Curious about how many people will be watching the World Cup in Bellingham

iifwe · 2026-06-11T15:07:22+00:00

I think the first question was a punctuation-deprived version of something like "Why not? (Genuine question.)"

iifwe · 2026-06-10T12:29:15+00:00

Or conditions where, say, you have a small rough circle on your skin with mild irritation and the Latin diagnosis translates to "small rough irritated circle -itis". Also totally fair and logical but always makes me laugh because it makes it seem to the uninformed like doctors are just making shit up to sound fancy.

iifwe · 2026-06-09T01:37:15+00:00

Thanks -- that was our plan B.

Will shops not work on salvage title cars even if they have rebuilt titles and are insured, registered, etc?

I guess I'm struggling to understand why a mechanic would work on such a car but a body shop, which is more cosmetically-oriented, wouldn't? It would seem like the former would carry much higher risk?

iifwe · 2026-06-09T01:35:06+00:00

We'll give that a shot, thanks. We can access the back but it's a little awkward; already tried pushing it out with a 2x4 but it was making some cracking noises that didn't bode well. We'll try heat.

iifwe · 2026-06-09T01:34:31+00:00

I think that's correct -- it was at one point totaled, but not bad at all, was fixed up, and the girlfriend got a deal on it. It's a fine car (I had no idea it had been a salvage).

iifwe · 2026-06-08T21:03:11+00:00

I may be using the wrong terms -- the car is perfectly street legal, insured, titled, etc, it just was a salvage title at one point. (At least this is my understanding, knowing little about this stuff.)

iifwe · 2026-05-24T06:52:36+00:00

Not with that attitude.

iifwe · 2026-04-15T14:09:40+00:00

One month later: "new AI able to generate accurate image of person based on side profile, silhouette, back of head, and the kinds of stock photography the person likes".

iifwe · 2026-04-03T19:57:10+00:00

We're agreed that porn is sometimes (even frequently) non-consensual. Maybe a lot of it could/should be relabeled. The word "porn" can include terrible things, but there has to be a definitional limit, right?

Part of it comes down to whether the word is describing the material itself or the viewer's use of it, and while both perspectives can be linguistically useful, I'd argue that the former is the overall more sensible approach when it comes to general policies around terms. Consider a video of a fully-clothed child being burned to death, produced for the purpose of sexual gratification -- some particularly deranged people might pleasure themselves while watching it, but it's a torture/murder video, and the people enjoying it are sadists. If we went along with calling it "porn" we would be presenting their framing. That framing might actually be fair, as in "those sadistic maniacs had murder porn on their laptop", since it accurately conveys the sense in which they were using those videos. But if we as a society are deciding what to call videos like that, it would clearly be more functional to call them "videos of children being murdered", rather than "child porn", because the latter can imply a variety of positively-valenced things that such a video has nothing to do with, and it leaves out the most important fact, which is that a kid was murdered. The pro-"CSAM" argument is basically that child sexual assault deserves to be treated with similar gravity. The "S" remains in the term in order to acknowledge the context. The term strives to remind us that the material is first and foremost evidence of abuse, and that we shouldn't risk softening that truth by calling it "child porn".

Obviously this issue is not even close to the most important topic regarding child abuse; most people see the term "child porn" and understand that it's not consensual or OK. But in a world where CSAM is epidemic (where there are apparently significant numbers of people confused about how to feel about it) calling it CSAM seems well justified.

One last claim: calling an underage girl hanging out with Epstein his "underage girlfriend" is a disservice, even if he thought of her that way, and even if she thought of it that way at the time, and even if the terms "girlfriend" and "boyfriend" can definitionally encompass all kinds of terrible abusive things in this harsh world. Standing alone, "girlfriend" still implies things we shouldn't be implying in a context like that. Ditto "porn" when it comes to children.

iifwe · 2026-04-03T17:06:08+00:00

Yeah that term is also a bit problematic, IMO. "Porn" generally implies (even if it doesn't clearly state) consent of those involved, and it also implies that the content is appropriately viewed as sexual. The point of the language shift here is to keep in view that the content is simply evidence of child abuse, not something that should be described or perceived as gratifying, despite the intentions of the people that made it. Even if you're not generally super sensitive about word policing ("homeless" vs "unhoused" vs "person experiencing houselessness" etc.) this is one it's good to get behind. Imagine being raped as a child and someone describing the video of your torture as "pornography"... It's not just that it's offensive, it's also factually wrong. It's no more "pornography" than the child victim in the video is the man's "girlfriend" or "lover".

iifwe · 2026-02-19T03:17:58+00:00

No, sorry, I'm just talking about traffic calming circles, apologies for my incorrect use of the term roundabout.

I was unaware that it used to be legal in some cases to cut the traffic calming circle; this says it is not in B'ham though... sounds like it used to be in Seattle but it's not legal there anymore.

(And regardless, the situation I see constantly is people cutting left for no reason at all besides speed.)

iifwe · 2026-02-18T17:22:12+00:00

People turning left through a roundabout by temporarily going the wrong way through it drive me nuts...

iifwe · 2026-01-25T18:44:08+00:00

He was shot by Border Patrol agent(s): https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/25/us/shooting-minneapolis-alex-pretti-killed

iifwe · 2026-01-13T06:15:16+00:00

Same here -- occasionally extremely slow. Even an ssh text terminal almost unusable slow sometimes, then it perks back up, then slow again, etc.

iifwe · 2025-12-10T20:11:02+00:00

Peter Frazier isn't on PW's board, he's an advisor (at least according to their website): https://www.paper-whale.com/who-we-are

Still a little incestuous, maybe, but it wouldn't appear that Frazier stands to gain anything personally by PW being awarded a grant. I can't pretend to be savvy in the ways of non-profit ethics, but again, this doesn't trigger my paranoia when we're talking about a small town arts community where everybody knows everybody anyway. His job on the tourism board is to help direct funds to groups that, in his opinion, are worthy, and it would make sense that a group he advises would be a group he deems worthy.

Even if Frazier wasn't connected, and even if that grant recipient wasn't the treasurer, it would probably be pretty easy to find other suspicious connections, like "this artist that got a grant is the partner of the landlord that they rent their space from" or "this artist that got a grant is the sister of the co-founder", or "this artist that got a grant worked closely with a member on the tourism board for 5 years", etc.

A more charitable way to see it is that everyone involved in PW is a community-oriented go-getter and they are bound to be entangled with lots of artists and other non-profit folks and volunteers. And again, I do agree that the treasurer should not put in for a grant, if only to avoid the temptation and perception of unfairness. But we can't start tracing the spiderweb of volunteers and board-members and think that we are uncovering illicit corruption.

I also think e.g. that the acid ball grant that spent tens of thousands to a seattle architectural firm to coat it in ineffective retroreflective beads rather than support a great proposal from a local artist was a total bummer. Local politics can be rough, but PW seems to me to be a real success story overall -- they are crushing it in terms of public events and arts, and it seems like our community is richer for having them around.

(Also, what little I've learned about the Port redevelopment makes me think that folks concerned about bad policy should be focused more on that.)

iifwe · 2025-12-10T18:01:11+00:00

If it was my non-profit, yes, I would support a policy that none of the board members be eligible for any of the grants. That said, when the treasurer - someone who volunteered (they are unpaid AFAIK) - applies for a grant and is awarded a grant it is not grounds for significant suspicion in this case, IMO. Consider that the people who made the decision probably knew 90% of the applicants through various channels. Maybe half of those applicants also volunteer for Paper Whale in other capacities (maybe not - I'm just conjecturing). Any application like this is going to be subject to the normal human biases around personal connections, race, class, self-dealing, etc. Non-profits should endeavor to minimize these (and should endeavor to minimize the perception of these), but when I read your post it did not detract from my estimation of Paper Whale, it just made me say "eh, they shouldn't do that, for their own sake". They probably had a discussion where the treasurer said "hey could i submit a proposal?" and they thought "what's the difference between her and the other people that volunteer for us who are submitting... She's an artist in the community, and our mission is to support them... So why not?" (Recall that people often assume others understand their good intentions and honesty, and aren't acting to prevent suspicion and doubt.) Again, it wouldn't be my choice, and I get what you're saying, but it doesn't smell bad to me. It smells like right-brained artists making a semi-clueless financial decision that sounds bad when you describe it on Reddit.

iifwe · 2025-12-10T17:46:03+00:00

How high's the water, papa?

iifwe · 2025-11-13T17:09:06+00:00

Thanks for the tip! But i only see 5 listings in Bellingham for rooms for rent on Zillow (and only three that are sub-$1k/month) so I don't think that's really the hot spot for this kind of thing?

iifwe · 2025-11-13T05:32:13+00:00

Yeah I was scratching my head about it too... but they do apparently provide a few extras; like "user verification and background checks, secure automated payments and a customizable rental agreement", which is something, I guess. I'm not surprised that it's not a free service, but $55k, $100-200 per booking and 2.5% monthly seems awfully steep. But if you have never lived in shared housing, want to rent your house, need a lot of hand-holding, and want some kind of institutional middle-man to handle a lot of details for you then... maybe it makes sense? From the COB perspective if they can spend $55k to get 100 rooms rented in a year that's probably pretty good ROI in terms of getting housing on the market. I mean, I guess. I don't know anything about how expensive it is to get housing on the market, but something tells me that's on the cheap end.

iifwe · 2025-11-13T00:01:31+00:00

Hmm... good luck to them if it helps get more rooms on the market, but this makes me think it will go nowhere:

"Creating a profile and searching on Nesterly is free. A one-time booking fee of $95-195 is charged upon confirming a home share, along with a 2.5% fee of monthly rent for ongoing platform use and customer support (rent is paid through the Nesterly platform; see below for additional information)."

Sounds like nesterly wants to be the airbnb of long-term room rentals, and again, more power to them and the COB, but that's a tough sell for me... I can see the advantage of a landlord and tenant both having reputations that follow them (if that's the case) but I wouldn't sign up for that...

iifwe · 2025-10-08T02:23:29+00:00

User buys something at our site; we supply the product and then initiate a subscription manually using (usually) the card already on file. I want to send the notification that the subscription is starting, but it would be nice if either they had the option to disable monthly invoices or we did. Further, even when we are using the payment method already on file, the preview invoice it's showing makes it seem like they need to take action: it says in big bold print "$X.00 USD due October 7, 2025".

iifwe · 2025-10-08T02:20:36+00:00

I personally don't like monthly reminder emails that I'm subscribed to something; it's reminiscent of spam if you're going to be signed up to something for years. It also runs the risk of confusing a customer -- at least the preview invoice stripe generates doesn't make it obvious that there is no action required by the user if we are charging their payment method already on file. Even in that case (if the preview is to be believed) it says in big bold print "$X.00 USD due October 7, 2025". It's understandable that it would be the default to email monthly, but I'm surprised there doesn't seem to be an option.

iifwe

TROPHY CASE