StringTheory @ StringTheory @beehaw.org

Fun with strings! Ukulele, knitting, physics!

---

Read more

Posts

20

Comments

177

Joined

2 yr. ago

Here’s an excellent place to start: https://tincanknits.com/collection/the-simple-collection

And “run” the heels and ball of the foot so they felt down and last longer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fKKLOUNOHU

I did a deep-dive reading and watching videos learning about sturdy and long-lasting fabrics and materials. Learned a bit about tailoring for durability, too. (For example, Duluth Trading shifted the inseams on their Firehose pants forward. The forward seams don’t rub on each other when you walk, and so the inner thighs don’t self-destruct as quickly.)

There are also a ton of excellent resources on how to mend clothing and properly care for it. And it doesn’t take much effort, really.

So now I have a bunch of older clothes, with subtle repairs, still in good shape. Sure, I’d like some sexy new trendy disposable stuff so I can be one of the cool kids - but that’s how fast fashion gets its claws into you. Preying on our magpie-like desires for shiny new things makes somebody big bucks. (And creates huge waste and exploits desperate workers.)

Buy sturdy “classic” clothes. Keep them in good repair. Fight the system.

Yep, it will be free for California residents in need, and much cheaper for everyone else. Pharma corps have been running amok raising insulin costs insane amounts. California can make their own and provide it directly to residents for far less money than they spend buying it from the companies.

I used to make big platters of deviled eggs for afternoon seminars. The grad students descended upon them like ravening wolves.

https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/04/12/california-senate-transport-committee-passes-solar-parking-canopy-and-highwayside-law/

Speaking of shade… This is pretty cool.

Just give ‘em bus tickets to Seattle and Portland, like Idaho does.

/s, but not really. Seattle even has a program to give people free tickets back to their hometowns.

Thanks, I hadn’t seen that word before and had assumed it had something to do with cars (car-nist).

What’s a carnist?

The “Cheap Old Houses” website is reassuring. It’s not a McMansion in the tony suburbia of a large popular city, but there are small reasonably priced houses in smaller cities and towns. https://www.cheapoldhouses.com/

I have two friends from high school who found houses under $100k within driving distance of larger cities ($60k in Kansas, $32k in Illinois)

They want to stop a certain type of population from declining. Can’t let them be replaced, y’know! Of course, the planet’s human population is exploding… unless you don’t consider some people to be human.

“The universe danced towards life. Life was a remarkably common commodity. Anything sufficiently complicated seemed to get cut in for some, in the same way that anything massive enough got a generous helping of gravity. The universe had a definite tendency towards awareness. This suggested a certain subtle cruelty woven into the very fabric of space-time.”

• Terry Pratchett, Soul Music

Best for what?

If you want to play baroque, go re-entrant like a ukulele and take off two strings.

If you want to play Hawaiian, take your pick of a bazillion slack key options. (Start with material from Jeff Peterson)

Despite claims by school officials that the adaptation had not been approved, KFDM notes that the book “was on a reading list sent to parents at the start of the school year,” so the district’s suggestion that the teacher “went rogue” seems…not true at all in the, y’know, actual sense of the word. A source close to the teacher told KFDM that the school’s principal had approved a syllabus that included the book. “There is an active investigation,” Mike Canizales, a spokesperson for the Hamshire-Fannett ISD, told the outlet.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/09/texas-school-fires-teacher-over-anne-frank-graphic-novel

The ol’ “philosophy is just applied history, history is just applied psychology, psychology is just applied biology, biology is just applied chemistry, chemistry is just applied physics, physics is just applied mathematics, mathematics is just applied philosophy.”

Which I saw as graffiti in a university bathroom back in Ye Olden Days and has stuck with me ever since.

Can you document this and present it to your town council? Give them your pictures and a brief write-up, and suggest a solution.

It looks like this is a pretty ambiguous sidewalk and could easily appear to be the verge of the street (rather than a sidewalk). A defined pavement with curbs would be a far more effective sidewalk, with the added benefit that anyone parking on it would clearly be in the wrong and could be ticketed or towed.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/fathead

In common North American usage “fat head” and “big head” imply hubris or pride, as well.

Dusting cloths: tear old cotton flannel sheets into squares. You can do this to sheets in your own rag-bag, or buy sheets at the charity shop. Old towels work well, too. They can be washed and re-used for quite a while. Old cotton knits work fine, if you don’t mind waving your dingy old tightie-whities and sweat stained tees around.

Anything soft and slightly fuzzy, and if the cloth alone doesn’t do the trick all you have to do is get it damp with plain water.

No, correlation does not mean there is a relationship. That’s the whole point behind “correlation does not equal causation.”

Read some of the ludicrous correlations people trot out to illustrate it. Two things occurring at the same time do not have to be related.

And no, I couldn’t use that meaningless population statistic to make the argument that oligarchs (lower case “o”) are destroying everyone else’s ability to have a family. Arguments require data, not correlations.

people who live longer take longer to pass on their house to their children; the older generation have also used housing as an investment vehicle and/or purchased second/holiday homes; and the elderly are typically the most likely to object to new housing developments, blocking their construction.

I don’t know anyone who inherited a house.

I don’t know anyone whose parents own more than one house.

I personally have objected to a large condo building that was planned on an unstable hillside with only a steep alley for access - cuz that shit was stupid in so many ways and a disaster waiting to happen.

Where is this huge population of wealthy old people who own multiple houses, and where are all these young people who are inheriting houses?

Just maybe we should be getting pissed at job insecurity, ruinous healthcare being used to chain workers, and falling wages for the source of wealth inequality…. Pretty hard to buy a house when your boss makes 500x what you do. (He’s making all that delicious money off you).