u/bennetthaselton

I’m sure Rainier Farms is a lovely place and these look yummy, but… I don’t think I can just call my farm “Prime Farm” and then sell all my beef as “prime steaks” 🤣

I also didn’t see any other fruit from “Rainier Farms” at this particular Fred Meyer so I wonder how much of their sales is from people who have heard about the famous “Rainier cherries” and want to see what the big deal is.

Through the chain link fence at Pacific Fishermen's Shipyard, you can see this device which was recovered off the coast in 2005.

The only article about the incident that I could find is from the Bellingham Herald, and is reprinted in this Facebook post:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/292825605597810/?multi_permalinks=1307595130787514&hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen

>"The U.S. Navy plans to take a closer look at a piece of Russian submarine gear recovered July 12 by a fishing trawler off the Olympic Peninsula. The Navy took custody of the missile-shaped communications device with stubby fins shortly after Erik Eide, skipper of the Windjammer, reported his unusual find."

The sign says "telephone cable listening device", but according to the article it's not quite as nefarious as that:

>"It was designed to be towed behind a submerged sub on a cable, providing sonar readings for the undersea vessel's sonar blind spot dead astern. It could also be floated to the surface, transmitting signals to communications satellites while the sub itself remained submerged."

I was in Ballard with some Russian friends visiting, so I took them by there to thank them for the display piece.

This vinyl mural was installed in 2023 outside the International Arrivals door. At the beginning of July I was at International Arrivals and noticed the mural was gone. I pinged the original artist on Instagram and she said she didn't know it had been removed. When I emailed Port of Seattle, they said it was always intended as a temporary installation, and they left it up longer than planned but then it started "peeling" so they had to take it down for safety.

But right now it's just a blank wall and this seems like a wasted opportunity to keep it up, since they've already paid for the artwork and the printing, and right now the wall is just empty. Worst case, couldn't they just glue it back up the same way they did the first time? The artist said that if the vinyl has deteriorated, she'd let them use the digital file for free to print another one (but even that's probably unnecessary, it sounds like the vinyl itself hasn't deteriorated, it was just peeling off of the wall).

And if there's some reason they can't do that (maybe they are contractually obligated to put someone else's art there soon), at least they could sell it, or lend it, or donate it to some other place that could display it, instead of just sitting in storage somewhere.

[Edit: OK some people who do these installs professionally have noted that this was probably effectively a very large sticker, meaning it would have gotten wadded up and destroyed in the process of being removed. But this still leaves open the possibility that they could print a smaller version to stretch over canvas and put somewhere else in the airport, or that the artist could let it be printed and hung somewhere else, like in an immigration non-profit office.]

I emailed Sea-Tac customer service to ask if they could at least tell me if it was sitting in storage or if they had thrown it away, and after two AI-generated responses I finally got a human who told me that I would have to contact the art department, and they have no public-facing email address so I'd have to send a letter to their PO Box which is what I'm doing now. (The third response did look like it was written by a human, mainly based on the typos and non sequiturs in the email, unless maybe their AI is smart enough to start inserting typos if a customer types the word "human".)

But I don't know how any of this works; all I know is that it seems like a waste for the artwork to be sitting in storage when it could be somewhere that people are looking at it. The original announcement said the artwork was sponsored by "The Bezos Family Foundation"; maybe that means they legally own the vinyl after it gets taken down. Any other suggestions on what leads to chase to try and make some headway?

A group of us spent the night in Forks, WA (yes got dragged here by Twilight fans, but it was beautiful) using this Glacier’s Edge 6-person tent. However it rained a lot overnight and in the morning there were puddles inside and stuff near the walls had gotten wet.

I don’t know much about this but it looks like the went inside was caused not by leaking, but by the cold rain on the outside causing condensation to form on the inner layer of the walls, and then the condensation running to the floor. I am guessing this since (a) the tent is relatively new and there are no visible leaks, (b) the condensation inside the walls is uniform (rather than being mostly in one spot, as it would be if there were a leak) and (c) the condensation did not form on the part of the walls that was covered by the rain fly.

So
(1) do you think this is correct, and
(2) have you ever camped in cold rain with a tent that did not have this problem, and what product was it? Or have you successfully used some other trick to make a tent like this usable in the rain, like extending the rain fly with tarp attached with clothes pegs?

If it’s true that the water inside is caused by cold rain hitting the outside of the innermost layer, it seems weird that the standard rain fly doesn’t just cover the entire inner layer. Seems like this would add about $10 to the cost of the tent, not hundreds. Do experienced campers just look at this tent and say “Yeah that won’t work in cold rain”?

Fairly calm for now. Capitol Hill Pride is a pretty normie group which organized a rally that starts at 132nd and 85th and then moved in front of the church. Heavy police presence and some conservative streamers engaging in circular arguments with protesters.

A more radical group, the self-described communist American Party of Labor, was going to protest and then cancelled saying that Capitol Hill Pride had ruined it or something by “collaborating with cops” (like a lot of normie groups, they usually inform police of planned protests that might spill out into the street). Seattle Revolutionary Socialists had announced they’re coming at 5:30 though.

Leveraging Murphy’s Law: what I prepare for won’t happen.

A coalition of groups ranging from more mainstream (Indivisible) to hard left (PSL Seattle) held a rally today at Seattle Central commemorating two men killed by ICE this week. About 100 people in attendance.

Several speakers talked about their experience as immigrants, both documented and undocumented, and how different groups of immigrants had had each other’s backs in their old neighborhoods. (Some of the speakers talked about abolishing patriarchy and capitalism, which is whatever, but not morally offensive.)

Rally lasted from 1 to 3, no counterprotesters or incidents. Speakers urged people to keep their foot on the gas and keep coming to events.

There is a guerilla community garden at 4616 22nd Ave and Seattle PD had posted a notice that they planned to sweep it this morning. A group of about 30 protesters gathered this morning to prevent the sweep, and the cops never showed up. Hard to say what would have happened if the protesters hadn't been there, but at least the garden is still there.

I am not sure of all the pros and cons regarding unauthorized community gardens, even on a patch of grass beside the road that nobody was using for anything else (do the unauthorized ones attract more rats than the authorized ones?), but it does seem like an odd thing for the city to prioritize.

I also have no idea, the sweep notice said the city was going to do a sweep "at" 9 AM on this day, but once it's past that time, does their policy allow them to do it at any point past that time as well? Does that mean people have to guard the garden in perpetuity if they want to prevent the sweep?

(The anarchist crowd that was there has a lot of overlap with the "Long Live October 7th" crowd that has perpetual beef with me, so there was a smattering of boos when I showed up, but there was only one guy there who was part of the group that beat me up and pepper sprayed me at Cal Anderson on the 25th and stole my phone, and he didn't do anything today.)

Katie Wilson has agreed to turn off the cameras but not dismantle them yet.

The rally was small with about ten people speaking and about 20 in attendance who were not speakers/organizers. (But it also wasn’t highly publicized and rally turnout doesn’t generally say much about what percent of the city agrees with a position.)

A common theme from speakers was that they are slightly disappointed in Katie Wilson but haven’t given up on her, and some people even wore their Katie Wilson for Mayor shirts. A representative from the Transit Riders Union said they still feel some “responsibility” for her because she came out of their organization.

A drag queen who uses the stage name Miss Texas 1988 said that as a “nightlife worker” she had seen people in altercations in her nighttime walks after work and said she had intervened more often to protect people from police (unclear what that meant - filming the police, or telling people to ask if they were free to go?) than to call the police. (I don’t know how accurate this is generally; I am just writing what she said.) She directed remarks to Wilson saying, “You should listen to the community’s needs, and you’re not going to discover our needs by filming us.”

Work hard play hard.