The fiftieth season of the American sketch comedy late night television program Saturday Night Live premiered tonight.
‘Vice President’ Kamala Harris (portrayed by Maya Rudolph) and ‘Second Gentleman’ Doug Emhoff (portrayed by Andy Samberg) doing a skit during the cold open* tonight. Nothing about the future is certain, but let me be optimistic. The American people will confirm in 38 days that the real VP Harris will become President Harris, and that her husband Doug Emhoff will become the first First Gentleman on Jan 20, 2025. *Cold open: jumping directly into a story at the beginning of the show before the title sequence or opening credits are shown. [Screen shot from Saturday Night Live on NBC broadcast television].
Happy Friday.
The five amigos got together at Chuck’s Hop Shop in Central District for a beer and a bite to eat from the food truck outside.
I’m in line inside to procure a beverage from the 50 or so listed on the screens by the counter. The non-alcohol Bitburger pilsner they had last time was not listed tonight, and I got the ‘Ladd & Lass : *Fresh Hop* West Coast IPA’ instead, even though it has 6.5% alc/vol. It was Friday night after all, so why not have a *real* beer?
Hurricane Helene is one of the biggest storms on record to strike the Gulf Coast. A few hours before making landfall, Helene had winds of at least tropical storm force, a sustained 39 mph or greater, across some 420 miles.
According to an analysis by Colorado State University hurricane scientist Phil Klotzbach, Helene is larger than all but two gulf storms since 1988: Opal, a Category 3 storm that made landfall on the Florida Panhandle in October 1995, and Irma, a Category 4 storm that struck South Florida in September 2017.
When a storm is so large, it means more people are exposed to its hazards, which extend hundreds of miles away from the point of landfall.
– From reporting by Scott Dance, Simon Ducroquet and John Muyskens in The Washington Post
Hurricane Helene made landfall tonight into Florida’s Big Bend region as a catastrophic Category 4 storm. There may be winds with speeds over 130 mph, and more than 10 inches of rain in some places.
Even at Oktoberfest— arguably the world’s most famous ode to alcohol— alcohol-free beer is on the menu. All but two of the 18 large tents at the festival offer the drink through the celebration’s 16 days. The sober drink will cost drinkers the same as an alcoholic beer- between 13.60 and 15.30 euros ($15.12 and $17.01) for a 1-liter mug (33 fluid ounces) – but save them from a hangover.
– Stefanie Dazio writing for The Associated Press
Oktoberfest started on Saturday in Munich, Bavaria’s capital.
Here come the beers! Seven of those giant 1-liter mugs in each hand, if I count them correctly. [Photo by Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/dpa, from Süddeutsche Zeitung online]
We clambered up the steep 2.6-mile loop trail called Saddle Rock Trail this morning (it is just outside of Wenatchee), and then spent some time in Leavenworth before driving home.
We took this route back, along I-90 and over Snoqualmie Pass. Without stops, it comes to a 3 hour-trip from Wenatchee to Seattle.Here we go. The Saddle Rock Trail winds along the contours to the top— for the most part; some parts are steep. And yes, we made it all the way up, to those rhyolite (igneous rock) outcroppings at the summit. Our smart watches showed an elevation of 846 ft (257 m) at the summit, relative to the trailhead at the bottom. The Chelan-Douglas Land Trust has worked to protect the foothills around Wenatchee through trail building, land acquisition, and partnerships with the community.A lot of the vegetation around the trail is tinder dry, but still beautiful to look at from up close.Beautiful sage green and lime green rock lichens. A lichen is a fungus plus one or more types of algae or blue-green bacteria that perform photosynthesis. I could not track down what these ones are called specifically, though.Some of the sage brush is still flowering. Throughout the Columbia Basin, Big Sagebrush (Artemesia tridentata) is the dominant species of sagebrush.Woo hoo! At the summit, and looking southeast with the Columbia River on the left.Turkey vultures (Cathartes aura) overhead, circling the summit of Saddle Rock Trail.I found this little lizard it at the base of the rocky summit of Saddle Rock Trail. It is a Northern sagebrush lizard (Sceloporus graciosus). This one was 5 or 6 inches long head to tail. They have lost more than 70% of their habitat since the 1970s in Washington State, and the status of this species is of concern to Washington Dept. of Fish and Wildlife.Looking more or less towards the north from the summit of Saddle Rock Trail, across West Wenatchee on the banks of the Columbia River. The Wenatchee River is not really visible in the picture, but its confluence with the Columbia River is south of Highway 2, the concrete bridge structure over the Columbia River in the middle of the picture.Here’s a panorama picture of Wenatchee, situated in a fertile valley in Central Washington at the confluence of the Wenatchee and Columbia Rivers. A sign at the entrance to the the city says ‘Welcome to the Apple Capital of the World’. The city of Wenatchee is the second most populous city in the central part of the state and serves as the Chelan County seat. To the south and west, mountains provide a dramatic backdrop for the city.All right. We had a rest at the top, and enjoyed the spectacular views, and are now making our way down. It’s steep down here as well, and the gravel can be treacherous. Better to stick to the bare part of the trail that does not have gravel.Here’s Leavenworth where the buildings along the central part of the town comply with Bavarian village architecture, with just about zero exceptions. This is a beer hall (festhalle).Balconies, hanging flowers and flags of the USA, Bavaria and Germany, of course. Lots of souvenir shops, but also clothing, sporting goods, stores for Christmas decorations, candy and chocolate stores, restaurants and coffee shops.This cider house sign pays homage to the mountains and the apple orchards around Leavenworth. The summer crowds are now gone, of course, but the ‘Bavarian village’ will soon brighten itself up with Christmas lights and decorations to attract visitors during the holiday season. How did Leavenworth get to model its downtown after a Bavarian village? Two of the leaders instrumental in this effort were Pauline and Owen Watson, longtime residents of Leavenworth who owned and operated Alpine Electric out of one of the buildings on Front Street. In 1965 the decision was made by key business owners to adopt the Bavarian theme and remodel their buildings.It does not matter if you are a Subway sandwich shop, or a 76 gas station. Thou shalt dress up as quaint Bavarian village businesses.Cloppety-clop, cloppety-clop. This was the only horse-drawn carriage doing the rounds that we saw, though.
Three amigos and I went on a quick road trip to Leavenworth and Wenatchee on Sunday. We overnighted in Wenatchee.
Three amigos picked up the fourth at the Edmonds train station, and from there we drove along Highway 2 (the Stevens Pass Highway) to Monroe, Gold Bar and Leavenworth to reach Wenatchee in Chelan County.We crossed a number of truss bridges on Highway 2. This one is just outside Sultan in Snohomish County, crossing the Skykomish River. It was constructed in 1932. Washington DOT categorizes it as Functionally Obsolete. (Functionally Obsolete: Bridges in this category are typically too narrow, has inadequate under-clearances, has insufficient load-carrying capacity, is poorly aligned with the roadway, and can no longer adequately service today’s traffic).Here is the Wenatchee River seen from Highway 2 as we were approaching Leavenworth from the west.The welcome sign to the Leavenworth Bavarian Village.Charging our Tesla Model Y a little at the supercharger by Dan’s Food Market in Leavenworth. There are16 Superchargers, available 24/7, charge rate up to 150kW.
Summer is officially over.
The fall equinox here in the Northern Hemisphere is at Sun, Sep 22, 2024, 5:43 AM Pacific Time.
Here’s a gorgeous aurora borealis picture taken near Near Magnuson Park, Seattle around midnight or in the wee hours of Tuesday morning. [Posted by NWS Seattle @NWSSeattle at 1.35 am on Tuesday. I reduced the pixel size of the original picture]
Happy Friday.
I cracked open one of my Guinness beers tonight.
I knew, more or less, what the little ball inside my can of Guinness beer was for, but thought I’d ask Chat GPT anyway.
Hmm .. ChatGPT Is very enthusiastic about the widget (‘a brilliant solution’), making me suspect that it had lifted this answer in its entirety from the Guinness website. That’s all right, though— at least I learned that the little ball is called a ‘widget’, and that it has nitrogen in.
I had business downtown and missed the No 10 bus on the way back.
Oh well, I thought, it’s such a beautiful day— let’s just walk back up to Capitol Hill.
Top to bottom: The monorail station at Westlake Center. The Summit Convention Center, the addition to the original Seattle Convention Center. (The Arch + Summit Convention Centers hosted 160 events in 2023, up from 114 in 2022, but still came in with an operating loss of $23 million for 2023). Fall leaves at East Pike Street and Boren Avenue. The Starbucks Roastery at East Pike Street and Melrose Avenue. The pooch is wearing booties. Beer truck from Ninkasi Brewing Company in Eugene, Oregon. Korean Restaurant on Denny Way. (And now you know how to write Korean Restaurant in Korean!).
Hey! And here’s the Google Street View car at work. Maybe an image of me will make it onto the next update for Capitol Hill. 😆
The Federal Reserve cut interest rates on Wednesday by half a percentage point, an unusually large move and a clear signal that central bankers think they are winning their war against inflation and are turning their attention to protecting the job market.
– Jeanna Smialek writing for the New York Times
The ‘dot plot’: dots for each Fed official’s projection on where they expect the federal funds rate to be at the end of 2024, and at the end of 2025. The federal funds rate now stands at 4.9%. The dot plot shows the average projection for the end of 2024 to be 4.4%, and for the end of 2025, 3.4%. Graphic from the New York Times
I spotted this peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus) today, in an open lot near Broadway & Republican Street here on Capitol Hill.
I think this one is a juvenile bird— it still had some downy feathers on its breast and underbelly.
Falcons have extraordinary speed and maneuverability, and hunt birds on the wing. Their prey also include bats, voles, lemmings, squirrels, rats and lizards.
Three amigos went to the Electrify Expo 2024 here in Seattle today: an electric vehicle festival that visits different cities to showcase EVs of all kinds.
Visitors to the expo could look at, and drive, electric cars and trucks, and ride e-bikes, e-motorcycles, e-scooters and e-skateboards.
This Ford F-150 Lightning Platinum starts at $85,000. Range is 300 mile-range and horsepower is 580.The 2025 BMW iX (it’s an SUV; ignore the camera angle), offers up to 324 miles per charge and up to 610 horsepower. It’s going to gobble up $100,000 of your cash.I believe this is a 2025 BMW i4 M50. I could not find this outrageous deep turquoise(?) color on the BMW website, though. MSRP starts at about $70,000.BMW X4 Sports Activity Coupe.2024 Tesla Model Y Performance in quicksilver. Starts at $52,000; range is 279 miles and the electric motors put out 455 horsepower.We’ve seen the Tesla Cybertruck before, but today we got to clamber into it and see what it’s like inside. The frunk (front trunk 😁 ) is open.The Cybertruck Foundation Series All-Wheel Drive starts at $94,000. The tires on this beast are 33.5″ in diameter.A view from the inside. The windshield is enormous, of course, as is the glass roof. The steering wheel and rear-view mirror are smaller than I guess I had expected them to be.Here’s another Cybertruck, displayed by an enthusiastic private owner. (She owns this Cybertruck with its custom rainbow metallic wrap, a Tesla Model S Plaid, and a Tesla Model 3 Performance). She loves the truck’s steer-by-wire and its tight turning radius.E-motorbike offering by BMW, the BMW CE 02. It goes about 55 miles on a full charge, and costs around $8,000.Check out this Honda Motocompacto E-Scooter. This folding scooter weighs all of 42 pounds and can fit into the back of a conventional hatchback. It tops out at 15 mph, with a 12-mile range, and riders over 265 pounds need not apply. Cost: about $1,000.A souped up Tesla Model 3. I’m not sure what’s going on in the frunk!Whoah— three Cybertrucks coming in from their test drives. The wait for a Cybertruck test drive was more than 2 hours. We were in line to take a Tesla Model X for a spin, but there was a little confusion and we ended up hopping into a Model S Plaid instead.Lucid Air at the back (512 miles range), then left to right Tesla Model 3, Tesla Model S, Tesla Model Y.Inside the Model S Plaid for a test drive. (No, we did not do anything crazy such as trying out ludicrous mode*— just a little circuit around University Village. We had a Tesla representative in the passenger seat. He is actually a Tesla service technician at the Bellevue service center). *A performance mode on Tesla vehicles that increases peak torque by about 60%, catapulting the car forward from 0 to 60 miles per hour in as little as 2.5 seconds.
King County Metro’s latest ‘rapid ride’ bus route opened today: the RapidRide G Line along Madison Street.
Its promise is to have the most frequent transit service in the region for riders in Seattle’s Capitol Hill, First Hill, Central District and Madison Valley neighborhoods.
The bus comes every 6 minutes for most of the day, except on Sunday.
The line runs along Madison Street between Martin Luther King Jr. Way and First Avenue, and turns on 1st Avenue to go back to Madison Street.Here we stand on Madison and 13th, with the bus bound for downtown. From the Seattle Times online: The New Flyer model XDE60 buses, which cost $1.3 million each, are the first in Seattle to have a left-side door, allowing passengers to board from four stations, between Eighth and 13th avenues, in a center median island that allows the bus to stop without being held up by drivers turning right or pedestrians in a crosswalk.Inside the bus. I can see myself on the little monitor by the door on the left side. It’s tap to pay, inside the bus (Orca card readers at the doors), or outside before boarding, at the bus stop. There is still a cash pay point at the front of the bus for travelers with no Orca cards. Android users can add their Orca cards to their Google wallets, and use their phones to pay, but we cannot yet add Orca cards to our iPhone wallets.
Happy Friday The Thirteenth.
Below is a story of a harbor seal that was in the wrong place at the wrong time (but ended up being OK).
Photo by Brooke Casanova, Blue Kingdom Whale & Wildlife Tours (Pacific Whale Watch Association).
STRAIGHT OF JUAN DE FUCA, Wash. — An incredibly rare event was caught on camera Thursday in the Strait of Juan de Fuca: a humpback whale accidentally scooped up a seal while trying to snack on some fish.
Not to worry, though. The seal is unharmed. According to the Pacific Whale Watch Association (PWWA), humpback whales eat small fish and krill, not seals. While they have very large mouths, their throats are roughly the size of a grapefruit, so PWWA says they can’t swallow something as large as a seal.
A PWWA member company, Blue Kingdom Whale & Wildlife Tours from Anacortes snapped a photo of the very surprised seal in its jaws and shared it with KIRO 7. The tour was watching humpback whale BCX1876 “Zillion” feed on a school of small bait fish at the time. “The harbor seal was likely feeding on the same small fish and found itself in the wrong place at the wrong time,” PWWA said. Zillion opened her jaw and lowered her head into the water so the seal could swim away. “We occasionally see humpback whales get small birds stuck in their mouths while feeding, but a seal was a huge surprise,” PWWA said.
– Reported by By Lexi Herda, for KIRO 7 News in Seattle (here’s the link)
Lately, I have had a hard time finding my favorite non-alcoholic beer in stores (Beck’s from Germany).
Below are three other beers I am trying out, now.
Here’s my quick take on each of these: Guinness 0 A non-alcoholic beer striving for the iconic taste of Guinness Draught, rich and creamy with a velvety finish. It’s not ‘as good’ as the ‘real’ Guinness Draft, but I can get used to it. Fremont Non-alcoholic IPA From Fremont Brewery here in Seattle. Florals with orange and lemon followed by some guava, grassy, honey and other sweet aromatics. Gentle sweetness and lightly bitter in light body. (Description from their website). I like it. Stella Artois Liberté The non-alcoholic version of Stella. Water, barley malt, cane sugar, natural flavors and hops. The closest as a replacement for Beck’s non-alcoholic.
The years are rolling by, and it has now been 23 years since the terrorist attacks that had claimed the lives of some 3,000 people in New York City, Shanksville (in Pennsylvania), and at the Pentagon.
“After tonight, I don’t think Donald Trump will be insisting on another debate.”
– Whit Ayres, Republican Pollster
“Trump looked angry, scowling, and old”
– Chris Wallace on CNN tonight
“I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election.”
– Taylor Swift in an Instagram post to her 283 million followers
By all accounts (that matter), Vice President Kamala Harris acquitted herself very, very well during the debate tonight with Trump.
Leigh Ann Caldwell and Theodoric Meyer writes for The Washington Post: Harris’s strategy was to get under Trump’s skin, a campaign official said, and she did that. A few examples: She said people leave his rallies early “out of exhaustion and boredom.” She said military leaders have told her he’s a “disgrace.” She said 81 million people fired him and “he is having a very difficult time processing that.” She said Russian President Vladimir Putin would “eat you for lunch.”
The picture that went with Taylor Swift’s Instagram post that contained her endorsement of Kamala Harris. The cat’s name is Benjamin Button, a Ragdoll. (Ragdolls have a distinct colorpoint coat and blue eyes. They are large and weighty cats, with a semi-long and silky soft coat). Swift signed her post as ‘Childless Cat Lady’— a reference to comments made by Trump’s running mate Senator JD Vance of Ohio, about women without children. (Hint: He wasn’t praising them). [Picture from Instagram @taylorswift]
Apple has announced the new lineup of iPhones today, and I can order one this Friday.
I have an iPhone 13 Pro (three years old), so it’s a happy coincidence that my upgrade this year catches the Apple Intelligence-enabled (aka Artificial Intelligence-enabled) phones.
What will that mean, eventually? (Not all the AI features will be available right away).
Well, the AI tools will fall into three main categories: a smarter Siri (the voice-enabled assistant); assistance with text (proofread your text, rewrite it to adjust the tone and wording, or summarize selected text with a tap); and assistance with images (tools to create original images based on text prompts, or from a rough sketch, and powerful editing functions for photos).
As usual, there are two phone sizes at the high end (the ‘Pro’ phones). I’ll stick with the smaller one, the 16 Pro, and with the dark gray that’s called Black Titanium. On the far right is a new bronze color called Desert Titanium. There is a new camera control button on the side, and the ‘action’ button from last year’s iPhone 15 is still there. [Screen shot from The Wall Street Journal online]
