Sarah Barrett

I keep a list for each season of all the things that I think of doing at the wrong time of year, so I have an ongoing list of stuff I've been looking forward to doing in the winter: books, recipes, movies, crafts, places, even nail colors.

I lost the argument to name the kittens Bootsy and Catfish, but know that I wanted to honor the Collins brothers. His Bullseye interview is one of my all time favorite things. www.npr.org/2020/09/01/9...

When I was at Microsoft, working on docs, I used to point out that we didn't have "users," we had hostages.

Home Alone, 1990. I spent months afterward making bandit traps out of pebbles and bandanas (the materials ready to hand)

Local Wiki will show you all the interesting things within a 30 minute walk from you. www.neil-scott.com/localwiki By @neilscott.substack.com

I can't wait

There are always a lot of comments on things like this saying how expensive or inaccessible they are. One thing you can do right now that's free is check the reactions you have to mended clothing. Practice thinking "oh, what a good idea" rather than thinking something looks old or messy.

And Seattle now has the 5th highest per capita transit ridership! Mygod what a transformation over the 35 years I’ve lived here.

the more i think about it the more i dig into the same position as @anthonymoser.com regarding ai being primarily a rhetorical technology. more than anything it is for: • convincing people in advance to go along with what you want to do • justifying something you already did

I bought a very roomy vintage olive trench this year, and this is def what I think i look like. I might actually look like a child in their father's bathrobe, but see if I care.

The restrooms he was claiming Wilson wants to waste money on are portable (and private); the contract includes frequent cleaning and the toilets have graffiti-deterrent designs. As a policy matter, the city of Seattle does not want people to be out in public.

Pinehurst Station cost less than the three new parking garages that Sound Transit is currently building in Sumner, Kent, and Auburn but we don't talk about that

This is a really good articulation of the frustrations I have felt with the doom and despair from (my fellow) white people to whom nothing bad has happened yet.

I feel like you could make kind of a productive analogy between AI agents where they save the user time by wasting everybody else's time and the American approach to vehicle safety where occupant safety is prioritized at the expense of everybody else's. Prosocial? Never heard of her.

the pettiness of homeowners who just can't abide people enjoying outdoor spaces in "their" neighborhoods knows no bounds the need for a "solution" to outdoor dining only exists if you concede that outdoor dining is inherently a bad thing www.capitolhillseattle.com/2026/10/if-s...

Halloween is coming. You don’t have to go to a “trunk-or-treat” event in Seattle! You can close your neighborhood street to through-traffic – for free! Trick-or-Streets permits are free and easy to get. Join here: seattle.gov/transportation/trick-or-streets

I dunno man. The way you look isn't some weird hex placed on you via your words and deeds.

Ballard Congratulates Golf Course on Its New Light Rail Station: tinyurl.com/yncw9jep

To be clear, Kettle is suggesting Seattle reduce its overall funding for affordable housing in order to fund more police.

you will encounter more opportunities in life to change the batteries on a smoke alarm than you will to run into a burning building and no one gives a shit you changed those batteries but it is still very important and why are you waiting on a burning building, know what i’m saying, it’s a metaphor

The Urbanist and Ryan Packer in particular did an amazing job raising awareness of this issue early and often! Without that journalism and efforts from transit advocates, things would likely have turned out differently. Thank you, and this again highlights why local media matters.

Erica once again bringing fantastic reporting on the Seattle SC. Read through this and never have Imposter Syndrome again.

So excited for this! How Infrastructure Works was one of the big hits of my IA class last spring, despite being late in the quarter.

The enormous 90s trench coat I just got (to channel Miracle on 34th St (1994) obviously) is really earning its keep today.

This is so good, I hugely recommend it. I'm never a "less is more" person, but it really doesn't need the cheese, it's so rich it's better without it.

It is, btw, entirely a product of Wilson Derangement Syndrome that we are still talking about why a press conference in July didn't happen sooner than it did. If you rely on mainstream press for your news, you'll think this is all that's happening (that and rampant murder sprees across Seattle ofc)

I don't need to belabor how incredibly shitty the coverage of Mayor Wilson is, but a lot of outlets have reported inaccurate information, seemingly in service to their obsessive negative coverage of the mayor.

By and large, SPD is not good at solving crimes. This is true of the recent shootings that happened in Belltown, which is an area with cameras, and it's true of this shooting. SPD still hasn't found a suspect.

Hear me out

Yes, a lot of LLMs can pass the Turing Test, but they can't get blackout wasted and call their ex from a payphone or feel the hot shame of letting their partner down by wasting time talking about cryptids. The human experience is not just expression, it's Proustian experience.

Vancouver/UBC friends, a reminder that this is weekly, free and open to everyone, bring whatever handwork project you’re working on. Tomorrow I’ll be talking and reading about synthetic and natural fibres.* *expect to see my wrist/foream tattoo of collagen structure used as a visual aid

I saw a great production over the weekend: Twelfth Night set to Duke Ellington’s music. The music from Play On! has been dancing through my head ever since. If I had the time, I’d go and see it again. If you’re in Chicago, I highly recommend it. chicago.suntimes.com/theater/2026...

This point header comes up for me every time I see yet another lawyer called out for submitting an error-riddled, LLM-generated legal brief. I've NO doubt an LLM can construct a bad legal brief; I've got every doubt about a lawyer who submits a document to the court that they neither wrote nor read.

I now understand the Democratic leadership’s screeching, apocalyptic hatred of Mamdani. His success is a daily, damning indictment of decades of Democratic Party intransigence and failure.

Very happy to see this

The Urbanist is in the middle of our fall membership drive right now, and our pitch is pretty straightforward: we want to provide more REPORTING and not AI slop. www.theurbanist.org/membership/

I've made this and SK's bialy babka and they are both fantastic, super fun to make.