Matt, you are (as usual) an idiot. From the Aurora death:

“At 10:15 p.m., a man in his 30’s attempted to cross the street in the 4500 block of Aurora Avenue North. The man made it to the center jersey barrier and jumped over, and was struck by multiple passing vehicles. The man died at the scene.“

So the pedestrian, at night in poor weather, crossed Aurora at a point where you don’t fucking cross. “Jumped over the jersey barrier”… dumbass played in traffic at night.

Jaywalking across Aurora at night… yeah, not SDOTs fault. Or the cars. It’s the Darwin Award winner.

@1 - completely agree. Blaming Aurora or cars or capitalism or whatever for this is way off base. Jaywalking there is about as smart as sleeping on a railroad track. Also, you can cross under at 46th, so this guy was not only dumb as a fucking rock but too lazy to go to where he could have been safe.

And yes, I do care that someone is dead. But we need to place responsibility where it belongs.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/07/italian-ultra-cyclist-aims-to-complete-first-coast-to-coast-crossing-of-antartica-by-bike

Man, there's a super easy and delicious peanut sauce I've been making for years that's basically just peanut butter, soy sauce, sriracha and some hot water to thin it down. Adding mustard to the mix sounds bonkers (and I love mustard in general.) Is this like mustard seed or powder? And if it's the condiment, I guess I would assume brown, as opposed to yellow? I'm intrigued, but also a little concerned.

“Facebook joins Twitter in planning mass layoffs this week.”

It’s a good start. How do we get them to lay everyone off, and, whilst turning our their corporate lights, apologize for having made even American discourse much, much shittier?

@5,

Fuck, I love stories of nut jobs attempting to cross Antarctica by some means or other. This is a wonderful (and pretty long) tale of such an account with some gorgeous photography to accompany it.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/the-white-darkness

They did a podcast version of the story too, which is also great. I've both read that story and listened to the podcast (albeit a couple years apart) and enjoyed both immensely.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/tnyradiohour/segments/alone-and-foot-antarctica

@8. Fuckin incredible, thanks for sharing broseph.

I know heat pumps cool the air more efficiently than air conditioners, but are they as effective at filtering out smoke during fire season?

It's really never that hot in Seattle (still) provided you can open windows and get a breeze flowing through your home.

What makes me wish I had an air conditioner is the three weeks when it's not only hot, but the air is filled with smoke and ash.

Are heat pumps effective in that situation?

@1 Thanks for pointing that out. This morning when I read that the pedestrian jumped the barrier my first and only thought was what a dumb ass.

Heat pumps are effective in smoke season because you can close up your windows and stay cool without letting the smoke in. You'd probably still need an indoor air purifier but those are cheap.

It is sad that yet another person lost their life on Aurora, but there is a solution. Put a freaking fence on that barrier. No, it won't be pretty but these people will keep running through high speed traffic until there isn't a way to do it. Lowering the speed limit will not help. Writing tickets for speeding won't help.
Put in all the bridges and tunnels you like, but the tweakers will still run across the road if that's the most direct route. I don't know if you've noticed but much of this Aurora jaywalking demographic isn't generally preoccupied with self preservation.

Heat pumps are not just air conditioners. They are also heaters.
The reason they are more efficient is that they are taking existing heat in the air and concentrating it rather than creating it by burning fuel. Electric resistance heat is 100% efficient (but expensive) while a heat pump is about 300-400% efficient. The best gas burning furnace can hit 98% but is expensive and directly polluting many times more than a heat pump (even with coal powered electricity!) and secondarily responsible for even more CO2 through the gas extraction process. That's also why there is a such a push to drop natural gas...it might burn cleaner than wood/coal/diesel/heating oil, but the gas extraction process is so incredibly polluting, spewing insane amounts of greenhouse gases, that no matter how efficiently you can burn it you'll never get over the initial negative impact of getting the gas out of the ground.

@1, first comment, first sentence for the win!

The Stranger is even more insufferable and a hate read than when I last was here. I read one SLOG, and my blood-pressure goes through the roof and I remember why I don't visit anymore.

How is this not torture for the regulars? The exact same idiocy day after day after day.

Though there's admittedly something nice about seeing the old faces still going through the motions.

I hope everyone's voted (for Democrats).

@10 Depends on your setup. If you have a heat pump with an air handler distributing heat+a/c via ducts, then yes, you can use a MERV-13 in the air handler and run the fan to filter out smoke.

The smaller, cheaper option is ductless mini-splits, which have minimal filters and don't move nearly as much air, so won't be very effective for smoke mitigation. They're the better option for apartments or homes with baseboard or in-wall electric heat without ducts. You'll also see them installed in homes where the owner spent the ~$3k to add efficient A/C to a room or two but stuck with their furnace for heat.

If you already have a forced-air furnace system and ~$6k-12k to spend, you can (and probably should) get rid of your furnace, keep your ductwork, and retrofit it with an air handler and heat pump. This also adds central air conditioning if you don't already have it.

imagine having so much free time to participate in something as useless as trying to troll the mayor via spray paint. more of a self-own, if you ask me.
also a self-own: playing in traffic.

It's actually reassuring to read the comments to realize: No, most Seattle liberals have NOT lost their minds. The Stranger writers are so far left they've fallen off of the flat earth.

"The French, a society many centuries beyond our own.."

What the hell does that even mean? So American society began when a bunch of European babies were dropped on the beach to start a new society from scratch? That complex, sophisticated societies (in the form of First Nations people) didn't exist in North America for thousands of years before Europeans arrived here? Such uninformed, whitewashed, Eurocentric nonsense!

Seattle has awful drivers, but the pedestrians are dumb as mud. They just walk out into the street, usually looking at their phones or with earbuds in. As for this poor soul, trying to cross aurora at that location is idiotic, especially when you consider that there's an underpass right there.

As for heat pumps, we have one in our place over in E Washington. It's marvelous, and completely self-contained, so the smoke didn't bother us over there this year.

@1 also to consider - Aurora is prone to having severely impaired street folks wander into traffic. It’s extremely sad and frightening when it happens.