Who needs a village when you can have parking lots?

All my mom friends chats are some equivalent of “hiding in the bathroom from the disaster that is my life this Christmas Eve.” Hope y’all’s day is going better.

Whelp that was a bust.

Nina Jankowicz: “They’re not doing this because they have any evidence of censorship — they lost a Supreme Court case that made those claims… They’re doing this because the group of researchers and advocates have stood up to liars like Donald Trump and the platforms that enable them.”

More info on education impacts from the governor’s proposed budget.

This is outright Nazi stuff, and Democrats in Congress aren’t doing enough to try and stop it.

This is their vision for the future of the USA.

This.

None of the community colleges in WA State can sustain a 1.5% cut on top of what we've already lost.

Here's the deets Amy references.

You can read more details here: washingtonstatestandard.com/2025/12/23/f...

I got too tired earlier to keep posting (darn this sickness!) but want to add Ferguson's proposed budget cuts education further, incl. cuts to pre-K (Transitions to Kindergarten) and to public colleges and universities. Universities have already been hit hard by federal shenanigans this year.

This “snowman” head they put on Lenin is kind of disturbing, lol. Scarf, or horrible smile full of rotten teeth? You decide!

OH NO!!! I did my undergraduate REU with Horn Point's sister lab in the University of Maryland system, Shannon Point. We spent half of orientation there, and I learned a lot about oysters!

One April, it started snowing in the pass, and I was going to Wenatchee. My aunt called me after she made it over to tell me it had been fine. I left less than an hour later and it was the scariest drive of my life. I finally get to Wenatchee and it turns out, my aunt had been right behind the plow.

Happy Solstice, friends. The year’s tide is turning. May the Solar year ahead bring growing light.

Crown Hill wildlife update. Two fat raccoons kept coming up onto the porch last night to look for snacks. Doggo was going bananas. Opened the door to scare them off, instead they looked at me like, “Hi! We’re collecting donations for poor starving raccoons, can I put you down for some dog food?”

If you don’t work in climate/water/atmos sciences you might not know how big of a deal NCAR is. The closest is like if particle physics lost CERN. The collider, the staff, the institutions. It’s like if US social science lost census.gov. It’s like if IEEE *and* Digikey disappeared.

Bremerton HS Principal announces that a HS student walking was hit by a driver who fled the scene Friday morning. Student was taken to the hospital.

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST

Nobody can definitively PROVE they are a citizen. If the burden of proof is on the accused, they can detain and deport anyone.

How do freeway advocates handle similar situations? When costs soar on the 520 project or delays hit 405 widening they don’t start falling all over themselves to scale it back. Instead they say “this project is necessary and you’re going to fund it as-is.” And they win. Learn from that!

This project was added to the transportation levy as a special line item in mid-2024, and the first time the public is being asked about it is nearly 2026

This looks like closed longer than "a few months" to me. Yikes. www.reddit.com/r/stevenspas...

Talk about siloing. I am planning summer camping and it always irritates me that there is no unified National Parks-Forest Service-BLM map that shows trails and campgrounds. Did I make one? Kind of, but I've found BLM data to be really hard to work with. It disappears, is divided up by region, etc.

The only “staffing crisis” politicians seem to care about is at the police department. Homelessness services are critically understaffed. Workers deal with many of the same populations and issues for half the money.

They developed the "high school girl's sports" angle as a wedge issue, to lever their way up to full society-wide discrimination. What's endlessly stunning to me is how many purported liberals a) helped them when it started & b) are still helping them even after the larger purpose has become clear!

A second levee broke south of Seattle last night as our relentless parade of atmospheric rivers continues. Thinking of the John Holdren quote that we have three options: mitigation, adaptation or suffering. The third is growing ever more apparent as progress lags on one and two.

Starting now! Please show up!

From The Seattle Times article about Hwy 2. LOUD FART NOISE

Because I am a nerd, I spent too much time looking at this cool map showing the flooding timing and depth from King County. For the reference of everyone, I marked on the one place on the map everyone in Seattle knows: IKEA.

While we don’t yet know all the details of this tragedy, we do know that we can save lives through better street design. Making our streets safer, especially for the most vulnerable road users — people walking, biking, and rolling — will be a high priority for my administration. #VisionZero.

Everyone wants to tax the rich! cc: @governorferguson.bsky.social

This might be my favorite local branch building. We live closer to Greenwood, but it was closed for some remodeling awhile back and I kind of never switched my holds back from Broadview.

What’s been crazy about all these floods and storms is that it’s hit the east side of the Cascades as well. Central WA, like Leavenworth and Cashmere, have been hit hard too.

And we already thought we were broke going into this short #WALeg session…

We must note that @viviansong.bsky.social, despite being only woman of color on the board, twice elected to the board, won most votes of any director in 2025, has yet to be elected to a board officer position. For a district that claims to make racial equity a priority, this is unacceptable.

I was discussing this with a friend yesterday. Both my eldest and I have been present for school shootings. (Neither, thank God, ended up being mass casualty events). This is the norm, not the exception. I have now been both on the sending and receiving of the texts you never want to know about.

NEW STORY // Op-Ed: It’s Time to Imagine a Safer, More Connected Rainier Avenue Op-Ed by Anna Zivarts (@nondriver.bsky.social) via @theurbanist.org // 🔗 www.theurbanist.org/2025/12/14/o...

When you leave the ADHD parent home alone with the children you MIGHT come home to new pet fish, I'm just saying.

"Local safe streets advocate has more photos of bike lanes, crosswalks and intersections than of his family from recent vacation." www.creativebyrovelo.com/therovelorec...

Me: “Do you WANT me to tell you about the Water Cycle?” W, 7yo: “I don’t want to have it spoiled for me. I already had division spoiled for me.”

This is a terrible cost of weaponizing the National Guard against people.

After so many days of grey early darkness, it feels really nice to see something of a sunset tonight.

Eddie Lin, District 2's newly elected councilmember, was sworn in on Dec. 2. Reflecting on the budget Council inherited, Lin says he intends to bring forward more progressive revenue in the next budget cycle:

Every single person, from Bondi and Miller down to the lowest pencil pusher on the org chart, is complicit. May we find the courage to punish this evil severely enough to scare people out of repeating it for generations to come.

And here's @robertcruickshank.com on SOFG and the Seattle School Board.

DON'T DROWN GO AROUND PEOPLE

Interesting discussion of the moment Song asked Briggs directly about SOFG and Rankin went off during Board Elections at the last Seattle School Board Meeting on Reddit. I think it's clear they need to have a direct conversation in public about board governance. www.reddit.com/r/seattlepub...

If you want good flood coverage, short videos, updates, etc., I strongly recommend visiting the @cascadiadaily.com Cascadia Daily News page; most all their emergency flood coverage and media are *not* paywalled. www.cascadiadaily.com