Seattle is bankrupting its non-profit housing providers.

https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/seattles-winter-eviction-moratorium-is-endangering-affordable-housing/

It is preventing new non-profit housing from being built by making financing of it impossible.

"Power's out, school's out: School districts in Issaquah, Bellevue, and Kent have canceled school for the third day in a row. Schools in Lake Washington, Tahoma, and Mercer Island districts are also closed."

drill, baby.
fucking
Drill.

@2
Relax.
It’s as if students are learning anything in Washington schools.
50% of students can’t read at grade level so they aren’t exactly missing out on anything

After these storms, I don't want to hear a single peep from the "let's ban natural gas for heating/appliances in homes" ever again. Our gas fireplace was the only thing keeping our house warm for the 48+ hours we didn't have power, our gas range enabled us to still cook, and our gas hot water heater provided us with hot showers and hot water to wash dishes. If it weren't for those three things, we would've had to scramble to find a hotel or airbnb last minute that allowed three dogs, and god knows how much that would've cost us out of pocket.

And for the "ban gas powered lawn equipment" crowd, gas powered chainsaws and trimmers helped clear roads and got the cities moving again without having to wait for the fire department, PSE, etc.

@3 with a glaring typo in his post shitting on students for their literacy rates, perhaps the only thing more satisfyingly predictable than a rain soaked November morning.

“[the donold's pick] [to run our War Department]
[pardon me, our 'defense' dept], Pete Hegseth
. . . also compelled conservatives to ‘mock,
humiliate, intimidate, and crush our leftist
opponents’ and to ‘attack first.’”

well, that explains
‘thump you!’ sent
here to thump Us
Lefties right here
at the Stranger.

let’s hope
the full Senate’s
not Totes Insane too
and tells eltrumpfster to
shove his pick up his arse

@3

yeah
I'll "relax"
when your pick
disbands or disables
the dept. of Education

@4

drill, baby.
Drill.

@5
How do
You know
I wasn’t using
Creative syntax
like kristoforian?

@4 Or you could've put on a sweater and made sandwiches. Also, fuck leaf blowers. Gas AND electric. Use a damn rake.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GN0mnE-H3rI

lol hegseth is such a fuckin wanker, please come at me bro

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_(Huxley_novel)

"Judge not too much and love more."

https://sacred-texts.com/bud/bear.htm

SMOKEY THE BEAR SUTRA
BY GARY SNYDER

@7: Why so anti-comfort? Better to have hot chocolate. I agree with the rest of your comment though.

@8: What genre would you describe that music as?

Balls.

Unfortunately the posting from Bluesky isn’t lasting (I guess the TS folks can’t shake that sweet Musk money).

Aside, literally every zombie twitter link story has an equivalent posting on Bluesky. Example, https://bsky.app/profile/johnhopperstadtv.bsky.social/post/3lbk4uiimsk2e

For the love of all that is holy, please stop supporting that shithole.

nyt:

Bluesky, Smiling at Me

Bluesky has a hint of the old
Twitter magic, but the feeling of
freedom it offers might be even better.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/22/technology/bluesky-x-alternative.html

a couple of ‘nyt picks’ of readers’ comments:

I opened a Bluesky account and closed my Twitter account last week. Not because I'm interested in entering a lefty echo chamber, as a few readers suggest, but because the new X has become unusable.

My feed became dominated by random "blue checks"... I was bombarded by ads for things I had no interest in... and my favorite follows no longer posted because they had already left the site.

Bluesky is breath of fresh air for those of us that like to follow news events in real time and interact directly with experts. (Like what you could once do on Twitter.).

There's nothing on Bluesky that prevents conservative viewpoints from being shared. But I have a hunch that conservatives, especially of the MAGA variety, prefer safety in numbers and will stick to their own echo chambers.
--Michael; Ecuador

For those who are complaining about Bluesky being an echo chamber of the left - because they aren't tolerating the vitriol of MAGA trolls forget that toleration is a social contract.

There are people there who want to discuss things with good intent, without calling people slurs or denigrating them. What we don't want is the echo chamber of nasty.

There is the paradox of tolerance -- when i start to tolerate your intolerance we no longer have a tolerant society.

So I put up boundaries about how people can interact with me on Bluesky. I am willing to discuss things in good faith. I am unwilling to entertain intolerance.
--PB; Canada

oodles:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/22/technology/bluesky-x-alternative.html#commentsContainer

FUCK
MUX.

@1 that story is not going to get covered here because Sharon Lee is one of the OG's of the homeless industry and the law in question was put in place but TS favorite pol so to insinuate either of them could be in the wrong here would cause universes to collapse upon themselves. No doubt if the council heeds Lee's call and actually takes a look at repealing or amending that legislation though there will be much complaining about the how the corporate bought council is doing the will of the landlords.

As noted in the op-ed DC recently rolled back their eviction ban because low income providers were folding

https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/dc-rolls-back-pandemic-era-protections-that-cost-landlords-hundreds-of-millions/3731955/

My beloved and I wonder if we'll make it very far into 2025.
I don't know what to add to this comment thread. :(

Wishing you the best auntie g

https://youtu.be/AvhWausoKaQ?feature=shared

Buddhamat dear, I hear Sara Nelson just LOVES Twitter. Can't get enough of it.

(that oughta get The Mean Girls at The Stranger to stop linking to it)

Has it occurred to anybody yet that, re Trump's cabinet announcements, it's just Trump selling his publicity coattails? Isn't it possible that all these names are paying Trump, or Trump is paying them back, by just putting their names in the national spotlight? Most of Trump's game is that all his outrageous pronouncements are really just how he garners BILLIONS in free publicity. Publicity that his opponents have yet to learn how to rake in for free as he does. Trump, and more & more his minions, are the poster children for the adage, There is NO SUCH THING as BAD publicity!

Forget about what Trump or ANY of the Republicans say. Very, very little of substance will change under Trump. Only keep an eye & a hand on your wallet & civil rights. It's all misdirection; sleight of hand.

Neither Trump nor ANY of the names which have been broached have ANY interest in policy or governance of ANY kind. It's all a smoke screen for the one thing they care about: Lining their pockets at the expense of the rest of us. It's today's answer to what they used the Flag Burning Amendments smoke screen for during the 1986-95 Savings & Loan Crisis. And they brought it out again without having to change ANYTHING in 2003-11 during the Iraq war.

There's one born every minute........and it's US!!!! (Suckers.....if you're not familiar with that old P. T. Barnum quote.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0_NezngRCg

@18/@19 - This is no time to catastrophize. Stop pouting and get to work.

Please remember that his name is spelled "accused rapist who would not have paid off the victim unless he was guilty Hegseth."

@25, Even if someone who is sued wins, it costs $100,000 in legal fees just to go through the discovery phase of a trial, before settling. It costs $450,000 to get to trial, and another $100,000 or more go through trial to a verdict.

When you buy liability insurance (home owner's, renter's, etc. which defends you against non-auto liability, everywhere) your insurance carrier obtains the right to settle all cases, without admission of liability, as a condition of covering you. If you decline to agree to settle, on the advice of your carrier, they stop paying for the attorneys and trial costs, and aren't on the hook for a jury award. Pragmatically, you lose the right not to settle your case and go to trial.

So would you, or your insurance carrier, pay half a million bucks YOU WILL NEVER GET BACK, to have a 7 of 12 jurors say the allegations had no merit? You also are taking the risk 7 of 12 jurors will go the other way, in spite of the evidence, or Plaintiff's lack of definitive evidence, because jurors are emotionally swayed.

The Plaintiff doesn't pay legal fees unless they win, and then it comes out of the award they get. The Plaintiff's lawyer is risking mostly time, not cash, on the case. If they lose, they aren't out cash. A court order, awarding attorney's fees to the Respondent, for being put through a case where they were innocent, is uneforceable because of U.S. Bankruptcy Laws.

So a case being settled tells us the respondent settled because it was the cheapest option, not anything about the merits of allegations.

These legal costs, are often why GOVERNMENT'S SETTLE LAWSUITS. It's more cost-effective to settle a case, than to win the case. Elected officials have a duty to minimize taxpayer costs of litigation, not a duty to win every case against the government.

I am not saying Hegseth did or didn't do what he is accused of. I am just saying a legal settlement to avoid trial tells us nothing about whether he drugged the woman so she couldn't consent, or whether the sex was consensual.

The reality of the legal landscape, particularly if you are one of the small portion of Americans high-profile and wealthy enough to be judgment proof because of the protections of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, is a reason not to have extra-marital sex, and to marry only with a prenup.

@24: pouting is easier, is more dramatic and garners attention and sympathy. Work is boring and requires effort and time.

@27: So true. And as I grow more ancient, I pout more. The missing ingredient is motivation. Interesting efforts can spur motivation. Here's one interesting suggestion:

https://indivisible.org

@28: followed link. Website feels deja vu - how many organizations like this are there in existence? It would be interesting to see a detailed study on the actual impact that such groups have. Seems like it promotes more talking. We have more ways to talk about politics than any time in human history. If the sheer volume of words being exchanged about humanity's problems had an actual effect, we'd be living in paradise right now.

One of the best ways people could "fight back against Trump," and more specificially, is greatly improve the Democrats and their agenda -- go after them, and to be something better than just a lesser of two evils. That Democratic Party strategy is ultimately, IMO, what got ya'all Trumped. But I know Democrats won't be able to do this. As they're totally out of touch with the working class, versus pronouns and shallow identity politics. So ... brace yourself for at least two terms of the GOP.

Democrats worried about Gaetz? Don't me laugh. Like you didn't see anything in Hunter Biden's laptop, huh? Not to mention AOC defending him for his role in human trafficking, not to mention his penchant for beating prostitutes?

And don't forget - the Russia-Russia part was debunked as fake, also from the Democrats. Not to mention that your total trash Joe Biden raped an aide while he was in the Senate. But oh, she had a landlord-tenant dispute, so she wasn't on the level, huh. And even though her account fulfilled more check boxes for "the actual thing" than Blasey Ford.

Who's liking Gaetz? But you really think this is about mistakenly sleeping with a 17 year old prostitute - say the word, don't dress it up as "sex worker." I used to support legalization and I don't anymore and you know why? Because of the Democrats and because they're so sickening.

Your identity politics are a total front for your endless wars. Something Gaetz with all of his obvious flaws nevertheless opposed. While none of you spoke up against Biden and NATO's war in Ukraine which is one of the major reasons the American people threw you out of 3 branches of government. Because your senile, playing-with-his-genitals-in-public-at-Howard, nuclear-war-lusting, UHC-hating, social-security-screwing, homelessness-ignoring rapist has been bringing us to the brink of global catastrophe -- and while ya'all complain about your pronouns.

Also: I don't know if some of you pronoun-correct, "sex-worker" language appropriate Democrats noticed --- but there's something called a real economy and real jobs for women - and growing numbers of young women (and young men for that matter) getting raped for a living doesn't make the list, nor is making the conditions of someone's rape "better," including entirely pretentious and so-called better "labels," the solution. Some of you don't know any better but a lot of you just make me want to vomit. Along with your blindness to a nuclear war with Russia and your disgusting party's bankrolling of a genocidal slaughter of civilians, many of whom are children, in Gaza. You not only lost because of the corporate elite's disgraceful lesser of two evils strategy -- which was no longer the lesser - you lost because most of you are a bunch of conceited and conditioned sheep who think you're so bright while you're helping to walk the entire planet to the edge of a cliff. Because you don't see anything beyond the surface appearances and what your clowns on MSBNC and CNN are telling you.

The American people do not want a war with Russia nor do they want a genocidal slaughter in Gaza BUT they support the existence of Israel too. Remember WW II?

And they want UHC, sufficient social security, affordable housing, and cheap groceries and gas. And yeah, they don't want millions of people walking into the country without being screened and being in compliance with US labor laws.

And yes, many of them are beginning to think Democrats are totally FOS on climate because if you really cared why would you be supporting a nuclear and 3rd WW and record spending on the biggest climate offenders and criminals in US history -- and while talking about windmills, pretending you don't see that Biden -- the US -- blew up the Nordstream Pipeline. With Kamala's complicity in everything.

We have been jumping up and down about all of this FOR FOUR YEARS. When we weren't being just plain ignored, or listening to the loud singing of crickets from so-callled progressives, we were being sent death threats, obscene message and pictures from members of the Democratic Party, Cheney Wing, about their version of Putin having his penis in their version of someone's mouth.

Ya'all make me sick and ya'll deserve Trump. Though as usual, you won't learn from it, so I fully anticipate to be writing in my choice for president for the rest of my life as the Empire burns and crashes. "I didn't leave the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party left me." Whether I continue for any of them at the state and local level: YOU ARE ON NOTICE.

whether I continue [voting] for any of them

And there are more and more of us out here than any of you clearly have any inkling of.

Another case that proves The Stranger's arguments for "no youth jail," were spot on:

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/14-year-old-shot-at-seattle-officers-during-pursuit-prosecutors-say/

North American Jay Bird is like a cartoon of everything wrong with America.

@34 -- ranked
choice Voting? you
might get Larger numbers
when the lesser of two Weevils
can be your 2nd or even 3rd Choices

the 'democratic' party left the
Left and working people
Ages Ago & Demand
our votes, blaming
US when they
Lose. this
one took
me by
Surp-
rise.

Across the
fucking Board
against a Lunatic
wannabee Gonnabee
Dictator, Day One & beyond?

fucking
Whoa. I was
equally Astonished
at Biden's debate debacle

it seems to me to be
Political Malpractice
in the First Degree.

let the Pill-
iging begin.

@24

bugger off
auntie Gee's
got every Reason
to be distressed over
this Travesty of an Election
a Plane rocketing towards either
an Extinction or Armageddon which-
ever come first. Mother Nature bats Last

but the
Get to Work
part's Good Advice

a fucking
Planet rock-

https://youtu.be/peXNAwzyJas?feature=shared

Has anybody heard from xina?

@19 pat L: Thank you, Pat. I have just been slammed with Parkinson's on top of Type II.
It's really hard to cope right now to the tsunami of changes in my life, especially during the holiday season.
And the newly acquired additional help I have gotten over the past two weeks will be unavailable during Thanksgiving week due to the holiday. So I'll be left on my own to deal with these stressfully challenging health issues. Getting around in fall and winter has been difficult in icy conditions. It will be a nightmare for me on sidewalks and crossing at traffic lights, even with use of a walker or a cane. And I have diligently been taking walks--up and down stairs, up and through my neighborhood, downtown. I'm told I'm already doing all the right things, and I'm STILL getting thrown under the bus.
If I could still function as independently as I have until recently I wouldn't be so stressed out right now.
My parents both had Parkinson's. The timing for me to be diagnosed with Parkinson's is shitty: I just got blessed with a wonderful music agent who loves my music and wants to promote it. What to do if I can't write, play, and edit music anymore? Arm and knee jerks and muscle spasms, despite following my doctor's instructions, are driving me crazy. And I refuse to give up my beloved VW, even if I only drive during the warm weather months anymore.
To add to my occupational frustrations my music composition writing software program is being discontinued. I have until mid August 2025 to upgrade to, learn, and switch over to an entirely new one. I Google searched and found to my chagrin that current software users who switched over to the new program are already having trouble with it. There have been reported issues with things that have worked like a well oiled machine that the new program "doesn't recognize". Terrific. I don't want to lose what I have worked on and built up with a deep passion over the last two decades.

@24: See my response to pat L @19, Phoebe. It isn't just the disastrous results of the 2024 presidential election that have me down. I'm not exactly in a position to "get to work" other than address my current health issues right now. I have been adjusting to a tremendous lot and hope I can still safely shift gears and drive my beloved VW, compose, score, and arrange music, and play my piano and wind instruments.

@24 Phoebe in Wallingford and @39 kristofarian: How can I get to work when I physically and neurologically cannot? Everybody is telling me to take things one day at a time. I have had to wait six months for an occupational therapist. I don't start OT until December 12th.
I am amazed I can still comment without a mess of typos right now. I have gone to my primary doctor and neurologist recently for reevaluations on my body's reaction to Carbidopa-Levadopa and Lexapro for Parkinson's. I have a lesion in my spinal column that is causing excruciating upper back pain---like I have just been stabbed with a kitchen knife. The only remedy that helps ease the back pain isn't prescription medication or an OTC drug, but ice packs. I have to lie down several times daily with this home remedy to get relief.
Even with prescribed Lidocaine patches my level of neuropathy has worsened. How and where am I supposed to get to work?
The Orange Turd's "concept for a [healthcare] plan" to replace the ACA is simple: 'Sick people, fucking DIE already.' And with anti-vaxxer RFK Jr. being sworn in as Head of the Health Department in January a lot of us should be dropping like flies.

@27 Jeebus and @28 Phoebe in Wallingford: Read my comments above, however lengthy, and I think you'll both find I have sufficient reason to be upset. Thank you both very little.

@32: “Because you don't see anything beyond the surface appearances and what your clowns on MSBNC and CNN are telling you.”

With the exception of Kristofarian, I doubt most Stranger commenters watch cable television news. That stuff rots your brain, Jay Bird. 😉

@143: So sorry about the diagnosis! How were we to know? Without that context, comment @18 seemed totally political. Dearly hope you get out of pain as much as possible.

Auntie grizelda, I'm really sorry as well to hear about your situation. You write: "To add to my occupational frustrations my music composition writing software program is being discontinued." If you don't mind my asking, what's the name of this software? I've observed in recent years that, with the consolidation of the software industry, useful software just ceases to exist, and things I used to be able to do on my computer years ago that are not even imaginable now. But hey, isn't it wonderful we can have AI instead? /s

In answer to your question about xina, I see she posted here a few days ago:
https://www.thestranger.com/visual-art/2024/11/19/79789676/a-broke-manhattan-made-keith-haring-a-famous-artist/comments

I'm reading these comments by North American Jay Bird @30 to @35 which are an almost verbatim recitation of a whole laundry list of Kremlin agitprop, the likes of which no normal human being would have the time or the inclination to compile or regurgitate, and I always have to remind myself that the disinformation operatives and propagandists have an almost unlimited amount of time and resources. They are part of the reason for our societal breakdown.

@46: lol, there’s no reason to suspect Jay Bird is a Russian agent! People in this comments section constantly accuse one another of being paid agents of foreign powers, and it’s pure nonsense. 😂 I get accused of being a foreign spy all the time, and all it does is downgrade my opinion of my accusers’ intelligence. I hate to break it to everyone, but no one cares what we say in here. Jay Bird isn’t a Russian spy, he’s just a regular old Fox-pilled Republican who believes a bunch of stuff that isn’t true. 😁 I know tons of people like him IRL, and they all talk this way! 😂

@47, you can laugh off my comment all you want. And certainly it is hard to imagine that this individual is directly in the pocket of Russia or some other foreign power. But you have no factual proof that they are not getting directed to make these comments by some political entity, just like I have no factual proof that they are not.

If someone has the free time to spend their Saturday afternoon going through a laundry list of disinformation which is so faithfully anti-Democrat and anti-American, then I'll point out how strange this looks. And even if we can't prove any motives, we can point out disinformation when we see it. We are awash in disinformation today, regardless of how much of it is deliberate or coming from dupes.

And yeah, I'm sure nobody reads these comment threads. But you hit enough comment threads that nobody reads, eventually it adds up.

@Trumpus, just cause your trolling pay is in $ and comes from AIPAC and/or Stop Antisemitism (M. Gessen on Stop Antisemitism, an organization dedicated to getting people fired) doesn't make it any more palatable.

@48: It’s true you and I can neither prove nor disprove that any commenter here is a Russian agent. In the face of such uncertainty, the rational thing is to fall back on your priors.

My priors are that Russian agents are extremely rare in the United States, but committed and impassioned viewers of Fox News are extremely common. Here on Slog, commenters ranting unconvincingly at enormous length are also very common, while erroneous and unsupported accusations of paid foreign agentry are so common that it’s actually more suspicious if you HAVEN’T ever been accused! 😃

Another prior of mine is that conspiracy theories of the form “everyone who disagrees with me is the puppet of some villainous, shadowy mastermind” are so seductive that you have to extra vigilant whenever you find yourself thinking along those lines. Remember, it is always highly likely that you, personally, have somehow, unexpectedly stumbled onto a battlefield in the war of Good vs. Evil and must now unsheathe your righteous sword. It is always much more likely that you have just encountered some random dumbass on the internet. 😄

@49: Ha ha ha, look what came in while I was typing @50! Ha ha ha! Not just an agent, but an AIPAC agent! You know…THE JEWS! 😂🤣😂🤣

@50: “Remember, it is always highly likely that you, personally, have somehow, unexpectedly stumbled onto a battlefield in the war of Good vs. Evil”

Uh unfortunate typo, that should be “highly UNLIKELY.”

Unless of course you’re Angryone @49, in which case, yes, the Internarional Jewish Conspiracy is absolutely sending secret agents to get you fired from your job for anti-semitism, JUST AS YOU ALWAYS SUSPECTED! 😂🤣😂🤣

@45 Phoebe in Wallingford: Thank you, Phoebe. I admit in @18 that I didn't elaborate on what has had me so stressed. I was feeling really overwhelmed when I posted the comment.
One day at a time, and I have another ZOOM meeting with my music agent in a couple of weeks.

@46 cressona: Thank you, too, for your concerns, and sharing thoughts and ideas.
I have been composing music on Finale for 20 years successfully. I hate to part with it, though, and risk losing what I have.
Finale, as of August 24, 2024 was discontinued and replaced by Dorico. The claim by MakeMusic is that Finale can no longer live up to current technology standards after 35 years. While Dorico might offer more contemporary features that Finale cannot, I call this high tech profiteering bullshit. If something ain't broken, don't try to "fix" it. And Artificial Intelligence (AI)---the term ALONE is something I find additionally worrisome.

I want to use my own brain to write music, not have a computer microchip do it all for me. It sounds like something so 1960s sci-fi dystopian that Rod Serling of The Twilight Zone would love. Serling actually did have an episode of The Twilight Zone, "The Brain Center at Whipple's", Season 5, Episode 33, that first aired on May 15, 1964. This story was about an executive who chose to fully automate his corporation by replacing all his human employees with computers. The CEO was SO obsessed with his company supposedly becoming "the wave of the future" that he himself in the end got replaced by a computer. The electronic board of directors eventually deemed Whipple, being human, obsolete.
That's a pretty eerily spot on prediction of the 21st Century coming from 60 years ago.
SpellCheck and AutoCorrect are infuriating enough. I prefer to be able to think and work on my own.
Food for cyber-thought: Do we really need to make Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg ad nauseum any insanely wealthier than they already are?

@ North AmericanJay Bird...
Wow, just... wow.
One thing you don't get (for example, Ukraine) is that half the people are going to disagree with any position you hold, whatever they are (same goes for me). The U.S. has never been monolithic, and sure as hell ain't now.