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Feels like the end of an era.

This investigative report shows that Portland's surveillance data isn't secure. And we know our own WA State Department of Licensing is sharing license plate data here in this state.

It's almost as if data security is porous and difficult to achieve, just like the experts say.

Brussels launched an age checking app. Hackers say it takes 2 minutes to break it. Cyber experts say they have found holes in Brussels’ age verification app, despite claims by the EU executive that it is “technically ready.”

Exhibit A in the problems with age verification.

If Wilson goes this route, her shelter plan will fail. You cannot jail someone out of addiction any more than you can beat them out of it. And "mandatory treatment" is a waste of time and money if a person is not ready to change their entire life in order to commit to recovery.

I kept thinking I was misunderstanding something!

Big news about PROTEC17 stepping up for its CARE team workers and filing an unfair labor practice. Particularly brave to take on SPOG in this way.

Exactly

In today's double takes.

Oh wow, that's a big deal. Thanks for letting me know. It looks like I can't take a look without a case number so let me know if it goes to a hearing.

Slim black box with rotring written in red font.

I have been inducted into the inner circle.

All workers in Washington should read this quote from our state Attorney General.

Learn how to spot wage theft and how to report it.
www.cascadepbs.org/the-newsfeed-2/2026/03/h...

Chart showing lives lost on Seattle's streets at 27. 18 people walking were killed.

Along with a scooter crash that occurred in Belltown last year, where a rider suffered an aneurism at the time of their crash that could have been the result of that crash, SDOT has revised the total number of lives lost on Seattle's streets in 2025 to 27.

18 of those people were pedestrians.

In which I take a close look at King County Council D2 candidates Hasegawa and Saldaña's newly released public safety platforms. While very similar in many respects, the details are interesting!

The Portland ICE facility is a little fascist fortress in a quiet, peaceful city.

I think about this a lot. AI chatbots remove a lot of social effort, which can incentivize their use. You don't have to be vulnerable with actual humans anymore!

But that social effort builds the connections and community that I would argue bring much of the meaning in life.

Citations Virtually Nonexistent After Metro Resumed Fare Enforcement King County Metro restarted fare enforcement on its buses last spring after a five-year hiatus. But between May and December, the agency issued just eight citations for repeated non-payment, with none...

Despite an estimated 35% of King County Metro riders declining to pay fares even after the agency restarted its fare enforcement program, a new report reveals just eight citations were issued between May and December 2025.
www.theurbanist.org/few-citation...

Have to decide whether to stop distributing with them. Might make more sense. Sigh.

Oh nooo, that sounds like a disaster.

Wow!

Questions I feel like I'm constantly asking electeds (and candidates):

How are you going to pay for that?
How are you going to deal with federal policy and budgetary shenanigans?

Meanwhile, when I talk to the DPD, they say a lot could be done by being more selective about which cases are prosecuted (stop prosecuting crimes of poverty & cases unlikely to win) but prosecutors don't want to do that.

Basically something needs to change but power wants the status quo.

I've been covering this for a couple years now. The state level electeds don't want to pay for it and kick the can down the road every year. There's only so long they can get away with it though before the whole system breaks worse than it has already.

I am so close to being able to chop vegetables again (maybe even already there, I need to experiment), and I can't wait!

Yessss, I think my finger has finally healed enough that I can use scissors!

Alert: there is a DRAGON-themed event in Renton this afternoon!

As federal systems break down more over time, we'll see increasing ripple effects making life harder locally, whether that's due to unscientific public health decisions, further deregulation granting corporate impunity, dismantling the US research apparatus, stalling the energy transition, etc.

All this contributes to the overall sense of doom that is already prevalent because of neighbors being kidnapped off the streets by masked goons, a new disastrous war, and the affordability crisis that makes housing, food, healthcare, child care, etc feel tenuous or out of reach for many.

All in all, on a local level, there's much larger than usual senses of both uncertainty and precarity, a feeling that crucial systems could fall apart at any time (but maybe we can somehow duct tape them together), and a slow grind against functionality. But also an attempt for business as usual.

2. The answers from local officials tend to be repetitive: we don't know, lawsuit lawsuit lawsuit, wait and see, there's not a lot we can do. The ones actually trying to implement solutions that involve $$$ have trouble gaining the support of their peers/the establishment.