Weekend Linkages: Spiders and Fast Food Ghosts

July 17, 2022

...Michael Grave’s original plans for Portland City Hall had a little town on top via @jmfowl. Two Men Had To Be Extinguished After Catching Fire At Goop Store A beautiful art book about spiders LA Restaurants Are Breathing Life Into the Architectural Ghosts of Fast-Food Past China Miéville: “If you don’t feel despair, you’re not opening your eyes” Energy use from US cryptomining firms is contributing to rising utility bills...

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Yet Another Lawn Rant

Mr. Homegrown

July 2, 2008

Lawns, Thoughtstylings

6 Comments

...117,000 folks in the United States made trips to the emergency room in 2007 because of lawn mowers. We’ve witnessed first hand the power of lawn mowers. A neighbor of ours had his windshield shattered by a rock propelled by a mower blade. As the Orthopedic Surgeons note, “The energy transferred by a typical lawn mower blade is equivalent to being shot in the hand with a .357 Magnum pistol. A lawn mower can eject a piece of metal or wood up to 100...

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Essential System #8 – Nutrition (Extra Food)

Mr. Homegrown

August 23, 2006

Preparedness

...was what you’d expect – a cross between balsa wood and salt. The chocolate energy bar was much more substantial with a thick, waxy chocolate-like-ness, almost completely masking a surprisingly malty undertone. I’d use the word cloying, but I hate that word.” Should you require another opinion on MREs, someone calling themselves “Badtux the Snarky Penguin” has a review of the chicken tetrazini MRE. We prefer the more upscale freeze dried backpackin...

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What are trees worth?

Mrs. Homegrown

August 20, 2015

Fruit Trees, Gardening, Nature Awareness, Permaculture, Thoughtstylings, Trees

21 Comments

...d around your own house make your home cooler in the summer, reducing your energy bills. Low lying cactus and succulent plants do little or nothing nothing to cool the city, while gravel, concrete and artificial turf make your yard a blistering heat trap. Trees help the land absorb rain, increasing ground water levels and preventing destructive run off and storm flooding. (See this and this.) A single tree can absorb thousands of gallons of rain w...

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Who Needs Windows?

Mr. Homegrown

November 23, 2021

Design

5 Comments

...ded me of this issue. If ever there was an example of the over-reliance on energy intensive HVAC systems it’s the idea that buildings don’t need windows. I can’t possibly, in a short blog post, round up all the windowless buildings such as phone company switching facilities (like the famous brutalist AT&T switching center in New York above), all those Amazon warehouses, or Los Angeles’ hidden and still functioning urban oil wells. Our window free...

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