KW-05 It's the end of the world as we know it

And I feel fine

When talking about the end of the world, we are almost never talking literally. The spinning ball of rock is pretty immutable, and it would very much take the heat death of our own sun to seriously affect its inherent Dasein in any geometric kinda way.¹

So, we mean it figuratively. Which is fine. And as we know from a million motivational posters, an end is just a beginning. Or, as I prefer to think about it “melting and freezing are the same thing, man²” it just depends on your perspective. And which direction time moves in, I suppose.

The difference this time around, is that most perturbations of the lived experience of the human race have resulted in an increase in luxury. The wheel, agriculture, the printing press, antibiotics, the fractional distillation of crude oil, electricity all made things generally better for generally everyone. It doesn’t even really matter what the cause of the next existential upset is going to be, we are probably not wrong in assuming that what comes after it is going to be bloody awful compared to what we have now.

Projects for 2025

All of which is probably somewhere towards the roots of my being slightly annoyed with myself for not making fast enough progress in Things.

I tried to make a timelapse video of myself preparing one of the roundwood elements of the tomato house. I set up the camera to create a video of 2 minutes in length from a recording time of half an hour. I am getting faster in the fabrication, and I figured half an hour would be enough to make an interesting video.

It got me to the end of the first stage of a four stage process. It would appear that I am spending upwards of 2 hours per piece, without even noticing the time racing away into the past. If I want to get it finished in time for spring, I’d better get a wiggle on.

And so, for my own benefit as much as general consumption, a run down of the overly optimistic list of All The Things I Want to Make this Year.

• The Tomato house

▦▦▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢

We already know about this. I’ve not talked about anything else for weeks, and frankly Ben, it’s getting boring.

• Hot water system for the showers / heat exchangers

▦▦▦▦▦▢▢▢▢▢

We made the version 1 heat exchangers last summer. I need to construct a frame to mount them on. Obviously, I have an idea that is cooler and more complicated than it needs to be, so I’m going to do that. The picture of me crouched over a wooden construction at the top of this newsletter was what I did this week to distract myself from endless tomato housing. It’s part of that frame.

It’s a bit barren this time of year, but still has a strange allure to it.

• Bookshelves for the library.

▦▦▦▢▢▢▢▢▢▢

I have all the wood cut to size, and I have a plan for when and how to make them. Kid brother fancies a bit of something useful, so he’s going to be here for three and a half days in March and we’re going to try to knock them out then.

• Improved outside toilets.

▦▦▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢

The idea here is a very nice toilet / outdoor shower block, with on demand solar heated water. So very much just a thing for the height of summer. The all important drop hole has been dug, and I have made a large wooden floor / cover for it. Really, I just need to make some walls. The roof (with the heat exchangers) is a potential project for the Timber Frame Construction retreat. Either way, it can be done much later. No need to panic on this one.

• Frost protection system in the orchard

▦▦▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢

This isn’t even really an option. We had zero tree fruit last year, thanks to a ridiculous frost. I have all the bricks sorted out, but very much in the wrong place. If there was a plan of any sort, this would be done before the end of the winter, after the successful completion of the Solanum lycopersicum domus, if you know what I mean.

• The sauna suite

▦▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢

I have such a beautiful plan for the sauna suite. And it’s not that hard, and I think I probably have all the things I need. Is it essential? It is. Yes.

• The Bar, of course.

▦▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢

This is a very typical barracks project. I have been accumulating bits and pieces and things and stuff that I need for it for a very long time. I have a clear vision of the finished project in my head. Behind the bar will be all mirrors. I have maybe a dozen interesting pieces now, all picked up for pennies or, more commonly, totally free. The inspiration for it is a cocktail bar I went to a few times in Berlin. I have no idea what the name of the place was, and you essentially needed to do a secret knock to gain entry. Within, incredibly sharply dressed cocktail professionals - three piece suits, keychains, bowties - masters of the art, all of them at least 60 years old - served any cocktail you could imagine, in the appropriate glass. If the appropriate glass was currently in use, it would be gently suggested that perhaps Sir would prefer a different selection. Divine in it’s silliness.

I can’t really imagine this happening this year. But I do have one very important log that is essential to it, and I am irresistibly drawn to chopping it up appropriately every time I walk past it³.

Fast moving pigs, knee deep in mud, but eating from the pig table. Brunhilda was unavailable for this photo, so I got van Gogh to paint her in instead.

• The Beech hedge

▦▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢

The forestry commission appear to have decided to chop down a huge number of trees bordering The Barracks. This will render us visible from the road. So I will grow a hedge of 2400 beech trees all along that one side. And in twenty years time, we will have a spectacular beech wall, 10 meters high and a meter thick. And if I happen to put a metal link fence in place which gets absorbed by the growing trees that might accidentally destroy the chainsaw of anyone trying to fight their way through it, they can appeal to the court of awww diddums.

This gets a 1 shaded square out of 10 for completeness as I have written an email to the man who sells beech saplings for a snip. But even at 50c each (fingers crossed), that is 1200 eurodollars. I will buy them in lots of 100 when finances allow I think.

• Pumped hydro energy storage.

▦▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢

I’ve run some numbers. It should be possible. It’s certainly a flipping brilliant idea. But, thinking sensibly for a moment, it comes under the heading of “too much fun”.

I would do best to forget about it for a while.

• grow all the nutritious and delicious food that I and three pigs can eat in a year.

▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢

Must not forget this one.

Let’s see how we progress. There is still plenty of winter left to do useful things in.

And I shall see you all a-next time

Much piratty love

Your Pirate Ben

xoxo

1. For students of philosophy getting ready to write in the comments that Dasein can only refer to an phenomenological human existence, I had a word with Heidegger. He said that he was down with the reinvention of his terminology. So ya boo sucks to you.

2. We never talk about “frozen metal” or “boiled air”, but that is exactly what they usually are.

3. Apparently, resistibly. I have resisted.