Happy new year and good riddance 2025!

When you raise your kids with a thorough Marxist analysis of real estate development and discourse on the downsides of gentrification… it makes it less fun to whoop them in Monopoly.

Julie K. Brown is a reporter for the Miami Herald who did groundbreaking work on Epstein beginning in 2018, including groundbreaking work on the disgusting coverup by Alex Acosta. Her travel itinerary was released with some of the Epstein files. It appears the DOJ was monitoring her in 2019.

In America, where irony is dead, a hotel chain uses a policy denying shelter to local people, for fear of accidentally housing homeless persons… To deny a reservation to the author of a much-lauded book on how American economic unfairness forces working people into homelessness.

Happy Christmas, cheese people!

My favorite Christmas story is O. Henry’s “Gift of the Magi,” and the Bert and Ernie rendition of it is pretty sweet, too. Have yourself a happy Christmas Eve, everybody! youtu.be/o2VFgHGKzx4?...

I wish the low-energy Kim Jong-Il currently in the White House could at least hire someone who could use the correct font, or recognize that two uses of “the” in the title makes no sense. A petty, image-obsessed dictator should at least have some _style_, man.

My kid is playing (and my husband is coaching) in the state finals for rec soccer this morning, and they did a FIFA-style walkout thingy!

A lot of children’s cartoons feature deadly quicksand, and yet in life, it hasn’t turned into as much of a danger as child-me would have predicted. This story is like I feared it would be! www.nytimes.com/2025/12/11/u...

It’s Nicaragua night, niños, niñas, y niñx! #eatTheWorldAtoZ

At a dance class I complimented a woman on her grippy-bottomed socks. “I love the psych ward socks,” I said. And she goes “I call them Pilates socks.” And those, my friends, are the two types of people.

Touring Nucor with a bunch of the @environmentalworks.bsky.social crew!

Valuable lessons to be learned from stories of older co-operatively held community developments like this as Seattle gets started with social housing. Getting the governance right at the outset is critical. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

ICE detained a woman 15 days after her c-section, while she was on the way to the NICU for her daily visit to her newborn daughter, holding her for 34 hours without pain medication or access to a breast pump. Remind me again what they mean by “pro-life”? 19thnews.org/2025/12/post...

We are making a Baja Blast Pie. (Yes, teenagers are involved.)

The racism is just spilling out all garbled now.

When someone asks if I want to see some concrete

Excited by the prospect of Mamdani bringing his communication skills to talking about basic public functions and the people that provide them.

Commentator highlights from the #nationalDogShow: On the Irish Setter: “This dog always looks like the redhead who just walked into the cocktail party.”

At the West Seattle Light Rail Community Forum. Hearing from @cmtmosqueda.bsky.social and Dow Constantine of @sound-transit.bsky.social.

SHE IS ROASTING COFFEE WHILE MARCHING IN THE PARADE this is why Silver Spring is the best Spring

In my second year of Chaperoning the PACMUN Model UN tournament, I have been upgraded to an “advisor.”

Zohran flip your hair again we need healthcare get him to give us healthcare.

Teenagers: old enough that they no longer demand a FaceTime “tour” of every work trip’s hotel room, but still insistent on “putting the dog on” when I call home.

The affordable housing community should tread carefully in arguments about “reforming” Davis-Bacon prevailing wage rules. Every time someone argues that paying prevailing wages “drives up the cost of building affordable housing,” an angel loses its wings. bipartisanpolicy.org/testimony-le...

Got this beautiful Jonathan Kozol quote in an email footer from one of my kids' teachers, and I'm sitting with it and my gratutitude that smart, committed, inspired people choose other professions--like middle school teacher-- that intersect my life. We are so blessed.

when I was young, i used to wonder how people like this would fare in life, as they didn't seem suited for gainful employment. it turns out, the internet allowed them to accumulate a massive audience of similar idiots, enriching them and turning them into a presidential advisor

If you don't have undergraduate students in your inbox explaining why they are missing class, where are you getting your graphic descriptions of life for the day?

State Senator Emily Alvarado just spoke to the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance annual meeting and observed that if Washington just adopted the average tax scheme of some other average state, we'd have around $300 million in extra revenue beyond what we have today.

I’m at the Washington Low Income Housing Association’s annual meeting, and they just shared the good news that all legislators statewide who voted for last year’s rent stabilization bill won their re-elections this month!

In a student presentation this morning about the history of farm worker housing in Washington state, they conducted a Kahoot quiz. I came in 3rd, which actually seems ideal to establish myself as holding sufficient expertise to teach but still being a sponge for learning!

Every year since 2010, I've curated an album (slavishly defined by the number of minutes of music I can burn onto a CD) of my favorite new tracks of the year. While I'm finishing up my selections for 2025, here's a retrospective of the previous 15 years: airtable.com/app9zs5ZA1Dn...

Ahhh, the restful sounds of fall in Seattle: being woke up by your neighbor’s leaf blower pre-9:00am.

What's from Chicago, hates Illinois Nazis, and is holy as fuck? It's the Pope in 1982.

West Seattle light rail supporters are going to want to make sure they make it to this event on Monday night hosted by @cmtmosqueda.bsky.social, given the fact that light rail opponents are likely to turn out in spades. westseattleblog.com/2025/11/west...

Siri, what's one way that I could prove the lack of basic logic inherent in transphobia with one stupid, ironic choice?

Ugh. Get ready for more of this garbage: an anti-urban group in Toronto named “Integrity Toronto” has used AI to imagine terrifying neighborhood retail—with loitering, littering, and dance music!—apparently threatening to open right next to YOUR home. Integrity, indeed.

Tell me you don’t understand risk pools without telling me you don’t understand risk pools

You love to see it.

🇳🇿 It’s New Zealand night, baby! 🇳🇿 We made: 🥧 Meat and cheese pies (with Impossible meat); 🌽 Keri Keri, a corn salad; 🐟 Ike Mata, a Māori dish of cured raw fish—like ceviche; and 🎂 a Pavlova. It’s subtle, but I made the slits in the top of my pie in the shape of New Zealand! #eatTheWorldAtoZ

Things are fine.

Last night was a celebration of the 30th birthday of the Communties, Environment, and Planning major at UW. I’ve been teaching adjunct in this program for 6 years, and it was a blast to see many former students and older alumni. CEP builds such a powerful community each year. Long live CEP!

👏 CHECK 👏 YOUR 👏 BALLOT 👏

My husband prevailed in the family movie selection process last night, but it was French avant-garde, and one kid refused to even start the winning movie, and then the other kid and I both fell asleep like 20 minutes in.

Just an absolute banger of an animal family

Etsy is a weird place. www.etsy.com/listing/4399...

Final door-knocking shift energy! @wilsonforseattle.bsky.social

Getting ready for country #125 tonight: 🇳🇱 the Netherlands! 🇳🇱 #eatTheWorldAtoZ thezimbabwes.org