My Mom and I were talking about leather last week. There are still plenty of animals being butchered for meat but, where do all those hides go now? The post below has it wrong. They are assuming there is a demand for leather. When did you last see or touch anything that was 100% real leather from an animal? Think carefully because a lot can be labelled leather without actually being leather. Of course, its not quite false advertising because there are loopholes to get around almost any and all laws which used to govern marketing. So, it is unlikely anything called leather is actually authentic, real, actual leather from an animal hide.

Leather has always been a byproduct of the meat industry, and as Americans' beef consumption grew over the 20th century, the leather industry grew with it. The past three decades, though, have seen a decline of about 28 percent in Americans' appetite for beef, and the supply of hides has dwindled accordingly. At the same time, drought in the Midwest has pushed up feed prices. The result is that America has fewer and more expensive cows. Meanwhile, the world's consumers still want leather goods.

Source: Your Salad Lunches Are Killing American Leather - Bloomberg Business, 2015.

So, what does happen to all those hides? In Ontario we used to hear advertising (and even visited) the Olde Hide House in Acton, Ontario. Its been closed years ago, not enough business. No shortage of hides. Even though towards the end a lot of them were not coming from Canadian animals. Hides were sent from South America, not in the best of shape, but likely cheaper and maybe more available because it was not a great business for Canadian animal farmers to sell hides. The cost to have the hide processed was not balancing the money made from the sale of the hide.

Too much competition from the fake leather which did not need a lot of processing because it was not taken from any animal. Pleather, plastic leather, did not come from any animal. Carry on with all the other faux leather types, you can see how the business of making leather from animal hides went downhill.

But, we still have all those animals being eaten. So what does happen to all that could-have-been leather? It didn't disappear. Likely a lot of it is included in pet food. That's an easy way to sell parts of animal not sold as steaks, etc. Do you ever wonder what goes into that pet food they sell as pure beef, etc?

This leaves a whole possible business (if someone could come up with an idea) for animal hides to be used again, as something other than pet food, compost, or whatever it currently is going into. Can you think of any ideas? I can't either. The problem is still the cost of processing the hides. Turning hides into leather is not neat and tidy, it stinks, literally. Are there even any places still in Canada that cure hides? Its not something you can just hop into. Think of all the government control there would be for dealing with animal hides. Even before you can think of some new product (that would be cost efficient to make and sell well). Workers would need to be trained and its not a nice job so workers might not be found in Canada.

I don't think the leather industry, as it is, will see a come back. The faux leather is so much easier and cheaper to produce. It sells just as well as the real leather ever did. I doubt people, in general, could tell the difference. Another thing, real leather wears too well. It doesn't rip, fade, or need to be replaced often enough. So once you buy a real leather purse, coat, couch, etc. its not going to need to be replaced for a long time. Meanwhile all that faux leather can generate lots of sales - its not designed to last. Like most of the products made these days. The plan is to sell, sell, sell! Sell junk so you can sell more. Marketing at work!

Lastly, the beef industry and the guilt trip given about eating salad, or meals which do not heavily include beef/ meat. This idea of meat heavy meals is a more modern thing. People long ago did not have the amount of meat in their diet as we do now. Plates at restaurants, on cooking shows, and so on are at least two thirds meat, if not far more. That is not even healthy for people. Long before people could not choose to butcher an animal more than once a year. They were needed to provide milk and eggs, or eat bugs, some kind of service. The plates of pioneers, people from even 50 years ago would not have been meat heavy. It was expensive, not as available and people ate more vegetables. Dishes were more likely to include meat as an ingredient than to be on the plate at all. Soups, stews, all of those would use meat bones boiled down to create flavour. If there was still some meat from those bones it could be added. Meat was not abundant as it is now.

So these meat farmers complaining about salad eaters are basing this on an inflated market. A market created to sell beef/ meat. Like the faux leather, the marketing went wild, with no control over what the market actually could support in sales. Generating sales worked, too well. If you knew how many animals are slaughtered to feed people every day... its a kind of sickening. I'm not a vegetarian, I do eat meat, but I don't take it for granted. I do balance how much meat I eat with more vegetables on my plate. I don't eat out very much because those meals are just too meat heavy, not practical or realistic for what people really need to eat.

Protein is shouted all over the ads for anything edible now. I would not be surprised to see some company marketing ice cream as protein rich. It will have protein. But also a lot of sweetener you don't need. Protein can be found in food other than meat and dairy. How much protein are people eating, being kind of obsessed with it (like a food fad) versus what they really need? Eating too much of anything is not good. That is something you could look into for your own health/ needs.

Anyway, if people could stop eating so much meat they could be healthier and the environment would be better with less production of meat (meat takes far more resources than it does to produce vegetables and fruit). Don't take for granted all those animals which would not be born, live less than a year, and then slaughtered. I'm not expecting, or wanting, to stop eating meat, but there is no need to mass produce it at the current rate. Especially when so much of that animal is not being used but left as byproducts. Have you ever thought about the amount of bacon sold versus the rest of the pig killed to produce bacon? Its not just beef cattle out there being served up on a platter.

We have a sundial in the backyard but it's not very functional. Made of cement and no one ever thought to position it in a clearing where it could catch the sun. It's just ornamental. But, it would be interesting to have a shiny, more complicated sundial that could show the time with the passing of the sun. Of course, it might get rusty if it were metal. Maybe something not plastic but not too quick to rust or need a lot of maintenance. I always thought of a sundial as something that can stand the test of time.

The Nocturnal Celestial Stardial! This long-forgotten instrument aided a few lucky navigators and charmed romantics of the Renaissance. Earliest references include Cosmographicus Liber in 1530, Arte de Navegar, in 1551, and Horologiographia, The Art Of Dialling in 1626. 'Twas rare then as now. The Nocturnal Celestial Stardial is also called a stardial, a nocturnal, a "horologium nocturnum" (time instrument for night), or nocturlabe.

The outer disc is marked with the months as well as an indicator for each of the 365 days of the year. The inner disc is marked with hours and 5-minute increments. The pointer rotates on the same center axis as the discs. The center axis has a sight hole through which the North Star Polaris can be aligned.

via - Instructables - 2d Nocturnal Celestial Stardial TJT1/6

It may not be as accurate as modern technology but it is interesting to use historical technology and... you wouldn't have to buy batteries (or recycle batteries).

I can't wear a battery operated watch. For some reason the batteries die within a week or two. I was looking for a mechanical watch. So far I haven't found just the right one. This would be interesting but... the reviews say it isn't very accurate. Still tempting to try it though.

• The British Sundial Society
• North American Sundial Society

I'm starting to get fed up with cookies, especially having those notices half filling my screen and no option to say NO/ deny them. Some sites do let you say no to cookies and then you can go on to see the site. Most do not. Why not, wasn't that the point of being asked? Otherwise why ask at all if the site is still sticking me with cookies I don't want?

The other thing, are sites that try to make me shut off my ad blocker. Yes, they want to make money, fine. But, how can I decide if I care enough to look at their site before I've seen any of it? They could give people an option to at least see the site before they stick me with a bunch of ads which most likely include cookies, tracking and whatever other junk.

Marketing continues to suck the life out of the Internet, like a parasite.

I posted this to the forums on the Curlie site. As someone who reviews, edits, and lists sites (a lot of them) the cookies and assorted marketing junk really get annoying, quickly. Before you think sites are not asking me to list them... you're wrong. I'm reviewing sites which have been submitted to the directory. I'm not usually looking for sites to list, out of the blue.

Also, last night I was thinking about advertising in general. I've written before that marketing and advertising preys on people, finding weaknesses to sell them stuff they likely could do without. Last night I went a bit farther down that idea.

Marketing and advertising finds ways to make us feel incompetent. "You can't do this without buying that." ... "You can't wash your car without buying this or that product because without it you will do a botch job". You get the idea, I hope. Marketing is training people to think they can not succeed at life on their own. It belittles people and softly bullies them. The whole thing about adulting as a verb is a marketing scheme. There is no reason you can't be an adult. Adults are not omnipotent beings. Why make people needy, unsatisfied, neurotic even unless you have the cure/ solution they need for 3 easy payments of $9.99 a month...

AI is set up to "help" us even more because we are just that incompetent. Why can't people make a cake, fix a toaster, etc, etc, etc, as they did twenty years ago? Of course they can. But, they are trained to believe they can not. Think about the ads you've seen lately. How many have told you (not in so many words) that you can't do something? Ads making men look like clumsy fools. Men are not, in general, clumsy or fools. Children are not uncontrollable wild animals and women are not idiot trolls trying to look like Barbie dolls, or whatever the marketing twists people into so it can sell us stuff.

How will people be living in another few generations? If you're not generating money somehow, in order to buy stuff, will people become a nuisance population? Like an out of control population of mice. Will we be herded up like cattle, as some science fiction has suggested? (Even that will dwindle down as supply and demand fall off). Will we be used as sort of living batteries to power the machines, the artificial intelligence? Our abundance of population will only be useful if we contribute to the economy and then... what if the consumer economy tanks?

What happens when there are not enough human consumers to support the industries, the businesses, and services geared to human beings? How much of what exists, only exists for some form of human consumption? Whether physical, mental, or emotional... so much of what marketing sells is based on having a human population with the money to support it. If things keep going as they are and humans become useless, how will that change everything? Quite a lot, I'd think. Hard to even imagine once you start to think about all the pieces falling out of place.

Life after humans... what would it really look like?

Small acts of nature conservation. A couple of these we already do but others would be new and different to work on this year, in the garden especially. Includes things like not raking up all the leaves in the Autumn. You can rake them off the grass and into the flower beds, good for the plants and the wildlife.

Once you find an old single-wide mobile home, dirt cheap or even free and in need of some TLC, you can set up your own homestead in a rural area. Not so different from people homesteading in the cities, taking over abandoned and derelict areas and bringing new life to them.

Trailersteading is taking it to the rural places where there isn't a large population (or options for jobs) and making your own self-supporting homestead (or as near to it as possible). Running a trailerstead is a chance to live without debt, growing much of your own food. Living off the grid is possible too. You can create your own green living homestead, living out of a trailer with a very small carbon footprint.

Homesteading On The Internet: "Trailersteading" Makes Beginning Homesteading Easier

Trailersteading: How to Find, Buy, Retrofit, and Live Large in a Mobile Home - Anna Hess

All the advantages of a tiny house at a fraction of the cost!

Imagine what you could do with your time if you didn't have to spend $16,000 a year on rent or a mortgage. Old single-wide mobile homes can often be found for free (and installed for a couple of thousand dollars) in rural areas, so trailersteading is akin to dumpster-diving. A trailer allows you to live without debt, to keep your ecological footprint to a minimum with energy bills at or below the national average, and even to blend right in alongside traditional-house dwellers after a few years.

Trailersteading profiles thirteen mobile-home dwellers who have used trailers as a stepping stone toward achieving their dreams. Some have spent the cash saved to expedite renovations involving extra insulation, pitched roofs, classy interiors, and even basements, while the found money has allowed others to go off the grid. Many also took advantage of a low-cost housing option to pursue their passions, becoming full-time homemakers or homesteaders.

In addition to the case studies, this book presents easy methods of minimizing the negative sides of trailer life and accentuating the positive. For example, did you know a single-wide is easy to retrofit for passive solar heating? That a simple plant-covered trellis can break up the blockiness of the trailer's external appearance? Learn which parts of installing and upgrading your trailer are easy for a DIYer and which parts should be left to the experts, along with how to cheaply heat and cool a mobile home.