Farmstead Meatsmith's Kickstarter Project →

The Farmstead Meatsmith is comprised of a young family that does hog butchery, charcuterie, and consulting on Vashon Island in the Puget Sound. They’re trying to put together some free videos on these subjects because they believe this stuff is worth knowing. Free videos cost someone money, however, so they’re trying to offset the cost via Kickstarter. Take a look and kick ‘em a few dollars, won’t you?

The American suburbs are a giant Ponzi scheme →

“We often forget that the American pattern of suburban development is an experiment, one that has never been tried anywhere before. We assume it is the natural order because it is what we see all around us. But our own history—let alone a tour of other parts of the world—reveals a different reality. Across cultures, over thousands of years, people have traditionally built places scaled to the individual. It is only the last two generations that we have scaled places to the automobile.”

Fascinating article by one Charles Marohn over at Grist. HT to the Underpaid Genius.