Potato game upgraded. || Starfish tippy-toes. || The thrill of pond water. || I’m pretty sure I’ve done this. (h/t, Dicentra) || The pieties of our betters, a brief compilation. || Possibly related. || Police escort. || Steep. || Explorers. || A project for the weekend. (h/t, Beagle) || Modern problems that your parents didn’t have. || Distancing technology. || I don’t think cats do this. (h/t, Damian) || Don’t tell your mother. || Music machines of note. || We Will Rock You. (h/t, Open Culture) || Savings. || Cheers. || Bloopers of yesteryear. || Parisian balloons, 1914. || Boys and girls. (h/t, Dicentra) || Webslinger. || Not entirely successful wildlife photography. || And finally, somewhat alarmingly, scenes of forbidden love.

As we confront the reality of COVID-19, the idea of living self-sufficiently in the woods, far from crowds and grocery stores, doesn’t sound so bad. 

From the pages of Outside magazine, the romance of the primitive:

I’m on my way to meet Lynx Vilden, a 54-year-old British expat who, for most of her adult life, has lived wholly off the grid. The slick roads don’t help my apprehension about what lies ahead: a three-day, one-on-one experience of “living wild.” The details are hazy. I’ve been advised to prepare for bracing climes and arduous excursions. “Wear sturdy shoes,” Lynx told me. “Bring meat.”

You may want to keep those last two words in mind.

I send a text message to Lynx telling her I’ll be late. Only later do I realise how presumptive this is: she doesn’t have cell service or WiFi.

Feel free to scream quietly into your sleeves.

Until about ten years ago, Lynx also possessed no credit card, nor fixed address; her previous abodes—a tepee in Arizona, yurts in Montana and New Mexico, a snow shelter on the Lappish tundra—had neither electricity nor running water.

As an attempt to glamorise primitive living, away from all those grocery stores, we aren’t, it has to be said, off to the most promising start.

This all changed when she received a modest inheritance from her mother’s estate in Britain that allowed her to purchase a remote five-acre plot some 12 miles outside Twisp.

Primitive living, it turns out, is so much easier with an inheritance. 

When I finally arrive at the property in the early afternoon, she welcomes me to her wooded outpost wearing hand-stitched leathers. She heats her 900-square-foot log cabin—also the handiwork of the prior owners—by tending a wood-burning stove.

Again, if you’re into Stone Age role-play, then spare cash and pre-built property, complete with solar panels, power outlets and rudimentary plumbing, does seem rather handy, perhaps a prerequisite. Such that our fearless disdainer of modernity can “divide her time” flying between continents as mood suits, from Sweden to France’s Dordogne Valley and back to the mountains of Washington, USA. It’s the prehistoric way.

In the pages of Teen Vogue.

Because masked misfit sociopaths are inspirational and totes dreamy.

According to Teen Vogue, Antifa’s behaviour, a collective Cluster-B disorder, is merely “militant self-defence.” A construal that, shall we say, bears little relationship with the videos linked above, or others in the archives. It seems we’re supposed to believe that seeking out gratuitous confrontation and gleefully threatening to kill onlookers, simply for onlooking, is the height of bravery now. And harassing and physically threatening random elderly and disabled people, for trying to use a pedestrian crossing, is totally where it’s at, cat.

It’s a “woke brand,” you see.

Update, via the comments, where Liz notes this,

In one year, Teen Vogue’s readership has nearly halved. Less than 5% of their audience consists of actual teenagers.

Then adds, rather pithily,

So what kind of creeps are reading this shit then?

Well, indeed. What kind of adult searches out a magazine with lots of sexualised content – how to masturbate, use sex toys, etc – and which is supposedly aimed at teenage girls? I doubt there’s an answer that isn’t at least somewhat unsavoury. That unhinged and heavily-airbrushed far-left politics, from Marx to Antifa, should be the new connective tissue at Teen Vogue, the obvious and complementary glue, to the extent that its editors describe their readers as “activists,” is possibly something to ponder.

Also, open thread.

Hog toys. || Big Bob ahoy. || Witches’ brew. || Build your own engines. || Dog versus leaf blower, metamorphosis begins. || At all times, dignity. || Godzilla versus Mito Komon. || A gift for the mother-in-law. || Good idea. (h/t, Perry) || Day 14. (h/t, Damian) || Moon whales detected. || The sounds of cake. || Customer service. || Cat chatter. || Leader of the pack. || A project for the weekend. (h/t, Dicentra) || Her missing shoes. || I think they may be wombles. (h/t, Julia) || Today’s word is intervention. || Lively scenes. (h/t, Neontaster) || Minus 7 Celsius. || Paranormal car crashes. || The transparent jigsaw puzzle you’ve always wanted. || And finally, quite instructively, on the proprieties of video conferencing.

Can you access a broader intelligence and gain quick information without having to use your logical mind?

From the pages of Everyday Feminism, an offer you can’t refuse.

Sharpen your sense of self-awareness.

Just $35.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.