Keeping My Head Above Water, Modern Times Edition

Often, my gutter-crawling through politics and the history of revolutions, government, racism, and nastiness, leave me so sad and angry that I don’t know what to do. Add on top of it my leg hurting and the clot-buster drugs, which seem to be making me a bit stupid and low-energy, and I’ve got a real motivational crisis. Oh, yeah, and looming over it all is my certainty that species extinction and the collapse of civilization is hurtling toward us at an accelerating rate. “Why bother?” doesn’t strike me as an unreasonable question; trying anything at all seems to be an act of denial.

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Wax Axe – the Axening

A year ago I obtained one of those electronic induction heaters, because, why not? They’re fascinating. Some blacksmiths use them to produce high point-heat, including bringing small regions of steel to welding heat in about a minute (more or less). Induction heating is also used by some craftspeople to melt/slump glass in home microwave ovens – you put a block of insulating material containing your target into your microwave and turn it on for 10 minutes. Then, if you still have a microwave oven and kitchen, you can let it cool down and examine the contents.

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