Such restrictions can prove frustrating for a member who may want to, say, trade goods for services. In this version of a gifting economy, where all items are of equal value, members are not allowed to trade or barter, as each object is seen as a gift independent of anything else. Instead, you are intentionally “gifting” your possessions. You are not putting your stuff on the street hoping someone claims it before the trash truck comes. Terms like “curb alert” or “first come first serve” are discouraged. “If we can reuse and refurbish and fix and repair and just keep recycling these items, nothing needs to be discarded,” Ms. In the language of Buy Nothing, everything we possess has value, if you can find the person who needs it. Clark, one of the founders of the Buy Nothing Project. “We have plenty right here within each of our local communities to sustain us,” said Liesl B. Because each group is geographically limited, sometimes encompassing only a few city blocks, and members are allowed to join only a single group, an active group can become a tight-knit trading post where a decorative birthday banner could make the rounds, shared repeatedly for months until it mysteriously disappears, as happened in one Brooklyn group earlier this year. But Buy Nothing turns the act of decluttering into a way to meet and befriend your neighbors.
And social media has made it easier for people to find free stuff on sites like Craigslist or through groups like Trash Nothing.
Charities like the Salvation Army and Goodwill rely on these kinds of donations. Giving away the stuff that you no longer want is nothing new. The Buy Nothing Project recently developed an app that it will release more widely in a few weeks. Created in 2013 by two women in Bainbridge Island, Wash., it has grown to 6,700 independent Buy Nothing Facebook groups in 44 countries. Members are encouraged to offer their time and talents, too, and loan items that someone may need for just a few hours, like a car or a cake pan. Welcome to the wild world of Buy Nothing, a network of social media groups, mostly on Facebook, where people give and receive things, treating the stuff taking up space in their homes as gifts meant to be shared and treasured. He drank the brine with a friend, using it as a chaser for shots. I was like, ‘No, I just really like pickle juice,’” said Mr. “The doorman thought that I wanted the glass because it was such a large glass.
Stahl walked 10 blocks to a stranger’s apartment lobby and retrieved a one-gallon Mt. It turns out, people are willing to give away (and take) just about anything, if you ask. But a few months ago, he decided to ask for some just to see if it was possible, posting a request to an Upper West Side chapter of Buy Nothing, a hyperlocal Facebook group. If you would like to suggest one, email me.David Stahl did not need leftover pickle juice because, really, no one needs someone else’s used brine. I’m always on the look-out for great puzzles. I set a puzzle here every two weeks on a Monday. Instead discuss edible Platonic solids and other mathematical milk derivatives. UPDATE: To read the solutions click here. I’ll send one of my puzzle books to the reader who sends, or tweets me, the best image of the answers to questions 3 or 4, using real cheese. How do you slice a cube of cheese into six pieces of identical volume with only three cuts? How do you slice a cube into two equal parts, such that the cross-section of the slice is a hexagon?Ĥ. If you slice it in half by making a vertical cut, midway between, and parallel to, two of the sides, the cross section of the cut will be a square. A cheese cube is sitting on a horizontal table. Show a path through the cheese that passes through every subcube and ends in the centre subcube, or prove that such a path is impossible.ģ. A mouse starts at one of the corner subcubes and eats his way through the cheese (without ever passing through the same subcube more than once.) Whatever subcube the mouse is in, it can only move into a subcube that is horizontally or vertically adjacent to it. A cube of cheese is divided into 27 identical smaller ‘subcubes’, as above.