This is a blog about making connections between different media and ideas. You can subscribe by email or RSS! Those links are below.
Zine
Yesterday I published Making Do: a life skills zine, a free PDF that shows you how to do a number of little crafts and projects, makes some life suggestions, and talks through some food and cooking ideas.
Embezzlement
A former co-director of a food pantry in central Ohio was just indicted for embezzling nearly $40,000.
My mind is reeling, because a similar theft is the inciting incident of the beautiful 2025 novel A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar, which I read this year. Basically, what if someone had seen the Ohio co-director stealing and then used that as a way to blackmail her? That's how the novel begins.
Plants and their secrets
In Why Weeds Reveal Where a Body Is Buried: Forensic Botany Explained, Sunnyside Soil explains how turning over even one shovelful of soil mixes together organisms that are usually separated -- let alone when a human body begins depositing nutrients from underneath. This is a clear and concise video about something totally fascinating.
Miranda Pietzsch is also dealing plant-based body blows in This Tree Is Destroying Our Cities, where they describe the invasive Tree of Heaven that's trying to strangle out local trees. With expert advice in hand, Miranda kills some Tree of Heaven saplings using precisely applied pesticides.
My zine above is part of a "jam" about life skills, meaning a scheduled time period where people make art, writing, games, etc. about a particular topic or with a particular constraint. I was delighted to flip through Foraging Wild Plants, an interactive book where you click to navigate through and learn best practices about foraging.
And elsewhere on itchio, a solo game developer I like released Mini Eco, a little environment that you kickstart by clicking to grow plants. The plants attract rabbits and bees, the rabbits attract wolves, the bees attract badgers, and so on. It's really fun to let this go for a bit and then see who's around.
That's it! Thanks for reading.