Ned Harr

It was around the mid 2010s. At the time, my twin brother lived in NYC while I lived in Oh Hah. One funny thing about him is the kinda flowery archaic pseudo-posh-British way he writes, as if he's constantly impersonating an Edwardian English novelist or something.

In that same flowery archaic manner, I wrote him a long letter pretending to be the head of a local amateur swim team in New York. I figured this premise alone was ridiculous enough to give a clue that it was a joke. I told him I'd randomly spotted him leaving his apartment on a rainy day, and the way he stepped through the rain told me he'd be a great swimmer, and would he like to join my organization. (Again, thinking for sure by that point in the letter he'd catch on.) I said we meet at such and such a natatorium at such and such a time each week (I looked up a swimming pool near where he lived) and I think he'd be a star on the team, just could he please bring $75 to help cover our lane rental. (That part I almost died laughing while I wrote it, thinking for sure it would tip him off that it was a prank). I explained that I'd found his name and address by coming back later and digging through his trash. I filled up two pages with this sort of gobbledygook, then put that letter inside a sealed stamped envelope with a return address that was in between two real addresses somewhere else in NYC (I looked that up too), then put that in an envelope and mailed it to a friend of mine who also lived in New York and was in on the joke. My friend put the letter to my brother in the mail so that he received it on April 1.

My brother ended up receiving this letter exactly on time (apparently not noticing the date he'd received it)---and then I heard nothing for a week or two. Until he posted the letter to Facebook along with a companion letter he'd sent to the local FBI office in NYC, making them aware of this apparent scam that he was being targeted for! His letter to the FBI was just as long, and read just like the fake letter I'd written him, which took my prank and escalated it to a whole new level of hilarity. I called him up and debriefed him, and we both had a good laugh.

He got me back the next year with a prank that was much more elaborate but not quite as funny. (He very realistically forged an overcharge on my cell phone bill and sent it to me, complete with a fake toll-free customer service number that rang to a friend of his who was in on it and who strung me along with increasingly ridiculous questions for maybe 20 minutes until I finally "got it".) Since then we've occasionally pranked each other on April 1st, and even established a sort of "rules of engagement" to ensure it doesn't end with anyone calling the cops, losing property/money, or having a heart attack, but the first AF prank I described above was the iconic timeless one that set the bar and cemented April 1 as an official family holiday, at least as far as my brother and I are concerned.

Just wanted to note:

The noise dolphins make might be spelled out like this: e-e-e-e-e-e

The hex color code #EEEEEE is dolphin gray.

I can't remember how I discovered this, but it seems like proof of the beautiful harmony of the universe to me.

Stephen B. Thomas wrote:I've noticed that pour-over is a popular coffee style for several of the Permies folks I've visited recently. I'm curious to know what makes it the apparent go-to method for so many. If you're a pour-over-er, please share your thoughts.

Foremost I liked the simple elegance of it: no moving parts (and only 2 parts at that!), cleaning involves just a quick rinse of the carafe and cone, etc.

And it's not just having control over each part of the coffee equation, since by various means you can control those in other brewing methods, but with a pour-over that control is very straightforward and direct.

Plus as I mentioned, there's a nice little ceremony in unfolding the fresh paper filter, placing it in the cone, spooning in the coffee, heating the water, doing the pours, watching the angle of the shadow change on the beautiful foamy surface as it descends...very meditative.

BTW the image in the OP reminded me, coffee has a most interesting history--it has not always been universal and instead was very much tied to various places and times! Wikipedia's summary is good; I learned what I know from an episode of In Our Time, one of my favorites: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000c4x1

I used to do a pour-over every morning. Light-roasted beans ground medium-fine, filtered water brought to 210˚F, first a "bloom" pour just to get the grounds wet, wait 30 seconds, then pour over the rest. Drank black of course.

But as much as I loved that routine, it took time and my wife begged for years to simply get a programmable percolator, which we did this past December. Now I use the same ground beans but they are prepared by the robot and waiting for me when I wake up. (Actually the khhhhh of the percolator finishing up is what signals to me to get out of bed.)

Now I will sometimes do a pour-over for company, or later in the day if me or my wife are in a mood for something fancy. Anyone who asks for cream or sugar with this is given a hurt look.

(At the other extreme, sometimes after dinner, instead of dessert I will just mix 190˚F water into a mug with a spoonful of instant decaf...but that must always be taken with 1/2 & 1/2.)

I like the idea of a reintroduction thread, especially for those of us about whom something fundamental or important has changed since we first introduced ourselves here, but which we might not have talked about!

Riona Abhainn wrote:How about most countries agreeing not to use chemical or biological weapons?  Like the tech to create them exists but most of us have agreed its a no-no, even in wartime.

I don't think DDT is still used, because it was so dangerous.  Maybe things like that would count as giving up types of technology.

Yeah, this is a great example, as is an even more glaring one: the fact that no nuclear weapons have been detonated with the intent to kill (so, only tests and flexes) since WWII four score years ago, despite massive proliferation in nuclear armament. In fact the universal symbol for peace (the peace sign) began as a call for nuclear disarmament--a superposition of two nautical semaphore signs for N and D.

Restraint in general, especially when practiced by large organizations such as governments and corporations against what might be considered their more basic incentives, fits the thread category. Everything from not using certain tactics to businesses being closed on Sunday.

The Amish are pretty much known for having decided, about 120 years ago, to become very judicious about which technologies they would adopt on a community-by-community basis.

There are lots of people who have sworn off social media. Not a majority, obviously, but enough that I was able to enlist a few dozen people to participate in a study on that topic (which I didn't complete) maybe ten years ago just by putting word out on a blog. (Blogs are not social media as I was defining it, or according to most mainstream definitions.)

What about long-standing laws getting repealed? Prohibitions on various things might be considered a technology, so their repeal constitutes the giving up of a technology.

Thanks for the replies, everyone!

Just a quick note to Jay Angler about those baseboard heaters. If I'm understanding correctly, the solution to the issue you describe should be as simple as figuring out which breakers are carrying their load and then swapping the wires to the appropriate breaker. To figure out which breakers to deal with, all you need is a friend and a hot stick a.k.a. tick tester a.k.a. voltage sniffer. Unscrew the cover of the baseboard heater to where you can see the wires feeding it. Have your friend hold the voltage sniffer up to one of the hot wires while you flip breakers. When the sniffer stops reporting any voltage, you have found one of the breakers. Note it, turn it back on, and proceed until you've found the other breaker. No destruction of your walls needed.

One of the things that has impressed me deeply since I entered the trades a year ago, that wasn't as obvious as the aesthetic/health/FIYable* differences between "conventional" and so-called "natural" building materials/techniques, is the modularity of the former.

*fabricate it yourself

The way everything in the big box hardware store is designed more or less to fit together into the same "grid" is quietly brilliant. On top of the general ease of combining ingredients, it also provides the flexibility to allow structures to keep being built or renovated to codes and other standards that are continually updated.

Today I was picturing in my mind's eye some kind of permie-paradise house where all the walls and built-ins are artisinally sculpted out of locally-sourced logs or cob or whatever, with a green roof and earthen floors, mycelial insulation, etc. etc. Then this pleasant scene was disrupted when I had a thought like "what if I want to add an outlet there?" or "What if I need to reroute a plumbing line over here?"

These thoughts might send a dreamer with less fortitude running to Big Construction Supply on the day of his breaking ground, but I am resolved to resist that temptation. I know that to successfully resist it, I will have to build modularity into whatever dream home I one day assemble, so that the back-of-house of my house can still play nicely with the common products (pipes, wires, electrical boxes, lumber, and other materials possibly even including sheet goods) inevitably required to make it function as a comfortable (and in most places, legal) 21st century home.

And then it occurred to me: many of you here have made natural buildings for yourselves; how have you addressed this issue?