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]
The results of the US Open 2024 are in.
Men’s Singles:
Jannik Sinner (23, 🇮🇹 ) def. Taylor Fritz (26, 🇺🇸) 6-3 6-4 7-5.
Women’s Singles:
Aryna Sabalenka (26, *) def. Jessica Pegula (30 🇺🇸) 7-5 7-5.
*Lives in Florida but is from a country involved in the invasion of Ukraine.
It was great to see American players in the final, but in both cases it would have been a surprise if they had managed to best their opponents.
The beautiful people were out in full force, and here is the other Taylor, Taylor Swift, arriving at the US Open today with beau Travis Kelce. [Still from video clip posted on X @usopen]
Ahead of a key Federal Reserve meeting to set interest rates, employers added 142,000 jobs in August, fewer than economists had expected, and previous months were revised downward.
– The New York Times
Not a lot of new jobs in August, but unemployment ticked down to 4.2% (July: 4.3%), and average hourly earnings rose 0.4% in August compared to July. [Graphic from the New York Times]
My little ultraviolet lamp arrived today: one that is specifically designed to inspect postage stamps. (My pictures below).
Starting in 1969, South Africa began to add phosphorescent frames to stamps from its first definitive series of stamps*. Starting in 1971, the phosphorescent element appeared throughout the paper. It is almost impossible to distinguish between these two types of stamps without the aid of an ultraviolet lamp.
*Definitive series of stamps for the Republic of South Africa. The Union of South Africa became the Republic of South Africa in 1961 when it gained its independence from Great Britain.
Republic of South Africa First Definitive Series, Redrawn Issued 1969-1972 Perf. 14×13½ Photogravure, chalk-surfaced paper, printed with phosphor bands 282 168 ½c New blue, carmine-red and yellow ochre | African Pygmy Kingfisher [Source: Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue: Commonwealth & British Empire Stamps, 2016 Edition]Republic of South Africa First Definitive Series, Redrawn Issued 1969-1972 Perf. 13½x14 Photogravure, chalk-surfaced paper, printed with phosphor bands (LEFT, issued 1969, with bands badly misplaced! ) and without phosphor bands (RIGHT, issued 1971) 277 169 1c Rose-red & olive brown | Coral tree flowers [Source: Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue: Commonwealth & British Empire Stamps, 2016 Edition]Republic of South Africa First Definitive Series, Redrawn Issued 1969-1972 Perf. 14×13½ Photogravure, chalk-surfaced paper, printed with phosphor bands 284 132 1½c Red brown and light purple | Afrikaner bull [Source: Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue: Commonwealth & British Empire Stamps, 2016 Edition]Republic of South Africa First Definitive Series, Redrawn Issued 1969-1972 Perf. 14 Photogravure, chalk-surfaced paper, printed with phosphor bands 285 133 2c Ultramarine and yellow | Pouring gold [Source: Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue: Commonwealth & British Empire Stamps, 2016 Edition]Republic of South Africa First Definitive Series, Redrawn Issued 1969-1972 Perf. 14 Photogravure, chalk-surfaced paper, printed with phosphor bands 286 134 2½c Violet and green | Groot Constantia wine estate [Source: Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue: Commonwealth & British Empire Stamps, 2016 Edition]Republic of South Africa First Definitive Series, Redrawn Issued 1969-1972 Perf. 14 Photogravure, chalk-surfaced paper, printed with phosphor bands 287 135 3c Red and deep blue |Burchell’s gonolek [Source: Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue: Commonwealth & British Empire Stamps, 2016 Edition]Republic of South Africa First Definitive Series, Redrawn Issued 1969-1972 Perf. 14 Photogravure, chalk-surfaced paper, printed with phosphor bands 293 138 10c Brown and pale green | Cape Town Castle gate [Source: Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue: Commonwealth & British Empire Stamps, 2016 Edition]Republic of South Africa First Definitive Series, Redrawn Issued 1969-1972 Perf. 14 Photogravure, chalk-surfaced paper, printed with phosphor bands 294 139 20c Turquoise-blue, carmine and brown orange| Secretary Bird [Source: Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue: Commonwealth & British Empire Stamps, 2016 Edition]
We’re going to warm up to 88°F (31°C) tomorrow here in Seattle: warm for late summer.
Our summer temperatures are nothing compared to a place such as Phoenix, Arizona, of course.
At 11 a.m. local time this morning, temperatures in Phoenix hit 100° F (38°C) for the 100th day in a row. The longest previous 100-degree streak was 76 days in 1993.
Posted by the National Weather Service for Phoenix on X @NWSPhoenix. Today’s high in Phoenix was 108°F (42°C). Night-time temperatures do not bring much relief. The low last night was 88°F (31°C).
WHIDBEY ISLAND STATION, Wash. — Residents of and near Whidbey Island witnessed a weather phenomenon on Tuesday as “wave clouds” lined the horizon.
Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds or fluctus clouds, as the formations are named, are very rare over Washington, according to KING 5 Chief Meteorologist Mike Everett. The clouds look like literal waves in the sky, a series of rounded crests that are worthy of a double-take. Often referred to as “wave clouds,” the clouds signal a difference in wind speed and density between two layers.
– Reported by Olivia Sullivan for king5.com
“Wave” clouds, or Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds, seen from Whidbey Island toward Possession Point on Sept. 3. [Photo courtesy of Cathy O’Keefe, posted on king5.com]
Here are my pictures of a ride today on the new northbound extension of the Sound Transit light rail system to downtown Lynnwood.
Here it is: the $3 billion extension from Northgate to Lynnwood with four new stations, 16 years in the making. Voters approved it with along with Obama’s election in 2008; planning was done from 2010-2016, design from 2016-2019, and construction from 2019-2024. The 1 Line extension hugs 8½ miles of Interstate 5 and crosses over it north of the Mountlake terrace station. A fifth station will open in 2026 at NE 130th Street. [Map from Sound Transit website]Northbound and approaching the existing Northgate station here. Interstate 5 traffic on the left. Much of the extension is elevated compared to Interstate 5, though, due to the uneven terrain there.Here is the view from the elevated rail and platform at the Lynnwood City Center station. There is a large parking garage at the back (not visible here), a parking lot on the left, and the canopies and bus stops of the Lynnwood Transit Center. Buses can be taken from here to Everett in the north, or to either of the ferry terminals at Edmonds and Mukilteo.Glass mural artwork on the boarding platform at the Lynnwood City Center station. The artist is Preston Singletary. The art was inspired by his Tlingit heritage and family, and influenced by his father’s recent death.Here’s the train at the Lynnwood City Center station, with the parking garage at the back of it.One of two identical sculptures called “Shift” down on the grounds below. The artist is Claudia Fitch and are a nod to the lamps from Lynnwood’s Interurban trolley system, which operated from 1910 to 1939.Here is Claudia Fitch’s “City Hummingbird” and “Kitchen Window Curtain” at Lynnwood City Center Station, to honor the history of neon road signs that once lined Highway 99 as well as the nature Pacific Northwesterners see in their own backyards. [Description of artwork and text from Seattle Times]Getting ready for the 30-minute ride back to Capitol Hill train station. The overhead graphic of the 2 Line (blue) and 1 Line (green) shows that more stations will open in the near future. Stations have numeric identifiers as well, which should make it easier for foreign language speakers and visitors to find the stations that they need to use.A peek into the future, looking at a little section of rail north of Lynnwood City Center station that has already been constructed. The next push north is scheduled for 2037 with stops at West Alderwood near the mall, Ash Way, Mariner, Highway 99 in South Everett (possibly) and Southwest Everett Industrial Center near Paine Field. Two final stations at Evergreen Way and downtown Everett are aimed for 2041, depending on funding.
It’s September, which means we will soon learn which new products Apple will introduce. It’s time to upgrade my phone.
Here’s a cute cartoon from the Seattle Times Sunday.
