My Morning Routine: Tarrying With the Negative

...g via the very object that wounded him. Žižek, building on Freud and Lacan uses this as a metaphor for the ways in which we use language and narrative to deal with the struggles of life by reenacting pain and pleasure cycles in order to heal. In the final chapters of the book Žižek moves on to collective forms of ideology via a deep dive into Lacan. Of our current system Žižek says, The elementary feature of capitalism consists of its inherent str...

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Pepper’s Ghost

...eB4kup3oKY0?si=Lp8HuYnto3B3_gH1 Looking for an easy Halloween display that uses stuff you might have at hand? In this video Joshua Ellingson shows you how to create the 19th century Pepper’s ghost effect using an iPad, some plastic film and a glass container. YouTube is full of pre-made Pepper’s ghost videos so you don’t even need to shoot anything. If you want to go deeper there’s a free version of a video DJ type program called VDMX that you can...

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Cold brewed tisanes, teas and coffee: Your summertime best friends

...d plants. He talks about this in his book, The New Wildcrafted Cuisine. He uses whatever is in season at the time, an eclectic mix that may include wild mints, elderflowers, conifers like white fir and pine, herbs like black sage and berries of all sorts. Sometimes he adds less-wild ingredients, like lemons or honey. He leaves all these things swirling around in the jug at table, so that the sight of the infusion is almost as arresting as the tast...

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The Walls Have Eyes

...r adapters etc all equipped with hidden cameras. Could their be legitimate uses for these devices? Maybe the sight of a baby monitor offends your aesthetic sensibilities and you’d prefer it discretely hidden in a smoke alarm? Possible but unlikely. We all know but don’t want to think about these inexpensive electronics in the hands of Airbnb voyeurs. While our ancestors once scanned the savanna in the hopes of bagging a gazelle for dinner we moder...

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The Great Greywater Debate- PVC or Polyethylene?

...reywater installations it ain’t practical. Aqua-Flo does carry a new HDPE product called Blu-lock. You can get 1-inch Blu-lock in-100 foot rolls for a reasonable price (more info to follow in another post). Blu-lock uses special proprietary fittings that are easier to assemble than conventional mainline drip tubing and, intriguingly, allow for disassembly. I’m going to test Blu-lock and will report back on the results....

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