Stuart Strickland

Any #GreenNewDeal in Pittsburgh must include total restoration of all cut and not-implemented transit routes & trips from 2011/2007/2002, 24-hr service, a 5th bus garage and free fares.

@NWSPittsburgh 1.04” rain in McCandless between 9pm & 11pm. #CoCoRaHS PA-AL-64

@billpeduto I own one of the former Scoobi scooters. I get 30 miles on a full battery. Takes 600 watts for 4 hours to recharge, 2.4 kwh. At 15 cents/kwh, that's 38 cents to travel 30 miles. I rarely travel more than 30 miles in a day.

With my EV, on average I pay less than $30 for 300 miles and use only renewable sourced electricity. Makes sense (cents).

@PghTransitCare Bus 6315 (Ross) has a leaky skylight / escape hatch. During the rain this afternoon on an outbound 13 Bellevue, I was getting regularly doused. Please check seals, etc. This was most unpleasant.

@PghTransitCare Please fix pull cord on 6353 (Ross Division). Cannot easily signal a stop.

@ThatEricAlper That names a specific human being, not a fictional person? This has my vote. youtube.com/watch?v=ciLNMe…

What’s a great song where the title is just a person’s name?

America is going to attack Iran under the guise of protecting the US and the world against Iran enriching weapons grade uranium. After we “obliterated” their nuclear program months ago. This is America fighting a proxy war on behalf of Israel. Iranian civilians will be slaughtered. Not the regime, not the IRG. The people of Iran. Anyone out there in America got a beef with citizens of Iran? I don’t. I don’t want our soldiers put in harms way and I don’t want women, children and men slaughtered because Trump and Netanyahu have financial plans for the Mideast. This is reprehensible and any Israel or US citizen backing a US attack is a cold blooded killer. I’m tired of people dying for rich, deranged politicians.

At 10:24 this morning, Friday February 27, the United States Ambassador to Israel emailed his own staff and told them to leave the country today. Not next week. Not when convenient. Today. Mike Huckabee, the man Donald Trump personally appointed to represent America in Israel, sent an email to every embassy employee in Jerusalem telling them that anyone wishing to depart should book “any available flight” and leave Israeli soil before the day ends. The embassy has shifted to “authorized departure” status, meaning the US government will pay for nonessential personnel and their families to evacuate. The New York Times obtained the email. The timestamp is 10:24 AM local time. The language says “no need to panic.” The action says panic. When an ambassador tells his own people to leave the country he is assigned to, he is not managing risk. He is clearing the blast radius. Authorized departure is the second-to-last step on the State Department’s crisis escalation ladder. The only step above it is ordered departure, which is mandatory evacuation. The United States has not reached ordered departure. But at 10:24 this morning it reached the step directly below it, and the ambassador personally urged speed. Now hold this against what happened in the last 72 hours. Wednesday, Geneva. Six and a half hours of talks. Araghchi called it the most serious session yet. The Wall Street Journal reported the US and Iran remain far apart on every core issue. Iran refused permanent zero enrichment. America refused anything less. Thursday, 37 advanced combat aircraft landed at RAF Lakenheath in a single day. 12 F-35As. 14 F-15E Strike Eagles. Additional F-22s. The staging base that funneled the first wave of Raptors to Israel is now reloading with strike aircraft carrying 23,000 pounds of ordnance each. Friday morning, the ambassador tells his people to leave. Wednesday you negotiate. Thursday you reload. Friday you evacuate your own embassy. That is not a sequence of unrelated events. That is a countdown visible to anyone reading the timestamps. Huckabee’s email went out five hours ago. Tomorrow, Saturday February 28, Oman’s Foreign Minister meets Vice President Vance in Washington carrying Tehran’s response to Geneva. Technical talks are nominally scheduled for Vienna next week. But you do not tell your embassy staff to leave today if you believe next week’s talks will happen in a world that looks like this one. The email says “make plans sooner rather than later.” Ambassadors are trained to communicate in precise diplomatic language where every word is calibrated. “Sooner rather than later” from a political appointee who does not speak in euphemism means the window for safe commercial departure is closing and he knows approximately when it closes. India told its citizens to leave Iran. Germany told citizens in Israel to prepare for airspace closures. Beirut’s US embassy began evacuating. And now America’s own ambassador in Jerusalem is telling his own staff to get out of the country he represents. Everyone with classified briefing access is moving in the same direction. Toward the exit. Today. Not Monday. Not after Vienna. Today, Friday February 27. The people who know what is coming are not waiting to find out. They are already on planes. The only people still debating whether this is real are the ones without the clearance to read what Huckabee read before he typed that email at 10:24 am this morning.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

@PghTransitCare Bus 6411 has a problematic left-rear suspension. Any sort of hole it hits is like a hammer on an anvil. Loud and painful to anyone in the back of the bus. Right-rear seems OK.

@PghTransitCare Please have 1701’s left rear suspension looked at. Broken spring? Tooth-jarring ride on an inbound 8 this afternoon.

@ThatEricAlper “Anything forced can’t ever be right, if it doesn’t come naturally leave it.” —Al Stewart

Using only one line of lyrics, what's your favorite song?

@Autistic_Lauren About 20 at home, about 80 at work. The work one is four windows, about 20 each for reference (same 20 for years), 20 for short-term projects, 20 for longer-term projects, 20 for random stuff that pops up from hour to hour.

They say people with ADHD often end up with an endless amount of tabs open on their main Internet browser.... So how many tabs do YOU have open right now?

5/ The bill cuts the help middle income Americans get to buy health care on the Affordable Care Act exchange. A 60 year old couple making $85,000 (not a king's ransom) would see a $26,000 increase in health care premiums. Yes, that's right - $26,000.

@TheRealHoarse Less than 60 days from retirement, I made a list of the things I still need and want to do myself and the things I will pass on to my co-workers to handle. Deciding what to let go was quite fulfilling.

Sorry I’m tardy but let’s do this. Tell me something good. What good thing happened in your life this week? Hit the boardwalk or passed Go and collected $200, both work. Just something good.

@ThatEricAlper youtube.com/watch?v=41P8Ux… Usually Ann sings lead. This one's all Nancy.

What's a great song from a band not sung by their usual lead singer?

If folks on the right can yap about Trump Derangement Syndrome, then the rest of us can point out Constitutional Estrangement Syndrome, in which adherence to the framework our nation is built upon is tossed aside in favor of swearing fealty to an orange felon and lifetime crook.

@ThatEricAlper When the whistling shows up unexpectedly. It’s what makes this cover delightedly different. youtu.be/d_vRgMFIS2Y?si…

What's a great song that features whistling?

@ThatEricAlper From the WW2 era, The Andrews Sisters, Rum and Coca-Cola. Lyric: "Both mother and daughter / Working for the Yankee dollar."

What song that you listened to when you were young did you realized later was about sex?

@ThatEricAlper A hand-cranked Victrola that's been used in the last six hours.

What's something in your room right now that most people probably don't have in theirs?

@20th_Centurygal @ThatEricAlper Came here to say that. Amazed it's the first response.

@ThatEricAlper Budd Dwyer and that's all I have to say about that, google it.

What is the most unexpected thing you've seen live on tv?

@ThunderWolf08 I was really hoping for the NYC-Dallas line, since the NYC-Pittsburgh line already exists.

Now that there's a good chance none of these proposed trains are ever happening. Can we agree how insane some of these routes are??