I use my Patreon page => http://www.patreon.com/HarperKingsley?ty=c <= like it’s some weird scrapbook. Except I’m that crafter that posts random pictures with text that completely doesn’t match. Like those greeting cards with the picture of a sunset accompanied by beautifully scripted nonsense.
Take my “Nancy, Drew, and Charlie” thing for instance.
For some reason I thought that I would share my picture of where the bugs were munching at my plants. (Those bites are what I blame for my crop failure :P) That picture has nothing to do with the dialogue. But I chose to use it anyway.
So if you want to say you visit my Patreon page just to look at the pictures… I will completely understand.
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I had the Kid cut my hair to donate to Locks of Love. It’s 11-inches of dark brown medium grain straight hair. Hopefully it will make someone a great wig.
For my head, the Kid did a good job. It’s a little lopsided, but I can fix it myself. It makes me feel lighter and more carefree to have shorter hair. It feels more like a giant life change than just a haircut.
I like shorter hair because it feels better, not just physically but spiritually. It’s like my hair gathers up all of the miseries of the year, and when I cut it off a weight is lifted from my shoulders.
I have a round face. I look best with my hair down past my chin, giving the illusion of a longer face, or pulled back to show off my neck and bone structure. Anything else and my face looks like a basketball. I tell people I have a Charlie Brown head because it’s true.
The longer my hair gets, the prettier I become. It’s some kind of weird curse. The best look for me is the one I hate the most. If I ever want to be “beautiful,” I’d have to carry my miseries around like a flowing cape of seal brown locks.
Ugh. I hate how long hair sheds. I’m not someone that takes care of my hair–I let it ride around in a ponytail and my hat is my friend. I grow my hair out just to chop it off.
I hope this feeling of renewal lasts a while.
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I’ve been regrowing green onions. I buy them from the store, chop the green off to use, and stick the white ends with the dangly roots in my grow tray. The aquaponics really make them shoot up fast. I can get two uses out of one bunch of green onions.
Speaking of aquaponics: we’ve planted some lettuce, green onion, and white onion. The zucchini is pretty much a bust–our media is being kept way too moist. I don’t have any say in that though.
The Kid showed me a YouTube video where someone got roots to grow out of a brussels sprout. I’m going to try that and see what happens. I’ll try to get some regular pictures. It just seems so interesting to me–I didn’t know you could regrow brussels sprouts, and I’m really curious whether a new sprouts tree will grow. That would be super cool.
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Mad Max 2014:
I feel that there might be fanfiction in my future. The Mad Max fandom will either stand up on its own, or it will be absorbed by the Nolan-Batman (Blake/Bane/Barsad) or Inception (Arthur/Eames) fandoms. I’m not worried. (And if I’m real lucky, the wonderful brain that spawned the Nolan-Batman/The Collector longfic will fusion me up some Nolan-Batman/The Collector/Mad Max action with Blake and Barsad escaped from the Collector into a Mad Max world.)
People always want to complain that books cost too much money. I want to tell them to shut up. Because sure, books may be expensive and a luxury good, but they’re worth the price of the read.
And there’s so many ways to read books for free. It takes a few extra minutes, but joining things like Netgalley and visiting the library really work. And now most libraries let you check ebooks out from your house.
So to complain that prices are way too high when you get a full novel for $3.99 is ridiculous. Sure, you don’t “own” the book, you’re only licensing it, but as long as you have that reader or Calibre, you don’t have to worry about the book being taken away. Nobody is going to come into your house and take your ebook away (the jackboots of the officers stomping, and the hobnails of the common soldiers echoing against the stone. Ereaders torn out of the hands of sobbing children to be tossed onto a giant electromagnet, every single one of them reduced to factory settings. The knowledge of an entire people destroyed as garbage for no good reason).
The whole reason you’re licensing the book rather than owning it is to keep you from reselling an already rock-bottom priced item. The author of the piece would like to receive some compensation for all of their work. $0.20 royalty through some sheister companies is no fair. The author should get at least 30% on everything, some percentages being higher.
But old contracts or unfair practices leave a lot of writers destitute. Authors making millions of dollars for some publisher that contracted the rights years ago, and receiving a pittance of a share back. So to pass those books out for free and not even add a “Leave a review for the book” readme file is so rude.
*The author is not getting paid.
*You’re giving their book away for free.
*You read and enjoy the book, sharing copies of it with hundreds, maybe even thousands of people.
*You never leave a review of the book, neither does anyone else.
Those are the steps to a failure to follow through. At the very least someone needs to introduce the request that people share a review on Goodreads or LibraryThing. Give the author something at least, even if it’s just an acknowledgment that the book was read.
I don’t know.
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Sometimes I get to thinking about stuff. Like, I am usually a completely oblivious person, but there are moments that abruptly change my world view.
People literally give me an “Are you a pod person and should I be worried?” look all the time. It’s part of my obscure charm.
There are several things I’ve really come to believe in:
HABO — Help a Brother Out. Seriously, dude, every once and a while you’ve gotta give some habo love to somebody. Otherwise you’re a bit of a turd sandwich. My biggest problem is that I’m oblivious; I don’t see other peoples’ stuff unless it’s mentioned to me. But once I see it, I gotta habo man. That’s my resolution in life.
If you help someone in need, when you are in need someone will help you in return.
Even if you don’t have a dollar, you should still give some free habo back to the world. Even if it’s just for the feel good glow that takes over your chest for a little while. It’s nice to hear someone say your name in a “Thanks for being awesome” way. Take that happy joy and smoke it, that’s good fruit loops.
Write an online review for someone’s hard work. Retweet someone’s stuff on Twitter. Volunteer at the library. Work at a food bank. There are a million free ways to help the world out there, and they’re all at various levels of commitment. If you’ve only got a few seconds, if you’ve got a whole afternoon or series of weekends, there are ways to plan out a full family activity roster.
I believe that kids learn charity at home. When you see your parents or members of your family working hard to do stuff for others, they grow up as people that give back to the world. Being kind needs to be learned, it’s not something that just happens for most people.
Aquaponic farming — This is a kind of urban farming I completely support. A community aquaponic garden is a smart move to me. Grow soy beans and you can make tofu and soy milk, as well as soy sauce, miso, and delicious soy frappuccinos. So many vegetarians and lactose allergic babies would be grateful to get an affordable source of food. Especially since WIC and a lot of other welfare services have been cut recently.
I’m a firm believer in the idea that people deserve to eat. I don’t care what kind of wastrel you are, unless you’re a cold-blooded murderer or some sex-offender, you should be allowed to come around and collect a bag of food from your community garden. It’s for everyone.
There should be community canning stations where people can can their own food. There should be fermentation tanks and mixers to make the strawberry tofu ice cream and the locally brewed soy sauce. There should be areas where the fish are scaled and filleted (no one wants to bring the stink of fish home with them. And fish, while delicious, can be a serious mess, which is why there are fish cleaning stations at good docks) and can be packaged to be frozen. Extra fish can be vacuum sealed and frozen to be sold in the Community Garden Store. Each community would become its own brand, generating money for the inhabitants and feeding the people that need it.
Maybe locals could receive a discount that out-of-towners don’t get. Bring some togetherness and solidarity back into the idea of a community. (These are the people you are going to need to depend on after the apocalypse. Don’t you already want them to think you are cool before the end of times? They need to be primed to help your ass out in case your bug out shelter idea falls through. They are your backup plan in case of emergency; you don’t want them to have the pre-conceived notion that you’re a giant pickle head and you deserve to die.) Earn a bit of love by giving a bit of love.
And the things I love are: spinach (blanched, mixed with sesame oil, garlic powder, green onions, boiled bean sprouts, julienned carrot, and salt. Served cold as a side for rice.), carrots, tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers (Korean angel hair noodles, julienned cucumber, green onion, julienned daikon radish, red pepper paste, sugar, sesame oil, garlic powder, all mixed together and served cold with a splash of vinegar), zucchini, sweet potatoes (wrapped in tinfoil and buried in the coals of the fire. Dig them out when the fire burns down, and the skins peel off to reveal sweet delicious insides that you don’t have to add anything to. The sweet potatoes become sweeter as they cook, until they’re perfect creamy goodness in your mouth.), asparagus, brussels sprouts, strawberries, and beans (black beans, pinto beans for chili, kidney beans for chili and soups, navy beans for bean soup, green beans, soy beans).
I found this place => http://www.kitazawaseed.com/all_seeds.html <= that sells all the seeds to grow the ingredients for kimchi; all you need to add is salt. I’m so happy. I’m planning out my aquaponics set up and I’m going to grow me some kimchi. I promise to share pictures 🙂
Anyways, TL;DR, even if the book is stolen (*ESPECIALLY* if the book is stolen!), leave a review once you read it.
I feel terrible about how bad I am about reviewing. I will try to do better in the future. Habo *fist bump*
I got a Vudu account because we have a Smart TV and the Vudu app came pre-installed. Still, it’s easy to log in and it’s easy to use on my computer.
Netflix on the TV isn’t as hard to use as Hulu, but it’s a little bit janked for us. Still, it’s a must-have around our house. I enjoy watching Netflix on the TV or my Kindle Fire. I’m always using my computer and I worry about it breaking down from being overloaded, but I log in through my computer to arrange my queue.
Flixster works on my Kindle Fire, which is awesome. All the movies I saved on Vudu are cross-shared to Flixster so I can watch them. (There’s no Vudu app.) So I can actually watch all those movies we’ve bought whenever I want, as long as there’s wifi.
Crackle is free movies and TV shows and they allow a free app, unlike Hulu.
For my most used free services: Hulu and Dramafever are most comfortably watched on the computer. Viki works well on the Kindle, though it freezes up for me occasionally.
I watch a lot of my saved stuff and DVDs with the VLC Media Player, which makes me wish that all those services worked with it. I like being able to easily resize and move the player and tell it to stay a particular size.
TL;Dr, watch free stuff on Hulu, Dramafever, Crackle, and Viki. Netflix is an easy pay-service, as is Amazon Prime. And for all those digital copy codes that come with DVDs and Blu-Ray, I prefer inputting them into Vudu — it works for all kinds, and they’ll self-propagate to the Flixster app for android devices and to UltraViolet.
RCA graduate Julian Melchiorri says the synthetic biological leaf he developed, which absorbs water and carbon dioxide to produce oxygen just like a plant, could enable long-distance space travel.
We would finally be able to travel to Mars and further without having to pack so much oxygen. The weight limits would be bypassed, and more equipment could be carried. Along with the Tesla/(Elon Musk) Space X rocket, which can land and liftoff for multiple journeys, it would be an easy endeavor to have people travel back and forth from the “colonies.”
Melchiorri’s Silk Leaf project, which he developed as part of the Royal College of Art’s Innovation Design Engineering course in collaboration with Tufts University silk lab, consists of chloroplasts suspended in a matrix made out of silk protein.
These pieces of silk leaf fabric are able to photosynthesize oxygen. Just shine some light through the leaves, and there’s oxygen creation.
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The article is getting a lot of negative response, but it’s really quite a remarkable idea.
At some point in the future, we could have oxygen producing drapes on our windows, wall hangings that literally breathe, and the assurance that whatever happens, we’ve got clean air in our home.
I believe there are going to be many technological marvels discovered in the coming years. The world will be terrible ecologically, but I hope that will only be in some areas. Places like China and Texas will have terrible air and bad stuff, but most of the rest of the world will be better off. Still, it would be worth the cost to purchase an air conditioner that also cleans and creates oxygen, or clothing that literally breathes.
A filter of silk leaf could be part of a person’s breathing mask. If its able to be kept alive, it could last for decades.
An outfit made of breathable material. Flip up the hood and keep from suffocating while in a place packed with people. The perfect party suit. (Translucent bubble suit of silk leaf. Bicycle shorts-wearing grinding body, twisting and bending, cami top clinging, dancing within the safety of her private world. Holland watched her for a moment, tracing the curves and bends, admiring the nubile young beauty; his admiration was abstract but honest.)
Apartment complexes would offer the luxury of a silk leaf shell that produces clean oxygen for the occupants. That would be something people would want available.
I don’t know. I am really enthusiastic about some of the newest technologies coming out.
