Is Facebook Useful?

...sh me and shunt them to the bottom of my friend’s feeds. I have a Facebook page for Root Simple but Facebook wants me to pay to promote posts. So instead I mostly use my personal page to promote stuff with limited success. But, worst of all, Facebook has distracted me from responding to comments on this blog and, instead, focusing on comment threads on Facebook. It may be futile, but it’s time to fight back. What I’ve resolved to do I’m not going...

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Spam Poetry Sunday

In lieu of our usual picture Sunday, we offer instead a beautiful word picture from our friends the spammers. Our software blocks thousands of these every day, but some get through and we have to hand prune our comment sections: We wish to thannk you yett agai ffor the gorgeous ideas you offered Janet when preparing her own post-graduate research and, most importantly, pertaining to providing masny of the ideas in a blog post. If we had been awar...

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Root Simple Redesign

...man Jaster, the designer of our book Making It (seen at the console in the picture above taking some last minute refinements from Mrs. Homegrown), is just about to pull the switch on the new design. We’re switching from Blogger to WordPress. Our new website design will feature: improved search functions an easier to navigate interface improved comment moderation better graphic design podcasts videos All of the 1800+ posts and comments from this bl...

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Saturday Linkages: Logs, Invasives and Italian Veggies

...http://www.uvm.edu/~uvmpr/?Page=news&storyID=17209#.Ut8epeX8ggE.twitter … Urban Nature: How to Foster Biodiversity in World’s Cities by Richard Conniff: Yale Environment 360 from @YaleE360 http://e360.yale.edu/feature/urban_nature_how_to_foster_biodiversity_in_worlds_cities/2725/#.Ut78MbYkqKk.twitter … Building With Logs – 1957 USDA Government Pamphlet http://feedly.com/e/SggnDsK7 Milky The Marvelous Milking Cow toy (1977) – Boing Boing http://bo...

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What Does California’s Prop 64 Say About Home Marijuana Cultivation?

...ry it ended up in. This was before bookstores created separate shelves for urban homesteading. Unsurprisingly, we found it in the gardening section. What did surprise me was the other books in the garden category. The overwhelming majority were about growing marijuana. There were lavish coffee table books of bud porn, detailed encyclopedias edited by huge teams of experts and countless tomes covering the technical details indoor lights, fertilizer...

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