specseaweed

u/specseaweed@lemmy.world
7 posts · 275 comments

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We moved from Texas to Seattle about 5 years ago (god, it's really been that long). After 15 years living in Texas and fighting the schools, the government, and the weather (our house flooded twice, including one that was a near total loss), Seattle felt like heaven. Still does.

My kids were in middle school and had survivors guilt about leaving, like we were letting everyone in Texas down by not staying and fighting. I had to explain that Texas passed a law to allow people to sue us (I volunteered at an abortion charity) and we gotta go.

My rep in Congress now is the leader of the progressive caucus. It's so weird to not be trying to chip away at the political situation and instead have someone that represents my beliefs.

Disclaimer: I'm American, I want Balogun to play, and I don't think it was a red card. I've been a soccer coach for over a decade now.

FIFA has never had an issue reducing red card suspensions in any World Cup ever and I don't see how this is any different. The fact that a country's leadership went directly to FIFA to complain isn't unique at all. The only thing unique about it is that it was the host nation, and that's only unique by circumstance. The USA would have done it either way.

I'm not saying it wasn't a dirty deal. It was. I'm saying there's nothing special about it and FIFA is exactly this awful and always has been.

I have mixed feelings about this. I'm a public transit maximalist, but I'm also old enough to feel like any progress is still progress. The loss of the Avalon station sucks but I'd be ok with it if the bus lines that run 35th got a big old makeover with bus additions, which looks to be the offer.

on NIMBYism at its lowest · c/seattle · 7 pts · 272d

It's a slippery slope. If you allow for a sidewalk for children between a school and transit, where does it end? Safe sidewalks for adults? What about able bodied adults? Shouldn't we be means testing sidewalks or are we just gonna hand out free sidewalks to everyone?

That's communism, friend. Can't have it.

Disclaimer: I'm not giving advice here and I don't have insight into Rad's specific situation. I am very, very progressive, I love regulation, and I own a Rad bike. I don't have the battery in question. I like my bike, but I don't love Rad. I also happen to know quite a lot about the CPSC.

The CPSC is typically led by a board of 5 members. Trump fired the 3 Democratic members which was plainly illegal but the appeals court order to reinstate them was struck down by the Supreme Court in an emergency order (dirty Supreme Court doing dirty Supreme Court things). 1 of the remaining 2 members resigned, leaving a single person in charge of the entire CPSC. CPSC's power comes primarily through two vehicles: enforcement action (fines) referred to the DOJ for charges (usually for companies that it believes are intentionally hiding defective products), and reputational damage to the company by going public when it wants to apply pressure (like we're seeing here with Rad).

With a solo Republican commission running the place, you would think this would result in a toothless agency that was generally uninterested in enforcement. You would be very, very fucking wrong.

I'm a guy that's complained that the CPSC should be more aggressive, but their stance in the last six months (and especially the last month) has gone waaaaaay past reasonable. They're firing off demand letters in all directions, at anyone and everyone. They're fully on the attack. If there's even a whiff of product problems, they're attacking first with maximal threats.

Why is this a bad thing?

Companies (most of them) self report issues with their product and work with the CPSC on solutions, if one is needed. That is how the CPSC is made aware of the vast majority of product issues. A company realizes there's a product issue and is incentivized to work with the government to fix it, instead of hiding it and hoping nobody notices. This is a system that works surprisingly well because executives can be held accountable (including criminal charges) if they hide issues and don't want that liability hanging over them while at the same time, consumers are protected by the willingness of companies to be open and honest. The only real friction between companies and the CPSC is when the CPSC thinks a company should have been more forthcoming or figured out the problem sooner. Again, this is a good thing because it incentivizes companies to be proactive in product safety.

But now the CPSC is changing the equation. It's going after EVERYBODY that's self reporting, demanding maximum fines. Now instead of executives deciding how to work with the CPSC on product safety, they're deciding whether or not they can win a court case that the CPSC brings against them for not self reporting.

Or put another way: you're an executive. you know the CPSC is gonna either sue you or publicly damage your reputation for reporting a POTENTIAL (not confirmed!) product issue. can you beat the charges saying you weren't aware there was a specific issue with a product that should result in a report to the CPSC? if so, why the fuck are you even reporting it to them at all? why would you have a dept in your company that looks for product problems if it's going to cause you to get sued for knowing and not reporting? shouldn't you be firing those people immediately?

Again, I don't know the specifics of Rad. Maybe they're the bad guys here! But maybe the CPSC's asshole idiot behavior is what's going on.

Well that was somehow worse than I thought it would be.

It is difficult for me to square a need for law enforcement with the reality that the people doing it are often not the people you want doing it.

The old saying about how I’d never join a club that would have me seems apropos.

My councilperson is Rob Saka. His deep commitment to more cops being the answer strikes me as deeply unserious.

on *Permanently Deleted* · c/frugal · 23 pts · 2y

Wikipedia functionally ended the market for encyclopedias. When I was a kid I would go to the library and read an encyclopedia just to see what random knowledge was in there. Traveling salesman would sell encyclopedias door to door and they were hugely expensive. Then Encarta came along and it was mind blowing you could have all that information on some CDs. Then Wikipedia killed all of them and did it for free.

When computers began to take hold in middle class homes, one of the biggest gold rushes was to be the encyclopedia of choice on the computer, since consumers saw encyclopedia software as an obvious (and maybe best!) use case for a computer.

My account has been locked up because my daughter has three separate BG3 games going with friends. Last week my son said we need to put a time limit on her because nobody else can play on Steam.

If you're ok with small spaces, the Seattle underground tours are really really fun.

I live in West Seattle so I'm biased, but I think the best park in the city is Lincoln park over on the west side of West Seattle. Grab some sandwiches (or ice cream) from Husky Deli in Alaska Junction then head down to Lincoln Park, get a bench down by the waterfront, and just hang out. The southern most part of Lincoln Park is the easiest way to get to the water. You can go thru the park too (which is a big beautiful urban forest) but the walk down to the water thru the park is a little steep, especially for people not used to hiking.

If dorky Americana type stuff is fun for you, there are lots of semi-pro sports happening around then. Our family likes going to the Dub Sea Fish Sticks games here in West Seattle, but there's teams all over Seattle. The Fish Sticks play low level baseball and it's much more people having a good time outside and screwing around than actual serious baseball. There's also Ballard FC for soccer, with the same vibe.

Imagine being so divorced from your community that you think only the actual act of being killed in their school affects children and not the practicing for active shooters, dealing with the fact that people walk into schools and murder children in your society, etc and not understanding the possible consequences of that on small children.

Very good statistical argument. You may have missed a very small issue though, the part where it's children and being murdered and them having to deal with that. Other than that, well done.