http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10928032

These guys seem like douche bags.  It isn't really minimalism if you maintain enormous collections of digital goods.

And couch surfing isn't really minimalism either - it's taking advantage of your friends and their stuff, instead of maintaining your own.

On the other hand, I do have a soft spot for minimalism.  Just not this douchey.

Yeah... that's Cennaghaer's version of minimalism. You remember him? Tulip's ex who lectures on minimalism, freedom and socialism... and then embezzled all our money. Fucker.

Pat Sherrill minimalism is where it's at... A house with one chair and just enough crockery and cutlery for one, some fatigues and his USPS uniform.

And a buttload of high powered weaponry.

That's funny, on another board there was this woman who was all down-home-you-betcha republican and was constantly talking about personal responsibility and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and being against welfare.

Of course she disappeared for awhile and we found out she finally got pinched for skimming a ton of money from a hotel chain and skipping town. Then she got pregnant on purpose to get leniency.

That's about your typical Republican right there.

I remember he made a big deal about being in charge of libations at one event.

That alone rendered him worthy of being ignored.  Why make a big deal about shitty mixed drinks when almost everyone else is just passing around bottles of liquor and drinking beers?

I witnessed this in my undergrad. Well to do young adults think it is really fucking awesome to move to the city, live in some squalid apartment and pretend to be poor for a while. it drove me fucking insane, why all the mooching? I didn't understand it. I couldn't rationalize it. I figured no one in their RIGHT MIND would want to be poor. But I was missing one big fact, these people have never known the sting of true poorness. I was looking at it from the eyes of someone who truly understood poorness and therefore couldn't possibly see the positive side to this lifestyle.

These assholes enjoy the novelty of faux poorness (excuse me, I mean "minimalism") until it gets too hard and they run back to the safety of mommy and daddy's money or their trust fund in the suburbs. I've seen it happen countless of times.

In the end these asshats leave the city (the same city they never bothered paying taxes in but sure enjoy the benefit of services paid for with tax payer's dollars) and end up with the biggest toll brother's house on some purchased and carved out former farm in the now overcrowded suburbs with 2 kids in private school.
...while the rest of us sweat in this city, hoping we never feel that horrific sting of poorness ever again.

Clearly this hits a nerve with me.

Oh... and toll brothers are these monstrosities:


Disgusting. Who needs that much house?

Funny you should mention those...

Death Of The McMansion

I certainly hope that article is true because I fear that these ugly things are alive and well out where I work. It's completely destroying the countryside, the roads are more and more crowded, the flooding is getting worse and the houses are cheaply made and not made for efficient heating and cooling so they are draining the grid. Revolting.

speaking of... look at the foyer. they put the tallest ceilings in just for space, but think of the heating and cooling ramifications!!!!

Baltimore has some truly shitty artist warehouse type housing - not surprisingly, a bunch of trust fund kids going to the local art school live there in addition to the stereotypical starving artists.  The only way I can sort of explain that is they want to party/put on shows/do a lot of drugs all of the time with no supervision.

My biggest objection to the people discussed in the article is the more fundamental misunderstanding of minimalism (and even really the word "less").  The people in the article ultimately are not addressing minimalism and the question of identifying the essential and eliminating the needless.

For example, on music:
Let's say some dude has 1,000 CDs and a stereo.  He says hey, I can consolidate this by getting rid of the stereo, converting my CDs to MP3s, and using my computer instead.

That's not really accepting a minimalist ethic, it's just accepting a transition in how goods are delivered and retained.

In trying to apply a minimalist ethic one would, at a minimum, look at the 1,000 CDs and ask, "how many of these do I need and listen to regularly?"  You'd look at your music collection and ask how many of those CDs you actually listen to.  The answer isn't 1,000.  Let's say it's 25.  You would get rid of 975 CDs.

You would do similar if you converted them to MP3s.  Say each CD had ten songs, so you have 10,000 MP3s.  Maybe you'd hang on to a few more songs you liked, but you wouldn't retain all 10,000 - maybe you'd keep 500.

Likewise, questions about housing, food, etc. would be answered entirely differently than some of these people suggest.  They aren't pursuing a minimalist ethic.  They're pursuing a selfish ethic, which pushes the burdens of life on to other people. 

And ultimately, that's what the whole article describes: it's an ethic that's not really about "less" and more about convenience.  It's more convenient to let iTunes sort and store your 1,000 CDs than it is to sort and maintain them yourself; it's more convenient to let someone else cook your food and just pay them for it;  it's more convenient to crash on your friends' couches than it is to vacuum and dust your own apartment...

Also, the thing to do with abandoned McMansions isn't to turn them into something else.

It's to salvage all of the useable material, tear them down, and let the land go back to nature so it can maybe be productive farm land again someday.

You know, for the future we should all see coming when you can't use natural gas to make cheap fertilizer and actually have to resort to old-fashioned agricultural techniques that don't destroy the land every year.

Speaking of natural gas and other non renewable resources, I read an interesting article yesterday about something not many people ever think about .

http://news.holidash.com/2010/08/25/helium-supply-running-out/?icid=main|main|dl3|sec3_lnk3|166389

I guess there goes my ideas for city sized luxury airships.

Tin foil is not something I think about.


(however, the waste side is something I do.)