I know i am going to get torched for this but here goes... At what point do we give people autonomy? The volleyball player was 23 yrs old at the time of the "assault." the complaint does not say anything about force or coercion. Of course dudes shouldn't be drunk and out of line, but if a drunk dude starts kissing you and you don't want to go further....

"She said Shick groped her, then penetrated her 'with his fingers and penis,' according to the report. Strickland said she didn’t give consent, and that Shick didn’t ask for it."

Yeah, that's called rape.

The shaming plastic bags story gave me a rare smile before 10am. What a great idea.

Timothy, you might be less inclined to support the mother-in-law cottages if you considered the fact that it's yet another benefit given to those who already own property, at the expense of the rest of us who don't.

@4 Just curious what expense the 'rest of you' will incur if they allow backyard cottages? Reduced parking?

Timothy: You don't just "sign up" for Democracy Vouchers. You have to qualify for them via donations and signatures.

cream cheese?
huh?
I've lived in greater Seattle area 64 years and never heard of this until now.
Is this really a thing or another product of Timothy's febrile imagination?

@3 at the UW you're literally required to get active verbal consent for each sex act. Stop pretending this was not known. There are literal courses you have to take about it.

As to Canada, we now know that fossil fuel emissions have quadrupled since 2010. Time to stop all subsidies, exemptions, exclusions, incentives, and depreciation for all fossil fuel infrastructure.

"at the UW you're literally required to get active verbal consent for each sex act."

Coming soon, signed releases in front of a school lawyer.

Call it 'foreplay for feminists'.

@10: Backyard cottages also require transportation for their residents. Our single-family zoned neighborhoods have no transportation options other than surface streets, and we have no plans ever to build any. Hence the fight over parking, because single-occupancy private vehicles are really the only transportation option for most cottage-dwellers.

Increasing population density without adequate infrastructure to support it is a very bad idea, not one we should be praising as a win all around without qualification. Right now, backyard cottages are a path to more single-occupancy vehicle trips over already-loaded streets. More emissions, more traffic, and more land dedicated to car storage is not a proper direction for our urban land-use planning.

@12 nope, people in backyard cottages are just people. If they're ADA they use paratransit to get around, if they're grad students, they bike or scooter or walk/bus everywhere, no additional parking needed, stop driving your suburban cars on my streets and parking in front of my house. Seattle citizens know enough to commute via methods other than cars.

@12, you do know we passed a 50-fucking-BILLION dollar ST transit package a few years back, right? We have invested in transit infrastructure. It’s happening. And anyway, it’s already the case, as @13 points out, that an increasingly healthy amount of transit options exist right now. Healthy people who live in the city limits simply don’t need to drive everywhere all the time anymore, and that will only get more true over the next decade with rail extensions and further build outs of the transit grid. Also, @10 is 100% correct about the win/win of backyard cottages, re: single-family housing vs. yet more rowhouses and boxhomes.

@4 - By your logic, anytime anyone anywhere builds a house/apartment/any sort of housing on property that they own, they wold be getting a "benefit" that you are not. It is not quite clear to me where you DO think people should be allowed to build. Building housing on property that you don't own is somewhat more problematic. There is no "expense" of any kind imposed on you by allowing this. In fact, by increasing the supply of rental housing, this would be a step towards holding rents down for those of you who don't own property.

@10 - increasing population density is the ONLY way that public transit is ever going to become practical. Backyard cottages a a small part of helping with that.

And @12 - I agree that people should not drive if it can be avoided. But as a practical matter (ask anyone in Wallingford), the opposition to new development, be it a backyard cottage or an apartment building, often comes down to concerns over added traffic and parking. Requiring that impact be dealt with by the person building the new housing rather than sucked up by the neighbors is a great way to defuse opposition and actually get things done. There are still many disincentives to drive all over town - time spent in traffic, expenses, etc. More and more commuters are NOT driving all the time. But it is disingenuous and naive to suggest that the majority of new residents are not going to own cars. BTW - your comment about "stop parking in front of my house" illustrates my point beautifully.

@11 -- that's gonna put a serious dent in the Rapists Agenda.

@17, by definition it won't.

@16 Wallingford here. No car. Somehow I survive and do everything I want to do.

@8 kallipugos: I'm just as stumped as you are. The only food item other than on toast that I would add cream cheese to is scrambled eggs (makes 'em extra fluffy). But---everything? Methinks the cream cheese fixation is part of Timothy's febrile imagination.
@18 & @19: Would a RepubliKKKan pig roast coast to coast end this too-long nightmare? Let the bloody Revolution begin and feed the ensuing pork fat and gristle to Trumpty Dumpty's prized MAGA rubes and GOP trophy bitches.

@13: As raindrop took you seriously, I’ll assume you weren’t, and your “get offa my lawn” statement near the end shows the real outcome of building backyard cottages without having additional transportation infrastructure already in place to handle the load.

@15: Yes, I'm well aware of what we’re building. Are you aware there are entire neighborhoods in Seattle which will, under ST3, never have a light-rail station? How then do additional residents, living down side streets, not add to those streets’ traffic? (And, we don’t have to allow for duplexes or triplexes, either.)

@16: Backyard cottages are a great way to increase fights over parking. They’ll do little to nothing to bring more mass transit. Upzoning near existing or planned transit stops is a better route to higher density served by public transit.

@20: Do you live in a backyard cottage?

I wonder how many fortune-seeking Albertans cheering about pushing through the Trans Mountain Pipeline, with Justin Trudeau's blindsided okey dokey are now losing everything they own to out of control wildfires. A large number of British Columbians, environmental groups (such as RE Sources and the Sierra Club among many others), U.S and First Nation tribes are rightfully protesting against it. I sure am. The gluttonous fossil fuel industry's unchecked reckless capitalism and stubborn climate change denial are only producing the direst of globally decimating consequences.

"The gluttonous fossil fuel industry's unchecked reckless capitalism and stubborn climate change denial are only producing the direst of globally decimating consequences."

Plus, we Subsidize Big Fossil to the tune of around $20,000,000,000.00.
Per. Fucking Year.

So's they can devastate the only Viable Bioshpere
for Billions of miles more quickly, one wonders?

Great comment, Auntie Gee.

@20- not disputing that people can/do live in Wallingford (and lotsa other places) without cars. My point is that concerns over parking getting tighter is a major driver of opposition to denser housing. That is based on people I know in your neighborhood as well as other places. AS you have no car, this is probably not something that influences you one way or the other on new development.

@22- backyard cottages are one part of a saner zoning policy that would increase density & make mass transit more practical. Not the whole answer, but part. What we really need to do is to allow some mid-density housing (think duplexes or triplexes) in single-family neighborhoods. I'm puzzled by your statement that we "don't have to allow them either." Are you advocating that we keep the existing single-family zoning in place forever?

@25: I like plenty of housing options. I’m just not enthused about pursuing the option which provides the least new housing whilst provoking the most heated political opposition. (And, while we’re on that topic, my “arg about parking” is being taken quite seriously in this thread, as the very next comment after yours again shows.)

@26: “Not the whole answer, but part.“

A very small part. Meanwhile, we could upzone around future light-rail stops, as we already have in Roosevelt and West Seattle Junction. Why fight when we don’t have to?

“Are you advocating that we keep the existing single-family zoning in place forever?”

I’m saying it should be our last area of focus, not our first.

Here's another take [repost] -- from the New York Times:

"Americans Need More Neighbors
A big idea in Minneapolis points the way for other cities desperately in need of housing."

"The city’s [Minneapolis'] political leaders have constructed a broad consensus in favor of more housing. And the centerpiece is both simple and brilliant: Minneapolis is ending single-family zoning.

Local governments regulate land use by chopping cities into zones, specifying what can be built in each area. This serves some valuable purposes, like separating homes from heavy industry. But mostly, it serves to protect homeowners. In many cities, including Minneapolis, more than half of the city’s land is reserved for single-family homes.

People should be free to live in a prairie-style house on a quarter-acre lot in the middle of Minneapolis, so long as they can afford the land and taxes. But zoning subsidizes that extravagance by prohibiting better, more concentrated use of the land. It allows people to own homes they could not afford if the same land could be used for an apartment building. It is a huge entitlement program for the benefit of the most entitled residents.

The loose fabric of single-family neighborhoods drives up the cost of housing by limiting the supply of available units. It contributes to climate change, by necessitating sprawl and long commutes. It constrains the economic potential of cities by limiting growth."

See more at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/15/opinion/sunday/minneapolis-ends-single-family-zoning.html