At least the red line and the x-axis have diverged. That's gotta be some sort of improvement

It is both hot and shockingly bright

Yep. And if you spend a ton on housing, there is less left for other things which is a form of reduced spending power

This is highly depressing

My wife and son find ELCA Lutherans to match that, both Faith in Seattle and Good Shepherd here in Olympia. But it doesn’t work for my more cynical mind

I get the “is” versus “ought” argument. But isn’t the opposite approach more effective in the face of a shortage? Create a viable alternative infrastructure which makes it easier to insert things like anti discrimination expectations without the risk of real hardship among the unhoused?

Do children ever fall asleep on Christmas Eve?

Thurston court records shed light on fatal road-rage shooting in Lacey The victim was shot in the neck.

This was actually local to me and it just seems crazy. I drive with my kid in the car in Lacey all of the time

amp.theolympian.com/news/local/a...

This weekend at the blog:

observationalepidemiology.blogspot.com/2025/11/havi...

What awful campaign strategy. I am only interested in your city if I get to lead it, otherwise I would rather live elsewhere. I am not one of you? Maybe a reason he is struggling to win?

This is why it is tricky. I think my point is the place to try these experiments are states like Texas, West Virginia, or Utah, where we’d rather have a maverick than another Republican. Winnable states like Arizona require some more thought about living with the maverick

Oh, 100% agreement. I am just scarred by pundits trying to pick a “pundit class” candidate and trust the voters more than pundits. A primary is a great place to bring out uncomfortable issues

Primary are surprisingly good at candidate selection and I think we should encourage promising candidates to run and see who the voters pick

It is tricky. I think that unconventional should definitely not be the only criterion of interest in a candidate. Sometimes you compromise in very tough races (think Joe Manchin) but there needs to be a very good reason

The dangers of being too far north. We had this issue in Canada when I was growing up — the seasonal pattern just makes for a dark winter no matter what you do

Oh course this is the week I am traveling to DC

So went to pick up the child today and this wonderful news greeted me. Second major set of afterschool care disruptions and it is only six weeks into the school year!

It is also the case that fuel has rival uses and so not charging the market clearing price on AI data centers is always going to run into resource constraints

Children’s birthday parties take so many logistics that it is remarkable. On the other hand, the pizza run is chill and the pizza worker is super helpful, so there’s that

Mostly for sporting events. It happened for soccer as well

I really love using the Sounder but I am a bit unclear why it makes sense to cancel regular service because of a baseball game. If the service is that fragile, shouldn’t we expand it?

I will never understand why I rarely react to vaccines and my wife is just floored by them. We got flu and covid at the same clinic so it can’t be formulation issues, can it?

It's also kind of crazy -- when is the last time that you got a paper piece of mail from a journal on a paper submission? I mean, I know that it helps them target junk mail, but even that has radically diminished over time.

Not a small loss!

“You only ever need a light jacket to deal with the drizzle”

How do you think recent events have impacted this take?

In the end, I think it is like real life. We never get to see how all of the stories end, but exit the stage in the middle of the action. And I think I can live with that.

As for somebody else finishing it? I suspect that is only going to come up when the rights are inherited. Think of Dune -- it was also incomplete but was a well known and popular IP so there was a market for finishing it.

That said, I think that we can be pretty confident that the series is never being finished. It's been 15 years and no plan that I have seen suggests the next book is the last one. It'd be remarkable if the pace picked up enough for a completion.

It ends on a clear cliffhanger that makes you really want to see what happens next. Just like George's books currently end on the assassination of Jon Snow. I think that this is just the risk of media properties, in general.