Month: October 2018

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45969676

This was a very interesting article as its a question that always permeates my mind during hard rubbish collection day. There are so many products I hold on to because I don’t know where or how to trash them. As an audiophile and music producer, When it comes to the Gerrard Street Headphones subscription model, it actually sounds highly practical. The amount of headphones I got through because the foam becomes damaged, or a chord falls out, is highly cost inefficient. To replace the foam as it becomes damaged, and replace the chord when needed would save huge amounts of money in the long run and be more eco-friendly and practical because why throw away the headphones when all the components but one don’t work, it makes more sense to replace that single component. My roommate has been doing this modular system with his headphones for years, although not necessarily a perk of the headphones he buys. The headphones themselves are close to $500USD, so when a chord breaks, he usually purchases an aux cable online and soulders and glues this chord to the damaged part. For a company to build their product around this system is a win win for everybody and prevents the haphazard tinkering my roommate has to do, with a simple dispose and swap.

After the scoby spent two days drying, i thought it was done and was pretty happy with the texture. It was as thin as paper but reacted like a nice leather, however as I let it sit on my desk for a week I noticed it became drier and drier each day

The drier it became, the more brittle it became. In the future, i’m going to leave the scoby in the mixture for at least 3 weeks before drying it out.

Hopefully I get the thin leather result I sought after in my next update.

I forgot to take process pictures, however, I decided to mold my mycelium mixture into a fruit bowl. I was quite concerned about the mycelium as the mixing process wasn’t as sanitary and hygienic as I’d liked, however, the results superseded my expectations. The only concern I have is about the base thickness of the bowl as it wasn’t as thin as i’d hoped. Regardless this makes for a lasting bowl and great experiment.

Growing Kombucha leather seemed easy until I began going through the process. Within mintues of simply opening the tea bags I ripped one completely open, sending tea flying EVERYWHERE.

A small snag, I found another pack of old tea and emptied that, creating a new bag to fill with the original tea. Pictured in the top left corner.

I boiled the water and let the tea darken.

Then proceeded to add the sugar and mix until dissolved with a fork.

The hardest and most concerning part about this process what getting the temperature right before we put the komchua scoby in. This took 20 minutes as I regularly checked the temperature with a thermometer.

Pictured below is the Kombucha mix a week later.

Naomi Klein does not view the leading “climate deniers” as bigots; she considers them to have settled on a critical decision to protect the fossil fuel industry for greed, perhaps, but also to maintain jobs for many of the workers who’ve sacrificed plentiful to keep this work. However, she alludes to the disconnect between workers, people and their government. People blame the workers on many of the issues that trailing, and oil pipelines create, yet for the most part, many of these workers dislike the impact they’re making on the environment and hope their employers’ transition into more environmentally friendly alternatives. Klein is honest in her impetus: she is of a democratic socialist orientation, has been slow in completely understanding climate change because of the human/animal disconnect (diminishing polar bear numbers aren’t enough to convince me there’s a climate issue), however it wasn’t until Klein was exposed to more of the issues climate change creates for humans that she decided to deduce that climate change is an actual issue not only effecting animals, but our consumer society, farm communities and even major cities. Klein recommends that we should transform the non-renewable energy source organizations into open utilities, thinking that we should leave most of what’s left of fossil resources in the ground, while applying the benefits gathered from consuming our residual carbon apportions to the change into sustainable power sources. She affirms that this is 100% achievable on a brief timeframe scale. Whether this helps, only time will tell; but this would definitely be a step in the right direction.

The other week whilst wandering around Tompkins Square Park I noticed quite a few birds playfully gliding around the trees. This got me thinking about what they would need to maintain a comfortable existence.
Comfort comes from the food they can access and the places they can nest.

So this initially got me thinking about worms.

I looked into the conditions in which worms thrive and procreate and they are as follows (in no particular order).

Many of these conditions were similar to those we discussed when growing mycelium…

so I sought to find resources which verified if worms can flourish in a mycelium mixture… although I didn’t find a concrete answer. The reference I did find likened worms to maggots, and then proceeded to maintain that beetles could populate the mycelium. Regardless I went on a whim and decided that Mycelium would be a suitable environment for an amalgamation of insect and bug populous as long as it had regulated oxygen, warmth, and moisture.

now you might ask “AJ how do you suppose you can regulate oxygen, warmth, and moisture” and I can’t say this would work for sure but I found some recent research regarding a new crystalline material which can store huge amounts of oxygen in small quantities.

So using all this research I came up with a design for a somewhat self-sustaining ecosystem.

This is how it would function:
The rain would fall onto the mycelium mixture. Any excess water that doesn’t get distributed by the mycelium network would interact with the crystalline material forcing any stored oxygen out into the mycelium mixture. Any excess water after that could be stored in a small water tank connected to a tap or sprinkler for easy distribution. We could build a small and flush turbine piping system against park lights or poles which would flow oxygen down underground into the crystalline substance maintaining that it is always full of oxygen. As an added bonus the installation of shaded and noise proof birdhouses on top of this piping system would give birds a place to nest and enjoy the inevitable bug buffet that would form below. The mycelium would also break down any plastic left around thereby creating a safer environment for birds and animals to forage in the city.

 

References:

https://phys.org/news/2014-09-material-oxygen-air.html

Raising Earth Worms

https://www.mycopolitan.com/for-agriculture/
https://books.google.com/books?id=NPI8_-omzvsC&pg=PA123&lpg=PA123&dq=mycelium+attracts+worms?&source=bl&ots=3bmE1Xcj_F&sig=uKUD8gmo1fUvmR03tHOXWI–rEU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiks725gP3dAhWEwVkKHbNYB0sQ6AEwD3oECAEQAQ#v=onepage&q=mycelium%20attracts%20worms%3F&f=false

The LES Ecology Center gave me a new perspective on the island I live on, the once called “Manna-hata”. This field trip taught me why certain areas flood over others in Manhattan by utilizing a website called “welikia.org”. Using this website we can understand where marsh and wetlands resided by using an overlay of the pre european settled island. This website not only showcases what flora and fauna lived on Manhattan but also the huge difference dredging had on the island. We can see how much of Manhattans island was man made and taken away to widen the east and hudson rivers. We also learnt about the maintenance and volunteer effort the center places on their park as the city only permits one gardener which is absolutely crazy for the amount of land the park covers. Understanding the positive impact oysters have on the river ecosystem was also new to me and gave me a new found appreciation of their simple form.