Fucking Plinths, man.

Democracy is great. Six corrupt, unelected fundies, held accountable to no one, in power for life, get to dictate the lives of hundreds of millions of Americans. So freedom, much liberty.

obscene court

I’m going to do a Slog Troll impression for you all. Ahem.

Turns out San Francisco tech executive Bob Lee was stabbed to death not by a homeless man but by another Tech Brah named Nima Momeni. They knew each other. It was neither a random killing nor a robbery.

What are we going to do about all this housed Tech Brah on Tech Brah violence?! And why won’t The Stranger report it.

@3,

And five of those six fundie nutjobs were appointed by an executive who lost the popular vote in HIS election.

If we just didn't build the parking garages for the Eastside light rail, we could finish the line.

You don't really need parking garages. It's a suburban myth.

@9: Will it's not the parking garages, which are done AFAIK. It's the plinths that support the line over the i-90 bridge. there's like a zillion of them. Glance over there next time you're biking across the bridge (I know you'd never drive it).

The Stranger refuses to report on housed Tech Brah on Tech Brah violence!

The housed commit homicide at like almost 3x the rate of the homeless. I mean, there is nothing about this housed crime epidemic anywhere in the Stranger archives!

Not once or rarely in any crime report does the stranger note if the perpetrators of crime were housed or worked in tech.

Why are they covering it up? And why do slog trolls apologize for this clear bias? We must get to the truth.

I can't believe how naive I was thinking that billionaire conservatives ONLY bought off Clarence Thomas by funneling funds to his wife, Ginni's, "consulting" business, Liberty Consulting. Liberty Consulting's website stated that clients could use Thomas's "experience and connections" to help with "governmental affairs efforts" and political donation strategies. Or buy a Supreme Court Justice.

WHAT kinda sick
Fuck'd think housing
a judge's own MOTHER'd
EVER Sway a fucking Supreme
fucking Court JUSTICE? A. a commie

or a fucking Socialist

@15

A. or a
late-stage
CAPITAList

“Crow paid $133,363 to Thomas and his relatives for a single-story home and two vacant lots in Savannah, Georgia.”

To be fair, Crow hadn’t yet the opportunity to learn the only proper way to preserve a building: extend the boundaries of the Pike Place Historical District to include it.

“…what the two vacant lots had to do with the museum.”

Exactly the same purpose as the two vacant lots included with the Showbox, silly! Do you really know so little about the proper way to preserve historic structures?

I'm kind of disappointed that "cocaine hippo" was not a reference to Clarence Thomas. Or maybe Ginni.

Also, the plinths/railroad ties or whatever were removed from part of the bridge some time ago, weren't they?

@am no idea what it is you're selling but thanks anyway

pass.

Hippos love MALT LIQUOR.

Regarding the leaks.

I see a lot of "this was just some idiot who wanted to look cool" coverage. Which is... somewhat fair. Sending a bunch of classified intelligence to a group chat because you want to impress your friends is not exactly what I would call good decision making. But I don't think it's the most interesting thing. There are 2 things I think are interesting.

First, that people spying on Russia are now at risk. This is why real whistleblowing is a careful process where the press critically analyzes the information, and works with the government to make sure that sensitive pieces of information are redacted. Because you don't fucking dox people who are resisting a state that has launched a colonialist war of aggression. Of course, the press needs to vigorously advocate for the public interest while working with the government and critically analyze the governments claims, because "this is sensitive material" is often code for "we fucked up and don't want to admit it" or "this might be controversial and I want to do whatever I want with no oversight".

Second is that we have special forces operating on the ground. I don't think anybody finds this information particularly surprising, but it does not have to be surprising to be notable. I want the US to support the Ukrainians in this fight, but I know that there are plenty of people in this country - people whom the government is also supposed to represent - who oppose the war on principled grounds. They deserve to know what their government is doing. This needs to be weighed against that material harm that could be caused by this revelation. Namely, it is now public that 2 nuclear powers have armed forces in the same conflict on opposite sides. That is not nothing, but I also don't think it's as dangerous as it first appears. As I said before, this revelation is not particularly surprising, and I would be shocked if Russian intelligence wasn't already aware that this was happening, at least in the broad strokes. So the harm is that they have more details about the operations (this goes back to the first point about being careful when you blow a whistle) and that they have diplomatic cover for escalating conflict with the US. But I don't think that the realization of nuclear war is going to hinge on whether or not one party has diplomatic cover for attacking the other - it hinges on the literally apocalyptic consequences of nuclear war. So on the whole, I think it is good to have general awareness about special forces operating in the region, but not at this level of detail.

WTF is up with trains and light rail? Either they get derailed or delayed until the Twelfth of Never.

It's time to Abort the Extreme Court! Lock up the Orange Turd and its billionaire coddling neofascists, Clarence Thomas and his Ginni bitch, Samuel Alito, Jr., Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett.

Hooray to SuperBob Ferguson for being among many of us in the Sane Washington for fighting to keep abortions safe and legal Our bodies, OUR choice! Corrupt RepubliKKKan men, keep your hands OFF!

So comforting when an event that appeared to have been random is not random and all this time we've been deceived into thinking that downtown San Francisco (or Seattle for that matter) have been actually devoid of violence and crime all this time and that there's absolutely nothing to worry our pretty little heads about.

There is very little chance an airman had access to JCoS decks. He had hard copies that he photographed and posted. Hard copies they track and collect for destruction. They do not circulate that to fucking airmen. Even IT airmen. If he did have access then we have way worse things to worry about.

And these were posted in separate tranches. The digital files were manipulated and altered to make the Russian position look more favorable— ie casualty numbers much lower than in the original files and files invented. And then put on the game server. So they were fed to Russian intelligence first.

And. Unless things have changed radically and foolishly since I was in the military or since everyone I know retired in the 2000’s most of these kinds of docs were sneaker-netted and not kept on networked systems.

So. No. There is a higher probability that this kid was almost certainly fed these. My bet is from some pro-Putin republican on a congressional intelligence committee or a JC staffer. No way he had access to most of this shit.

Another option I guess it’s a deliberate counter-intelligence leak.

But we will never know.
They have their fall guy.

@25 RogerTheShrubber The point about tracking hard-copies is interesting. I've never worked in the DoD, but I completely believe that they would have that level of tracking. My first thought is that if he could smuggle out digital copies then couldn't he just print them off manually? I might be missing something obvious with that thought though, would appreciate your input.

Regarding the alteration, my understanding is that the original leak appears legitimate (though unconfirmed), but after the leak Russian intelligence started circulating a modified verison. https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/07/politics/pentagon-leaked-ukraine-documents/index.html It seems plausible that the Russian version of the files was purely opportunistic, and if it was their op at the beginning I'd be surprised that they let the originals out.

@25 Granted this was my experience in the early eighties and again in the early nineties. And not in the Air Farce - which shall we say back then had a somewhat casual attitude generally. This was infantry. While I never had Top Secret clearance, Most of my job was logistics, etc but I was semi-officially (after 1984) a MOS 35/G-2 and we did work with Signal intelligence officers. And those had these graduations of clearance waaaay above me. Though yes got really confusing once we had to wrk with other branches.

Anyway. When they had hard copies of anything sensitive those docs were part of restricted distribution lists and each doc was numbered and had this little code so you knew who it was for and ideally who last touched it and you only got keep certain things for a certain period of time. Some guy came around and collected shit and checked it off. Sometimes another special very stern G-2 guy just stood there next to briefing materials and never let anything out of his sight. And if anything was missing. I never saw anything go missing. But I can imagine it was... unpleasant.

And all I was working with half the time was basically shipping containers. And let me tell you if the army kept what they were moving around that buttoned up I cannot imagine the Air Farce is this lax during what is a proxy war with our greatest strategic threat invading a crucial strategic ally in god damned Europe.

Of course before smart phones. Which is a god damned intelligence nightmare. But I remember civilian contractors and stevedores getting the shit nearly beat out of them for wanting to take film photos of the mountains of gear they were moving. Like. No. Every little thing was tracked.

@21 dvs99 for the WIN! I wonder whatever happened to Arthur Zefferelli? Did he overdose on COCAINE AND MALT LIQUOR ? Did he switch to FETANYL AND CRYSTAL METH ?

More double-talk from Sound Transit. Since when did legacy transportation technology become so tricky? Crumbling plinths?

How difficult is it to make a decent concrete rail platform? These transportation bozos are running this conflagration across the floating bridge so wear a life-preserver, although this won’t come into play for several years because they have to pull up all the track between Bellevue and Seattle.

When you consider all the sexual activity among the indigent population (if this van’s a rock-in’, don’t come-a-knock-in’) this public health policy makes perfect sense. There’s a tendency in our puritanical culture to turn a blind eye to sexual activity, but this is crucial and necessary. If all else fails, use a plastic baggy or mutual masturbation.

This is certainly as serious as drug addiction and greatly impacts the young, so serious steps should be taken in this regard.

Rich folks bludgeoning rich folks, how estimably American. Apparently, this San Francisco high-tech bro’ culture has gotten out of control and gone full circle back to the Middle Ages.

Nice to know this wasn’t a homeless person or someone of color, which plays into the “threat to the white middle-class” bias the news media uses to sell papers.

Whenever political patrons get caught with their pants down, they play the enlightened self-interest card and tell everyone they wanted to repurpose the real estate they got at a steep discount into a living trust in memory of Justice Clarence Thomas or they wanted to donate it to the county for a museum in honor of the benefactor.

Jim Crow laws have mutated into equally unsavory Harlan Crow laws.

Nice to know reproductive resources are still available for women to avail themselves of under advice from their physician.

Reassuring to have AG Bob Ferguson with us on this torrid issue, which has all the conservatives cornholing each other with abandon in the executive washroom at one of Trump, the orange-green howler monkey troglodyte’s New York hotels.

Thank goodness for progressive thinkers like Biden and Ferguson, who support the right of a woman to determine her reproductive fate, without interference from bone-headed conservatives, who think of a woman’s uterus as their church of male-domineering fellatio.

Forgive them Lord, for they know not what they do, although boys will be boys, and with all these electronic resources intelligence sharing has become ever more prevalent. Back in the day the spy would have to hop in the rack with a hairy Ukrainian and shove a flash drive up his or her butt in order to pass top secret information.

Governor DeSantis may have invoked the wrath of God and the wrath of Disney with his recent gubernatorial edicts.

Let these biblical floods be a none-too-subtle warning to let freedom ring, even though you’re down there in Florida with all the octogenarians and rednecks with flabby putrescibles.

Interesting to note how conservative Republican men want to pull their dick out of their pants and pee all over the room telling women how to address their reproductive issues, when it’s none of their business, and you get the impression they love to talk about rape and incest in a political context, which is sort of what they’re doing to women’s reproductive rights.

Everyone is running to the hospital to get their reproductive issues addressed before some conservative lunatic outlaws their God-given rights.

This is the flipside of all the gun purchasing behavior we see today in reaction to impending gun control legislation.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.