Suffering an extended Sound Transit snafu: The light rail and its parent company are making it really hard to ride the trains these days. Scheduled repair work, which began last weekend and won’t stop until Feb 5, slowed trains down by single-tracking on weekdays and stopping service at Westlake, University Street, Pioneer Square, International District/Chinatown, and Stadium stations during the weekends. Trains come only every 26 minutes. Or, that’s what Sound Transit estimated. However, people are trying to use the trains—like they should be able to in a major city—and crowded loading and unloading has slowed trains down to arriving every 35 minutes. Technical issues have also contributed to the slower trains. It’s all bleak as hell. How is anyone supposed to rely on a mass transit system that continuously fucks them over like this?
Extreme cold kills five: Hypothermia claimed the lives of five Seattleites during the sub-freezing cold snap that started on Jan 11. Two died in a residence, two died outdoors, and one died in a vehicle.
King County is for readers: Look at all you little bookworms! The King County Library System ranked third in the nation for total number of digital checkouts last year. The number? A cool 8.8 million. The Los Angeles Public Library had the most number of digital checkouts at 12 million, and Toronto Public Library came in second.
And now, the weather: It will be chilly, but, like, regular Seattle-chilly and not the chilly it’s been the last week. I wouldn’t really call the last week “chilly.” In hindsight, I’d probably call it “frigid,” or “feel-it-in-your-bones cold,” or something. This chilly today? It’s just chilly. And, there will be no rain. The dry, overcast, chilly day is the most depressing in my opinion. We will have that again on Saturday. Then, rain returns and will it ever end? No, my dear, this is the section of the year we talk about when we talk of Seattle gloom and doom. Just remember: Spring is always coming.
Here’s a look at the radar this morning. Plenty of rain still across the area this morning, but we’ll see showers taper through the day and temperatures continue to very gradually warm up. #wawx pic.twitter.com/uXIoGTcpbv
— NWS Seattle (@NWSSeattle) January 19, 2024
Meanwhile, a state of emergency in Oregon: Gov. Tina Kotek declared a state of emergency in Oregon Thursday night after last week’s winter storm killed 13 people and caused extensive damage.
Portland teen saves baby: During the ice storm, two Portlanders loaded their baby into their car with a downed power line on it. Trying to fetch the baby, the father slipped on slick concrete, touching the live wire in the process. He died with the baby in his arms. His pregnant girlfriend and her 15-year-old brother also died, electrocuted as well, while trying to help. Their neighbor, 18-year-old Majiah Washington, who watched the whole incident, called for help and then went across the street and rescued the baby.
Hmmmm, well isn’t that interesting: According to a new report by progressive think tank Groundwork Collaborative, “corporate profits accounted for about 53% of inflation during last year’s second and third quarters.” Companies are keeping prices high even as inflationary costs drop because of the wide profit margins. Always remember that corporations are evil and do not care about you or your family, just their own bottom line.
Japan shoots for the moon: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, is attempting to land on the moon for the first time. If successful, Japan will become the fifth country to park on the lunar surface. What’s different about this landing is JAXA is using “pinpoint landing” for its lander, meaning “where we want to, rather than where it is easy to land,” according to JAXA.
LA Times walk out: The LA Times staff is stopping work and walking out Friday in response to management’s intention to lay off a slew of journalists. It’s the first work stoppage since the paper began printing in 1881. More here.
📢DON’T CROSS THE LAT GUILD DIGITAL PICKET LINE
To support us in our walkout, we ask you not to
1) Click on LAT stories
2) Engage with LAT brand accounts on social media
3) Open LAT news alertsOr otherwise engage with LAT content from midnight to 11:59 p.m. Jan. 19
— L.A. Times Guild 🦅 (@latguild) January 19, 2024
Trump files a brief with Supreme Court: Donald Trump would like to be on the ballot in states like Colorado, which have barred him under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment’s stipulations banning insurrectionists from holding office. The Supreme Court will argue the Colorado case on Feb 8. Trump submitted a brief to the Court urging them to rule in his favor. “President Trump never participated in or directed any of the illegal conduct that occurred at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021,” the brief reads. “In fact, the opposite is true, as President Trump repeatedly called for peace, patriotism, and law and order.” An earlier brief from Trump even claimed Jan 6 wasn’t an insurrection at all. The brief also argues that Section 3 “applies only to those who took an oath to ‘support’ the Constitution of the United States” and Trump as president swore “a different oath set forth in Article II, in which he promises to ‘preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States’—and in which the word ‘support’ is nowhere to be found.” The Court could decide on this matter as early as March 5.
Thanks, king: Pope Francis said sexual pleasure “is a gift from god.” Wait, shit. In the same breath, he said this gift should be “disciplined with patience.”
Yeah, that’s not a great sign: A Boeing 747 cargo plane made an emergency landing after flames spewed out of it mid-flight. I’m no aerospace engineer, but I can tell you that you do not want any sort of fire in or around your plane. Given the whole door-flying-off-a-Boeing-plane thing a few weeks ago, January really has not been a banner month for the formerly local plane-maker.
A video for your Friday: Check out these manatees living in the cenotes, the freshwater-filled sinkholes formed from collapsed caves, in the Yucatan Peninsula. The cenotes are connected by a nearly 10,000-mile-long underwater cave system.
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Or sexual pleasure is a gift from your brain. But it’s probably easier for the church to justify all the kid-diddling if god is the one providing the pleasure.
In grad school in the 90s, I came back from visiting my family at Xmas to find my roommate had let the oil tank run dry because he spent all his money on cocaine. We had a functional fireplace he never thought to use because he was also an idiot.
It can get real cold in a poorly-insulated old Seattle house. RIP died-of-hypothermia-in-a-residence Seattleites.
Not to worry, they’re upgrading LINK to spew flames too
Would anyone notice if work stopped at the LA Times?
“When will The Stranger’s staff practice what they preach regarding unions and organize so they can have walk-outs of their own?”
When the Stranger’s staff collectively decide that the terms of their respective employment contracts are unsatisfactory and warrant such an action.
Will Neale Frogginghammer ever learn the simple and fundamental tenets of unionization efforts and how collective bargaining works? Doubtful. Will he soon be having his 6,374th slog profile deleted and banned for being a stubborn, shit-brained idiot? Signs point to yes!
“Always
remember that
corporations are evil
and do not care about you
or your family, just their own bottom line.”
was gonna say
how can Soulless
Corps be ‘Evil’ but then
the Lust
for Money
is the Root
of ALL Evil or
something like that
popped up. when
Shareholders’ & Managers’
Bottom Lines become the SOLE
Raison d’être for a corps’ Existence
then
unbridled
Capitalism’s
gone too fucking FAR
and when
vulture capitalists
& “Private Equity” buys
up all the fucking Housing
and vastly too Many Peeps
Cannot Afford Abodes unbridled
Capitalism’s gone Too Fucking Far. again.
what’re ‘we’
Waiting for all
you “Temporarily
Embarrassed” Billionaires?
your ‘ship”s
likely been
Derailed.
Cap’n
fuckin’
Ahab’s
fucking Kneel
foamin@themouth?
oh
shit:
apologies
wormtongue!
I thought cap’n
was Your baby. he
looks Just Like you!
& Thnx
mike blob!
“The King County Library System ranked third in the nation . . . .”
No, third in the world. I expect dumb mistakes from the Stranger, but I wouldn’t have expected someone to write “Toronto Public Library came in second” and not realize the rankings included cities outside the United States.
@3
Max, please tell me this grad student roommate didn’t become a Boeing engineer!
@11: LOL, he was not capable of that level of achievement.
@ #5, Since 1942, The Times has won 51 Pulitzer Prizes, six of which were gold medals for public service. So clearly, this high-quality newspaper would be missed.
@ #10. THANK YOU. It is really hard to take The Stranger seriously when its reporters don’t realize Toronto is in another country. Maybe TS staff need fewer edibles in the morning.
I’ve heard it said that some need religion in order to cope – or to keep from killing each other, but I firmly believe that if you are raised to be a sentient, caring human being, morality is part of the package. One needn’t be religious to be moral contrary to what most religions beat you over the head with.
It happens in Protestant religions, too, but it amazes me to no end how people will stand with the Catholic Church given their history including the vast, long-term problem of child sexual abuse and all the scheming to cover it up. Would you join a club that sponsors the Magdalene Laundries? Yes, they say, but not all priests and cardinals are power- and/or sexually abusive pedophiles, and the Catholic Church does so much good. OK, that’s rather like saying an abusive uncle sure can throw a fabulous barbeque, He even gives all the kiddies Heath bars.
The whole point of religion is to keep you afraid of death, science, and the future. What worked in 200 AD is just fine. Why, then, does anyone give a fuck about what the Pope has to say about anything? Is it all the jewels and gowns and the Prada slippers? It’s a stupid, fucking costume party, but only some people get to eat and have a good time. Wake the fuck up.
I have found that public transit is way more helpful and efficient in those cities where the administrators use it. Most heads of public transit wouldn’t be caught dead on a bus or a subway train unless it’s a photo op. Perhaps that’s the problem with Sound Transit.
Have a good weekend, all.
@14 it feels like the only reason they are doing that is they don’t want to stand out in the cold. I guess their dedication to the cause has some limits.
@14, @18: Let’s just go ahead and write The Onion’s headline for them: “Transit Agency Fights Protesters Over Credit For Station Closure.” 😀
@19 I’d go with “Sound Transit cites crowd in U station as proof they are on the right track”
Dear God, that’s a horrible story out of Portland. That girl is a true hero – and I have no idea how that baby survived being in its fathers arms when he was electrocuted. I guess because it wasn’t grounded?
I would prefer to see the headline “Protestors blocking train station get shit beaten out of them.”
@22 alotta
dry* clothing?
*thank god
for modern
day diapers
@22 Catalina Vel-DuRay: +1 Agreed–what a horrible story about what happened to the Portland family who got electrocuted by a live wire from a downed power pole on their car. What a frightening way to die! The brave, resourceful 18- year-old girl who called 9-1-1 and went back to save the baby deserves a medal. My heart goes out to Portlanders, Seattleites, and everyone in the Pacific Northwest grappling with the current winter storm.
I feel sorry for everyone struggling to get around in Seattle and throughout King County and can’t because of all the current Light Rail related woes.
@3 & @12 Max Solomon: Egad, that’s sad about your roommate. Seconded, though, with you and pat L @11–good thing your fellow grad student & roomie wasn’t a Boeing engineer.
I pity all the well educated retired Boeing engineers who knew what they were doing and once upon a time in The Good Old Days ran Boeing like a well-oiled machine. Sadly, those days are long gone until the greedy corporate profiteers are stripped of their ill-gotten riches and power.
Why don’t the corrupt Boeing CEOs get it? It’s like their corporation WANTS to get massively boycotted by disgruntled airline passengers, heavily sued, and face bankruptcy.
And like you, I too wish the Orange Turd would just DIE ALREADY, so we never have to see its ugly face or hear of or from it again.
@24: I’d rather see the headline “MAGAts blocking access to voting stations get the shit beaten out of them.”
There, Swifty, I fixed it for you. You can put your military assault weapons down now.
Everyone hang in there, weather-wise. It’s supposed to return to the 40s over the weekend. Hopefully the worst of what the Arctic, Alaska, and Canada didn’t want will finally be gone soon.
“I’m no aerospace engineer, but I can tell you that you do not want any sort of fire in or around your plane.” While the sentiment is spot on, one of the issues that needs engineering is that controlling fire in and around your plane is currently how we make them go.
@27 “MAGAts blocking access to voting stations get the shit beaten out of them.”
This is also an excellent headline. If you block access to public rights of way, you deserve whatever beatdown you get.
@29: Jesus, Swifty! Did my comment actually instill further violence? Does your local rifle range relieve tensions or only serve to further fuel your fire?
Tell that to profiteering KKKorporations, systematically racist police departments and their unions, the Trump-appointed neofascists in the Extreme Court, and the RWNJs in the House of Misrepresentatives.
@30:
Neo-fascists like Swifty have been down on their knees for so long sucking conservative cock, they’ll barely notice when the jackboot shoves their necks all the way to the ground.
Why the hell didn’t ST replace tunnel service with a replacement bus during the downtime — like literally every other mass transit rail system does?
Oh, right, because they don’t know what they’re doing, and don’t know it
@31 COMTE: Sadly, I believe it.
@32: Okie-dokey, raindrop dear:
There oce was a troll some call Dewey
Who on SLOG would act rather screwy.
He’d spew out such rants
That he’d crap his pants,
Then play victim upon crying out, ‘Who, me?’
switfy’s
not only
right she’s
on Your side
on this one aun-
tie Gee. a small vic-
tory perhaps but nevertheless
I kinda think
I’d Like to have
that (currenly-?) non-
Famished warrior on OUR Side.
every War
needs a
Sound-
track:
Red Sector A — Rush
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3ytkyn3vUU
@31, 34. The fascists I see are Trump, Hamas, and all their supporters. Get a clue.
@35 kristofarian: Thank you and Swiftress @38 for further clarifying.
@38 Swiftress: Okay. I’m glad we see eye to eye regarding who the fascists are.
You somewhat lost me at “shit beaten out of them”. I only saw the violence.
Yikes, comments can’t close fast enough on this thread.
@40
Mr Raindrop –
That’s the spirit of true bipartisanship!
@40: Hard pass, raindrop dear. I’m asexual, remember?
@38: I’ll get a clue when you lower your weapon, Swifty. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like we’re on the same side.
@41 mike blob: It does seem rapid fire, doesn’t it?
Disciplined with patience! Kinky!