I moved my home music studio up from the basement to Athena’s old bedroom in the last couple of weeks, so now it’s time to put it to use, and for my first bit of music in the new space, I decided to record an old tune: “These Days” by Jackson Browne, first released in 1973.
Having said that, this arrangement is rather more like the 1990 cover version by 10,000 Maniacs, which was the first version of the song I ever heard. I originally tried singing it in the key that Natalie Merchant sang it in, and — surprise! — I was having a rough time of it. Then I dropped it from G to C and suddenly it was in my range.
I’m not pretending my singing voice is a patch on either Ms. Merchant or Mr. Browne, but then, that’s not why I make these covers. Enjoy.
So, a group based in Sydney, Australia has put out a preprint with a new estimate of the resource requirements for Shor’s algorithm, claiming that if you use LDPC codes rather than the surface code, you should be able to break RSA-2048 with fewer than 100,000 physical qubits, which is an order-of-magnitude improvement over the previous estimate by friend-of-the-blog Craig Gidney. I’ve now gotten sufficiently many inquiries about it that it’s passed the threshold of blog-necessity.
A few quick remarks, and then we can discuss more in the comments section:
Yes, this is serious work. The claim seems entirely plausible to me, although it would be an understatement to say that I haven’t verified the details. The main worry I’d have is simply that LDPC codes are harder to engineer than the surface code (especially for superconducting qubits, less so for trapped-ion), because you need wildly nonlocal measurements of the error syndromes. Experts (including Gidney himself, if he likes!) should feel free to opine in the comments.
I have no idea by how much this shortens the timeline for breaking RSA-2048 on a quantum computer. A few months? Dunno. I, for one, had already “baked in” the assumption that further improvements were surely possible by using better error-correcting codes. But it’s good to figure it out explicitly.
On my Facebook, I mused that it might be time for the QC community to start having a conversation about whether work like this should still be openly published—a concern that my friends in the engineering side of QC have expressed to me. I got strong pushback from cryptographer and longtime friend Nadia Heninger, who told me that the crypto community has already had this conversation for decades, and has come down strongly on the side of open publication, albeit with “responsible disclosure” waiting periods, which are often 90 days. While the stakes would surely be unusually high with a full break of RSA-2048, Nadia didn’t see that the basic principles there were any different. Nadia’s arguments updated me in the direction of saying that groups with further improvements to the resource requirements for Shor’s algorithm should probably just go ahead and disclose what they’ve learned, and the crypto community will have their backs as having done what they’ve learned over the decades was the right thing. Certainly, any advantage that such disclosure would give to hackers, who could take the new Shor circuits and simply submit them to the increasingly powerful QCs that will gradually come online via cloud services, needs to be balanced against the loud, clear, open warning the world will get to migrate faster to quantum-resistant encryption.
I’m told that these days, the biggest practical game is breaking elliptic curve cryptography, not breaking Diffie-Hellman or RSA. Somewhat ironically, elliptic curve crypto is likely to fall to quantum computers a bit before RSA and Diffie-Hellman will fall, because ECC’s “better security” (against classical attacks, that is) led people to use 256-bit keys rather than 2,048-bit keys, and Shor’s algorithm mostly just cares about the key size.
In the acknowledgments of the paper, I’m thanked for “thoughtful feedback on the title.” Indeed, their original title was about “breaking RSA-2048″ with 100,000 physical qubits. When they sent me a draft, I pointed out to them that they need to change it, since journalists would predictably misinterpret it to mean that they’d already done it, rather than simply saying that it could be done.
A common immature attitude to desire is to assume that you are entitled to what you passionately desire, and to then cry if you don’t get it, to pressure others to give it to you. If you still don’t get it, a common response is to then declare that you’ve given up on the entire category, and just don’t care anymore.
For example, you fall in love with someone who rejects you, and then declare you are done with love, and will just live alone. Or you want a career as an actor, but then fail there, and so declare that jobs don’t matter, they are just a paycheck. Or you try to elect socialist utopian, who then betrays your hopes, so you decide it’s all corrupt, and you might as well elect partisans on your side.
A more mature stance, adopted by the wiser and more experienced, is to admit that you care a lot, but even so you can’t always get your favorite outcomes. Thus you must search carefully for the best feasible options. (LLMs confirm this overall story: 1,2,3.)
Regarding culture, the most common attitude I see is naive entitlement. Such folks fully embraced the aesthetic and moral views of their childhood, schools, associates, and entertainment sources. They see the views of folks from other times and places as just wrong, and expect history to prove their judgements right. They are typically disappointed when later generations reject many of their cultural truths.
The second most common attitude I see is among folks who have come to realize that cultures change greatly over time, and that the reasons they were given to embrace their local cultures don’t really stand up to scrutiny. In response to evidence that their culture is likely to decay and be replaced by very different ones, such folks often express indifference. They don’t care much which cultures win in the long run.
These both seem, to me, immature stances on cultures. A more mature stance is to admit that the future won’t preserve your culture by default, and that in fact it might not preserve very much of it. But then to ask what you most value in your culture, and to search for ways to preserve those best features. Even if you maybe can’t save much.
Folks with a mature stance on cultural desire are ready to help me think about how to fix cultural drift.
1 1/2 oz Brugal 1888 Rum (Don Q Añejo)
1/2 oz Chairman's Reserve Spiced Rum (Don Q Spiced)
1/2 oz Lost Spirits Navy Rum (Planteray Mr. Fogg No. 1)
3/4 oz Lemon Juice
1/2 oz Falernum (Velvet)
1/2 oz Cynar
1/4 oz Clement Creole Shrubb (Bauchant)
1 dash Angostura Bitters
1 dash Crude Attawanhood #37 Bitters (King Floyd's Cherry-Cacao)
Whip shake with crushed ice, pour into a sea-themed mug, top with crushed ice, and garnish with freshly grated cinnamon (freshly grated cinnamon and a cinnamon stick). The Crude Bitters are aromatic bitters featuring cherry, clove, and cinnamon.
Two Sundays ago, I was in a tropical drinks mood and decided to make a recipe that I had spotted a few weeks prior on Instagram called Oh, Barnacles! by Todd Yard on his Concoctails account. Todd named this after a swear on the SpongeBob SquarePants television series that he heard his daughter say. The Cynar and falernum duo here caught my eye for they have paired well in drinks like The Brooks and Commercial Free, and I utilized them in the Home Drum, a stirred drink inspired by The Brooks and the Corn'n'Oil. In the oceanic mug, the Oh, Barnacles! gave forth a cinnamon and caramel aroma. Next, caramel, lemon, and orange notes on the sip submerged into rum, herbal, orange, clove, and vanilla flavors on the swallow.
It's commonly said, particularly on Bluesky right now, that US supermarket rotisserie whole chicken is as cheap or cheaper than buying a whole raw chicken, with many people wondering how that's possible. A common reason suggested is "loss leader". More cynically, one might suspect of chickens about to expire, thus providing basically free input. (There's an independent grocer-deli in Montreal that I suspect did exactly this: their cooked drumsticks that I bought had a suspicious whiff to them.)
But why do people believe cooked chicken is cheaper than raw? Apparently because they compare the cost of cooked and raw chickens... as if all chickens were the same size. Or as if stores drew randomly from the chicken supply to cook. But really, given that raw chicken is sold by weight, and cooked chickens are sold by chicken, why wouldn't a store pull the smallest chickens to cook and sell at a markup?
As for the "Big Lie" in the title, that's not the stores lying, per se. They offer you a chicken, and they sell you a chicken. But the belief circulating that it's comparable to a chicken you'd buy to cook on your own? That's generally a falsehood, if not a lie.
Because it feels like a good time to do it, some current thoughts on “AI” and where it, we and I are about the thing, midway through February 2026. These are thoughts in no particular order. Some of them I’ve noted before, but will note again here mostly for convenience. Here we go:
1. I don’t and won’t use “AI” in the text of any of my published work. There are several reasons for this, including the fact that “AI”-generated text is not copyrightable and I don’t want any issues of ownership clouding my work, and the simple fact that my book contracts oblige me to write everything in those books by myself, without farming it out to either ghostwriters or “AI.” But mostly, it’s because I write better than “AI” can or ever will, and I can do it with far less energy draw. I don’t need to destroy a watershed to write a novel. I can write a novel with Coke Zero and snacks. Using “AI” in my writing would create more work for me, not less, and I really have lived my life with the idea of doing the least amount of work possible.
If you’re reading a John Scalzi book, it all came out of my brain, plain and simple. Better for you! Easier for me!
2. I’m not worried about “AI” replacing me as a novelist. Sure, someone can now prompt a novel-length work out of “AI” faster than I or any other human can write a book, and yes, people are doing just that, pumping into Kindle Unlimited and other such places a vast substrate of “AI” text slop generated faster than anyone could read it. Nearly all of it will sit there, unread, until the heat death of the universe.
Now, you might say that’s because why would anyone read something that no one actually took any effort to write, and that will be maybe about 5% of the reason. The other 95% of the reason, however, will be discoverability. Are the people pumping out the wide sea of “AI” text slop planning to make the spend for anyone to find that work? What are their marketing plans other than “toss it out, see who locates it by chance”? And if there is a marketing budget, if you can generate dozens or hundreds of “AI” text slop tomes in a year, how do you choose which to highlight? And will the purveyors of such text slop acknowledge that the work they’re promoting was written by no one?
(Answer: No. No they won’t).
I am not worried about being replaced as a novelist because I already exist as a successful author, and my publishers are contractually obliged to market my novels every time they come out. This will be the case for a while, since I have a long damn contract. Readers will know when my new books are out, and they will be able to find them in bookstores, be they physical or virtual. This is a huge advantage over any “AI” text slop that might be churned out. And while I don’t want to overstate the amount of publicity/marketing traditional publishers will do for their debut or remaining mid-list authors, they will do at least some, and that visibility is an advantage that “AI” text slop won’t have. Even indie authors, who must rely on themselves instead of a publicity department to get the word out about their work, have something “AI” text slop will never have: They actually fucking care about their own work, and want other people to see it.
I do understand it’s more than mildly depressing to think that a major market difference between “AI” text slop and stuff actual people wrote is marketing, but: Welcome to capitalism! It’s not the only difference, obviously. But it is a big one. And one that is likely to persist, because:
3. People in general are burning out on “AI.” Not just in creative stuff: Microsoft recently finally admitted that no one likes its attempt to shove its “AI” Copilot into absolutely everything, whether it needs to be there or not, and is making adjustments to its businesses to reflect that. “AI” as a consumer-facing entity rarely does what it does, better than the programs and apps it is replacing (see: Google’s Gemini replacing Google Assistant), and sucks up far more energy and resources. Is your electric bill higher recently? Has the cost of a computer gone up because suddenly memory prices have doubled (or more)? You have “AI” to thank for that. It’s the solution to a problem that not only did no one actually have, but wasn’t a problem in the first place. There are other issues with “AI” larger than this — mostly that it’s a tool to capture capital at the expense of labor — but I’m going to leave those aside for now to focus on the public exhaustion and dissatisfaction with “AI” as a product category.
In this sort of environment, human-generated work has a competitive advantage, because people see it as more authentic and real (which it is, to the extent that “authentic” and “real” mean “a product of an actual human brain”), and more likely to have the ability to surprise and engage the people who encounter it. I don’t want to oversell this — humans are still as capable of creating lazy, uninspired junk as they ever were, and some people really do think of their entertainment as bulk purchases. Those vaguely sad people will be happy that “AI” gives them more, even if it’s of lesser quality. But I do think in general when people are given a choice, that they will generally prefer to give their time and money to the output of an actual human making an effort, than to the product of a belching drain on the planet’s resources whose use primarily benefits people who are already billionaires dozens of times over. Call me optimistic.
Certainly that’s the case with me:
4. I’m supporting human artists, including as they relate to my own work. I’ve noted before that I have it as a contractual point that my book covers, translations and copyediting have to be done by humans. This is again both a practical issue (re: copyrights, quality of work, etc) and a moral one, but also, look, I like that my work pays other humans, and I want that to continue. Also, in my personal life, I’m going to pay artists for stuff. When I buy art, I’m going to buy from people who created it, not generated it out of a prompt. I’m not going to knowingly post or promote anything that is not human-created. Just as I wish to be supported by others, I am going to support other artists. There is no downside to not promoting/paying for “AI” generated work, since there was no one who created it. There is an upside to promoting and paying humans. They need to eat and pay rent.
“But what if they use AI?” In the case of the people working on my own stuff, it’s understood that the final product, the stuff that goes into my book, is the result of their own efforts. As for everything else, well, I assume most artists are pretty much like me: using “AI” for their primary line of creativity is just introducing more work, not less. Also I’m going to trust other creators; if they tell me they’re not using “AI” in their finished work then I’m going to believe them in the absence of a compelling reason not to. I don’t particularly have the time or interest in being the “AI” police. Anyway, if they’re misrepresenting their work product, that eventually gets found out. Ask a plagiarist about that.
With all that said:
5. “AI” is Probably Sticking Around In Some Form. This is not an “‘AI’ Is Inevitable and Will Take Over the World” statement, since as noted above people are getting sick of it being aggressively shoved at them, and also there are indications that a) “this is the worst it will ever be” is not true of AI, as people actively note that recent versions of ChatGPT were worse to use than earlier versions, b) investors are getting to the point of wanting to see an actual return on their investments, which is the cue for the economic bubble around AI to pop. This going to be just great for the economy. “AI,” as the current economic and cultural phenomenon, is likely to be heading for a fall.
Once all that drama is done and we’ve sorted through the damage, the backend of “AI” and its various capabilities will still be around, either relabeled or as is, just demoted from being the center of the tech universe and people making such a big deal about it, scaled down and hopefully more efficient. I understand that the “AI will probably persist” position is not a popular one in the creative circles in which I exist, and that people hope it vaporizes entirely, like NFTs and blockchains. I do have to admit I wouldn’t mind being wrong about this. But as a matter of capital investment and corporate integration, NFTs, etc are a blip compared to what’s been invested in “AI” overall, and how deep its use has sunk into modern capitalism (more on that in a bit).
Another reason I think “AI” is likely to stick around in some form:
6. “AI” is a marketing term, not a technical one, and encompasses different technologies. The version that the creative class gets (rightly) worked up about is generative “AI,” the most well-known versions of which were trained on vast databases of work, much of which was and is copyrighted and not compensated for. This is, however, only one subset of a larger group of computational systems which are also called “AI,” because it’s a sexy term that even non-nerds have heard of before, and far less confusing than, say, “neural networks” or such. Not all “AI” is as ethically compromised as large-scale generative “AI,” and a lot of it existed and was being used non-controversially before generative “AI” blew up as the wide-scale rights disaster it turned out to be.
It’s possible that “AI” as a term is going to be forever tainted as a moral hazard, disliked by the public and seen as a promotions drag by marketing departments. If and when that happens, a lot of things currently hustled under the “AI” umbrella will be quietly removed from it, either returning to previous, non-controversial labels or given new labels entirely. Lots of “AI” will still be around, just no one will call it that, and outside of obvious generative “AI” that presents rights issues, fewer people will care.
On the matter of generative “AI,” here’s a thought:
7. There were and are ethical ways to have trained generative “AI” but because they weren’t done, the entire field is suspect. Generative “AI” could easily have been trained solely on material in the public domain and/or on appropriately-licensed Creative Commons material, and an opt-in licensing gateway to acquire and pay for copyrighted work used in training, built and used jointly by the companies needing training data, could have happened. This was all a solvable problem! But OpenAI, Anthropic, et al decided to train first, ask forgiveness later, on the idea that would be cheaper simply to do it first and to litigate later. I’m not entirely sure this will turn out to be true, but it is possible that at this late stage, some of the companies will go under before any settlements can be achieved, which will have the same effect.
There are companies who have chosen to train their generative models with compensation; I know of music software companies that make a point of showing how artists they worked were both paid for creating samples and other material, and get paid royalties when work generated from those samples, etc is made by people using the software. I think that’s fine! As long as everyone involved is happy with the arrangement, no harm, and no foul. But absent of that sort of clear and unambiguous declaration of provenance and compensation regarding training data, one has to assume that any generative “AI” has used stolen work. It’s so widely pervasive at this point that this has to be a foundational assumption.
And here is a complication:
8. The various processes lumped into “AI” are likely to be integrated into programs and applications that are in business and creative workflows. One, because they already were prior to “AI” being the widely-used rubric, and two, because these companies need to justify their investments somehow. Some of these systems and processes aren’t tainted by the issues of “generative AI” but many of them are, including some that weren’t previously. When I erase a blotch in an image with Photoshop, the process may or may not use Generative AI and when it does, it may or may not use Adobe’s Firefly model (which Adobe maintains, questionably, is trained only on material it has licensed).
Well, don’t use Photoshop, I hear you say. Which, okay, but I have some bad news for you: Nearly every photoediting suite at this point incorporates “AI” at some point in its workflow, so it’s six of one and half dozen of the other. And while I am a mere amateur when it comes to photos, lots of professional photographers use Adobe products in their workflow, either because they’ve been using it for years and don’t want to train on new software (which, again, probably has “AI” in its workflow), or they’re required to use it by their clients because it’s the “industry standard.” A program being the “industry standard” is one reason I use Microsoft Word, and now that program is riddled with “AI.” At a certain point, if you are using 21st century computer-based tools, you are using “AI” of some sort, whether you want to or not. Some of it you can turn off or opt out of. Some of it you can’t.
(Let’s not even talk about my Google Pixel Phone, which is now so entirely festooned with “AI” that it’s probably best to think of it as an “AI” computer with a phone app, than the other way around.)
This is why earlier in this piece, I talk about the “final product” being “AI”-free — because it’s almost impossible at this point to avoid “AI” in computer-based tools, even if one wants to. Also, given the fact that “AI” is a marketing rather than a technical term, what the definition of “AI” is, and what is an acceptable level of use, will change from one person to another. Is Word’s spellcheck “AI”? Is Photoshop’s Spot Healing brush tool? Is Logic Pro’s session drummer? At what point does a creative tool become inimical to creation?
(On a much larger industrial scale, this will be an extremely interesting question when it comes to animation, CGI and VFX. “AI” is already here in video games with DLSS, which upscales and adds frames to games; if similar tech isn’t already being used for inbetweening in animation, it’s probably not going to be long until it is.)
Again, I’m not interested in being, nor have the time to be, the “AI” police. I choose to focus on the final product and the human element in that, because that is honestly the only part of the process that I, and most people, can see. I’m certainly not going to penalize a creative person because Adobe or Microsoft or whomever incorporated “AI” into a tool they need to use in order to do their work. I would be living in a glass house if I threw that particular stone.
9. It’s all right to be informed about the state of the art when it comes to “AI.” Do I use “AI” in my text? No. Do I think it makes sense to have an understanding of where “AI” is at, to know how the companies who make it create a business case for it, and to keep tabs on how it’s actually being used in the real word? Yes. So I check out latest iterations of ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini/Copilot, etc (I typically steer clear of Grok if only because I’m not on the former Twitter anymore) and the various services and capabilities they offer.
The landscape of “AI” is still changing rapidly, and if you’re still at the “lol ‘AI’ can’t draw hands” level of thinking about the tech, you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage, particularly if you’re a creative person. Know your enemy, or at least, know the tools your enemies are making. Again, I’m not worried about “AI” replacing me as a novelist. But it doesn’t have to be at that level of ability to wreak profound and even damaging changes to creative fields. We see that already.
One final, possibly heretical thought:
10. Some people are being made to use “AI” as a condition of their jobs. Maybe don’t give them too much shit for it. I know at least a couple of people who were recently hired for work, who were told they needed to be fluent in computer systems that had “AI” as part of their workflow. Did they want or need to use those systems to do the actual job they were hired for? Almost certainly not! Did that matter? Nope! Was it okay that their need to eat and pay rent outweighed their ethical annoyance/revulsion with “AI” and the fact it was adding more work, not less, onto their plate? I mean (waves at the world), you tell me. Personally speaking, I’m not the one to tell a friend that they and their kid and cat should live in a Toyota parked at a Wal-Mart rather than accept a corporate directive made by a mid-level manager with more jargon in their brain than good sense. I may be a softie.
Be that as it may, to the extent you can avoid “AI,” do so, especially if you have a creative job, where it’s almost always just going to get in your way. Your fans, the ones that exist and the ones you have yet to make, will appreciate that what they get from you is from you. That’s what people mostly want from art: Entertainment and connection. You will always be able to do that better than “AI.” There is no statistical model that can create what is uniquely you.
This is it. The Wire. You may think that our fateful moment will come on Election Day in November. Or when the last tranche of Epstein Files hits. Or the coming New-9/11. But you're wrong. This is a potential save that (alas) we're about to lose.
In a couple of weeks it will be too late for 'decent Republicans' to step up and register as candidates in 2026 GOP primaries. There's still just a little time for honorable, courageous conservatives (and I must believe that some still exist!) to step up and flip the tactic that till-now effectively destroyed the Republican Party, turning every top GOPper into an unknowing -- or in many cases knowing -- tool of our nation's enemies.
Maybe two weeks. That leaves just a little time to talk it over with family... then step up. Like a citizen. Like a patriot. Like a decent person.
Sure it would take guts to 'primary' the MAGA cretins who now rule in red districts. Even now, as polls show GOP popularity plummeting nationwide, those districts have been heavily gerrymandered and now are weighted toward fanaticism. By design. Moreover, all sorts of KGB methods are used to coerce into darkness any challengers who possess even a scintilla of honor, methods that range from honeypot traps, to blackmail, to (in some cases) threats of violence.
Above all why try something that's doomed to be futile?
But is it? Futile, I mean?
Less than you might think! Because there's another deadline looming. One that every decent person in any Red district should consider. Because only a fool remains a "democrat" or "independent" in such a place.
== Register in the party of your district! ==
If cheating politicians have rigged things so they get to choose voters, instead of the other way around, then you should vote in the only election that matters, in such a district. The primary of the dominant party.
Hold your nose, think of America and do it! Because:
1. If you do, for the first time in years, your vote might actually count! Even if it means a liberal or leftist must choose a somewhat decent conservative over a mad-corrupt one. Aw, poor baby. (And don't pick the crazy one! That never works!)
2. You'll protect your own registration to vote! In recent years we've seen flagrant and rampant purging of Democrats in red states (and may the culprits rot in hell.) Often this happens just weeks before Election Day. (Even if you don't re-register to change parties, as I recommend, CHECK your registration, especially this coming October! And tell your friends.)
3. If you do change parties, you'll mess up their calculations! Their joy over an uptick in GOP registrations will soon turn to sour bile in their mouths, when they realize.
And sure, this also holds for conservatives who live (frustrated) in heavily Democratic districts. So? Vote for a moderate instead of a leftist? That's your right! Only note that in California and bunches of blue states, party registration matters a whole lot less than it used to. Any citizen can vote for any candidate, already.
The way things ought to be.
Anyway, envision this happening nationwide, if say 200+ honest, honorable and residually sane American conservatives were to step up -- (again the deadlines are soon!) -- to challenge cretinous confederate Putin-puppets. It might seem hopeless, but have courage!
A: If you do step up, publicly and vigorously, there may follow a flood of newly registered "Republicans" in the district. Democrats and Independents who are sick of having no meaningful choice. And...
B: You'll have staked ground for after the GOP self-torches in the fall. Folks will remember that you tried!
And I have one answer for the MAGAs who are already screaming at their screens right now, typing furiously that 'this'd be cheating!' No it wouldn't be. But it's a good way to answer YOURS!
== The Voter ID Scam is NOT what you think! ==
They are desperate.
Almost no one anymore believes that there was even a scintilla of evidence for a 'steal' of the 2020 election. Not only zero evidence, but Democrats have shown ONE-EIGHTIETH the rate of cheating, corruption and malfeasance in office as Republicans, as revealed by Grand Juries (mostly white retirees) all across the continent. (And I invite you to have your attorney contact me when you have escrowed $10,000 in wager stakes.)
But faced with those facts, the Foxites are trying to distract. by howling that 'Democrats oppose Voter ID. And hence must be intending to cheat!'
First, there have only been about 30 known and audited cases of fraudulent voting by non-citizens, across thirty years and over a billion votes. Want to prove your case? AUDIT MORE! Though in fact, the case is nonexistent. An incantation.
BUT DEMOCRATS ARE STOOPID TO OPPOSE VOTER ID IN PRINCIPLE!
This is a trap to make it seem as if you are intent on cheating.
There is a better answer.
"Sure, we'll all be happy to do Voter ID! Just as soon as you confederate/MAGA/Foxite jerks stop cheating.
"Stop deliberately CLOSING DMV OFFICES IN BLUE OR MINORITY AREAS IN RED STATES! And offices for other government services. Which should OVER-serve those who need help, not under-serve or starve them.
"Re-open those offices and help poor folks to GET the ID that will help their lives in all sorts of ways. And thereupon they'll have their rightful ID to show at the polls. It's called COMPLIANCE ASSISTANCE and corporations demand it, whenever they face some new regulation!
"If you do that - and get results - then watch as we'll all negotiate over Voter ID. Because we're not the cheaters.
"Oh and do you truly want to get folks to go back to standing in line to vote, instead of mail-in ballots?
"Fine! Then make any citizen's receipt for in-person voting their ticket to a day off work! Watch how quickly things will shift back!"
Can you see how this flips the narrative they hope to use against us and against America? Yeah.
And that's just one of the 35 proposals in my Newer Deal list of pragmatic, easily passed and crucial reforms that you can scroll through, here.
Specifically:
13. THE VOTER ID ACT: Under the 13th and 14th Amendments, this act requires that states mandating Voter ID requirements must offer substantial and effective compliance assistance, helping affected citizens to acquire their entitled legal ID and register to vote.
Any state that fails to provide such assistance, And thus substantially reducing the fraction of eligible citizens turned away at the polls, shall be assumed to be in violation of equal protection and engaged in illegal voter suppression. If such compliance assistance has been vigorous and effective for ten years, then that state may institute requirements for Voter ID.
In all states, registration for citizens to vote shall be automatic with a driver’s license or passport or state-issued ID, unless the citizen opts-out.
2. THE PROFESSIONALISM ACT will protect the apolitical independence of our intelligence agencies, the FBI, the scientific and technical staff in executive departments, and the United States Military Officer Corps. All shall be given safe ways to report attempts at political coercion or meddling in their ability to give unbiased advice. Any passive refusal to obey a putatively illegal order shall be immediately audited by a random board of quickly available flag officers who by secret ballot may either confirm the refusal or correct the officer's error, or else refer the matter for inquiry.
Whistle-blower protections will be strengthened within the U.S. government.
As described elsewhere, the federal Inspectorate will gather and empower all agency Inspectors General and Judges Advocate General under the independent Inspector General of the United States (IGUS).
NEW PARAGRAPH:Certain positions that have until now been appointed entirely at presidential discretion or whim shall be filled henceforth -- by law -- in ways that narrow selection down to a broad pool pre-approved by pertinent professional organizations. Posts that involve scientific judgement, for example -- such as the heads of NASA, NSF, EPA, CDC and so on may be presidentially appointed only from pools of twenty or more candidates selected by the National Academies of Science and Engineering. The leaders of agencies or institutions bearing on the arts shall be chosen from pools selected by pertinent arts councils, and so on. The Attorney General and other high justice officials and federal judges shall be chosen from large pools of candidates rated 'qualified' by both the American Bar Association and a national academy of police officers.
NEW PARAGRAPH:The Inspector General of the United States (IGUS) shall yearly and anonymously poll the senior 20% of employees at the FBI, CIA and all intelligence agencies, to verify their overall confidence in the leaders that were appointed over them. IGUS shall confidentially relate the results to the president and to senior members of the pertinent Congressional committees. If the poll results are less than satisfactory, a new poll shall be taken in three months, with the results given to all members of Congress.
== Get busy living, or... ==
Are we lesser Americans than the blue volunteers who stepped up to rescue our revolution -- against 6000 years of wretched/failed/oppressive feudalism -- before us? At Cowpens and Yorktown? At Gettysburg and Appomattox? At Pearl Harbor and Berlin... and 44 years later, again, in Berlin?
I guess we're about to find out.
------
Lagniappe:
Shouts for you to use at the right moments:
If there's some kind of 9/11 event aimed at distraction and to get us to 'rally around the leader,' shout "Reichstag fire!" Folks will get it.
From now until this phase of the US Civil War finally ends:
As we all know, the march of technological progress is best summarized by this meme from Linkedin:
Inventors constantly come up with exciting new inventions, each of them with the potential to change everything forever. But only a fraction of these ever establish themselves as a persistent part of civilization, and the rest vanish from collective consciousness. Before shutting down forever, though, the alternate branches of the tech tree leave some faint traces behind: over-optimistic sci-fi stories, outdated educational cartoons, and, sometimes, some obscure accessories that briefly made it to mass production before being quietly discontinued.
The classical example of an abandoned timeline is the Glorious Atomic Future, as described in the 1957 Disney cartoon Our Friend the Atom. A scientist with a suspiciously German accent explains all the wonderful things nuclear power will bring to our lives:
While the Our-Friend-the-Atom timeline remains out of reach from most hobbyists, not all alternate timelines are permanently closed to exploration. There are other timelines that you can explore from the comfort of your home, just by buying a few second-hand items off eBay.
I recently spent a few months in one of these abandoned timelines: the one where the microwave oven replaced the stove.
First, I had to get myself a copy of the world’s saddest book.
Microwave Cooking, for One
Marie T. Smith’s Microwave Cooking for One is an old forgotten book of microwave recipes from the 1980s. In the mid-2010s, it garnered the momentary attention of the Internet as “the world’s saddest cookbook”:
To the modern eye, it seems obvious that microwave cooking can only be about reheating ready-made frozen food. It’s about staring blankly at the buzzing white box, waiting for the four dreadful beeps that give you permission to eat. It’s about consuming lukewarm processed slop on a rickety formica table, with only the crackling of a flickering neon light piercing through the silence.
But this is completely misinterpreting Microwave Cooking for One’s vision. Two important pieces of context are missing. First – the book was published in 1985. Compare to the adoption S-curve of the microwave oven:
When MCfO was published, microwave cooking was still a new entrant to the world of household electronics. Market researchers were speculating about how the food and packaging industries would adapt their products to the new era and how deep the transformation would go. Many saw the microwave revolution as a material necessity: women were massively entering the workforce, and soon nobody would have much time to spend behind a stove. In 1985, the microwave future looked inevitable.
Second – Marie T. Smith is a microwave maximalist. She spent ten years putting every comestible object in the microwave to see what happens. Look at the items on the book cover – some are obviously impossible to prepare with a microwave, right? Well, that’s where you’re wrong. Marie T. Smith figured out a way to prepare absolutely everything. If you are a disciple of her philosophy, you shouldn’t even own a stove. Smith herself hasn’t owned one since the early 1970s. As she explains in the cookbook’s introduction, Smith believed the microwave would ultimately replace stove-top cooking, the same way stove-top cooking had replaced campfire-top cooking.
So, my goal is twofold: first, I want to know if there’s any merit to all of these forgotten microwaving techniques. Something that can make plasma out of grapes, set your house on fire and bring frozen hamsters back to life cannot be fundamentally bad. But also, I want to get a glimpse of what the world looks like in the uchronia where Marie T. Smith won and Big Teflon lost. Why did we drift apart from this timeline?
Out of the frying pan, into the magnetron
Before we start experimenting, it’s helpful to have a coarse intuition of how microwave ovens work. Microwaves use a device called a magnetron to emit radiation with wavelengths around 5-10 cm, and send it to bounce around the closed chamber where you put your food. The idea that electromagnetic radiation can heat stuff up isn’t particularly strange (we’ve all been exposed to the sun), but microwaves do it in an odd spooky way. Microwaves’ frequency is too low to be absorbed directly by food molecules. Instead, it is just low enough that, in effect, the electric field around the molecules regularly changes direction. If the molecules have a dipole moment (as water does), they start wiggling around, and the friction generates plenty of heat.
As far as I can tell, this kind of light-matter interaction doesn’t occur to a noticeable degree anywhere on Earth, except in our microwave ovens. This is going to be important later: the microwave is weird, and it often behaves contrary to our day-to-day intuitions. (For example, it’s surprisingly hard to melt ice cubes in the microwave. This is because the water molecules are locked in a lattice, so they can’t spin as much as they would in a liquid.) Thus, to tame the microwave, the first thing we’ll need is an open mind.
With that in mind, let’s open the grimoire of Microwave Cooking for One and see what kind of blood magic we can conjure from it.
The book cover, with its smiling middle-aged woman and its abundance of provisions, makes it look like it’s going to be nice and wholesome.
It’s not going to be nice and wholesome.
Microwave cooking is not about intuition. It’s about discipline. The timing and the wattage matter, but so do the exact shape and size of the vessels. Smith gives us a list of specific hardware with exceedingly modern names like the Cook’n’Pour® Saucepan or the CorningWare™ Menu-ette® so we can get reproducible results. If you were used to counting carrots in carrot units, that has to stop – carrots are measured in ounces, with a scale, and for volume you use a metal measuring cup. Glass ones are simply too inaccurate for where we are going.
The actual recipe section starts with the recipe for a bowl of cereal, which I am 70% sure is a joke:
Whenever a cooking time is specified, Smith includes “(____)” as a placeholder, so you can write in your own value, optimized for your particular setup. If your hot cereal is anything short of delicious, you are invited to do your own step of gradient descent.
A lot of recipes in the book involve stacking various objects under, above, and around the food. For vegetables, Smith generally recommends slicing them thinly, putting them between a cardboard plate and towel paper, then microwaving the ensemble. This works great. I tried it with onion and carrots, and it does make nice crispy vegetables, similar to what you get when you steam the vegetables in a rice cooker (also a great technique). I’d stillsay the rice cooker gives better results, but for situations where you absolutely need your carrots done in under two minutes, the microwave method is hard to beat.
But cardboard contraptions, on their own, can only take us this far. They do little to overcome the true frontier for microwave-only cooking: the Maillard Reaction.Around 150°C, amino acids and sugars combine to form dark-colored tasty compounds, also known as browning. For a good browning, you must rapidly reach temperatures well above the boiling point of water. This is particularly difficult to do in a microwave – which is why people tend to use the microwave specifically for things that don’t require the Maillard reaction.
But this is because people are weak. True radicals, like Marie T. Smith and myself, are able to obtain a perfectly fine Maillard reaction in their microwave ovens. All you need is the right cookware. Are you ready to use the full extent of microwave capabilities?
Tradwife futurism
In 1938, chemists from DuPont were trying to create a revolutionary refrigerant, when they accidentally synthesized a new compound they called teflon. It took until the early 1950s for the wife of a random engineer to suggest that teflon could be used to coat frying pans, and it worked. This led to the development of the teflon-coated frying pan.
In parallel, in 1953, chemists from Corning were trying to create photosensitive glass that could be etched using UV light, when they accidentally synthesized a new compound they called pyroceram. Pyroceram is almost unbreakable, extremely resistant to heat shocks, and remarkably non-sticky. Most importantly, the bottom can be coated with tin oxide, which enables it to absorb microwave radiation and become arbitrarily hot. This led to the development of the microwave browning skillet.
In the stove-top timeline where we live, the teflon-coated pan has become ubiquitous. But in the alternate microwave timeline, nobody has heard of teflon pans, and everybody owns a pyroceram browning skillet instead.
I know most of you are meta-contrarian edgelords, but nothing today will smash your Overton window harder than the 1986 cooking TV show Good Days, where Marie T. Smith is seen microwaving a complete cheeseburger on live TV using such a skillet.
Pictures from www.corningware411.com, a now-defunct blog dedicated to space-age pyroceram cookware. I will finish what you started, Corningware411.
I acquired mine second-hand from eBay and it quickly became one of my favorite objects. I could only describe its aesthetics as tradwife futurism. The overall design and cute colonial house drawings give it clear 1980s grandma vibes, but the three standoffs and metal-coated bottom give it a strange futuristic quality. It truly feels like an object from another timeline.
The key trick is to put the empty skillet alone in the microwave and let it accumulate as much heat as you desire[1] before adding the food. Then, supposedly, you can get any degree of searing you like by following the right sequence of bleeps and bloops.
According to Marie Smith, this is superior to traditional stove-top cooking in many ways – it’s faster, consumes less energy, and requires less effort to clean the dishes. Let’s try a few basic recipes to see how well it works.
You’ll microwave steak and pasta, and you’ll be happy
Let’s start with something maximally outrageous: the microwaved steak with onions. I’d typically use olive oil, but the first step in Smith’s recipe is to rub the steak in butter, making this recipe a heresy for at least three groups of people.
The onions are cooked with the veggie cooking method again, and the steak is done with a masterful use of the browning skillet.
I split the meat in two halves, so I could directly compare the orthodox and heretical methods.[2] The results were very promising. It takes a little bit of practice to get things exactly right, but not much more than the traditional method. The Pyroceram pan was about as easy to clean as the Teflon one. I didn’t measure the energy cost, but the microwave would probably win on that front. So far, the alternate timeline holds up quite well.
As a second eval, I tried sunny-side up eggs. On the face of it, it’s the simplest possible recipe, but it’s surprisingly hard to master. The problem is that different parts of the egg have different optimal cooking temperatures. Adam Ragusea has a video showcasing half a dozen techniques, none of which feature a microwave.
What does Marie Smith have to say about this? She employs a multi-step method. Like with the steak, we start by preheating the browning skillet. Then, we quickly coat it with butter, which should instantly start to boil. This is when we add the egg, sprinkle it lightly with water, and put it back in the oven for 45 (___) seconds. (Why the water sprinkling? Smith doesn’t explain. Maybe it’s meant to ensure the egg receives heat from all directions?)
Here again, I was pleased with the result – I’d go as far as saying it works better than the pan. With that success, I went on to try the next step of difficulty: poached eggs.
Poached eggs are my secret internal benchmark. Never in my life have I managed to make proper poached eggs, despite trying every weird trick and lifehack I came across. Will MCfO break my streak of bad luck?
Like for veggies, the egg is poached in the middle of an assemblage of multiple imbricated containers filled with specific amounts of water and pre-heated in a multi-step procedure. We are also told that the egg yolk must be punctured with a fork before cooking. (What happens if you don’t? The book doesn’t say, and I would rather not know.)
The recipe calls for 1 minute and 10 seconds of cooking at full power. Around the 1 minute and 5 seconds mark, my egg violently exploded, sending the various vessels to bounce around the walls of the oven. And listen, as I said, I came to this book with an open mind, but I expect a cookbook to give you at least enough information to avoid a literal explosion. So I wrote “LESS” in the “(____)” and never tried this recipe again.
The rest of the book is mostly made of variations of these basic methods. Some recipes sound like they would plausibly work, but were not interesting enough for me to try (for example, the pasta recipes primarily involve boiling water in the microwave and cooking pasta in it).
All in all, I think I believe most of the claims Smith makes about the microwave. Would it be possible to survive in a bunker with just a laptop, a microwave and a Cook’n’Pour SaucePan®? I think so. It probably saves energy, it definitely saves time washing the dishes, and getting a perfect browning is entirely within reach. There were failures, and many recipes would require a few rounds of practice before getting everything right, but the same is true for stove-top cooking.
On the other hand, there’s a reason the book is called Microwave Cooking for One and not Microwave Cooking for a Large, Loving Family. It’s not just because it is targeted at lonely losers. It’s because microwave cooking becomes exponentially more complicated as you increase the number of guests. I am not saying that the microwave technology in itself cannot be scaled up – if you really want to, it can:
If you didn’t get your microwave from MAX Industrial Microwave® systems, you are not a true pro-natalist
But these industrial giant microwaves are processing a steady stream of regular, standard-sized pieces of food. Homecooking is different. Each potato comes in a different size and shape. So, while baking one potato according to MCfO’s guidance is easy and works wonderfully, things quickly get out of hand when you try baking multiple potatoes at the same time. Here is the sad truth: baking potatoes in the microwave is an NP-hard problem. For a general-purpose home-cooking technology, that’s a serious setback.
The weird thing is, the microwave maximalists of the 1980s got the sociology mostly right. People are preparing meals for themselves for longer and longer stretches of their lives. Women are indeed spending less time in the kitchen. The future where people cook For One – the one that was supposed to make the microwave timeline inevitable, arrived exactly as planned. And yet, the microwave stayed a lowly reheating device. Something else must be going on. Maybe the real forking path happened at the level of vibes?
Microvibes
To start with the obvious, the microwave has always been spooky, scary tech. Microwave heating was discovered by accident in 1945 by an engineer while he was developing new radar technologies for the US military. These are the worst possible circumstances to discover some new cooking tech – microwave manufacturers had to persuade normal civilians, who just watched Hiroshima on live TV, to irradiate their food with invisible electromagnetic waves coming from an object called “the magnetron”. Add that to the generally weird and counterintuitive behavior of food in the microwave, and it’s not surprising that people treated the device with suspicion.
Second, microwave cooking fell victim to the same curse that threatens every new easy-to-use technology: it became low-status tech. In Inadequate Equilibria, Eliezer makes a similar point about velcro: the earliest adopters of velcro were toddlers and the elderly – the people who had the most trouble tying their shoes. So Velcro became unforgivably unfashionable. I think a similar process happened with microwaves. While microwave ovens can cook pretty much any meal to any degree of sophistication, the place where they truly excel is reheating shitty canned meals, and soon the two became inseparable in the collective mind, preventing microwaves from reaching their full potential for more elaborate cuisine.
Third, compared to frying things in a pan, microwave cooking is just fundamentally less fun. I actually enjoy seeing my food transform into something visibly delicious before my eyes. But microwave cooking, even when done perfectly right, gives you none of that. You can still hear the noises, but not knowing what produced them makes them significantly more ominous. Some advanced recipes in MCoF call for 8 minutes at full power, and 8 minutes feel like a lot of time when you are helplessly listening to the monstrous anger of the oil, the stuttering onions’ rapid rattle, and the shrill, demented choirs of wailing pork ribs.
With all that said, I do think Microwave Cooking for One is an admirable cookbook. The recipes are probably not the finest cuisine, but they’ll expand your cooking possibilities more than any other recipe book.[3] What I find uniquely cool about Marie T. Smith is that she started with no credentials or qualifications: she was a random housewife who simply fell in love with a new piece of technology, spent a decade pushing it to its limits, and published her findings as a cookbook. Just a woman and a magnetron. You can just explore your own branch of the tech tree!
Let’s not oversell it – if your reference class is “tech visionaries”, maybe that’s taking it a bit too far. If your reference class is “Middle-aged Americans from the eighties who claim they can expand your horizons using waves”, then Marie T. Smith is easily top percentile.
To illustrate the fact that things can get really hot in a microwave oven, here is a tutorial for smelting metals in the microwave. You just need a graphite crucible and very tolerant roommates.
For maximum scientific rigor, I should have done a blind comparison, but I didn’t – in part because I’m lazy, in part because asking someone else to do the blinding feels like breaking the rules. It’s microwave cooking For One. I must face it alone. It is my journey.
Time for a status update on cultural drift. I’ve been pondering solutions, and now see at best only three weakly promising options. The other possible approaches seem to me at best only modest supplements to these three best solutions.
The first solution is for some rather large polity to adopt a very competent form of governance (e.g. futarchy) tied to an ex post measurable sacred goal correlated greatly with the capacity of our main world civ over the next few centuries. Citizens should see this goal as sacred so that they are proud to sacrifice for it, and ashamed to abandon it. Polls suggest some possible goals: the date when a million people live in space, or when we achieve physical immortality. This approach requires that that we find, prove, and adopt a competent form of governance, tie it to such a sacred goal, and do so for polity so large that its actions have a substantial influence on the overall chance of our main world civ achieving this goal. Yes, this seems a long shot. Futarchy to help firm cultures seems a good training ground.
The second solution requires groups where members somehow become strongly attached to the goal of group adaption itself, even though few today feel much attachment to it, or see it as remotely sacred. Yes, that seems harder, especially given the modern taboo on “social Darwinism”, but an advantage of this approach is it that can work for much smaller groups. We’d create a way to measure ex post group adaptive success in a few centuries, make market estimates today of those future measures, and then reward/punish group leaders as those estimates rise/fall. This requires substantially competent governance, and could fail if the world too strongly shares many maladaptive global norms and status markers. Yes this also seems a long shot.
While I have separate posts on the above two approaches, this is my first post on the third solution: more capitalism. Which, yes, also seems a long shot. The parts of our world that are driven by capitalism today, such as tech and commerce, seem to have healthy cultural evolution, even though they are subject to many maladaptive global norms. So the idea here is to get more parts of our world to be more driven by capitalism.
Yes, many other parts of our world, such as marriage, parenting, sex, friendship, and art, are mostly “voluntary”, but that’s not “capitalism” for my purposes here. Just as kings of old who “owned” nations were also not very “capitalist”. The issue here isn’t what choices are voluntary, or who owns what, but which behaviors are strongly directed by for-profit ventures who use the powerful tricks we’ve learned over recent centuries to manage such orgs. Tricks like as stock price signals, hostile takeovers, boards of directors, CEOs with stock options, clear performance metrics for employees, standardized job roles, and so on. These tricks, added to basic capitalist freedoms and incentives, are what let capitalism be so powerful today at enforcing and evolving adaptive behaviors.
Some examples of how capitalism might drive more behaviors:
We might pay lots to parents. For example, we could give them a transferable right to a percentage of the future tax revenue that those kids pay as adults. While parents might try to manage this by themselves, investors and for profit ventures such as boarding schools seem likely to get involved to advice, shape, and manage parenting in big ways.
We couldhave capitalist governance of towns, cities, or larger sized government units. This could induce much stronger adaptive incentives re policies that governments set or influence. For example, they might make citizenship transferable.
We could change bequest and charity laws to let organizations that pay low tax rates primarily hold assets and reinvest their returns. If allowed to persist for generations, such orgs would accumulate most of the world’s capital. As a result, the world would have far more capital, investment rates of return would fall to econ growth rates, and capitalism would care lot more about the long term future.
Making hostile takeovers of firms much easier would greatly increase competitive pressures to make firms efficient.
Heath and life insurers, merged together, could let people buy only cost-effective medicine.
Crime vouchers could help clients be cost-effective at avoiding committing crimes, and at punishing them if they do commit crime.
Tax career agents could help guide key life choices, such as re education, careers, or even marriages.
Note that, like the second approach above, this approach could also fail if the world too strongly shares maladaptive global norms and status markers.
While this third “capitalist” approach seems more “libertarian” than the other two, I fear it doesn’t seem libertarian enough to excite most self-identified libertarians, who likely prefer the current artisanal non-capitalist ways that we manage marriage, parenting, sex, friendship, art, etc.
What about the other approaches I’ve discussed before? AI/ems would strengthen selection pressures, but not directly address other drift issues. Spreading across stars would induce variety at the largest scales but not address within system drift. Nationalism, recently risen and now falling, seems too weak to drive sufficient competition. Deep multiculturalism seems very hard, unpopular, and only addresses the variation issue. These can at best supplement the main three approaches.
Added 15Feb: A poll finds this approach to be most favored:
Let me emphasize that all these approaches require a group or polity using them be sufficiently insular re a wider world culture’s norms and status markers.
In my current procrastination regarding actually leaving Japan, I found an attractive place nearby: the upper level of a house, 100 square meters! Japanese and Western style rooms, choices of futon and beds! Figured I had to try it. Was only available for a week. A bit pricey, but pretty cheap for the space -- not that I need all that space, but after an accumulated month in a 20 m2 place, I looked forward to stretching out.
You pay in another way, though: where my first places had been a 15 minute walk from the main station, then a 5-8 minute walk, this was a 7 minute walk to a minor station, two stops away from Fujisawa, on a line with 14 minute headways. (The Enoden line is mostly single tracked, so probably not much choice there.)
2 oz Rye Whiskey (Old Overholt 86°)
1/4 oz Amaro Nardini
1/4 oz Green Chartreuse
1 tsp Rich Cane Syrup (1/4 oz 1:1)
2 dash Orange Bitters (Angostura Orange)
Stir with ice, strain into an old fashioned glass with ice, and garnish with a lemon twist.
Two Saturdays ago, I opened up my copy of The Madrusan Cocktail Companion book and landed on the Shinola by Greg Keesee at Nashville's Attaboy in 2021 via the book's Old Fashioned section. I was drawn in for I recalled how well Nardini and Chartreuse pair such as in the Green Hornet and Key Party which had motivated me to create the Metal Urbain soon after. In the glass, the Shinola donated a lemon and green herbal bouquet to the nose. Next, a semi-sweet sip with a hint of caramel unfurled into rye, bitter herbal, and herbaceous flavors on the swallow. Indeed, the Nardini played well with the Chartreuse as it had before, and it gave depth to the Chartreuse's brighter notes.
This release is all about warnings updates. There’s no new infrastructure here but there are some closure/construction updates, the most important being temporary closure of Burke-Gilman in Kenmore, with a detour onto a car street between 61st Ave NE and 65th Ave NE. Pedestrians have to go up to Bothell Way.
Here’s the complete changes list:
WARNING: Burke-Gilman CLOSURE in Kenmore for emergency repairs. They aren’t saying what, but it’s almost certainly hillside stabilisation where they piled up highway legos a few months ago. Between 61st and 65th Aves NE, February 16-20. (Both maps)
WARNING: I should’ve added this already, but I’ve now added caution flags on 125th NE in Seattle showing the rework in progress through November 2026. This is a massive project and will be a massive upgrade. (Both maps)
WARNING: Kirkland’s sewer line repair work still hasn’t let the southern Central Kirkland Connector reopen, and the latest word is end of February. Notice updated to reflect that. (MEGAMAP only)
REMOVED WARNING: EastRail Trail South temporary closure in Renton is over, so the warning has been removed. (MEGAMAP only)
REMOVED WARNING: Final work on the extended bike lanes of NE 124th in Kirkland wrapped up, so that warning has been removed. (Both maps)
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 bonus map variants, like pre-sliced printables of the Greater Northshore, and this month I’m throwing them an all-cautions-removed 0% compression version of the MEGAMAP to see whether people like that. Plus, I can be open to requests.
With pride month coming to an end, we wanted to let you all know that we have a Pride collection on the site YEAR ROUND! AND PRIDE NEVER DIES!!!!!!
Your money is going to LGBTQ+ creators when you purchase these items, and it is so so SO important now more than ever to support these amazing people. Seriously!!!
Featured above are just a few items/artists on the site that we recommend you check out :) Each creator is listed below!
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