Comments

1

Best to you Jas. In the tradition of Jen Graves, I enjoyed your art reviews and you have a good eye for design. I see successful days for you ahead.

3

why do I get the feeling the stranger is not going to exist by the end of this year

4

Bye Jas. Who's left over there on Dearborn? Anyone besides Mudede & Savage?

5

Jeeze
ANOTHER
good one bites
the Dust (figuratively).

thank you for all the
Enlightenment Jas!
gonna Miss y.o.u.

6

"We politicized
MASK WEARING, no way
we couldn't not politicize this."

"republicans" weaponize
Everything in their War
on Women the Poor
the Middle Class
and on Mother
Nature

if They cannot
have all the Power
well neither will Anyone

but does it seem like
we wanna have a
War on China?

7

"Hopefully we've learned to never again take seriously anything these asshats write in the future."
--@lost ALL my Marbles somewhere in Seattle

& I've learned a Lot from you
right here in this rag
you Love to hate

8

@2: fantastic Gish Gallop. you're really skilled, esp. sneaking Covid-unrelated #6 in there.

what to refute 1st? does one refute them all? who/what is "Media"? how much time to waste responding? why bother?

10

The very best to you, Jas!
Here's wishing you every good thing!

14

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6DaUAourSc

17

Jas, sorry to hear you're departing. Enjoyed your irreverent writing. Appreciate that you didn't take yourself too seriously. Always enjoyed your Seattle Sticker Patrol. And I respect how gracefully you stepped into the art beat when no one could fill the shoes of Jen Graves.

Considering that both Jas and Matt Baume's last days are Friday, I can't help but wonder if there's something bigger afoot. Hope not, but goodness knows, this media outlet hasn't been the same since the pandemic. A lot hasn't been the same since the pandemic.

Thanks a lot, China. To bring this back to another topic today.

18

Oh, I'm really sorry to see you leave this place, Jaz. I love your eye-for-things, your writing. The sticker patrol is a hoot. Damn. I am sure you will find some other outlet for your flair and talent that will be available to us all.

22

The right-wing majority of the Supreme Court faces a dilemma: Undoubtedly they hate Biden's loan forgiveness, but striking it down will require a major expansion of the definition of "standing" -- which conservative judicial activists have been fighting for decades to narrow. Even if one has no strong feelings about loan forgiveness itself, it will be interesting to watch Alito, Thomas and company try to thread this procedural needle. I'm not making a prediction here but I won't be surprised if they (reluctantly) throw the case out.

23

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyGzseVQPFs

Can you imagine a world without springs?

24

Thanks for all of your good work, Jas; like your fellow departee (is that a word?) your excellent writing, especially on queer issues, will be missed. That is a topic long held dear by the Stranger and readers.

Best of luck in your future endeavors!

25

@2 Calling covid-19 the "China virus" is racist, full stop. It engenders fear, hatred and stochastic violence toward all people of visibly Asian descent. You and Trump do not get a pass on this one, regardless of whether the lab-leak hypothesis is true. Sorry.

26

Man. A lie circles the world before the truth gets it’s pants on. The WSJ was a clickbait headline that almost nobody thoroughly read and the report itself deeply flawed.

That DOE report did NOT conclude that SARSv2 pandemic was 100% the result of lab leak. It gave a “low confidence” probability that there might be credibility to the theory. The report is a mess. It at one point says they don’t know but then say they do.

No new evidence was presented. No smoking gun. They based this on an unnamed intelligence source and do not clarify what that source based its finding on. The CIA and NSA cannot verify this source.

Does nobody remember WMD’s in Iraq? The DOE was hopelessly partisan. This was more culture war sabotage. It’s not scientific.

First off the DOE does not have infectious disease experts. Their epidemiologists mostly study radiation and chemical exposure. The bio “labs” they claim give them expertise are shared academic labs that mostly study bio fuels. Not viruses.

The reason the DOE can do this is because the Chinese totalitarian government refuses to cooperate in any investigation. This is largely due to increased tensions and the authoritarian internal politics of China. Nobody there will ever admit to anything because they face firing squads.

Anyway. You can read the report on Google. The report itself is from the earlier one compiled largely by old Trump era loyalists and selectively edited.

We know that there were unexplained pneumonia cases outside Wuhan in fall of 2019. Before the Wuhan doctor whistleblower leaked the ICU report in December. So most actual epidemiologists still largely favor zoonotic origins because… Occam’s Razor.

Is it possible the virus spread to human populations en mass through a lab leak? Yes. Sure. No scientist omits the possibility.

The fact is we will never ever know for sure. And this report present zero evidence to alter this.

27

Ps. The Stranger is going under unless it gets a big infusion of cash. You got your wish, Shitbags.

And like every monkeys paw wish the irony is where will the lonely trolling Slog shitbags here go?

28

Best wishes to Jas in their new endeavors. I always enjoyed Sticker Patrol.

I was wondering how long it would take before people predicted the end of The Stranger. Predictably, not long.

@26 I agree with your conclusions, but I made the same mistake as you about DoE re: COVID expertise. At least on paper, they've done quite a bit. I'll agree that none of it looks like "figuring out where it came from" though. https://science.osti.gov/nvbl

29

Ugh, piling on w/ the well wishes for Jas. Holy Hamburgers will the Sticker Patrol posts be missed.

I'd think there's at least a chance this is just unfortunate timing for them & Matt. Matt's writing a book after all. Knowing a couple people who've taken on this endeavor, that seems like a full time job in itself and it'd have to be utterly exhausting to undertake such an effort while also writing here, even on a part-time basis. That said, the advertising revenue model seems for online publications without a subscription fee seems rather suspect and it's hard to see how it pencils out without some serious strain. Hoping for the best.

Take care Jas and thanks for all your contributions here!

30

@27: Always brightening our day; that’s our oft-banned prof’ indeed. Where are YOU going to go, to verbally abuse persons whose arguments you cannot answer? As you yourself have written, most moderators are not as forgiving as moderators here are, and that goes for both tolerating ban-worthy behaviors, and in allowing a banned person to create new profiles. You’re the one who’ll be feeling pretty lonely if this place shuts down.

As for myself, I continue reading here because the steady stream of misfortune reported here validates my decision to leave Seattle, a decision which had nothing to do with the Stranger’s downward spiral. I do my little part to improve the civic dialog here, because I loved living in Seattle, and hope the place makes at least a partial recovery. The Stranger seems implacably opposed to any such recovery, but I can still be a small voice of reason, now and again. If this place goes the way of the dodo, then I’ll simply pay even more attention to local issues where I now live.

I hope the good writers here continue to find good work elsewhere, come what may.

34

@26: Wow, you're really sweating bullets over this. What's your dog in this fight? Dinner with Xi Jinping?

36

@30. Oh, come on. Who of us haven't been banned at least once now, tensor ;-)

37

If the stranger goes under, it's because it allowed blip to get banned by resident shitbag dumbass seventiesrocks who has been banned about 80 times. Blip and Robotslave were the only other folks who provided meaningful commentary before the peanut gallery of shitheads took over.

38

@13: "why bother" in the sense of "why bother shooting down a gish gallop?" your mind won't change when @26 spends 10 minutes refuting your half-truths. you post in bad faith.

39

@33: Spanish Flu didn't start in Spain. It started in Kansas. Look it the fuck up.

Did I change your mind?

40

@36: I’ve never been banned here, or from anywhere else. Issues with my personal IT were the entire reason I took out a new account. (I even appended “na,” for “new account,” for everyone here to be sure it was the same human.)

There’s a difference between being irreverent, combative, strident (each of which applies to me at times) and being verbally abusive toward anyone who gets the better of you in an argument, or in tendentiously provoking conflict instead of constructive dialog. It takes a lot of such abuses for the Stranger’s moderators to ban someone, and it’s pretty funny when someone refuses to acknowledge just how much effort it takes to promote banishment.

@37: blip made some good points, but also pretty consistently argued in bad faith, and also asserted some pretty insulting opinions as if they were facts. I really don’t miss him.

41

Good luck and much success in your future endeavors, Jas.

43

@37 If the TS goes under it will be because Covid killed their revenue stream (ads for events around town) and fundamentally altered how those venues communicate with customers. Capacity restrictions and safety protocols necessitated that many venues communicate directly with their customers and mobile makes it so much easier to reach a mass audience. Venues and promotors no longer need to rely on channels like TS to reach audiences. They can now do it via social or their own direct channels for much cheaper.

It also didn't help TS took a large pivot into progressive policies and alienated portions of their audience (homeowners, business owners, those who want to feel safe in their neighborhood). The continued gas lighting and outright propaganda published by some of the writers here was really galling and like @30 it was what promoted me to start commenting on articles. It's a sad thing because TS had a platform and they could used it to provide alternative viewpoints like they did in the past but they got in bed with SA and Sawant and followed her right down the tubes. I hope the writers who called TS their home are easily able to find new outlets and if TS does indeed cease publishing I don't think the current iteration will be missed that much.

44

It's the CCP virus now. Being of artificial origin of malicious intent, the previous COVID naming should be reevaluated.

45

@39 - It was Spanish Kansas, tho.

I predict SF approves the 5-million payout to most black folks in the city sometime in September or October of 2024, thereby ensuring a GOP sweep of all national races. Why? Because we never, ever miss a chance to participate in a good ol' circular firing squad in the Dem party!

Maybe TS is simply cleaning house in order to run a super-streamlined, bargain basement type of operation.

47

All the best in your new adventures, Jas. I've always enjoyed your Sticker Patrol and amazing flair for design. Thanks for the memories and sharing Simple Minds' "Don't You Forget About Me" video.
I have a DVD copy of The Breakfast Club, and plan to watch it in your honor tonight.

@45: Oh, Jesus, Morty---!!!---for the sake of our country, Washington State, and what's left of our democracy, I hope you're wrong.

48

I find Phoenix pretty depressing. Some people formerly from around here have moved there because it is soooo much cheaper to live, but it takes, I’m told, quite a bit of adjusting from life in Southern California. I’m never very happy when it is 120 degrees out, which it is in Phoenix, nearly every day for about nine months of the year. The miserable heat is all I can think about, but I know some absolutely love it. There have been maybe three or four days in the past couple of years when planes couldn’t take off from the airport. It was too hot for lift to take place. And please don’t give me that “yeah, but it’s dry heat” crap. Stepping outside is like opening the door of your oven to check on the apple pie. The heat comes in blasts.

My Phoenix tale involves an acquaintance. She had just purchased a used ’72 Corvette (her dream car) and headed toward Phoenix to road test it and visit a close friend who had been transferred there. Not knowing the ways of the desert, she parked her new-used car on the street in front of her friend’s house. Unknowingly, she had left a small mirror in the car’s rear deck. The sun was so intense that day that it reflected off that mirror and burned a hole in the back of the leather-covered seat. When she came out of her friend’s house (to make a gin run probably), the car was filled with smoke.

Riverside-San Bernadino much the same story. Only they get these one-hour biblical floods at certain times of the year. It also has a sad, big-box store suburban vibe that would certainly put me on Elavil.

In general though? These are deceptively tough times for almost everyone. Yeah, I know. Not the Great Depression or WWII, but standard-of-living is plummeting. So is the sense of community. I’m not one bit surprised that polls are finding us sad.

Again, don’t give a fuck what China has to say about anything – and won’t until they get their shit together.

Wouldn’t characterize all justices as “sucky,” but the three that T-Man appointed are going to make sure that the Christian Nationalist agenda is pushed, and that Progressives aren’t going to get anything that comes before the Court. I can almost say it for sure. You can forget about loan cancellation even though the toad who argued against it got shot down all morning. Religious beliefs (and corporations) rule at SCOTUS.

Nisqually: I was in London. The earthquake was breaking news there. I wondered for the rest of the week what I’d be coming home to. No damage. The cable box had fallen off the TV.

All those injectables that help to control Hgb-a1c work a part of the brain that slows digestion. Food stays in your stomach seemingly forever. You can actually be hungry, but you can’t eat because your stomach is still full. Takes a lot of getting used to, and you have to slowly increase dosage over time or it will fuck you up. I didn’t much care for it although it was indeed helpful in lowering a1c. The big stumbling block though is the price. Victoza, the drug I took, was around $2700 for about 3 months. I got financial assistance from Novo Nordisk, the manufacturer, but it was very hard to get it and maintain it. Lots of hoops of fire to jump through (by design, I imagine). Too many hurdles and side effects for vanity in my opinion.

Best wishes to you, Jas, and Matt. I always liked the Caesar at Lowell’s.

49

@32 spews "Obama sent Seal Team 6 into Pakistan on circumstantial evidence, probability, and a hunch. No smoking gun that Bin Laden was really there. Intelligence rarely has the smoking gun, but its better than nothing. We are at about that same place with COVID origin intelligence."

Erm, BS. The CIA had a good idea that bin Laden lived in the compound. They then created a vaccination drive, getting a tiny sample of blood left over from vaccinating a child at the compound. DNA testing revealed that it was BL's descendant there, so they had a very good idea that he was in residence. There was far better evidence that BL was in residence than that Iraq had WMDs.

50

@2, @13, and @33 Insane lil MAGAt: All this ignorant bullshit because your Uncle Goober's still blew up in '03?
You are one lonely little trolling racist incel! Raindrop must be so proud of you. Do you get a doggy treat every time you spew on SLOG? That's right--roll over and play dumb!

@25 CKathes for the WIN!

@49 re @32: Ignore him. 70s isn't all there. He's missed a lot over the years from all the weed blackouts.
And notice that it was our 44th U.S. President, Barack Obama, NOT George "Dubya" Bush---who successfully eliminated global terrorist Osama bin Laden on May 2, 2011. The Obamas and Bidens had to clean up the mess the Bush die-nasty left behind in 2009.

51

Jas, you sure about the last sentence in the first paragraph of the "lab leak" item? I don't think any of the other intelligence agencies have changed their view of the source of the virus due to DoE's opinion.

And good luck - you'll do OK.

52

I don't know who's lonely here, or who's an incel here, or who's even a racist here. Neither does anyone else.

53

Best wishes, Jas dear. Thank you for putting up my occasional crankiness.

As far as the virus origin is concerned, I'll leave that to the scientists. My weighing in would be like asking a Pomeranian to explain theoretical physics.

54

Jas, noooo! I love your POV, can’t believe I’m going to have to go back to having my own taste in art, culture and stickers. I’m going to accept this as a personal challenge. You carry many of us on your tasteful coat tails. Im not shocked at your burn out, you always know what’s up. We’ll miss you. I’ll be googling your name in the coming months to find you.

55

so find a safe space
throw away your pencil

and have a safe Trip!
or maybe several
it's JAS Time,
baby!

56

Happy Trails Jas

57

@52...said the Twitter lovin' MAGA denier.

@54 soapboxstack and @55 kristofarian: +2 Agreed. I plan to Google Jas in the coming months, too.
She has a bright future ahead of her. It's JAS time, indeed! Sad--first Matt, now Jas. Here's hoping we don't lose The Stranger.

58

@51 Good catch! Morning brain typo, noted the edit. Thanks for the well wishes, everyone!

59

@article Hope all goes well in your future ventures!

Also hope all is well with TS...

60

Interesting how the supposedly pro-freedom and personal rights Stranger is so willing to bend over backwards to defend the Chinese CCP, which has done NOTHING but enslave every neighbor it can, from Nepal to Burma to Korea to the once free Hong Kong. What a ridiculous rag the writers on this paper put out. There is PLENTY of opinion from epidemiologists that the virus mutates from a non-natural synthetic base. Of course, virologists can be like spies or any other specialists. Their fantasies are always to play with the hottest fire, so of course, the Chinese probably didn't do this alone. Private landlords are ruining Seattle as much as the city council, but who does more damage than a for-life govt scientist like the Bat Lady who may have been DELIBERATELY ordered to set loose a pathogen right during the Hong Kong freedom demonstrations. Do the geniuses at the Stranger even want to consider that possibility?

Whatever America's MANY shortcomings, the idea that we should aspire to live like the IMPRISONED communist Chinese population is something that only the stupidest diktat dealers could get behind. It's also SO consistent with hatred of the police, because you know, dictatorships NEVER rely on the police. ROFL.


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