Comments

1

I am enjoying the mental image of "the richest man on the plant."

3

lol @ the author thinking "Finney Ridge" (as the author misspelled) was ever anything but 100% white.

And yet another stranger anti-tech screed where they deliberately ignore Asian & Indian people who work in tech.

5

You came back to a much less white Seattle, and every.single.item purchased on Amazon means someone didn’t drive to the store.

Fuckin haoles these days.

6

Er, last time I checked a map, I-5 and Route 99 both ran straight through the heart of North Seattle as well as South Seattle, and the BNSF Railway was right next to those nice water-view homes in North Beach and Broadview.

I find it easy to credit a link between pollution and higher rates of related health problems in South Seattle, but from industrial sources, not transportation.

7

I agree! Drive to each store that you would need to and get the items you want. More traffic means maybe you'll support more roads!

8

Is this what passes for journalism these days? Sarah, if it wasn't for Amazon, we would all be driving to stores, to buy the same items you complain about. The goods must travel from the warehouse via diesel truck, regardless if the vendor is Amazon or some other retailer. Cars emit far more carbon dioxide per unit of goods moved, than delivery trucks. Your analysis isn't just wrong, its shockingly disingenuous. Having good delivered via Amazon has far less environmental impact than how we used to do our shopping 18 years ago.

10

Intriguing premise, only to start stereotyping "white" tech bros. Yet curiously (as @3 noted) you don't care to acknowledge the great software engineering talent from our Indian, Asian, and other communities.

Hint: to keep your integrity, go easy on the W word, Sarah.

12

Gil Scott Heron it ain't

13

I thoroughtly believe that Jeff Bezos is one of histories biggest ass-holes - a man who cannot find a way to creatively leverage enormous wealth for the common good of humankind.

However...

While Jeff Bezos and Amazon have clearly had an impact on Seattle, the region was going to change anyway.

"What is the difference between the Seattle of 2000 and the Seattle of 2018," you ask?

In magnitude, I'd argue the city has changed far less in the last 18 years than over any other 18-year period in our modern history.

Imagine how much Seattle changed between 1900 and 1918, or the difference between Seattle 1950 and Seattle 1968.

Change happens, and not always for the better.

14

@13

You'd think someone who was around in the '80s-'90s might at least vaguely remember a few of the locals bitching about all the rich asshole computer kids flooding into town to work for... Microsoft.

15

The author is quote tweeting snarky replies to the responses here, rather than engaging, in case anyone's interested:

https://twitter.com/SarahEMyhre

16

I don't get the Bezos hate. If people hated him as much as they say they do, he wouldn't be rich.

He's rich because the same people complaining are the same ones buying all their shit from Amazon. I buy stuff from Amazon all the time, thousands a year. Why? Because it's inexpensive and convenient. OH THE HORROR.

There's a thread that runs through all the stuff about our modern culture that I hate, and it comes back to this idea that the same people who are loudly renouncing various things and people (appropriation, gentrification, toxic masculinity, amazon, etc) are also the same people that are arguing it doesn't matter for them. I don't understand a world in which it's perfectly acceptable to have a Taco day and have all t hese white people talk about how much they like tacos, but then turn around and run two white taco makers out of town.

Pick a side and be on it.

17

@10:

Or maybe it's just that those Indian/Asian/Other Communities tech workers keep a lower profile and don't run around emulating their White co-workers?

@14:

Except for: A of All): we weren't really complaining (I note your deliberate use of "a few of the locals", which was what - maybe three our four?), because; B of All) most of them were relocating to the Eastside, and' C of All) at least two of those rich asshole computer kids grew up here.

18

@17

Yeah, there was certainly a lot of cheerleading as well, particularly from the PI, the Times, and the local networks.

And we've got plenty of that for Bezos now, too, don't we?

21

@15, I like how Sarah ties comments that have nothing to do with rape to rape culture on her twitter feed.

22

I-99?

24

Sarah, your "reply" to me on twitter makes no sense. When confronted that your argument about Amazon being worse for the environment is flat wrong, your reply on Twitter is (to paraphrase) "But rising consumerism is bad!". While this is true, this was not the point of your original post, and you are attempting to move the goalposts of your argument, rather than admit your original argument is wrong.

27

@15 Here's the best response on her twitter feed:

"These are the people that call a woman a bitch after she turns them down at the bar."

Errr no, these are the guys who are glad when they dodge the crazy bullet.

28

There's plenty of legitimate criticism to throw Amazon's way, but this is weak.

So many of these anti-Amazon articles are from losers who left Seattle for 10 years and came back to find things different from how they left it. You don't get a say anymore. You left.

29

“*We arrived at 19.1 million metric tons by taking the average emissions per package—averaged from the publicly released data by UPS (1) and FedEx (2)—and multiplying it by the total number of Amazon packages delivered in 2017.”

Oodles of commenters have beaten me to this, but it’s worth reiterating that this is a poor method for estimating Amazon’s incremental contribution to emissions. How much fuel would have been burned trucking these items to a suburban Walmart / Borders / Toys R Us then driving consumers to-and-from purchasing them? (It also ignores that the Postal Service performs an enormous fraction of Amazon’s deliveries, and that they are quite a bit cheaper and more efficient than UPS or FedEx.)

30

“Bezos Dreams Of Shooting His Load” / “he dreams of shooting his penis into space”

I only see one person here dreaming about Jeff Bezos’s penis.

31

Also black ppl obviously can’t afford Amazon because I mean they’re black.

And, obviously, they got that black lung.

Thx 4 unrequested unban. Badger time.

The city you claim to live in does not respect the choices made by or the opinions expressed by this lunatic.

32

I’ve lived in Seattle for over the entire last quarter-century, almost all of it in Belltown or Pike-Pine, near downtown. In that time it has become wealthier, more diverse, and safer.

I happen to think that high-tech companies paying large salaries to large numbers of skilled workers makes for a great city. And anyone who walks by Amazon’s HQ (as I do every weekday) can easily see the diversity of that workforce.

The entitled whining from people who don’t want to compete here is just delicious. Keep it coming, Stranger!

34

Still better than reading Katie Herzog.

35

@32

Safer?

How have you managed to even momentarily forget the swarms of needle-hoboes advancing their feces-tents into the city center, thirsting for the blood of your children-- or even worse, your tax dollars?

36

@35: Because I’m comparing the Belltown in which I live to the Belltown which was my first neighborhood in Seattle. The old place was deserted at night, save for the occasional car-burglary, with lots of crunchy crack-vials underfoot.

(More recently, the encampments at Third and Denny are gone.)

37

@36

A neighborhood where ghosts somehow manage to smoke crack all night doesn't sound particularly scary to me, but I guess we've all got our foibles.

I did once have a gentleman get a little impatient with me on a summer evening on Broadway in the late 80s when I failed to understand he was trying to purchase sexual services from me, but that was more Confusing And Embarrassing than Scary And Life Threatening, really.

39

@35 - When people defend the homeless, downtown is a swamp of hepatitis A and bike-stealing hordes. When someone criticizes a rich white man, downtown is a tech-enabled utopia!!!

That’s Tensorlogic (tm). “Tensorlogic - It makes sense, because I say it makes sense. - tensor”

Whatever Slog is for, tensor is against. Whatever Slog is against, tensor is for (e.g.: rapists). Ignore him. Everything he says is a waste of time.

40

@39

Oh I dunno, I think he's fun. But I've been told I have peculiar sensibilities.

41

@40 - I’ve had great fun with him, too, but it’s the kind of fun you have with a sex doll. Yeah, your moves are impressive, but they’d be just as good if you were fucking a pillow, know what I mean? And in this analogy, the sex doll can talk and just keeps repeating the same thing over and over. “Murray never got his day in court. Murray never got his day in court.“ which makes your boner shrink.

42

@41

Er, OK... but if you don't mind maybe I'll leave you alone with your analogy there for a while and just let the two of you work things through.

43

You returned to a city after 16 years, and apparently you expected it to remain in stasis. This is a recurring theme for articles like these; you didn't change, but the city did. You know who it changed for? The 16-years ago version of you, or at least the 2018 version of that person.

45

@43 It’s like the city cut off its nose to spite its face.

47

There are many people who do not buy from Amazon and that is because they are too poor and/or have other reasons.
Amazon treats many of their workers like shit or haven’t you noticed? There are several countries now where amazon workers are on strike and there are incidents here where workers are abused.
Bezos is a monster and Seattle has gone downhill since amazon arrived He is the richest person in history and it is the employees/customers that made it so. Examples are that housing has become so expensive that people have had to move out of town to afford it or no longer have housing since amazon came to this town. A lot of people that work can no longer live here. I have lived here for years by the way and I think this is a great well written article.

I’m just a poor working class person so what do I know? I do know there are some elitist assholes writing these comments that have no compassion for the downtrodden. Drug addicts and the mentally ill are human beings. “There is nothing worse than a snob,” Hedy Lamarr. Bezos wants to rule the world. BOYCOTT AMAZON.

48

Stop whining about us. You have that option.

49

@37: Nice humblebrag about your awesome sexual desirability. And your repetitive nonsense about how I'm scared got old back before your Broadway story did. I grew up in New York City, and there's a difference between fear and concern. Apparently you'll never know it.

@48: Well said. Put that advice to work for you. Now.

50

No Tensor. The truth can hurt. You need to take that advice Mr. elitist.

51

@49

At the time, to be a heterosexual man desired by a homosexual man was absolutely not something to brag about. Your memory seems to be highly selective, so I suppose it's not surprising that you haven't realized times have changed for the better in that regard, too.

And now you're saying you grew up in NYC, yet still thought Belltown at night in the '80s felt dangerous? This is why we think you're fun, you super-never-afraid totally-tough guy, you.

52

Ivy, you’ve done a better job than Sarah conveying a point.

I’ll take that back, though, if you tell me you’re hallucinating about being dug in in a trench, with imaginary lice gnawing away, imaginary shells whizzing by, churning the imaginary dirt into imaginary mud, while you say imaginary prayers to the god you don’t believe in because you’re about to become imaginarily deceased.

Ok?

53

I'd always read that home delivery was considered to be (at least potentially) an environmental benefit, because putting a lot of packages in a truck and driving them one way is a lot better than using a whole bunch of consumer cars driving round trips?
Amazon for me means my car never leaves the garage to buy things. All my groceries and local items are transported by my walking. Anything I can't get that way is delivered (mainly by unionized usps and ups workers I would note). I could come up with a list of issues I have with them a mile long, but the expansion of mail order does not seem like a pure negative.
If it's about people buying too much, is it even true? Where are they keeping it? Anecdotally, people's apartments seem to have about the same amount of stuff in them as they always have. Or if not, it feels more like there's the same stuff in increasingly smaller spaces.
By weight, excluding food, by far the largest number of kilos of manufactured goods transported on my account have been books. More than the cars I've owned even. I got off that train because of the madness and expense of moving them, storing them. Instead of travelling with 30lbs of them in a backpack, I now stroll around with a 2lb fucking library under my arm.

54

I am not spiritual, but we really need a dose of Buddhism/Zen thinking these days. Try it Sarah, you might understand better the reality of constant change and the importance of finding a calm 'center' and rising above it. But then you'd have to learn how to care about the world absent constant emotional turmoil causing you to seek relief in 'activism'.

55

This, according to Miss Safe Space, is a Tweet from a "harassing account"

"What's worse: 100 cars driving into a city to pick up 1 item each, or 1 van visiting 100 houses?

Carbon footprint my ass."

56

She’s still shadow boxing in an alternate universe.

Himpathy.

No Sarah, I wouldn’t respect a guy with plastic parts either.

As for Bezos, everyone has their own opinion. I’m resigned to reality.

The entire premise of your article is delusional and fallacious, and your psychotic take on a race/amazon/assault/victimhood/otherness is just using minorities to prop up your own, to put it lightly, misconceptions.

Less pollution != black and brown asthma like in that Luniz song.

K lady?

The prettiest guy who has been in the most women you’ll see all day, and then some.

Ok NOW bbl road tripping leave my badger alone.

58

“ patriarchy's direct relation to consumerism”

That must explain the hell that is spending an hour with the wife in the Nordstrom women’s shoe department. #patriarchy

59

“ patriarchy's direct relation to consumerism and”

By the way, women do 75% of all consumer spending in the US. My wife’s fuck-me pumps included.

Source: Harvard Business Review

60

Seattle proper has been lily white ever since the Puget Sound War. It's changed a bit over the last decade and while there is a wide diversity of ethnic commercial activity most of the residents are white. Once you get out of Rainier, South Park or the CD (and that's changing...) it's pretty much white man's land. There are some people from the 'burbs commuting in that are POC but to pretend there is significant racial diversity living in the city of Seattle is wide of the mark.

61

@60. Diversity to intersectionalists means only two groups: African Americans (not African immigrants who are thriving in the US) and Latinos. East Asians and South Asians need not apply, unless their name is Sarah Joeng and they went to Berkeley, Harvard and the New York Times. She’s clearly very oppressed.

62

This is how some people react to not being academically strong enough to score a permanent faculty position: publicly quacking unsupportable, bitter, self-aggrandizing invective, then lashing out in emotional attacks at measured contrary responses. Nobody in the academy is going to tell you this, but it's fully transparent that you're bitter-thrashing down the downward spiral toward shit out of the system. Get yourself away from the crowd that thinks this is cool.

63

Lots of commenters on here making an assumption that online shopping is inherently better for the environment than the old way of individuals driving to stores. But whoops, maybe that’s wrong? https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/the-big-idea/2017/12/21/16805324/online-shopping-instant-delivery-greenhouse-gas-amazon-environmental-problem

64

I like the 'trace' application. Amazon process has infiltrated health-care at my employer: Virginia Mason. Production is king. Care? . . . well--we keep winning shiny awards. So, that's a thing.

65

I love all the growth that Amazon and other companies have brought to Seattle. Skyrocketing home prices and horrible traffic congestion are small prices to pay for being able to have delicious $4.00 donuts. When I moved to Seattle, we didn't have $4.00 donuts. I don't think we even had Wagyu beef burgers.

And all the people in tents just add a lot more character to Seattle. For example, the stairway that connects 12th Ave S with S Lane St (near the Seattle Goodwill) used to be clean...BORING! Now there's trash all over it, people camping alongside it and a huge pile of garbage at the bottom. That's so much more interesting. I like to think of the garbage as street art.

I hope we grow more and more and more. More high-paying jobs drawing more people from around the country (and the world.) Think how we could brag if we surpassed San Francisco (now $1.61 million) in median home price. We're only at $820,000. Surely we can do much better.

66

You got my vote Roma. You wrote a masterpiece.

67

@52 Huh?

68

@51: Dude, please stop projecting your raw fears onto me. I didn't say Belltown 25 years ago felt dangerous to me, or even implied that it did. I just noted that it's safer now, because the crime rate is lower. That has nothing to do with my feelings.

Modern Seattle is a great place. To the author of this post, to Ivy and anyone else who does not like it-- well, the rest of us are not forcing you to live here, now are we?

69

I agree that Amazon shopping is bad for the environment and package delivery to front porches feeds our drug addicts. A retailer gets one delivery of a product in one large box. Consumers come to the business, often on their way somewhere else and generally purchase more than one product, no more packaging involved. With Amazon, you get excess packaging each and every time, including plastic packaging material. Typically if you buy several things they will come in several packages delivered by multiple methods.

However, this is what the people want. I'm not convinced Bezos is to be blamed for giving people what they want.

Phinney Ridge Preschool has always been white. And yes, there have been many many conversations among the parent volunteers about making it less white. But Phinney is not diverse, so neither is its neighborhood preschool. The bigger issue is that to do a preschool coop you need to have certain socio-economic advantages because you have to work at the coop and not everyone has that luxury of a flexible schedule. Still I'm not sure how anyone can point fingers at an organization that runs itself and supports parents, all parents need support and community. And there are generous scholarships available to those who request them, but it rare that they are requested.

Of course Phinney does have its own Spanish speaking preschool and I'm unsure if they sit around wondering if they can get more non-Latinos involved? This preschool exists here because there is a group of local neighborhood parents who want to gather together for support.

70

@68 Man you just never stop. But neither will we. I’m stuck here for economic and social reasons and you ain’t in charge.

Just gotta run screaming from the room.

71

@65 As a single family home owner on the north side of Seattle, I thank you. I, too,am glad we bought our house when we did. Great time to be in Seattle. Lots of good paying jobs, lots of great restaurants opening, decent Asian food at last (sorry, Seattle yakitori is shite). Hell, I’ve even noticed a new breed of better looking women coming to town, stylish, well kept, well educated, and most amazingly, not overweight. Better than the native land whales with stupid tattoos who lumber around town thinking they are 8s when they are 3s.

72

Tired of the Bezos-bashing from The Stranger, Mudede and now Myhre. Go read Stephen Hawking: moving into space is actually a planet-friendly, long term good idea. The problem with Amazon and Bezos isn't Bezos' space plans or success, it's that we don't don't tax income and wealth sufficiently to provide for health, housing, and education, and we leave health, housing and education to the free market which suck at adequate housing, healthcare or education. Capitalism is great at getting your Amazon delivery to you within 48 hours.

73

@68

You're gonna trip and hurt yourself if you keep backpeddling that hard, friend. But I'm sure you're not afraid of that, either, being the big strong brave man you are.

You don't have any inkling of what makes you so hilarious, do you?

74

I think people's anger at Bezos is misdirected. Business people are gonna do what they're gonna do and most of them are sociopathic, so where does that leave us? People should be angry at the State of Washington, King County, and the City of Seattle who are at fault for failing to rein these corporate bastards in and failing to force them to contribute to the community that helped make them so rich. Instead, the electeds give in to extortion and threats pretty quickly, and you wonder why and how much goes into their personal coffers. (And I guess I contribute because I love the service Amazon provides.)

If Washington continues to refuse to work to implement an income tax, finding one lame excuse after another, the poor will continue to suffer and unfairly bear the majority of the state's needs.


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