Why You Should Have a Cat Fountain

...clean out the pump twice a week and change the water frequently. The pump uses a small amount of electricity and costs just $1.29 a year to run. You need to be careful when you remove the pump from the bowl so as not to rip off the suction cups that hold it to the bottom of the bowl. As a side benefit the fountain adds the sound of running water to our living room, thus giving the space the vibe of a yoga studio or West Coast chiropractor’s offic...

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Behold the Sector

...out the divider on the workplace. In addition to carpentry the sector was used in navigation, surveying and gunnery. With your handy sector you can also solve multiplication and trigonometry problems. The sector’s invention is attributed to either Galileo Galilei and/or Thomas Hood sometime in the 16th century. If you’re a teacher or a parent looking for a geometry lesson to do in quarantine Jim Toplin has a free paper sector plan you can downloa...

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Kelly’s New Desk

...ry and older designs that, paradoxically, seem clean and modern. This desk uses a common staked leg design that you’ll see on a lot of tables and chairs in the past and to this day in many places in the world. As this was the first time I’ve ever built this type of table, mistakes were made but I’m pleased with the end result. Schwartz emphasizes hand tools which means that this desk could be made with just a few tools in a small workshop (though...

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Saturday Linkages: The Calm After the Storm

...ting.html?spref=tw … Primitive Skills Roland Trevino of Altadena Makes and Uses the Ancient Atlatl: http://dirttime.com/?p=2741 Gardening What to do with storm damaged trees: http://www.treesaregood.org/pressrelease/press/firstaid.aspx … Check out The vegetable garden by M.M. Vilmorin-Andrieux, of Paris on Google Play! Old book recommended by John Jeavons: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Vilmorin_Andrieux_et_cie_The_vegetable_garden?id...

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Garage Philosophy

...s : Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies Erik Davis uses the phrase “garage philosopher” to describe the self-made DIY thoughtstylists of the 70s counterculture. Considering the epistemological mess we’re in right now, it would be to our benefit to re-embrace garage philosophy, to democratize and make practical the observations of the greats of the discipline. Unfortunately, my public school education, almost all the way thr...

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