The Elysium Delusion

...nate Mars reality show participants, I say we haven’t been spending enough time looking down at our feet. The fact is that earth is a paradise, space is a vacuum and Mars is a hell. We have to work with what we have. In my cranky opinion, the future is in down-to-earth appropriate technology, not space stations.We need to plant gardens here on earth not in the vacuum of space. I’ll note that the farms in these space colonies look an awful lot like...

Read…

Cat Litter Compost, Installment #3

...tter Box. (And that name is pretty dubious, btw, because I spend plenty of time cleaning the boxes still.) Anyway, it’s basically a nesting system, two trays nested together. The inside tray has a perforated floor. The lower tray is solid. The way it works is that pine litter, when it meets moisture, expands and crumbles into sawdust. This dust just builds up in a regular box, but in these perforated boxes the dust falls through to the bottom bin....

Read…

We Are in This Together

...Unfortunately, people will die in a country where you have to launch a GoFundMe campaign to pay for your COVID-19 treatment. As Senator Sanders said regarding this crisis, “Now is the time for solidarity. Now is the time to come together with love and compassion for all, including the most vulnerable people in our society.”...

Read…

Starbucks Moderne

...n and ignored, Generation X. We’re the last generation that can remember a time of lounging in curlycued, overstuffed post-modern furniture, a time before the gig-slave economy. Now we’re hunched over in misery contemplating eking by on Fiverr and Mechanical Turk while the fat-cat masked billionaires enjoy slices of pie and a cup of coffee on the way to their Eyes Wide Shut parties. Further evidence of the age of the artist or, more likely, that t...

Read…

Saturday Linkages: Gaslighting the Quarantine Cats

...nitize their food and kitchens 3 Reasons Your Chicken May Display Red Legs Time to Get Blueberries in Your Freezer? Strawberry Feijoa Jam Your wedding’s been cancelled by the coronavirus lockdown? Good Inside NextDoor’s Karen problem What It’s Like to Get Doxed for Taking a Bike Ride Writer Lane Moore condensed my mood in a Tweet, is anyone else feeling gaslit all the time lately? I’m wearing my mask everywhere I go, I don’t touch it, I don’t pull...

Read…