Literally a metaphor
Skip to the tool ... Background There are good reasons roads and sidewalks (and bikelanes and crosswalks, etc.) are closed, especially in cities. Usually there's a project going on: new road infrastructure, improvements to water, electrical or sewer infrastructure. Sometimes road lanes, sidewalks or crosswalks have to be closed for days, weeks or even months. In the city of Seattle, and…
This one is going to be a short-short one for the Seattle area folks. My partner and I have already voted and dropped them in a ballot box. But some friends have previously said they found these posts useful. So here it is! If you want to find some guides on how to vote, I pretty much always end up voting (at least in general elections) who the The Urbanist endorses and usually read The Stranger…
I use "machine learning" in the title of this post because the current crop of "AI" – "generative AI", "ChatGPT", "Bard", generative image tools like Dall-E and Stable Diffusion – are all in the general class of "machine learning" tools. The main thing that makes ChatGPT and their ilk different from machine learning generically is that these tools are trained on huge datasets largely scraped from…
Today is six weeks since I went to the emergency room. The day before I had been sent the results of an MRI that indicated I had a fairly large mass in my brain which had been causing seizures, increasingly intense headaches for well over a month and also failures to speak in ways that made sense to others. On August 22nd they performed surgery on my brain. This post is an update on a previous…
After I came home from the hospital I mostly spent a lot of time lying down. The drugs I'm on can make me ravenous. Plus it gets boring laying or sitting. One night I decided we must have soup for dinner. We didn't really plan it. I just picked things I thought would work with my ability to move my mouth and that would be satisfying and came up with a mixture that is very mild but full…
My blog and website have been moved again ! Now it's again built statically from local markdown and uploaded to a server that only uses pretty minimal html, css and other files. Previous website was using Wordpress which I was increasingly annoyed with due to various issues. So I started working on it mid-July. In retrospect a very weird choice. Note: this post contains some mostly…
This is a fusion (sort of) of two dishes (or kinds of dishes) I really like: one is spicy garlic cucumber salad, such as the one in Fuchsia Dunlop's The Food of Sichuan and the other are spicy & sour dressed noodle dishes that have a base flavor profile of chile oil, soy sauce, Sichuan peppercorn and dark Chinese vinegar such as Dan Dan noodles or spicy cold noodles . Dunlop's cucumber…
One of my favorite recipe orders at a Sichuan restaurant is some kind of "cumin lamb". It's the flavor added to the lamb, not the lamb that I love. I'd been considering trying to figure out how to make something with tofu at home for a while when Mala Market posted a recipe for toothpick lamb which has a similar flavor profile. I decided it was time to try to make a riff on this! The…
If you follow me on twitter, you may have noticed that the last couple years I've been cooking more Chinese foods which was started by a mapo tofu recipe video from Chinese Cooking Demystified . We now have a number of cooking implements, including an induction wok unit, and stock a range of pantry staples for Chinese recipes. "Fried rice", a dish that I'd attempted in the past and…
Even if you don’t drive a car, you know gas prices are high right now in the United States. Some states have already committed to gas tax “relief”, either through temporarily lowering state gas taxes or direct payments to vehicle owners. The federal government has released reserve oil to try to lower prices. Even though retail gas prices aren’t strongly correlated to gas taxes and oil is a global…
The Seattle mayoral primary is basically over. It's pretty clear who will advance, even if the vote isn't certified. So it might seem silly to go look at accessibility of campaign websites now. But some folks look at how much Andrew Grant Houston's campaign raised and spent for so few votes and are concerned. I think folks should not be surprised or concerned: a relative unknown…
If you're in Seattle or King County you might have noticed there's an election! You hopefully already have your ballot as they were mailed out last Wednesday (if not, King County Elections can fix that ). Here are my not very detailed preferences on various races. Note this isn't all the elections on the ballot just the ones I'm voting on or care a bit about that I know…
Adapting two recipes I've used in the past as guides, plus strong opinions about what I like about it, I thought I'd actually write down what I did this time.
A little over nineteen (19) weeks ago, a friend living across the street was moving and he couldn't take his old upright piano to his new place. He'd gotten it free from a friend and so I got it free, aside from splitting the cost of piano movers (needed even just for across the street) and a piano tuning, as it hadn't been in a while. So we got a piano in our living room.
I don't have a lot of time or energy to write blog posts and I save it for dashing out emails to my elected officials. This morning the mayor of Seattle gave a press conference on what she plans to do in response to the Defund SPD (Seattle police department) movement demand which a super majority of the city council has voiced public support. At this press conference, she made a number of…
Since our mayor, Jenny Durkan, marched with Black Lives Matter yesterday here in Seattle, but still shows no sign of meeting the organizers demands, I wrote her again.
I’ve not been great at writing much about anything lately, except to write to elected officials. So here’s what I wrote to the city council this morning about this issue. Our over-policing harms everyone but because of the way society operates and the reality of racism, overpolicing harms black people and anyone perceived as too different more.
The "tl;dr" ("too long; didn't read"): if you just want to know how to make text art accessible, just scroll down to the heading "How to make text art accessible". If you want to know how to check for image descriptions on twitter, scroll down to heading "How to use image descriptions on Twitter". But if you want to understand why this matters to me, read on!
Menus locally are full of squash and pumpkin themed recipes. The fancy coffee seasonal drinks are often pumpkin spice themed. For some reason this made me decide to make fancy waffles this morning for family breakfast. Specifically "squash spice waffles topped with coconut cream and candied spiced pistachios" since that's what worked out with what is on hand.
A few weeks ago I attempted chiles rellenos for the first time. If you've never had them, they are roasted and skinned peppers (often poblanos) that are de-seeded, then stuffed with something, often cheese in the United States, then battered and fried, and served with a savory-spicy tomato broth/sauce. Mine didn't come out that pretty but it was an experience and they were…
My family went on a bike ride to the zoo and back. We live near I-90 and Rainier Ave S (just barely in "southeast" Seattle) and the zoo is on Phinney ridge just north of N 50th St. Depending on route, it's just over 6 miles to 7 or more. We chose to go through downtown because that allowed us to use the new Dearborn protected bike lane (PBL) and the 2nd Ave PBL. I'll try to gloss jargon…
A few months ago, everyone in government and politics came to cut the ribbon on the new oil pipeline. Even the governor running for president came. But he didn't mention carbon pollution or climate change. No one did in the endless speeches faithfully relayed to twitter where I tried not to read but could not turn away. We even had tours of the new facility!
In my continuing series of "what can I cook in cute 7 inch individual cast iron pans", this morning we made individual blueberry pancakes!
We went to a local diner yesterday – Ludi's downtown which somehow I hadn't realized existed and they are good and cheap. One of their specials was ube pancakes with haupia syrup. But they were out. But this made me realize this morning that I could easily make coconut waffles with what we had in the kitchen!
I get a lot of political advocacy email. I got one asking me to comment in favor of Washington House bill 1453 to better protect tenants. It's primary sponsor is Nicole Macri who by all accounts is awesome and the advocacy group's summary sounded like a great thing for us to change, so I commented and expressed the sentiment that tenants should be as secure in housing as home owners are.…
Tomorrow is my three year anniversary at Glowforge working as a software developer and erstwhile manager!
Some months ago a coworker mentioned their partner making them Dutch baby pancakes for a special day. I was intrigued and googled, stashing away this Alton Brown recipe . A few weeks ago I finally made it in a 9 inch pan for family breakfast (partner, kiddo, my mom and me). They were delicious but somewhat awkward to make seconds. I made up a batch, we baked it, divided into quarters and repeat.…
Okay, technically "cars" are't regressive taxes. Our focus on them is. That we prioritize and promote facilities overwhelmingly for private automobile use is a cost we impose on everyone, but for those who are poor they are a regressive tax.
Seattle folks (and some online folks) may have noticed I've been a bit absent from politics, especially cheerleading folks to get out and talk to voters and so forth. The reason is simple: health. I've had a progressive (and so far unknown) eye issue. At first it was just my left eye and I dealt with it, but I gave up driving early in the summer and gave up biking a few weeks ago as my…
People have been using "ebikes" on Seattle's multi-use trails for some time. These are primarily pedal assist ones capped at 15, 20 or 25 mph. Our household recently got an electric cargo bike with this feature. It's great because it's insurance that you can get where you need to go, even if a little tired or the hills are bigger than you realized on the route you picked (a critical…
Seattle's Mayor, Jenny Durkan, announced a new interim director, for the city department of transportation (SDOT), Linea Laird. Urbanist twitter was aghast at this choice to lead SDOT as Laird's most recent project was the state highway 99 replacement: a tunnel with no downtown exits is useless for freight or transit. “Why are we choosing a car focused person to lead SDOT during the…
Seattle's Department of Transportation (SDOT) put up a new speed limit map last week. Seattle had a couple of years ago changed local law so that default speed limits for arterials was lowered to 25 mph and non-arterials was lowered to 20 mph. But, it will take a long time to officially change all roads because the process described to me in email involved evaluating a handful of urban…
It's 2032. The Mayor of Seattle – in 2032 a woman of color being mayor will be almost unremarkable – stands before the city council and distinguished guests to announce the completion of a program that marks Seattle officially becoming carbon neutral. While Seattle couldn't control all of its carbon emissions directly, we discovered that the vast majority were under our control and what…
Seattle's city council committee devoted to transportation issues received a presentation last week on our free floating bike share program and then passed an ordinance out of committee. The current bike "free floating" (park anywhere) bike share program is still technically under pilot rules. Lime Bike is apparently currently "winning" – I'm not at all surprised as I use a Lime bike at…
There's still a window where we can limit global warning to 1.5 C rather than 2 C. As David Roberts notes in that article, that half a degree means saving hundreds of millions of lives, prevents inundations of some islands and coastal areas, not to mention the affects on the wider environment. That half a degree seems worth it to me.
The latest Bike Master Plan was adopted in 2014. There's even a map . But plans require implementation and that's where I sometimes feel we've lost our way. I've historically just accepted bike infrastructure as what it is, even being happy someone painted sharrows on a road to maybe warn folks in cars that people on bikes might be present. But since having a kid and really…
I'm just declaring bankruptcy on clever titles about the head tax vote. Considering how much energy I put into the head tax (still a lot less than many), I feel I can post my own hot take on my own blog even if I can't come up with a good title. Anyway, it was repealed . It was pretty inevitable after the last minute special meeting was called. I went to the vote anyway. I spoke. There…
I was at city hall to give comment against repealing the EHT. One minute isn't very long so I left out a bit. This is my full comment, roughly written this morning since we only had 24 hours notice .
The EHT is on fast track for repeal .
The city of Seattle has delayed or put on hold a number of transit and safe streets projects in recent months, including many funded from the Move Seattle Levy . Notable projects include:
Last night I (perhaps foolishly) stayed up late semi-manually extracting data from PDFs to create a single master spreadsheet with the kind of data and calculations I have on these the previous posts . The takeaway graph is of course the one for each total department in per capita 2017 dollars:
I previously looked at how much the city of Seattle has planned to spend in total every year since 2005 – divided by Seattle populated and adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars. Another question is to ask how different departments spending has changed in that time frame. The big topic right now is homelessness and housing. I pulled the adopted expenditures for three departments:
There's now a movement to repeal the tiny head tax passed by the Seattle City Council. Suddenly lots of folks are experts about how the city council could have just done something different and still somehow funded the massive number of homes we need to build in Seattle and King County in order to begin addressing homelessness for real and making homes affordable for all. Parts of the…
I stopped biking to work regularly at about the sixth month of pregnancy. Almost five years ago! I kept trying to get back into it but with kiddo management and time, I just never did get into a regular cadence again. Since this is May , some coworkers of course organized and encouraged folks to get biking again so I've been trying!
The Washington State property tax is one of the most complicated in the nation That quote is from an overview provided by MRSC which helps local governments in Washington with legal and policy guidance. I knew it was complicated. I'm digging through the data the King County Assessor's office provides so I can answer questions like "what is the average property tax paid for single family…
A friend of mine Jason Hahn who I've met in the last couple years "in politics" wrote a short little post called "Shameless in Seattle". A short quote because a longer one would be the entire post: Today I read in the Seattle Times that there are 4,280 school-age children living in homelessness in Seattle. This is 45% more than when our city leaders supposedly declared a homelessness…
Tonight (literally, as I type!) I'm at the public hearing for city council districts 3 and 7 on the Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) upzone plan. I've written before about the zoning plan. Tonight folks are giving verbal testimony to five of our city council members, as well as writing up their comments on paper. You can also submit comments online by emailing the council ! I gave…
Note: if you read my blog for more general policy related politics, then my apologies, but this is about insider stuff and specifically some stuff that has gone down with King County Democrats. I don't like talking about insider stuff too much because what matters is helping people not party rules and games. But "insiders" are the ones getting things done. Good insiders try to be as…
I want to tell you about 417 acres of land owned by the city of Seattle, about 1% of the Seattle that does not have a road on it. This land does not have any housing on it or city offices or facilities freely open to everyone. You have to pay money to use this land.
It's a number that gets bandied about a lot. Depending on who is involved in the conversation you will have angry repudiations and corrections of that number. "Well, actually ..." followed by a claim of a wildly different number. I happened upon Rezone Seattle today which pointed me at page 421 in the appendices (pdf) of Seattle's Comprehensive Plan . That page has the end of a very long…