Luke O. @loppear@social.coop

Use less, for longer, and share more.

Quiet day at home and in the woods here, wife and kid away to the city for the day. Gathered basket making possibilities, planted out some paw paw and redbud trees, mowed the driveway. Good vibes with a little breeze and cool clouds our only hurricane effects.

Family home science project today, I & I made yogurt. Plain store whole milk and store active yogurt for culture, one 500ml batch was in a temp-controlled heatpad cooler held at 43C, the other was in a cooler with a towel over it, dropped to 39C, both for 6hrs. Yogurt was produced, easy! Next time we'll discuss blind tests (by actual blindfolding for adventure?) but we could not tell any difference. Also I don't have to bother with the temp control for future batches.

Some kind of chanterelle that I'm finally going to figure out as it regularly fruits there between some oaks, persimmon, and pecan. And a mini hugelkultur bed getting started as it was suggested my replacement rosemary could use more drainage and more sun.

#gardening update

Oh, THAT'S why this old laptop's trackpad hasn't been clicking in the way it used to for a couple months now ... *puts the swollen li-ion battery pack in the unused wood stove until I can recycle it*

Ultravisitor was such a strange mix of an album.

Taking a look at collective/feminist/anarchist bookshops, infoshops, and adjacent, for formation and operation models and general case studying. Firestorm in AVL, Wooden Shoe in PHL, Left Bank in SEA, who else? Esp this century and US, but a global list out there helpful too.

#anarchism #collective #infoshop #bookstore #cooperative #feminist boosts ✔️

Sometimes it's a strain to get the ball rolling with other folks when you're not personally committed to it mattering whether we roll this ball or not? A rolling ball is a nice-to-have, we all agree, and might be more work than leaving the ball where it already brings such roundness to the space, hmm?

An unexpected turn in the first chapter of this academic book I suppose I have to blame on Moby Dick.

To be clear, I've heard from a few friends that their pharmacy refused to check whether their insurance would cover them no-cost, or only sold ones for more than the $12/test that will be reimbursed. Find out if your insurance has a form to submit for reimbursement and cross your fingers, as 8/person/month at $12 is still the fed rule. So, our systems suck and will try to get you to pay, in too many cases. Stay safe out there.

Recently reminded that if you have insurance in the US you can get 8 home tests every month per covered individual reimbursed, or under many plans, free. But it's probably hidden under a bunch of dark patterns to make it seem like a hassle. We just re-upped here heading into the new school semester we'll be back to weekly family testing, and it was only mildly infuriating through CVS to get them at no-cost.

I've got a void of doom in my head, as one does, and I hope to continue balancing it with a heap of compassion on my tongue. Breath in, breath out. You're doing alright, friends, just as you are, as you do what you can.

One excellent sunrise over Lake Superior this summer.

A year ago I dropped my phone and spiderwebbed the screen, weighed the steep cost of replacing the screen or the phone, waffled some more. I now get why so many people have phones with cracked screens: it's worked fine for 12 months, $0. Now the battery is failing after 4 years, and it's a moderately involved de-gluing, so the cost of repair and parts is pushing into new phone territory again.

Sincere music moment last night:

"You're telling me you can just plug this [holds up a 3.5mm audio jack to the hifi] into your phone? [Squee, omg] I want one, it's like an iPod!!"

My mother asks, "wait, are we talking about Salvador or Parton?"

Dreamt i found an "Auto Pink Leopard Spider" that would rapidly inflate itself from small black speck to thumb-sized bulbous cotton candy pink with black spots. It was cute, and hard to photograph.

Looking forward to finding out where my town installs these things and [a]voiding them.

https://www.flocksafety.com/

Start of June #gardening update: Purple tomatoes starting to ripen; rando grocery store butternut squash seed fruiting; rouge vif d'etampes pumpkin nearing volleyball size; and a rose of sharon #florespondence. Harvesting cucumbers, picking larva off eggplant leaves, no problems with hornworms on tomatoes so far, starting next tomato seedlings for mid-July planting, summer beans/cowpeas coming up.