I’m going to take a minute to step entirely out of character and write about something local – the effort to save KPLU, a highly popular non-profit radio station. I know, I know, nobody cares about radio, but you should care about journalism and media consolidation, and that’s also what this is about.
KPLU has been owned by Pacific Lutheran University since its founding. It’s a jazz and news station, with very good local coverage – something sadly lacking in mass media. However, the university decided to sell it; they see radio as a declining-value asset, and the school needs the cash. But they negotiated this deal in secret; the first hint that they had any interest in selling was an announcement that they’d reached a deal with KUOW and the University of Washington.
Now, once upon a time, KUOW – UW’s NPR outlet – was a decent station. Not the best, but not the worst, and I was a regular donor. That time is long past. They have virtually no local programming or news anymore; I stopped listening to them because since they hired their new east-coast programming director and station manager, they sound like an NPR corporate station operating out of Washington, DC, not a UW station operating out of Washington State. And, all too predictably, they immediately announced their intent to fold KPLU into their broadcast network as an all-jazz second station, eliminating KPLU’s very good independent local news and information bureau.
We are already suffering – as are most of the US-controlled territories – with a near-collapse in anything that can be seriously called journalism. In-depth coverage is all but absent, and local coverage in particular loses out. Media consolidation sucks.
For all of these reasons, a large local movement arose to demand that KPLU be given the chance to buy itself out, and go independent. You see, despite what PLU likes to say, KPLU is entirely self-supporting now. It just had a record fundraising drive during the secret sellout negotiations. Its listenership is quite large. Its citizen advisory board demanded to know why they’d been kept out of the process, once it was announced, and asserted immediately that the sale was deeply inappropriate.
So, following massive protest – well, massive, given the scale of non-profit radio – we’ve been given a shot. It was begrudgingly given; KUOW really wants to own KPLU’s transmitters. But it was given, so we have a chance.
We have six months; they need seven million dollars. I’ve already pledged. If you’re interested at all in supporting Puget Sound news coverage, I hope you will too.
Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come check out our music at:
Bandcamp (full album streaming) | Videos | iTunes | Amazon | CD BabySIGNAL BOOST. This is incredibly important. KPLU is a resource that a LOT of us in the South Sound know, love, and depend on, and we can’t afford to take it for granted right now. I’ll be donating as soon as I can.
Blog
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RIP Bowie
Releasing a major piece of art days before dying to cap an epic body of work because you created until the end: true life goals.
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“We have normality. I repeat, we have normality.
…Anything you still can’t cope with is therefore your own problem.”
Slowly life is starting to return to normal. Or what passes for normal these days. Although we are both still, seemingly, hyper stressed, and our stuff is one week away from being in the country (as opposed to continuing its trek around the country), and I’m driving a V6 (or V8) Dodge Caravan… but we’re slowly finding our feet.
I have spent the morning being slightly productive. I’ve been to the Social Security Office (where they were very nice and fixed my name, and I even made two of the people there laugh which was nice). I’ve been to the bank and fixed my PIN which I’ve been unable to remember since picking it when I was given my bank cards. So I can now pay for things on our joint account. I’ve been to the supermarket. I’ve put out the
rubbishtrash. I’ve bought coffee that’s more to my taste*. I’ve navigated back without google maps. I’ve looked at a lot of old Honda Insights (2001-2006 model year) online – since we think that’s what we’ll be buying. I’ve even found a possible one – which is only 100 miles away.I’ve fed the birds, put up a smoke alarm, and emptied the dishwasher.
It’s all been terribly normal. I might wander out for a walk…who knows.
That said, I was pretty down last night – after we realised our plans for the house were wildly optimistic, and that the house sale and the minor and various other things had cut us back by nearly $40k all in. To say I was grumpy really doesn’t entirely cover the range of my utter disappointment. Especially since early in the evening we’d both agreed that buying an EV right now is probably not the best plan (we’d love to, but we’re not sure whether we need the super expensive not-really-in-our-price-range one, and with the 200 mile EVs coming in next year, that should drop the price of the ones we want anyway – and by then we should know more about what we’re needing it to be capable of). But having reached that disappointing conclusion the looming possibility that we might not be building our place, and then the realization that we might not be able to do geothermal heating, because we probably couldn’t afford the house-with-land…and then spiralling ‘oh fuck it all’ meant I was pretty fed up by the time we hit bed.
However, having slumped into bed we did some sums and realized that we were planning a house way bigger than we need.
Actually, our last house came in at around 900 Sq Ft (not including the garage). And building something a around that size is probably within our budget. Just because everyone else has 2000 sq ft houses doesn’t mean we need that much. To be honest, we don’t really need even 1000 sq ft of space… but it was a nice size. This house we’re in is probably around 1600 or so sq ft, and is actually vast (at least to my little British brain). So it’s possible the building idea is back on. Which makes me happier…
…so, uh, yeah.
…so better. Yeah. That’s my opinion.
* The people we’re renting from like a really dark roast, and kindly left us coffee. I like a much milder roast… I got my coffee – and then made a substance that’s a bit like coffee and more like water. Me and the drip filter need to make friends.
“We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. was originally published on Mostly lemon based
First: My house was 1092 sq ft, and is now 1320 (after making the garage into living space), if that helps give you another data point. :) That’s too-small public spaces (I want to be able to host big music parties!) but one extra bedroom I wouldn’t need if I was renting.
Second: If you made the coffee using a standard coffee maker, it’s likely the water wasn’t hot enough. The heating elements get too crappy after a few years, and most people don’t replace them
because they’re not ridiculous coffee snobs like usit’s been gradual and they don’t notice. French presses all the way!Third: WAIT WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE HAVE NORMALITY THIS IS NOT NORMAL oh wait you just mean for you. *sigh of relief* *still can’t cope*
Fourth: I am excited to see you Sunday!!
Handy data point, thanks! :) I think it’s going to be down to good layout, sucking up that our offices both go above/around the garage somewhere, later, and… uh, yeah, the fact that I’m British and Kathryn’s got used to British houses which are super-way-small compared to US ones. Like our 900sq ft house was *bigger* than Nikki and Kates ‘reasonable size family home’. Both of ours had 3 bedrooms.
Second: Nope, it’s a filter that you tip hot water into from a kettle. Our french press will be here soon [optimism] and then I’ll go back to making it that way. It’s also easier for me to judge the amount of water… and I can just slop the hot water in, rather than dripping it a teeny bit at a time.
Third: “We are now cruising at a level of two to the power of twenty-five thousand to one against and falling, and we will be restoring normality just as soon as we are sure what is normal anyway.”
Fourth: Me too! Yay!
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Everyone on the internet right now.
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It seems there has been a development that is both pleasing… and terrifying.
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“We have normality. I repeat, we have normality.
…Anything you still can’t cope with is therefore your own problem.”
Slowly life is starting to return to normal. Or what passes for normal these days. Although we are both still, seemingly, hyper stressed, and our stuff is one week away from being in the country (as opposed to continuing its trek around the country), and I’m driving a V6 (or V8) Dodge Caravan… but we’re slowly finding our feet.
I have spent the morning being slightly productive. I’ve been to the Social Security Office (where they were very nice and fixed my name, and I even made two of the people there laugh which was nice). I’ve been to the bank and fixed my PIN which I’ve been unable to remember since picking it when I was given my bank cards. So I can now pay for things on our joint account. I’ve been to the supermarket. I’ve put out the
rubbishtrash. I’ve bought coffee that’s more to my taste*. I’ve navigated back without google maps. I’ve looked at a lot of old Honda Insights (2001-2006 model year) online – since we think that’s what we’ll be buying. I’ve even found a possible one – which is only 100 miles away.I’ve fed the birds, put up a smoke alarm, and emptied the dishwasher.
It’s all been terribly normal. I might wander out for a walk…who knows.
That said, I was pretty down last night – after we realised our plans for the house were wildly optimistic, and that the house sale and the minor and various other things had cut us back by nearly $40k all in. To say I was grumpy really doesn’t entirely cover the range of my utter disappointment. Especially since early in the evening we’d both agreed that buying an EV right now is probably not the best plan (we’d love to, but we’re not sure whether we need the super expensive not-really-in-our-price-range one, and with the 200 mile EVs coming in next year, that should drop the price of the ones we want anyway – and by then we should know more about what we’re needing it to be capable of). But having reached that disappointing conclusion the looming possibility that we might not be building our place, and then the realization that we might not be able to do geothermal heating, because we probably couldn’t afford the house-with-land…and then spiralling ‘oh fuck it all’ meant I was pretty fed up by the time we hit bed.
However, having slumped into bed we did some sums and realized that we were planning a house way bigger than we need.
Actually, our last house came in at around 900 Sq Ft (not including the garage). And building something a around that size is probably within our budget. Just because everyone else has 2000 sq ft houses doesn’t mean we need that much. To be honest, we don’t really need even 1000 sq ft of space… but it was a nice size. This house we’re in is probably around 1600 or so sq ft, and is actually vast (at least to my little British brain). So it’s possible the building idea is back on. Which makes me happier…
…so, uh, yeah.
…so better. Yeah. That’s my opinion.
* The people we’re renting from like a really dark roast, and kindly left us coffee. I like a much milder roast… I got my coffee – and then made a substance that’s a bit like coffee and more like water. Me and the drip filter need to make friends.
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A bit of fear, a bit of excitement.
So I have a job. It’s per diem, but it’s in an ER and it sounds like it’s a really interesting client population. So that’s pretty awesome. However, today they contacted me and said “we can’t find your details off your social security number”. There were also some visa queries… which led to a quite stressful couple of hours while I found the answer to the visa questions (everything is fine) and rang the social security folks.
After a [very long] time on hold to the social security agency, I discovered that they’ve munged my first and last names together. Yay.
So tomorrow I get to go the social security office and try and fix that with as much proof of ID as I can throw at the problem, because they can’t fix it over the phone. So that will, I’m sure be fun.
On the plus side… I HAVE A JOB!
Yay.
Also I’m starting to feel a bit of excitement (and terror) about building a house. I’ve spent much of the day doing sums and looking at fun things like Glulam timber framing companies (none of whom will provide any concept of how much a frame might cost for a straw bale house). I’ve waited in vain for the makers of the insulated concrete slab to come back to me with any details on costs or local companies who’ve used it. And I’ve spent some time looking at the salvage yard stuff and trying to get a bit of a bead on how much the things I can cost up will cost…
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This morning was gorgeous… And it’s turned into a super pretty day :) on Flickr.
This morning was gorgeous… And it’s turned into a super pretty day :)
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@ autistic / light sensitive people
i downloaded this thing the other day called f.lux and it basically just tints your computer screen to match the time of day where you are. i have my screen brightness dimmed most of the time but during the night it still hurts bc it’s a harsh light compared to the pitch black of my room, this thing makes it look more natural. it is nice. also free
f.lux is amazing
I’ve been using it for a couple of years and sometimes forget how necessary it’s become for me. Whenever I disable it temporarily, my eyes suffer. Cannot recommend it enough.
i know a ton of neurotypicals will just ignore this too but please download this. computers are made to be like the sun and they cause so much damage to your eyes at night over time. download this!! you’re preventing yourself from having to deal with some future hospital bills, its so necessary.
I LOVE f.lux.
You can turn it off for color-sensitive work, but it’s a huge help if you get eyestrain headaches and still have to work at the screen.