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Another Disappointment

Perhaps disappointment is too strong a word. I left the theater (yes, I actually ventured out to a real theater today) feeling…underwhelmed. As I told a friend, perhaps i’m so thoroughly familiar with the lore of the Backrooms world that nothing really grabs me about it any more. I found Kane’s original five videos far more engaging.

Don’t get me wrong: the performances were spot on. The sets and effects were of a quality that we’ve all come to expect from a summer movie. But in trying to explain what the “monster” was, I think Kane and crew missed the mark. The monter in his original videos is never explained; it just is, and I think they should’ve done the same with the movie. The unknown (and its motivations) is far more viscerally frightening than a monster whose origin and motivations are all explained and tied up with a neat little bow.

Or maybe I’ve just become so old and jaded that movies in general no longer give the that endorphin rush they used to when I was in my 20s and 30s.

At this point, I’m expected to be sorely disappointed by the two other movies I’m actually going to a theater to see this summer, Disclosure Day and of course, DUNE 3. I hope i’m proven wrong; I hope at least one of them wows me.

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They’re Scared

Good.

“Shut up you ugly f—.” That’s what the Democratic Party’s official account told Stephen Miller, after he mocked a Senate candidate as “transgender” to insult his looks. And honestly? Good.

Here’s the full exchange, because context matters.

On Wednesday, the DNC posted a photo of Talarico, the Texas Senate candidate, with the caption “Fired up. Ready to go. It’s time to take back Texas.”

Stephen Miller, the architect of family separation and the cruelest immigration policies in modern memory, quote-tweeted it: “The Democrats made history in Texas by nominating their first transgender senate candidate,” needling Talarico over his appearance.

For the record, Talarico is not transgender. He’s a straight, cisgender Christian man with a girlfriend.

Miller knew that. The “joke” wasn’t really about Talarico. It was the same tired playbook: use “transgender” as a slur, treat an entire group of people as a punchline, and dehumanize for sport.

So the DNC fired back. “Shut up you ugly f—.”

Predictably, conservatives clutched their pearls. “WHAT THE F—? DEMOCRATS TURN TO PROFANITY INSTEAD OF POLICY,” screamed Fox News.

The party of “f— your feelings,” the people who turned cruelty into a brand and put it on hats and flags, suddenly discovered the importance of civility the moment someone gave it back.

Yes, some Democrats winced and called it embarrassing.

That’s the instinct that’s gotten the party steamrolled for a decade. The endless belief that if they’re just polite enough, dignified enough, the other side will play fair. It never does. Stephen Miller is not owed politeness. He’s owed exactly what he dishes out.

You cannot shame people who have no shame. You cannot out-civility a movement that mocks the dead, the disabled, and entire minorities for fun. Sometimes the only language a bully respects is being told to sit down.

For once, a Democrat didn’t bring a strongly worded statement to a knife fight.

More of this.

[source]

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Again, Needs A Half Bath On The First Floor

I’m just not sure where it could go. I’d get rid of the wall at the back of the living room to connect directly to the kitchen. Ideally if you’re a fan of the “open concept,” get rid the basement/basement stairs and both walls between the living and dining rooms (you’d need a massive beam to hold up the 2nd floor there since one of those is probably structural) and install an open-riser, see-through, self-supporting steel staircase.

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The message is everywhere right now.

It’s coming from tone-deaf University commencement addresses,
from soulless techbro vampire startups,
from morally bankrupt data center builders,
from myopic local politicians,
from woefully lazy journalists,
and from the largest organizations in the world that have gutted their creative departments.

They want us to believe that the mighty horse of progress has left the barn; that the inexorable march toward the future has begun, and we’re either gonna figure out how to ride it or be trampled to death trying to stop it. I’m calling BS on that.

Yes, artificial Intelligence’s existence is guaranteed, but humanity’s response to it is still well within our hands, and that response will determine whether we allow our ethical and moral convictions to bear on the technology or remain silent and be swallowed up.

Will we value the already-fragile environment enough to fight the fatal blow the current proposed proliferation of data centers presents?
Will we continue to cheapen the work of human creators, whose art we’ve gradually been conditioned to believe we should get for free?
Will we allow ourselves to be lured into the seductive shortcuts and quick solutions generative AI provides, or will we honor the creative process and the slower road to discovery?

Artificial Intelligence evangelists insist that we’re afraid of this technology, but they’re misreading the situation. I’m not afraid of generative AI; I’m morally opposed to it, and there’s a big difference.

I don’t resist progress, but I do resist technological movements that pillage our natural resources, devalue human beings, harvest their creativity without compensating them, and enable talentless parasites to profit from the work of billions of flesh-and-blood people, who since the dawn of time have spent themselves on behalf of their art.

Pushing back against the unethical rise of Artificial Intelligence isn’t as complicated as we’re led to believe. Some steps you can take right now:

Stop sucking up thousands of gallons of drinking water just to turn your dad’s texts into a song for a 90-second Instagram reel.

Turn off the AI assists on your search engines and email portals.

Stop using ChatGPT, Claude, or other platforms to find information you already have near-immediate access to.

If you’re a student, stop trying to cheat your way to knowledge and experience. Enjoy the long, often meandering but ultimately fruitful road of study, failure, and exploration.

If you’re in charge of a business, church, or organization hiring for a creative project, seek out actual qualified, experienced human beings who’ve devoted their lives to their craft; investing in people who’ve earned their expertise and their price tag.

Find out where data centers are being proposed in your area, and show up at town halls, board meetings, politicians’ offices, and wield your power as a resident and taxpayer.

Stop using generative AI to make a meme that’s no one’s going to care about thirty seconds after they’ve seen it.

Use your brain instead of your thumbs. A few quick prompts will give you immediate ideas which can be seductive, but it’s fool’s gold. Part of the creative process is to sit with the empty page, the frustrating silence, and the blinking cursor; the invaluable times when the wrestling and the waiting force you to go deeper than a web search.

Partner with advocacy groups to hold CEOs, executives, employers, developers, and lawmakers accountable to the human beings in their midst.

Financially support artists whose humanity feeds your soul.

If you reject the threat of AI to creativity, one of the ways you can fight it is to support flesh-and-blood creators. If there are bands, writers, comedians, journalists, painters, jewelry makers, small businesses, or songwriters who make life more beautiful or bearable, please tangibly partner with them as you can. If financial support is not possible, please leverage your social media platform to share their work and help them break out of the prisons of the algorithms.

Artificial Intelligence, like any new technology, can either be a useful tool or a deadly weapon. We shouldn’t be afraid of progress, but we should be very worried about sacrificing one another and ourselves on the altar of that supposed progress.

AI is not inevitable, but the greed, ignorance, and short-sightedness of human beings is, which means we’re all going to push back against it with urgency and ferocity to ensure that we don’t gain some time and a little ease, and lose our souls.

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Another Hillside Home

This one I envisioned located on the northeast side of Tucson, east side of the Catalina Highway on the way to Mt. Lemmon. Back in the early 80s when I designed this, it was pretty much pristine desert out that way, and the view of the Catalina and Rincon Mountains was breathtaking. There were a few homes scattered among the sahuaro and mesquite, but by and large it was undeveloped—although there were unpaved streets and it was zoned for residential development.

When I moved back to Tucson in ’95, I was shocked at the changes that had occurred in the area over the previous decade. It now seemed to be homes as far as the eye could see, and I realized that while this house might still eventually be built—somewhere out that way—it certainly wouldn’t have the gently sloping lot with the view of the mountains I had envisioned.

Sadly, I don’t have printouts of the elevations available to share, so you’ll just have to settle for the floor plan.

 

There’s a gated front courtyard that leads you to the breezeway between the garage and the main house. When you enter through the gate, you’d get a view through the breezeway to the lower patios, pool, and studio. You enter the house under the breezeway. If you continue straight ahead, you’ll go down a few steps to an intermediate level where you have access to the separate studio/guest house with its own bath and kitchenette.

Continuing down another small flight of stairs brings you to the swimming pool, something I wouldn’t be without in Tucson.

The main house is very simple: two bedrooms, one bath.  When I showed it to him years ago, Ben’s first comment was, “The kitchen’s too small.” Yeah, well, I designed this when I hadn’t envisioned a wonderful man coming into my life who loved to cook!

Now, of course, we need three bedrooms (master plus two offices) and two bathrooms, because living with only one bathroom is a pain when there is more than one person in the house, regardless.

I found this in the same folder. At some point (still before I met Ben) I expanded the plan to accommodate a second bedroom and bath in addition to the den/office space:

And then there’s this variation on a theme…

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A Desert Dwelling For A Single Individual

This dates from 1977, what I affectionately call my Star Wars summer.

Yes, those are three-foot thick concrete walls. Guaranteed to keep out the desert heat. I remember showing the plans to a contractor who the firm I was working for kept on staff, and he was enthralled by the design. “You bring me the money, I will build this!”

The basic idea for this house stayed with me for years, finally morphing about fifteen years later into this variation:

No longer partially sunk into the ground, the three-foot thick concrete walls and very basic layout (with a few changes) remained. This is another house I spent so much time with inside my head it might as well have been built for how real it felt to me.

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Breaking Barriers

Click on headline to read the (somewhat long) article…

The woman who defied the odds as the first Black nurse in the U.S.

At a time when Black women were largely excluded from formal training, Mary Eliza Mahoney set a new standard for who could serve in American hospitals.

Sixteen-hour days, seven days a week, scrubbing floors, em­ptying bedpans, and even­tually assisting nurses and doctors. For 15 years, Mary Eliza Mahoney toiled at Bos­ton’s New England Hospital for Women and Children as a maid, cook, and washer­woman. These were the only jobs open to Black women during an era historians now darkly recall as “the nadir of American race relations.”

Despite how limited her options were, Mahoney dreamed of being at the forefront of patient care. In 1878, a 33-year-old Mahoney applied to nursing school at the hospital where she worked. Although she was two years older than the pro­gram permitted, the admin­is­trators waived the age re­quire­ment, as they’d seen years of her work.

Mahoney became the first Black professionally trained nurse in the United States and also went on to raise nursing’s standards and open its doors to other Black women, insisting that professional excellence and racial justice were inseparable.

Thanks, Rick!

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