Cassie

I recently saw a headline in a british newspaper about 'this one manor house has so many hacks for climat econtrol without hvac!' and it was just... "orient the building and windows to catch or deflect the sun", which is something I learned just living in southern california and having a bedroom on the west side of the house.

Most houses that are older than the McMansion boom are oriented to catch the most HEAT. That's why bedrooms are on the west and south sides of the house usually. Because people used to worry about the cold more than the heat, in most places!

I read a lot of midcentury plan books and most of them are still oriented in this way, despite saying the plans can be mirrored.

Colonialism has fuelled this idea of people ignoring the true seasons of their biome in favour of just using "winter/spring/summer/fall" for everything, everywhere. But that's not how all of the world works, and so that's not the environment we should build for in the desert, the everglades, the pacific northwest, etc.

Houses should not be commodities or investment portfolios. Houses should be for the people that live there, and should be anchored to THAT reality, that biome, and those plants and weather patterns, as well as the materials available in that environment. And we should make use of hills and build into the sides of them--that will regulate the temperature of our house much better than sticking it on top of the hill!

With a warming planet, it behooves us to build for coolth, not warmth; we should look to indigenous architectural styles from hot places for cues on what will help keep the building cool without needing expensive HVAC systems. Sinking the house down even a few inches into the ground will help cool it off, so will going back to using lathe and plaster and other "mud" building materials, building into hills, and being mindful of wind currents and using breezeways and window alignment to create breezes--my childhood home was like this and stayed surprisingly cool even in 100F California summers, because the breezeway was oriented to catch the south-to-north winds, and opening all the windows and doors meant it sucked the air through the whole house. The deep eaves of California-style houses act as awnings and shield the windows from the sun, keeping the house shaded and cool even without trees surrounding the house (which is dangerous in fire-prone environments like most of california!). Mud walls are extremely effective in desert environs, as well as being very cheap--and plaster is a kind of mud btw, so is stucco and adobe. All very good cheap building materials used in deserts all over.

At the Irvine Arboretum there's a museum house that was built and oriented so that a small breeze always circulates through the house from down to upstairs. It's amazing to witness!!! All because the builders used to care about that sort of thing.

I had to turn this off, but it's something that allows Windows and anyone using your device to generate text/images.

Sous La Glace, Georges Leonnec for La Vie Parisienne, 1926

i was working at a little cafe where I could deny service over bad behavior, harassment etc. & mask mandates had just ended a week before & already people were being weird about me still wearing mine—an N95, the kind shaped kinda like a duckbill.

so this man walked in, looked at me sooo scathingly, laughed at me, and said “damn. never known a woman to choose…practicality over looks.”

And I just said, “oh. you can go, you’re not getting a drink.” And he said, “what???”

I said, “sir, you just walked in at 6 am & called women impractical and me ugly in one sentence.”

(I was admittedly much less pleasant to the person who called my exec housekeeper a bitch and banned that person entirely)

Keith Haring's story is usually told as a solo rise, but that version leaves out Angel "LA II" Ortiz, a Puerto Rican artist from the Lower East Side who collaborated with Haring from the very beginning. Angel was a teenager when they met, already active in the neighborhood's graffiti culture. He taught Keith how tagging worked on the street, painted alongside him, and guided him through spaces Keith did not come from. Angel's tags, infill, and visual language appear across works that later became associated with Keith Haring's public legacy.

After Keith Haring's death, the story changed. Museums mounted exhibitions, publishers released books, and merchandise entered the market under a single name.

Levi's said yes, actually. Assless chaps and a biker vest. Happy Pride.

and shane says, "who is it?"

"lily!"

"oh." shane immediately sets aside what he's doing and walks over, saying to his mom, "that's ilya."

yuna looks at him in confusion as he picks up his phone. "why is ilya saved as 'lily' in your phone?"

and shane looks at her, away, shrugs as if it's obvious and simply says, "I can't have ilya rozanov saved on my phone, mom" before answering the call with a, "hey, baby" and walking away.