solarbird: our bike hill girl standing back to the camera facing her bike, which spans the image (biking)
[personal profile] solarbird

Greater Northshore Bike Connector Map 2.1.1 – 15 May 2026 – is now available on github, as is MEGAMAP 2.1.1.

If you’re on a pre-2.1 map, 2.1 was massive, filling in large swaths in the south end and you want this update to catch up.

If you’re on 2.1 already, this is a minor update unless you’re in Newcastle, where by percentage the new bike lane openings are a big deal since not much exists down there. In Seattle, there are also new facilities connecting Broad Street in front of the Space Needle to 4th Ave and the rest of the network, which is a long-awaited connection finally here.

If you’re only using the Greater Northshore map in particular, you have no real reason to update with this release. The CKC is still closed at 85th and will be at least until June. Updating that text to note the slightly-extended construction time is the only change, so you can wait ’til 2.1.2, when you will have reason to update.

2.1.1-specific changes:

  • ADDED: Newly-opened protected bike lane along Broad Street in front of the Space Needle all the way to the 4th Ave downtown bike corridor. (MEGAMAP only)
  • ADDED: A missing short bike lane on Broad Street from Elliot Ave to Elliot Bay Trail (northwest side only) has been added ot the map. (MEGAMAP only)
  • ADDED: T-033 Phase II in Newcastle, which completes the eastbound bike lane on May Creek Park Drive east from the roundabout. Westbound got a sharrow, but no lane. (MEGAMAP only)
  • CHANGED: The CKC closure-with-difficult-detours is extended at least through the end of May, and may (may!) go into June. Warning flag modified to note this. (Both maps)

Particular thanks to Shawn Wilsher/@sdwilsh@social.ridetrans.it for photos confirming the new Seattle bike lanes being open.

All permalinks continue to work.

If you enjoy these maps and feel like throwing some change at the tip jar, here’s my patreon. Patreon supports get bonus map variants, like pre-sliced printables of the Greater Northshore, and this month I’m throwing them an all-cautions-removed 0% compression version of the MEGAMAP to see whether people like that. Plus, I can be open to requests.

Regardless – enjoy biking!

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

“Biological reality”

May. 15th, 2026 09:48 am
solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)
[personal profile] solarbird

The christofascists sure like to talk about “biological reality,” particularly lately. It’s stupid and meaningless, particularly given how much they hate science, but wow, do they like to whip that shit out against trans people when they think they can get away with it.

It’s not just against trans people, though. It slithers out eventually to any class of people they want to beat down as either inferior or eliminate entirely – lesbians and gays, women, anyone not white – it’s all “biological reality” sooner or later, their self-proclaimed “biological” superiority giving them the right to do horrible things to the rest of us.

Of course, their “biological reality” is always – always, never forget it – a stack of blithering bullshit sorted to suit whatever fascist political agenda they want to serve at the moment. None of it’s in good faith, so don’t treat it like it is. If they believed in biological reality – in biological science – they wouldn’t be a bunch of fucking vaccine deniers. They’d be all over vaccination, and yet, surprise! They’re not!

“Biological reality.” Their use of the phrase genuinely disgusts me.

Anyway, I was thinking about this, and came up with a teardown rant. Next time some fash brings their “biological reality” shit up as an attack on trans people, maybe try some variation of it.

You want to talk biological reality? Are you sure? Is that what you want to embrace?

Because great. Let’s talk biological reality.

Biological reality is that you are an animal. A mammal, of the clade of the great apes, no different from a chimpanzee, and very little different from a dog or a cat. Take any decent college course in anatomical biology and you will see every part of the biologically real you in every creature you dissect from the flatworm on up.

Biological reality is that you are a short-lived animal in the life of this world, and even shorter in the life of the universe. You were born through an accident of complicated chemistry to live briefly and then die, ending forever, and that’s it. You have no more soul – no more immortal part – than does a cockroach, and in the long term will leave exactly as much behind.

Biological reality is that you. are. an. animal. like. every. other. animal., and not one iota more.

So if you want to embrace biological reality, fucking do it, you clown, you fool, you coward. Because that is what you are embracing, because that is the actual biological reality. And you are no more made in the image of God than is a scarab, the dung beetle the ancient Egyptians thought holy.

But you won’t do that. You won’t embrace actual ‘biological reality.’ You can’t.

I don’t even mind that you can’t. I don’t mind that you don’t.

But my gods, I loathe the pretence – the filthy, disgraceful lie – that you do, and that you only pretend to do it as a weapon against others. You only claim you care about science when you think it’s a weapon you can use to hurt.

In my head, I deliver it hot; you’d probably want to present it cooler, particularly if you’re not in person and can’t get hot yourself, which is important for hot deliveries. Maybe deliver it cold. Maybe very cold. It’s up to you, by which I mean do not quote it, make it your own.

Just whatever you do, don’t deliver it nicely. Nice is the opposite of the point. Be mean, because there is no “nice” response to the lie of “biological reality.”

If that doesn’t work for you, maybe just use the vaccination thing. That’s easier, I suppose. But it’s also less… direct. Less personal. And it leaves them a little room, where “YOU. ARE. AN. ANIMAL.” doesn’t leave any.

These fuckers want to talk about “biological reality?” Fine.

Let ’em have it.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

Page generated May. 21st, 2026 02:44 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios