Introducing #ArtShopaholism and #BiblioShopaholism

...king a healthy dinner or cleaning the house. #ArtShopaholism: Not actually making art but, instead, shopping and/or obsessing over art supplies. I’ve found drawing useful, but it’s a skill you have to practice in order to get any good at. To counter this I’m only allowing myself to draw with whatever crappy ballpoint pen I have on me. No thinking about, buying or obsessing over having the “right” pen pencil or sketchpad. #BiblioShopaholism: Shoppi...

Read…

Join or Die: Why You Should Join a Club

...I attended a screening last night of a new documentary, seven years in the making, profiling the work of Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, best known for the book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. I read this book when it came out and it had a profound influence on me, leading to years of joining clubs and organizations. The documentary is professionally produced and features some high level interviewees inclu...

Read…

Skyglow Raises Awareness of Light Pollution

...is is one of those problems that would be relatively easy to fix simply by making sure that lighting is not directed upwards and by using bulbs that emit light on a limited portion of the spectrum. And we’ll save energy in the process. Unfortunately, as the Los Angeles Weekly recently reported, the City of Los Angeles has not done a good job with light pollution. If you’d like to contribute to Mehmedinovic and Heffernan’s project, their website is...

Read…

Timing Sourdough Feeding

...ecent sourdough bread: the amount of time between feeding your starter and making your dough. I keep a small amount of starter on hand since I bake, at most, twice a week under normal circumstances (Under quarantine I’m baking a lot more but the reasons for that would be the subject of another blog post). Just before I go to bed, the night before I’m going to make bread, I take a tablespoon of starer and add it to 50 grams of whole wheat flour and...

Read…

Saturday Linkages: Let Them Eat Cake

...Coronovirus plans: stay home and make a cat cake. Coronovirus – Things You Can Do Our Economic Model Is Making Us More Vulnerable to Coronavirus How to Make a Garden Fountain Out Of, Well, Anything You Want You Already Live in Quarantine The One Defense Against Weaponized Memes ‘The best thing about Wellington’: Mittens the cat has paws all over New Zealand capital Visit the Chocolate Shop...

Read…