A Fennel Drinking Straw

...onable, like drinking toothpaste, but others might sense a cocktail opportunity. Dr. Google informs me that I’m not the first with this fennel stalk cocktail idea. Emily Han, a guest on episode 67 of the Root Simple Podcast, outscooped me back in 2013. But perhaps, via crowd-sourced knowledge, we might make a vegetative drinking straw breakthrough. What other plant stalks could we replace all those plastic straws with?...

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There’s No Such Thing as a Free Watch

...e internet. On the one hand I’m thankful for the platform of this blog and podcast as well as instant access to a whole world of useful how-to information and videos. But, the other day while doing an image search for William Blake’s Urizen, I landed on a hateful anti-Semitic website. Grossed out, I retreated to the computer-free early twentieth century technology of my garage workshop where the Butlerian Jihad backstory of Frank Herbert’s novel D...

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Saturday Tweets: Muting, RIP Hygge and an Owl

...iX — Luciano Giubbilei (@L_Giubbilei) January 1, 2018 New Opposable Thumbs podcast! This episode is really just about saying Happy New Year! so we have no guest or challenge. We talk about the hard work of creativity and the mirage of success… and buying deodorant. https://t.co/flwT1vr0nC — Rob Ray (@robdeadtech) January 2, 2018 RIP Hygge 2016-2017 https://t.co/AFUfQx0pu1 — Root Simple (@rootsimple) January 2, 2018 No-one paints owls like Hieronym...

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Practical, Positive and Peaceable

...[Editors note 2022: I’ve come to see Eisenstein’s thinking as deeply flawed listen to this podcast for what I agree are many of the problems with his work. I also have come to see the problems with my own posts here. Sometimes you have to fight. Sometimes you have to be cranky. To not fight or be cranky in the face of death and injustice is an unethical political stance.]...

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The World’s Most Beautiful Font?

The Futility Closet podcast had an interesting episode a few weeks back that told the story of the creation of what many consider to be the most beautiful font ever designed: Doves type. In 1913 the type’s creator, Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson, threw the typeface into the Thames rather than let it fall into the hands of his unscrupulous business partner. Designer Robert Green spent years attempting to recreate the font. Unsatisfied with the resu...

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