Design by Committee

@dbc.bsky.social

538 Followers 460 Following

Abolish ICE and DHS Urbanist, cycling advocate, and failing musician.

Screenshot from a Eurostar train showing a speed of 182mph.
Seattle's skyline as seen from the peak of the West Seattle Bridge
The nasty patty from spongebob
West Seattle Summerfest absolutely packed with people
Cascadia "Doug" flag.
Rainbow behind Beacon Hill
Cascadia "Doug" flag
An e-bike locked to a bench because the bike rack in the background barely comes up past my ankle. I don't understand how anyone is supposed to be able to lock a bike to it.
"You are not immune to propaganda" featuring Garfield
$75,930 in student loans 🙃 Please hire me.
A meme about the history of income tax proposals in Washington State. Too long to type out, the gist is it's one of four bodies asking every time: the governor, the legislature, the people. Every single attempt results in one of the other bodies (plus WA State Supreme Court) saying "No"
UW telling me the internship requirement is waived only for Evans class of 2027 on Thursday this week, with two weeks until graduation.
Zuckerberg's superyacht support vessel, the Wingman
The view from N 34th St in Fremont - the Zuckeryacht is nearly the same size as The Mountain.
Zuckerberg's superyacht 'Launchpad' docked in South Lake Union, right next to the westside trail
Job growth in Washington State 2020-2026. Job growth is currently -0.09% in 2026, the first time it's gone negative since 2020.
Americans are expressing some of the deepest, broadest, and stubbornest economic pessimism ever recorded. They’re doing so even though nearly every American who wants a job has one and the stock market is booming. Things aren’t perfect, and people have plenty of reasons to be disappointed. But I couldn’t come up with a coherent explanation for why people are this down about an economy this good, or why they are so mad right now.
A blurry red VinFast turning left
White House counterterrorism document: "In addition to cartels and Islamist terror groups, our national CT activities will also prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist. We will use all the tools constitutionally available to us to map them at home, identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa, and use law enforcement tools to cripple them operationally before they can maim or kill the innocent. We will do the same with the state sponsors of such groups and those governments undertaking lethal plots on U.S. soil or against Americans anywhere." The bit about "violent secular political groups" is highlighted.
Looking south from the waterfront trail. The mountain is out, and there's a big green and red ship off to the right.
Ebike odometer reading 3333 miles
The TM-B and TM-Q rely on the same underlying technology, but are designed for different use cases, Yu said. They differ from other products on the market in the way the pedaling mechanism works — the e-bikes have no chains. “There’s no physical connection between your input and the result of the bike moving,” Yu said. “It’s all software. We turn your leg power into electrical power, we send that electrical power to the battery, and then the battery sends it to the wheel.”
A bunch of people with colorfully lit bikes at a park
Bellevue, as seen from the 2 line
"This is fine." meme
Websearch for "is Trump dead?". (I search this every time Trump hasn't been seen in a while, at least to help ensure it trends)
Step counter showing 56,013 steps / 27.28mi walked yesterday
Yesler Ave bike lane. It keeps going all the way up to 4th!
A BCTransit bus in Victoria. There's an electronic sign showing the last, current, and next stop.
A demi baguette from Le Painier. The crust is super hard and very light in color. The bread itself is full of tiny holes, indicating a quick rise - possibly aided by sugar? The overall result is a loaf one might expect from a cheap Italian restaurant like Olive Garden. Very cheap and very disappointing.
Pike Place Market filled with people. It's nice and sunny.
The FCC order does not impact the ​import or use of existing models, but will ban new ones. The agency ​said a White House-convened review deemed imported routers pose "a severe cybersecurity risk ⁠that could be leveraged to immediately and severely disrupt U.S. critical infrastructure." It said malicious ​actors had exploited security gaps in foreign-made routers "to attack households, disrupt networks, enable espionage, ​and facilitate intellectual property theft," citing their role in major hacks like Volt and Salt Typhoon. The determination includes an exemption for routers the Pentagon deems do not pose unacceptable risks.
A view from the same bridge as before, only now it's so snowy you can't see the city.
The proposed rule to limit student loan forgiveness under PSLF was finalized and published in the Federal Register last summer. Once enacted, it would give the Education Department, via the Secretary of Education, the power to cut off employers from being eligible for PSLF if, in the Secretary’s determination, the employer is engaged in activities that have a “substantial illegal purpose."
Seattle as seen from the west Seattle bike trail
Photo of a chimp with the caption: "we taught this chimpanzee to understand the median voter's politics and he hanged himself"
Photo from 1934 showing the Palazzo Braschi covered with a giant likeness of Mussolini with a background covered entirely in "SI" It is incredibly fucking ominous in the same way as Trump putting his face on the DOJ building.
Screenshot of old tweet from Ben Rosen: "REPUBLICANS: we're having the military throw protestor in unmarked vans DEMOCRATS: mark 👏 the 👏 vans 👏"
BE A TROUBLEMAKER: TAKE ACTION This week, Congressional lawmakers have an opportunity to vote for meaningful guardrails against ICE in a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding bill. Working people should feel safe to cast their ballot or go for a walk in their neighborhood without fearing they’ll be abducted off the street by masked agents. Join us and demand that our elected officials refuse to pass any DHS funding bill that doesn’t include fundamental reforms regulating ICE, including: Barring ICE from wearing masks or conducting operations at polling sites, schools, or hospitals Requiring ICE to wear body cameras and visible IDs Requiring DHS to cooperate with state-level investigations where unlawful actions may have occurred. Yes, I’ll contact my members of Congress!
A take-action email from Fuse Washington. The subject line says "RUCKUS: If MAGA won't reign in ICE, Democrats shouldn't fund it"
The crowd at the Seattle superbowl parade. It's huge. It's loud.
The penultimate creep sci-fi writer, L. Ron Hubbard with a speech bubble saying the quoted skeet
View from the Admiral Way bridge, Seattle is covered by fog.
In November, Bundy self-published a long essay titled “The Stranger,” in which he labeled the Trump administration’s treatment of undocumented immigrants a “moral failure.” “To call such people criminals for lacking official permission” to be in the country, he wrote, “is to forget the moral law of God, the historical truth of our own founding, and the Constitutional ideals that continue to define justice.” On a recent livestream following the killing of Renee Good in Minnesota, Bundy told his audience that ICE’s conduct “clearly looks like tyranny.” If the government threatened his family, he said, he would fight back by whatever means necessary.
When Bureau of Prisons personnel asked to see Anderson's credentials, federal prosecutors said he showed them a Minnesota driver's license and "threw at the BOP officers numerous documents." Anderson said he had weapons in his bag, and inside the bag was a barbecue fork and a pizza cutter, according to the criminal complaint.
Rod Serling from The Twilight Zone with a speech bubble that makes it look like he's saying the quoted skeet
Escalator out of service at the U District Link station
Under the midnight sun, passengers gathered on the bow and the bridge to watch Polar Star in action. Crew members served Champagne, and the expedition staff provided commentary. A few Americans, inspired by the icebreaker’s U.S. flag, sang the national anthem. Griffiths said about 50 of the 191 passengers stayed up late to observe the event. (the bit about singing is highlighted)
Salmon alfredo with pasta and broccolini
When the report was first published in late November, it said the more than 3,600 projects that the act funded statewide were expected to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 8.6 million tons over their lifespan. That’s the equivalent of taking nearly half the gas and diesel vehicles off Washington’s roads for an entire year, according to department officials. Now, state officials have issued a correction that cuts the law's benefits to a tiny fraction of that original estimate: just 308,000 tons over their lifespan, or less than 4% of their original estimate.
West Seattle Bridge. It is very dark and cloudy.
Very low, dark clouds obscuring Seattle. Belltown and Magnolia look unaffected
When companies sold smaller cars in the past, "people didn't want to buy them," says Jessica Caldwell, head of insights at the car data site Edmunds. "We look at the subcompact car — that is the smallest car sold in the United States. That segment is less than 1% of the market," she says. And it's shrinking, not growing. Federal fuel economy rules have been criticized for incentivizing larger vehicles. Automakers have another incentive to go big: They make bigger profits on bigger vehicles. But consumer preferences have also spoken loud and clear. Years ago, Daimler made a push to sell the Smart fortwo, a tiny car by any definition. It was cheap and cute, and it could fit sideways in a parking spot. But it was discontinued in 2019 after about a decade of disappointing sales.
From the article, a $350 toaster with a very questionable brand name and a second, marginally less questionable brand name on it. It's grey, too. Do rich people not see color or something? Is color restricted to the proles?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_in_Europe_by_military_expenditures Ukraine is top of the list, followed by Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Poland. Poland is the highest spending NATO member as proportion of GDP.
Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point (but with Rob Saka's face)
Bread.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is warning consumers to immediately stop using lithium-ion batteries for Rad Power Bikes e-bikes, model numbers RP-1304 and HL-RP-S1304, because the batteries pose a risk of serious injury and death. (RP-1304 is highlighted)
Photo from the article. A car rests nearly vertical on a guy wire to a power pole.
Textured vegetable protein and peas cover a bowl of rice. It doesn't come across on camera, but it's dripping in teriyaki sauce. Yum.