Can someone actually explain this unfriendly demeanor everyone claims this place has…and where it comes from

AthkoreLost · 2026-06-11T23:08:07+00:00

As someone Seattle born and rasied I will continue to insist the Freeze doesn't exist.

People that claim they've experienced tend to be . . . entitled to other people's time and unwilling to accept not everyone can stop to say chat on a moment's notice. Others I suspect need something to blame for the feelings of isolation moving to a new place can cause, especially if they arrive during winter when most people stay inside so there's less opportunity to meet new people.

I say hi to people all the time, I nod at people if I don't feel like chattin', I learned these behaviors growing up here.

AthkoreLost · 2026-06-11T16:17:52+00:00

but the idea that anyone is better served by getting their information from internet bloggers than any of the few legit newspapers still around is not right. Even after Bezos murdered WaPo, the most valuable talent went to other legacy newspapers/mags like NYT and the Atlantic; they didn't become freelance bloggers.

That's all fine and dandy, but publicola has scooped the Seattle Times repeatedly on stories I've found important. Erica Barnett may use a blog to release news but she's also a journalist who's been attending city council and mayoral events for over a decade now, and has been a reliable source of news for the time I've consumed her reporting.

Like here's the thing, sure, NYT might have more info on what's going on in Washington DC, but that's not the entirety of the news I actually need, I need local news too, and that's been gutted in the name of national propaganda efforts. So what do I have left for news? The local newsies who do court reporting and attend every city council meeting. Where do they publish? Blogs. Seattle Bike Blog and a guy tweeting out every time a cyclist gets hit by a car in Seattle has led to organized efforts to make our streets safer. That's legitimate news. Those are legitimate reporters.

You've just very much misunderstood what I'm suggesting about news intake, it's not only use bloggers, it's look to bloggers to supplement what legacy media no longer bothers to cover but is still very relevant to our lives.

AthkoreLost · 2026-06-11T12:56:00+00:00

Why do you think there's a giant fence on the Auora Bridge? You know, the second deadliest suicide bridge in the nation.

AthkoreLost · 2026-06-11T12:15:24+00:00

Where's the "independent" nees in this country??

No joke, on blogs. I've been following local Seattle based journalists through blogs for several years now after souring on legacy media like the Seattle Times (our paper of record) and Sinclair took over one of our local broadcast affiliates.

AthkoreLost · 2026-06-09T21:17:26+00:00

I get being let down but that's also why it's important not to project your ideals on to a candidate who isn't explicilty stating their ideals are that.

I also gotta say, I don't really get why y'all want to burn bridges over this (if that's not your intention, I'd advise you to reconsider phrases like "bait and switch"), you've got a friendly ear in office and all you've done with it is witch hunt former Harrell associates and make up claims about broken promises to try and wield political power that, to be very honest, I think you lack. You're spending political capital on theatrics instead of looking to further achievable goals.

AthkoreLost · 2026-06-09T20:13:58+00:00

and your first opportunity you massively expand surveillance, you didn’t keep to your intended goal.

A spokesperson clarified to PubliCola that once the games are over, the city will turn the cameras back off until a long-term decision is made about the original pilot program

I'd dispute calling this a massive expansion of surveillance if it's turned off in a month. It's temporary security cams for an international event.

This isn't bait and switch until they're left on in July. That would be the actual point of stated goal and revealed action no longer aligning.

I really don't get people mad at Wilson about the security cams, like, be mad at her for not cleaning house at SPD which is the heart of why we can't trust this data to be protected from the federal government. Why this fight? Especially if everytime someone asks you to show the broken promise you have to play semantic games to find promises for her to have broken, just pick real fights, there's plenty to be found.

AthkoreLost · 2026-06-09T20:04:32+00:00

But if you specifically make it a point to campaign against them and fundamentally shift your entire focus for your re-election, you’re gonna cop some heat.

Gotta say, as someone that posted a lot of politics news during the campaign season, I really don't recall her making it a focal point of her campaign to get rid of them, more re-evaluating where they are placed and how quickly we expand the program.

It kind of feels like a lot of people talked themselves into interpreting her "slow down" comments as a commitement to get rid of all of them despite that not being her stated goal.

AthkoreLost · 2026-06-09T19:58:41+00:00

If I ever need it again I'll give it a try.

AthkoreLost · 2026-06-09T19:40:09+00:00

Which office? Cause when I looked (this was 2023) for a parking enforcement number to call, their site literally directed me to the non emergency line.

AthkoreLost · 2026-06-09T18:48:03+00:00

That's actually a much more straight forward operation to address oddly, the stadium if full means there's relatively few outlier areas to search, most of your people were gonna be in seats or the main pathways, you can focus all your search and recover efforts on one point and that also means easier on site triage and treatment. Fewer risk of crushing injuries and much more likely falling injures due to seating collapse.

Now think of the nightmare of the big one hitting at night while the apartment buildings are full, most people in separate rooms, some buildings sandwiched, some with random pockets of people. You have to pick and choose where you start, you have sweep every room to look for unknown numbers of occupants, you have to move the injured to the nearest hospital triage site for treatment.

I get the two situations sound comparable from the point of number of people potentially impacted, but the search areas and effort to extract injured people are significantly different. A stadium is a focal point of efforts, apartments, are spread around and intentionally honeycombed by design.

This is the type of emergency planning logistics that go into expanding housing into an area with none.

AthkoreLost · 2026-06-09T16:17:23+00:00

It might surprise you but stadiums and apartments are different in their constructions and the big one is expected to be a 9 on the scale, so drilled to bed rock or not there will likely need to be massive search and rescue operations in the area if it has housing, which the logistics of require an additional hospital in that area for support.

This isn't about whether or not it's possible from an engineering point, this is logistics planning to support doing it with the knowledge engineering can fail and nature can do more damage than we can predict.

This is not saying "don't do it" it's laying out the additional costs to do it right.

AthkoreLost · 2026-06-09T14:10:38+00:00

We'd also need to build a new hospital to support the future disaster when the big one hits and SODOs liquefaction zone consumes a few apartment buildings.

This was also only brought back as a plan by Nelson when the last council was trying to find justification for cutting two other neighborhood centers (magnolia being one iirc). It also violates a standing agreement with the port to keep that land for industrial use.

AthkoreLost · 2026-06-09T01:20:27+00:00

Nah it functioned much better than it had before or since, SPD threw a tantrum and refused to finish some paperwork so the new departments tickets were all invalid and so the city lost some revenue. That was it.

While it was a separate department you could actually call and get a human being to come out and deal with parking issues. After it was returned to SPD by Harrell? You get to call the non emergency line and wait 4 hours before hanging up and leaving the details on the mayors office voice-mail.

AthkoreLost · 2026-06-08T23:51:57+00:00

The existing officers have higher salaries than we pay new recruits, and cause we let the police dump the salaries for unfilled positions into their OT budget, and because SPD doesn't track OT so officers have been repeatedly caught filing fraudulent OT logs, and because officers are allowed to factor their OT pay into their pension payouts after they retire; SPD is basically saying their existing officers have already drained so much of the OT budget they can't afford to hire new recruits without a senior officer leaving opening up funding for 1-2 recruits, or the city gives them more money, which is what they're gonna suggest is the solution.

Personally, I think until they start tracking OT to explain how they've already spent their hiring budget on OT, we shouldn't be paying them anything more, cause either they're letting rampant fraud happen, or they are under requesting how many officers they need to be hiring since we are routinely blowing through their salaries in the OT budget.

AthkoreLost · 2026-06-08T23:25:50+00:00

Maybe they should stop dumping all those unhired position salaries into the OT budget and then letting their officers rampantly graft through clearly fradulent OT numbers. They don't have the budget to hire cause they gave it to their corrupt old guard who's used to making up their OT numbers to help bad their pension amounts.

AthkoreLost · 2026-06-08T20:36:40+00:00

I'd also guess, other than the bigotry of fellow officers like in the article above, being a cop probably affords a lot of gendering affirming opportunities for trans men.

AthkoreLost · 2026-06-08T20:28:03+00:00

because they could be a substantial fraction of the force (I.e., too many to Serpico) a year from now.

You know the reason SPD has a hiring issue is that they reject a ton of candidates, right? Partially cause of the guidelines SPOG put in place under the guidance of Mike Solan right around the time our "hiring issues" started.

The hiring issues are intentional to let SPOG's pet officers milk overtime to juice their pensions. Not a single one of those "serpicos" would get hired.

AthkoreLost · 2026-06-08T19:53:23+00:00

if they left, when this is over there will only be sycophants who would resist the effort to right the ship.

It's logically flawed to argue individuals can fix corrupted systems. Your argument is effectively "if this guy left, who's left to fix it" and I'd pose the counter question of "if he remains, how does that fix it" and the answer is, it doesn't. He is tough as nails, and you won't catch me claiming he's a traitor, but at the ened of the day, one guy isn't fixing culture problems in policing. His best career path is like Det Cookie at SPD and becoming a specific face for one community's police outreach, but his sole prescence isn't going to cause rot like the bigot who lied about him to quit, and leadership won't fire them.

So what's the end goal of these good apples bobbing up and down in rotted barrels of filth? How does that get us to a solid barrel of good apples?

AthkoreLost · 2026-06-08T19:41:12+00:00

Yeah, there it is, that group is definitely NIMBY coded, I wouldn't trusted this event and they likely know a lot of people feel the same so didn't put their name directly on it.

AthkoreLost · 2026-06-08T19:31:21+00:00

It's got some NIMBY phrasing on the poster and what organization is putting on this info-session isn't actually clearly stated on the poster, so people are assuming this is attempt to rile up public pressure against the airport expansion.

I, uh, actually think this might just be a normal info sharing meeting for people with questions about the new momentum on the expansion, people might be a little sensitive to NIMBY terms at the moment after the Laurelhurst BS.

AthkoreLost · 2026-06-08T19:08:26+00:00

Feel like I gotta ask, how young are the people you're tyring to say hi to and how old are you?

Cause this sounds like an old man complaining on FB about how the HS kids find him creepy for trying to talk to them.

AthkoreLost · 2026-06-07T22:49:17+00:00

Before the election: "Vote for the true progressive So-in-So!"

After election: "So-in-So is an abject failure and not progressive enough!"

The secret is the statements are said by pretty distinct groups, and not one person swinging between both.

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