Is the Amazon-Led Economic Boom Wrecking Seattle? 410
reifman writes: Seattleites are struggling with massive traffic, rising housing costs and declining diversity. Amazon's building and acquiring enough office space to triple its local headcount by 2020. Facebook, Google and many other tech companies are now expanding here as well — it's the San Franciscoization of Seattle. Downtown is filled with 75 cranes — some blocks look like mining towns. Amazon's hired so many white males that King County is now the whitest in the nation and hate crimes against gays have shot up in a formerly LGBTQ neighborhood. Politicians can't agree on reforming impact fees and taxes to address these issues."
An interesting piece of recent advice from a long time Amazonian to the company's interns: avoid full-time employment there.
The Struggle (Score:2)
Seattleites are struggling with [...] declining diversity.
What? What does this even mean? How does one struggle from declining diversity? Don't communities generally struggle with inclining diversity?
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I've read the linked article, however it does not assert any causal link between "low diversity" and "anti-gay violence".
So, I reiterate my previous question: "What?"
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That was sarcasm...
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It isn't clear that I'm saying that decreasing diversity of sexuality is contributing to the rise in hate crimes against minority sexualities? Maybe the problem is that you're not actually trying to understand.
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feceshole
Is that the new politically correct term so people with a colostomy bag don't fell ostracized?
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So-called "black on black crime" is not the same thing as "hate crime". Black people don't commit violence against other black people for being black. Likewise, queer people don't commit anti-queer hate crimes. They might commit other kinds of crime against each other, in some number which may be worth discussing if anyone wants to provide evidence worth discussing, but that isn't the topic thus far.
Re:The Struggle (Score:4, Interesting)
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sorry, i wrote non 2 times. im saying if you are at a bar and you get in a fight with someone, you dont know they are gay until after the fight. yet sometimes you will still get charged with a hate crime.
I understood your "point", I asked you to provide evidence of it, with specific instances where it has happened. You didn't do that. Please do that.
somewhere else in this threat it was said that there were 20 cases in 2014. Id hardly call that a "thing"
I don't know the actual numbers. What I know is that I live in a neighborhood that used to be a safe haven and isn't anymore. And that lack of safety is felt all around me. Not everyone in a targeted group needs to be directly affected by a hate crime to feel its intended terror. You don't see the significance of a rise in violence against queers in a historical
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I see your point and im sorry if thats how the way you see things is making you feel. however numbers dont lie, and only 20 examples in a city is a rounding error as I said, and not a "thing" it would be like if everyone in NYC lived their lives in fear of another airplane attack because it
Re:The Struggle (Score:4, Insightful)
i understand now, i dont have any specific links to go by
Not surprised.
however I would argue that the woman who was sued for not baking a cake would be an example of someone being unjustly charged with a hate crime in one instance
Since you're naming a specific incident, can you please link to it? I'm not aware of a baker being charged with a hate crime.
I see your point and im sorry if thats how the way you see things is making you feel. however numbers dont lie, and only 20 examples in a city is a rounding error as I said, and not a "thing" it would be like if everyone in NYC lived their lives in fear of another airplane attack because it happened back in 2001, yeah it could happen but the odds are very slim
This is a bullshit analogy. It'd be like if over 250 attacks (again I don't know if the number 20 is accurate, but taking it for granted, that's 8,406,000 population in NYC over 652,000 in Seattle, times 20) happened in NYC in the course of a year. This year.
I sincerely hope the best for you and your area as 1 attack on another , regardless of the reasoning is a bad thing
No idea what this means. Have another toke duder.
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Last I saw hestiaphobia was not considered a hate crime. The woman you mention was charged and convicted of unlawful discrimination.
Re:The Struggle (Score:4, Insightful)
see, this is the problem. I am sitting here not insulting you, trying to understand your side while offering my side of things.
No you're not. If you can't understand that, this is not going to be productive.
yet your side seems unable to do so without resorting to smugness.
I asked you to defend any of your outlandish claims with evidence, and you continued posting more outlandish claims and refused to provide any evidence. I'm not being smug, I'm being efficient with my use of Internet Debate Time.
What I said was in simple terms, "dont hurt people for...reasons" I dont care black white gay straight, you shouldnt be attacking someone for no reason.
I'm not attacking anyone at all. I came in here to defend.
As for the baker, you didnt hear about the baker being forced to pay over 100 grand to a lesbian couple because they refused to bake them a custom cake???? google is your friend, and for someone who is caught up on LGBTQDFHSDTHUA++ you should be well aware of that case
1. I'm aware of a number of contrived cases about "cakes". Please specify one, with a link to something anything. Your claim was not that someone was sued, but that someone was charged with a hate crime. This might be news to you, but some things are not the same as other things.
2. LGBTQDFHSDTHUA++ - Oh yeah, you don't want people to attack each other. You just literally mashed your keyboard because you couldn't be bothered to understand what the acronym is that represents several sub-sections of society whose concerns you can't stop taking time out of your day to dismiss. The amount of defensive disdain is palpable.
Look, do you want to have an honest, compassionate discussion about things you are actually self-aware enough to admit you don't understand? Stop acting like you're an equal in that discussion. I am not an authority on queer issues in Seattle, but I'm a queer in Seattle. I have more experience than you do as a not-queer in not-Seattle. If you want to understand my "side" of a discussion, stop putting straw men in front of me that queers are getting innocent bigots charged with hate crimes over cakes. It's not real, it's not true, it's a caricature, it's insulting, and it's not in the spirit of honest discussion.
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Im going to use a blog that shows seattle is the 3rd most "hate crime" city in america (somewhat the point you are making) while at the same time showing its a rounding error.
http://blogs.seattletimes.com/... [seattletimes.com]
For every 100,000 Seattle residents, there were three hate crimes based on sexual orientation that year, the most recent data available. Among cities with at least 200,000 residents, only Washington, D.C., and Memphis, Tenn., have higher rates of anti-LGBT hate crimes.
so 3 for every 100K people in a city you said has 650K people which makes the numbers exactly what i said 19.66 attacks
1
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You're right. The deliberate attacks designed to terrorize my community don't matter because you don't care about the actual 20 people affected in the last year, nor the thousands of people who are denied the safe haven they previously found in their community. Small potatoes. So, we should just take it? Stop talking about it? Let it get worse still? When is it okay with you, a person who isn't affected, for us to stand up for our community?
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This is because the refusal to bake the cake was of minimal consequence to the size of the judgment. The size of the judgment was primarily about the harassment that the Kleins subjected the couple to after they lodged a discrimination complaint (the refusal to serve a couple because of their sexual orientation is illegal in Oregon).
See more here [thenewcivi...vement.com].
The article includes the following quote from the ruling:
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Words are generally the catalyst of violence.
When is the last time a bar fight broke out when no words at all were said? How often does it happen?
Get real, live in the real world. Even the courts recognize that there are such things as fighting words.
Yes, he is saying that when you go around pissing people off, do not be surprised when they get pissed off and get violent. That is what some people do when they get pissed off and it's been a part of human nature and probably an evolutionary key to survival si
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That's true when considering the same crime. It's not true when considering robbery versus beatings and murder. Stealing from someone because they have something you want isn't the same as hanging them because you don't like who they are.
I agree that "hate" doesn't make the same crime worse. I don't agree that "black on black crime" is the same as a lynching or a gay bashing.
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motorcycle riders who wear helmets are twice as likely to be injured in an accident as compared to those who don't wear helmets. Therefore wearing helmets on motorcycles is bad.
Of course the reality is those who don't wear helmets are just more likely to die in said accident.
Point of view is everything. Find a realistic one please.
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anti-queer violence? You mean bigots are getting beat up?
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Huh? People are doing violence against queers.
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you sure you don't mean violence against people who are anti queer?
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Yes, I'm sure I don't mean that.
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You mean bigots are getting beat up?
After the recent Supreme Court decision you can tell Fox News knows it's happening somewhere. They just need someone to tell them about it, and they'll fly in the troops to 'report' on it.
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When I saw (in the article summary) the implication that there are too many white males, I was done with the article. I'm all for diversity --- I live in Hawaii, as diverse as it comes, and married an Asian --- but I'm SO tired of the "white males are the soul of evil" rhetoric.
Re:The Struggle (Score:5, Funny)
white males are the soul of evil
Wait. That can't be right. White males ain't got no soul.
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gingers have no souls
Re:The Struggle (Score:5, Funny)
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The first person to mention evil is you. The post was lamenting declining diversity—a social quality the author values—in favor of increasing majority homogeny. You may not specifically value diversity, but those of us who do are not maligning the majority group.
Re:The Struggle (Score:5, Interesting)
Honkeys aren't homogeneous. Anyone who thinks so hasn't thought much about it at all.
Whites are diverse in religion. Some follow no religion at all.
Whites are diverse in country of origin, further there are a number of "white" regional cultures in the USA..
White Euro-Americans are diverse in ethnicity. Some of these ethnic categories are Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Gallic, Iberian, Italic, Greek, Germanic, Basque, Scandinavian, Hispanic, and Slavic.
White Americans are diverse in how long they or their families have lived in North America. Some families have been here for hundreds of years, but at least a third of all white American families have a grandparent who immigrated here from Europe.
White Euro-Americans are diverse in wealth. Over half of all the people in the United States who live below the poverty line are white Americans.
Whites have a wide variety of facial features and colours.
Re:The Struggle (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd go even further and say that "whiteness" is entirely fabricated and only exists as a social construct. The biological and cultural reality is that race breaks down under many kinds of scrutiny.
Be that as it may, it's also a powerful social construct. "Whiteness" doesn't just convey a number of social privileges, it also provides a set of assumptions of belonging for a huge proportion of the people who can reasonable be described as "white". It provides none of those qualities for people who don't have the "whiteness" attributes.
It's easy to dissect social differences into absurdity, but it's a mistake to pretend that race isn't a strong force in many social issues. As such, while people of any given race have a wide range of experiences, beliefs, attachments and orthogonal social variations, their race also tends to have a huge impact on a certain range of experiences. For "white" people, one of the prevailing experiences is being dominant in many respects. This effect is amplified for people who were born with a penis, who are comfortable with a male gender role, and who are attracted to people who were born white, with a vagina, and comfortable with a female gender role.
The effect is not total, but it is generally observable. The effect also isn't universal, nor is it universally applied. It's not applied as strongly in less "white" places, though it tends to have a surprising residual presence in most of them.
The biggest exception to all of these power dynamics is access to wealth. Moderate access to wealth has the effect of making these other dominant attributes somewhat less potent. Access to extreme wealth eliminates many of the competing advantages. But not all of them.
Glad we had this overly specific discussion. I hope to press buttons that send electric signals into a series of electronic circuits that connect to wires and other such machines and eventually communicates data in the form of text to you, again in the future.
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Your post makes good points in an articulate manner. I don't doubt for a moment that there has been white male dominance during many times and in many places; that's a fact of history. What I do doubt is the generalization that some people make from this, that all or even a majority of white males today in Western society are the "enemy" or are "evil" or "bad" in some way.
I don't and won't apologize for being a white male. As I said above, I live in Hawaii (where white male dominance, by the way, is long a
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What I do doubt is the generalization that some people make from this, that all or even a majority of white males today in Western society are the "enemy" or are "evil" or "bad" in some way.
Already addressed this in another comment. The only people calling white people evil are the people getting upset that anyone else values diversity. It's a straw man argument.
I don't and won't apologize for being a white male.
Good. Neither will I. No one asked you to.
I don't and won't apologize for being a white male. As I said above, I live in Hawaii (where white male dominance, by the way, is long a thing of the past) and I married an Asian. I love and would never give up either the diversity of this part of the world or the multicultural richness that my marriage has brought me. I also try to do everything I can to treat people fairly. Is it too much to ask to be treated fairly in return, and not be categorized and stigmatized because I happen to be a white male?
Do you feel you're being treated unfairly because here in Seattle we're talking about a problem that doesn't appear to be about you in any way? Has anyone said to you, as a white male in Hawaii, that you're responsible for hate crimes in Seattle? As a white male, who works in the tech industry,
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The only people calling white people evil are the people getting upset that anyone else values diversity. It's a straw man argument.
I recommend browsing this [reddit.com] thread. There's whackjobs aplenty on both ends of the spectrum.
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Oh I thought I was having this conversation, not one deliberately designed to caricature it.
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Slas
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Well, the first thing that came to mind when the article mentioned "declining diversity" was yet another swipe at white males. The homophobia caused by the unmentioned boogeyman was yet another, this time at CIS white males.
Diversity as I hear it used nowadays typically means "we need more minorities". When our schools were predominately white, we needed diversity. So we bussed diversity in from minority neighborhoods. Demographics have changed over the years and now many of our schools are no longer pr
Hiring your clone sucks dogs balls (Score:3)
For instance, if you have a multinational company with executives all from the same college tennis club the place will end up being run like a colle
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diversity for it's own sake? That's a recipe for disaster.
It's not for its own sake. Diversity has the desirable quality of leading people to behave less like hateful shits. As a mental exercise, imagine if the world were composed entirely of Slashdot commenters. Good luck sleeping tonight.
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Oh, you mean 'Seattle'?
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Lots of it yeah.
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im not sure ive ever seen that as what diversity was all about
I do. So we see it differently. That's probably why I value it more than you do.
you dont need to be diverse to not hate others
Of course not. It just tends to have that effect.
while one can want diversity SOOO bad, that one turns into one of the hateful people that you are speaking of
Lots of people can distort motives in lots of ways. What you're describing is not typical, it's a caricature of a stereotype. You've seen an article bemoaning the loss of Seattle diversity, taken it as a threat, and proceeded to post scattershot about how the problem is actually the opposite of what people's experiences are.
I realize it's pointless to argue with you, but your poin
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I see alot of people who as you said distort their motives, perhaps its a new york thing but the people who want the most diversity in NY, also seem to be the least tolerant people I pe
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there is no fear on my side, but we do see the idea of diversity differently. I dont believe there is a need for it. I enjoy it, i like learning about other cultures and being a part of them. However I disagree that it is something that should be forced onto people (not saying that you feel that way just explaining myself)
You should stop and think about what you're saying. You created a straw man caricature of my views, tore it down, then told me you know that the straw man is not representative of my views.
I see alot of people who as you said distort their motives, perhaps its a new york thing but the people who want the most diversity in NY, also seem to be the least tolerant people I personally know. i understand my anecdote does not mean that all people who are pro diversity are evil intolerant people, just that is what it seems like here in NY these days.
Well at least your made up bullshit is an anecdote this time.
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You should stop and think about what you're saying. You created a straw man caricature of my views, tore it down, then told me you know that the straw man is not representative of my views.
i did no such thing, you accused me of living in fear and other junk and i simply was making an argument based on my experiences
Well at least your made up bullshit is an anecdote this time.
I made up nothing. I stand by my statement. and the fact that you are as defensive as you are when i said nothing remotely offensive, and at the same time continue to talk down to me and anyone else who disagrees with you in the slightest, it adds to my data points that those who sc
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You and I have been over this like four times today. As the queer population in Seattle is decreasing, violence against queers is increasing. My neighborhood is a homogenizing community with increasing conflict.
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Unless your name happens to be "Hatfield" or "McCoy".
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I have a question for you since you support diversity in the workplace.
To be clear, I wasn't talking about the workplace. I know Slashdot hates reading the thing they respond to, but this is getting ridiculous. The post, and my comments, are about diversity (among other issues) in Seattle. I work here, but I also live here. I can change jobs, but changing cities is much harder.
Regarding workplace diversity, it's complicated. Between distortions of reality, you hint at some of why it is (and miss a lot of other reasons). But I think you miss the point of a discussion about dive
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I'll tell you right now that your experience isn't typical. It's not even based on reality from my experience. I've worked at a lot of jobs doing a lot of things- most of these things are crap jobs most others do not want to do. I've had minorities work circles around me and I have had idiots who were basically place holders for quotas that caused me to work 3 times as much as I should have.
There are jobs run by incompetent management who value race, gender, and appearances over skills or performance specif
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It doesn't strike me as trolling, it strikes me as horribly misguided. You're assuming that being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered or queer is hereditary. If that were the case, don't you think your hypothesis would have come to pass long ago?
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not sure if intentionally funny or accidentally
Boom-Town Rats (Score:2)
Wrong skin color (Score:3, Insightful)
According to this article, having too many people of a specific skin color in an area causes crime. Does Slashdot really want to endorse that kind of retrograde prejudice?
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According to this article, having too many people of a specific skin color in an area causes crime.
Actually, according to the article, it's claiming that by having too many rich people causes crime. The idea being that having someone move it and get a well paying job that must have only come from making someone else unemployed. So now there are a bunch of unemployed homeless people, and all of the housing has gone to over paid people. So home breakins has increased because now there's actually something worth stealing in houses.
Re:Wrong skin color (Score:5, Insightful)
The article does not say that too many people of one color cause crime; you said that. What the article does say, is that Amazon is hiring a primarily white male workforce at salaries far in excess of the average for the area. This correlates with, but it is not proven that it causes, a number of things stated in the article. The gender imbalance, may mean that there are a large number of men without female counterparts or potential mates. The implication in the article is that this is driving prostitution as these men seek sex they are hard-pressed to find in a relationship because there are not enough woman. The income imbalance means that Amazon employees can pay a premium for living space close to Amazon, and because they are the highest paid workers in the area, it is displacing other residents, many of whom happen to be the existing diverse people that current live there. The increased affluence of the area surrounding Amazon, it is implied, is leading to increased crime because wealthy new communities are a target for theft.
The article doesn't prove any of this. The white males that Amazon is hiring may have brought their wives with them, in which case, Amazon's hiring would not create a gender balance within Seattle. Regardless, it doesn't say that less racial diversity = crime. That's a dumb statement you made; not the article.
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The summary clearly associates an increase in people of a specific skin color with more crimes. You are correct that it doesn't say "causes", but the skin-color/crime association is clearly made. Making statements that associate skin color with crimes is called bigotry in other cases. It should be treated the same here.
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Another anti-Amazon rant from reifman? Sigh... Same story, different slant. And predictably, Slashdot is promoting his click-bait nonsense just because a tech company is mentioned.
Sorry, Amazon has been good for Seattle. Jobs are a good thing. Taxes get paid. Rent gets paid. People can eat. They buy things from other local businesses, and the cycle continues. You know... all that sort of stuff. People used to celebrate when they saw that an area was vibrant and growing. 75 cranes in the area? I'd
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We just had a pride celebration after the Supreme Court decision, and an annual pride parade before that, ...
Sounds like a bad place to have any kind of old-school religious faith.
Non-problems, except for traffic (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazon is great for Seattle. Property values are going up, and formerly seedy neighborhoods are getting developed and gentrified.
The media narrative about hate crimes and lack of diversity is just pandering to people who are upset by rising rents and evolving neighborhoods. Seattle's "whiteness" is not a issue unless lower crime rates and less nuisance behavior is somehow problematic. I'm not being racist, just calling a spade a spade here.
If it's a bar fight and one of the participants happens to be gay or trans-gender, then it becomes a hate crime. Boo hoo. This is just a convenient way to breed an "us versus them" mentality between groups that will always feel marginalized or oppressed somehow vs people climbing the economic ladder.
The only REAL problem is the traffic, and it is caused by too many cars on the road, and Seattle voters consistently voting against their own best interests.
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What about those who want to buy a home or rent?
That is not good at all as $400,000 for a starter home is great if you are a typical Linux programmer like many on here are who make $100,000 a year fresh out of college but many if not most are not. A lowly admin and senior desktop guy would need a room mate where 10 years ago could get a full 2 bedroom place by myself??
Also have we not learned in 2008 that too much of a good thing thanks to cheap free money by the FED pumping low interest rates due to housin
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Uh yes we people did not get in before the fed jerked up the prices thanks to government debt.
There is no where you can afford an hour in every direction in New York, Seattle, LA, DC, etc unless you already got in years ago at the right time or you make $70,000 a year or more. That is not the median income by far yet that is supposed to be the median price for a home. That doesn't add up.
That is a bad thing as it means a coming crash for you home owners as that is unsustainable.
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Re:Non-problems, except for traffic (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, I've lived and worked in/around Seattle since the 1980s - awful traffic is nothing new. Even back around 1990 it was ranked the 6th worst in the nation.
The people who think it's recently gotten much worse have likely moved here during the past five years or so. After the 2008 crash, traffic in Seattle improved a fair bit because a lot of people were out of work. It still wasn't great, but it was significantly better. Now that the economy is booming again, traffic sucks again.
I will say that, prior to the past year or so, northbound traffic jams heading out of downtown were a rarity... but nowadays they're pretty common. Thank heavens the U-Link light rail will be starting up soon.
Statistics (Score:5, Insightful)
Seattle Police Department records show that "bias crimes" against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in the first half of 2014 had already outnumbered those for the whole of 2013.
This statement is meaningless as it gives no contect.
In the first half of 2014, the Seattle Police Department reported 21 crimes such as assault or vandalism against LGBT people, compared with 19 for all of 2013.
This statement is more helpful as it points out that there were and extremely low number of incidents in 2013. Doubling a very low number is not difficult. Another thing I just noticed is that these crimes may have nothing to do with hate against LGBT. Just because the victim is LGBT does not mean it is a hate crime.
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Simple fix: Move into MS (Score:3)
Just expand into Microsoft's buildings: they're still laying off.
Whiteness in King County (Score:2)
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That's because of the clouds. Nice and fluffy white. Seattle has lots of them.
Invoking Betteridge (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:3)
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Wait ... it was .coms expanding right?
I thought you meant Indians in King Country
... as a former resident of the rainy city (Score:2)
Seattle was wrecked long ago. Amazon is merely defiling the carcass.
So let me get this straight (Score:3)
Amazon, a large tech company, is hiring a bunch of highly-paid confederate-flag waving gay-bashing white men in Seattle, they're turning the whole county white, and they're going around beating up gay people and burning down gay bars?
Does this even pass the smell test? Of course not. Has anyone involved in this story ever worked for a large modern tech company, or talked to anyone who does? Of course not.
Check the actual [seattletimes.com] references [bloomberg.com] and you get a different story. First of all, King County is not the whitest in the nation. It's the whitest of the top 20 counties in the nation by population. But at 62.4% white non-Hispanic, it's just below at the national average for whiteness (63.7%). Second, "the county's fastest population growth is happening among Asian and mixed-race people."
Third, let's take a look at those attacks. The arson? Committed by one Musab Masmari. White tech company employee? Nope. Unemployed drunk raised by Libyan parents mostly in Libya. Race unclear; Arabs are usually counted as white but Libyans are mostly Berbers who are mixed. The other complaints don't mention the employment or race of the perpetrators, though none of them apparently were traced back to tech company employees.
As the Bloomberg article says, "an industry that's otherwise showering Seattle with jobs and money has become a scapegoat".
Re:Leftist propaganda article (Score:5, Insightful)
Including content from such noted leftist wacko publications as Bloomberg Business, no less...
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Umm.. your confused. That was Harpo Marx [wikipedia.org] not his retarded cousin Karl. Sorry, I know it's hard to tell the clowns apart but Harpo rarely spoke but had a lot to say.
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Yore
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All Hail Marx and Lennon! [wikipedia.org]
Wrong. (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, the framing of this is 100% accurate. I was born and raised here and Amazon and its asshole-geek army, who don't have ANY FUCKING MANNERS, have ruined what used to be a great place to live. Fuck Seattle and Fuck Amazon.
It really is (Score:5, Informative)
The only anti-gay that crosses tech is from conservative male Indians, everyone else in tech embraces LGBTQ and generally IS it. Amazon and Microsoft are and have always been pretty accepting. I'll say Amazon has made poor decisions, I hate the South Lake Union area and refuse to go there (Hey lets build a big company right in the 'central park' of Seattle). The housing in Queen Anne and Capital Hill has been overpriced for over a decade, so nothing really new there. Queen Anne looks like a shitty old Boston neighborhood with no parking and Capital Hill is a dirty overrated Portland neighborhood. Please, everyone move there...
As for development, this is exactly the opposite of SF, the reason why SF is fucked is because of the NIMBYs like who wrote this article. Building denser is the only solution to more populace. Oh noes, no pretty skyline.
Traffic in and out of Seattle sucks more from bad geology/geography than anything. Its population density is incredibly low compared to other metros. I do think Amazon's choice of location is insane, and since they move all of their real logistics elsewhere, I guess they agree. Google has a bunch of offices around the area much like Microsoft smartly does and plans on expanding on east side, so I am not sure why they matter. Facebook is small and Oculus is east side too (until they still birth).
Re:It really is (Score:4, Funny)
I hate the South Lake Union area and refuse to go there
Goddammit. When did they rename the South Lake Union Trolley to the South Lake Union Streetcar? :(
I lived in Seattle for 5 years, and I loved taking out of towners to ride the SLUT.
Re:Leftist propaganda article (Score:5, Informative)
but literally everything else he complains about in here is a non issue. we shouldnt care one way or another who our neighbors are, if that means less diversity so what? all the nordic countries that the leftists love have little to no diversity so why should that matter?
and why the need to bring up "white males" Its as if the submitter wanted a flamefest
This kind of trolling does not belong here, and i dont usually complain about what should and shouldnt be on the front page
Re: Leftist propaganda article (Score:5, Informative)
You're obviously American, so I can make some allowances for your deficient education, but those "non diverse" Nordic countries are more diverse than you.
Ahhhh....more pig ignorant American cannon fodder. Gotta love 'em and their naivety.
That is laughable. Finland and Sweden are fairly diverse by European standards, but the entire European continent is not very diverse. A quick look at France, Germany, and Italy show they have over 90% of their population in their respective ethnicity. The United States largest ethnicity is German, with about 17%.
From Populstat.info:
Norway -> 96.4% Norwegian, 0.5% Laplander, 0.3% Finnish, 2.8% Other
Sweden -> 89.3% Swedish, 3% Finnish & Laplander, 0.8% Yugoslavian, 0.6% Iranian, 6.3% Other
Finland -> 93% Finnish, 6% Swedish, 0.1% Laplander, 1% Other
Iceland -> 98% Icelanders (Norweigian, Celts), 0.5% Swedish, 0.4% Danish
Denmark -> 97% Danish, 3% Other
United States -> 75% White (So much varied ethnicity the site doesn't try to list them all), 12% Black, 10% Hispanic, 3.3% Asian, 0.7% Native American
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Eh what?
12% of German population doesn't have a German citizenship, they are different ethnicities by definition. Same for France. Third generation immigrants usually have citizenships and count as Germans. 13% of German population have Polish surnames for fuck's sake.
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Not that this changes your point but where did you your stats?
I quoted my stats as coming from populstat.info. It was just the first link that came up when looking for the first country on my list of nordic countries: Norway. It does appear their stats may be as old as 2002, but that doesn't change anything about my point. Their numbers would have to be off by a huge margin for any Nordic country to be as diverse as the US.
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United States -> 75% White (So much varied ethnicity the site doesn't try to list them all), 12% Black, 10% Hispanic, 3.3% Asian, 0.7% Native American
Except you seem to be comparing apples to oranges. In Sweden for instance there are no records of ethnicity whatsoever (it is in fact illegal) and this means that everyone who is born in Sweden counts as "Swedish" regardless if both of their parents are from Indonesia or if they consider themselves to be of "Asian" ethnicity.
Well, somehow web sites have statistics of how many Finnish, Laplander, Yugoslavian, Iranian, and other nationalities are in the country. My guess is that sociologists can find a way to determine these numbers based on sample sizes smaller than a full census. Even if the numbers are off, I can't believe anyone would think Sweden is even close to as diverse as the US.
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If you think that there is always the drudge report which have nice far right wing news.
Slashdot is news for nerds. Not news for republicans where other sites cater to these needs
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There is an old saying in geek world, "do not feed the trolls", apparently this needs to be updated with "or the threads they purposefully generate to flood page 1 of comments". Why would they waste this on a seeming non story, it seems like a practice run to see what they can get away with.
Re:Leftist propaganda article (Score:5, Informative)
"Amazon's hired so many white males that King County is now the whitest in the nation"
OK. So what? if King County was 80% black there would be no complaint about a "lack of diversity". if King County was 80% asian there would be no complaint about a "lack of diversity".
Diversity is simply the latest code word for anti-white male.
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Like beauty and even competence, relevance is in the eye of the beholder.
After all, what are you going to do with your smart self? Troll on Voatse or Reddirt?
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Democrats are no different than Republicans. They are both terrible managers of the government. Populists and the so called Progressives are even worse. They tend to spout ridiculous policies that are so divorced from reality they should rename themselves the Fairy Tell party. If we could just get the extreme far right and extreme far left, which are pitiful minorities, to shut the fuck up maybe things could get better.The extremist of every strip just generate more screeching rhetoric and hyperbole while t
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but thats the leftist way it seems, insult insult claim racism or sexism, and insult. thats ALL i seee from you guys these days
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Yet, your post reads just like the conservatives' stereotypes of the modern left suggest. Quoting a left biased blog that tries to pass itself off as non-partisan is hardly an argument. The NYTimes on political issues? Seriously? Would you take studies from the Heritage Foundation seriously? I doubt it. Instead of just quoting sources, why not try to argue a point on your own?
You defend an ideology that builds bias and multilateral resentment into society (affirmative action law). It also misrepresents the
Re:So tired of these stupid articles (Score:5, Insightful)
You tell that healthcare costs are down. After the ACA, my healthcare premiums DOUBLED. Fucking... Doubled.
Hello over there, Americans! While you bicker about whether the ACA increased premiums or brought healthcare costs down (or both or neither), the rest of the developed world enjoys per capita overall spending that is a fraction of yours, and with much better overall health outcomes. Maybe you could simply agree that a truly "socialized" system of medicine would be a great improvement on either the pre- or post-ACA American healthcare system and drop the partisan crap?
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Give me your complete estimation for a single payer society's healthcare costs that takes into consideration all subsidies.
Any country you like. You choose.
If you had even the simplest comprehension of economics you would know that isn't possible in the space here. I can only assume you are one of those immature keyboard warriors types who thinks everything they say is right, and that a discussion group is a place purely for them to try and prove that point to themselves.
As to your admission that your argument was stupid... thank you for admitting your argument was stupid.
QED.
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*laughs*
Is writing your emotions inside asterisks still a thing?
Insult, insult, insult... The most obvious sign that you are unable to argue your point coherently.