All posts by Nathan Ruffing
The Post-Industrial House
The post-industrial house will solve the following domestic problems and maximize the following healthy ways of living.
- Fresh air should be maximized.
- The “un-building” house: start all planning with the assumption that we live outside and favor outdoor living unless necessary to be indoors. Assume that the outdoors is a good thing and try to not block it if possible, for example:
- Need heat in the winter. Best kind of heat is a small cozy space with body heat. Can heating be compartmentalized into a small center of the house?
- Keep bugs out. Screens do this without blocking the rest of the outdoors. A breeze is pretty effective against bugs but too much breeze could be annoying all the time.
- Houses with opaque well-insulated walls are great if you assume you want to completely control the indoors and live in a controlled environment, but they almost totally sacrifice fresh air. Walls block breezes. Walls get hot in the sun and bake the indoors all night long even when it is cool outside. Roofs prevent sunlight from sanitizing and drying the indoors.
- How to minimize how “indoor” the house is?
- Completely compartmentalize the “indoor” aspect of the house?
- Disinfecting sunlight should be maximized especially in bathrooms.
- There should be so much airflow in bathrooms and laundry areas that anything in those areas dries quickly.
- Should be outdoor space for a clothes line near the laundry, preferably with some cover that allows sunlight but not rain.
- Shower curtain against bath tub mold build-up: how has this problem not yet been solved?? (besides dripping the shower liner onto the floor outside the tub or replacing the shower liner every few months). There must be airflow and sunlight or there will be mold!!
- Outdoor shower is nice but good to do something to control mosquitos around it.
- All sides of the house should receive some direct sunlight.
- During the winter day, the house should be able to collect and store as much heat from the sun as possible when available.
- Wood stove? (more efficient than wood-burning insert into existing fireplace).
- Address humidity if possible. Dry air is usually just accepted in the winter, but is there a way to naturally or easily have the air a little bit more humid in the winter?
- Personal humidifiers, OK.
- What about compartmentalizing the house somehow so the human warmth collects in a cozy way, i.e. cozy small room effect? At least for sleeping areas.
- During the summer night, should be able to cool off as quickly as possible and drain heat reservoirs to collect excess heat during the day. House should feel like a large shade tree on a breezy summer afternoon – (NOT like the inside of a refrigerator).
- Remember to address humidity. Humidity is half of the comfort and convenience equation but is usually treated as an afterthought.
- Should be able to completely shade itself on the exterior, independent of trees.
- Or using strategic trees.
- Large eves are nice and simple design for shade and protect the side of the house. Movable eves?
- Canopies over windows?
- Should be able to leave the windows open during summer rainstorms, while still addressing the following issues:
- Security of having windows open.
- Screens should prevent bugs from entering, plus a system to eliminate the bugs that get through.
- Convenient window coverings should not get in the way of opening and closing the windows. Automated windows would be nice (cars have them!) except when they fail, which they would, so they should just be easy to open and close.
- There should be outdoor space on the roof, or above the house somewhere. Like a rooftop bar with a view of whatever is around doesn’t matter rooftop is cool.
- There should be ample shade / rain cover just outside the house near the kitchen for meals outside.
- Build house around a central courtyard area? Build in a horseshoe shape?
- The hot water tank should be near the hot water faucets. Waiting for hot water is hot water wasted and time wasted. (I am opposed to tank-less water heaters, they just aren’t that great.)
- Independent water treatment system for healthy drinking water, nice skin, and prevent mineral deposit build-up.
- Completely separate heated exterior space with garage door, ~14 x 22 feet ~ one-car garage size. Bicycle storage plus.
- Carport! A simple cover over the car keeps the snow off in the winter, prevents most of the rust from being rained on all the time and prevents sun damage. A garage is unnecessary but a carport is necessary.
- Location location location. There should be good people, good government, good parks, libraries, town center within biking distance.
- ~1407 sqft. 3 bedroom, 1 1/2 bathroom. Kitchen, dining, living room. Large closet in the master bedroom. Laundry, clothes line area, outdoor shower all connected.
- 2-story with bedrooms upstairs, or ranch?
- 2-story pros: rooftop bar higher. Bedrooms separate from living area. Smaller footprint / basement requirement. More cube-like for less exterior walls (more efficient?)
- Ranch pros: no stairs. Everything connected.
- Maintenance convenience:
- All (or most) plumbing and electric – especially plumbing – should be accessible from a basement or with known and marked access points.
- While some things will be automated, automation should be limited and control should be centralized with systems accessible for maintenance and upgrades.
- There should be a large Time v3 timekeeping device prominently displayed in the post-industrial house.
- Other sources:
- Consult Tim
- Consult The Landlord’s Operating Manual
- Consult architect(s).
- Consult “Snowmass house”
- Alternative materials.
- Absorptive and radiative materials
- Hemp? Consult Kreg.
- Consult “Earthship” internet search rabbit hole.
- Earth-filled tires?
Pet Photography: Emi!
What Will Cause the Apocalypse?
Had I really not published this post before? Here is my speculation on what will cause the (next) apocalypse / collapse of civilization. In order of likelihood:
Why ask this question, you ask? Apocalypse is a surprisingly entertaining subject for us. I ask, why are we all interested in it?
- Apathy: the builders of society get bored when we can’t reach new highs and we just let it go. Like a little boy playing with Legos, the world is built by men. How long does a Lego structure last? The bigger it is the funner it is to destroy. How long does a dollhouse last within sight of a young boy? We should enjoy our tower while it stands!
- Zombies: zombies have already caused one apocalyptic civilization collapse. The only question remaining is, could they end us entirely?
- Disease*: disease is ancient and kills by numbers even bigger than millions or billions. Disease kills by the percentage of population. Disease is our most ancient enemy and far-underrated as it is invisible and not glamorous or sensational.
- Nuclear war: nukes are powerful and most people don’t even realize how powerful. Fusion bombs make Hiroshima and Nagasaki look tiny.
- Global Carbon Transfer (commonly mis-labeled as “global warming” or “climate change): this I believe is unlikely to cause our end. I think we are being overly-optimistic to imagine that we will thrive long enough for this to get us.
- EMP: again I think it’s optimistic to believe we will last long enough for an electromagnetic pulse to get us. Plus, one-time catastrophes like an EMP are sensational but not nearly as crushing as grinding sickness that can slowly erode resolve over years, decades, centuries.
- Flood, Earthquake, Asteroid, Volcano, Fire, Storm: wouldn’t be the first time for some of these, but could any of them really take us out? An asteroid certainly could, but it’s pretty sensational.
*COVID has brought disease to our attention but the COVID response has mostly highlighted our unprecedented inability to actually do something. Lose weight? Strengthen ourselves in the face of disease? None of that. This could be a wake-up call to get healthy.
Time v3 and Daylight Savings Time
There is a certain a group of people who hates the daylight savings time change because it “arbitrarily disconnects us from nature.” One day we wake up and the sun is up. The next day we wake up at the “same time” and it is dark (or vice versa when we go off daylight savings time).
To my timekeeping-conscious friends out there, we have something in common: a dislike of brutish machine timekeeping. However, I believe what we really dislike is industrial timekeeping as a whole, not just daylight savings time. The daylight savings time change is like a tiny semiannual glitch in the matrix of industrial timekeeping that draws our attention just enough to feel something is wrong but passes before we really focus the energy to investigate the true enormity of the problem.
The problem is industrial time – since the 18th century – and the solution is Time v3.
Ebola, How Bad?
No sources, but I am unaware of any dispute in the following quick summary:
Really Bad
- Ebola causes internal and even external bleeding.
- (The book The Hot Zone describes the virus “liquefying organs,” but this description is widely regarded as overly-sensational to the point of being inaccurate).
- Very high fatality rate and recovered patients experience ongoing symptoms.
- Ebola is known to lay dormant within individual human organs for many years.
- The latest outbreaks are believed to have originated from recovered patients from previous outbreaks in whom the virus lay dormant for years.
- Scientists believe it is theoretically possible for an Ebola virus to become airborne.
“Not So Bad”
- As yet, Ebola has been contagious only by bodily fluid contact so outbreaks are almost always contained to just a few hundred people.
- Infected persons are contagious only when symptomatic and the symptoms are too extreme to ignore. Little or no asymptomatic spread.
Snitch Lines
Citizens in Delaware Ohio and Columbus Ohio are encouraged to snitch on each other, even anonymously, for not covering their face or for large gatherings. Fact.
Delaware Ohio
To snitch in Delaware, go to this address:
https://delawarehealth.org/covid-19/
or call the hotline at 833-427-5364
Delaware is seeking mask snitching specifically:
Columbus Ohio
To snitch in Columbus, call 614-645-3111, or go to this address:
https://311.columbus.gov/311_main.aspx
and submit a service request.
Columbus is more concerned with gatherings, both indoors and outdoors, which are “violations”:
Gathering and mask snitching is currently the #10 service request in Columbus:
Celestial Time Lapse Videos
26 Feb 2021
20 Feb 2021
20 Nov 2017
20 Nov 2017
Sky at a Glance | Recent Astronomy News & Night Sky Events – Sky & Telescope
Celestial Movement: Know Less Understand More
The following are true and do not change perceptibly over an entire human lifetime.
- The non-sun stars do not move relative to each other. Not now, not over thousands of years, not anytime we will ever know about. The stars remain a fixed spherical image we gaze out at from the inside.
- The north star and southern cross remain in the same positions in the sky and do not move relative to an observer on Earth, even as Earth rotates. They mark the axis of rotation of Earth. Correct, they do not move at all. You could build a structure pointed at the north star one night and if the structure doesn’t move, it points at the north star day and night season after season year after year forever, whether you can see the north star or not, it’s there. (The structure would be called a gnomon, if you care).
- All of the non-sun stars/constellations remain in the exact same latitude and therefore trace the exact same line through the sky each time Earth rotates, every day of our lives, no exceptions. The line a star traces through the sky at your location peaks at 90° – [your latitude] + [latitude of the star] always.
- Earth’s rotational axis is not tilted. Earth’s orbital plane around the sun is tilted! When orienting celestial objects, we are forced to choose what we consider “upright.” Earth’s gravity cannot dictate “upright” for celestial objects. If you imagine Earth’s rotational axis as upright, the north star remains fixed as “north” or “up” and the orbital plane is then tilted 23° meaning Earth “moves north and south” as it orbits, or moves “up and down.”
- The sun. slightly more complicated, but helpful because the sun is bright. What is a line of latitude? What does a line of latitude look like? The blindingly bright sun traces a line of latitude through the sky every day. On equinox days, the sun traces the 0° line of latitude (celestial equator) and on the solstices the sun traces the +/- 23.4° line of latitude. In between, the sun gradually traces lines of latitude from 0° to 23.4° to 0° to -23.4° and back to 0° again throughout the year. Each day the sun traces a slightly different line of latitude as Earth orbits.
- Nobody is good at three-dimensional spherical-angle geometry! Nobody! Astronomers are not good at it. Nobody is! Then why does the current zodiac constellation represent the constellation behind the sun that we cannot see?? Because nobody is good at three dimensional geometry! Astronomers for millennia past and still today use the sun as a “pointer.” Nothing in the sky points like the sun. The sun is such a bright “pointer” that you cannot see what is behind it – but remember that the stars do not move relative to each other so if you have some idea of what the starry sky looks like, and you know the current zodiac constellation, you can reference the rest of the starry sky off of the sun itself. “Pisces is shining bright this month!” True statement – even though Pisces is only up during the day because looking forward the sun means looking toward the current zodiac constellation. We are currently in Pisces. “The sun pointer is moving toward the constellation Aries.” Another true statement. The line the sun traces through the starry background as we orbit is called the “ecliptic.”
Once you have some firm ground to stand on, you can start to remember some more basics and build. If you get confused, re-read the above and remind yourself that many things in the sky do not change!
- Orion, the most widely-recognized constellation, is on the celestial equator. Therefore Orion rises directly east and sets directly west. Orion is “up” ~12 hours and “down” ~12 hours. Orion’s path peaks at 90° – [your latitude] above your horizon (directly overhead the equator). Also, Orion is visible from everywhere on Earth.
- Orion is directly south of the border of Taurus and Gemini. The Taurus Gemini border marks the northern hemisphere summer solstice, so on the summer solstice the sun points near Orion. On the winter solstice, Orion is high in the sky at midnight.
- Polaris, the north star, is located directly north at [your latitude]° above the horizon, always. Most people use the Big Dipper to find Polaris.
- The two stars in the Big Dipper aligned with Polaris point to the ecliptic at Leo near its border with Virgo, so near the sun’s location at the autumnal equinox.
- The Milky Way’s bright galactic center is among Sagittarius, specifically Sagittarius A. It is 29° south of the celestial equator so therefore peaks at 61° – [your latitude] in your sky (more visible in southern hemisphere). Being near the northern hemisphere winter solstice, it is most visible in northern hemisphere during summer.