After years of living across the city in spots that get absolutely zero TV reception, I'm *finally* in an apartment with a balcony that faces the right way and isn't behind seven hills. So why can't I record Jeopardy now? MY ANTENNA BLEW AWAY.

doom loop more like oowm loop amirite

Level of service for thee, but not for me. Any actual commitment to the climate and reducing drive-alone trips will mean turning lane space over the particular uses like buses, bikes, and walking. We've done it on main thoroughfares like Madison Street, we can *definitely* do it here.

Unless you have a gazillion lines, you're on an ancient plan that costs like $3.72, you're being reimbursed, or you need some ultra-niche feature that's only on postpaid: More people should look into "prepaid cell phones" like Visible or Mint or Tello. Save a bunch of money for not much different!

Nick raises a good point I want to double down on: While that percentage drop isn't "that bad" considering COVID, the change in the map is drastic. The before map is light rail, RapidRide, and local route corridors. After deletes that last one, with a couple exceptions. That's not great. Why? 1/

Increased spending on capital projects, the streetcar, and "ST3"* are the three big reasons (a fourth is inflation) we get fewer bus service hours out of the Seattle Transit Measure than we did under the STBD, even though they both collected the same amount of money. Some numbers:

honestly I try to keep my expectations in check but now that Katie Wilson is sworn in I believe we will be able to strike at least ONE of these boxes out of my comic.

Someday I hope to grow up to be half as cool as Pauline the Transit Fairy. If you're at all associated with the Transit Riders Union, you know Pauline is an absolute legend. She's out most days making our transit better and comes to virtually every event TRU does. Very, very cool.

Night bus vibes for the first time in 2026. (First transit of the year)

Happy new year everyone

Hello 👋 We met last evening and we are going to work to fundraise for a land use lawyer. We have been discussing this / meeting with lawyers since 2018 but at this point it will be essential to understand the complexities of this effort. If you’re a land use lawyer in WA State reach out!

The 2025 Wrapped we've all been waiting for.

Get yourself a hometown library with an absolutely banger historical logo. “Prithee take thyneself off t’lybraree”

Still can't believe the Kimbell. Just a random small art museum in Fort Worth that's free to get into and you can stroll past works from Monet, Caravaggio, Sisley, and Cézanne. They have my second-favorite painting ("On the Pont de l'Europe" by Caillebotte) and not in Chicago so I'll take it.

Merry "Seattle Has Better Transit Than London" Day! Today there are more buses (and trains!) operating in places like Seattle, Minneapolis, or Fort Worth (and Dallas!) than in London and that just makes me giggle. Thank you, @sound-transit.bsky.social and @metrotransitmn.bsky.social!

Mid-20s Wes is so happy right now

(Starting an 🍎 review 🧵 because we live in a golden age of apples and they don’t get enough respect. Feel free to mute). First time trying Pizzaz, a newer Honeycrisp cross, and I’m a fan! Still crisp like a Honeycrisp, but a little more tart and low key flavor. Maintains color when cut. Easy eating

I'll get into CTR law in a second but this is also one of those extremely shortsighted things employers pull on employees. If you have 100 employees in the most expensive Seattle zone, your cost to give them all full-ride ORCA cards is: $48,936. Per year. At most.

For some reason ORCA stuff is handled like a private company that doesn't have to answer to the public. They have a public monthly newsletter with updates, would be a great place to give us status updates on these projects!

I want @sound-transit.bsky.social to give us updates on ORCA card projects like they do with infrastructure construction projects. I don't understand why we have to rely on rumors from Reddit comments to learn that things like Apple Wallet integration is cancelled. www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/co...

Absolutely. This is why I try to stay borderline-unhinged positive about our city and how we can improve it, not bang on about all of the ways it is (perceived as) bad. We do have it pretty good here! We can do better and lots of cities show us how, which is awesome.

please Santa I won’t ask for anything else 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 Social Housing 🕯 in Talaris 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯

Barnes & Noble Northgate is open until 10pm during Holiday Capitalism Season (tonight through the 23rd) so I am closing down the cafe for the first day in celebration of something around here being available after 8pm.

Want to get involved? Follow @affordabletalaris.org for more info! This is very exciting news. We championed daylighting Yesler Creek for the very reasons the city wants to purchase this land. It is very exciting this is happening and we don't want the Laurehurst Nimbys to mess it up!

Metro and ATU587 have sent out info on a memorial ride for Metro operator Shawn Yim, who was killed last year. It begins at 45th & University Way at 7pm with a wreath laying at 15th and 43rd a couple minutes later. People with candles will be out at the route 70 stops in the UDistrict and Eastlake.

Fun fact: this stop is on American Blvd, a very apt name.

HELLO YES I STILL HAVE MY AFFORDABLE TALARIS STICKER LET'S GOOOOO

Minneapolis has FIFTY YEARS of inclusive laws protecting trans people, allowing them to self-identify, and ZERO cases of trans people attacking women in the bathroom. ZERO. Over FIFTY YEARS.

Really enjoying all of these “benign” parking infractions at bus stops from Capitol Hill to Greenwood.

OK so...possibly spicy question related to this article: why don't more grocery stores do paper bags? Or do recycled "cloth" ones like Target in Portland? QFC and Freddy's (RIP) are the only reliable paper bag stores I find. Everyone else is thick plastic. www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

Stocking the merch donation table for tonight…see you at the @seattletru.bsky.social fundraiser? Beacon Hill, El Centro at 6pm!!

Absolutely deserved!

Thanks Transit App for the recognition

Even if you lean heavily toward keeping the second downtown tunnel, it should worry you that Dave Somers is trying to dispatch with such a central ST3 question in this lame duck period before all of the new Sound Transit board members are even seated.

First time riding the train southbound out of the airport (I took the bus to Star Lake for opening day and didn't get a chance to go back until now) and it's already happened: two people with roller suitcases board at the airport. We depart. "Excuse me, does this train go to downtown Seattle?"

Excellent food? ✅ Fun people? ✅ TRU merch store IRL? ✅ A certain Mayor-elect? 👀 👀 👀 givebutter.com/Z0191M

I’ll be at the TRU fundraiser this Thursday. Will you be there? Our new Mayor should be making an appearance!

One of those "shouldn't be irritating but is" things: When a book series has a bunch of books but halfway through the author said "what if I made this Amazon-exclusive" and now you can't read the rest because you don't use Kindle or Audible and the library doesn't have the physical version. 📚😢

Not me rigging up my own HD Radio setup so I can stream 89.5FM without hearing “SDOT asks drivers to slow the flock down”. (What donation tier to skip the web stream pre-roll ad, @c895radio.bsky.social?? I’ll pay it. I don’t even drive! lol)

I don't know when it happened (maybe when Saar's opened, which is also 24/7) but as a confirmed night owl I was giddy to notice that our IHOP at Aurora/105th is open 24/7. Raises the count of overnight IHOPs next to 24/7 buses in the city to *two*.

Night bus vibes 🚌✨

Ding (of a real bell)

Some of my favorite photos from today's Federal Way Link celebration...

We made it! My group biked to all new light rail stations along the Federal Way Extension and more while avoiding the rain. It’s great to have 3 more stations active in the system #SouthKingLink @cascade.org

Next stop: Downtown University of Washington Street PLEASE HOLD ON This is the 1 Line

Yay, I love a good transit Opening Day! Congrats, Central Time Zone METRO (and also I need to know more about that scarf). For those in the Pacific Time Zone, come check out Federal Way Link Opening Day later this morning!

IMO, the problem is the purposeful conflation of large language models with the buzzword "AI." Evaporating a desert lake to generate a crappy image or text block based on stolen work? Yeah, Seattle's gonna hate that shit. But it's not like the city is against machine learning and tech advancement.