Not all SLUT photos are created equal -- brappy★'s "Sidewalk Art" documents some of the . . . hmm . . . urban vernacular response? That or it's alien toasters, as one of his commenters suggests. Nice shot -- thanks for including it in our Flickr pool.......

Hello all-- News from the front lines of the blogging revolution: We've killed guest comments. Well, to be accurate our corporate overlords have killed guest comments. Ist-wide, the vast majority of spam and boorish behavior comes from guest commenters. As many Internet pundits have observed, total anonymity seems to make even the nicest person act totally insane. It hasn't been much of a problem here at Seattlest, and I'd like to thank those guest commenters......

The Mariners announced yesterday that Manager John McLaren and General Manager Bill Bavasi will both be back next year. McLaren took over in mid-season, the team was 40-41 under his guidance. 2008 will be Bavasi's fourth year as Mariners GM. Out in blogland, they've been calling for McLaren's head since the M's went on a 15 of 17 losing jag, one of the biggest collapses by a contending team in baseball history. The main complaint:......

Sorry, "Guest," you're on your way out. Seattlest loves you--For the most part you who forgo the site's great commenter profile system to add your wisdoms to our posts are well-behaved and interesting, but our brothers and sisters across the country (heathens, apparently) are of the mind that people act differently when their words are attached to a name, any name, and that all commenters should be logged in. Starting today "guest" comments to......

Overheard at Seattlest HQ: "I can see how the guy might have a case, but it's pretty common knowledge in the industry that you don't fucking sell AutoCAD on your own -- at least not on obvious places like eBay." That Seattlest was referring to Timothy Vernor, a local guy who filed suit against Autodesk because they used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to have eBay pull auctions where he was trying to sell used......

A big 'thank you' to Seattlest commenters for making the previous two posts on the Gas Works Park Mystery Party the definitive places for speculation and conjecture. Just this morning an unregistered guest indicated that they'd received an email asking for actors to "protest" the party at $100 a head, which kind of dulls the luster on a previous commenter's note that Melinda Gates's birthday is August, 15. Anyway, in lieu of any actual, factual......

Yesterday, when a reader informed Seattlest of an enclosure going up at Gas Works park for a private event, we posted some smart assey thing about the park's recent unfriendliness towards private events. We were aghast that public property could be employed as someone's personal party space, but, you know, not really. We pictured a dog run-like chain link fence enclosure near the back of the park, maybe in that newish area that no one......

Starbucks is going to slim down its drink menu, notes Starbucks Gossip. They cite a line from an AP wire article on recent Starbucks business: "Starbucks also said it plans to cut the number of different drinks on its menu, a move it hopes will help baristas get customers through the line more quickly." This makes sense to Seattlest. We're fans of Barry Schwartz and his Paradox of Choice: too many choices stress people out.......

Last year, we had the joy of walking around town before the precarious date of 6/6/06 and seeing images of nuclear holocaust strung across every light poll in town (meaning on Capitol Hill). This year, we get the pleasure of anticipating our big 3-0 on a far more auspicious date: 7/7/07. As a child of 7/7/77, we've lived with the inevitability of next Saturday for our whole lives. For us, it's the only time......

No, Seattlest didn't quite make it to everything on the checklist we created last Friday, but we did manage to stay out past midnight on both weekend evenings, proving we've still got it after all. Friday night's Purr toga party proved to be a sausagefest, which I'm sure was fun if you're into that sort of thing. We, however, are not, so we headed down to Chapel to party with our people. Damn it was......

-- John Moe's Family Herman project: the funniest riff on The Family Circus since the Dysfunctional Family Circus. -- Consumerist presents: Confessions of a Starbucks Barista. Commenters say: she sounds like a PR flack. -- An Event Apart is in town. -- Metro buses unwrapped, then partly rewrapped. -- Up-to-the-minute updates on Seattle Web 2.0 popularity. Quick, someone give them venture capital. -- Dig your trench coat out of your closet -- the Noir......

All across the Ist-A-Verse (or at least the American parts thereof), writers and editors are in the midst of enjoying their three-day weekend. But after the week we've all had, we feel like the break is not only needed, but deserved. Just look at everything we've been doing! Gothamist headed into the Memorial Day weekend with a number of tasks accomplished. They worried about Long Islanders giving New Yorkers a bad name. They tried......

As the amazing reality of the 2007 draft order settles in, it has become apparent that if you need to send a representative to the NBA Draft Lottery, pick a Garfield High graduate. Locally everyone wonders if this amazing stoke of luck will keep the team in town, and on the basketball front what happens with soon be restricted free agent Rashard Lewis now that the Sonics are about to draft Kevin Durant. Nationally the......

Nowhere is racial bigotry more starkly communicated than during coverage of the NFL draft. If you're interested in the race of a recently-drafted player, you don't need to glance up to look at the guy's photo. No, just listen to the commentators: White draftees are "lunchpail guys" who have "motors that won't quit." Black players are "natural athletes" with "character issues." Then we move on to the narration of the game film where we......

It's like a painting, see? From far away, it's OK, but up close, it's a big old mess. That's kind of what Lawrence Cheek says in the PI today, where he dares to say what a lot of Seattleites are thinking: our new central library building isn't all that. This library, incredibly, is an uncomfortable place to read. The third-level "Living Room," which has the feel of a vast indoor park, is not conducive to......

Sunday. Usually, a quiet, contemplative day in the Blogosphere. But not here in the Ist-a-Verse. Nonono! Just look below and see all of the wild and crazy stuff our staffs are up to. In Austin, bands are beginning to confirm for SXSW and the rumor mill is up and running. Good thing, too, because we all know how much Austinites love live performances. Austin also found itself in the national spotlight, with Longhorn Legend......

We returned to the homeland over the holidays. Lugged skis and snowboards to the land of 3.2 beer, special garments, and the "Greatest Snow on Earth" only to find they had half the snow base compared to what we have here. Everything seemed backwards. We picked up the local weekly, which feels smarmily like Seattle's version as so many do (albeit, sadly, the SLC web version makes the Weakly look divine). And what do people......

So Rick's was raided on Wednesday night: P-I night reporter Scott Gutierrez was out on the scene and reports that police arrested 14 dancers and one manager for what a police spokesman said were violations of the city's adult entertainment ordinance. Hmm. 14 dancers and a manager. Who's missing? Right. The johns. Well, maybe there weren't any customers there at the time, with a squad of Seattle's Finest patronizing the place? No, that's not it:......

Three years ago, we all hoped for aging middle infielder Omar Vizquel to fail a physical so the M's wouldn't complete an agreed-upon deal for him. And our pleas were heard. Well, M's fans, break out your prayers to the patron saint of aged middle infielders failing physicals again, because we need another favor from him. Pending a physical, the M's are going to deal two good young prospects, Chris Snelling and Emiliano Fruto, for......

Before we begin, we'd like to extend our deepest sympathies to the family of James Kim. We are not, by any means, trying to discount that tragedy by juxtaposing posts about the Kims with more light-hearted posts. It's the nature of doing a compilation such as this one: we're trying to give a full slice of the goings-on in the Ist-a-Verse: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Londonist wants you to know where......

Halloween is Tuesday, which means this weekend is really the time for all of the –ists to celebrate. And whether they’re designing super-spooky costumes or talking about the super-spooky upcoming elections, we’d say that they’re doing a fine job of it. Austinist knows that few things in life are scarier than zombies, people with way too much money, and politicians who try too hard to be funny. Slightly less scary, depending on whom you......

Founder of the social networking news site Newsvine and Seattle resident Mike Davidson got an email from Moda Condominiums last week. Not too big a deal, especially considering he'd given their website his email address for the specific purpose of sending him updates on availability. However, the CC field contained the email addresses of all 1086 recipients. It’s bad enough when a friend forwards you a joke e-mail and there are 50 people CC’d, but......

We were going to write about style after one of our valued commenters (and one of our three readers) took Seattlest Dan to task for carrying an umbrella. We envisioned inking one of those grandiloquent "A Moral Defense of..." columns that one sees written in defense of some generally unpopular concept; however, dumb things like work and its attendant personal-time-sucking qualities derailed us. Fortunately, the excellent feature story in last week's birdcage liner has......

Last time we reported on a Starbucks lawsuit, public sympathy was tilted in the caffeine giant's favor. Even the frequently anticorporate commenters at Consumerist thought it was stupid to sue them for "betrayal" over a botched email coupon. But they're rooting for a Bellevue woman who sued Starbucks on Monday for "unlawful use and abuse of its monopoly power." And no, that's not putting three hotels on Boardwalk. Penny Stafford, owner of Belvi Coffee and......

As we sat down to write this week's Best of the -ists post, a car blaring "21 Questions'" passed by our house. And that started us thinking about how some of the best -ist posts out there have at their hearts questions, some of which are answered, and some of which are left open. Check out the Best of the -ists from this week, and see if you agree. Londonist answers the questions "How......

In Seattlest's little egg of grey matter, every news item is connected to another, bigger, news item. We can't help ourselves. So when we see that the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild is going to settle with the Seattle Times for pay raises of $0.00 for the next two years, we have to connect it to something else, and in this case that something else is the Joint Operating Agreement that binds the Seattle Times......

Breaking the law, breaking the law We -ist folks love us some crime, and no misdemeanor is too petty for a post on any of our sites. This week, join us for a rogues' gallery of miscreants major, minor, and alleged. Gothamist gets us started with "Law & Order", muppet style. Oh, you know what isn't a crime? Taking pictures on the MTA. So, why are cops stopping photographers? In other Gotham crime, a......

God, we're so sick of Snakes on a Plane that we want to kill anyone and everyone that makes a "something on a something" joke. But then we realized that there was no way we could ever win this fight, and, hell, if you can't beat them, we might as well join them. And with that, you have the theme of this weeks' Gothamist network post. Austinist makes it easy for us, with Candidate......

LAist has so much fun this week! They go to E3, where they overhear the timeless remark "Man, this is where nerdy girls get laid." Is that a promise? They also give us this week's best CDs and make us realize that LA is the best place to use Zillow. Ah, Houstonist. They're biking to work, that is, if they can figure out how to get there. That's right, Mapquest says "Houston had the......

Londonist prepares a Happy Birthday bath for Buddah this week and then things get all cliched. A madman goes on a rampage while axe-wiedling and London's mayor warns an American diplomat to avoid the kitchen if the heat bothers him so much. LAist has finally come around to purchasing tickets for Clipper Train. Hyper local dating sites are spamming L.A. neighborhoods and the fascinating Dame Darcy talks with LAist about art, the city and earthquakes.......