No DoorDash gift cards available at Costco yesterday.. I fear paying full price and not getting the juicy 25% off may force me to confront my DoorDash addiction by. Pray for me.

Why are Facebook marketplace listings so mispriced so often? I’ve been thinking about this as I look to buy a large format camera to experiment with the wet plate process. Large format cameras are regularly listed at the same or more expensive than from reputable camera dealers.

Low or correctly priced items will sell faster and leave the market, meaning overpriced items stay on the market longer, making it more likely to see them. But what causes people to post overpriced items? Is it the hope that people will buy it even though it’s too high? Do they even know it’s too high? Do they list it at the same price as camera dealers, not understanding the inspection + guarantee that camera dealers provide?

Overpriced cameras might be an opportunity for me to learn how to negotiate without lowballing too hard and annoying the seller.

Off-grid foraging-fed independent homesteading (e.g. this guy) is an aspirational dream for me that I know I’ll never pursue. There’s aspects of this way of living that we can pull into our lives without committing to living in the woods and building our own shelters out of clay and straw.

Buying in-season produce from local producers gets you cheap and tasty veggies. You can end up with an absurd amount of produce though, which is where traditional recipes from regions that grow the produce you have too much of can help. I accidentally bought way too much zucchini last year and made spaghetti alla nerano, a pasta dish where the zucchini is broken down to become the sauce. Pickling in vinegar is a good way to make use of veggies that you’d otherwise have to toss.

One way to get in season produce in the Dallas area is Profound Foods grocery delivery. Profound marks which producers are local and what produce is sourced elsewhere. Farmers markets are another way, but I’ve had some lackluster experiences at the ones near me. CSA’s may be an option for you, but I haven’t been able to get signed up on any local to me.

Standard Ebooks is a collection of well formatted ebooks in the public domain. There a lot of great books available: Great Gatsby, Frankenstein, The Count of Monte Cristo. Public domain ebooks I’ve downloaded in the past have been frustratingly poorly formatted, with weird characters or missing/extra whitespace.

Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court was a fun and easy read. I was surprised at how modern the writing style and ideas felt.