24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep

...blogging now seems quaint next to the horrors of social media which was only just gestating when Crary wrote 24/7. Perhaps to update his argument a bit Crary’s has a new book, Scorched Earth: Beyond the Digital Age to a Post-Capitalist World which continues many of the themes developed in 24/7. To extract a personal strategy from either of these books is to miss the point. Pervasive, addictive technologies must be confronted in solidarity with oth...

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Book Review: A Feast of Weeds by Luigi Ballerini

...ademic tome. Ballerini is erudite, witty, even bawdy at times. Ballerini’s book infuses foraging with history and meaning, Gathering, cooking and reading seems like a triad of imperatives much more appetizing than the believing, obeying, and fighting through which one famous twentieth-century dictator tried to reduce Italy to idiocy (largely succeeding) and the buying, pretending not to know, and not giving a damn about others with which his polit...

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Make Your Own Furniture

...ssic 70s DIY Furniture manuals, Furniture in 24 Hours and More Furniture in 24 Hours. You’ve got 24 hours. Get busy. Ken Isaacs Ken Issac’s work inhabits the liminal space between architecture and furniture. Here’s a download of Isaac’s classic and hard to find manual How to Build Your Own Living Structures. Isaacs’ method, sometimes called “Grid Beam” relies on either wood or metal with a regular series of holes drilled to accept bolts. Grid Beam...

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Being the Change: Peter Kalmus Book Appearances

...r shows you how to slash your fossil fuel use to 1/10 the average and still live like royalty. If you’d like to hear Peter speak you have two chances: Wednesday Aug 9, 7:00pm: Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena Friday Aug 11, 7:30pm: The Last Bookstore in downtown Los Angeles Hope to meet some Root Simple readers at Peter’s talks!...

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What we think about when we try not to think about global warming

...ers–look at CostCo alone! How could we not be doomed? And then I read this book–and now I’m not so sure anymore. Because Stoknes addresses the realm of spirit in Part 3. Given the PowerPoint-ready stolidity of the first two parts of the book, it really surprised me that he went there. And at the same time, it was exciting to find an ally in an unexpected place, to find these more radical notions rising out of such a practical footing. What does he...

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