The Google Maps car captures a woman waving outside of her home. Today, her home is gone and the land sits empty...

I know this house! The woman waving on the front porch actually died, leaving behind her elderly husband. He was so devastated when she died, and he became kind of a recluse. The government wanted to tear down the house, so he got a bunch of helium balloons and lifted the house away to go live by a waterfall or something. Also there was a boy scout and a talking dog for some reason. I don't know, I could be remembering this wrong.

I've got photos of me and my neighbors in the house across the street from the Covid era. In the few years since, it went vacant, and then started getting break-ins and squatters, we chased them out many times. Then one morning last December, I woke up to see the house engulfed in flames. It was about 130 years old. One of about 6 old houses torched by squatters in my area in the last year...

Is she waving? Looks more like she’s flipping them off.

A good reminder of how temporary things are. Makes you ponder about what truly matters.

I love old houses, but not every old house is salvageable. It looks freshly painted, but it looks pretty old, 100 years or more, and it probably had a lot of structural issues. If it had termites as well, it was probably impossible to save. Who knows if it even had electricity or plumbing?

How much do you want to invest to fix an old house like this? When does it become a House of Theseus?

Surprised you didn't remove the Google Maps text and year from the image.

Perfect location for a data center

::: spoiler Tap for spoiler /s :::

At least the shrubs survived.

What about instead of “land sits empty”, as if it’s a bad thing or needs a purpose, we say “the house gave place to a park” or “land was added to the adjacent park”?