Is it Cake?

...In the penultimate show, you’ll find out that the final bake-off involves making a cake that is a simulation of cake, which leads the contestants in the show to question if everything is, in fact, made of cake, that we’re living in a vast cake simulation. In the the last episode the losing contestants, angry at missing out on the $10,000 prize and driven mad with their epistemological cake crisis, set out to slice the meta-obnoxious host in half...

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Community Power! Elect Hugo Soto-Martinez!

...ary working people. He supports building social housing, jobs programs and making our streets safer for everyone. You can read more about his platform on his website. Electing Hugo is just the beginning. There’s a lot of work to do to turn this city around. Thankfully, more people are starting to pay attention to local elections. You can help out by going to my fundraising page for Hugo and chipping in a few dollars. Wherever you are you can be a...

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BrickTube

...et for cutting bricks. Bricklayer, August Sander, 1929. I like the idea of making small garden follies with bricks and can imagine other uses for brick structures in gardens. Could I build a wall or something structural? No way–not without a lot more practice. Brick work is intellectually challenging and hard physical labor. I have much respect for the people who do this for a living. I mean, just think about the man in that Sander photo above and...

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Saturday Linkages: Blow Blow Thou Winter Wind

Blow Blow Thou Winter Wind, John Everett Millais 1892. Ornament Making in the Octavia Lab ‘The Best Thing You Can Do Is Not Buy More Stuff,’ Says ‘Secondhand’ Expert Do This Before It Snows! Snow Blower Maintenance A wheel education: the environmental diploma you earn by bike Cypress Park’s “Egghead Stonehenge” takes a hit Notes on an afternoon inside John Portman’s Bonaventure Hotel Should I Worry About Death Cap Mushroooms in California? Video:...

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Backyard and Backwards Beekeeping

...Q&A you’ll notice that my desktop computer is installed in our closet thus making my Zoom background a pile of folded sheets. In the talk I give a brief intro to bee biology and then go over the way I keep bees here as taught to me by “backwards” beekeeping guru Kirk Anderson. Beekeeping resources I mention during the talk: Organizations/Websites HoneyLove.org: local non-profit that provides hands-on education and resources for backyard beekeepers...

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