Velo, Rapido: This is about a few different things.

Here’s the Thing

Think about what an abandoned American city looks like, how much less room there is for the green grass to grow, how much harder it is for PVC siding to return to the earth. Mostly, though, I want to know so many things about who used to live here.

via slavin (“sorry, I know this is a depressing image, but it’s also a remarkable one.”) via satanvsrussia (“Abandoned Village in Russia”)

01/30/12
via susanmernit, via FFFFOUND!

01/30/12
Election 2012: Send us your audio comments | Marketplace from American Public Media
Souncloud + PIN + Marketplace = a pretty interesting crowdsourcing project.
01/30/12
via kenyatta, Dolores Park, by Caryn Kesler.

01/29/12
I post people’s stories as they tell them to me. I am not a journalist. I don’t try to verify, just listen.
Actually, Chris is a journalist and this is journalism.
01/29/12
mpdrolet / Christopher Gielen

01/27/12
mpdrolet, # 1820-4, Tsz Wan Shan, 2000 Georg Aerni

01/27/12
Grateful for Nadalex, Fluxus, Madeline. We make our own reality.
01/26/12
via eyeheartnewyork the Standard Hotel

01/25/12
We Have Decided Not to Die
I heard a rumor that Occupy Cal State (possibly Cal Arts?) had adopted “We have decided not to die” as a slogan. I love it, though I can’t find any actual evidence of that claim.
01/25/12

I bet @sagac could make one of these out of army blankets. January 17, 2012
I bet @sagac could make one of these out of army blankets. […]
Coming soon to an episode of portlandia. Also: great. January 14, 2012
Coming soon to an episode of portlandia. Also: great. […]
Photo January 14, 2012
[…]
Photo January 11, 2012
[…]

Oggy Two

I got a new ogg player for Christmas. (That's how it works: I get Christmas presents, Noah gets Hannukah presents) and on the first go round I managed to completely bork the thing. Broke it so's I had to send it back to SanDisk. Got it back, plugged it in ...

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Kombucha

When I started brewing kombucha, I had a hard time distilling the instructions (which are everywhere) into the nuts and bolts. Here's the thing no one just spells out: for every 3 quarts of tea, use about 1 cup of sugar. The rest of it goes like this: You need a container. Glass is best, metal and plastic are no good. Some people use ceramic, which is fine, though I like a transparent container so I can keep my brew on a high shelf and check on it from time to time. So I have a giant pickle jar. For best results, you want the surface area to be wider than it is deep, but it doesn't matter that much. My pickle jar is much deeper than it is wide, but I don't usually fill it. You need tea, green or black or oolong. You need sugar, white or brown. No honey. 1 cup of sugar per 3 qts tea. And you need a starter, aka a mother or a scoby. It helps to have some brew from your last batch. You need a piece of cloth. I used cheesecloth for a long time until a fruit fly epidemic in our compost made it's way to the cupboard where my kombucha was brewing. That was truly revolting. Now I use a clean piece of sheeting, which has a much tighter weave than cheesecloth.

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Crack, By Popular Request

A salad dressing you don't think will be good, because nutritional yeast is for hippies, but you are wrong. These go in a blender: ⅓ c tamari soy sauce, ⅓ c cider vinegar, ½ c water, 2-3 cloves of garlic, ½ c nutritional yeast. Blend them. Then add 1½ c vegetable oil. ...

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Mapping (to read)

Skipped out on Hacks and Hackers tonight in favor of my quiet couch. The twitters say these are worth looking at: https://github.com/albertsun/gmap-features http://projects.propublica.org/redistricting-maps/protect-your-vote http://censusmapmaker.com/ Next item: I need to understand analytics much more deeply again.

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Simeone in a Nutshell

Listening to On The Media's report on Lisa Simeone this morning, because I ran into a friend on Saturday who heard on Democracy Now that she was fired for "attending a protest," which I'm tempted to say is why I don't listen to Democracy Now. Mostly I find ...

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Good Real Food

Still down (the dinner blog) but last night I was lured (under false pretenses, but it's cool) to Brooklyn Kitchen for a panel, not on radical grocery stores (that was the false premise) but about grocers, generally. First it was dull. Some stats on farms and farming. Specialty food ...

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Drupaling Taliah

Taliah wants to bring her website straight through the aughts and into this decade. We were going to write a book, a ten year anniversary of BicyclePaintings.com and I was going to contribute an essay about how much has changed since I whipped together an html template and showed ...

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Vegetable Casserole, Page 100

The second in what may or may not turn out to be a series of open conversations with Kiersten about what we find in It happened in the kitchen. Noah declared this to be the weirdest thing I've ever made. He also declared that it needs salt. I didn't mind ...

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Travellers Wish to Stay Put

I've been working on a project called Nutshell, a sort of proof of concept. I could write up "occupywallstreet" but I don't think it rises to the occasion. I might write up something about Travellers, since they seem to be making the news here, but there's more parsing than background to it, because of course, the history of most Gypsies is one of eviction. Note: Travellers aren't Romani. Still: call them travelers and then tell them to hit the road. For now: Travellers facing eviction from Dale Farm gipsy camp have their own homes in Ireland - (Telegraph). I'm trying to decide how much and how often Nutshell makes sense.

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Water Pressure

Arif asked a pretty good question about water pressure and rain barrels. I know the practical answer: you need the barrel to be higher than the hoses; the higher it is, the more pressure you've got; soaker hoses don't need much pressure. If you don't want to build something get ...

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