Alton Brown selling out the Paramount is quite possibly the whitest and most Seattle thing ever

Is the photo of the King County Water taxi the result of Matt's inability to find an uncopyrighted photo of a Washington State Ferries vessel?

We can’t afford to keep the escalators working at Westlake Station, but Washington will spend over $4 billion on “highway improvements” over the next two years.

--I think your video speaks for itself. The transit station is EMPTY, the highways are CROWDED. I'm pro transit, but people need cars and highways.

Thank you for more info on the link rail breakdown Matt. I was wondering if they still had conductors. Not communicating with the passengers is unfathomable!

Love that clip about Ethel Merman. I can just imagine Loretta's reaction.

2 - I think it has to do with the contractual arrangement to use Getty images.

The summary about the public defender is inaccurate. The Seattle Times story says "The growing terror LaRose endured through most of 2013 and into early 2014 was compounded by the sense of betrayal she says she felt when her supervisors failed to remove her from the case, which ended in his conviction."

Reading further, the article says "LaRose told her supervisor about the inappropriate calls from the client and thought she should be taken off the case, but wasn’t removed and later told him she’d try to finish it.... In her lawsuit, LaRose argued she should have been removed, even if she objected." The article also says this guy had harassed another woman representing him in a previous case, and that public defenders and female staff experienced harassment so often, they just came to expect it.

Translation: The office cultivated a culture in which harassment was "just part of the job" and if you complained about it, you got to have one of those conversations with a supervisor where they ask "... well what do you want us to do about it? do you want us to reassign this case?" and the implication is "if you do, we'll give you a poor evaluation at the end of the year and insinuate that you just can't handle the pressures of the position and you want special treatment," basically.

So the only "correct" answer to "do you want us to reassign this case [probably to a female colleague, thereby putting her in the line of fire]?" is "no, I'll try to handle it," because you've gotten the message: your employer doesn't have your back, and they're going to make you out to be the problem if you don't learn to keep your mouth shut. Same dynamic as in a million other jobs, where if you complain about the client/coworker/student/shift supervisor/customer/whoever making your life hell, you've painted a target on your own back.

We could make transit so amazing that no one would drive a car again.

But that would be socialism.

So instead we give the money to Elon Musk to build tiny tunnels. And to Jeff Bezos to launch himself and Capt Kirk into space. Because America. And Jesus.

Happy Monday.

The fact that people have to be told not to get off a train and go wandering in train tunnels in order to remain safe (no matter what the idiots managing the train DIDN'T tell them) is further proof that humans are stupid AF and just getting more and more stupid. Seriously?

Having been on a NYC subway train stuck in the tunnels and an Amtrak train stuck in the middle of who knows nowhere on its way to North Carolina, I can't even fathom having to be told NOT TO GET OFF THE TRAIN AND WANDER ON THE TRACKS OR OFF THE TRACKS.

Even the people evacuated from NYC subway trains (who had to walk the tracks. led by people sent to walk them out) when the entire east coast electrical grid went down (in what, 2003?) had to be FORCED OUT OF THE TRAIN. The sheer stupidity of getting off a train that has broken down and wandering the tracks is literally incomprehensible.

They were mostly football fans from the Apple Cup, @8. I'm surprised they didn't try to rock the train.

8 - That's the way these situations appear from the outside. After hours in the dark with no communication and people panicking, I would have left!

8 - I wouldn't call it wondering the tracks. There's a barrier, and good signage to the exit.

Was the stalkers name Kshama? Just curious.

DanOh @3: "—I think your video speaks for itself. The transit station is EMPTY, the highways are CROWDED."

DanOh, you know very well that the trains are quite busy. Is the ridership back to pre-pandemic levels yet? I think not, but I don't have the latest numbers.

DanOh: "I'm pro transit, but people need cars and highways."

Translation: "I'm anti-transit, but in these parts I can't admit that." And nobody's saying we don't need cars and highways. At least nobody serious is saying this.

The implication of your statement seems to be that we don't need mass transit. But maybe you're making some more subtle point that's beyond my limited reading comprehension.

Disclaimer. I'm in no way defending Sound Transit's recent service failures. Let's just say there's room for improvement.

From Seattle Times: "Sound Transit said the severed cable blocked communication over the intercom to internal speakers in all but one of the cars, though Wilton likely heard the announcements coming from the lead car."

@1:

Riiiiight. Because there's absolutely no chance in hell he'd sell out dates for the roughly 50 or 60 other cities to which he's touring...

While we are listing ST gripes:
- The escalators are almost unbelievable. Constantly breaking down, sometimes broken for months. They would be better off replacing them with stairs if they can't manage to do better here.
- As a regular rider one thing that drives me absolutely nuts are the extremely loud and almost always pointless and repetitive announcements. Are you reminded 6 times while waiting for a delayed train that the authorities don't 'tolerate harassment' on any other transit system on earth? I have been on quite a few and as far as I remember usually there are announcements for when there is useful information, like a service change, to impart, and that's it. So fucking annoying. What the hell does 'holding doors for thays(?) passengers' mean anyway? The announcements and passive aggressive signage just serve to communicate that this is some sort of fishing village where everyone needs their hand held as they have never encountered modern technology before.
- Interface on the ticket machines has an absurd number of steps merely to fill an Orca card. Clearly they did some research on other systems, right?
- In spite of the fact there was some minor effort made to correct this the floor symbols in the elevators are mostly incomprehensible and not consistent. Honestly, who the hell designed this shit?
- Why can't they manage real time info regarding train arrival times? This does not seem like it would be terribly complex. It was attempted at one time I noticed but never seemed to be accurate.

You should also give a listen to Carly Simon's cover of Sondheim's "Not a Day Goes By".

I'm sorry to hear about the problems with Sound Transit and all the people in flood zones who have lost family members, loved ones, possessions, livestock, and pets. Whatcom and Skagit Counties are going to be a mess for a long time, and more rain is expected. And we're about 316 years overdue for a major earthquake that would wipe out the entire region of Cascadia: British Columbia, Canada, Washington, Oregon, and Northern California. Sigh.

Rich--thank you for the precious clip on Ethel Merman--it made my fucking day.
Rest in peace, Stephen Sondheim. Heaven got another class act.