Absolute clinic by Spain. First shot on target for France was in the 81st minute. That's insane.

Yup, sounds like you fit right in in Texas. Glad you found your people.

We moved from Texas to Seattle about 5 years ago (god, it's really been that long). After 15 years living in Texas and fighting the schools, the government, and the weather (our house flooded twice, including one that was a near total loss), Seattle felt like heaven. Still does.

My kids were in middle school and had survivors guilt about leaving, like we were letting everyone in Texas down by not staying and fighting. I had to explain that Texas passed a law to allow people to sue us (I volunteered at an abortion charity) and we gotta go.

My rep in Congress now is the leader of the progressive caucus. It's so weird to not be trying to chip away at the political situation and instead have someone that represents my beliefs.

We talked to a whole lot of contractors in 2022 before going with STS Construction. They were great. It was a big project and it's been years now and it came out just about perfect.

I have mixed feelings about this. I'm a public transit maximalist, but I'm also old enough to feel like any progress is still progress. The loss of the Avalon station sucks but I'd be ok with it if the bus lines that run 35th got a big old makeover with bus additions, which looks to be the offer.

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.