Michael Grass

11% of Northwest Residents Live in Fire Country; 100% Pay the Price | Sightline Institute 1.6 million people live in high hazard areas. As the region continues to build in flammable landscapes, policymakers can protect communities with smarter building choices and the truth about rising ri...

The Northwest is growing into wildfire areas. In fact, high-hazard regions are where the population is growing *fastest.*

As of 2023, almost 1.6m people in the NW lived in wildfire hazard areas, an 8% increase since 2018.

Parking-aware navigation system could prevent frustration and emissions By minimizing the need to drive around looking for a parking spot, this technique can save drivers up to 35 minutes — and give them a realistic estimate of total travel time.

​New research from @cathywu.bsky.social et al. confirms something I've long suspected:

Navigation apps could save their users a lot of time — and tilt travel decisions toward transit and biking — if they showed users how long it takes to find parking.

A Sound Transit Link train interior.

With these 2-car 2 Line Link trains in Seattle, I'm having weird flashbacks to chasing short G trains on subway platforms in Brooklyn before they departed the station.

Join us for ‘The Risks and Realities of AI Chatbots’ event on April 7 Join us for a special conversation on April 7, 6-7:30 p.m. at the Seattle Central Library.

Join us April 7 at the Seattle Central Library for "The Risks and Realities of AI Chatbots," a special discussion with journalists @kashhill.bsky.social (N.Y. Times) and @jeffhorwitz.bsky.social (Reuters), moderated by @mnickelsburg.bsky.social (KUOW).

Event info: www.cip.uw.edu/2026/02/16/r...

Want to walk more without trying? Move here Researchers found that walkable city design—not personal motivation—was the key factor behind people taking 1,100 more steps per day

People walk more in places that make it easier to walk.

Op-Ed: Pierce County Must Run a Transit Ballot Measure in 2026 » The Urbanist # The Pierce Transit Board is considering a ballot measure in November 2026 that would boost funding in order to expand bus service, make routes more frequent, and create new transit connections to li...

NEW OP-ED // Pierce County Must Run a Transit Ballot Measure in 2026

Op-Ed by Kirk Hovenkotter of @transpochoices.bsky.social and Laura Svancarek of Tacoma On The Go.

via @theurbanist.org // 🔗 www.theurbanist.org/2026/02/16/o...

I cannot stress this enough: writing is thinking.

Business Class seats

Destination board

Locomotive Cab with Union station reflections

Airo or Charger locomotive in Cascades Colors

Amtrak's Newest Train on film
Their "Airo" trainset in Cascades livery looks fantastic on Fuji 200

As a Tacoma-UW Seattle commuter (via King St Station), I appreciate the regional significance of the combined 1 + 2 Line train frequency through Downtown Seattle.

It'll reduce my wait times at ID/C + UW, which will cut ~5 min in each direction for some trips. That adds up over many commutes!

Smiling couple on boat headed to their destination

Entire Relationship Hinges on Getaway Weekend on Orcas Island: tinyurl.com/ydfaes49

Opinion | Something Surprising Happens When Bus Rides Are Free

Sorry, but this @nytimes.com op-ed on free fares in New York City, by @galvinalmanza.bsky.social, is deeply ignorant of the issues.

It proposes that pretty social justice vibes and some careless citations will change facts of math. Thread: 1/

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/o...

An orange tabby cat sitting on a human's legs.

My favorite part of #Caturday is a ritual of hiding post-lunch dental treats around the house that my cat hunts down one by one. Then the cat demands I create a comfy pedestal on the couch for sentinel duty to protect our domicile from pigeons outside the window. Then we both nap.

When Posting Becomes Its Own Style of Politics Social media has long been flooded with populist rage and discontent. What happens when the posts become policy?

"Slopulism," a type of viral content that @cip.uw.edu co-founder @katestarbird.bsky.social has called "participatory propaganda," has been a dynamic that's been "building for years," Starbird recently told @nytimes.com in an interview. [1/2]

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Why MAGA-Boosting Comedy Bros Are Turning on Trump From Joe Rogan to Andrew Schulz, the bromance between right-coded comics and the president is quickly cooling off.

In a @thr.com interview, @cip.uw.edu graduate research assistant @sydneydemets.bsky.social says that “[p]odcasts are incredibly persuasive” because “they induce the parasocial phenomenon” and “trigger a lot of feelings of intimacy and trust.” www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/politic...

Most Americans don’t pay for news and don’t think they need to For a new report released Wednesday, the Pew Research Center surveyed 3,560 U.S. adults in December 2025 about their relationship to the news and how they perceive its value in everyday life. Pew aThe...

"I don’t pay to go to church, to get a spiritual message, you know? And if you’re true, and your mission is to relay facts that are fundamentally important for people’s well-being, do I need to pay you for that?"

A glass sculpture of the Downtown Seattle cityscape.

Here it is ...

While it's not very large, the Museum of Glass in Tacoma has glass sculpture of the Downtown Seattle street grid with buildings, roughly the cityscape between Pioneer Square and Westlake, First Hill and the waterfront.

There's a national media event unveiling our new Amtrak Cascades trains in DC today. Here are some photos for you to enjoy! The Cafe Car is even stocked with our PNW favorites.

There's a very talkative passenger on the 1 Line in Seattle who is screaming out alternate station announcements: "Ladies and gentlemen, this is not U District Station. You are now entering Tenleytown-AU and don't you forget it! Gemini says so!"

As the nation’s eyes turn to Minneapolis, they’re also turning to Minnesota Public Radio Long one of the strongest public media outlets in the country, MPR has reached new traffic highs amid the ICE raids and protests there. Here’s our regular ranking of the top 25 public radio websites…

Long one of the strongest public media outlets in the country, Minnesota Public Radio has reached new traffic highs amid the ICE raids and protests there. www.niemanlab.org/2026/02/as-t...

ICE at the polls! Bannon is basically yelling “fire” in a crowded theater here. His objective is to cause chaos (and suppress votes on the left). And it’s already working.

This threat works on multiple levels and doesn’t have to be “real” to serve its purpose.

Let me explain & offer some advice.

A lot of people cannot just start a paid newsletter or become freelancers to sustain their careers. The sports, metro, and international desks did work that requires *team* resources, like legal checks, documents, access to archives, and long-term beat experience.

Making Sense of Minnesota, Anticipating Springfield Exposing the propaganda-to-policy pipeline (and other reflections on current events)

“One of the most troubling dynamics of the past twelve months is seeing anti-immigrant propaganda become policy in the second Trump administration. […] These pipelines between participatory propaganda and policy are growing increasingly robust and hard to ignore.”

Ok, let’s do this🙄

We’ll start with an explainer covering:

🕒What is a 15-minute city
🏫What on Earth is going on with Oxford
👽Where the conspiracy theories have come from

And then we’ll look at the Telegraph article

🧵
1/25

this handful of independent journalists (my former colleagues at Motherboard) do more impactful journalism than 75% of the corporate tech press on a fraction of the budget

‘Cowards’: Democratic election officials rip Bondi, Gabbard, Noem for bailing on event Pam Bondi, Tulsi Gabbard, and Kristi Noem were slated to speak to election officials on Friday. They didn’t show.

Pam Bondi, Tulsi Gabbard, and Kristi Noem canceled a highly anticipated appearance before secretaries of state.
www.votebeat.org/2026/01/30/b...

🌟OPEN ACCESS🌟 In a new #BSSA paper, a team from the USGS simulates hypothetical earthquakes on Washington State’s southern Whidbey Island fault. ⚒️

buff.ly/DrbnLp0

⤵️⤵️⤵️

News publishers limit Internet Archive access due to AI scraping concerns Outlets like The Guardian and The New York Times are scrutinizing digital archives as potential backdoors for AI crawlers.

News publishers are limiting access to the Internet Archive's crawlers because they fear it's a backdoor to AI scraping. As a result, some of the web's history of getting lost.

www.niemanlab.org/2026/01/news...

How malicious AI swarms can threaten democracy The fusion of agentic AI and LLMs marks a new frontier in information warfare

AI technologies now enable coordinated "swarms" of inauthentic social media activity that can manipulate public opinion at scale by mimicking human behavior, generating convincing falsehoods, and fabricating false consensus.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...