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KAITLAN COLLINS: So you agree that people who break in and vandalize a building should be prosecuted?
JD VANCE: Yes
COLLINS: Ok, I’m just checking, because you helped raise money for people who did so on January 6
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Adorable

I could live in any of them (assuming fully modern interior finishes), but for practicality sake, I’m going to have to go with the first one only because it has three bedrooms.

Thanks, Rick!

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We Will Survive This

“Right, Bubba?”

I’m not talking about the Middle East being inches away from WWIII, or the  latest attempted power grab by the orange clown in the White House. No, this time it’s more personal.

As many—if not most—of you know, I was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer back in 2003. Through a combination of fortunate events (and damn good medical care), I came through it—although not without some battle scars—and have been cancer free for the last two decades.

Everything’s been good, but lately I’ve been having more than the usual difficulty (a long-term effect of that previous course of radiation) swallowing. Stuff was getting caught on the way down, and while I’ve been able to successfully hack it back up and get it down on a second try, I was concerned enough that one day I reached down my throat and felt something—odd—on the back of my tongue. I made an appointment with my ENT. He ordered a CT scan and the results came back clear. Still, he shoved that infamous scope up my nose and down my throat and saw a spot where things had been getting caught. “Probably just an ulcer,” he said, “but with your history let’s be sure.”

I was supposed to go in for a biopsy yesterday, but when I went in on Tuesday for my pre-op screening, we discovered that I was never told to discontinue one of my medications, so now it’s rescheduled for this coming Monday.

It’s not my first biopsy; it’s usually an in-and-out the same day thing, but last time I had one done (this past November) I ended up in the hospital for several days because my blood-oxygen was remaining stubbornly low post-op. They finally decided that I had some kind of non-specific pulmonary infection and sent me home with a strong antibiotic and oxygen. It resolved itself in about a week, my numbers climbed back into the mid 90s and the oxygen generator went back.

But this time, as I got the pre-op paperwork from my insurance it mentioned not only the laryngoscopy with biopsy (expected), but also partial glossectomy. WTF? He’s planning on cutting out a part of my tongue? This was not discussed. I spoke at length with a good friend who’s been a nurse since probably I was in high school who managed to talk me off the ledge. She said that particular line item was in there because it was pretty standard, CYA stuff—especially with Medicare—in case he got in there, discovered it was not just an ulcer, and decided to excise the whole thing immediately.

This still has me a little freaked, mostly because of not knowing how it’s going to affect speech and swallowing if he decides to take out a chunk of the back of my tongue for however long it takes for it to heal. And then of course, if the biopsy comes back as malignant, then there’s all that to deal with, which—having been to that rodeo once already—I am most definitely not looking forward to going through again.

So if I go quiet—no pun intended—for some time after Monday, it’s because I have other things on my mind…

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I Could Live There

An Austin Home Designed Without Windows Is Rethinking Privacy and Security

Introducing the Stealth House – Specht Novak’s revolutionary perspective on city dwelling and the first of its kind home in Austin. This forward-thinking abode defies standard perceptions surrounding seclusion and exposure. The outer shell boasts an eye-catching profile, completely devoid of windows and enveloped in corrugated Cor-Ten steel. The exterior not only bolsters security but also fosters an air of intrigue. Specht Novak’s Stealth House is located on an infill lot in Austin’s city core. It is also the home of the architect himself, Scott Specht.

Stealth House has garnered several prestigious design awards in 2025 already: AIA National, Texas Society of Architects, AIA Austin Design Award of Excellence, and several more

A New Home in Austin Is Rethinking Privacy, Security, and How We Live Today. 

At first glance, the Stealth House designed by homeowner and architect Scott Specht, Specht Novak, is nearly invisible. Located on a gravel alley behind a row of traditional homes in downtown Austin, this 1,100-square-foot residence reveals little—a low, rust-colored steel façade with no outside-facing windows, offering no clue to its interior world. But step inside, and the experience is nothing short of revelatory.

Sunlight streams through floor-to-ceiling glass, illuminating two lush interior courtyards—one centered around an olive tree, the other serving as an aviary with bamboo. “We wanted to completely rethink what makes a home feel open and inviting,” says Scott Specht, Specht Novak. “Most modern homes rely on glass to connect with the outside world, but what if you don’t want to be on display? What if you want light, nature, and space without sacrificing privacy?”

The Stealth House breaks from the contemporary trend of open-plan, glass-walled homes by turning inward—drawing inspiration from the Roman domus, Moroccan riad, Chinese siheyuan, and Japanese machiya, where daily life revolves around interior courtyards.  Located In a dense, walkable neighborhood where views often mean staring into someone else’s home, this design offers a clear separation between public and private spaces. “This house feels connected, but only on our own terms,” Specht adds.

Powered by a rooftop photovoltaic array with battery backup and featuring a low-power-use air-conditioning system and super-insulated envelope, the house is extremely energy-efficient.  The Cor-Ten rusting steel exterior is maintenance-free, and the landscape, largely of gravel and cactus requires little attention. Everything about the Stealth House is built to be easy. “There’s no waste, no unnecessary spaces—just the essentials, done really well.

While the Stealth House is highly personal, its ideas could have larger implications for urban housing. Its compact footprint, acoustical and visual separation, and energy independence make it a model for accessory dwelling units, infill housing, and even “unbuildable” sites near highways and industrial zones.

“It’s a prototype,” Specht says. “It shows how you can live well in a small space, even in a dense area, without sacrificing privacy or sustainability.”  More than anything, though, the house is an answer to the evolving way we live now— in an environment of increasing social unease where the comfort of security, peace, and control over one’s environment are more valuable than an unobstructed view of the street.”

[source]

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Meh.

 

So I created a separate partition on my drive and downloaded and installed it. First impression? Meh. I don’t hate the new UI like so many are complaining about, but I’m also in no hurry to rush out and make it my daily driver. Of course I will when it’s officially released, but right now I see nothing compelling enough to jump wholeheartedly into the beta program and put my data at risk. (Remember, I learned that lesson—unfortunately multiple times—in the past.)

I will say, however, that for the first developer beta of a new O/S, it seems incredibly stable compared to times past. For the few hours I was playing with it nothing locked up, nothing crashed…but admittedly I wasn’t doing any of my usual tasks since none of my daily applications were installed.

I’ll also say that I rather like the new wallpaper, as trivial as that may seem. I snagged it to use with my existing Sequoia installation.

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Wednesday Madness

it’s the Boy King’s birthday!

the Boy King is excited, because everyone loves him — and the Royal Military has thrown him a great big parade!

look at all the powerful tanks! look at all the marching warfighters!

but wait — what’s that over there in the crowd? someone isn’t smiling at the Boy King.

the whole day is spoiled. it’s not fair! the Boy King slams his doughy doll-sized fist down onto his throne.

everyone has to love me! the Supreme Court says so

no, really. he’s such a fucking child.

“we’re celebrating big on Saturday, we’re gonna have a lot of— and if any protestor wants to come out, they will be met with very big force, by the way. and for those people who want to protest, they’re gonna be met with very big force.”

wait, how big? very big? oh, okay. thanks for clarifying that, Mr. Dimwit With The Vocabulary Of A Toddler.

with all due respect, Donny, you can fuck straight off with your tough-guy threats. everybody doesn’t have to love you — and the last time I looked, the right to assemble was still guaranteed by the First Amendment of our Constitution.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

on Saturday, June 14 — the same day as Donny’s Big Birthday Parade — we’re going to right-to-assemble the shit out of America.

there will be hundreds of No Kings protests happening on Saturday — join one near you.

hey, do you know what the Boy King’s Big Love-Me Birthday Parade is costing? 45 million dollars — $16 million of which is just to repair the damage to DC’s streets that will be caused by hundreds of tanks rolling across them.

The Army is preparing for the potential harm to Washington streets with several measures it hopes will avert damage. These include using 1-inch-thick steel plates, some as long as 20 feet, at places along the parade route where the tanks must turn and where those turns could cause the most damage to the streets.

this is all so unnecessary. tens of million of dollars, pissed right down the drain, just so a broken-inside narcissist can pretend he’s not the worthless piece of shit failure that his father never stopped telling him he was.

you can only have two government-approved dolls and five pencils, but Donny gets to have a skillionty tanks and spend all the money he wants on a vanity parade.

and by the way, forty-five mil is chicken feed compared to what Donny’s wasting on his little adventure in Los Angeles.

“the current estimated cost is $134 million dollars.”

wrap your mind around that. one hundred and thirty-four million dollars, just so the National Guard can “protect” a few square blocks of downtown Los Angeles from its own residents. what a waste.

think about that, the next time some Republican fuckwad tells you that we can’t afford to give seniors healthcare, or provide hot lunches to schoolchildren.

every time you think Donny’s reached the bottom of the barrel, he somehow manages to kick his way though and go even lower. he turns every public appearance into a highly-politicized campaign rally. here he is, goading assembled troops at Fort Bragg into booing Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.

“in Los Angeles, the Governor of California, the Mayor of Los Angeles [boos]. they’re incompetent, and they paid troublemakers, agitators and insurrectionists. they’re engaged in this willful attempt to nullify federal law and aid the occupation of the city by criminal invaders.”

what just oozed out of Donny’s rancid anus-mouth? did he just accuse Newsom and Bass of paying the protestors? that’s what it sounded like to me. what the fuck?

just imagine if Joe Biden had goaded a bunch of troops into booing Greg Abbott or Ron DeSantis. Republicans would have burned DC to the ground. Comer Fudd would have started bleeding from the eyeballs. Hannity would have shit a massive brick on live TV, and then had it bronzed.

but Republicans think it’s just fine when Donny uses our troops as props, and starts shit-talking Democrats. in fact, they just join right in, like it’s the funniest fucking thing on Earth.

reporter: “Speaker Johnson, the president said, possibly in jest, that if he were Tom Homan, he would arrest Gavin Newsom. do you believe that Newsom should face consequences, in a legal way?”

Holy Mike: “um. uh. look. that’s not my lane. I’m not gonna give you legal analysis whether Gavin Newsom should be arrested, bu he oughta be tarred and feathered, I’ll say that.”

oh fuck right off, Speaker Limpdick. Gavin Newsom should be tarred and feathered? for what, exactly? for back-talking Dear Leader? is that a crime now?

Mike Johnson holds a law degree from LSU. legal analysis is his lane. he knows that Gavin Newsom hasn’t broken any laws — but he has to toe Donny’s line and pretend that Gavin’s a master criminal, because Holy Mike is a cowardly fucking weasel.

oh, and by the way, tarring and feathering is a thing the KKK used to do to ‘uppity’ blacks. it’s gruesome, medieval torture.

while we’re on the subject of Gavin Newsom, let’s give him a round of applause for meeting the moment.

he’s been great on social media.

and he’s been great on TV. last night, Newsom gave a televised address to the nation, and he did not mince words.

no fucking shit.

here’s a short chunk from the speech.

“democracy is under assault before our eyes. this moment we have feared has arrived. he’s taking a wrecking ball to our founding fathers’ historic project. three co-equal branches of independent government. there no longer any checks and balances. Congress is nowhere to be found. Speaker Johnson has completely abdicated that responsibility. the rule of law has increasingly been given way to the rule of Don. the founding fathers, they didn’t live and die to see this kind of moment. it’s time for all of us to stand up. Justice Brandeis, he said it best. in a democracy, the most important office, with all due respect, Mr. President, is not the presidency. and it’s certainly not governor. the most important office is Office of Citizen. at this moment, we all need to stand up and be held to account, a higher level of accountability. if you exercise your First Amendment rights, please, please — do it peacefully.”

here’s the whole 9-minutes.

I’m liking the Fight-The-Power Gavin Newsom so much better than the Let’s-Podcast-With-Steve-Bannon Gavin Newsom.

more like this, bro.

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when Donny Bone Spurs sent the National Guard to quote-unquote ‘bring order’ to the completely-avoidable ‘crisis’ he manufactured, do you know what he didn’t send along with them? anything for the Guard to eat, or drink. any place for them to sleep, or shit.

he just unceremoniously dumped them in the middle of Los Angeles without planning or forethought, and said sayonara, fucknuggets, you’re on your own. why? because Donny is an incompetent imbecile, and that’s how incompetent imbeciles roll.

look at this dumb-assery.

that’s the California National Guard, trying to sleep on the floor of a warehouse basement in downtown Los Angeles.

this is your National Guard, ladies and gentlemen. hungry, tired, thirsty, and forced to sleep piled up on top of one another — because apparently, it didn’t dawn on anyone at the top that food, water, or places to sleep and shit might be necessary for the Guard during an open-ended deployment.

“This is what happens when the president and (Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth) demand the National Guard state assets deploy immediately with no plan in place … (and) no federal funding available for food, water, fuel and lodging,” the source said. “This is really the failure of the federal government. If you’re going to federalize these troops, then take care of them.”

“Currently, there is no plan for where everyone is sleeping tonight,” the source said, adding that there was an urgent need to find more portable bathrooms and dumpsters for garbage.

isn’t it heartening to know that ‘because fuck you, that’s why’ also extends to the brave men and women who serve our country?

this is the level of expertise that Donny brings to his job: zero.

never forget that as powerful as the position of United States President is, Donny totally fucking sucks at his job — and all his Sewer Clowns suck attheir jobs, too.

here’s a fun fact:

When called into federal service, the National Guard becomes part of the Department of Defense

that means that the federalized Guard in Los Angeles is currently the responsibility of the Fox News dunk-tank clown who the Mad King decided would make the perfect Secretary of Defense.

do you think the tipsy chat-show host who now runs the DoD knows — or cares — about logistics? fuck no, he does not. but you know what SecDef Kegstand does have? his own really cool makeup studio in the Pentagon, so his hair will be perfect at all times.

priorities!

this macho-obsessed uber-bro never stops yammering about warfighters and battle readiness — and what does he do during his first test of his mettle? he tanks it.

fuck me, a carload of drag queens could have done a better job of feeding the Guard.

reporter: “Gavin Newsom is daring Tom Homan to come and arrest him. should he do it?”

Donny: “I would do it, if I were Tom … I think it would be a great thing.”

reporters caught up with Donny again later in the White House, and they were all ‘arrest Gavin Newsom? for what crime, exactly?’

reporter: “what crime has Gavin Newsom committed?”

Donny: “what crime has he committed? I think his primarily— his primary crime is running for governor.”

perfectly normal stuff, the chief executive of the land deciding ad hoc that doing stuff I don’t like is now a crime. Donny wasn’t joking. there’s no smile on his face, or levity in his tone of voice.

nothing to see here, folks, just a spiteful, vindictive Mad King, making shit up as he goes along — exactly as our founders intended when they drafted the Constitution.

let’s back up a bit. the whole reason for the exchanges between Donny and the reporters was ‘border czar’ Tom Homan’s weekend threat to arrest Newsom if he tries to ‘interfere’ with the ICE’s Los Angeles raids — a threat to which Newsom replied, bring it, shitnozzle.

“the fear, the horror, who the hell is this guy? come after me, arrest me, let’s just get this over with, tough guy.”

now, here’s a cool fact about being Donny’s ‘border czar’: it’s a made-up job.Homan wasn’t confirmed by the Senate, and doesn’t actually work for any government agency.

Tom’s job is to puff out his chest and make racist-as-fuck proclamations — but he can’t arrest anybody. he doesn’t have that power.

while we’re on the subject of Donny’s Racism Czar — what’s with the Fidel Castro cosplay?

Tom Homan apparently believes his job now entails playing dress-up and preening for the camera. dude, sit the fuck down. you’re a bureaucrat, not a background extra in some action movie.

Tom must have gotten jealous of all the airtime ICE Barbie was getting.

Tom Homan apparently believes his job now entails playing dress-up and preening for the camera. dude, sit the fuck down. you’re a bureaucrat, not a background extra in some action movie.

Tom must have gotten jealous of all the airtime ICE Barbie was getting

Fox: “what do you say to her point and Gavin Newsom making the same point that all the chaos and everything you’re seeing now is because ICE showed up on the scene, that everything was peaceful up until that moment.”

DHS official Tricia McLaughlin: “that’s absolutely ridiculous. it’s just on Friday night, we— when LAPD was not responding for two hours, our ICE office was surrounded by a thousand protestors. they were uh lighting American flags on fire. burning them as they were hoisting up foreign flags. it’s un-American activity going on, and it was becoming very violent. they were pummeling our ICE enforcement officers with rocks.”

here’s a pro tip for Fox: when making the case that all of Los Angeles is a violent, lawless hellhole, don’t support that case by showing live feed of a people swaying to music in LA’s downtown.

also, if Fox is making the case that ‘hoisting up foreign flags’ is now an ‘un-American activity’ — tell me, is this a foreign flag?

these, to refresh everyone’s memory, are the homeys Donny described as “very fine people” as they marched in Charlottesville in 2017.

how about this dude?

bro here seems a bit confused about which America he belongs to.

here’s a map that that I want you to keep in mind as you listen to Donny and the Sewer Clowns — aided and abetted by the entire wingnut outrage/industrial complex — work overtime to convince you that the entirety of Los Angeles has been ‘swarmed’ by commie anarchists, and that the entire city is consumed by fire and violence.

it was sent to me by commenter Alison Parker, but I didn’t receive it in time to include it in the emailed version of yesterday’s post.

this is the City of Los Angeles. circled in red is the downtown area where the protests are.

so please, Donny, tell us again how all of Los Angeles has been ‘overrun’ by ‘insurrectionists.’ it’s such a cute story.

here’s your quote of the day.

that’s us. let’s fucking go.