Root Simple

I have a morning routine of reading the Episcopal (Anglican) lectionary over breakfast followed by some thorny philosophical tome while I drink my coffee.

I’ve taken Instagram and Twitter off my phone and I nuked my Facebook account (for the second time) a few months ago.

I have so many questions about this.

A Hidden, Handmade House That’s an Immersive Work of Art Renaissance Watercolours: materials and techniques DIY tunnel explainers: the Chabad tunnel and that tunnel influencer Three Delightful Alcohol-Free Cocktails Why Are American Drivers So Deadly?

Sometime in the aughts I discovered that you could listen to the wireless order transmissions from a nearby In and Out Burger near where I worked.

The Kept and the Killed 2023 Top 10 of Olden Tymee Cook Books on Sandwiches of History⁣ 2023 Top 10 Worst Sandwiches on Sandwiches of History⁣ The San Francisco Bay’s Red Rock Island is for sale for $25M Headlights Seem Brighter?

This will inspire the worst critical theory essay of all time pic.twitter.com/emrU444aRX — David Griscom (@DavidGriscom) December 29, 2023 I’ve fallen down a deep hole of learning how to do marquetry and inlay work for a bed I’m building and I’ve been on…

Dr Phene in his garden Build yourself a viking ship Old man parks his car in a very small garage Play Freebird!

I don’t now why it took me so many years to realize that our kitchen temperature is too low for proofing bread.

Mike the British Museum cat All roads lead to Thaxted British (and U.S.) children shorter than other five-year-olds in Europe, study finds JFC, calm down about the medieval Church The destruction of Cincinnati

Like many, I struggle with digital clutter–too many photos, emails, and articles I’ll never look at again.

Turn-of-century Berlin and more on cheerful Art Nouveau postcards ‘Your wife wants to see you’: 18th-century Spanish letters seized at sea by British published online Removing a motorway to bring back the original waterway How to tie a trucker’s hitch

Cathedral Wagon On A Medical Train.

Pumpkin spice/”Christian Girl Autumn” arrives here in Los Angeles without the warning of red and yellow leaves that comes elsewhere.

Do-It-Yourself Curb-Cut Guide 18th Century Trade Cards From compressed yeast to cream cheese and cornflakes: one man’s search for the world’s greatest sandwich Ideal built-in furniture Great app I’ve been using to sort way too many photos

Arend Hendriks, Cat at the top of a Dark Staircase.

Grid Beam chair from gridbeam.xyz Root Simple reader LeJun, responding to my post on my Enzo Mari table, left a link to two more ideas in the sphere of DIY furniture: Grid Beam and Open Structures.

My friend John came over last week with a stack of 2x6s that have been sitting in his yard for awhile and we spent the day making one of Italian artist and furniture designer Enzo Mari’s tables.

Alexander Shayle’s coffee grinders Raspberry Pi All Sky Camera Stop obsessing over heirloom seeds and let plants change A Letter from an 18th-century Journeyman Cabinetmaker You are not, in fact, the granddaughter of the witches they couldn’t burn

I lieu of links this week, here’s a conversation between three of my favorite writers, Richard Seymour, China Mieville, and David Bentley Hart.

Los Angeles Library card holders can check out an air quality monitor and participate in a crowd-sourced science project to monitor and map air quality.

Meme found on the interwebs (not sure where).

I took a pizza class at Josey Baker Bread in San Francisco this month and picked up a great tip from the instructor, JB pizza baker Caitlin (sorry did not get a last name!).

Looking for an easy Halloween display that uses stuff you might have at hand?

A mini Red Car at L.A.

With the news that Amazon is flooded with dangerous, AI generated mushroom foraging books, this seems like the perfect time for this blog to point towards the Japanese kid’s show Ultraman Taro, specifically episode 31, “Danger!

‘Life or Death:’ AI-Generated Mushroom Foraging Books Are All Over Amazon Scientologists Ask Federal Government to Restrict Right to Repair Plan for 55,000-acre utopia dreamed by Silicon Valley elites unveiled Tennessee woman sets record for world’s longe…

Coit Tower mural by Bernard B.

Living, as we all do, in a fog bank of texts, emails, social media updates and more it can seem as Marx put it, that “all that is solid melts into thin air.”

I’m in San Francisco this week hanging out with a relative and everywhere I go I see driverless Cruise and Waymo cars inching about the streets.

Alexander Graham Bell’s Tetrahedral Kites (1903–9) Dystopian On Trial: Alice Coleman’s Architectural Determinism HGTV Personality Tarek El Moussa Denies He’s Evicting North Hollywood Tenants To Build New Complex Gym shorts and a leotard: subway rider’s bo…

I have a lazy and ridiculous fantasy of picking up cookbooks at the library and handing them off to a personal chef to cook from.

Handle It Does this handle thingy do anything in terms of cleanliness?

When I’m having a spat with the Muses, I tend to write long, ponderous and negative blog posts that, mercifully, never leave unpublished draft status.

Vincent Woo surreptitiously stuck a GoPro to the front of a BART train to make this magical film, Tunnel Vision.

Quilt, Solar System. 1983.0618.01.

Levi Walter Yaggy’s Geographical Maps and Charts Photographs of the Los Angeles Alligator Farm (ca. 1907) The Navajo farmer taking a traditional approach to making baby food Historic San Francisco tiki bar the Tonga Room is a rite of passage.

HGTV is making our homes boring and us sad, one study says Could an ancient, climate-friendly crop be the future of beer?

Too Good to Go screenshots.

To my dear Root Simple friends: I’m back.

Image: Andrew @ortofarms The bee swarms of spring makes my inbox overfloweth with requests to remove bees from where they take up residence.

Dispenser for Sowing Tiny Seeds I Get No Mail and It’s Glorious Bohlin Cywinski Jackson’s Forest House The Blitz, September 1940-May 1941

Reconstructing the Apollo Belvedere Officials won’t stop wrecking ball for Canada’s ‘most photographed house’ That weird coronation thing Behold the ultimate McMansion

I’m thankful for the luxury of being able to do a completely pointless project occasionally.

The workers of The Flipping El Moussas.

When public transportation took you to the mountains in SoCal.

We were deeply saddened to hear of the death of Father Peter Rood this past week.

If Herbert Marcuse did a lot of cocaine and ditched critical theory for interior design he might have penned this very much of its time coffee table book: Sensuous Space: How to Create Romantic, Seductive and Sensuous Settings by Sivon Reznikoff.

Source: the deep interwebs ChatGPT Is Not Intelligent (a great podcast episode on the hype surrounding AI) The art of Henricus Jansen A house with a strange design feature What is Acid Communism?