That's right.
Wanderer. Graphic designer. Translating for engineers since 1977. The QuimbyCats are Beatrice & Ramona. Pictures on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/graphxgrrl/
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That's right.
Go Western States Compact, go!
Hummingbird patrols have been stepped up this evening in my front window.
Naming a cat Fiasco is like naming a cat Ramona. You’re in for some chaos.
Nothing like your sealed unit carbon monoxide detector starting to give up the ghost in the middle of the night with no real way to silence it apart from replacing it.
I’m just going to note that the National Interagency Coordination Center that does all our coordination on western wildfire response… is in Idaho.
Jamaican patties!
This is such a Harrell kind of decision. “If we do nothing meaningful, it’ll just fix itself eventually!”
It’s cool enough this morning that I can give Ramona a light blanket to burrow under next to me while I read on the couch.
I've said it before and I will say it again: Choosing people to hate together is not unity.
Normally when they want to just hang out they make sure they’re an arm length away and just stare at me.
Cats. Beatrice is curled up next to me, but she’s thrashing her tail like she’s upset. She does not want pets, but she does not want to leave.
I get to use my mandoline!
Is science fiction dead or dying? Some wise words from Ursula K Le Guin to the TLS a decade ago:
The first time I ever used the word epitome.
I have decided to take a smörgåstårta to a bbq I’m going to on Monday. This is definitely the fault of @formicadinette.bsky.social Which means I need to make a mini-smörgåstårta for her to enjoy.
I feel sorry for the folks at James Corner Field Operations who are capable of helping create truly transformative spaces when they’re not whittled down for the sake of cars.
Beatrice is out on the catio, I went outside to pet her and she ignored me completely—because it looks like both the hummingbirds and our Stellars jay are up to No Good this morning. She has no time for distractions from her important bird monitoring work.
Bluesky right now ...
he'll always be dead in our hearts
alright i'm going to be honest some of you are hoping against hope the president is about to die and some of you are lifelong mariners fans lamenting another loss and none of you are being all that clear about which one you're feeling right now
I’d originally been tackling clearing out my closets with the goal of making room for a portable washing machine. It now feels like I need to use that new space to store more canned goods. Everything is exhausting.
Nothing like going through a box of old papers and finding some old medical records you really could have liked to have had handy… well, at this point eight years ago.
Mass shooters since 2018 who were transgender — 4. Mass shooters since 2018 who were not transgender — 4,193. Hope that helps.
Seattle folks, Walgreens and CVS are taking appointments in their website/app. Walgreens suggested I might need a prescription. However if I’m reading things correctly Washington is not a state that requires this. YMMV. I theoretically have an appointment in a week at CVS.
If you are angry, as you should be, that restricting access to the vaccine will make covid worse and more dangerous, please start wearing a mask, which actually does a significantly better job of preventing transmission in the first place.
There’s a climate policy podcast that I regularly listen to often while falling asleep. It’s often very nerdy and that along with the hosts voice… I just can’t make it through a whole episode without nodding off. I’m sure I’m learning something about climate advocacy while unconscious.
imagine being so maniacally racist that you side with the fire over the firefighter
The interview we’ve all been waiting for.
Did we ever actually officially END 2020s Western States Pact which leveraged the Scientific Safety Review Workgroup that California stood up to function in opposition to federal disinformation?
Ruin any book by adding "Tom Clancy's" to the title: Tom Clancy’s Beezus and Ramona
sir patrick stewart’s range is incredible: thread
remember folks, we cant have gun restrictions because if we do the federal government will occupy our streets, imprison people without due process, ship dissidents to foreign gulags and things of that nature
Can we hire all the folks from the Federal systems usability/efficiency team that were laid off to make way for SV hacks? Dealing with org/tech debt is so hard, but I bet there are a lot of former fed employees who could turn this around.
primary everyone, save the country
Apparently due to supply issues Washington may not have access to the COVID vaccine in September this year. Which now has me looking to see where the nearest pharmacy is to my hotel when I’m in Denver for work next month.
I love you Bluesky never change.
And depending on the industry—in my case everyone knows someone somewhere. Burn your bridges at one firm and you may find your job search harder than it needs to be.
The market right now is tough, definitely get that paycheck! The frustration is tough—I also feel for folks not included in layoffs dealing w/ this. Morale is always shit and made worse if folks actively make life difficult for people they hopefully had good working relationships with previously.
Agreeing with the literati, that due to the current state of our local universe… we have not been talking enough about Elizabeth Gilbert this week. Culture is definitely in decline.
Hey, western WA folks: A person important to one of my communities recently died, and their two cats have ended up in a shelter. They need to go as a bonded pair if possible & need a quiet home. Please take a moment to look at Max and Ollie in the following skeets.
Well, hell.
same for artists. no artist is burnt out because their workload would be less with AI or their project managing software could be assisted by AI. we’re burnt out because our work is not respected enough. what we do is seen as disposable and replaceable, rather than valuable.
Poor girl at Starbucks this morning—when it was 90 degrees yesterday trying to convince people they wanted PSL samples.
This article just reminded me of this old tweet
I highly recommend keeping a retired engineer handy. My dad came over to help figure out if I could repair my living room blinds and today my parents apparently drove up to a shop in Woodinville for a 20+ year old part? He also fixed the closer on my screen door, which has been broken for years.
even as the world is completely falling to pieces im still able to worry everyone’s mad at me which really shows the resilience of the neurotic human spirit
When you googled something a few months ago and end up explaining it badly to people online because your brain is like a leaky sieve for random facts. Sigh.
It’s the average train capacity used, they measure it by route segment and the overall utilization is pegged to the utilization of the peak sub segment. For Cascades it’s usually Tacoma/Olympia.
Tonight might mean napping on the couch where the AC is—my bedroom does not seem to be cooling down enough for real sleep. Especially since I usually sleep with a heated humidifier strapped to my face. Seattle: they don’t issue extreme heat warnings here when it’s only 85 for no reason. We wilt.
Utilization is currently around 70%, and that’s higher than 2019 numbers, so we’ll likely reach capacity before it’s time for replacement if they can continue to improve schedule reliability and efficiency.
*trainsets
It’s about the same I think. Current trainers seat around 250 and I think I’ve heard 300 for the new ones. Nothing to sneeze at, but not dramatically huge.
Ramona is either very upset by the sing-a-long version of K-Pop Demon Hunters or trying to join in herself.
What a great time to support your local butcher who has a relationship with the farmers providing them meat. And no snark about going vegan, we’ve all seen the vegetable recalls.
I am amused by the discussion of &Juliet in the comments because it was 100% my first thought for a “Fourth Corner Musical”.
Living in the future is a disappointment, when waking from restless sleep due to unhappy dreams—those dreams are all anxiety dreams around getting my work headset to properly pair with the right device while trying to facilitate a virtual meeting.
This is why physical media is still so important.
wow that’s fucked up that they killed everyone who didn’t complete the scavenger hunt
Because as most people who live under fascist regimes will tell you—the unfortunate reality is that life, for the most part, goes on.
Familiar acronyms mean very different things here in the haunted woods: NFT = Nocturnal Forest Things AI = Angry Insects GPS = Ghosts Prefer Shadow FBI = Forgotten Bones Inside BTW = Belligerent Twig Witch GE = Ghosts Everywhere NASA = Never Ask Squirrels Anything
If Mamdani can do a transit race like our race with the L8, can @wilsonforseattle.bsky.social do a Seattle scavenger hunt?!
Bear ransacks an ice cream parlour in California, eats most of the stock. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/22/u...
Words/phrases Democrats should never use: * bipartisan * my Republican friends * real, valid, legitimate, serious, important (to describe issue raised by Republicans) * yea (when voting on Republican bills) * distraction (to describe bad thing Republicans did) * woke (in derogatory sense)
There’s a hummingbird that regularly visits the flower box outside my window that @formicadinette.bsky.social has planted. Today Beatrice and that hummingbird got into an argument. That saucy hummingbird is definitely aware that it’s safe on the other side of the catio chicken wire.
Often you’ll be walking on Dartmoor & some ponies will be like “Follow us, we will lead you to the castle where the wizard lives & life is perfect!” My advice, from experience, is to ignore them. Ponies are known liars who will make up any old shit to briefly relieve the vast boredom of their lives.
Given the joy this brings him, it’s shocking how few things he’s gotten done as politician. Think how fun it would have been to cut the ribbon on a new 1st Ave Streetcar or a fully bike/pedestrianized Lake Washington Boulevard!
If I get ambitious I could go sit on my favorite memorial bench in Interlaken.
After a weekend at Worldcon and social out of town coworkers in the office all three days this week, this introvert is hoping I can manage to take the afternoon off tomorrow to just kind of stare into space for a few hours.
This is the future this liberal wants.
There is hope in this world. Some hot dog controversies can be resolved.
When you want Seattle style corruption, put the bribe in a bag of this and be really passive aggressive about it
When you’re out of town coworkers ask you for restaurant recommendations. You point them towards Matt’s in the Market and Place Pigalle… …and they choose Purple because they’ve eaten there before?! Why did you ask, my guys?
Nostalgia is a toxic impulse but also I miss the time when tech trends were things like "let's put everything in a translucent colored plastic case" instead of "let's add software to everything that lies and also accelerates climate change"
Do you still become a shrimp based superhero if you bite the shrimp vs the other way around?
Tonight I try and decide if I want to try and replace the tilt wand mechanism on my window blinds myself or put in a maintenance request and have them break my blinds.
Progress, but still depressing on what it will take to get to 2019 levels of service.
This thread is a delight of odd facts.
Also football season. Heaven forbid I want to spend a weekend in my hometown in October without paying a fortune to stay at a damn Holiday Inn Express.
Mondays. I’ve been trying to pivot on my birthday vacation plans because reasons. And let’s just say I will always curse the fact that my birthday falls regularly on… well, we WILL call it Columbus Day because he’s an asshole and has been ruining my birthday for 48 years. Planning is challenging.
We need to get our best guys working in this straight away.
It’s a Provision Press, so doesn’t break the bank. And happily I can get an adapter to use my Prixel with it as well. www.provisionalpress.com
I’ve been trying to better organize all my crafting supplies, because I managed to talk myself into buying a small tabletop proofing press… and now I’m really going to have some ridiculous supplies to make room for.
Oh good, now that we know this—no need for further study. Who’s bitter about women’s healthcare? Not this girl.
Overall better air quality all week than you might expect, but especially in the larger panels—not ideal for unmasking.
Biggest excitement of the weekend, confirming with @fridaytea.com in the dealers room that now that all the tea robots are behaving themselves (for the moment), since I don’t have any special teas or add-ons in my Kickstarter order, that I should see it soon!
I would bring a Smörgåstårta to that potluck.
Same in many ways. I’ve tried a few times over the years because various people I love have loved Tumblr. This panel was framed as “Why folks should come back to Tumblr!” And I think I walked away with the feeling that I personally don’t have the energy for a different social media culture.
I once had someone try and insist that I was not using Twitter correctly because I kept my account private from the beginning. I can’t 100% speak to the motivations of early 2000s me—but I suspect LiveJournal taught me that I can only manage so much chaos in my social media.
This panel on Tumblr is a welcome reminder that I am not as online as I sometimes think I am. And for me, that’s healthy.
A few logistical notes to consider for future Hugo ceremonies: It wouldn't be a bad idea for future Hugos to invest in a trained transcriptionist at $60/hr or whatever rather than relying on risible autocapture. Some of these folks type 120 wpm with exceptional accuracy.
Perfect may be the enemy of good, but Newsom is neither.
And a second one in comics! (The other was for short form dramatic presentation.)
So glad to see @jordanscarroll.bsky.social get the Hugo Award. Have spent the past year screaming at people and demanding that they read it. Deserves to be read. So relevant.
Lower decks! LOWER DECKS! (won a Hugo)
Movie clips for best film—that are just clips from the damn trailers—but not showing art from the various art nominees, makes me sad. Boo Hugo organizers.
I’m a graphic designer, not a statistician—but I’d be surprised if it were above 10%.
I guess I’ve traveled enough over the last couple years to feel very much like The Only Person Masking in too many places except when I’m home in Seattle.
EEEEP. 🦊
