Bloomberg article this morning with the following headline:
UAE Joins Saudis, Qatar in Urging Trump Not to Restart War
No idea how to get around the paywall so I’ll just post the AI Summary:
The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar have urged US President Donald Trump to give negotiations a chance to end the Iran war, citing fears of retaliation from Tehran that could harm Gulf economies.
The countries’ leaders have told Trump that military action won’t achieve America’s goals with Iran, and they differ on the kind of diplomatic deal the US should pursue, but they share a wariness of renewed hostilities.
The UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar have improved ties since the UAE’s decision to leave OPEC, and they are coordinating with regional and international partners, including Pakistan, which is mediating between the US and Iran to reach a peace deal.
As someone who worked in construction; from single family homes to an electric power plant (smokestack 370 ft tall), this video is full of falsity.
Brick isn’t magic stuff. People have been building wooden houses for millennia. You build with what is available, least expensive, and good enough for purpose. Cheap and shoddy can be brick or wood.
Brick and mud brick is particularly bad if you have seismic hazards unless you don’t care about dying under a pile of bricks.
Hostility to free speech and Christianity is growing dramatically across Europe, slowly shifting restrictions on these fundamental human rights closer to those of repressive regimes such as Russia and China. A former U.S. ambassador estimated England alone now jails more citizens over speech crimes than Vladimir Putin’s Russia, including numerous prosecutions of people for admitting to silent prayer on public property.
Why are we allied with these folks again?
Funny, in 1994-5 I lived as a renter in an 1840 wood-framed house at 106 Bainbridge St, Philadelphia Pa, one block south of South St. It’s still going strong, albeit renovated along the way, last sold in 2025 apparently.
Bad, inaccurate video.
I lived in Minneapolis from 1969 through 2015. All of the four houses in which I lived were made of wood. All were in solidly middle-class pre-1945 neighborhoods.
Sears Roebuck company used to sell mail order wooden houses. They shipped the materials, you build.
Robert, there was a Sears House about a mile down the road. Two Story, looked nice. County (Boulder Cty, CO of course) made the owner of the land tear it down. Couldn’t have two house on the lot.
“om” has it right (@ 10:25am). My childhood home (in the SF Bay Area) was wood frame construction: lath & plaster on 16″-center frame.. built in 1937. It stands today, as does the rest of that neighborhood that looks as neat and clean as it did when I was growing up there. Fast-forward to two homes I owned and lived in, one built in 1904, the other in 1897. Both wood-frame, wood siding… and the frame was 2×4 that actually measured 2×4. Both are doing well as they enjoy their second century.
1906 and 1989 saw a serious problem with brick, and all “un-reinforced masonry” construction: earthquakes.
This video is typical of what is infesting the internet/YouTube these days. Essays generated by AI and converted to a video with voice-reconstruction and generic photos and video clips that are believed to be illustrative of the topic. The timetable of the switch seems off, but the change from brick is pretty accurate at least until they got to vinyl siding, which was mostly a fad, in my opinion, to eliminate the need for paint on wood siding– hide the rot under something shiny. In my neck of the woods now the go-to material is cement siding (Hardi-plank) and multi-pane windows, driven by the hazard from wildfire. Stucco is also making a comeback.
That story doesnt pass the smell test, if anything they have been most underfire after israel why would they trust iran
In fact why havent they moved farther ahead towards their own defense
Indeed as Om noted brick is poorly suited to areas with any tendency to earthquakes. Even structural brick with bricks tying the layers together fairs poorly as the mortar tends to break in shaking. In addition (having had a father inlaw who was a brickmason for 40+ years) Brick has seasons where you can’t build with it in much of the northern parts of the US. If you get a frost overnight the brick takes longer to set up or may set up poorly in a hard frost. Freeze thaw cycles and acidic rain take their toll on the mortar. Also as noted by others wood framing is used all over especially outside cities. In Boston and its suburbs the early houses (late 18th and early 19th century) are often brick. Why? Because timber, especially fine grained long pieces of hardwood and spruce were FAR more saleable for shipbuilding. Even in the 19th century the poor person houses (called Triple Deckers here in the Northeast) are timber frame usually built on a brick or field stone foundation. Brick starts to win if you either have insect issues (i.e. LOTS of Termites) or severe weather (tornadoes especially) as the thick brick structures tend to be better proof against flying debris, and even a termite cant eat brick.
Miguel cervantes – If Trump resumes attacks on Iran, Iran will resume attacks on the oil infrastructure of the gulf states. Therefore, the gulf states do not want Trump to resume attacks on Iran. It’s not rocket science. (Unless you count the rockets that Iran used and would use to attack the gulf states.)
Gee, wouldn’t it be nice of Trump hadn’t spend the past year trolling for crypto and aircraft from the Gulf states. That looks a little embarrassing now.
Iran: now reporting that a Qatari delegation is in Tehran, so I guess no bombing at present. The 3 ME states becoming active in the talks just tells me that they are afraid of drone/missile attacks if the US resumes action. I’m convinced that Iran is stringing everyone along, including Trump. I’ve lost faith in the whole thing. they need to be brought to their knees; it’s the only thing they understand. As long as they keep the “talks” going, they get to rebuild and strengthen which is their real objective. What, 7 weeks now? And nothing to show.
Almost no brick buildings in California cuz earthquakes, duh
The administration doesn’t seem to have backed down from the following: Iran will hand over its enriched uranium or we will take it from them.
I have heard reports, from sources linked to here, that something like 30% of Iran’s military assets remain. If we have to go get it, then those military assets are a threat to our personnel. If we have any hope of them handing it over, it would be more likely to happen if they were truly defenseless. Either way, it seems to me that that 30% should have been taken care of when we had them on their heels.
Last night at sundown started the Jewish Festival of Shavuot. ( Leviticus chapter 23) For Christians, this is the day in Acts chapter 2 when the Holy Spirit was sent on the church. In English often referred to as “Pentecost”. The Western church remembers this Sunday and the Orthodox the following Sunday.
Tulsi Gabbard will leave her DNI position on June 30, due to her husband’s recent bone cancer diagnosis and therefore her need to help him through his treatments forthcoming. Many thanks, Tulsi, best wishes to your husband and your future together.
I always knew I was an outlier; I live in a 300 year old wood house, with wood roof, in New England. Also own a large brick commercial building built in the 1990s.
Of course wooden houses are very old. In New England, they are VERY old.
However, there was a period when brick houses and especially brick commercial buildings were extremely common. The mills that powered New England were almost all made of brick.
I grew up in a NY house made of brick, in an area where a great many houses were brick.
As far as I can tell, in all those places building with brick did end at least fifty years ago. I have no idea whether the facts in the video about that are correct, but I put the video up there because it made me think about the brick buildings of my youth and how much I liked them.
I have no particular love for this video, but I didn’t hear it as saying wooden homes haven’t always been built, just that brick homes often used to be built – this was absolutely true of where I grew up – and that they’re never built anymore (also true of where I grew up). In New England, that’s mostly true of large commercial buildings rather than homes.
Several people beat me to it, but this video is not accurate. You will notice that most of the examples of brick “homes” that he presents are large buildings, not single family homes. I grew up in a frame house in Pittsburgh, that was built in 1900, and it is still standing (although not in great shape the last time I drove by). Every house in my neighborhood was frame.
I suspect the real reason is the increasing cost of labor, relative to other costs. When people’s time isn’t worth much, we can afford to pay for brick masons to spend many hours meticulously laying one brick after another. But now that our time has gotten more valuable, it makes sense to use construction methods that are less labor intensive.
Yup, wood frame houses tend to do OK in seismically active areas e.g. southern California. When my wife and I owned a home in Orange County, we were considering adding a second story and had to have a geologist come out to see if our property was suitable (we lived in an earthquake liquefaction zone). To my surprise, he said yup, the footings were OK and that having a second story would actually be better because of the added weight. Something to do with the house being more stable in the Jello-like soil conditions, IIRC.
Tulsi’s husband is said to have “a rare form of bone cancer”, which I take to likely mean osteosarcoma arising in Paget’s Disease of bone, based on his age.
I live in a wooden house built in 1899, it’s in great shape. There’s a wooden house on the next block that was built in 1740! About a mile away the Historical Society is located in a salt box house built in 1780. On the other hand, the nearby Meetinghouse Cemetery was established in 1680 and a lot of inscriptions on the grave stones are barely visible or completely gone. So the answer to the question what produces longevity is “it depends”
So sad for her
So how many weapons were in inventory how many destroyed how do we know where the remainder are
In the middle class northwest Detroit where I grew up, I can’t remember a single wooden house. All brick single-family and duplex homes as far as the eye can see. Those neighborhoods were built mostly in the 30s, 40s, and 50s when Detroit was prosperous. The older adjacent suburbs are also mainly brick. That region is more prone to tornadoes than earthquakes, but that may be coincidental.
Re: Wood / Brick
I thought this was all settled in “The Three Little Pigs” v “The Big Bad Wolf.”
A note regarding brick nostalgia. A common form of residential single home construction was/is brick veneer exterior walls where the wood frame walls have a layer of brick facing instead of other siding such as lap wood siding or shakes/shingles. Brick exterior over a 2×4 stud wall. You don’t have to paint brick veneer. That predates aluminum or vinyl siding over wood sheathing.
The walls are not entirely and only masonry.
Paul in Boston had it right.
huxley:
Indeed, the science is settled.
huxley, an uncle of mine had a house built with straw — that is, frame with thick walls filled with bales of straw. Wood siding outside, drywall inside, straw in between. Very energy-efficient.
Better to make a house of straw without bricks than make bricks without straw.
@huxley at 6:13:
Ha ha, good one.
Neo,
Just curious, can you feel a difference in the interior ambience of brick vs wood? Is one quieter or warmer than another? I’ve always lived in wood frame so I wouldn’t know. I do know that the heavy bankirai wood doors we replaced the original interior doors in our home with are incredibly sound deadening. No comparison to the conventional wood interior doors. I also had a log home in British Columbia with hot water floor heating. Heaven! Worlds better than the forced air heating in the So Cal home I grew up in. Because the floors were always warm so was everything that touched them, furniture, feet… Again, the thick log walls kept out noise and that big house always felt cosy. My mother grew up this way in Northern Minnesota – a wood house – heat from the floors. But with the need for A/C in so much of the country floor heating has become old school. Except for bathrooms, I hear.
And don’t get me started on that ‘radiant heat’ from the ceiling crap.
I have neither heat nor A/C in my home, only redwood louvers between us and nature, socks and electric blankets sometimes, but that is the beauty of a climate like Hawaii’s.
I didn’t watch the video on front porches, but I really loved the one at my last house. It was shaded in the morning by the huge house next door that jutted out, and I was on the curve of a cul-de-sac. When I had my retirement home built, I splurged on an $18k upgrade to add a front porch. This porch faces west, so it’s nicely shaded in the mornings. I like to sit outside (I tend to wake early) and enjoy my first cup of coffee watching people drive by, children get on the bus, people walk their dogs… Why would they take away a porch (my neighbors say they wish they had one, but maybe it doesn’t make as much sense if one isn’t retired).
The house I grew up in Denver was cinder block and brick on the outside. Brick is very common in Denver for obvious reasons. The house was a bit cold in winter, but otherwise fine and very weather resistant. I’ve lived in wood houses since. The vary greatly in terms of comfort depending on how well constructed they are. Our present house in FL was done by a extremely good contractor (custom house so we were involved all the way) and is the best wood house we’ve had.
Well, in California what contraindicates brick are earthquakes.
Bricks are just fine where there are no earthquakes.
Another thing the video overlooks is that back in the day, a lot of working class people never owned their own home at all, they had to rent on a more or less permanent basis. Home ownership became far more common post WW II, in part as a result of intentional Federal policy. It may have gone too far in some cases, in fact.
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Bloomberg article this morning with the following headline:
UAE Joins Saudis, Qatar in Urging Trump Not to Restart War
No idea how to get around the paywall so I’ll just post the AI Summary:
As someone who worked in construction; from single family homes to an electric power plant (smokestack 370 ft tall), this video is full of falsity.
Brick isn’t magic stuff. People have been building wooden houses for millennia. You build with what is available, least expensive, and good enough for purpose. Cheap and shoddy can be brick or wood.
Brick and mud brick is particularly bad if you have seismic hazards unless you don’t care about dying under a pile of bricks.
In The Federalist today:
https://thefederalist.com/2026/05/21/european-author-of-banned-book-it-is-christianity-they-are-trying-to-censor/
Why are we allied with these folks again?
Funny, in 1994-5 I lived as a renter in an 1840 wood-framed house at 106 Bainbridge St, Philadelphia Pa, one block south of South St. It’s still going strong, albeit renovated along the way, last sold in 2025 apparently.
Bad, inaccurate video.
I lived in Minneapolis from 1969 through 2015. All of the four houses in which I lived were made of wood. All were in solidly middle-class pre-1945 neighborhoods.
Sears Roebuck company used to sell mail order wooden houses. They shipped the materials, you build.
Robert, there was a Sears House about a mile down the road. Two Story, looked nice. County (Boulder Cty, CO of course) made the owner of the land tear it down. Couldn’t have two house on the lot.
“om” has it right (@ 10:25am). My childhood home (in the SF Bay Area) was wood frame construction: lath & plaster on 16″-center frame.. built in 1937. It stands today, as does the rest of that neighborhood that looks as neat and clean as it did when I was growing up there. Fast-forward to two homes I owned and lived in, one built in 1904, the other in 1897. Both wood-frame, wood siding… and the frame was 2×4 that actually measured 2×4. Both are doing well as they enjoy their second century.
1906 and 1989 saw a serious problem with brick, and all “un-reinforced masonry” construction: earthquakes.
This video is typical of what is infesting the internet/YouTube these days. Essays generated by AI and converted to a video with voice-reconstruction and generic photos and video clips that are believed to be illustrative of the topic. The timetable of the switch seems off, but the change from brick is pretty accurate at least until they got to vinyl siding, which was mostly a fad, in my opinion, to eliminate the need for paint on wood siding– hide the rot under something shiny. In my neck of the woods now the go-to material is cement siding (Hardi-plank) and multi-pane windows, driven by the hazard from wildfire. Stucco is also making a comeback.
That story doesnt pass the smell test, if anything they have been most underfire after israel why would they trust iran
In fact why havent they moved farther ahead towards their own defense
Indeed as Om noted brick is poorly suited to areas with any tendency to earthquakes. Even structural brick with bricks tying the layers together fairs poorly as the mortar tends to break in shaking. In addition (having had a father inlaw who was a brickmason for 40+ years) Brick has seasons where you can’t build with it in much of the northern parts of the US. If you get a frost overnight the brick takes longer to set up or may set up poorly in a hard frost. Freeze thaw cycles and acidic rain take their toll on the mortar. Also as noted by others wood framing is used all over especially outside cities. In Boston and its suburbs the early houses (late 18th and early 19th century) are often brick. Why? Because timber, especially fine grained long pieces of hardwood and spruce were FAR more saleable for shipbuilding. Even in the 19th century the poor person houses (called Triple Deckers here in the Northeast) are timber frame usually built on a brick or field stone foundation. Brick starts to win if you either have insect issues (i.e. LOTS of Termites) or severe weather (tornadoes especially) as the thick brick structures tend to be better proof against flying debris, and even a termite cant eat brick.
Miguel cervantes – If Trump resumes attacks on Iran, Iran will resume attacks on the oil infrastructure of the gulf states. Therefore, the gulf states do not want Trump to resume attacks on Iran. It’s not rocket science. (Unless you count the rockets that Iran used and would use to attack the gulf states.)
Gee, wouldn’t it be nice of Trump hadn’t spend the past year trolling for crypto and aircraft from the Gulf states. That looks a little embarrassing now.
Iran: now reporting that a Qatari delegation is in Tehran, so I guess no bombing at present. The 3 ME states becoming active in the talks just tells me that they are afraid of drone/missile attacks if the US resumes action. I’m convinced that Iran is stringing everyone along, including Trump. I’ve lost faith in the whole thing. they need to be brought to their knees; it’s the only thing they understand. As long as they keep the “talks” going, they get to rebuild and strengthen which is their real objective. What, 7 weeks now? And nothing to show.
Almost no brick buildings in California cuz earthquakes, duh
The administration doesn’t seem to have backed down from the following: Iran will hand over its enriched uranium or we will take it from them.
I have heard reports, from sources linked to here, that something like 30% of Iran’s military assets remain. If we have to go get it, then those military assets are a threat to our personnel. If we have any hope of them handing it over, it would be more likely to happen if they were truly defenseless. Either way, it seems to me that that 30% should have been taken care of when we had them on their heels.
Last night at sundown started the Jewish Festival of Shavuot. ( Leviticus chapter 23) For Christians, this is the day in Acts chapter 2 when the Holy Spirit was sent on the church. In English often referred to as “Pentecost”. The Western church remembers this Sunday and the Orthodox the following Sunday.
Tulsi Gabbard will leave her DNI position on June 30, due to her husband’s recent bone cancer diagnosis and therefore her need to help him through his treatments forthcoming. Many thanks, Tulsi, best wishes to your husband and your future together.
I always knew I was an outlier; I live in a 300 year old wood house, with wood roof, in New England. Also own a large brick commercial building built in the 1990s.
Of course wooden houses are very old. In New England, they are VERY old.
However, there was a period when brick houses and especially brick commercial buildings were extremely common. The mills that powered New England were almost all made of brick.
I grew up in a NY house made of brick, in an area where a great many houses were brick.
As far as I can tell, in all those places building with brick did end at least fifty years ago. I have no idea whether the facts in the video about that are correct, but I put the video up there because it made me think about the brick buildings of my youth and how much I liked them.
I have no particular love for this video, but I didn’t hear it as saying wooden homes haven’t always been built, just that brick homes often used to be built – this was absolutely true of where I grew up – and that they’re never built anymore (also true of where I grew up). In New England, that’s mostly true of large commercial buildings rather than homes.
Several people beat me to it, but this video is not accurate. You will notice that most of the examples of brick “homes” that he presents are large buildings, not single family homes. I grew up in a frame house in Pittsburgh, that was built in 1900, and it is still standing (although not in great shape the last time I drove by). Every house in my neighborhood was frame.
I suspect the real reason is the increasing cost of labor, relative to other costs. When people’s time isn’t worth much, we can afford to pay for brick masons to spend many hours meticulously laying one brick after another. But now that our time has gotten more valuable, it makes sense to use construction methods that are less labor intensive.
Yup, wood frame houses tend to do OK in seismically active areas e.g. southern California. When my wife and I owned a home in Orange County, we were considering adding a second story and had to have a geologist come out to see if our property was suitable (we lived in an earthquake liquefaction zone). To my surprise, he said yup, the footings were OK and that having a second story would actually be better because of the added weight. Something to do with the house being more stable in the Jello-like soil conditions, IIRC.
Tulsi’s husband is said to have “a rare form of bone cancer”, which I take to likely mean osteosarcoma arising in Paget’s Disease of bone, based on his age.
I live in a wooden house built in 1899, it’s in great shape. There’s a wooden house on the next block that was built in 1740! About a mile away the Historical Society is located in a salt box house built in 1780. On the other hand, the nearby Meetinghouse Cemetery was established in 1680 and a lot of inscriptions on the grave stones are barely visible or completely gone. So the answer to the question what produces longevity is “it depends”
So sad for her
So how many weapons were in inventory how many destroyed how do we know where the remainder are
In the middle class northwest Detroit where I grew up, I can’t remember a single wooden house. All brick single-family and duplex homes as far as the eye can see. Those neighborhoods were built mostly in the 30s, 40s, and 50s when Detroit was prosperous. The older adjacent suburbs are also mainly brick. That region is more prone to tornadoes than earthquakes, but that may be coincidental.
Re: Wood / Brick
I thought this was all settled in “The Three Little Pigs” v “The Big Bad Wolf.”
A note regarding brick nostalgia. A common form of residential single home construction was/is brick veneer exterior walls where the wood frame walls have a layer of brick facing instead of other siding such as lap wood siding or shakes/shingles. Brick exterior over a 2×4 stud wall. You don’t have to paint brick veneer. That predates aluminum or vinyl siding over wood sheathing.
The walls are not entirely and only masonry.
Paul in Boston had it right.
huxley:
Indeed, the science is settled.
huxley, an uncle of mine had a house built with straw — that is, frame with thick walls filled with bales of straw. Wood siding outside, drywall inside, straw in between. Very energy-efficient.
Better to make a house of straw without bricks than make bricks without straw.
@huxley at 6:13:
Ha ha, good one.
Neo,
Just curious, can you feel a difference in the interior ambience of brick vs wood? Is one quieter or warmer than another? I’ve always lived in wood frame so I wouldn’t know. I do know that the heavy bankirai wood doors we replaced the original interior doors in our home with are incredibly sound deadening. No comparison to the conventional wood interior doors. I also had a log home in British Columbia with hot water floor heating. Heaven! Worlds better than the forced air heating in the So Cal home I grew up in. Because the floors were always warm so was everything that touched them, furniture, feet… Again, the thick log walls kept out noise and that big house always felt cosy. My mother grew up this way in Northern Minnesota – a wood house – heat from the floors. But with the need for A/C in so much of the country floor heating has become old school. Except for bathrooms, I hear.
And don’t get me started on that ‘radiant heat’ from the ceiling crap.
I have neither heat nor A/C in my home, only redwood louvers between us and nature, socks and electric blankets sometimes, but that is the beauty of a climate like Hawaii’s.
I didn’t watch the video on front porches, but I really loved the one at my last house. It was shaded in the morning by the huge house next door that jutted out, and I was on the curve of a cul-de-sac. When I had my retirement home built, I splurged on an $18k upgrade to add a front porch. This porch faces west, so it’s nicely shaded in the mornings. I like to sit outside (I tend to wake early) and enjoy my first cup of coffee watching people drive by, children get on the bus, people walk their dogs… Why would they take away a porch (my neighbors say they wish they had one, but maybe it doesn’t make as much sense if one isn’t retired).
The house I grew up in Denver was cinder block and brick on the outside. Brick is very common in Denver for obvious reasons. The house was a bit cold in winter, but otherwise fine and very weather resistant. I’ve lived in wood houses since. The vary greatly in terms of comfort depending on how well constructed they are. Our present house in FL was done by a extremely good contractor (custom house so we were involved all the way) and is the best wood house we’ve had.
Well, in California what contraindicates brick are earthquakes.
Bricks are just fine where there are no earthquakes.
Another thing the video overlooks is that back in the day, a lot of working class people never owned their own home at all, they had to rent on a more or less permanent basis. Home ownership became far more common post WW II, in part as a result of intentional Federal policy. It may have gone too far in some cases, in fact.