It’s a slippery slope. If you allow for a sidewalk for children between a school and transit, where does it end? Safe sidewalks for adults? What about able bodied adults? Shouldn’t we be means testing sidewalks or are we just gonna hand out free sidewalks to everyone?

That’s communism, friend. Can’t have it.

Disclaimer: I’m not giving advice here and I don’t have insight into Rad’s specific situation. I am very, very progressive, I love regulation, and I own a Rad bike. I don’t have the battery in question. I like my bike, but I don’t love Rad. I also happen to know quite a lot about the CPSC.

The CPSC is typically led by a board of 5 members. Trump fired the 3 Democratic members which was plainly illegal but the appeals court order to reinstate them was struck down by the Supreme Court in an emergency order (dirty Supreme Court doing dirty Supreme Court things). 1 of the remaining 2 members resigned, leaving a single person in charge of the entire CPSC. CPSC’s power comes primarily through two vehicles: enforcement action (fines) referred to the DOJ for charges (usually for companies that it believes are intentionally hiding defective products), and reputational damage to the company by going public when it wants to apply pressure (like we’re seeing here with Rad).

With a solo Republican commission running the place, you would think this would result in a toothless agency that was generally uninterested in enforcement. You would be very, very fucking wrong.

I’m a guy that’s complained that the CPSC should be more aggressive, but their stance in the last six months (and especially the last month) has gone waaaaaay past reasonable. They’re firing off demand letters in all directions, at anyone and everyone. They’re fully on the attack. If there’s even a whiff of product problems, they’re attacking first with maximal threats.

Why is this a bad thing?

Companies (most of them) self report issues with their product and work with the CPSC on solutions, if one is needed. That is how the CPSC is made aware of the vast majority of product issues. A company realizes there’s a product issue and is incentivized to work with the government to fix it, instead of hiding it and hoping nobody notices. This is a system that works surprisingly well because executives can be held accountable (including criminal charges) if they hide issues and don’t want that liability hanging over them while at the same time, consumers are protected by the willingness of companies to be open and honest. The only real friction between companies and the CPSC is when the CPSC thinks a company should have been more forthcoming or figured out the problem sooner. Again, this is a good thing because it incentivizes companies to be proactive in product safety.

But now the CPSC is changing the equation. It’s going after EVERYBODY that’s self reporting, demanding maximum fines. Now instead of executives deciding how to work with the CPSC on product safety, they’re deciding whether or not they can win a court case that the CPSC brings against them for not self reporting.

Or put another way: you’re an executive. you know the CPSC is gonna either sue you or publicly damage your reputation for reporting a POTENTIAL (not confirmed!) product issue. can you beat the charges saying you weren’t aware there was a specific issue with a product that should result in a report to the CPSC? if so, why the fuck are you even reporting it to them at all? why would you have a dept in your company that looks for product problems if it’s going to cause you to get sued for knowing and not reporting? shouldn’t you be firing those people immediately?

Again, I don’t know the specifics of Rad. Maybe they’re the bad guys here! But maybe the CPSC’s asshole idiot behavior is what’s going on.

I came here to be told who to hate and instead got the tiniest bit of hope when I saw two posters with recommendations.

If you’re ok with small spaces, the Seattle underground tours are really really fun.

I live in West Seattle so I’m biased, but I think the best park in the city is Lincoln park over on the west side of West Seattle. Grab some sandwiches (or ice cream) from Husky Deli in Alaska Junction then head down to Lincoln Park, get a bench down by the waterfront, and just hang out. The southern most part of Lincoln Park is the easiest way to get to the water. You can go thru the park too (which is a big beautiful urban forest) but the walk down to the water thru the park is a little steep, especially for people not used to hiking.

If dorky Americana type stuff is fun for you, there are lots of semi-pro sports happening around then. Our family likes going to the Dub Sea Fish Sticks games here in West Seattle, but there’s teams all over Seattle. The Fish Sticks play low level baseball and it’s much more people having a good time outside and screwing around than actual serious baseball. There’s also Ballard FC for soccer, with the same vibe.

When is she coming and do you have a car?

holy shit what a disaster.

nagelsmann sends his regards

Thanks for posting that. Imma do that. Nothing special on the temps? Hot enough to cook but low enough to not burn the sugar?

So you cut em, marinade em, and then grill em? That sounds pretty cool. I’d imagine you get a much different flavor that way.

So it’s probably been a decade since I did back ribs. I’ve just always done spare ribs, but I saw a nice sale on back ribs and figured sure what the hell.

I’ve always taken the silverskin off. Once I didn’t and I remember getting comments about it, like the mouth feel was a little tough there. This time I went to grab it to yank it off and it was super thin and barely there, so I just said screw it and left it on.

For whatever reason, it was great. Just a crackly little bite on the back side of the rib that came off cleanly. I think the thinness of the skin certainly helped it and if I saw it that thin again, I’d leave it on again.

Engineering is the usual path into SCADA, but most firms require specialists and networking is certainly a needed specialty.

At will is a bullshit shield used to deflect legitimate labor issues. You need to talk to a lawyer like now.

sir this is a joke about qanon thread

If we’re casting around looking for good advice from relevant people, James Carville would be way down that list.

Boy that name just keeps popping up doesn’t it? You’d think we elected him to something.

Pretty big rebalance.

Be boring somewhere else.

not gonna lie wanna hear more about the wolf warrior vest

These people sound like exact copies of the people saying voting in 2000 didn’t matter, and that turned out to be the most politically consequential of my lifetime. Gore was imperfect as they all are, but holy fuck did Dubya fuck up literally everything he touched.

Among many, many, many things, Dubya started forever wars killing untold hundreds of thousands of people. He accelerated oil and gas production, absolutely setting the Climate Change world on a pace for disaster. He seated Alito, unquestionably the biggest monster currently on the Supreme Court. And he passed a monster tax cut for the rich that set us on this path of unrestrained deficit spending.

And that’s just the headlines. Remember when he tried to put his personal lawyer on the Supreme Court? lol

Gen X already tried this 25 years ago and it fucked the world up so badly that we need to be saved by the future generations. Imagine not learning that lesson and doing it again.

Cool graphic. Thanks for posting it.

I’m an Americano dude, myself.

They will be cut up and all over socials the next morning. Nobody hit like Jon in the Daily Show format.