Building the Pink House

The Pink House house is made of rammed earth, and heated by geothermal energy – through in-floor water pipes. The floor is concrete, which is the best conductor for in-floor. The heating is supplemented by a Tempcast masonry stove, the latter the greenest cheapest way to heat a house, its radiant heat used in pre-electricity Europe. For the first year, we only used the masonry stove, and it kept us warm, despite the 12 foot walls, and massive central hall.

The cost savings of geo-thermal were substantially less than advertised.

Cancelling Television

April 14, 2021

For the past year I’ve engaged in a process of withdrawal from violent or frightening-in-any-way-television. I haven’t been to the movies for years. The last I remember were the televised National Theatre productions beamed out to us provincials in the netherlands where non-progs and pencil-necked turkey farmers live. Last one was Kenneth Branagh playing Macbeth in a set that looked like a barn. It was not fun. And the tragedy was buried under so many ...

Absurdistan, Week XXXXXXIV

April 8, 2021

This makes sense from the Endocrine Society Gender is often misused as a synonym for sex—for example, when filling out forms for various activities, we are routinely asked to check a box labeled “gender,” but the only available options are boxes labeled “M” and “F.” But sex is not the same thing as gender and using these terms as equivalents obfuscates differences that are real and important in society in general and biomedical research in particular. Endocrine Society I spent my 20’s in ...

Black Duchess to Black Duchess – Kill Shot. With Honey.

March 15, 2021

As a sometime royal reporter – working for Time Inc. in London – I have processed through the dislike and envy felt by every normal human faced with the Windsor’s unimaginable wealth and power, through to a grudging acceptance of just how bloody hard the family works, how much good they do, and how important they are to the world. This is the attitude of a woman, which is to say me, dragged into maturity ...

Did Davos-Man start the Hate?

January 26, 2021

As Lyndon Johnson pointed out, the way to loot poor whites is to make them hate blacks. Dividing people is pretty easy, if you want to go low. You just repeat the lie often enough and before you know it, anyone not-you is anathema. This has been repeated so many times in human history, it is always surprising when we reach a time in history where we DON’T hate each other. Right now, we have ...

We Didn’t Make This Storm

January 19, 2021

The hate! I see hate in everything written now, casual hate in fashion blogs and celebrity blogs and design magazine, offhand hate as if in passing – even from a therapist I instantly dropped. It is our signifier of community now. Of course we are close because we both hate the same thing and we are solid haters you and I. I seem to have signed up for a half dozen different social networks in haphazard ...

Muh Politics

January 5, 2021

Since the publication of Eco-Fascists and the subsequent land and water policy papers, I am ineluctably connected with the right, and not the polite right either, the populist right. The prejudice regarding the so-called right is so pervasive that even members of my family (not to mention life-long friends) assume my opinions, without bothering to ask. They are almost invariably wrong. This is what I think: Abortion. I would not remove a woman’s right to ...

The Only Solution to Black Violence is……

September 24, 2020

I have told several people, left and right, about the HBO doc, Stockton on My Mind. Particularly those who aggressively mock “Defund the Police” or those who say that police violence against blacks must stop. This issue, more than any other, has divided us. This is deliberate, the result of careful crafting of a series of violent acts, meant to terrify voters in the runup to the November election. The fielding of BLM, ...

Pretty much

September 15, 2020

Fade to Black..the old culture is dying.

September 9, 2020

At the grocery store yesterday I noticed paper copies of September Vogue and Vanity Fair, which were covered by a black model and a black actress respectively. This intrigued me because those issues are usually crammed with fascinating stories about the rich and heedless and suddenly they’ve gone all social justice warrior, which is a strange enough reading of their audience to intrigue me. I suppose the core audience for Conde Nast is well-heeled bored ...

The only solution to homelessness is……

September 8, 2020

How the mega mega-wealthy in LA and San Francisco put up with the plague on the streets is beyond me. The cruelty in their hearts must be as impressive as their bank accounts. Up here in the demented Dominion, we just buy the homeless hotels and serve them 24/7. So far, the province has bought three hotels, and is in the process of planning for another 40 rooms. The cost is nasty, but Malcom ...

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