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# A Secular Approach to Home Improvement
- URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/wreckage/
- Published: 2022-10-25T20:41:43.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:51.000Z
- Description: I took an afternoon drive through Indiana the other day, and it was clear that America is not doing well.
- Author: James A. Reeves
- Tags: Notebook

Here in the Middle West, it’s seventy-seven degrees in late October. I took an afternoon drive through Indiana the other day, and it was clear that America is not doing well. The interstate was a patchwork of craters and ragged concrete, and I still feel the judder of the car in my nerves. Above a shuttered rest area, a billboard announced *Jesus Christ is the Answer! Call Dan’s Windows & Flooring*. I spent several miles wondering about the net return on this marketing strategy: those who want a Christian window installer versus those who prefer a secular approach to home improvement.

Real-world rot feels related to [Drew Austin’s meditation](https://kneelingbus.substack.com/p/193-sludgefeast) on being choked by digital content. “It fills our cloud storage to the brim and piles up at the margins of our digital interfaces like garbage scattered across a freeway median,” he writes. “It is the lorem ipsum that wallpapers and carpets the internet’s liminal spaces.” 

Last night I received an error message from The New York Times: *You are browsing and clicking much faster than is typical of a human being.*