Allegedly Squirrel Proof Bird Feeder Not Rat Proof

...cilmen! Just kidding. It was rats. This discovery caps off a busy week for urban wildlife in our backyard. A young coyote visited last week and, last night, our indoor cats got in a full on cat fight on either side of a glass door with a visiting outdoor cat. Our new bird (rat?) feeder has a lever that closes when a heavy animal steps on it. This is supposed to deter squirrels. As you can see from the photos, rats easily hacked their way around th...

Read…

Spaceship Earth

...what could be more non-essential than hippie avant-garde thespians? For us urban homesteader types, it’s also good to have a reminder that hubris in the face of complexity is an occupational hazard of anyone who attempts to garden, keep animals, cook from scratch or otherwise interact with things other than laptops and iPhones. You can stream Spaceship Earth via the YouTubes for here. If you haven’t seen Adam Curtis’ All Watched Over by Machines o...

Read…

Saturday Tweets: Goodbye 2017

...dening (@guardiangardens) December 25, 2017 This @kcrw interview with UCLA urban planning professor Bryan Taylor really is a smart look at why LA traffic is so bad…and what to do about it.https://t.co/fRthpjqmOu pic.twitter.com/oqlHpv0rsd — Peter Flax (@Pflax1) December 27, 2017 "Holypager", an artwork that eavedrops on unecrypted pager messages https://t.co/kZJLZrUT0y — Root Simple (@rootsimple) December 29, 2017 Typeface reviews https://t.co/70p...

Read…

Reject Modernity Embrace Post-Capitalism

...hat profiles the erasure of African-American neighborhoods in the name of “urban renewal” during the 20th century. In Instagram, Susaneck posts before and after photos showing once thriving neighborhoods turned into the sort of horrific landscape depicted in Skeleton88 and Octopolis’ YouTube videos. The Segregation by Design website takes a systematic approach, showing how redlining and demographics were weaponized to eradicate minority neighborho...

Read…