Catch some cool architecture-related flicks at ByDesign Festival 2021 this weekend.
Catch some cool architecture-related flicks at ByDesign Festival 2021 this weekend. Courtesy of Northwest Film Forum

Turns out that the real name of Pierce County Sheriff Ed Troyer is Kevin. On January 27, Kevin (related to Karen, of course) called 911 because some black man was up to something in his neighborhood. That something happened to be delivering papers for the News Tribune. The Seattle Times: Sheriff Kevin "sparked a massive police response in late January after confronting a Black man driving near his home, telling a 911 dispatcher the man 'threatened to kill me' — an allegation he retracted upon questioning by Tacoma police." Sheriff Kevin claims that the incident, which traumatized the poor delivery driver, had nothing to do with race. Nothing.


Biden hoped to hit 100 million shots in 100 days. This goal was achieved today, Friday, March 19, Biden's 58th day as the president of United States. Forty million Americans are now fully vaccinated. The most fully vaccinated state is Alaska (18%). Washington State is presently at 13%. King County at 15%, and nearly 30% partially vaccinated.

"Americans are getting tired" of the pandemic, reports KOMO. So what? There is nothing to be done about this all-around tiredness. This is the price we all have to pay for that very costly waste of time (a whole year of doing absolutely nothing) called Donald Trump.

Trumpians, You got this from God Himself. Enjoy it while you can. President Biden falling three times while climbing the stairs to Air Force One.

David Ross's the Morning News on KIRO Radio is too damn proud of this bad take on the Atlanta shootings. The way he sees it, the motive (be it porn addiction or racism) for the massacre is just unimportant because nothing can be done about what has been done. Ross: "Let me ask you: have you ever debated a racist? Does it cure him? I’m thinking that fixing racism is not going to happen until an entire generation of young parents make a deliberate decision to raise their children not to be racist." Good lord, how is it possible that this kind of stuff is filling Seattle's airwaves?

And now for a word from our pastor.


Amen!

If you visit Renton, as I did yesterday, you will see that its downtown streets are under heavy construction. You will also see that the men and women doing this construction work do not wear masks. None of them. Is this a construction worker thing? Are they anti-maskers because they see themselves as "macho men." (The few working women I saw here and there also did not wear masks.) Is this behavior industry-wide? Do many of the construction workers in the crane capital of the United States, Seattle, also dance to "Macho Man," the anti-mask anthem. I will look into this next week.

When the building industry and construction unions forced Inslee to reopen construction sites back in April 2020, a part of his 30-point plan required construction workers to wear masks.

Let's hope macho construction workers are not anti-vaxxers.


Senator Patty Murray, a politician who back in the day famously described herself as a sneaker mom, wants to give Sound Transit a $1.9 billion boost from the federal government. This money would help for "the Lynnwood and Federal Way light-rail extensions that are expected to open in 2024." That said, what I want to know is when will sneaker-wearing moms be in fashion again? Or will they be forever stuck in the 1990s?

Why do we have to wait for 2030? Let's get it done now. We can restrict cars from a "major area of Seattle" today if we wanted. (Let's not even talk about Pike Place Market.) My one and only point: There is no such thing as car urbanism. You either have a city, or you destroy one with this most awful form of transportation.

Just because the Pentagon is now run by a black man, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, doesn't mean it's going to change its old bloated ways. The new story for its huge share of the national budget? China, not the Middle East, is where the next big threat to our national security is to be found. “We still maintain the edge,” Austin stated, “and we’re going to increase the edge going forward.” I can already hear the US singing: "Baby I got your money, got your money."


Because my first love as a boy was architecture, my recommendation for this weekend is that you visit Northwest Film Forum's website and watch films on design, interior spaces, urbanist projects and much more in this year's ByDesign Festival. And if you must know, I'm a modernist and my favorite architectural movement is Japan's metabolism (æ–°é™łä»ŁèŹ, shinchintaisha). It was a thing between the 1960s and 1970s, and has its defining in work in the Nakagin Capsule Tower.

Lets end the news with the sight and sounds of a snacking porcupine.