At dinner last night, I talked to a young author about her book and in particular her sales on Amazon. As was indicated in Enshittification, Amazon takes an enormous percentage of the sales price, in addition to fees to have a store. Amazon sales lose money. But the author feels she must be on Amazon for the exposure. An example month: sales on Amazon $75, author got $40, monthly fee for store $40. Fees go up with volume, so a vendor cannot ramp up sales to escape Amazon's take by very much.

Project Gutenberg is a library of free eBooks.

Cory Doctorow gave us the word Enshittification. Sean Carlton gives us the manual. Exit Farming starts from a blunt recognition: the system is not broken. The exhaustion, the subscriptions, the debt, the fragility—these are successful outcomes. They keep people dependent and predictable. Carlton’s contribution is not rage or reform, but literacy. Learn how systems farm you. Learn how exits are hidden.

My friend Derek () and I have been working together on a dining room table. Cherry and purpleheart top, with steel legs. I worked on the top and Derek the legs. The parts are now together. In the photo the top is just resting on the legs. There is more finishing to go on the top, with the threaded inserts to go on the underside.

I use Arduinos in many projects, including robotics. Recently, Qualcomm acquired Arduino. It did not take long for Qualcomm to update its Terms of Service to dramatically shift from one of the most open source platforms to a highly restricted one. Here is a link to a reddit post that describes the current situation pretty well. This acquisition and update are yet another example of enshittification. I personnaly am going to pivot away from Arduino.

Cory Doctorow’s Enshittification isn’t just a rant about Big Tech. It’s a field guide to how our digital world curdles over time—and how we might reclaim it. I purchased the Kindle version of this …

Cory Doctorow’s Enshittification isn’t just a rant about Big Tech. It’s a field guide to how our digital world curdles over time—and how we might reclaim it. I purchased the Kindle version of this book. After I read the book, I started trying to withdraw from Big Tech. In prior book reviews, I put the link to the Amazon page with the book and a picture of the cover of the book from the Amazon page.

I had once read that there were three men who were geniuses in three distinct disciplines. Goethe was one, along with Albert Einstein and Albert Schweitzer. Goethe has also been cited in several of my other, recent readings. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was no ordinary writer. As Rüdiger Safranski shows in his masterful biography, Goethe was a rare fusion of poet, scientist, statesman, and philosopher.

I am a fan of Bill Gates. His solutions to some of the world's greatest problems are thoughtful and interesting and on a grand scale. Not solutions available at a personal level. One of his favorite authors is Vaclav Smil, which prompted me to read this book. In Invention and Innovation, Vaclav Smil slices through the glossy veneer of modern tech enthusiasm with the precision of a skeptical historian.

I have always been interested in computation and information, which attracted me to this book. I found Adventures of a Computational Explorer, interesting, though Wolfram's style and egotism wore thin after a while. Towards the end I found myself skimming more than reading. Though the various software programs he developed seem effective enough, I am not inclined to try any of them.

Sharing an exciting collaboration with none other than blogger extraordinaire, Cindy Georgakas, from Unique Times.

In reading or listening to anything on 20th century physics, Richard Feynman and his physics play a prominent role. With this in mind, I listened to Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman. When we think of scientific genius in the 20th century, Richard Feynman stands out not just for his intellect but for transforming how physics is practiced, taught, and imagined.

My wife and I recently took a trip to Niagara Falls, staying on the Canadian side. I also just finished reading Chaos: Making a New Science, by James Gleick. As I looked at the falls and the rushing Niagara River, thinking about all of that turbulence enhanced the experience. James Gleick’s Chaos: Making a New Science is a groundbreaking account of the emergence of chaos theory in the late 20th century.

A Welcome Sight in Spring Today’s woodland walk brought a delightful surprise: a beautiful cluster of Dryad’s Saddle mushrooms, also known as Polyporus squamosus. This impressive bracket fungus often appears on dead or dying hardwood trees—particularly elm, maple, or box elder—and is a welcome herald of spring. First Impressions Dryad’s Saddle gets its name from the old belief that wood nymphs, or “dryads,” might use the broad, flat caps as resting places.

I have mentioned Derek in an earlier post about my cherry/purpleheart dining room table. In this short clip from his most recent YouTube video, you see his stone kitchen sink. I have been impressed by Derek's metalworking and blacksmithing, and am amazed by his stoneworking skills. You can see more of his work on his YouTube channel.

I have found "information" fascinating. It seems to tie everything together. That is what attracted me to The Information. James Gleick’s The Information traces the evolution of human understanding of information—from oral traditions and alphabets to modern computational theory. The book draws connections between language, biology, physics, and digital technologies to show how information underpins our understanding of the universe.

A few years back, I enjoyed making mead. My son, who also makes mead, suggested using hyssop in my mead. I also noticed at the store of a Bucks County PA distillery, hyssop-infused bourbon. I tried unsuccessfully for a few years to grow it, but last year I finally got it to grow. I did not end up using it last year, but to my surprise, it came up on its own this year.

When we sold our Pennsylvania house, we had to install a new septic system as a condition of the sale. The only place on the property that suited the installation was at the location of my garden, so the garden had to be destroyed. I had gardened for 16 years using permaculture principles. No chemical pesticides, herbicides, fungicides or other chemicals.

I generally follow the slow-carb diet as prescribed by Tim Ferriss in The 4-hour Body. When using salad dressings, I try to use no sugar varieties, and especially with no sugar added. These have been almost exclusively store-bought and almost always use seed oils. To avoid these, I thought I would start making my own, and came across the recipe below.

Yesterday spent time in the annual garden putting in plants purchased from a local garden center. It is the time of year to think about the garden, and nature. That brings to mind the One-Straw Revolution. Introduction Masanobu Fukuoka’s The One-Straw Revolution presents a compelling case for what he calls “natural farming”—a no-till, organic method that requires minimal human intervention and mimics natural ecosystems.

As I have blogged in the past, I work with AI for my various activities, including my book summaries. I ask the AI for the book analyses in various files to download. In my last effort, when I went to download the files, I got an error message "File not found". Working with AI found no apparent fixes for the problem.

With the start of gardening season, I thought it appropriate to summarize what I believe to be the best introductory book on permaculture. Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture. Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway is widely regarded as the most accessible and inspiring introduction to permaculture available today. Designed for gardeners, homeowners, and sustainability enthusiasts, it offers practical, scalable strategies to turn backyards into resilient ecosystems that work with nature, not against it.