Jeffrey J. Early
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jeffreyearly.bsky.social
Jeffrey J. Early
@jeffreyearly.bsky.social
110 followers 120 following 55 posts
Runner, biker, dad, software developer, physicist with a PhD in oceanography.
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jeffreyearly.bsky.social
Ubiquitous automated enforcement. It’s the only way we will get to safe streets.
mb-z.bsky.social Mike Bollich-Ziegler @mb-z.bsky.social · 13h
The City of Federal Way is proposing to turn their school zone speed cameras on 24/7.

Incredible stat: During monitoring periods ranging from three days to two weeks in July, there were 21,996 instances of drivers going 11+ mph over the speed limit in the four existing school speed zones.
CITY OF FEDERAL WAY CITY COUNCIL AGENDA BILL ITEM #:_ SUBJECT: ORDINANCE: AUTOMATED TRAFFIC SAFETY CAMERAS IN SCHOOL WALK-ZONES POLICY QUESTION: Should the City update the current City ordinance to authorize the use of traffic safety cameras in school walk-zones? COMMITTEE: FEDRAC MEETING DATE: September 22, 2026 CATEGORY: Consent City Council Business STAFF REPORT BY: Chief Andy Hwang Attachments: 1. Staff Report 2. Ordinance Ordinance Resolution Public Hearing Other DEPT: Police Options Considered: 1. Adopt the ordinance. 2. Do not adopt the proposed ordinance and provide direction to staff. MAYOR'S RECOMMENDATION: Option 1. MAYOR APPROVAL: DIRECTOR APPROVAL: Hung 9/15/26 COMMITTEE RECOMMENDATION: I move to forward the proposed ordinance to first reading on October 6, 2026. Committee Chair Committee Member Committee Member PROPOSED COUNCIL MOTION(S): FIRST READING OF ORDINANCE OCTOBER 6, 2026: "I move to forward the proposed ordinance to the October 20, 2026 Council Meeting for second reading and enactmentiại SECOND READING OF ORDINANCE OCTOBER 20, 2026: "I move approval of the proposed ordinance." Ordinance: Automated Traffic Safety Camera in School Walk-Zones There is no cost to the City to amend the ordinance or implement 24/7 automated speed enforcement at the existing school-zone locations, as the program is designed to be self-sustaining and covers all ongoing costs. The City currently has an agreement with its third-party vendor, Verra Mobility, and automated camera systems are already installed and operational at the four school-zone locations. In 2024, the Legislature passed House Bill 2384, expanding local jurisdictions authority to use automated traffic safety camera enforcement beyond school zones and red-light intersections to include high-crash locations, walk zones, park zones, and hospital zones. The legislation came amid growing concerns about roadway safety in Washington. In 2023, 809 people were killed in traffic crashes statewide, one of the highest annual totals since tracking began. Fatalities increase 51% since 2019, speed-related death increased 65%. According to Washington Traffic Safety Commission, automated speed cameras can reduce speeding violation by approximately 50% within two years. The City's current third-party vendor conducted a speed study at four school-zone locations, Panther Lake, Twin Lakes, and Saghalie (two school zones) in July 2026 at the request of the City. The study monitored traffic activity 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with monitoring periods ranging from three days to two weeks, depending on the location. During the study period, a total of 21,996 speed violations were recorded involving vehicles traveling more than 11 miles per hour over the posted speed limit, which was the trigger speed used during non-school speed enforcement. The results of the July 2026 speed study confirm the concerns that the Police Department has consistently heard from residents and observed through ongoing traffic complaints and traditional speed-enforcement activities. The data demonstrate that there is a significant speeding and traffic-safety problem on Federal Way streets, particularly along major arterial roadways. The volume of excessive-speed violations documented during the study provides additional support for the use of automated speed enforcement as a supplemental traffic-safety tool. Based on these findings, the Police Department recommends that the City implement 24/7 automated speed enforcement at school-zone locations as a public-safety measure. Continuous enforcement would provide a consistent deterrent against excessive speeding, particularly during periods when traditional police enforcement may be limited. This approach is responsive to residents' concerns about speeding and roadway safety throughout the City. As a background, in December 2007, the City Council approved a one-year pilot program and entered into a contract with third-party vendor American Traffic Solutions to provide automated traffic safety camera services. In 2008, red-light photo enforcement systems were installed and activated at designated intersections. In 2009, the City expanded the program to include school-zone automated speed enforcement safety systems. Since the implementation of the automated traffic safety camera program, the Police Department has monitored and evaluated the effectiveness of the systems by collecting traffic and safety data at each camera location. The City currently has six red-light photo enforcement cameras at three intersections and eight school-zone photo enforcement cameras located in four school zones. The data collected by the Police Department indicates that the City's automated traffic safety camera systems accomplish two important traffic-safety objectives: increasing compliance over time and reducing collisions and the risk of collisions in monitored areas. Automated speed enforcement is not intended to replace traditional methods of traffic enforcement. Rather, it serves as a supplement to traditional police enforcement and is one component of a broader… Revised RCW 46.63.250 allows continuous automated speed camera enforcement in school speed zones and school walk zones. This authority provides the City with an opportunity to address speeding throughout the entire school day, as well as during after-school programs, extracurricular activities, and weekend activities when children and other pedestrians may be present on school grounds. Continuous enforcement is intended to encourage motorists to slow down and exercise greater caution when traveling through these areas, furthering the public safety purpose of protecting students, pedestrians, and other vulnerable road users. The purpose of automated speed enforcement should not simply be to issue infractions. Its primary purpose should be to change driver behavior and improve roadway safety. By encouraging motorists to slow down, 24/7 speed enforcement could have a broader traffic-calming effect and potentially reduce collisions, serious injuries, and traffic fatalities. The Police Department anticipates that speed violations, particularly at photo-enforcement locations, will decrease significantly following a full year of implementation. A reduction in violations would be an indication that the program is achieving its primary objective of improving driver compliance and changing unsafe driving behavior. Several other cities throughout the region have expanded the use of automated speed safety cameras. They are experiencing similar concerns related to dangerous and excessive speeding, including Edmonds, Tacoma, Des Moines, Bellevue, Kenmore, and Lake Forest Park, as well as enforcement beyond traditional school-zone operating hours. These actions demonstrate that automated enforcement is increasingly being considered as an additional tool for addressing speeding and improving roadway safety in Washington communities. The City's existing experience, together with the July 2026 speed study, demonstrates a substantial speeding problem and provides an opportunity for th…
September 18, 2026 at 2:00 AM
Reposted by Jeffrey J. Early
joeboomzag.bsky.social
I built a statistical model to forecast ski conditions using seasonal climate models. Summit at Snoqualmie in Washington has the worst ski forecast in the western US this winter. Makes sense given the “El Niño on steroids” model signal. Go south for better skiing ⛷️

Try it out: where2.ski
September 18, 2026 at 12:52 AM
Reposted by Jeffrey J. Early
mcnees.bsky.social
This isn't even 5d chess, this is Hilbert Space chess. He sees moves in directions you can't even conceive.
September 17, 2026 at 12:54 AM
jeffreyearly.bsky.social
What if I told you 40k American will die due to AI every year, but that we will accept that loss because the technology is so convenient.

Crazy right?

40k Americans die from automobiles every year but we accept that loss because the technology is so convenient.
September 15, 2026 at 11:29 PM
Reposted by Jeffrey J. Early
jenlucpiquant.bsky.social
What OpenAI’s latest controversy tells us about the future of math www.technologyreview.com/2026/09/08/1...
What OpenAI’s latest controversy tells us about the future of math
AI companies are making impressive mathematical strides. Human mathematicians are losing out.
www.technologyreview.com
September 9, 2026 at 11:21 AM
jeffreyearly.bsky.social
"In 2023...NSF spent $918 million on research in the directorate's three core areas—earth, oceans, and atmospheric/geospatial sciences. By comparison...$110 million to be available in 2027".

Geosciences decimated.

Why are we not talking about this more?

www.science.org/content/arti...
Is NSF’s new call for research proposals good news? Scientists and staffers have doubts
The long-delayed 12 solicitations only cover some disciplines—and promise to give them much less money
www.science.org
August 20, 2026 at 1:43 PM
jeffreyearly.bsky.social
If Washington, Oregon and California left the union they would be immediately better off and able to solve problems down to city level.

King County is one of the richest places on earth in all of human history and yet…
July 31, 2026 at 5:36 AM
Reposted by Jeffrey J. Early
planet4589.bsky.social
Number of launches to deep space (beyond 150000 km) versus time in 5 year bins. We're not back to Apollo levels yet...
July 4, 2026 at 11:01 PM
Reposted by Jeffrey J. Early
chordbug.bsky.social
fixed your headline
A hit song on the Billboard 100 charts is termed *$k$-good* if it is _ever_ in a weekly top-$k$, and *$k$-immediate* if it _debuts_ in the top-$k$. An artist is *$(n,k)$-Olivian* if their $n$ first $k$-good hits are all also $k$-immediate. *Headline 1.* Olivia Rodrigo is the first $(10,10)$-Olivian woman.
June 24, 2026 at 2:32 PM
Reposted by Jeffrey J. Early
jtimmer.bsky.social
I don't write a lot of editorials because my opinions are nothing special. But I feel the proposed OMB rule is a large enough threat that it merited one. I hope that you'll read it and act.
July 2, 2026 at 1:30 PM
jeffreyearly.bsky.social
The other context here is that a historically low number of NSF grants have been awarded this fiscal year AND money has been redirected away from basic research
beebrookshire.bsky.social Bethany Brookshire @beebrookshire.bsky.social · Jun 29
You may have heard about the OMB rule change that will put politics over federal grants. However bad you think it is? It's probably worse. Thanks to @theverge.com for letting me report this one out.

There is still time to comment.

bit.ly/4v2X4nQ
The war against ‘woke’ could end US science as we know it
“Everyone will be affected, not just scientists. Every community in the country.“
bit.ly
June 29, 2026 at 2:31 PM
jeffreyearly.bsky.social
1776: taxes moved money from the colonies to England.

2026: taxes move money from blue states to red states.
June 22, 2026 at 5:26 AM
Reposted by Jeffrey J. Early
evornithology.bsky.social
Brutal grant-witness.us/posts/2026-0...
The NSF is on Track for its Worst Year in Generations – Grant Witness
Throttling of science funding is utterly unprecedented and radical when compared to the past 50 years.
grant-witness.us
June 21, 2026 at 8:45 AM
Reposted by Jeffrey J. Early
bedform.org
This is the whole thing. Basic, wonky, weird, non-applied, whatever you want to call it, science is usually the eventual foundation of everything you know as "technology" or "medicine". It's not even a case of "if they succeed" - the investment is in the voluminous incremental advancements
jswatz.bsky.social John Schwartz @jswatz.bsky.social · Jun 20
"Right now, in some underfunded lab, a scientist is chasing a question that sounds pointless.... No one can say if they will succeed. But a century of experience says that funding people to do this work is a good bet. If we stop making that bet, we will pay for it in cures no one will know to miss."
Opinion | The Science That Turned Lizard Venom Into GLP-1s Is Under Attack
www.nytimes.com
June 20, 2026 at 6:03 PM
jeffreyearly.bsky.social
Could not agree more.
mcnees.bsky.social Robert McNees @mcnees.bsky.social · May 2
This is my annual plea for a native and mac-assed app to replace ReadCube Papers. Just an app for managing a big library of pdfs that A) can fetch metadata and export citations, and B) has a decent tabbed viewer where I can have lots of documents open at once.
May 3, 2026 at 4:08 AM
Reposted by Jeffrey J. Early
apnews.com
Sabastian Sawe of Kenya has become the first person to run a marathon in under 2 hours.
Sabastian Sawe of Kenya wins London Marathon in world-record time, first to finish under two hours
Sabastian Sawe of Kenya has become the first person to run a marathon in under 2 hours. Sawe smashed the men’s world record by winning the London Marathon in 1 hour, 59 minutes and 30 seconds on Sunday.
bit.ly
April 26, 2026 at 11:11 AM
Reposted by Jeffrey J. Early
selipot.bsky.social
USA Today also covered our recently published research!
urldefense.com/v3/__https:/...
2 studies warn 'Day After Tomorrow' ocean current is in trouble
More bad news for the ocean current at the center of the fictional (and scientifically inaccurate) "Day After Tomorrow" climate change disaster movie.
urldefense.com
April 23, 2026 at 6:17 PM
Reposted by Jeffrey J. Early
nickpizzooceans.bsky.social
Our recent paper on using thermal imagery from geostationary satellites to infer surface currents was published! We call the method GOFLOW 🧪🌊 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
April 18, 2026 at 2:37 PM
Reposted by Jeffrey J. Early
selipot.bsky.social
A nice coverage by @cnn.com of our article published last week in Science Advances on the weakening on the AMOC www.cnn.com/2026/04/16/c...
A vital system of Atlantic Ocean currents is weakening and closer to collapse than thought, new studies find | CNN
New research provides alarming evidence this ocean circulation is slowing and could be heading toward a shutdown, which would have catastrophic impacts on the planet’s weather and climate.
www.cnn.com
April 16, 2026 at 3:44 PM
Reposted by Jeffrey J. Early
kimcobb.bsky.social
Two postdoc fellowships now open at @brown.edu Dept of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences. One in ocean sciences (apply.interfolio.com/183855) and one in any field of geoscience (apply.interfolio.com/183852). Deadline May 1.
April 10, 2026 at 5:06 PM
Reposted by Jeffrey J. Early
arstechnica.com
The Trump administration's newest approach to block the development of offshore wind is to pay companies to walk away from lease sites they had paid for under the Biden administration.
US to pay TotalEnergies $1 billion to stop developing offshore wind in US
Payment reimburses the company for two leases, one for a massive 3 GW wind farm.
arstechnica.com
March 24, 2026 at 2:13 PM
Reposted by Jeffrey J. Early
meganranney.bsky.social
On top of the slowdown in grantmaking I wrote about last week - this is another deeply worrisome trend for scientists, physicians, patients, families, and basically anyone who wants new treatments and new tools to promote health. 🆘🧪🥼

open.substack.com/pub/elizabet...
I Wrote Research Funding Announcements for NIH for 22 Years. This Year They’ve Published 14
How NIH went from 756 funding announcements to 14 in two years — and what it means for every disease that depends on federal research
https://open.substack.com/pub/elizabethginexi/p/i-wrote-research-funding-announcements?r
March 16, 2026 at 12:30 PM
Reposted by Jeffrey J. Early
roguewave.bsky.social
🌊 3 year postdoc position in our group here at UMD

Studying interactions of internal waves and deep boundary currents, cross-scale energy fluxes, and Lagrangian observations of topographic wakes.

Full info: wenegrat.github.io/misc/Submeso...

Thanks for looking!
wenegrat.github.io
March 12, 2026 at 4:25 PM
Reposted by Jeffrey J. Early
jeremymberg.bsky.social
5/10
A line graph showing NSF grant awards made through 2/27/26 for fiscal year 2026 compared with grant awards for fiscal years 2021-2025 for the Directorate of Geosciences.
March 1, 2026 at 2:48 PM
jeffreyearly.bsky.social
“LLL-pilled” is a great term. It feels like there are few people who remain rational about LLMs.
janinegibson.ft.com Janine Gibson @janinegibson.ft.com · Jan 2
Ex-Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun has Lunch with the FT and in one of those instances so rare that you know he didn't sign an NDA, says exactly why as.ft.com/r/e503690d-8...
January 3, 2026 at 8:01 PM