rockshitty

[rockshitty]

"A planned community in Arizona has used time-honored Mediterranean strategies to keep temperatures down and attitudes high.

Western civilization has grown remarkably climate conscious over the last 20 years, but not when it comes to building, civic planning, and especially zoning. Perhaps the interiors of buildings are becoming more climate adapted, and in some cases the facades as well, but in a way that’s a little like inventing a freezer designed to keep ice cream frozen while sitting next to a fire.

Wooden or concrete boxes arranged side-by-side across leveled ground with sprawling, largely treeless gardens and concrete sidewalks alongside wide, blacktop roads is simply a culture of construction that has to be abandoned if living in a world of 2°C or higher annual temperatures [or, hopefully, less than that, but nonetheless likely over 1.5°C] is to be tolerable.

Fortunately for Arizonans, change may have finally arrived in the form of a carless, planned community that looks and feels like a Greek island village.

In the Phoenix suburb of Tempe, Culdesac has arisen as a 17-acre mixed-use neighborhood from the ground up to stay cool and local, taking the concept of the 15-minute city, where anything a resident might need is only 15 minutes away, and putting a Mediterranean spin on it.

Buildings are tall, thick, and totally white. The residential areas look like they were built atop of the ashes of the Phoenix zoning code burnt in effigy. Crammed together, they create narrow streets and alleys that are almost constantly shaded, through which wind is channeled and accelerated in passing.

Windows open towards each other, allowing wind that enters one building to exit into another, while the total lack of asphalt means that the ground temperatures are a staggering 50-60°F lower than pavements beyond the limits of Culdesac.

No privately-owned cars are allowed to enter the neighborhood, in which electric bikes, robotic mini taxis, and light rail shuttle people around town, to downtown Phoenix, or out to the airport.

The street life is lively—there are no cars to bisect movement between the 21 different businesses and eateries, among which is a James Beard Award-winning Mexican restaurant, DIY ceramic business, and some stores run out of apartments—a big no-no under Phoenix zoning laws.

“Once you pull the cars out,” Architect Daniel Parolek who designed Culdesac, told BBC, “there’s so much more opportunity to make a vibrant, thriving community.”

His inspiration was sun-soaked locales like Italy, Greece, and Croatia, where town centers were designed before the automobile and before air conditioning.

Technically speaking, the entire Culdesac neighborhood is one apartment complex, but the paseos, or little alleyways, open up into plazas of open space exactly liked one would expect in a little village in the Cyclades.

Because no one has to jump in a car to get from place to place, people run into each other, sparking conversations, relations, and breaking through the counterintuitive phenomenon of big city loneliness, which in Phoenix hits particularly hard.

“Culdesac Tempe has shown that people do want to live car-free in the US, even in a metro area like Phoenix that’s often seen as the poster child for car dependency,” says Erin Boyd, Culdesac’s government relations and external affairs lead. “This success has shifted the conversation around what’s possible in American development.”

-via Good News Network, August 25, 2025

[rockshitty]

jpeg from an alternate universe where they have new yorker cartoons at camelot

[rockshitty]

I won't say it's, like, the series' best feature, but on a personally relatable level my favourite thing about The Murderbot Diaries is the repeated implication that most of SecUnit's success as a hacker stems from the fact that it keeps bumping into mission-critical systems where nobody bothered to change the factory default wi-fi password.

[rockshitty]

situation dire. i've been saying 'huzzah', 'alas', and 'tis unironically for like a year now. harmless so far.

however. i hath noticed i now mark half of my goodbyes with 'i must away'. it's spreading

[rockshitty]

my friend and i have been losing our goddamn minds over the photography in this zillow listing and i feel the need to share it with you all too

the lighting??? the fog?? the atmosphere???

this shit is like high art and it's a ZILLOW LISTING . and that's not even all the photos!!! what the fuck!!!

[rockshitty]

Too many artists are held back by outdated and bad color theory rules, or even rules that are fine but have built in limitations that you should know and I want to set everyone free.

[rockshitty]

One unique kind of fanfiction is the beginning of an au fic written by someone who is not very good at writing (which is fine. It's fanfic) so they can't think of any way to get us up to speed except an unintentionally hilarious beat for beat recounting of the grimdark murderous canon backstory with a squeaky clean modern coat of paint. Hey everyone welcome to my story and by the way in this world I was NOT magically tortured by evil wizards for thousands of years BUT sophomore year of my liberal arts degree I did have an emotionally abusive boyfriend, so

[rockshitty]

If I was in a fanfiction and started coughing up flowers while working at a flower shop (because this is a flower shop au) I would NOT connect my crush on the tattoo artist next door to the flower cough situation. I would freak the fuck out and think the pollen at work was doing some Last of Us shit to me, quit my job and move FAR away. inadvertently my flame for the tattoo artist would fade with distance, solving my hanahaki situation and proving my 'the flowers were trying to turn me into a plant zombie' theory

[rockshitty]

As an aroace person I actually never had that feeling of being broken. I thought everyone was the same way and some people were just dramatic 😭

[rockshitty]

Loafing around

[rockshitty]

[rockshitty]

Smooth brain

[rockshitty]

[rockshitty]

sometimes you gotta bite the bullet and put "text your friend whom you love and genuinely want to talk to" on your to-do list because otherwise it is not getting done

[rockshitty]

what they dont tell u about bouncing on it is that is actually takes a lot of stamina and core strength

[rockshitty]

HELP