Natural Cooling: The Fresh Air Bed

...to the late 1950s, when air conditioning appeared in homes and apartments, builders used to have to consider regional differences. After air conditioning you could build any house anywhere. You could replace walls with sheets of glass, overhanging roofs with modernist boxes. Particularly in hot, humid climates houses often had a screened porch or balcony on which to sleep on a sweltering night. The early 20th century was probably the zenith of the...

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Shed Factoids and Resources

...nd resources for keeping costs low and creativity high. I used some of the building tips from his book Micro Shelters when I built my ridiculous neo-classical garden shed. Permits Here in Los Angeles you don’t need a permit for a shed that’s less than 120 square feet, One-story detached accessory buildings used as tool and storage sheds, playhouses and similar uses, provided the gross floor area does not exceed 120 square feet, the height does not...

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Saturday Tweets: Rainy Day Tweets

...SketchUp contemporary, Minecraftsman, blandmarks, LoMo (low modern), Spongebuild Squareparts — why do modern apartment buildings look the same, and what should we call them? https://t.co/giXtCixxkq — Patrick Sisson (@patrickcsisson) December 5, 2018 ‘The only way we are going to get out of this situation is by choosing to be courageous.’ — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pic.twitter.com/givJA9w8gy — NowThis (@nowthisnews) December 5, 2018 Check out all o...

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127 Apocalypse Now with Father Mark Kowalewski

...t, seem off-topic. But I think it’s safe to say that within the DNA of the urban homesteading, permaculture and ecological movements is a concern with how the world might end and the possibility of either hastening, postponing or avoiding the collapse of human civilization. Then there’s the fact that a significant portion of U.S. government officials believe in some form of a “rapture.” Of course there are many divergent opinions on the nature of...

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Worst of NextDoor

...nity is somehow more “open minded” than other parts of the country or that urban people are more progressive than rural people. These are stereotypes that I’ve been guilty of harboring in the past. We are all, myself included, easily sucked into the sort of hateful trolling that Silicon Valley has found a way to monetize on social media. How do you keep people glued to a website like NextDoor? Just offer the spectacle of your elder neighbors teari...

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