Artist Lucile Prache

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/12/13/you_are_stealing_our_future_greta

Democracy Now!

You Are Stealing Our Future: Greta Thunberg, 15, Condemns the World’s Inaction on Climate Change

Fifteen-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the U.N. plenary last night in Katowice, Poland, condemning global inacti

Actually you know what. Just don’t mow. Get rid of your lawnmower. Turn your whole yard into a wildflower field or an edible garden. Lawns are the invention of the upper class to show wealth through wasted plots of grass that is meticulously tended for no reason other than to be grass. It’s literally an empty plot of land they kept because they had so much money they didn’t need it to grow food. Not using a yard as just a yard is an act of rebellion.

One of the main industries still supporting lawns is chemical pest control companies, and they’re also responsible for the insecticides that crashed the bird populations in the 40s and 50s as well as a lot of what’s killing bees and butterflies now. The herbicides they produce specifically targets “bad” plants like dandelions, buttercups, and clovers, which are plants bees rely on for early spring feeding. Grass is just grass; it would be great for feeding small mammals if people would let it grow more than three inches, but they won’t.

So, yeah. Kill lawnmower culture. Plant some native flowers. Grow some vegetables and fruit trees. Put out bird feeders and bee sugar spots and homes for both. Be kind to bugs and birds and rabbits and opossums and whoever else might wander by. Make your neighborhood a lot more beautiful.

I’m using a plant to catch a leak in the ceiling. “No such thing as waste in a permaculture system,” right?

Amethyst mushrooms. Elaeomyxa Cerifera, identified in 1942. This fungi’s fruiting structures split open to release spores which sparkle like a disco ball. It looks like a whole Galaxy in a single mushroom.

Meet the Women Behind California’s First Open-Water Seaweed Farm

They’re on a quest for a delicious solution to global food insecurity

Tessa Emmer, Catherine O’Hare, and Avery Resor constitute the all-female braintrust behind Salt Point Seaweed, a fledgling Bay Area company that launched last June. They’ve been harvesting wild seaweed off the coast of Mendocino County, located a few hours north of San Francisco, for two years and selling it to chefs at local restaurants, seafood CSAs, and at retail. Now, they’re striving to become the first West Coast seaweed farming operation to establish an active, open-water farm.

The idea to launch a sustainable seaweed syndicate came to Emmer, O’Hare, and Resor after living in East Africa and witnessing the burgeoning role of seaweed in those communities—as local fishing stock dwindled, resourceful women had found a reliable replacement in seaweed. Seaweed grows rapidly and easily without help from external inputs. Emmer and Resor, who share a background in natural resource management, drew inspiration from a hardscrabble female aquafarming operation in Zanzibar. “There were so many women farmers using it as an alternative revenue model in declining fisheries environments,” says Emmer. “We started wondering why it wasn’t happening in California.”

(via Meet the Women Behind California’s First Open-Water Seaweed Farm | Sierra Club)

Salt Point Seaweed is a three-woman team - Tessa Emmer, Catherine O'Hare, and Avery Resor - living in the Bay Area and working throughout California.

Tessa and Catherine met as undergraduates at Oberlin College and have spent many days exploring the Pacific Ocean from Oahu, Hawaii, to Mendocino, California. Tessa fell in love with the coastal and riparian ecosystems of the Pacific coast when she came out to California for a restoration internship with the Presidio of San Francisco. Her drive to work at the intersection of ecological conservation, economic development, and climate adaptation led her to pursue a master in sustainable development at UC Berkeley, where she met Avery.

Catherine has a background in coastal ecology and sustainable agriculture. She grew up next to the ocean, splashing around the sunny tide pools of southern California. After graduating with a Biology degree from Oberlin College, she worked for small scale organic farms and a small food business, solidifying her passion for local food, regenerative food systems, and health.

Avery grew up living and working on a cattle ranch and has been working in sustainable agriculture ever since. At Duke University Marine Lab, she studied marine biology and environmental science and was captivated by the parallels between aquaculture and land-based agriculture. She is integrating her agriculture experience with 10 years of professional cooking experience to bring farm-to-table culinary expertise to our team.

Avery, Catherine, and Tessa are all committed to using business as a force for environmental protection, community development, and food system transformation.

https://www.saltpointseaweed.com/about

You can find out more / follow them on instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/saltpointseaweed/

Hey y’all! I wanted your opinion on something. My laptop for the past five years has died, it’s dead and gone. And I was wondering would it be best for me to just get some cheapo $200 computer and hope for the best or save up for like a $400 $500 computer that’ll last me for longer and treat me better? By the way I am like a first year college student who has access to computers on campus. And I already went to a computer technician who is backing it for like $50, so my files are not lost.

This is one of the oldest conundrums of personal finance: to spend a small amount of money on a bandaid solution NOW, or save up for a long-term solution later. We wrote about the dilemma here:

It’s More Expensive to Be Poor Than to Be Rich

Personally, if you can get by using the computers at school, then I would save up another few hundred dollars to buy the higher quality computer that will last longer. It’ll be cheaper in the long term, and you’ll rest easy knowing that you won’t have to deal with another computer combustion any time soon. Good luck!

Tiny Houses in Urban Context

I’ve seen a lot of really great tiny home designs, and I’ve seen a lot of love from other people for those designs as well. They combine a small space, perfect for one or two people, that usually only apartment buildings design for, with the benefits of having a detached home, with a yard, and windows on all sides for more natural light. 

What I don’t see is a whole lot of context, least of all in an urban neighborhood environment.  These houses are often pictured in an open grassy, or forested space, which is nice for some people I’m sure, but there are lots of people who would prefer to live in a city, in pedestrian and transit friendly areas, rather than in the middle of nowhere, where you’d have to use a car to get everywhere.

There already exists an urban context for tiny homes, but due to restrictive zoning, it’s not commonplace in most cities in the U.S.

They’re called Bungalow Courts, or sometimes Cottage Courts, and basically it’s where you take two adjacent lots, and rather than having one large single-family-house per lot, you have around 3 or so tiny houses per lot, all facing a shared space in the center. 

 All this takes up the same space as two city lots, which are usually zoned to only allow one house per lot. But not everyone wants, or can afford a large house, so Bungalow Courts would be a perfect fit in a lot of neighborhoods that currently lack a lot of housing diversity for a range of wants and needs.

Anyway, I just thought I’d share, because I think this a really neat concept that should be allowed more places. I’d think I’d like to live in a Bungalow Court; I like the idea of having a house to myself, but I don’t need much space, and I don’t want a huge yard to maintain.

In order to make this legal to build out, zoning would need to be changed to allow 3-4 units of housing to be built on lots currently restricted to only 1 unit of housing. A big contributing factor to rising housing costs has been the over-favoring of single-family houses on large lots since the end of WWII, so not enough units of housing are being built in many cities to keep up with demand. 

Legalizing more “missing middle housing” like Bungalow Courts in single-family-house-neighborhoods would help cities incrementally keep up with demand, in a way that fits nicely into existing neighborhoods. 

Shit No One Told Me About My Period

I knew the basics before I got it, but I had no clue…

* The blood wouldn’t necessarily be red. When I first got my period, I spent a few min looking at my underwear wondering how I shit myself. I didn’t know the blood could look brown, or be thick.

* That tampons weren’t a good idea yet. I was 10 or 11 when I got my first period and physically smaller than an adult woman. My first attempt at inserting a tampon was very painful and unsuccessful. I wouldn’t use them until I was around 14 or so.

* That when you use pads the blood can get on your bottom and I’d have to occasionally clean off the toilet seat after using it.

* That getting your first period DOES NOT mean you’re fully developed and fully able to bear children. I could have technically gotten pregnant at that age, but I was still a child and pregnancy would have put my life in danger because I was still physically immature.

* That it wouldn’t be regular for another few years.

* That very painful cramping is NOT NORMAL once you reach your 20s and is cause for concern.

* That the blood and tissue you pass can look chunky or stringy and not like blood from a cut.

* That stress can halt your period for months BUT

* That doesn’t mean you can’t get pregnant

Feel free to add your own

I just came across Molly Costello’s art, and it’s so incredibly solarpunk! It’s so gorgeous and hopeful and wonderfully nature-inspired and I love everything about it.