Architecture Wednesday: Converted Water Tower

If you’re looking for a home that can also help you get your steps in ... because there's no elevator ... then this former Swedish water tower is just the ticket.

The Vaxholm water tower is located on a small island in the Stockholm archipelago, just 20 miles from the Swedish capital. It was built in 1923 by Swedish architect Cyrillus Johansson, who also designed the Museum of Varmland. It has a cylindrical, wedding-cake design, topped by a copper-clad observatory and wind vein by Swedish sculptor Aron Sandberg.

The red brick industrial structure is currently on the market for $1.95M USD and was in service for 50 years before being decommissioned. It was sold to the current owner in 2000 and has undergone extensive renovations to become a four-bedroom home with living spaces set across four levels.

On the first floor is the kitchen, living and dining area with arched brick windows and a soaring 16-ft-high ceiling. Bedrooms are stacked on the levels above as well as a plywood-lined music room.

If you’re afraid of heights, this may not be the property for you, as the fifth and sixth floors are accessed only via a narrow spiral staircase. Originally the tower’s water tank, it’s now used to house telecoms equipment—the roof is dotted with antennas from telecoms firms, generating rental income for the owners to the tune of nearly 300K per year; in addition, a separate studio apartment on the property also creates rental income.

If you like Sweden and living tall, then maybe this one’s for you!

The Spaces

Meme Dump

Ain't That America IV

Well, what a week or so it's been in America … chickens are now less safe to eat … a two-year-old girl was deported … Black History is removed from the Smithsonian … The Felon refuses FEMA aid to Red States … a con woman was pardoned by a con man … and more:

The USDA is withdrawing a rule to help prevent food poisoning from poultry contaminated with salmonella. Under the Biden Administration effort poultry companies would have been required to keep salmonella bacteria levels under a certain threshold and test for the presence of six strains most associated with illness. If any of those strains were found or standard levels were exceeded, the poultry couldn’t be sold.

Last Thursday the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Services ended the proposed rule “to further assess its approach for addressing Salmonella illnesses associated with poultry product.”

Further assess its approach? They have no approach.

A federal judge says a two-year-old US citizen was deported to Honduras with her mother and sister without due process, amid the Fascist Regime’s drive to ramp up deportations. The child—known only as VML—and her family were apprehended during a routine appointment at a Louisiana immigration office.

The judge wanted to speak with the girl's mother but was told by a government lawyer that it "would not be possible because she (and presumably VML) had just been released in Honduras."

The immigration status of the girl's mother, father and sister remains unclear but, once again, the two-year-old is a US citizen although I’m guessing The Felon will claim she’s a member of MS-13?

This new regime is once again trying to erase Black history, which is also American history, by physically removing the Greensboro, North Carolina, Woolworth’s lunch counter exhibit from the National Museum of African American History and Culture—AKA the “Blacksonian”—because of its “improper ideology.”

The exhibit features portions of the original lunch counter and highlights the story of four Black male students from North Carolina A&T who were brutally attacked after sitting at the whites-only counter February 1, 1960, and refusing to leave when denied service. Their defiance sparked a wave of lunch counter sit-ins across the South and became a major flashpoint in the Civil Rights Movement.

Improper ideology because … oh yeah, it makes white people look racist.

Kristi Noem, AKA DogKiller, AKA Where’s My Purse, AKA Border Barbie, has a new publicity campaign aimed at discouraging illegal immigration but it’s off to a rocky start as Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has urged Mexico’s Congress to fast-track a law that would outlaw transmission of the ads on major TV and radio channels and calling it “propaganda.”

The campaign has raised questions in the US about its overtly political messaging and its price tag of $200 million over two years as the ads are appearing at a time when Leon Skum’s DOGE is slashing federal jobs.

This past week, under orders from Hair Furor, FEMA has denied federal assistance for tornadoes in Arkansas, flooding in West Virginia and a windstorm in Washington state. It also has refused North Carolina’s request for extended relief funding in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckleberry Sanders is especially upset at the aid being denied her state since she spent years lying to our faces for The Felon.

Oh Sarah, you’re as dumb as your daddy.

NIOSH’s congressionally mandated Health Hazard Evaluation program is one of many health and safety services on which firefighters depend that’s been shrunk or eliminated by HHS Secretary, and Heroin addict, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “reduction in force” of more than 10,000 employees.

Firefighters are regularly exposed to toxins and chemicals that affect their physical and mental health. The Center for Firefighter Safety, Health and Well-being researches why first responders get sick and die and how to prevent it and now services for hundreds of thousands of people exposed to toxins on 9/11 are hampered by these cuts to NIOSH.

First responders, first to have care cut.

The Felon has pardoned former Las Vegas City Councilwoman Michele Fiore weeks before her sentencing for wire fraud.

In October 2024, a jury convicted Fiore, suspended in July 2024 from her position as justice court judge after deliberating for two hours. The panel convicted her on one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and six counts of wire fraud for taking money meant for fallen police officers’ memorials and spending it on herself.

Grifters helping grifters. They call themselves the party of Law and Order except when they’re screwing Law and Order.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned states that they will lose federal funding for roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects if they continue to foster DEI programs; impede The Felon’s immigration enforcement efforts; or defy other directives from the administration.

Duffy laughably claims this is all part of an effort to protect Free Speech but only the speech of the criminal regime.

A 25% U.S. tariff on pharmaceutical imports would increase US drug costs by nearly $51 billion annually, boosting U.S. prices by as much as 12.9% if passed.

But The Felon said …

And speaking of tariffs, The Felon is claiming that he’s already “made 200 deals” on tariffs and has spoken with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who denies that any talks have taken place.

When asked to confirm that number, The Felon muttered “100%”—but could not elaborate on what countries he’s solidified deals with or the terms. And to be clear, there are only 195 countries in the world.

Maybe he included the Penguins?

Leon Skum’s DOGE says it has saved $160 billion through its push to root out wasteful or fraudulent government spending. But in order to save $160B it will cost US taxpayers $135B this fiscal year.

This is what happens when ill-informed racist idiots vote a criminal back into power.

FBI Director Kash Patel said, in a since-deleted social media post, that his agency had arrested Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge, Hannah Dugan for allegedly helping an undocumented defendant avoid arrest from ICE.

Dugan is accused of escorting the man and his lawyer out of her courtroom through the jury door after learning that ICE agents were seeking his arrest. The man was taken into custody outside the courthouse after agents chased him on foot.

This is not America.

This week The Felon went to the Vatican to pay his respects to the passing of Pope Francis. Protocol suggested he be seated in the third row but somehow the fat gelatinous tub of diaper wearing narcissism was seated in the front row … where he fell asleep.

How respectful. Of note is Melanie, appearing to clutch her rosary and wish for her husband’s death.

Nineteen Blue states—led by California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota and New York—are suing The Felon regime and the Department of Education’s order that they comply with The Felon regime’s all-white, all the time anti-DEI rules.

Stand up.

Demonstrators gathered last week on the steps of the Department of Health and Human Services [HHS] for a “die-in” over proposed funding cuts that could devastate programs addressing LGBTQ+ health disparities.

Health Secretary, and Heroin addict, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has sought to radically reshape HHS by cutting funding to programs geared toward treating and preventing HIV, a virus that in the US disproportionately affects gay and bisexual men.

Kennedy, not a doctor but in need of psychiatric counseling, has claimed that poppers cause AIDS and has questioned evidence linking HIV to AIDS, a discovery that won a Nobel Prize in 2008.

And so people will die, but I guess it’s just gay and bisexual men so it’s okay?

As part of his effort to overhaul the federal workforce and give that extra money to Billionaires Needing Tax Breaks, The Felon signed an order stripping collective bargaining rights from government employees at the departments of State, Defense, Justice, and HHS, among others. It also impacts the CDC, the FCC, and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

But last week a federal judge blocked The Felon’s illegal move and also found that a key section of The Felon’s executive order allowing more than a dozen federal agencies to end collective bargaining with unions to be unlawful.

Resist.

This is an actual question asked by The Felon regime:

“Why should coal miners pay for PBS?”

A typical stupid question but it begs others:

Why should a poor Black family in Detroit pay for a President to golf every weekend?

Why should a single mother of three in Louisiana who works two jobs be denied healthcare so that the CEO of AETNA can get a tax break?

Why is the guy washing dishes in Des Moines paying for the president’s wife’s Secret Service protection so she can live anywhere but the White House?

We could do this all day …but here’s the real question The Felon and the corrupt complicit chicken shit GOP need to answer:

Do you have a heart? Did no one teach you to care about your neighbors? Do you know what ‘empathy’ means? Did no one ever teach you to ‘share’ when you were in kindergarten? Have you ever heard the phrase ‘do unto others’?

I cannot think of a group of people who need to watch Sesame Street more than the GOP. Perhaps if they did they would learn some common decency.

George Santos, the former GOP congressman liar from New York was sentenced to 87 months in federal prison on Friday.

Standing before a judge in Federal District Court a very subdued—some say he was crying—Santos seemed far removed from the swaggering lawmaker whose lies—that he was a college volleyball star and a Wall Street financier with ties to the Holocaust and 9/11, to name a few—turned him into a national punchline and led to mocking impersonations on “Saturday Night Live.”

Sorry, not sorry.