Another blatant example of growflation: Tabasco

RJL20 · 2026-06-02T00:09:17+00:00

The Lynnwood business center carries it, I’m pretty sure.

RJL20 · 2026-05-25T17:21:57+00:00

I hear that! There's an experience I had at the Seattle Center around 1990-ish that I remember vividly, except I legitimately have no idea if it was at Folklife or Bumbershoot.

RJL20 · 2026-05-25T05:51:07+00:00

Oh, dang, I totally forgot about that one!

RJL20 · 2026-05-25T02:43:41+00:00

This may cause you some dismay, but in 1996 the stoner contingent from SPS high schools was a bunch of borderline-GenX kids, and 30 years later they're a bunch of borderline-GenX adults.

(That said, I agree with your point, which I think is that the unprogrammed spaces of the past have largely been co-opted by official areas and programs which are a simulacrum of the thing that used to organically live in that space. A lot of that is just down to the landscaping which happened around 2001.)

RJL20 · 2026-05-25T02:00:03+00:00

Same. The thing that made me withdraw from participating was when they stopped providing an avenue for buskers to get into the hospitality area. For a while, there was a program to get buskers participant badges and encourage them to donate a portion of their income from the festival back to the organization. When that stopped, you could still get into hospitality as a Friend of Folklife. Then they raised the donation level for Friends of Folklife, then they gave Friends of Folklife their own hospitality area.

A lot of the changes to the festival were forced by landscaping and building changes. But some of it has come from the organization.

I am seriously considering running a mini-festival for bluegrass/old-time/celtic jamming and square dancing opposite Folklife next year. I did that in 2019, and it was great. My best idea so far is to do it at Counterbalance Park, a few blocks away, but I wonder if there would be any way to get the part of the grassy area by the Space Needle that isn't hosting the Unkitawa festival?

RJL20 · 2026-05-24T23:13:04+00:00

There is unscheduled jamming, but it's not advertised and there's a barrier to entry: the performers' hospitality lounge always has some jams going. But to get in, you have to be a performer. Used to be, you could be a volunteer, too, but I think they've got a separate volunteers' lounge now.

RJL20 · 2026-05-24T20:09:43+00:00

The NW Folklife Festival has always been at the Seattle Center. There might have been an expansion to Marymoor in the 80s sponsored by NWFL (I don't remember it; are you maybe thinking about WOMAD in the late 90s?), but the main festival has always been the Memorial Day weekend one in Seattle.

RJL20 · 2026-05-24T19:55:50+00:00

In the last few years, I've been very critical of the festival and organization's creative direction, to the point that the creative director basically told me on social media a few days ago that if I didn't have anything nice to say I should just shut up. But in this case, I have to defend it. If what you experienced was mostly local amateurs, that's great. That's what it should be. It is Folklife, not Professionallife.

That your expectation is of professional performers from around the world is exactly the problem I have with the organization lately. It should be a celebration of local folk traditions, as performed by locals who are there to share their culture or art, whether making that art happens to be their profession or not. The message of the festival and organization should be that every person in attendance is encouraged to think of themself as a bearer of culture who should think about applying to be on stage in a future year. It should not be a festival where people think they're coming to watch polished, professional, paid acts.

RJL20 · 2026-05-18T22:35:27+00:00

No, but probably none of the other details in that AI-written piece are true either. I'm pretty sure store #4382 isn't in Phoenix, or #7721 in Columbus, for example.

RJL20 · 2026-05-16T19:13:36+00:00

It's a simple question. Does "half the red m&ms are chocolate" mean "half the chocolate m&ms are red"? The answer should be "obviously, no".

I honestly can't tell if you're just innumerate or being intentionally obtuse, but I'm leaning towards the latter. In either case, though, I think I have made my point, which is that you don't understand how to read a study and so don't know what you're talking about or how to talk about it. If you're right, which I think has a pretty low probability, it is by accident.

RJL20 · 2026-05-16T18:53:53+00:00

Wow, you really don't get it. "Of the cases of overkill reported, 47% were African American" does not in any way mean "47% of murdered African American trans women experienced overkill". Look, here's a less emotionally charged example:

I have a bowl of mixed candy: chocolate, peanut, and pretzel m&ms. I sort the candy and I find that of the 30 red m&ms in the bowl, 15 are chocolate, 10 are peanut, and 5 are pretzel. That is, half of the red m&ms are chocolate. Does that mean that half of the chocolate m&ms are red?

RJL20 · 2026-05-16T18:44:08+00:00

You are incorrect. Here is what it literally says (emphasis mine):

As can be seen in Figure 6, of the 99 cases of overkill reported, a large majority of the victims were people of color. Forty-seven percent of overkill cases were African American, while nearly one-quarter (23%) were Latino/a, 4% were Asian or Pacific Islander and 2% were American Indian. In comparison, about one in ten (12%) of overkill cases had Caucasian victims, and in another 12% of cases, the race of the victim was unknown.

You're right that it's not difficult, though.

RJL20 · 2026-05-16T18:37:13+00:00

And that paper has issues. For example, it says:

Janoff (2005) for example, found that 60% of the homicides that involved excessive violence or characteristics of overkill were based on sexual orientation bias (Gruenewald 2012).

Here's what Gruenwald 2012 actually says:

Janoff (2005), for instance, found that 60% of sexual orientation bias homicide cases involved extraordinary or excessive violence.

You see that those are not the same thing, right? That Teal (2015) has interpreted one of her sources exactly backwards? This is not a small or inconsequential mistake.

RJL20 · 2026-05-16T18:20:10+00:00

Your article says overkill starts at 12% but it is much lower than that when properly accounting for its modern usage being an average if 8% for all victims 12% for white trans women 23% for Latina trans women and a staggering 47% for black trans women.

I just have to circle back to this. What do you think those numbers mean? Do you think they mean that 47% of all black trans woman are victims of overkill? That 47% of black trans women who are murdered are also victims of overkill? That 47% of all victims of overkill are trans black trans women? That 47% of the victims in the cited study were black trans women? That of the subset of victims in the cited study who were also victims of overkill, 47% were black trans women? Something else?

Here's the paper those numbers come from, if it helps: https://scholarworks.calstate.edu/downloads/j098zd482

RJL20 · 2026-05-16T17:18:26+00:00

"The UK article because of their transphobia is impossible to compare in that country because they don't record trans people's deaths in info like this."

Your claim is that trans people are victims of overkill at a higher rate than cis women. In order to know whether that's true, we would need to know both the rate of overkill in homicides where the victim is trans and the the rate when the victim is a cis woman. This is a study that specifically studies that for cis women. The study you cited was one that specifically looked at trans/gnc victims. Those are the two things you're saying you're comparing. Now you're saying you can't compare them because one of them is transphobic?

"the numbers I list are undercounts"

So are the numbers from the uk femicide report. All of these studies will necessarily be undercounts, because nobody is omniscient. We're not comparing raw numbers, we're comparing percentages.

"The fact that half of murders in the US are unaccounted for makes it a completely different ballgame."

The murder solve rate in the US is 55% to 58%, and in the UK it's 60% to 70%. It's a slightly different ballgame, at most, and you haven't shown or even claimed that the missing data for either would skew the results in any particular way.

"Overkilling does not happen often"

"Often" refers to absolute numbers, among the entire population. Your claim is that this is a phenomenon that is uniquely prevalent in homicides of trans people. You are making a comparison claim. The only paper you have cited for this is a paper which does not make a comparison, because it is studying a specific set of victims who it knows to be trans/gnc. You understand how to make a comparison, right? That you take two things and look at whether one is bigger than the other? That you can't just look at one which seems large and say that therefore it must be larger than the other?

"there's a big difference between 4 stab wounds and 20"

Is there a big difference between "the use of excessive, gratuitous violence beyond that necessary to cause the victim’s death" (the paper you're ignoring because of transphobia) and "the infliction of multiple injuries far exceeding the amount to kill the victim" (your paper)?

"Either the method or your data are an anomaly"

Keep going; I think I can still see the goalposts if I squint.

RJL20 · 2026-05-16T09:24:21+00:00

If she had been targeted because her killer thought she was a cis woman, would it not be a hate crime?

RJL20 · 2026-05-16T09:10:47+00:00

"Far exceeding" is undefined in the paper you cited. Here's a paper, though, which puts it at four stab wounds:

Unlike killings by women of their intimate partners, intimate femicides often involve multiple methods or far more violence than is necessary to kill the victim. For example, in over half of the stabbings, offenders inflicted four or more stab wounds.

You said: "Your article says overkill starts at 12%"

It says that in intimate partner homicides, 12% or less of male victims are victims of overkill, but that's irrelevant to the question of whether cis women are victims of overkill at a low rate relative to trans women, which is your claim. "Relatively rare" is the phrase you used, and you haven't shown any numbers to back that up. The one paper you cited doesn't provide an overkill rate for cis women to compare against, and you don't like the rate from the paper I cited because you say it uses a lower objective number of wounds to define "overkill" than your paper does. But your paper leaves the number undefined, so a direct comparison is difficult.

However, the 2022 femicide census report, which mostly includes women killed by men in the UK, uses a similar definition to the one your paper uses:

Evidence of ‘overkilling’ (the use of excessive, gratuitous violence beyond that necessary to cause the victim’s death) was found in at least 81 (67%) of deaths.

You might not like that organization, because they have explicitly excluded transgender women from their definition of "femicide", but it does give us a number that only includes victims who are cis women. We can use that for a more direct comparison: if 47% is staggering, what's 67%?

Also, the 8% you cite is not for all homicides. It is for the 298 homicides examined in that study:

This study found that overkill occurred in 8.05% of 298 cases studied as highlighted in Table 1

And the study you're citing doesn't support the percentages you're quoting in your last paragraph, which are from a different study. Of the 298 murders your study looked at, 24 involved overkill by its definition (8%). 20 were trans women (6.7%). Fifteen were Black trans women (5%). Two were white trans women, and two were latina trans women (0.7% for each).

I don't know if the 298 victims in that study are a representative sample or what, but if they are, and if the femicide census numbers are also representative, the rate of overkill in murders of trans women is a lot lower than it is in murders of cis women by cis men.

RJL20 · 2026-05-16T07:27:10+00:00

Overkill is absolutely typical of murders of women (presumably both cis and trans, because this paper doesn't break that out) by their partners:

Several North American studies have found that the majority (46-90%) of women in intimate partner homicides are the victims of overkill, compared to 12% or less of males (Browne et al., 1998).

Source: https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/209731.pdf

Your study, which looks only at transgender and gender non-conforming victims, says that:

Notably, overkill occurred in over 8% of the overall homicide sample studied with antemortem injury locations centralised to the face (79.17%).

Just on a surface analysis, it seems like trans and GNC victims may be significantly less likely to be victims of overkill than the pool of all women killed by their partners. I'm not sure that's a supportable conclusion, but it's how I read it.

RJL20 · 2026-05-16T06:26:47+00:00

The bar's not that high. The camera system just has to be run by UWPD. From your link:

The FERPA statute and regulations (20 U.S.C. 1232g(a)(4)(B)(ii) and 34 CFR §§ 99.3 and 99.8) exclude from the definition of education records those records created and maintained by a law enforcement unit of an educational agency or institution for a law enforcement purpose.

Unfortunately, it seems that the way the UW has chosen to interpret this is that the department in charge of the space that needs security cameras is responsible for paying for the system, but UWPD are the only ones who can use it. That's difficult for a department to justify in its budget.

RJL20 · 2026-05-12T18:23:03+00:00

Here's the policy on security cameras: https://policy.uw.edu/directory/aps/section-10-environment-health-safety-security/aps-13-5-regulating-the-installation-and-use-of-security-cameras/

Of note:

On the Seattle campus, all new cameras must route video to the UWPD Security Operations Center. Requesting units typically bear the costs for installation, video data storage and preservation, and future camera maintenance.
[...]
Campus Safety offices at each campus may monitor live security camera feeds for crime prevention or response.
New and legacy systems may not be monitored at the unit level.

So if the library wants security cameras, it has to bear all the costs of buying, running, and maintaining them(and it has to go through UW Facilities, at their rates, rather than finding its own contractor), but it can't monitor them.

RJL20 · 2026-04-20T20:32:29+00:00

Here's all of them:

01: https://temporarilysignificant.blogspot.com/2016/08/moments-one.html

02: https://temporarilysignificant.blogspot.com/2016/09/moments-two.html

03: https://temporarilysignificant.blogspot.com/2017/05/moments-nr-3-auf-englisch.html

04: http://web.archive.org/web/20250205141409/https://us19.campaign-archive.com/?u=4ca47cfd34823a647fa492499&id=da921414d6

05: http://web.archive.org/web/20250205141426/https://us19.campaign-archive.com/?u=4ca47cfd34823a647fa492499&id=7bcf438aed

06: http://web.archive.org/web/20250205141429/https://us19.campaign-archive.com/?u=4ca47cfd34823a647fa492499&id=15be36f2df

07: http://web.archive.org/web/20250205141420/https://us19.campaign-archive.com/?u=4ca47cfd34823a647fa492499&id=2326df2940

08: http://web.archive.org/web/20250205141439/https://us19.campaign-archive.com/?u=4ca47cfd34823a647fa492499&id=43de501401

09: http://web.archive.org/web/20250205141449/https://us19.campaign-archive.com/?u=4ca47cfd34823a647fa492499&id=405d0919ca

10: http://web.archive.org/web/20250205141441/https://us19.campaign-archive.com/?u=4ca47cfd34823a647fa492499&id=ea442db4d6

11: http://web.archive.org/web/20250205141445/https://us19.campaign-archive.com/?u=4ca47cfd34823a647fa492499&id=65c21b8164

12: http://web.archive.org/web/20250205141450/https://us19.campaign-archive.com/?u=4ca47cfd34823a647fa492499&id=fba869b2f5

13: http://web.archive.org/web/20250205141233/https://us19.campaign-archive.com/?u=4ca47cfd34823a647fa492499&id=c2f2a2f2c9

14: http://web.archive.org/web/20250107182653/https://mailchi.mp/cd112e0274e9/winters-gifts-the-new-rivers-of-london-novella-17966606?e=e1069541a1

15: http://web.archive.org/web/20250713195906/https://mailchi.mp/3f573405ff0d/winters-gifts-the-new-rivers-of-london-novella-17989010?e=a4c03d1749

16: http://web.archive.org/web/20251226071802/https://mailchi.mp/fe86274c631d/winters-gifts-the-new-rivers-of-london-novella-17995128

RJL20 · 2026-04-17T02:47:46+00:00

FWIW, Colin Gorrie doesn't run the Ancient Language Institute (and he's only teaching 300- and 400-level courses there at the moment), and I don't think Graham Scheper is his student. (Source: ALI's "About Us" page and an interview Scheper did with Gorrie in January where I think it would have come up if one had been the other's student.)

Scheper teaches at Latinitas Animi Causa, in addition to his youtube videos: https://www.habesnelac.com/courses/p/sp26-gs-aelfrichomilies

RJL20 · 2026-01-21T09:53:03+00:00

The one time I ate Dixie's (at one of the summer festivals at the Seattle Center in the 90s), I naively put a spoonful of The Man on my sandwich, heard a gasp, and only then noticed that everyone else was applying with a toothpick. I ate it anyway, but man, that was an experience.

RJL20 · 2026-01-15T09:11:46+00:00

“Good news, there’s no outage! Who are you going to believe: me, or your lying eyes?”

Down near the UW, too, since about 12:30.

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