There is a system, usually reliable, whereby I can call on my friends, neighbors and relatives to do my watering when I'm out of town.
Usually works pretty good if I give them a quick primer.

I hope that Garden Gnome costume isn't too tight around the waist!

Most of my property is xeriscaped.

The rest is planter boxes with vegetables.
I manually, by hand, water my drought tolerant plants maybe twice a week.
I manually, by hand, water my planter box vegetables, herbs, fruit, etc usually daily.

What I have to water isn't huge, but it takes a while.
I actually enjoy watering. I get to see my plants, check how they are doing, etc;
I actually check the soil and how moist it is, see what bugs there are/aren't, the status of my garden in general as I water.

Maybe I'm odd but I actually like doing it.

I would assume if someone had a massive garden/yard then doing some kind of app based control of multiple drip systems, etc would be the way to go, but for me I would rather Keep It Simple Stupid. Plus I don't have to dick around with all of the management that comes with drip systems, sprinklers(nightmare), apps, phone settings, blah, blah, blah.

For me the garden is a way to get away from tech for a while.

Don't hold your breath....

I've tried to have a reasonable discussion on this topic with many people who are of the mindset you describe.
It always devolves into a "think of the children" tack, where people that are ok with omnipresent monitoring argue that we can't have a safe society unless everything is tracked, which of course is utter bullshit.

I started using cash for most of my "discretionary" purchases lately.
Things like grocery shopping, clothing, Home Depot, going to the bar, etc...

I initially started doing it because of how porous and UN-trustworthy the whole paradigm of card transactions is.

This article hits home on how using cash helps me in another way, being that my purchases can't be tracked.

You know it really is interesting seeing how (for lack of a better phrase) Orwellian the whole system is getting.
Interesting, as in Hindenburg appointing Hitler Chancellor in 1933...

Actually I prefer "Merka", thank you.

Really, Fox News is actually on cable, right?

One of the best descriptions of FB I've read.
Bravo!

There are several books that cause such social contagion "hive-mind" behavior, the most popular being The Bible and The Koran.

It's been really amazing watching what this guy has done and continues to do with his money and energy.

Why?

Compare to other tech billionaires and what they do with theirs...

I have my LG 42" LCD, my ONKYO Receiver, and my Sony Blu-Ray all plugged into a power strip.
Connected to the them are a digital antennae for OTA, an ethernet connection for NetFlix, and a Linux pc for everything else.

Cable?
Satellite?

Are you kidding me?
Do people still pay for that crap?
Who are these people that stay beholden to the most despicable industry in America?

My linux pc goes to "sleep" when I'm not using it...
When I'm done with the rest of them, I power off the rest, then turn off the power strip.
I've been doing it this way for years...
Never had any issues, except with Sony's bullshit user/login setup on their Blu-Ray players, but that's another story...

Brilliant!

To quote Roger Waters from Amused to Death:

I can't believe an avalanche of "Yea, but you have to appoint former industry bigwigs as regulators because they're the only ones who really understand industry" replies haven't shown up yet.

It appears the lobbyist apologists are slipping here on slashdot...

How your post was modded insightful is anybodies guess, and I think the answer lies in what you say, about the "mental capacity of neanderthals".

To begin with, did you RTFA?
It doesn't appear that you did.

The surprising findings from the research was that the arctic sea ice is a collector of sorts for the unfathomably large amount of plastic spewed into the oceans by man and his industrial offal. The amount of plastic found was "three orders of magnitude larger than some counts of plastic particles in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch" Maybe that isn't interesting enough for you, but it is for me.

Also from the article:
"Plastic is chemically inert. But the plastic can absorb organic pollutants in high concentrations, says Mark Browne, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Browne has performed laboratory experiments with marine organisms showing not only how the microplastics can be retained in tissues, but also how pollutants might be released upon ingestion. "

If any sort of +5 outrage should be generated by the research and its findings, its from the fact that mankind has and is continuing to pollute and degrade it's own biosphere.

Hello? Anybody in there?

"Thinly veiled reference to global warming"?
Wake up yo.