We Went to Japan

March 13, 2024

...re Sakura (cherry blossom season). A few trees were blooming early and the stores were full of Sakura themed goods and foods. There’s even a Sakura themed Domino’s pizza meal. Tokyo was immensely fun to wander at night and I kept thinking of the class I took on Frederic Jameson’s book Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. In that book Jameson links the particular stage of global capitalism we live in with the confusing “hypersp...

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Lead in Backyard Eggs: Don’t Freak Out But Don’t Ignore the Issue

Mr. Homegrown

March 11, 2019

Animals, Bees, Lead

3 Comments

...elevated lead levels in our soil when we did a series of soil tests back in 2011. Thankfully our egg results came in at 1.02 ug, just under the average level in the study. You’d have to eat a lot of eggs as an adult to go beyond the Federal Drug Administration’s maximum recommended lead intake level, though you could bump up against it if a child ate more than three eggs a day. I’d suggest that if you live in an older urban location, next to a gas...

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Primitive Grain Storage Technique

Mrs. Homegrown

November 4, 2013

Appropriate Technology, Food Preservation, How-to, Preparedness

8 Comments

When thinking about technology, I like to play with the idea of what is the absolute minimum you need to get the job done. This may be because I’m not very handy at building things, but yet have survivalist tendencies. So while I’m pretty sure I’ll never actually have any need for these skills, it’s fun to think about how I’d get by in a DIY world. So I was delighted when I ran across this minimalist grain storage technique on the BBC documentary...

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What’s Your Everyday Carry?

Mr. Homegrown

May 9, 2017

Preparedness

11 Comments

...ebsite. Consider this blog post as an update of the pocket dump I posted in 2011. Since that time my EDC has changed, mostly via subtractions. Here’s my current EDC: 1. Leatherman Rebar This is the central and, unquestionably, most useful cornerstone of my EDC. Not a day goes by when I don’t pull out the Rebar to fix something or slice off a piece of cheese with the dull (my fault) pocket knife. The Leatherman folks have tried to anticipate every...

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

Mrs. Homegrown

October 26, 2015

Reviews

2 Comments

...change information under several different psychological models, including evolutionary psychology, cognitive psychology and social psychology to show that (in precise technical terms) we just can’t deal with this information. Due to the nature our twisty psychology it is easier for us, advantageous, even, to ignore climate change than to face it head on. We have every (psychological) incentive to ignore the mounding pile of facts and focus on our...

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