The downside of living in a house lined with tile would be the acoustics, right? It's possible to imagine a sound ricocheting through the house for several minutes until it finally gets smothered by a quilt in the spare room. On the other hand, this is an amazing piece of work: the Tile King House, now for sale in Minneapolis. Go look. Almost 70 pictures of an unspoiled midcentury house that could have come straight from a Better Homes & Garden spread. Here's the lower-level room for rumpusing:

Realtor's page here, with many photos. Retro Renovation's piece with photos and commentary, here.

SDALE More on the sad failure of the original design for Southdale. Yes, yes, Victor Gruen was a socialist. Yes, yes, he wanted the interior courts to be public spaces. But if there was a utopian idea that failed, it's because it was a utopian dream. One quote says malls bring out "the mini-Marxist in all of us," and if only that was true; I could tie the bearded little troll to a bench and leave and never come back.

Gruen was an interesting chap, but his criticisms of post-war downtown's sterility don't quite jibe with the Dayton's block he designed for St. Paul. That thing killed street life for blocks around.

ONE-CLICK: THE NEXT STEP Amazon has invented a button you stick on the wall in various places in your house. Push it, and it automatically orders what you're almost out of. The Verge article, written in the necessary tone of boredom and cynicism, describes it thus:

Yeah, Murca! Because that's what it's about. Being lazy and spending money!

I'll admit that the woman seems to be taking the lack of Maxwell House pretty hard here: