By Hand and Eye

...lden section, for instance, and the shelf spacing came from an exercise on page 131 of the book. Far from being restrictive, I found the principles in Walker and Tolpin’s book liberating. I now had a starting point for any design project. For modern folks it’s difficult to imagine working without a ruler. Walker and Toplin explain, Instead of asking, “How high is this base dimension in inches?” pre-industrial artisans would have asked, “How tall i...

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I Deleted my Facebook Account

...ce: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection. It’s a sobering 429 page nightmarish list of social media’s many sins. Then there’s Jeremy Ashkenas who, in a series of tweets, dug up some of Facebook’s patent applications. As others have pointed out these patents read like Black Mirror episode summaries. If that isn’t enough, there’s Facebook’s attempt to exploit depressed teenagers for advertising revenue. Ironically, much of the privacy i...

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Saturday Linkages: Beetle Party, Floating Homes and Cilantro

...ker (@awalkerinLA) June 8, 2018 If you don’t have time to read the full 70-page UCLA study, then watch this short video on why transit ridership has declined and what can be done about it https://t.co/09uPpcyDCK — StreetsblogLA (@StreetsblogLA) June 7, 2018 Beautiful gardens in the back of Japanese mini pickup trucks https://t.co/Euw432jyF4 — Root Simple (@rootsimple) June 7, 2018 At the peak of its technological advancement, human civilization be...

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The Practical Side of Philosophy

How did I get through my entire education without studying so much as a page of philosophy? It is, after all, the foundation of all human knowledge. In desperate act of catch-up, I’ve attempted in the past few years an often difficult program of philosophical and theological self-study. Now, before you think I’ve gone way off topic on a homesteading blog, let me counter with a few examples of how philosophy can help navigate thorny DIY questions:...

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Random Acts of Beauty

...ouse in London that just happens to be owned by Led Zeppelin founder Jimmy Page. The ceiling of Burges’ Cardiff Castle, above, shows Burges’ extreme commitment to ornament and detail. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRDD2hfAxAk Lastly, when it comes to screen time, I’ve been thinking about re-watching the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, Stalker, in particular. Like all of Tarkovsky’ work the film is poetic and ambiguous. In Stalker, Tarkovsky addresses...

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