Not only do they have a fantastic full cast reading of the book, but for each chapter they have a companion episode where they talk to a Joyce scholar about the chapter. I went through it by alternating listening to a chapter then listing to the episode about the chapter, and I finally really got Joyce and understood why he is considered great.
I once commented that HN is the most wonderfully diverse ecosystem and here's my chance to prove myself right! I'm a cork 'farmer' in Coruche, right where this article is situated. I wasn't expecting to read a puff piece about it today. I just did my novennial harvest last year. For anyone not in the know, cork is the cork trees' bark, and it's stripped from the tree without harming it every nine years. Undressing the tree is properly medieval work and you need to be very skilled with a hatchet to do it. Do a poor job and you'll ruin the cork and scar the tree for decades.
The harvest is tough work but it's the only well-paid trade left in agriculture. I doubt it has much future beyond fodder for high peasant magazine articles. Trees are dying left and right from multiple climate-related problems no one has a handle on. Divestment from the traditional montado like mine into intensive production units with better water management and automated extraction is the likely future. The billion-dollar outfits have started experiments with high-density groves, inspired by the olive oil industry's success. It's a finicky tree though, so conclusive results are taking a few decades more than you'd expect to materialise. They're stuck having to buy cork from thousands of traditionalist family farms for now.
But that's assuming the industry even grows enough to justify the investment into better plantations. Legitimate uses for the stuff apart from wine corks are scarce. We're all hoping that our phenomenal ecological footprint will see us grow as an industry into everything from insulation and roofing to shopping bags and umbrellas (hence said puff piece I imagine). We'll see, it really is a phenomenal material and the carbon math makes sense at the source. You can almost see the tree sucking out stuff from the air and soil to build thicker layers of bark. I joke that we've been doing regenerative farming for generations, we just didn't know it until someone told us.
If anyone on HN is ever in Portugal and wants to visit a montado, happy to take y'all on the most boring tour of your life. But we can have a nice picnic! It's lovely country.
Good to see heat pump tech being pushed forward in all sorts of applications. I didn't even think about using CO₂ in car applications.
I have a CO₂ heat pump hot water system (integrated by this Australian mob - https://reclaimenergy.com.au/ - but I think the heat pump unit is an OEM Japanese one) and it uses a ridiculously small amount of energy compared to my old conventional electric system (somewhere between 1.2 and 2kWh typically vs 4 to over 6kWh per day - and the new system also has a tank 2.5 times bigger than the small one I had before, which is so much better, and I probably use some more hot water than I did previously since it’s available). I have solar and it’s timed so it basically always is entirely, or almost entirely powered from that, so it’s gone from using more power from the grid than the rest of my usage combined, to now using almost no power from the grid.
Yes, it was a bit pricy but should only take a few years to pay back.
https://nakashimawoodworkers.com (new commissions around $7K-$15K for a coffee table, $20K-40K for dining table, plus shipping; older Nakashima pieces are highly valued in the art world and sell anywhere between $15K-$300K)
Edit: Also, to echo what someone mentioned below, if you're interested in solid wood furniture you should find a local woodworker.
Another edit and thought: I used to own a lot of IKEA furniture and as I've gotten older, have slowly replaced those pieces with items from Knoll, with custom pieces from local woodworkers, with a few pieces from the studios listed above. A lot of people are commenting on the cost, and yes they're expensive and could be considered luxury goods.
But if you like art and design and you care about quality, you save for what you want to buy. I wanted to be surrounded by great craftsmanship, so instead of buying "stuff" and instead of spending money on lots of subscriptions and services, or constantly upgrading phones and computers, I buy one piece of nice furniture every year. I believe the more you appreciate the things around you, the more they begin to influence your own work, and your sense of place.
I regularly see a lot of IKEA furniture on the side of the road and in dumpsters. I think this is the difference between buying "things" and having "possessions" but that's a discussion for another day.
Shameless plug.. Does sponsoring my low traffic indie website[0] make sense to you? Audience is mostly fellow HNer's - I only showed it here. Even if doesn't work out the investment is tiny.
Do you really need a whole farm just to provide nutrition for you family, even if it does have some livestock, or is there more to it than that? I remember reading about some amazing results that can be achieved on very small patches of land, with the right techniques, tools and planning. The official website is light on details, this article is better [2].
This isn't the only bad PR tactic I've seen from Casio lately. There's a piano reviewer on YouTube who noticed a flaw in the action of a new digital piano they make, and their responses varied from claiming he was lying to _reportedly_ spamming his videos with negative comments. Here's the 3 relevant videos where he first raises the issue, responds to Casio, then just straight up dismantles the piano and proves it:
1. reserves the right to unilaterally vary the contract in any way, with immediate effect and without actively notifying the merchant
2. ensures that if anything goes wrong, any legal action against it by its merchants would have to be taken in another country and under another legal system, even if Paddle operates in the merchant's own country
3. takes extensive control of the product or service they are selling on their merchant's behalf, to the extent that they can sell it to whoever they want, sell it at whatever price they want, give demos to whoever they want, etc.
4. requires that any software it is selling on behalf of its merchants be bug-free, and that the merchants accept liability for anything bad that happens if it isn't.
It's hard to take any service seriously when it has terms like that in its standard agreement. Unless these kinds of terms are unenforceable where you are (or where Paddle is, given the above?) and you have a legal opinion telling you so that you trust enough to bet your entire business on it, it seems like you'd have to be crazy to accept them.
I've seen some very one-sided terms from other payment services before, but I take them at their word that those terms are typically required by the giants behind the systems like the card networks and banking groups. I think some of those should be also be unenforceable by law, but right now that seems to be the price of admission. I've never seen anyone else seriously suggesting the kinds of terms that Paddle is, though.
Edit: Changed to present tense, after checking Paddle's legal terms of use at the time of writing at https://paddle.com/legal/ to confirm that these criticisms are still current. The first two points above are in the preamble at the start of the document. The third is under 4.2 and 6.1. The fourth is under 13.1(ii) and 13.2(ii).
I felt loneliness acutely this week. I live alone, spend most evenings alone, and on top, work's coding and research has been slow for 2 weeks. Collaborators are at conferences and on vacation, so I had much less work and much less face-to-face contact than usual. Given that I code on my own, distribute analyses via email, and occasionally meet if people are around, I barely talked to people some days this week.
Going home feels so meh... I can watch more Sherlock Holmes videos (Jeremy Brett!), rewatch Parks and Rec or The Office, or work on music or art, but there is no one to share with, no one to quip with, no one to engage with on my passions. I just kinda laze about without more contact and stimulus.
And I do have a better social circle now than I have since I left home at age 18...minus the daily familial, non-work interaction. I can't wait to hit the phase of life with a partner and/or family living with me.
If anyone in Providence, RI wants to hang, let me know!
The kitchen exhaust fans in American homes are very weak (at least, every one I've lived in, and visited...). When cooking, you can smell what people are cooking, so it's not really doing its job of pulling the air out. I upgraded begrudgingly to a Chines brand called Fotile. It's expensive and I fought tooth and nail with my wife because my natural instincts was not to trust Chinese brands I never heard of. Admittedly, it's one of my best purchases. We can be frying stuff on the stove and standing 5 feet away, you won't smell it.
And like the link below says...it's the biggest appliance company I've never heard of. I have the one pictured on the left.
Not only do they have a fantastic full cast reading of the book, but for each chapter they have a companion episode where they talk to a Joyce scholar about the chapter. I went through it by alternating listening to a chapter then listing to the episode about the chapter, and I finally really got Joyce and understood why he is considered great.