Author: Even that’s Odd

  • Gonna Party Like It’s 1999

    A new US party structure, by way of Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the Nordics. Three things need to change if we want a country that actually moves instead of just performing motion for the cameras: The first two are arguments for another day. This one is about the third — because the two-party…

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  • US Against Them : Enough is Enough

    The third song in the Enough Is Enough campaign. It’s not red vs. blue. It’s about the people on top who need us fighting each other so we don’t notice them.

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  • BrokeCon By Design: The Complete 25-Part Series

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    A 25-part series on how American life got rigged against the bottom 90% — system by system, with receipts.

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  • Crashed My Bike Trying to Avoid a Garter Snake, And Then My Dog Wanted In On The Action

    We live right next to the rail trail — our property literally borders it — so we end up using it a lot. I walk the dog there. I ride my bike. The section closest to us is the rough version, just packed dirt that gets muddy after rain and stays covered in sticks and…

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  • Do Unto Others: The Complete 5-Part Series

    A 5-part series on transactional empathy, asymmetric hypocrisy, and what democracy requires that we’re no longer providing. Start here.

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  • Divided We Fall: The Complete 10-Part Series

    A 10-part series on the culture war as a business model — and what the data actually shows on the issues it sells you. Start here.

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  • Passing the Buck: The Complete 15-Part Series

    A 15-part series on how costs got shifted off corporations and government and onto individual workers — and what it would take to reverse it. Start here.

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  • Vehicle Roof Philosophy

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    I Was Wrong About Moon Roofs

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  • This New Old House Part 21: Post and Beam Kit Barn

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    From the moment we started planning the house, we knew there would eventually be a barn. Eventually being the operative word — we were already stretching to build the house, so the barn was going on the someday list alongside retirement and peace of mind. What we knew for certain: no attached garage. I know…

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  • Union Strong: The Only Thing Standing Between Us and the Bottom

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    I’m not a union guy in the way you might picture a union guy. I’ve complained about unions. I’ve worked around them because the budget demanded it. I’ve watched strong-arm tactics that embarrassed everyone involved. I’ve sat in a production office calculating how much cheaper everything would be if we just went non-union. And I…

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  • My Wheel Philosophy That Became a Tire (Tyre) Philosophy

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    I am a firm believer in snow tires and I think the fact that I have to say that out loud in 2025 is genuinely one of the more baffling things about living in the Northeast — like, we all agree the earth is round, right, so can we also agree that all-season tires in…

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  • The Upside Down

    We are living in the Stranger Things Upside Down. Same country, wrong version of it. I used to think Trump Derangement Syndrome existed on both sides. People so blinded by their feelings about one man that they couldn’t think straight. I had some sympathy for that framing. I don’t anymore. Because at some point the…

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  • Youth Sports Is Broken (And I Helped Break It)

    I’ll start with a confession: I was part of the problem. That’s not false modesty or a rhetorical device to soften what I’m about to say about the adults who turned our town’s recreational youth sports leagues into something unrecognizable. I genuinely made things worse. I yelled at kids. I put pressure on my sons…

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  • A Picture to Replace the Thousand Reminders

    I have two kids. Twelve and almost fourteen. And look — I know that whatever they are, that’s mostly on me. You are what you’re exposed to, right? I get that. But some of this is just kid behavior. And some of it is personality. And some of it, honestly, is just the particular era…

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  • Why I Started My Ecom Shop as an Accidental Designer

    It started, as most things do in my house, with baseball. My kids got into it around six years old — right past the T-ball phase where everyone’s just spinning in the outfield catching dandelions — and from there it was spring ball, fall ball, soccer mixed in, the whole blurry chaos of youth sports…

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  • Paris, September 2024: Tag Along Trip

    My wife Jennifer had to go to Paris for work and she was kind enough to buy me a plane ticket so I could come with her. I’ve done this before — tagged along to Vietnam once, Kauai another time — and I’ve learned that seeing a place through the lens of someone else’s work…

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  • Aphantasia, Dyslexia, and ADHD: How I Made a Career in a Visual Industry Without a Functioning Mind’s Eye

    There I was, alone in the car, somewhere on 78, Ubering one of my kids to a travel baseball tournament in New Jersey. Half-listening to NPR because it’s either that or the silence where my own thoughts live. And a Radiolab episode came on and I had a moment. Not a pull-over moment. But close.…

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  • PARTY OF ONE : ENOUGH IS ENOUGH SONG 3

    Here’s something nobody in either party wants you to think about too hard: they cash the same checks. Not the same voters. Not the same rhetoric. Not the same culture war. But the same donors, the same bundlers, the same checks written before the election and collected after. The red team and the blue team…

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  • This New Old House, Part 20: Interior Doors, Trim, and Hardware

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    Quick note before we begin: I wasn’t sure this post was needed. In my head, I thought we’d covered interior doors and trim somewhere already — maybe with the windows, maybe with the painting installment. My assistant (Claude, at this point) informed me that no, we had not. So here we are. This will be…

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  • Why Have I Started to Smell Like A Frito Corn Chip?

    I’ve been noticing something for the past few weeks. I smell like Fritos. Not after eating Fritos. Not near Fritos. Just as a default condition of existing. I’ll be sitting somewhere, not doing anything corn-adjacent, and I’ll get this whiff and do that thing where you look around the room trying to find the source…

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  • Updated My Travel Fit, Watch Out Portugal

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    If you read my Portugal post, you know how this started. Jennifer had opinions about my travel wardrobe. The citizens of Lisbon had opinions about my travel wardrobe. I came home suitably chastened and with a list of things to replace. Well, I’ve replaced most of them. This is the follow-up I promised — what…

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  • LIVING THE DREAM: ENOUGH IS ENOUGH SONG 2

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    We say it like it’s a fact. Greatest country on earth. Number one. Living the dream. But when you actually look at the data — the rankings, the numbers, the verified receipts — the scoreboard tells a different story. Living the Dream is the second Enough Is Enough protest song.

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  • Strait of Hormuz: The Board Game Edition

    Like most people, I’ve been watching this story with a mix of disbelief and exhaustion that is quickly becoming the default setting for following American foreign policy. I want to be upfront: I’m not a foreign policy expert. I don’t pretend to understand all the moving parts, and I’m genuinely open to the possibility that…

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  • This New Old House, Part 19: Bathrooms

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    When we designed the bathrooms, we made one decision upfront that was purely forward-looking and, honestly, pretty smart: the first-floor powder room got a shower. The room next to it — which we were using as a playroom, game room, whatever it is on any given Tuesday — could eventually become a bedroom. Aging parents,…

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  • My Clothing Philosophy (Who Even Has One Of Those?)

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    If you’ve been following my ongoing clothing saga — the chore coat search, the Red Wing chronicles, the light duty boot quest — you might have noticed that I have opinions. Strong ones. Possibly unreasonably strong ones for someone who spends a meaningful portion of his life mowing a lawn and cutting firewood. But here…

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  • This New Old House: The Navien NCB-240/110 Propane Combi Boiler — One Year In

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    If you’ve been following along, you know our Triangle Tube Prestige SOLO 110 finally gave up the ghost. Actually, “finally” is generous — it went out on its own schedule, which was, of course, the worst possible time. You can read about the full Triangle Tube saga here. The short version: indirect water heater tank…

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  • Drowning in It: The Ignored Trash Problem

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    There’s a moment every six weeks or so that snaps me back to reality. I load up the car, drive to our local transfer station, hand Dan a coupon, and drop off a single 44-gallon bag of trash. One bag every four to six weeks. And I think — okay, we’re doing our part. We…

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  • The Peace President Needs to Fund His Wars Instead of our Health and Child Care. So Democrats Talk About Crayons?

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    Sort of an Opinion piece but not really, it’s just this country is batshit off the rails. You seriously could not make up how out of touch these people are. WTF Is Wrong With Us? No Seriously… Let me set the full scene, because context is everything here. IHere is everything you need to know…

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  • This New Old House — Part 18: The Kitchen

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    In which we got stuck with — and to — the wrong cabinets, and poured concrete in our house on purpose The kitchen is where you spend most of your waking life in a house. Jennifer did the layout and it works — the flow is right, the dining area sits just off the kitchen…

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  • My GMO Concern Confusion (Until I Finally Looked It Up)

    For years, I walked past products screaming NON-GMO! and thought… so what? I’ll be upfront: I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed. I’m also an optimist — or maybe a pessimistic optimist? An optimistic pessimist? I’ve never quite nailed that down, and honestly, that tracks with the fact that I spent years vaguely confused…

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  • Passing the Buck: Why We Make Less But Pay More Part 15: How We Get There

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    Building the Power to Win We’ve shown you the problem. We’ve named who profits. We’ve proven it doesn’t have to be this way. Now comes the hard part: How do we actually fix this? This won’t be easy. This won’t be quick. And anyone promising simple solutions is lying to you. But it is possible.…

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  • Angry Old Extremely Religious Christian White Man Yelling from His Porch Syndrome

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    Why You Can’t Debate Someone Who Just Wants to Watch You Lose Let me tell you what finally broke my brain. The Epstein files dropped. Years of QAnon. Years of “protect the children.” Years of Democrats running secret pedophile rings in pizza restaurant basements. The entire moral foundation of a movement — the thing they…

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  • Passing the Buck: Why We Make Less But Pay More Part 14: What We Could Have Instead

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    It Works Elsewhere For 13 parts, we’ve shown you how broken the American system is. How costs have been shifted onto workers. How the math doesn’t work. How both parties protect corporate interests. Now we need to show you something crucial: It doesn’t have to be this way. Other developed countries face the same global…

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  • Are We About to Come Full Circle on Who We Trust?

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    Is It Possible We All May Share The Same Reality Again Thanks To AI I was driving to yet another baseball tournament Saturday morning, half-awake, NPR on in the background, when a story about AI disinformation in the Iran conflict completely hijacked my brain for the next forty-five minutes. The segment was trying to walk…

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  • This New Old House — Part 17: Exterior, Siding, Roofing & Trim

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    In which we make some good choices, watch other people undo them, and develop strong opinions about PVC By the time we got to the exterior, the siding decision came down to two options in the Connor package: cedar or HardiePlank. Jennifer would have preferred the cedar — she always gravitates toward natural wood —…

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  • Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make Less Part 13: How We Got Here

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    50 Years of Deliberate Policy The system we’ve documented in Parts 1-12 didn’t happen by accident. It wasn’t natural market forces. It wasn’t inevitable. It was built. Deliberately. Over 50 years. By people with names. Who passed specific laws. Made specific court decisions. Implemented specific policies. Let’s trace exactly how it happened. 1971: The Corporate…

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  • Is the Iran War America’s Biggest Self-Own of Self -Owns?

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    How to Punch Yourself in the Face. Three and a half weeks in. That’s where we are. Twenty-four days of US and Israeli strikes on Iran, oil at $112 a barrel, 13 American soldiers dead, the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed, and the administration scrambling to lift sanctions on the very country we’re bombing just…

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  • Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make Less Part 12: The Bipartisan Consensus

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    Both Parties Protect the System In Part 11, we showed you who profits from cost-shifting. Now we need to explain why this system persists regardless of which party controls Congress or the White House. The uncomfortable truth: Both parties protect corporate interests. Both parties enabled the cost shifts. Both parties take corporate money. This isn’t…

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  • Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make Less Part 11: Who Profits?

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    Following the Money We’ve shown you the costs. We’ve shown you they don’t add up. Now let’s follow the money. Emma from Part 10 pays out $71,564 per year in shifted costs—92.9% of her gross income. That money doesn’t disappear. It goes somewhere. Let’s trace every dollar Emma spends and see who collects it. Emma’s…

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  • WTF Is Up With MTG?

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    From QAnon True Believer to Stateswoman Cosplay — A Complete Profile Something strange happened to Marjorie Taylor Greene. The most reliably unhinged member of Congress — a woman who stalked a teenage shooting survivor through the Capitol, endorsed satanic murder conspiracy theories online, and appeared to call for the execution of Democratic politicians — suddenly…

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  • Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make LessPart 10: The Compound Effect

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    When All the Costs Add Up We’ve spent nine parts examining individual cost categories. Banking fees. Credit card debt. Forced car ownership. Food monopolies. Phone and internet. Insurance. Fees everywhere. Each part showed how one sector shifted costs onto working Americans while profits soared. Now let’s see what happens when you add them all together.…

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  • What’s Wrong With the Democrats. What’s Wrong With the Republicans. It Doesn’t Matter.

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    Neither One Will Deliver for You.Here it is — the full body copy exactly as it was saved to the draft: Let me start with something that should be obvious but somehow never gets said out loud. Neither party won the last election. The other party just lost it more. That distinction sounds like splitting…

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  • How an Angry Old MacDonald Became a Protest Song

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    It started with a question: What is actually wrong with this country, and why do we seem so far apart? The division felt real. The anger felt real. But when you actually looked at the polling data, something didn’t add up. Americans agree on almost everything that matters. Healthcare. Wages. Campaign finance reform. Taxing the…

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  • Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make Less Part 9: Death, Taxes, and Everything In Between

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    The Fee Economy Lisa decided to track every fee she paid for one month. Not the big stuff—rent, car payment, insurance. Just the fees. The extra charges. The convenience fees. The service charges. The processing fees. All those little costs that companies tack on for doing business. She’s 29, works as a marketing coordinator in…

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  • Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make Less Part 8: Insurance

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    Mandatory Purchase, Shrinking Coverage David is 38, lives in Tampa, Florida. He’s a physical therapist making $68,000 a year. He’s healthy, doesn’t smoke, exercises regularly, hasn’t had a car accident in 12 years. He’s the kind of customer insurance companies claim to want. Here’s what insurance costs him every year: Health insurance: $4,800/year Auto insurance:…

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  • Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make Less Part 7: Phone and Internet

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    The Monopoly You Can’t Escape Rachel lives in suburban Atlanta. She works from home as a customer service rep for a health insurance company. Her job requires reliable high-speed internet—it’s not optional. She’s on video calls, accessing patient records, processing claims in real-time. When she moved into her apartment, she called to set up internet…

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  • Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make Less Part 6: Food Monopolies

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    Paying More While Farmers Make Less Let’s follow a gallon of milk from farm to your refrigerator. At the dairy farm in Wisconsin: Tom has been dairy farming for 30 years. He has 150 cows. He wakes up at 4:30 AM every day—no weekends, no holidays. Cows need milking twice a day, every day. His…

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  • The Metric System Makes Sense to Everyone: American Misguided Exceptionalism and a $327 Million Spacecraft. 

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    When I was a kid, we started learning the metric system in school. There was an actual plan. America was going to join the rest of the world and switch from the imperial system — you know, the one built on the length of some king’s foot — to a logical, base-ten system that scientists,…

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  • Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make LessPart 5: The Auto Trap

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    Forced to Buy What You Can’t Afford Jennifer lives in Phoenix, Arizona. She’s a single mom with two kids, works as a pharmacy technician, makes $42,000 a year. Her shift starts at 7 AM at a CVS 8.5 miles from her apartment. She doesn’t own a car by choice. She owns a car because there…

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  • Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make Less. Part 4: Credit Cards

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    The Debt Trap Jason is a high school teacher in Arizona. He makes $48,000 a year, which is about what teachers make there. He’s 32, married, has a two-year-old daughter. His wife works part-time as a medical records clerk, bringing in another $22,000. Combined household income: $70,000. They’re not living extravagantly. They rent a two-bedroom…

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  • How MTV Killed the Video Star (And Cable/Network Greed Finished the Job)

    I’m not a media analyst. Smarter people than me — like Evan Shapiro, who you should follow on LinkedIn immediately — dissect this industry for a living. But I spent years working inside broadcast television, and I’ve been chewing on this particular problem for over a decade. So here’s my humble, slightly obsessive take on…

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  • This New Old House, Part 16: Chim Chimney, Chim Chimney, Chim Chim Cherooh-Noo

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    Some mistakes cost money. Some cost time. The chimney cost both, repeatedly, for years. If you’ve been following along, you know that this build had its share of “we didn’t know what we didn’t know” moments. The windows. The spray foam learning curve. The drywall saga. But the chimney — the chimney was different. Those…

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  • Dress to Impress (Who, Exactly? The Fine People of Portugal Obviously.)

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    We just got back from Portugal and it was fantastic. Lisbon, Porto, the hills, the pastéis de nata, the Super Bock — loved all of it. I dress for the weather. I dress for the walking. I dress to stay dry and not have to check a bag. Apparently Portugal noticed. So did Jennifer. They…

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  • Passing the Buck: Why We Make Less But Pay More. Part 3: Banking Fees

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    The Poverty Tax Maria works two jobs. Monday through Friday, she’s a home health aide making $15/hour. Weekends, she works retail at Target for $16/hour. Between both jobs, she brings home about $2,400/month after taxes. It’s not much, but she manages. Carefully. On Friday, she deposited her paycheck from the home health agency—$680 for the…

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  • Passing the Buck: Why We Make Less But Pay More. Part 2: The Baseline Shift

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    Part 2: The Baseline Shift How “Basic Survival” Got Redefined as Luxury In 1970, Robert worked as a machinist at a manufacturing plant in Ohio. He made $9,400 a year—roughly the median income at the time. His wife, Linda, stayed home with their two kids. On that single income, they: Robert wasn’t exceptional. He wasn’t…

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  • This New Old House Part 15: Flooring – Wide Plank Heart Pine Dreams vs. Reality

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    After painting came flooring. And I had a very specific vision: wide plank flooring with exposed face nails, just like colonial homes from the 1700s. Old growth wood with character. Reclaimed if possible. The authentic historical look. The Connor Homes kit included flooring as an option. It was beautiful — I think it was reclaimed…

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  • So Close, Yet So Far: The Telo MT1 and the Small or Mini EV Pickup I’ve Been Waiting For

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    Let me set the scene. We’ve got a 2016 Audi Allroad that my wife loves — genuinely loves — and it’s somewhere north of 100,000 miles at this point, probably pushing 125k by the time we actually get around to replacing it. Comfortable, capable, goes anywhere, hauls everything. The problem is it’s aging out, and…

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  • Passing the Buck: Why We Make Less But Pay More. Part 1: The Impossible Math

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    Part 1: The Impossible Math When Median Income Meets Real Costs, America Fails Meet Sarah. She’s 34 years old, works as a registered nurse at a regional hospital, and makes $77,000 a year. That’s well above the median individual income in America ($59,228). She’s single, no kids, lives in a modest one-bedroom apartment in a…

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  • This New Old House Part 14: Painting – Or: Why I Hope I Never Have to Use a Paint Sprayer Again

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    After drywall came painting. And by “painting,” I mean painting literally everything in the entire house. Every wall. Every ceiling. Every piece of trim. Every window interior. Every door. All 27-28 of them. Both sides. Jennifer and I decided to do all the painting ourselves to save money. This seemed like a reasonable decision at…

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  • Americans Agree on Almost Everything—We Just Don’t Realize It

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    I Fact-Checked a Viral Infographic About What Americans Actually Agree On. Here’s What I Found. This infographic popped up on social media (which I know is evil but I use it to promote my ecom site) claiming Americans have overwhelming consensus on most major issues — Majority agreement across the board. Gun control, healthcare, abortion,…

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  • (Eventual) Well Tank Replacement: How I May Have Ignored an Obvious Problem for Years

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    January 9, 2026 The Signs I Missed Looking back, I think the well tank bladder had been broken since at least summer 2024. It might have been failing for a year or two before that. What I was noticing: the water pressure would drop a little, then go back up when the pump kicked in.…

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  • Rainy February Family Visit to Portugal with two kids 13 & 12

    February in Portugal: When Life Gives You Rain and Residency Appointments We had to go to Portugal in early February for an AIMA residency appointment (you don’t get to pick the date), so we figured we’d escape the sub-zero temperatures at home and make it a family trip. The kids would miss a week of…

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  • Central Air to Heat Pump Upgrade: When Guilt Leads to Questionable Decisions

    March-April 2025 If you read my previous post about the emergency boiler replacement, you know that Company PPH didn’t exactly shine during that crisis, while Company NCS stepped up and saved Thanksgiving. You also know that I felt guilty about the miscommunication and decided to give PPH the heat pump job to make it right.…

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  • Emergency Boiler Replacement: When Your Service Company Isn’t There When You Need Them

    November 2024 Planning Ahead (That Didn’t Matter) Our Triangle Tube Prestige Solo 110 boiler had been breaking down occasionally, and each service call was costing a minimum of $1,200. I got so frustrated with service companies that I learned to fix minor issues myself. But every technician told me the same thing: boilers have a…

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  • This New Old House Part 13: Drywall – The Most Boring Post (But There Are Lessons)

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    After spray foam insulation, plumbing disasters, HVAC complications, and window decisions I’d come to regret for the next fifteen years, we finally got to something relatively straightforward: drywall. Spoiler alert: this was one of the easier parts of the build. Which means it’s also one of the less interesting blog posts. But there are still…

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  • Do Unto Others Part 5: What This Means for Democracy

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    When Shared Reality Dissolves, Only Power Remains Introduction: The Foundation Is Cracking Democracy rests on three pillars that most Americans take for granted: Over the course of this series, we’ve documented how all three pillars are systematically eroding. Part 1 showed empathy has become transactional – Melissa Hortman gets “I don’t know who she was,”…

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  • Do Unto Others Part 4: Flooding the Zone

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    Part 4 of Do Unto Others, a 5-part series. Read the complete series → When Lies Work Better Than Truth After documenting transactional empathy (Part 1), Stage 2 moral reasoning (Part 2), and asymmetric hypocrisy (Part 3), one question remains: How does this actually work in practice? The answer is documented. It’s called the “firehose…

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  • Do Unto Others Part 3: Both Sides Are Hypocrites

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    Part 3 of Do Unto Others, a 5-part series. Read the complete series → But the Hypocrisy Differs in Depth and Kind After two parts documenting transactional empathy and Stage 2 moral reasoning, a predictable objection arises: “Both sides do it.” This is true. Both parties exhibit hypocrisy. Both say one thing and do another.…

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  • This New Old House Part 12: Insulation and Air Sealing – When Tight Isn’t Right (Or Is It?)

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    When we decided to build our Connor Homes kit house, we had visions of a super-efficient, modern home wrapped in the latest insulation technology. We’d read all about spray foam insulation, tight building envelopes, and energy efficiency. We were going to do this right. Spoiler alert: We sort of did. Maybe. I’m still not entirely…

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  • Do Unto Others Part 2: “My Own Morality”

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    Part 2 of Do Unto Others, a 5-part series. Read the complete series → When the Only Limit Is Yourself On January 8, 2026, President Trump sat down with The New York Times. Asked about constraints on his power, he gave an answer that deserves examination: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My…

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  • Term Limits: Why This Popular Idea Could Make Things Worse (And Who’s Really Pushing It)

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    I Used to Think This Was a Great Idea I’ll be honest: I was sympathetic to term limits. Like most Americans, I’m exhausted by career politicians who seem completely out of touch. The frustration is real: So term limits sound great, right? Fresh blood, new ideas, less corruption! But then I thought: With how things…

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  • VOTING REFORM: Analyzing Every Voting System We Could Find. Here’s What Might Actually Work to Break the Two-Party Stranglehold.

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    We’re All Trapped Voting AGAINST Candidates Instead of FOR Anyone When’s the last time you actually wanted to vote for someone? For most of us, voting has become damage control. We’re not voting FOR our candidate—we’re voting AGAINST the one that scares us more. About 70% of Americans think the country is heading in the wrong direction.…

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  • Do Unto Others Part 1: When Empathy Becomes Transactional

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    Part 1 of Do Unto Others, a 5-part series. Read the complete series → Who Deserves Sympathy? The Politics of Victimhood A Note Before We Begin If this feels like an attack on Trump, I need to address that upfront. I tried to write this like an outside observer would—documenting what happened without partisan spin.…

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  • This New Old House Part 11: Windows – The Decision Where More Mistakes Were Made.

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    If you spend a fortune making your house air-tight with spray foam insulation, and then punch 27-29 holes in it and fill them with cheap windows, you’ve basically defeated the entire purpose of the exercise. This is the story of how we did exactly that. The Window Budget Reality By the time we got to…

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  • Divided We Fall Part 10: The Freedom Fraud: Crime, Corporations, and Schools

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    When “Freedom” Means Government Control American conservatives claim to champion freedom. Small government. Individual liberty. Free markets. Get government out of our lives. Don’t tread on me. But look at what’s actually happening in Republican-controlled states: Governments telling businesses who they can hire and how they can operate. Governments dictating what teachers can teach and…

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    Even that’s Odd

  • The Argument over ICE and Alex Pretti is bait. Don’t take it.

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    Before you react to this, before you decide whether you agree or disagree with me, I want you to understand what’s happening to you right now, psychologically. Research shows that the conformist instinct in your brain happens automatically. You’re literally unaware of it. You think your political beliefs accurately reflect reality, but they’re actually being…

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    Even that’s Odd

  • This New Old House Part 10: HVAC – The Radiant Floor Mistake?

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    Or: How Warm Floors Can’t Save You From Bad HVAC Decisions Winter 2009-2010 After the plumbing nightmares, it was time for HVAC. We installed radiant floor heating throughout the house—hot water running through tubes in the floors, heated by our Triangle Tube boiler. It’s actually very nice to have warm floors in the winter. Walking…

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  • Divided We Fall Part 9: Cancel Culture and “Woke”: Who’s Really Being Silenced?

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    What the Data Shows About Who Gets Canceled and Why Everyone claims they’re being canceled. Conservatives say they can’t speak freely without facing mob attacks. Progressives say they face consequences for standing up for justice. College professors say students are too sensitive. Students say professors refuse to update outdated views. Comedians say they can’t make…

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  • When GPS Dog Fencing Becomes Psychological Warfare: A $600 Lesson in Canine Trauma

    PetSafe Guardian GPS Connected Customizable Fence Review – Or: How I Accidentally Taught My Dog to Fear the Outdoors Rating: 2/5 StarsPurchased: September 18, 2023Price: $600Duration of Use: 2-3 months before abandoning in defeat Let me tell you about the time I spent $600 to give my dog an anxiety disorder. Hobbes is our bernedoodle…

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  • This New Old House Part 9: Plumbing – PEX, Paying Twice, and Poisoned Septic Tanks

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    Or: How I Paid Two People to Do One Job and Discovered Water Lines Don’t Make Sense Winter 2009-2010 After electrical was complete, it was time for plumbing and HVAC. My friend, who had been coordinating most of the work, had apprenticed to learn plumbing and HVAC. But because of all the equations for sizing…

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    Even that’s Odd