Our Amazon Problem

August 24, 2015

...es while BBC’s Panorama showed the hellish conditions at the bottom of the Amazon pyramid. For years Amazon avoided paying local sales taxes, gaining a discounting advantage that put small local bookstores, unable to compete, out of business. I could go on. If you’d like to know more read this roundup of Amazon’s sins in Salon. And yet, I suspect, few of us (including myself) have had the moral courage to delete our Amazon accounts like Rob Hoskin...

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Urban Homestead Trademarks Cancelled!

Mr. Homegrown

March 31, 2017

Urban Homestead Trademark Dispute

16 Comments

After six years of legal wrangling, “urban homestead” and “urban homesteading” belong to us all. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has cancelled the trademarks thanks to the hard work of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the law firm of Winston & Strawn. Here’s the press release from the Electronic Frontier Foundation: Urban Homesteaders Win Cancellation of Bogus Trademarks Global Community Had Faced Baseless Legal Claims and Content Remo...

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Homegrown Evolution in Chicago

Mr. Homegrown

May 9, 2009

Events

2 Comments

...tzen, who will be co-teaching the class and signing copies of his book The Urban Homestead. Bring some gloves and learn how to make and plant your own SIP. Leave with everything you need for a summer of fresh heirloom tomatoes–all you add is about 6 hours of good sun per day in your yard, balcony, or roof and enough water to keep the reservoir full. No weeding, no mulching, no worries. You’ll go home with: –Plant-ready two-bucket sub-irrigated pla...

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I’m Fed Up With Amazon

Mr. Homegrown

December 6, 2019

Thoughtstylings

11 Comments

...program on this blog. For the time being I’ve stopped adding new links to Amazon products. For years Amazon provided an ever decreasing affiliate income that, partly, pays the hosting bills for this blog and podcast. I’ve written about my ambivalence about Amazon before back in 2015 and many of you said, at the time, that you didn’t mind. I suspect, in the years since, many of you may have changed your mind about this company. I know I have. Prac...

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Looking for the Union Label

Mr. Homegrown

September 12, 2007

Domesticus

3 Comments

...we ordered from Union House arrived promptly and are of superior quality. Homegrown Revolution hecklers will, no doubt, shout us down for not sewing our own underwear and socks, but we’ll save our time for more complicated sewing projects such as the shirt we sewed a few years ago. We’ve all got a lot of moral geometry to perform in this globalized world–the keyboard we’re tapping this missive out on was assembled in Malaysia by workers who, it’s...

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