Rental prices https://culdesac.com/tempe/apply/unit-selection/

You can add pockets to the pants you buy, too. This video by Morgan Donner is adding several examples of types of pockets to skirts, but the process is the same. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pE_nrHKd58

And there’s this one by Bernadette Banner https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thlzJj1EHiY

Thigh pockets are really great for phones. You can make visible patch pockets or subtle welt pockets and you can customize to the size of your phone.

For t shirts I always sing the praises of Gettees. Tiny “factory” of half a dozen people making extraordinarily high quality and durable shirts in Detroit. Most of the people doing the sewing are former auto upholstery stitchers from the car factories. The quality is truly the best I’ve ever encountered. https://gettees.us/

Side note about pockets: Duluth Trading women’s pants have multiple ginormous pockets, and about half have crotch gussets or anterior inseams to avoid chub-rub destroying the pants.

A “final solution”, as it were.

My old Honda has a low and slanted front end (kind of like a wedge). At the time, Honda was crowing about enhanced pedestrian safety and how the wedge would scoop the pedestrian (or cyclist) up onto the hood rather than tossing them under the car.

Dunno about that, but I can say it is far easier to see over the nose of that old Honda than over the damn nose of newer cars I’ve driven.

And even when “right on red” is allowed, they will still lay on the horn when you stop. As if they don’t know you have to stop at the red and only proceed with your turn after a full stop and if the way is clear.

Actually, maybe they don’t know you have to come to a full stop before turning?

A good place to start on YouTube is Bernadette Banner’s channel. She is a clothing historian, so there’s a lot of historical and historical recreation stuff, but she also has a few basic repair and tailoring techniques videos. She wrote a mending book that I hear is much more in-depth than her videos (I haven’t read it). https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/make-sew-and-mend-bernadette-banner/1139915226

Patagonia Wornwear has a lot of repair instructions for outdoor gear (you don’t have to buy their repair materials). https://wornwear.patagonia.com/repairs

Reddit “visiblemending” and “invisiblemending” are also very good resources.

There is a generation of little old ladies who are passionate about sewing, but have no-one to sew for. Their kids are grown, and their grandkids don’t want handmade clothes. Ask at a senior center or at a local (not chain) fabric shop, seek out one of these ladies and hire her to sew for you. Or barter: help her around the house or garden or drive her to appointments or to get groceries, and in exchange she sews clothes from fabrics and patterns you choose. Or tailors used clothes to make them fit you better, or mends your worn clothes, etc.

Here’s an excellent place to start: https://tincanknits.com/collection/the-simple-collection

And “run” the heels and ball of the foot so they felt down and last longer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fKKLOUNOHU

I did a deep-dive reading and watching videos learning about sturdy and long-lasting fabrics and materials. Learned a bit about tailoring for durability, too. (For example, Duluth Trading shifted the inseams on their Firehose pants forward. The forward seams don’t rub on each other when you walk, and so the inner thighs don’t self-destruct as quickly.)

There are also a ton of excellent resources on how to mend clothing and properly care for it. And it doesn’t take much effort, really.

So now I have a bunch of older clothes, with subtle repairs, still in good shape. Sure, I’d like some sexy new trendy disposable stuff so I can be one of the cool kids - but that’s how fast fashion gets its claws into you. Preying on our magpie-like desires for shiny new things makes somebody big bucks. (And creates huge waste and exploits desperate workers.)

Buy sturdy “classic” clothes. Keep them in good repair. Fight the system.

https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/04/12/california-senate-transport-committee-passes-solar-parking-canopy-and-highwayside-law/

Speaking of shade… This is pretty cool.

Just give ‘em bus tickets to Seattle and Portland, like Idaho does.

/s, but not really. Seattle even has a program to give people free tickets back to their hometowns.

The “Cheap Old Houses” website is reassuring. It’s not a McMansion in the tony suburbia of a large popular city, but there are small reasonably priced houses in smaller cities and towns. https://www.cheapoldhouses.com/

I have two friends from high school who found houses under $100k within driving distance of larger cities ($60k in Kansas, $32k in Illinois)

Can you document this and present it to your town council? Give them your pictures and a brief write-up, and suggest a solution.

It looks like this is a pretty ambiguous sidewalk and could easily appear to be the verge of the street (rather than a sidewalk). A defined pavement with curbs would be a far more effective sidewalk, with the added benefit that anyone parking on it would clearly be in the wrong and could be ticketed or towed.

Aunts and Uncles (genetic or not) are of huge benefit to children. maybe you don’t have kids. But if your best friend has a kid and you become Uncle Meow for that kid, you’ve just increased the security and stability of that kid’s life. You now are another adult in their life who can protect that kid from social and financial disasters.

Maybe the way to look at it is “we all have fewer kids, and invest ourselves in the welfare of the kids around us.”

That makes it better, but I don’t want his normal cold, either. We all have a few masks lying around and tucked into pockets here and there these days. If one feels a cold coming on, toss a mask over your pie hole in public!

Yesterday while grocery shopping two men walked by as I was contemplating bread choices. One of them was saying, “yeah, it’s ok, I’ve got the sore throat but I don’t have the rest of the Covid symptoms yet.”

At that moment I really wished both he and I (and everyone else in the store) were wearing masks.

This reminds me of an article about journalism and the internet, from ages ago. A class was asked how they would research for a topic (it was some recent political event, I don’t remember). The class confidently answered “the internet.” The professor struggled to get them to understand that wasn’t enough. Yes, there is all kinds of stuff about this event on the internet, but how did it get there?. And more importantly, what is missing?

Sure, all the sexy AI stuff gives us goosebumps and sounds great. But how did it get there, and what is missing? Someone somewhere has to do the actual original work first, or it’s just making collages from the same library over and over and over again.