solarbird: (strictly outdoors)

If you’re a Bluesky user, hello! This post is mostly aimed at Mastodon users, so you might want to read this other post instead, which is for you. It shows how you can give Mastodon users permission to follow your Bluesky account in two clicks, entirely within Bluesky. There’s no interaction with Mastodon involved, it’s 100% Bluesky, no software, no nothing. Thanks!

Did you know BlueSky and Mastodon users can follow each other? They can, through something called a Bridge.

And while the big rush from both Twitter and Facebook at the moment is to BlueSky, I’m also picking up a bunch of new people on Mastodon, which I continue to recommend preferentially.

Now, in some ways, Mastodon is not as turnkey as BlueSky. But the Federation – of which Mastodon is the largest member – has things like groups, longer posts, custom emojis, picture and video services, and most of all didn’t just get another $700M of the same kind of venture capital vulture investment that BlueSky just got, which is in these current days always the vector insert for enshittification.

Don’t get me wrong: BlueSky is better than Meta or Twitter, so if you’re leaving to go there, please, keep doing that! It’s much better, at least for now! And it sends a market message even if BlueSky gets tanked later.

But if you’re willing to be a tiny bit more adventurous, there’s Mastodon. And the even better news is that BlueSky and Mastodon can interoperate via a bridge, which means yes, if you go to Mastodon and some of your friends go to BlueSky, you can still follow each other and keep in contact without having two accounts.

Isn’t Federation amazing? With some help, it even works with BlueSky. Here’s how:

FIRST, you have to turn on the Mastodon-Bluesky bridge. This is what joins the networks and lets them talk to one another. Turning it on is one action, whether you’re on Mastodon or BlueSky.

If you’re on MASTODON:

Follow the account @bsky.brid.gy@bsky.brid.gy

(If you don’t know how to do that: copy @bsky.brid.gy@bsky.brid.gy into the search box, hit enter. The profile will come up; click “follow.”)

If you’re on BLUESKY:

Follow the account “@ap.brid.gy

(If you don’t know how to find an account, here’s a direct link to its profile:

Click on the link, then click on the “follow” button at that page.)

Done.

Now, this doesn’t follow any specific people! It just turns on the bridge, which allows you to follow people on the other service, and allows people on the other service to follow you.

Unless you change accounts, you only have to do this once. It’s once per account you own. You don’t have to do each time you want to follow someone or anything like that. It’s one and done.

After you’ve turned on the bridge by doing this, you’re ready to talk on both networks with the same account.

NOW IT’S TIME FOR SECOND BREAKFAST

Okay, so you’re set up to follow people on the opposite service! Here’s how to do that.

If you’re on MASTODON (or anywhere in the Federation, really):

Accounts on BlueSky generally look like this when seen from Mastodon:

@[BlueSkyAccountName]@bsky.brid.gy

As an example, let’s take PopeHat, who is on BlueSky. His account is @kenwhite.bsky.social, or maybe just @kenwhite depending upon how you look at it. All you have to do is add “@bsky.brid.gy” to the BlueSky account name.

From Mastodon, that would be:

@kenwhite.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy

So if you use the Search box on Mastodon to look for:

@kenwhite.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy

…you’ll find his account profile as seen from Mastodon. Then, you can follow him by clicking the “Follow” button, same as anyone else, and you’re good to go!

If you’re on BLUESKY:

Accounts on Mastodon generally look like this when seen from BlueSky, and I’m sorry but here we go:

@[MastodonUserName].[FullMastodonDomainWithDots].ap.brid.gy

As an example, let’s take me, on Mastodon. My account name is longer than most because when I set it up I was a little bit of a dumbass. It is @moira@mastodon.murkworks.net and on BlueSky, that turns into this:

@moira.mastodon.murkworks.net.ap.brid.gy

That’s unpleasant, and I’m under the impression that BlueSky search is not fond of such constructions sometimes (I could be wrong, someone let me know!), but it should get you a profile you can follow.

However, if it doesn’t, there’s still a way. You can turn that into a profile URL directly, by taking away the “@” sign and adding https://bsky.app/profile/ to the front, so it looks like this:

https://bsky.app/profile/moira.mastodon.murkworks.net.ap.brid.gy

That will get you the BlueSky version of my Mastodon profile, with a Follow button, which you can use, same as for anyone else. Click on it, and you’re done.

Sorry it’s a bit of a mess, it’s mostly that BlueSky really isn’t so very well set up to handle anything that isn’t BlueSky and while it’ll do it, it’s … a little muddled. One might even say complicated. BUT IT WORKS! So.

Anyway, if you have comments on how I can improve this, please drop ’em. Right now, both services have real advantages over the other, not the least of which being BlueSky’s still-easier startup path and smoother UI, but also not the least of which is that Mastodon is much better at handling non-Mastodon media sources being in your timeline.

(This blog is pretty readable on Mastodon. But on BlueSky, it’s like two lines, some ellipses and a URL. BlueSky posts are so short, honestly, how do you live like that? xD And no custom emojis and no groups and no private lists? People talk about Mastodon being less than complete – and to be clear, it is – but dang, team. xD )

So with Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Threads) changing to Maga and legalising mass harassment of LGBT people and misogyny targeting of women across all its services, if you’re in a mood not to reward that? Well, there’s more than one place you can go without losing all of your friends.

C’mon over. Shit ain’t perfect, but it’s a hell of a lot better here than there.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)

I hate linking to The Hill, but here we go:

RFK Jr. says agency will reveal causes of autism in September

No, he fucking won’t. He literally shut down actual studies working on such things, because as with all fundamentalist-approach cardboard science, anything he does is driven by producing the answer he wants, not any answer that’s actually real.

So given all that, here’re a few key lies about “causes” I think we can expect:

  • “Overvaccination,” which isn’t a thing; it’s just a wedge to start rolling back vaccination in favour of “wellness” horseshit and pseudoscience that doesn’t fucking work;
  • High-fructose corn syrup, which in its most common formulation – for those who don’t remember – is chemically identical to honey. There’s literally not a way to tell filtered honey apart from 55/45 HFCS. This is also why filtered honey is fucking awful; once you filter out the water and the pollen remnants you don’t have any flavour other than sweetness.

    (This may be substituted out for artificial colours and/or flavours, he’s got bugaboos about those too.)

    And finally:
  • Hormone-based contraception.

Yeah. I think there’s a pretty good chance they’ll go there. I can’t be sure – this is all speculation, I assure you – but it’s been floated around in christofascism on and off for a while. Not as strongly as other lies about “the pill” (christ they’re so old) causing breast cancer (again: a lie), and being an abortifacient (again: a lie). So why not here? Why not go for it?

It has the added bonus of blaming the woman, which is another thing they always want to do.

Maybe I’ll be wrong. Maybe they won’t. But he used one word in particular that makes me think I’m right. That word is “interventions,” as in “interventions” that cause autism. That’s a word I’ve heard plenty of times before when fundamentalists talk about birth control, and also by the new age crowd that merged in with them, calling hormonal birth control an “unnatural intervention.” In other words, both upstream forks of his anti-vax “wellness” following have a history of using that word to describe hormonal birth control.

And here it is again. That word. “Intervention.”

Really could be a coincidence; really, genuinely could. That word is used by a lot of actual medical people for good and real medical treatments; it’s not one of their own made-up words.

But … they really do have a history of using it that way. And the orange fuckfash muttered on about “a drug or something” as the intervention at work, so… yeah.

I’m smelling an attack on birth control.

They’ve really been wanting to go at it, and given the increased… severity in tone… that we’re seeing out of the fascists, it feels like they’re slamming the metaphorical pedal to the metaphorical metal, and they might just go ahead and go for it.

Stock up on your meds, folks. Clock’s ticking.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

solarbird: our bike hill girl standing back to the camera facing her bike, which spans the image (biking)

Greater Northshore Bike Connector Map 2.0.2 – 4 August 2025 – is now available on github, as is MEGAMAP 2.0.2.

Mostly small updates again this time, but there’s one big one – the Redmond Central Connector final segment connecting to the East Rail Trail at NE 124th is already open! Ribbon cutting isn’t ’til September 12th, and I imagined it’d open early but I didn’t expect it to be this early.

  • ADDED: Redmond Central Connector extension up to Eastrail at NE 124th is open earlier than expected! (Both maps)
  • ADDED: Warning flag: the Pier 91 section of Elliot Bay Trail will close from 2 September to 2 October for repaving and rebuilding, including getting replacing that weird steep over-rail bridge. There WILL be a posted detour, but it’s kinda long and involves Magnolia Bridge, so I’m flagging it. (MEGAMAP only)
  • ADDED: A block-long half-dirt connector between Ashworth and Densmore continuing N 157th for pedestrians and bicyclists willing to deal with a dirt path (both maps)
  • ADDED: Extension of a Shoreline Trail Along the Rail fragment south of NE 185th all the way down to NE 180th; at previous check, it didn’t quite connect, and now it does (both maps)
  • CORRECTION: 10th Ave NE from 155th to 185th was listed as UNMARKED BUT POPULAR, but has sharrow markings, so will be re-marked as SHARROWS (both maps)
Screen-resolution preview of the Greater Northshore Bike Connector Map

All permalinks continue to work.

If you enjoy these maps and feel like throwing some change at the tip jar, here’s my patreon. Patreon supports get things like pre-sliced printables of the Greater Northshore, and also the completely-uncompressed MEGAMAP, not that the .jpg has much compression in it because honestly it doesn’t.

Enjoy biking!

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

solarbird: (sb-worldcon-cascadia)

we didn’t plan to go to worldcon

like, at all

even though it was fucken here, right downtown

because until a few months ago it was going to be utterly impossible, economically (we’ve only really dug out of a two-year financial crisis just now, just the last month or so)

and also because of the pandemic and how that’s never fully ended (check out how people who study long-term covid do conferences and tell me again it’s over)

and also because I have some ambivalence about it anyway, despite all the work I’ve done on cons including a couple of worldcon bids, a NASFiC, a couple of v-cons, and arguably way, way too many norwescons (because of the way the latter fell out when i was finally done there)

and also because, well, look the fuck around you, fascism everywhere and month to month reanalysis of whether we have to leave the fucking country (and the depression which inevitably falls out from that)

and so on

but it starts today, and we didn’t plan to go because we literally couldn’t

and yeah

i’m pretty sad about that.

i have work today, anna has work today, tomorrow, and friday. sunday’s the last day and probably a half day like they usually are. i guess that leaves saturday for… something? anything? i don’t even know. i was gonna do the tesla takedown protest, like usual. maybe i still will. but after that…

anybody gonna be around?

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

solarbird: (gun good job)

Holy hell. The Tesla Truck is such a complete fucking sales disaster that he’s getting a corrupt deal with the military to buy them as targets.

I repeat:

THE TESLA TRUCK IS SUCH A COMPLETE FAILURE THAT THEY’RE SELLING THEM TO THE MILITARY AS TARGETS FOR TARGET PRACTICE.

Only a couple at first. Still, no doubt it’ll be at full price or some shit. Gotta claw those losses back somehow, right? Try this, see who complains.

Regardless, “OFFICIAL US MILITARY TARGET” stickers for Teslas, y/y?

Also, I may need to make yet another new sign for the Tesla Takedown protests because holy shit xD

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

solarbird: our bike hill girl standing back to the camera facing her bike, which spans the image (biking)

Greater Northshore Bike Connector Map 2.0 – 4 August 2025 – is now available on github, as is MEGAMAP 2.0.1.

Mostly small updates this time, but one in particular is very important, and another is pretty important if you’re in Shoreline:

  • ADDED: Alaskan Way Connector linking Elliot Bay Trail to Waterfront Trail with fully separated bikeways. Decades in the making, finally here (MEGAMAP only)
  • ADDED: Painted bike lanes on Meridian Ave N in Shoreline between 155th and 175th streets (both maps)
  • ADDED: “Commonly used” markers on Meridian Ave N throughout Shoreline (both maps) – this is somewhat aspirational, as there has been use of this road as a secondary to tertiary bike arterial but not quite enough to justify marking it as such until now. I am fairly certain that the new bike lanes in the middle of the route will increase its utility enough to justify it (both maps)
  • ADDED: “Commonly used” makers on a section of Fremont Ave in Shoreline, because that section is used a little more than parts of Meridian which now carry that marking, and one should be consistent (both maps)
  • ADDED: A weird little section of bike path I found in Lynnwood north of 196th at Wilcox Park. As 196th loses its sidewalks in that area, even this standalone oddness serves a useful purpose if you’re having to sidewalk-bike on 196th, say, to get to Gregg’s Cycles (MEGAMAP only)
  • ADDED: A few more street names in City of Seattle, along with a couple of small adjustments on difficult streets (both maps)
  • CORRECTION: REI Lynnwood’s icon was placed very slightly left of its actual location, and has been adjusted (MEGAMAP only)
Screen resolution preview of MEGAMAP 2.0.1 - 4 August 2025

All permalinks continue to work.

If you enjoy these maps and feel like throwing some change at the tip jar, here’s my patreon. Patreon supports get things like pre-sliced printables of the Greater Northshore, and also the completely-uncompressed MEGAMAP, not that the .jpg has much compression in it because honestly it doesn’t.

Enjoy biking!

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)

Hey NORTHSHORE VOTERS!

If you’re in the Northshore School District voting area, please be aware there are two school district elections, and each of those elections includes an anti-trans candidate you need to vote against!

One’s relatively quiet about it but if you get to the bottom of their voter pamphlet statement they talk about keeping “fair competition” and keeping girls and boys separate, and if it’s not obvious to you that that’s anti-trans code language, well, it is.

The second anti-trans candidate in the other election is just straight out with it, and by the way, fags in general are evil and and and and.

Vote against both. There are two other candidates you can choose from, pick the one you prefer.

If you don’t usually bother voting for school boards, THIS IS THE TIME TO START VOTING FOR SCHOOL BOARDS.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

solarbird: Brigitte Lindholm from Overwatch (brigitte)

Seattle Cider dropped a cosmic-crisp single variety cider, so I had a sample this weekend at their booth at the Lake Forest Park Farmer’s Market.

My expectations were pretty low, honestly, because the cosmic crisp is what I think of as an adequate apple, but no better. It functions as an apple, it fulfills the role of apple, the texture is reliable and the flavour is acceptable, but there are many which are better at being what it tries to be. Fuji and honeycrisp both come immediately to mind as similar but better cultivars, but which are not as durable in shipping.

(This isn’t to condemn the cosmic crisp; the last apple to occupy its particular market slot was the loathsome red delicious, a mealy, tasteless apple-shaped object which fulfilled the function of looking like an apple, but not that of being an apple. The cosmic crisp is far superior, something I will eat intentionally and – in the case of a better example – actually enjoy.)

So after saying more or less all the above to the Seattle Cider rep, and adding that making a cider from it seemed fairly unlikely, I gave it a try.

It’s the pilsner of the apple cider world – but it’s a pretty decent pilsner.

I don’t mean to say that it tastes like a pilsner; it doesn’t. I don’t even like beer, and pilsners are not exceptions. But I know some of the roles of different beers, and this cider lands right in the same spot. It’s light, but in defiance of my expectations, it’s not empty. It has a presence. It’s the sort of cider you’d actively enjoy in the shade during a very hot day, probably after you’ve been doing something athletic.

In that way, it reminds me a bit of Growers, made up in BC, which lands in roughly the same weight location.

Like the cosmic crisp isn’t a great apple, this isn’t a great cider. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a pleasant or enjoyable cider. Kind of like – and yet moreso than – the cosmic crisp, I think it’s a cider that has an actual role, one other than doing a good job at surviving shipping.

It’s supposed to be hot this week. If not this week, we’re heading into August.

I bought a bottle. We’ll see.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)

Have you ever noticed that every projection about “AGI” and “superintelligence” has an “and then a miracle occurs” step?

I have.

I shouldn’t say every projection – there are many out there, and I haven’t seen them all. But every one I’ve personally seen has this step. Somewhere, sometime, fairly soon, generative AI will create something that triggers a quantum leap in capability. What will it be? NOTHING MERE HUMANS CAN UNDERSTAND! Oh, sometimes they’ll make up something – a new kind of transistor, a new encoding language (like sure, that’ll do it), whatever. Sometimes they just don’t say. Whatever it is, it happens, and then we’re off to the hyperintelligent AGI post-singularity tiems.

But the thing is … the thing is … for Generative AI to create a Magic Something that Changes Everything – to have this miracle – you have to already have hyperintelligent AGI. Since you don’t… well…

…that’s why it’s a miracle. Whether they realise it or not.

I’m not sure which is worse – that they do realise it, and know they’re bullshitting billions of dollars away from productive society to build up impossible wealth before the climate change they’re helping make worse fucks everything so they can live like feudal kings from their bunkers, or whether they don’t, and are spirit dancing, wanking off technofappic dreams of creating a God who will save the world with its AI magic, a short-term longtermism, burning away the rest of the carbon budget in a Hail Mary that absolutely will not connect.

Both possibilities are equally batshit insane, I know that much. To paraphrase a friend who knows far more about the maths of this than I, all the generative AI “compute” in the universe isn’t going to find fast solutions to PSPACE-HARD problems. It’s just not.

And so, sometimes, sometimes, sometimes, I think of…

…I think of putting a short reading/watching list out there, a list that I hesitate to put together in public, because the “what the actual fuck” energies are so strong – so strong – that I can’t see how anyone could take it seriously. And yet…

…so much of the AI fantasia happening right now is summed by three entirely accessible works.

Every AI-fantasia idea, particularly the ideas most on the batshit side…

…they’re all right here. And it’s all fiction. All of it. Some of it is science-shaped; none of it is science.

But Alice, you know, we’re all mad here. So… why not.

Let’s go.

1: Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970)

This is the “bad end” you see so much in “projections” about AI progression. A new one of these timelines just dropped, they have a whole website you can play with. I’m not linking to it because why would I, holy shit, I don’t need to spread their crazy. But there’s a point in the timeline/story that they have you read – I think it’s in 2027 – when you can make a critical choice. It’s literally a one-selection choose-your-own-path adventure!

The “good” choice takes you to galactic civilisation managed by friendly hyperintelligent AGI.

The “bad” choice is literally the plot of The Forbin Project with an even grimmer ending. No, really. The beats are very much the same. It’s just The Forbin Project with more death.

Well. And a bioweapon. Nukes are so messy, and affect so much more than mere flesh.

2: Blindsight, by Peter Watts (2006)

This rather interesting – if bleak – novel presents a model of cognition which lays out an intriguing thought experiment, even if it … did not sit well with what I freely admit is my severely limited understanding of cognition.

(It is not helped that it directly contradicts known facts about the cognition of self-awareness in various animals, and did so even when it was published. That doesn’t make it a worse thought experiment, however. Or a worse novel.)

It got shortlisted – deservedly – for a bunch of awards. But that’s not why it’s here. It’s here because its model of cognition is functionally the one used by those who think generative AI and LLMs can be hyperintelligent – or even functionally intelligent at all.

And it’s wrong. As a model, it’s just wrong.

Finally, we get to the “what.” entry:

3: Friendship is Optimal, by Iceman (2012)

Friendship is Optimal is obviously the most obscure of these works, but also, I think maybe the most important. It made a big splash in MLP fandom, before landing like an absolute hand grenade in the nascent generative AI community when it broke containment. Maybe not in all of that latter community – but certainly in the parts of which I was aware. So much so, in fact, that it made waves even beyond that – which is when I heard of it, and how I read it.

And yes… it’s My Little Pony fanfic.

Sorta.

It’s that, but really it’s more an explicit AI takeoff story, one which is absolutely about creating a benevolent hyperintelligent Goddess AI construct who can, will, and does remake the world, destroying the old one behind her.

Sound familiar?

These three works include every idea behind every crazy line of thought I’ve seen out of the Silicon Valley AI crowd. These three works right here. A novel or a movie (take your choice, the movie’s quite good, I understand the novel is as well), a second novel, and a frankly remarkable piece of fanfic.

For Musk’s crowd in particular? It’s all about the model presented in Friendship is Optimal, except, you know, totally white supremacist. They’re even kinda following the Hofvarpnir Studios playbook from the story, but with less “licensed property game” and a lot more more “Billionaire corporate fascism means you don’t have to pay employees anymore, you can just take all the money yourself.”

…which is not the kind of sentence I ever thought I’d write, but here we are.

You can see why I’m hesitant to publish this reading list, but I also hope you can see why I want to.

If you read Friendship is Optimal, and then go look at Longtermerism… I think you definitely will.

So what’re we left with, then?

Some parts of this technology are actually useful. Some of it. Much less than supports the valuations, but there’s real use here. If you have 100,000 untagged, undescribed images and AI analysis gives 90% of them reasonable descriptions, that’s a substantial value add. Some of the production tools are good – some of them are very good, or will be, once it stops being obvious that “oh look, you’ve used AI tools on this.” Some of the medical imaging and diagnostic tools show real promise – though it’s always important to keep in mind that antique technologies like “Expert Systems” seemed just as promising, in the lab.

Regardless, there’s real value to be found in those sorts of applications. These tasks are where it can do good. There are many more than I’ve listed, of course.

But AGI? Hyperintelligence? The underlying core of this boom, the one that says you won’t have to employ anyone anymore, just rake in the money and live like kings?

That entire project is either:

A knowing mass fraud inflating a bubble nobody’s seen in a century that instead of breaking a monetary system might well finish off any hopes for a stable climate in an Enron-like insertion of AI-generated noise followed by AI-generated summarisation of that noise that no one reads and serves no purpose and adds no value but costs oh, oh so very much electricity and oh, oh, oh so very much money;

A power play unlike anything since the fall of the western Roman empire, where the Church functionally substituted itself in parallel to and substitute of of the Roman government to the point that the latter finally collapsed, all in service of setting up a God’s Kingdom on Earth to bring back Jesus, only in this case, it’s setting up the techbro billionaires as a new nobility, manipulating the hoi polloi from above with propaganda and disinformation sifted through their “AI” interlocutors;

Or an absolute psychotic break by said billionaires and fellow travellers so utterly unwilling and utterly unable to deal with the realities of climate change that they’ll do anything – anything – to pretend they don’t have to, including burning down the world in the service of somehow provoking a miracle that transcends maths and physics in the hope that some day, some way, before it’s too late, their God AI will emerge and make sure everything ends up better… in the long term.

Maybe, even, it’s a mix of all three.

And here I thought my reading list was the scary part.

Silly me.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

solarbird: our bike hill girl standing back to the camera facing her bike, which spans the image (biking)

Greater Northshore Bike Connector Map 2.0 – 15 July 2025 – is now available on github, as is MEGAMAP 2.0.0.

The big update this release is making City of Seattle street labels legible when printed. This was a pretty big project, for several reasons, and involved patching many parts of the map by hand. This project is one of the reasons there are many small corrections in City of Seattle this release.

While yes, I can edit their PDF directly and change sizes that way, they use an $1850 typeface and I do not have that money, at least, not for this project. Also, their PDF is optimised… presumably for something… but whatever way in which it might be optimised, it’s in a way that makes it a nightmare to edit. So the hard way it is.

Additions and changes since 1.8:

  • ADDED: The abovementioned font embiggening. I only enlarged street names which are directly or indirectly related to bike routes; others, I left small, if they were present at all. I also added a lot of street names left out in the original. If you would find other absent or small street names useful, please let me know and I will add and/or enlarge those, too (Seattle)
  • ADDED: Bell Street improved bike facilities (Seattle)
  • ADDED WARNING: Construction underway for new bike lanes and sidewalk improvements on 61st Ave/Place (Kenmore)
  • RECONSTRUCTED: The north side of University Bridge in the U. District is a mess in real life, and I was asked to rework their map to at least try and make it more comprehensible. I tried. Feedback WILL be considered (Seattle)
  • WARNING: The East Thomas to Elliott Bay Trail bridge over the railroad tracks is closing for construction THROUGH AUGUST. Estimate for re-opening is September 3rd (Seattle)
  • WARNING: Cross-Kirkland Connector trail will be CLOSED due to construction at 85th Street until May of 2026. There will be signed detours (both ADA and not), but they’re out of your way (Kirkland)
  • CORRECTION: A major maps error in Lake City still present in Seattle 2025 has finally been corrected here. This involved one bike route off a cliff and another down a multistorey stairwell. You’re welcome. (Seattle)
  • Several other small Seattle 2023/2025 errors corrected – mislabelled streets, things like that (Seattle)
The Greater Northshore MEGAMAP, covering bike infrastructure from Lynnwood, Washington in the north to Renton, Washington in the south.

All permalinks continue to work.

If you enjoy these maps and feel like throwing some change at the tip jar, here’s my patreon. Patreon supports get things like pre-sliced printables of the Greater Northshore, and also the completely-uncompressed MEGAMAP, not that the .jpg has much compression in it because honestly it doesn’t.

Thank you! ^_^

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

solarbird: our bike hill girl standing back to the camera facing her bike, which spans the image (biking)

The last couple of posts I’ve made with images didn’t have their alt text make it to the Federation. It made it to Dreamwidth, but didn’t federate.

Let’s try this one:

A highly complicated cluster of street names on bike infrastructure and/or high-bike-use streets in east Seattle around Madrona. Is this alt-text visible to the Fediverse?

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)

Grok went gone full Hitler-supporting Nazi today. At first it was slightly hidden, but since I boosted this around, it’s just gone full-bore literal Nazi, calling for National Socialism and talking about what Hitler would do and why it would be good.

I don’t have time to write a long version of this, much less edit it to a good short version of this, so I’m just gonna dump my thesis:

I don’t think anyone changed Grok’s startup prompt.

I think they shifted weightings on sources until it started agreeing with Elon about all the shit he was mad at it about, and that meant…

…full-bore Nazi time.

Unintentionally.

But inevitably, since he’s literally a fucking fascist who literally threw a Hitler Rally-identical Nazi salute at the fucking inauguration.

Think about this, think about that, and think about who Elon is.

Today is a very good day to protest at a Tesla dealership. Find a protest near you. Get out, show up, do shit.

And it’s always a very good day to leave X behind forever.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

solarbird: (gaz)

My hold at the library came up, so I finally got to read Careless People, Sarah Wynn-Williams’s memoir about her time at Facebook.

You should read it.

No matter how bad you might think Facebook/Meta and its leadership might be, it’s almost certainly worse. Even if you know all of the pieces – all of the events discussed in the book were covered by the press in various forms before her memoir dropped – her presentation really pulls it all together.

Wynn-Williams doesn’t come off real great either herself, mind you. Early on, I found myself reacting with combinations of “…how did you expect this to play out?” and “this is both psychotically abusive and incredibly compromising, you should’ve walked. I literally would’ve walked out right here, and I know, ’cause I’ve done it.” (Tho’ to be fair, there have been a couple of times when I didn’t. But mostly, I have.) The recountings alternated between funny and hard to read, but in a way most people would mostly find funny – I think.

That was before it actually got to any of the worst parts, though, the parts where it went from a combination of entertainingly naive, occasionally pathetic, and often appalling to frankly revolting and rather deeply grim but still compelling as the… honestly, as the evil… crystallised.

But, well.

No matter how badly Wynn-Williams might come across in this memoir, Facebook comes off much, much worse.

So much worse.

So you should read it. No one other than Meta have contested the contents. Even they refer to the contents as “out of date” and “previously reported,” which worlds away from “lies” – although they do insist some of her accusations of behaviour by upper-level executives are “false.”

That’s probably about the sexual harassment, but I think we all know better.

More, Zuckerberg tried very hard to silence her and stop the book’s publication. He did manage to stop her – via binding arbitration – from promoting her work. That includes stating “orally, in writing, or otherwise any disparaging, critical or otherwise detrimental comments to any person or entity concerning [Meta], its officers, directors, or employees.”

The book came out anyway, because the publisher was in the UK, and said they didn’t care what an American arbitrator had to say.

And that’s one of the reasons you should read it.

Because if you think there is anything redeemable within Meta… based on the uncontested facts of this book… you are wrong.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

solarbird: our bike hill girl standing back to the camera facing her bike, which spans the image (biking)

Here – here’s why I’m doing all this relabelling work in one photo of actual printouts of the same area of map, laid out side by side on a tabletop, and shot from above:

Direct photograph of two printouts of the Seattle 2023 base map (updated by me), the left one with new larger black-on-off-white street labels, right right with only the original smaller, grey-on-off-white street labels.

Look at the street names.

That’s why.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

solarbird: (ART-gonzo)

So I’m redoing the text on the Seattle 2023 bike map, because I figured out that while in digital form on a phone or something it’s okay, printed, it’s REALLY not.

And since the printed poster is the biggest single part of the point of this whole exercise, if I want this actually usable on streets people don’t already know… I have to fix it.

And fixing it means new text everywhere important, and often that means having to block out existing text.

The problem with this is that this sometimes means covering up streets. Not important ones, but streets nonetheless, where the old labels crossed that road and still need to be removed.

Let’s take Mary NW here:

The Seattle 2023 bike map, extreme closeup view showing several streets on Crown Hill, inside Inkscape, a vector-based graphics design application.

The original small label text for Mary NW crossed a road, probably… 95th street? Honestly not sure. It’s not labelled, so I’m not adding a label of my own.

To remove the old Mary Ave NW label, though, I had to block over it with the background colour. That removed part of a street line.

Now, sure, I could draw another line there and replace it. I’ve done that before and will do again if I have to. But that’s an extra step that I might be able to avoid, right? What if instead of labelling the road “Mary Ave NW,” I just labelled it “Mary NW” instead, and make sure the first vertical of the capital N lies where the street line should be?

There’s no Mary Street so there won’t be ambiguity, so why not?

N 90th Street lower and to the right is doing the same thing. So is NW 90th to the left, but it’s the leftmost diagonal bar of the W.

This isn’t a big flashy trick. If I do it right, nobody will ever notice that I did it. That’s the goal, really. It’s not something anyone should see.

But it is a good example of the delicate art of text placement. Particularly on a map.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)

Okay, so, one of my best friends still has people from her neighbourhood being disappeared. It’s not getting better. It’s getting worse.

I’m not going to ID her here, not with undead pieces of shit like Laura Loomer literally calling for feeding everyone like her to alligators. But and she’s been talking about what’s going on around her, and there are fundraisers for families (via GoFundMe). They’re linked below, but mostly… honestly, I just want to let her talk.

Here are some of her words.


I know it’s drowned out by bigger news, and there’s 10000000 other things going on that require attention, I totally get it, but

ICE raids are still happening daily in Los Angeles and people are getting taken off the street

It’s not really safe for me to walk around, especially in the mornings to get errands done around my neighborhood

so

this is small and just one person, but please consider donating to Reyna. She is a tamale vendor I grew up with. She would laugh with my family and knew us as kids. I’ve never been so heartbroken like this. She literally has never been in any trouble. Her only crime was going to work her regular route selling her food and not being documented.

These are Zapotec (indigenous Mexican) community members who got taken on the first mass day of raids. They’re still trying to reach their goal.

I know this is like moral outrage shit, but like this is my community. It’s personal and it’s still happening and it’s just getting more and more brazen cuz cameras aren’t on them anymore.

They are stopping people based on racial profiling alone, they have taken people even with proof of citizenship in their cars or on their person, and the conditions they throw you into are basically deadly in their mini concentration camps with barely any food/water, no access to medication or hygiene products and not even any proper beds to sleep in.

It feels like the only people being searched for are those with connections here and those are the lucky ones. Dozens of others have no family or relatives here so they get forgotten about.

And no one should be forgotten.


Do what you can.

It should go without saying, but to be clear – neither of these fundraisers are for her. That might matter for some people, so I’m saying it.

Do what you can.

Next big protest day is July 17th. But there are many more things you can and should be doing.

Do what you can.

Everywhere.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

solarbird: (molly-feeling-alone-andor-pouting)

Once upon a time, I was friends with a guy named Jim. A very, very few of you might know him. Almost all of you won’t.

I walked away some years ago, blocked him on the socials over his support for the fascist, because I said that the fascist’s promises absolutely, positively, literally required American concentration camps, and that’s what he was supporting by supporting the fascist, and I could not abide that…

…and yet, he carried on, saying I was a fool, and that none of it would ever happen.

(I asked him then why did he support someone he insisted was lying to him. I do not remember getting an answer, before I quit.)

So now that we have American concentration camps…

…and now that people with direct access to the fascist are talking about sending literally every American citizen of Latino heritage there to die…

Laura Loomer on X, screencap-quoted on Bluesky:"Alligator lives matter. The good news is, alligators are guaranteed at least 65 million meals if we get started now."El Norte Recuerda on Bluesky, who posted the screencap:"The entire Latino population in the U.S. is 65 million. She means all of us."

(it will require more concentration camps than that, of course, but that’s a detail which makes no difference)

I wonder…

…has he yet been moved to repentance?

Or is he still a good and solid member of that wretched cult?

It’s immaterial now, of course. We are long past the point where the pebbles’ opinions matter, and crimes already done cannot be undone.

But once in a while, I think of it.

And for a moment – a pointless, irrelevant moment – I still wonder.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)

Not later; not tonight; RIGHT NOW. Pick up the phone and dial the switchboard if you don’t know their office’s direct number:

(202) 224-3121

Tell your Republican Senator or Senators that you demand they vote AGAINST the Big Ugly Bill that transfers wealth to the billionaire class at a scale not seen in decades if ever, and balloons the national debt to levels never imagined.

They’re still going through amendments. There is still time, if you call RIGHT. NOW.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)

This appeared first on my Mastodon account last night; it’s proven popular, so here it is – trivially expanded because I had to trim it more than I liked to fit in 750 characters – for here, too.

Some weeks ago, protesters at UW occupied an engineering building on campus, demanding that UW cut ties with Boeing over Israel’s war in Gaza.

“That’s fine,” I thought, and I started relaying news… until I saw their ebullient praise for Hamas and the October 7th attacks. Then I stopped.

Some people will roll their eyes at that reaction, noting – correctly! – that the Israeli government has done so much worse since. But that doesn’t make Hamas into good guys here. They are not.

For example, here’s translated Palestinian reporting on Hamas death squads killing Gazans trying to get food from non-Hamas aid stations, condemning them as “collaborators.”

It is an inconvenient truth that Hamas is a nightmare organisation – but it’s still a truth.

Don’t let Netanyahu’s crimes erase that.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)

A couple of lefty people I know are pre-emptively being bitter and anticipating defeat in the New York City Mayoral election, expecting “vote blue no matter who” suddenly not to apply.

I’ll be fair and admit they have reason, but pre-surrendering is not how to win fucking anything ever.

Now, some may note – fairly enough – that “vote blue no matter who” is fundamentally about how legislative bodies are organised and deciding who has the power to set the agenda for bills and legislative voting. They’ll note that it’s not actually about every individual race, but instead is about deciding what gets moved forward in a legislature.

But while true, “vote blue no matter who” still matters this time, even though it’s a mayoral race, and even though this time it’s someone to the left of people who usually say that, rather than about someone to the right of people who usually hear it. And that is because it’s about the Overton window.

Here’s one way you might pitch it to your “centrist,” or “establishment,” or “conservative-leaning” Democratic friends who might otherwise vote Cuomo as an independent, or just sit this this one out:

“Okay, yeah, I know, you don’t like the word ‘socialist,’ and so you’ve already decided you don’t like Mamdani. You’re afraid of him winning, you’re afraid of how the mythical “centrist Republican” won’t come over if Democrats somewhere back a leftist.

“Thing is, that’s bullshit. I’m sorry, but it’s a lie. It just is. They do not care. We had a literal fascist insurrectionist running last election, and a Democratic campaign that spent half its time with dissident Republicans trying to get those so-called centrist Republicans to acknowledge reality and switch over. Did it work? Not one whit. These voters don’t exist, so stop trying.

“But even that’s not the real point.

“This isn’t about Mamdani. Not him in particular. I mean, even as mayor of NYC, he can’t do that much by himself. I think he’ll do some real good. It won’t be enough for me, but it’s a start. But for you, now… for you

“For you, this election is about moving the Overton window back towards yourself.

“You may not have noticed, but right now, the Overton window is so far to the right that Elon Musk could do and did throw a literal Hitler-identical Nazi salute during the Presidential inauguration and still be welcomed into government. That’s insane. And fatal for a representative democracy.

“But we can push that window back to where you want it to be, and we do that by pushing to the left as hard as we can. Even if you don’t want to go there, even if you don’t want to go where I do, even if you’re ‘not comfortable’ with someone who calls himself a ‘socialist.’

“By electing him, we can make that position viable. Not dominant, not in charge, but viable. And doing _that_ pushes the middle of the window back to where you actually are. It makes you the middle position again.

“Right now, everyone not a fascist – which includes you – is ‘radical left.’ Rule of law? Radical left. Science? Radical left. Due process? Radical left. Social security and medicare? Radical left. Woman not the property of a man? Queer? Radical left. Which is, again, insane, but that is where we are right now.

“But if we start electing some real leftists, then suddenly, that window swings away from the right. You’ll be part of the Sane and Normal Centre again.

“In short: like always, this is strategy. Vote for him as ‘vote blue no matter who’ so that you won’t be the ‘radical left’ anymore, and so you can have an actual choice who you vote for again in the future.

“And that’s why, this time, it’s you who need to ‘vote blue, no matter who.'”

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

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