A Year after The Age of Limits: 5 Responses to the End Times

...and there are other types of resilient communities that we could choose to build if we were building from scratch. All of which is to say that the virtues of independence, resilience, craftiness, land wisdom, etc.– the virtues and skills we admire in our ancestors and which many of us cherish and wish to recover more fully–need not be paired with retrogressive social attitudes. The Good Ol’ Days were not good days for women–nor were they good days...

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June: National Bathroom Reading Month

...itional supplements. Precisely the items you don’t want for getting around urban Los Angeles. This particular catalog featured something new, however, his and hers matching bikes from Schwinn called, we kid you not, “Sid and Nancy“. Sid and Nancy feature automatic shifting since either bike gears are too complicated for Americans to figure out, or folks want to do what they do while driving: talk on cell phones. But why do Sid and Nancy have gears...

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Saturday Linkages: The Calm After the Storm

...nion/opinion-la/la-ol-getting-jerry-browned-20121024,0,2854852.story … New Urban Velo issue free online: http://www.urbanvelo.org/issue34/ The fox is guarding the hen house! How the sugar industry defends itself against claims that sugar is unhealthy: http://boingboing.net/2012/10/31/how-the-sugar-industry-defends.html … Billboard firm wrote L.A. proposal on signs http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-1027-billboard-influence-20121027,0,1562494....

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Thursday Linkages: Mason Bees, Hawks and Robot Cars

...d version: Build Your Own Mason Bee House http://boingboing.net/2014/05/16/build-your-own-mason-bee-house.html … Swiss Restaurant Imposes Fine on Customers Wasting Food http://www.ibtimes.co.in/swiss-restaurant-imposes-fine-customers-wasting-food-600131 … via @ibtimesindia1 #foodcrisis Hawks and Rats in NYC, on camera: http://www.theawl.com/2014/05/where-do-rats-go-when-they-die … Boxwoods? Bah! by James Roush http://feedly.com/e/KZ4uAoLm Bikesnob...

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RIP Michael Brooks

.... My writing beat, what has, for lack of a better term, been called “urban homesteading” is poisoned by that individualism which manifests in a concept of self sufficiency whose ultimate destination is a lonely existence in a doomstead bunker. I’ve always tried to point out that we’re all in this together, that we need to build up our households and our communities. It’s not one or the other. Michael was just beginning to formulate a strategy that...

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