Numbeo

Numbeo is a collaborative online database which enables users to share and compare information about the cost of living between countries and cities.
It also includes data on:

  • property prices,
  • crime,
  • health care,
  • pollution,
  • traffic,
  • travel,
  • quality of life
Quality of life comparison (March 2020)

Turf cutting in Co Roscommon in 1881

Turf cutting in Co Roscommon in 1881, from the Illustrated London News, February 26th, 1881

Cut turf stacked for drying, Lissananny, Co. Roscommon, August 2019

To sit beside the board and drink good wine

And watch the turf smoke coiling from the fire

And feel content and wisdom in your heart,

This is the best of life;

William Butler Yates

Cutting turf to heat homes has been a tradition for millennia, but the EU has ruled that it must stop.

February 2020

Low Tech Magazine

What is Low-tech Magazine?

Founded in November 2007, Low-tech Magazine questions the blind belief in technological progress, and talks about the potential of past and often forgotten knowledge and technologies when it comes to designing a sustainable society. Interesting possibilities arise when you combine old technology with new knowledge and new materials, or when you apply old concepts and traditional knowledge to modern technology.

My personal favourite articles:

Reinventing the Greenhouse –

Research shows that it’s possible to grow warmth-loving crops all year round with solar energy alone, even if it’s freezing outside. The solar greenhouse is especially successful in China, where many thousands of these structures have been built during the last decades.

How to Downsize a Transport Network: The Chinese Wheelbarrow

For being such a seemingly ordinary vehicle, the wheelbarrow has a surprisingly exciting history. 

https://www.lowtechmagazine.com