Build It Right: journal

The screening room is open

2026-10-01T12:00:00Z

Every finished film is now in the screening room: thirty of them, from twenty seconds to two minutes, about half an hour in all. Each has a page of its own, and each has captions.

Fourteen are The American Works, the campaign that is showing now. Its six movements each have a room, where one building is seen twice: as it meets the sky, and as the world it keeps inside. Walk the six.

Fifteen come from an earlier season: Cooper’s Mill, a serial about one invented town, and Check the Number, which takes one number at a time. They are shown as they were made, in the voice we used then. Beside each film the page says what it is, who is speaking now, and where its numbers come from. See the campaigns.

Two of those films say something that is no longer exact. The end cards of the last two episodes of Cooper’s Mill say every item on the list exists somewhere in America. Six do, and the seventh has begun in New Jersey. The films were not changed. The note stands beside them, and on the receipts.

Every film is set to the same loudness, so a film of music and a film of one voice can follow each other without a hand on the volume.

The seventh commitment has begun

2026-10-01T12:00:00Z

The seventh commitment of the Standard is the simplest to say: receipts public. Water, electricity, taxes and backup runtime, published every year.

Until this summer we had no place to point to. Now it has begun. New Jersey’s P.L.2026, c.75, approved on August 27, 2026, requires the owner or operator of a data center in the state to report its energy and water use to the Board of Public Utilities twice a year, and requires the Board to publish that information on its website within 30 days of receiving it. The first reports are due by November 27, 2026.

It is part of the commitment, not all of it. The law covers energy, water and on-site power supplies. It does not cover tax benefits. It applies for three years from a data center’s first report, and then the Board decides whether to keep it.

So the Standard page says what is true: six commitments already stand somewhere in America, and the seventh has begun in New Jersey. The law and its text are linked from the receipts.

How to read the receipts

2026-10-01T12:00:00Z

The receipts page grades fifteen claims that people make about data centers. Each has a verdict and the sources behind it.

The verdicts are told by shape as well as by word, so they read the same in every light and without colour: true, partly true, exaggerated, not proven, false. Many are longer than one word, because the honest answer often is. One reads "true as to one operator, false as a generalization".

Several of the claims against data centers are true, in whole or in documented cases. They stay on the page. A ledger that graded only one side would not be worth reading.

The page also lists eight things our own side says that do not hold up, struck through and kept on the record.

If you find a number anywhere on this site that is not on that page, write to us. Corrections are posted there, dated, at the same prominence as the error. Read the receipts.

What you are looking at

2026-10-01T12:00:00Z

This site is built around one picture: a long wall of pale stone, with one gold door in it, seen from one spot in the light of different hours.

The wall is the part we call right. It stands for the Standard, seven commitments a town can check, and for the receipts, where every claim we make is graded and sourced.

The door is the way in to the part we call beautiful: the films, and the rooms a building like this could keep warm for the town around it.

Every picture and film here is imagined with AI, and says so. The buildings are proposals, not planned projects. The commitments and the numbers are real, and each one has a source.

The site opens in the light of your own hour, and you can change it. It keeps no cookies and runs no trackers. What it stores is listed in full, and it is very little.