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Amazon needs a verified Made in USA filter. Too much slop. I just want a 5-gallon 304 stainless steel olive oil dispenser. I don’t want to second guess the steel grade from mystery factories.

Babylon's Code of Hammurabi had 5 laws on construction. Two of them: - If a house collapses and kills the owner, the builder is put to death. - If it collapses, the builder must rebuild it and pay the damage. Simple rules. Clear accountability. Today’s building codes run thousands of pages and vary city by city. Past a point, complexity makes things worse.

Good architecture shouldn’t stop at museums and homes. It belongs in factories too. Here’s the Vitsoe factory, one of my favorites.

We built this home in 45 days, faster than LADWP took to connect power. If a utility delays service beyond a month, it should pay the carrying cost of the building it’s holding hostage. The only reason they get away with it is monopoly.

Subsidizing demand does not solve a supply problem.

California should be the most agriculturally productive place on earth. We can make energy abundant and desalinate the ocean. Desal tech has advanced considerably, as has solar and nuclear. And the brine can be a feedstock for lithium, magnesium, and other critical minerals. California can pivot from rationing to exporting water-intensive specialty crops, all while decarbonising power and creating a new high-tech manufacturing and agriculture sector on the coast. The bottleneck is not physics – it’s regulatory and execution. We should be letting gigascale solar, batteries and SMRs iterate the way silicon did in the 80s and 90s. Water shortage solved, Central Valley super-charged, new export economy unlocked. Thats the playbook.

We analyzed thousands of public permit records. In LA City it takes 729 days on average from permit submittal to certificate of occupancy on a new detached ADU. That's 2 years, for just an ADU.

Scarcity mindset is a cope. California could comfortably house 1 billion people and still preserve all of its national parks, existing wilderness, and farmland.

China built this for $300M. Could we build this in the USA today for under $1B?

There’s a huge difference between modern and Box Slop. This is $4M Box Slop in LA. I’d take any style, modern, post-modern, Googie, Spanish, Ranch, even soviet brutalism, over a soulless grey white box pretending to be modern.

LADWP kept the Palisades reservoir empty for 9 months before the fire. Now, they're billing fire victims $10k+ to upgrade water lines for current code whole home fire sprinklers. The irony: those sprinklers would’ve run dry anyway.

45 days ago, we submitted a permit application for a 1 bed, 1 bath pre-approved ADU on a simple flat lot. We built the exact same one last year in just 45 days – from breaking ground to final inspection. Pictured below. Now, it's taking the city longer to approve the permit than it takes us to build the home. And this is supposed to be an expedited fire rebuild permit! Make it make sense.

Our software team analyzed thousands of public permit records in LA City. On average, for new detached ADUs it took LA City 302 days from permit submittal to permit issued. Median 238 days. CA state law says a complete permit needs to be approved or denied in 60 days...

Cheap electricity doesn’t just cut bills. It makes steel, aluminum, copper, food, homes, cars cheaper. Everything has stored energy.

We submitted permits to the city for this Palisades ADU on February 3rd. It's now been 41 days. Still no permit. The process has been anything but streamlined: 6 separate city departments. Lost paperwork. Bureaucratic delays. This isn't just slow. It's broken. LA calls this "streamlining." It's not. Cut the red tape and let people rebuild.

Amazon needs a verified Made in USA filter. Too much slop. I just want a 5-gallon 304 stainless steel olive oil dispenser. I don’t want to second guess the steel grade from mystery factories.

There’s a huge difference between modern and Box Slop. This is $4M Box Slop in LA. I’d take any style, modern, post-modern, Googie, Spanish, Ranch, even soviet brutalism, over a soulless grey white box pretending to be modern.

China built this for $300M. Could we build this in the USA today for under $1B?

We built this home in 45 days, faster than LADWP took to connect power. If a utility delays service beyond a month, it should pay the carrying cost of the building it’s holding hostage. The only reason they get away with it is monopoly.

Subsidizing demand does not solve a supply problem.

California should be the most agriculturally productive place on earth. We can make energy abundant and desalinate the ocean. Desal tech has advanced considerably, as has solar and nuclear. And the brine can be a feedstock for lithium, magnesium, and other critical minerals. California can pivot from rationing to exporting water-intensive specialty crops, all while decarbonising power and creating a new high-tech manufacturing and agriculture sector on the coast. The bottleneck is not physics – it’s regulatory and execution. We should be letting gigascale solar, batteries and SMRs iterate the way silicon did in the 80s and 90s. Water shortage solved, Central Valley super-charged, new export economy unlocked. Thats the playbook.

LA should be building 4x as many homes than it currently builds.

Babylon's Code of Hammurabi had 5 laws on construction. Two of them: - If a house collapses and kills the owner, the builder is put to death. - If it collapses, the builder must rebuild it and pay the damage. Simple rules. Clear accountability. Today’s building codes run thousands of pages and vary city by city. Past a point, complexity makes things worse.

San Francisco takes over 400 days to permit the simplest form of housing. Fresno does it in under 70. We analyzed thousands of public permit records across California's 20 biggest counties. Here's how long it takes to permit an ADU – county by county.

We analyzed thousands of public permit records. In LA City it takes 729 days on average from permit submittal to certificate of occupancy on a new detached ADU. That's 2 years, for just an ADU.

The ancient Romans built tunnels longer than this. I’m all for big transport projects, but can we stop pretending this is some modern engineering marvel?

3D printing is NOT the future of homebuilding. Here's why: The only part of a 3D printed home that's 3D printed is the structure. Plumbing, electrical, drainage, cabinetry, windows, appliances etc. aren't 3D printed, and that's 80%+ of the time & cost.

45 days ago, we submitted a permit application for a 1 bed, 1 bath pre-approved ADU on a simple flat lot. We built the exact same one last year in just 45 days – from breaking ground to final inspection. Pictured below. Now, it's taking the city longer to approve the permit than it takes us to build the home. And this is supposed to be an expedited fire rebuild permit! Make it make sense.