Am I living in a box? Am I living in a metal box?
Am I living in a box? Am I living in a metal box? takegraph/shutterstock.com

Paul Allen Gives $1 Million to Help Build a Temp Community in Columbia City for the Homeless: This community will be small and live in shipping containers. Cranes will lower these containers from the sky and place them on a site in Columbia City. The containers are considered to be cost-effective and halfway between life in a tent and life in a house. But if we are to get down to the bottom of things, we will clearly see that we do not need the money of billionaires to help solve this major social problem. We need a government that spends on the poor, builds homes for the poor, and creates jobs for the poor. The government we have at present does these kinds of things quite poorly, but it is, however, up to the task when it comes to inflating the financial assets that make billions for billionaires like Paul Allen.

The Rise and Rise of Rent Slavery in Seattle: We need to describe the sharp rent increases in Seattle as a form of enslavement. Why? Because slavery always means you are not working for yourself but for someone else. The more you work in this manner, the more you are a slave. At present, the general term for the worsening rent situation is cost-burdened (30 percent or more of your income goes to rent). In 1960, only 24 percent of renters in the US were cost-burdened. In 2000, it was 38 percent. In 2014, it was 53 percent. According to Puget Sound Business Journal, 50 percent of renters in our metro area "are cost-burdened." But the expression "cost-burdened" still does not have the right ring. We need to get raw and call it rent slavery.

Police Robot Finds Missing Body in Lake Washington: No one knows who the body once belonged to. The body, which was in Lake Washington for reasons that are also unknown, is at present just a body. When it is identified by the Medical Examiners Office, then we will know who once called this body home. (Note: Lake Washington gets deadlier in the summer months.)

Car Slams into a Restaurant in Des Moines: And another car slams into a grocery in Skyway.

OneBusAway App Redesigned: One of the best things to happen in the world of public transportation is the OneBusAway app. It provides real-time information for Metro buses. These buses are almost always running late. This, of course, isn't their fault. They do not have lanes dedicated to them. They often get stuck in traffic jams. The app gives one the power to plan for and around these delays. This power has improved the mental health of many humans. There is less stress with OneBusAway, an app that's great for buses but mostly useless for Link light rail. The trains on that great system, which is mostly grade-separated, run so regularly that real-time information is not a necessity but a luxury.

A Quick and Important Note About My Recent Post "Light Rail and Urbanism for Seattle's Rich": Yes, homes near Link stations are becoming more and more pricey, and this will certainly make life harder and harder for people earning low wages. And, yes, we should do something about this problem—and if this something is to be effective, it will need to involve the government and be deaf to all the things the market has to say about the matter. But, still, Link is the greatest thing to happen in Seattle. I feel more at home in those fast-moving trains than anywhere else in this city. We need to increase the lengths of our tracks and number of our stations. We need ST3 and much more.

Found Once Again in Twitter's Seattle Trends A #traffic.

A Text I Received This Morning From the Man Who Is the Subject of the Movie Grassroots: "[Seattle] is - in the deepest sense - a different place. Despite and whatever all many strands of connection to the other it was before. This is not where I visited four years ago, it is only WHERE I visited it. That is gone now."

Seattle is now a deeply different place.
Seattle is now a deeply different place. Charles Mudede


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