The Year We Gave Up Our Smart Phones

...got interrupted and too many accidents happened. In the years leading up to 2023 we came to understand our smart phones the way 20th century folks came to understand cigarettes, as addictive, unhealthy and destructive. Just like the cigarette executives the tech billionaires got our kids hooked to their unhealthy products. They ruthlessly mined our attention for dollars. Consider it lucky when those same tech billionaires got stranded on the Bezos...

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2022 in Review: Cats, Mushrooms and Politics

...streets. Partly to deal with those ugly streets, Kelly and I spent most of 2022 volunteering through DSA-LA in support of the Hugo Soto-Martinez campaign. Thankfully Hugo won in November and has already got to work making our streets safer and helping tenants and unhoused people. Tech I put up a 10 meter and 2 meter radio and did a little bit of amateur radio stuff. I’m not great at it but did manage to make digital contacts as far away as Indone...

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Saturday Tweets: Don’t Fear the Green Reaper

...dressmaids https://t.co/sXEv0xe9Ym — Root Simple (@rootsimple) January 28, 2019 The Right to Repair movement is making strides around the world https://t.co/PKffl3RWYJ — Root Simple (@rootsimple) January 28, 2019 I’m going to have to start eating actual mice, aren’t I?https://t.co/0cbDh6ipn4 — Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) January 28, 2019 Progress! https://t.co/7wPV20taEb — Michael Pollan (@michaelpollan) January 28, 2019 Play is beginning to loo...

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How to be a Tudor by Ruth Goodman

...ever see that described? Yet somehow, I feel better for understanding the making and maintenance process of these things. Now the ruff seems less like the inexplicable product of an alien civilization. Just think, someone (many someones) made that ruff and all those baubles and do-dads by hand Did you know folks could change the color of their ruffs in and out by treating them different colored starches? Or that there were colored ruffs at all? (...

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My New Thoughtstyling Throne

...he BarcaLounger which shows you how far this American Empire has declined. Making Stickley’s #336 involved an nerve racking steam bending process. The wood went in a makeshift box fed with steam from a wallpaper steamer. After an hour in the steamer the wood was quickly rushed to a form made with plywood. I had to actually sit on the arm to get it to bend. On the first attempt the arm broke and I had to do it all over again. When I was done with t...

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