It is still possible to build beautiful spaces. This is the great hall in my church in Dallas, built four years ago.

Is your wife on Nostr?

Went out for pizza and saw an old friend. #iykyk #carstr

Still laughing at this bumper sticker I saw a few weeks ago

GM ☀️ time for a nostr experiment.

Since nostr has no algorithms you can now rent me your friendly neighborhood influencer to be YOUR algorithm.

The menu below will be active 4/8/25 after that you can zap me all you want, but it won’t produce a reaction on my end.

Enjoy!

I confess to being baffled, perhaps naively, as to why we are conjoined with Israel. Evangelicals? A misplaced belief in our necessary stake in the Middle East? Something else entirely?

Not sure I’d call it free, and certainly not a level playing field

Pondering life:

Got home, sat down on the floor to do something. Now I'm just sitting here.

I'd like food, but that means getting up, and this is such a nice spot to sit on though... 🤔

My cat and I hunted a mouse in the house for two days a couple of weeks ago. I wasn't his favorite person until we caught it in my study and I praised him all day about it. Now he naps in there while I'm working and follows me around the house.

It was weird to have a cat walking along with me but it turned into a thing. I still walk. I’m still sober and occasionally Carl still walks with me. In general, he trusts me to walk alone now but he keeps his eye on me.

I drove around Springfield, Illinois, and the surrounding small towns today, for work.

These are the places we should all hope tariffs - or more importantly the resulting negotiations from them - help bring back to life.

I saw lots of long shuttered industry, urban neighborhoods all but abandoned, small towns literally rotting and falling down.

The core has some bauble shops and nice restaurants, catering to the top 20-25%, but for the rest it is a liquor store, a gambling parlor, a Dollar General, and a Caseys.

ICYMI, this is exactly how over 99% of social media #tariff debates go:

This may seem controversial, but I actually like that Japan is homogeneous. It’s more pronounced where I am compared to say Tokyo and I don’t think I like the “diversity” of Tokyo. Japan has a distinct culture and you can feel it in the rural areas more so than large cities. Having more international visitors seems to dilute this unique cultural vibe. I’m part of the problem too, I’m not exactly fitting in. That’s not to say that tourism is not welcome - but I don’t think people should aim to live in this country. Japan faces somewhat of a population crisis and will require more people emigrating here, and that’ll likely make it feel even less unique, which kind of saddens me.

If it were up to me I’d dismantle all malls and get rid of all the international chain brands. They can ship to homes but don’t pollute the area with global corpo sameness. I know, of exactly free market but that’s how I feel.

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