Brian's Friends

Greater Northshore Bike Connector Map 2.0.5 – 17 October 2025 – is now available on github, as is MEGAMAP 2.0.5.

This release is very small, containing two major upgrades, and some additional notes on the Central Kirkland Connector’s south-end closure.

Here’s the complete changes list:

• ADDED: Two-way bike lane opened on E. Marginal Way S on 9 October 2025 from Edgar Martinez/Atlantic down to Horton St., at which point you cross over at a new bike crossing to the existing ped/bike mixed-use trail which connects to Spokane Street Trail. This creates a no-car-interaction connection. These bike lanes will be extended from Horton directly to Spokane Street in early 2026. (MEGAMAP)
• ADDED/UPGRADED: Bike lanes on northern 100th Ave NE in Juanita upgraded and extended to cover NE 139th St. through NE 145th St. (Both maps)
• UPDATED WARNING: The south leg of the Central Kirkland Connector is BRIEFLY reopening this weekend (October 18 and 19) for a marathon event before CLOSING again until late October for continuing emergency sewer repair work. Once it does re-open, it will be closing again intermittently for additional work. On the maps proper, this is mostly be an alert box change. (MEGAMAP)

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.

Pamela Bondi went before Senate Oversight on Tuesday determined not to testify to Democrats, and to help Republicans deflect and defend the Trump regime’s fascism. That’s obvious; it happens fairly regularly.

But usually, people doing this routine at least pretend to answer the questions. They don’t provide answers, no, of course not. But they pretend and follow forms.

Bondi wasn’t even pretending. Her responses were unrelated, spurious – and as Senator Schiff put it, “pre-canned” – attacks on and insults of Democratic questioners, over and over again. We couldn’t be entirely sure of it at the moment, but Reuters managed to photograph her notes during her “testimony”, and now we absolutely know for sure they were prewritten.

Later, she started launching these prewritten lie clusters during questions, while Democratic senators were speaking. Here’s an example of her interrupting Senator Schiff over and over again with literal unrelated whatabouts and insults.

Eventually, I guess she ran out of pre-installed lie clusters, because she ran out during a response to a question from Senator Whitehouse and froze up. She literally couldn’t seem to talk.

It’s quite the clip. Watch her, she just shuts down. Here’s the moment she realised she didn’t have anything left so couldn’t come up with another lie cluster attack and just sits there, stalled out:

(I swear to you – I swear to you – I did not add that caption over the video. It was a player issue. But I couldn’t not keep it, now could I?)

But I do think there was a point here, and it wasn’t just not answering questions while giving Republican Senators time to lie and deflect on behalf of the regime. That’s all too normal.

No, I think the intent was to show their utter contempt for the legislature. I think this a stupid version of Caligula’s expression of contempt for the Senate, when he said he was going to appoint his favourite horse as a member.

(He didn’t actually do it, legend aside. The record is reasonably clear on that. He just mocked them with the idea.)

At least Caligula’s version was funny. This, by contrast, is just sad. But sad or not, I do think there was a point, and that point was to display contempt for representative government and to metaphorically blow a horse’s fart in the faces of elected representatives.

And I think that’s something people should understand.

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