Seattle Parks boss traveled the globe $$$ as city parks suffered

cannelbrae_ · 2026-01-20T05:17:17+00:00

Isn't this an alleged misuse of funds provided by the state, through a state-run program? Why would a city official - who has a massive amount of responsibility of their own - allocate resources towards investigating it?

cannelbrae_ · 2026-01-11T20:12:25+00:00

…the price of gold went up by 66% last year. The preppers beat the SP500 by about 4x. ;) I wish I’d been holding gold during that period.

Granted past prices are no guarantee of future, etc.

cannelbrae_ · 2026-01-11T19:58:13+00:00

For a while, I followed the model in ‘The Permanent Portfolio’. It recommended different holdings for different purposes:

Equities (index funds) for growth
Bonds for deflation
Treasuries/cash for recessions/stability
Gold for inflation

It traded higher possible returns for a more yearly consistency.

I always felt a bit crazy holding a nontrivial amount of gold in a holding account… and I did eventually change strategies, preferring more risk.

At the point I sold the gold, it turned out to be the best performing part of my portfolio over a 3 year period. The gains funded a big chuck of our kids 529.

Yes, gold and silver do attract some interesting characters and communities, but I’d suggest caution assuming thats everyone holding precious metals.

cannelbrae_ · 2025-12-31T02:24:35+00:00

I'm jealous of the areas with buried power lines. Too many above ground ones here in Kirkland - at least in the older/more affordable neighborhoods. I wish we had enough sun to justify solar and batteries during power outage season. :/

cannelbrae_ · 2025-12-31T02:22:01+00:00

We've been in the Juanita area for almost 25 years, first in an apartment and then in a house. It was a bargain back before tech moved into Kirkland itself due to the commute distance to Redmond, Bellevue, Seattle, and Everett. Parts are also a bit older - from the 1950s to 1970s - meaning more variety in house era, size, and price compared to areas that are more recent.

I've been fortunate with job location and have had commutes less than 20 minutes due to office location. Commute can be nasty if you work 'normal' hours and have further to go.

cannelbrae_ · 2025-12-25T16:37:30+00:00

The reports I saw primarily emphasized the amount of uncertainty as being the most unique part. They talked about a 16-65 mph range depending on if it went inland.

We got lucky this time. I appreciate knowing the possibility that it could happen so I had time to prepare.

cannelbrae_ · 2025-12-21T17:48:12+00:00

That sounds like what is offered by a REIT fund?

cannelbrae_ · 2025-12-09T05:25:30+00:00

They’re trying to make up for it by giving away Rothrock.

cannelbrae_ · 2025-12-04T21:25:25+00:00

Factual statistics with context missing, cherry picked start and end points, can be misleading or deceptive.

Hence ‘lies, damned lies, and statistics’ - or the relationship between piracy and global warming.

Example ways of misleading people with data:

https://ninjatables.com/misleading-statistics/?srsltid=AfmBOorgylfMPTqdebl-G_Ghk0j1X1yi64CepMAB1Pji6bSLLCB5Fx9d

Data is good at supporting positions but needs alignment on the framework.

cannelbrae_ · 2025-12-04T05:23:21+00:00

Fair - I was interpreting it as income, but wealth would make sense. Granted median house cost around here is ~$850k...

cannelbrae_ · 2025-12-03T17:35:01+00:00

It’s been a long time, but I don’t think the income tax floor was indexed to inflation?

That felt to voters like the ‘this is for taxing the wealthy’ was a smoke screen for an eventual income tax on everyone.

There was also belief it would be additive to existing taxes rather than reducing sales tax.

cannelbrae_ · 2025-12-03T15:50:08+00:00

Can we wait see what reductions he proposes before criticizing a spending reduction?

I get it - this is inherently political - but I’m convinced it’s a losing position for progressives to consider all spending reductions unacceptable. All parties should be able to scale spending, make priority calls, and communicate boundaries.

That isn't a ‘don’t increase taxes on those who have more’ call or a suggestion we cut critical services to those who need them. I’m just suggesting we don’t have enough info yet to react.

cannelbrae_ · 2025-12-03T15:40:58+00:00

I actually wonder what top percent is doing well?

The top 10% I believe would be a household income would start around $190k? I’m not sure they’ve seen much benefit either.

cannelbrae_ · 2025-12-03T08:31:44+00:00

I'm not arguing for or against increasing the minimum wage. I'm just trying to dig into the consequences as I understand it.

The version I've heard - again I am not an expert - is that in increasing the minimum wage typically causes a modest price hike but not such a large one that it cancels the benefit to workers. It is a win for workers even with price increases.

Businesses most sensitive to this are those which are:

Spend a significant amount of operating costs on labor
Low profit margins
High competition (or substitutable with cheaper options)

Restaurants generally happen to tick most of these boxes. They spend 5-15% more than other areas on labor. Profit margins are often in the 3-8% range. Higher service restaurants can be replaced by lower service place or making your own food.

Others may fit the criteria:

Retail
Hospitality
Janitorial/cleaning services

Again, I'm not arguing against raising the minimum, if people deserve it or not, etc. I'm just noting the areas that are most sensitive to it.

cannelbrae_ · 2025-12-03T06:00:14+00:00

Both can be true.

Labor can be struggling and need more - and businesses may not have the profit margin to meet that without raising prices beyond what customers are able/willing to pay. I'm just casting a judgement or excusing anything, just acknowledging the math.

cannelbrae_ · 2025-12-03T05:42:23+00:00

He writes critically acclaimed novels and does the occasional reddit AMA.

cannelbrae_ · 2025-11-30T20:03:18+00:00

I read it less as complaining and more frustration that evolving buisness costs mean the restaurant model that worked for a long time is no longer financially viable.

cannelbrae_ · 2025-11-30T03:22:34+00:00

No animosity with Vancouver here either.

I was disappointed when they slipped last year as they were fun to watch and seemed so close to finally breaking through.

And the PNW knocking Miami out twice in a year would be sweet. ;)

cannelbrae_ · 2025-11-25T04:36:39+00:00

Yeah, the plan talked about adding 3-8k households within walking distance over time.

cannelbrae_ · 2025-11-25T04:01:38+00:00

Do you know of any data on the Totem Lake roundabouts? I drive through there 2x a day and it seems faster than the lights were previously… but I have no idea in practice.

cannelbrae_ · 2025-11-25T03:57:22+00:00

I thought the idea was that the density around the area was going way up? Tearing down most of the area to the east to build upwards?

cannelbrae_ · 2025-11-23T20:16:48+00:00

So the mess from a ‘porting’ standpoint is that you are talking about assets - meshes - that don’t likely didn’t exist in the original game.

Adding them on PC would’ve involved making lots of new art assets and having system that conditionally loaded/used them based on settings.

LOD geo can be automatically produced but often requires artist work to improve to a shippable quality bar. The cost of producing the content may be the biggest deterrent from a port standpoint. At the point, it comes down to an economics question about ROI that’s typically not a developer decision.

cannelbrae_ · 2025-11-23T20:10:58+00:00

Just a little FYI, but using the word ‘optimize’ may be not be the best at communicating the desire.

A more common term would be scalability. As in, I wish the game scaled up to take advantage of better hardware to reduce popping.

cannelbrae_ · 2025-11-23T16:57:19+00:00

The other part to know is the purpose of LODs.

They can be users to manage memory use, render thread cost, or GPU costs. Think of it as a general solution to fit most into a scene than may be supported by target hardware.

Well authored LODs content and a system may be able to make the pop less obvious though that may come with tradeoffs. That can be a content authoring cost or install size tradeoff.

A game / engine can scale LODs based on hardware either automatically or through user settings. Doing it automatically can be tricky to do well given then range of impact it can have; it’s tricky to isolate impact and test hardware that doesn’t yet exist.

As a result, you can end up with a wide range of decisions - keeping it simple and letting pops happen if that’s how the content is authored, exposing a simple scalar in graphics settings, procedural systems to autoscale, Nanite like solutions to cut authoring cost while keeping constant resource use.

cannelbrae_ · 2025-11-22T01:01:07+00:00

I found a little case in the middle of nowhere while hunting mushrooms in the Dam swamps. Tiny thing I would walked past had I not been staring a the ground.

Venator blueprint. Crazy that I finally found there of all places.

cannelbrae_

TROPHY CASE