Everything Must Go Part II: Books

January 12, 2015

...eb, the books on philosophy and theology stayed in addition to most of the appropriate technology and gardening manuals. We have no math books (not our subject to put it mildly) and popular science and non-fiction books I get at the library. Everything else “died” and went to our local library’s book sale. What can make it difficult to let go of books, even ones we never really intend to read, is that our personal libraries are an external manifes...

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The Return of the Monocle?

Mr. Homegrown

February 3, 2015

Appropriate Technology

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...nline monocle dealer based in San Francisco. But what about the monocle as appropriate technology? It’s pretty much the same, after all, as wearing one contact. I have decent distance vision, so I could wear a monocle for closeup vision in my non-dominant eye. If you use glasses try looking through them with just your non-dominant eye to understand how a monocle would allow you to see both close up and distance at the same time. Monocles weren’t a...

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Getting my Ham Radio License

Mr. Homegrown

September 25, 2013

Miscellaneous

16 Comments

...of Limits conference he held court on some of my favorite forgotten ideas: appropriate technology, fraternal societies and Ham radio. A Ham himself, Greer recommended I read an amazingly odd book, Instruments of Amplification, which actually has directions for building your own transistors from junk. I’ll probably never get around to any of those projects, but I of A may be the ultimate DIY text. But I’m not just being contrarian. I’m looking forw...

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I don’t hear you singing in the wire . . .

Mr. Homegrown

June 14, 2008

Thoughtstylings

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...radio (perhaps a good idea considering AT&T’s repair service–I’d hate to see what they’d be like in an earthquake). In the meantime we leave you with a song that seems appropriate under our circumstances, Wichita Lineman, often described as the “first existential country song”:...

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Saturday Linkages: Murder Hornet Halloween

Mr. Homegrown

October 31, 2020

Saturday Linkages

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...terdämmerung,” in a Detroit Parking Garage I close with a quote that seems appropriate both for Halloween and for the political crises we’re in. It’s from one of my favorite books, Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative? and builds off of Marx’s love of a snarky vampire metaphor: The most Gothic description of Capital is also the most accurate. Capital is an abstract parasite, an insatiable vampire and zombie-maker; but the livi...

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