Search Results for: label/book%20reviews/2010/06/the-urban-homestead

809 results

The Gathering Storm

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Thoughtstylings
3 Comments
...end, gone. The burger place we ate at last Saturday, gone. The place I did book tour lectures at, likely, gone. Historic churches, gone. The Theosophical Library, with 15,000 rare books, gone. To have walked around just last weekend to go to that art opening, shop at a nursery and visit the Christmas Tree Lane model railroad with some friends and then see many of these places vanish off the map just days later is unthinkable. https://youtu.be/RaCm...

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Paleo Grift

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Thoughtstylings
6 Comments
...Northwestern University who was on to discuss his review of James Suzman’s book Work: A Deep History, From the Stone Age to the Age of Robots. Suzman’s book, popular with the tech bro set, focuses on the Bushmen or San people of the Kalahari Desert, made famous by the 1980s movie The Gods Must Be Crazy (which I’ve never understood the appeal of, frankly). Suzman, relying on bad research, makes the claim that the San work 15 hours a week. In realit...

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Go Plant a Million Trees

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Fruit Trees, Gardening, Reviews
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...of the world’s problems including climate change and soil erosion. In the book Silver makes the provocative suggestion that we might all be better off with a greater emphasis on tree crops instead of clearing land for monotonous fields of wheat, corn and soybeans. He has an interventionist, Johnny Appleseed like passion at odds with the hands-off, leave-no-trace branch of environmentalism. Silver says, “Instead of trying to have as little impact...

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Reject Modernity Embrace Post-Capitalism

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Thoughtstylings
10 Comments
...ear readers sake, I suffered through a few chapters of Chip Gaines’ latest book in an attempt to find some sort of philosophical basis for this madness. It was all about how much he WORKS and then he WORKS SOME MORE and then WORKS EVEN MORE. Chip’s book reminded me of what Mark Fisher had to say in Ghosts of My Life, Capital demands that we always look busy, even if there’s no work to do. If neoliberalism’s magical voluntarism is to be believed, t...

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Our New Open Floor Plan

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Design
18 Comments
...en disowned the practice. No doubt, within a fortnight I’ll be back on Facebook and Instagram posting my avocado toast lunches. How about open floor plans? In the click-baitiest blog post ever, I declared them a “death trap.” Then the good natured Will Wallus of the Weekend Homestead came on the podcast to gently defend open floor plans. Naturally, I’m spending this month making our house, gasp, more open. Let me explain. When I installed the floo...

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