It goes without saying that there is a great deal of Psychology going on in Donald Trump's second term. None of it is especially complicated, because the people involved are without exception clammy, low-wattage sociopaths who universally dislike and distrust each other, see their hugely consequential jobs primarily as opportunities to make short-form video content and fly on private planes, and have not let their (correct) understanding that they will be going to go to hell when they die sway them from gulping down huge foamy draughts of humiliation every single day. But if none of it and none of them are very interesting, the volatility of the visibly decaying real-estate priss at the center of it all generally keeps it surprising.

For the most part, this is a matter of nausea and dread—a drawling executive digression revealing plans to invade "four or quite frankly five" new countries, the most powerful politician in the world either nodding along or nodding off as his chief health officials stammer through an endorsement of miasma theory. But sometimes it plays out as it does in this Wall Street Journal story about the president compulsively gifting pairs of Florsheim dress shoes to the underlings and supplicants that wind up sitting across from him at meetings. The Journal story quotes a woman who works in the White House saying "all the boys have them," and another laughing that "it’s hysterical because everybody’s afraid not to wear them."

In one sense, this sort of behavior won't really be surprising to anyone who has spent time around a disinhibited and declining older person; thought processes become both less linear and much more legible in that cohort, and in this case Trump's interior progression from "bored with person talking" to "noticing that person's shoes" to "telling them to put on new shoes" is no longer interior at all. The Journal story describes Trump interrupting a lunch meeting with Tucker Carlson to start talking about "his 'incredible' new shoes" and pausing a December meeting with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to point out their "shitty shoes" before "retrieving a catalog" and getting to work on crafting a presidential solution to that issue. If this habit had in any way distracted the president from dropping bombs on foreign schools or his ongoing domestic terror campaigns, it would be much easier to laugh about it. As it stands, it's just one of those stupid things everyone gets to walk around knowing about while all the bombing and terror stuff continues. There's very little surprise left in that, either.

Scrub kosher salt into the surface of your stainless steel pan, says Wirecutter, citing the French Culinary Institute: This is "a hack to create a slippery surface," by filling in all the little microscopic cracks and ridges in the surface of the pan, so that you can cook eggs in the pan and they will not stick.

This method is truly a boon for frying and scrambling eggs, though mastering it requires a bit of patience. Nailing it took me three tries, but once I got it down, I was shocked by the results.

Three tries! To master the technique of buffing kosher salt onto a pan! So that you can cook some eggs! This is lunacy.

In 1991, Spin magazine took the Compton rap collective N.W.A out to eat for a profile at the Russian Tea Room in Manhattan. The white author presents gangsta rap as a cynical enterprise, no different than escapist, violent popcorn blockbusters. “They’re not stupid, even though you may think so by the time you finish this article,” he writes of one of the greatest groups in the history of recorded American music. The first printed interview question is “Would you consider yourself a professional n****?” (The word was printed without asterisks.) The headline on the article is “N****Z4DINNER."

The author, documentarian, and former photo editor at The Source, dream hampton, remembers that article serving as a rallying cry for the early iteration of The Source’s Mind Squad, including but not limited to the late, great James Bernard, Reginald Dennis, Matteo “Matty C” Capoluongo, Ed Young, Rob Tewlow, Dan Charnas, Kierna Mayo, Chris Wilder, and founders Dave Mays and Jonathan Shecter. “[Spin] were rock journalists thinking they are the punk to Rolling Stone’s mainstream. This type of shit was considered edgy at the time," hampton said. "The Source saw itself as being directly in conversation with that kind of drive-by journalism, with that kind of racist journalism. Because they loved this genre of music, hip hop, they were radicalized a bit around race. They rightly took offense to that kind of shit, and they saw themselves as an antidote to that. They were going to be people who actually understood and loved the music while everyone else was just kind of dabbling.”

The Mind Squad and editorial staff like theirs—people who understood and loved the music—would create a new, vibrant, and deeply informed style of cultural journalism that defined an era. A number of outlets rose up as a corrective to what was then the mainstream’s mistreatment of hip hop, including DIY projects like The Source and Haji Akhigbade and Sacha Jenkins' Beat-Down Newspaper, and institutionally backed outlets from savvy, opportunistic readers of culture like Larry Flynt’s Rap Pages and Quincy Jones’s Vibe. These magazines did far more than take youth culture seriously. They documented and curated stories about rap, R&B, street fashion, film, current events, race, and politics. They employed pedigreed editors, journalists, critics and photographers like George Pitts, Riggs Morales, Scott Poulson-Bryant, Selwyn Seyfu Hinds, Ben Mapp, and Joan Morgan. Much of the staff that put together these publications have gone on to become big names at institutions like The New York Times, in media as on-air talent, in publishing, and at the executive level in the music and entertainment industry. Others never got their due. 

A rough diagram from the Police Traffic Collision Report

CHS has obtained the Police Traffic Collision Report for the deadly February collision at Pine and Bellevue and can report new details of what the Seattle Police Department’s preliminary investigation of the tragedy revealed.

The report is based on descriptions provided to police by a witness to the crash and details from the 34-year-old food delivery driver who struck and killed Lilli Moreno as she crossed E Pine that Monday night. Seattle Police investigators are continuing work on a more detailed report, the standard process for a fatality collision.

CHS reported earlier this week that city officials are already acting on the PCTR to assess the intersection for safety issues including the sudden removal of an old utility pole blocking the walk signal on the intersection’s southwest corner.

While a Seattle Department of Transportation spokesperson told CHS the removal of the old pole was “not related to the incident,” the SPD collision report reveals it could have played a role in the tragedy.

According to the SPD report’s account from the witness and the driver, the delivery worker’s Prius was parked facing southbound on E Bellevue outside Kizuki Ramen as he made a pickup inside the E Pine restaurant. The driver, described as Unit 1 in the report, returned to his car with his delivery and began driving to turn westbound onto Pine from the restaurant when he struck Moreno — Unit 2 in the report:

Unit 1 went Southbound then was about to take a Westbound turn onto E Pine St. The driver of Unit 1 stated that he heard a noise and thought that he hit a traffic cone. When the driver of Unit 1 got out of the vehicle he realized that he had hit a pedestrian (Unit 2) and that she was under the vehicle. The driver of Unit 1 stated that he didn’t see Unit 2 when the Collison (sic) occurred

Police say a witness to the crash provided details about the signals at the time of the collision and a tragic sequence of events that played out.

According to the report, the Summit Ave resident was on the northwest corner of the intersection and crossing eastbound on E Pine before the crash occurred. The witness told police he had a green light and was ready to cross Bellevue when he saw the Prius approaching the intersection heading south and ready to turn right onto Pine:

“Witness advised that he waved down Unit 1 to take the turn before he crossed the street,” the report reads. “Witness then saw as Unit 1 collided into Unit 2.”

“Witness told officers that Unit 2 did not have the right of way to walk across the street.”

What the police report does not include is that a green light on Pine would have meant a red light on Bellevue. The intersection is one of hundreds in the city now marked with “No Turn on Red” restrictions.

It also does not include details of timing at the intersection and factors including “leading pedestrian interval” crossings in Seattle that give people a three to seven seconds head start before lights turn green in any direction.

And it doesn’t document the old utility pole in front of the walk signal at the time Moreno was hit.

The King County Medical Examiner said Moreno died when she was crushed under the vehicle in the 8 PM collision.

From the Lilliana Moreno fundraiser

The Seattle Police Department said the driver was evaluated for drug and alcohol use and showed no signs of impairment.

No citations were issued at the time of the deadly collision.

The report does not include what delivery service the driver was working for at the time of the crash.

Moreno is remembered by loved ones as a friend and coworker “with backbone, big emotions and strong opinions.” She was listed at a South Seattle address in the SPD report.

Moreno was reportedly walking with a friend that night but the preliminary SPD report does not include details from additional witnesses.

More than a decade ago, Pine at Bellevue was identified as one of the most dangerous crossings for pedestrians along E Pine. Pike and Pine have been reconfigured in the years since. Last year, the city completed an overhaul that included transitioning portions of Pike and Pine to new one-way configurations. A SDOT spokesperson said the reconfiguration of Pike and Pine “did not include work at the Pine and Bellevue intersection where the collision occurred.”

Grassroots efforts have now taken place near the intersection to help make the crossing safer including printed signs and barriers dragged into the street to block parking near the delivery area or the nearby ramen restaurant.

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