President Biden hopped on a Zoom call and rattled a saber at President Xi, which seems like a fine thing to do right now. Alex Wong / GETTY
One dead, six injured in I-5 pile-up: At around 8 am this morning, multiple car and truck drivers crashed into people driving Mac trucks going north on the interstate near Tacoma. KIRO reports that cops arrested one of the semi-truck drivers for a DUI.
Poulsbo will pay $2 million to family of man police shot in 2019: Police shot Stonechild Chiefstick in the head, killing the father of six “in front of hundreds of witnesses attending a celebration and fireworks display at the city’s Muriel Iverson Williams Waterfront Park,” the Seattle Times reports. “The lawsuit, relying on video and audio recordings and witness statements, alleged Officer Craig Keller shot Chiefstick just 12 seconds after arriving to investigate complaints that Chiefstick had threatened someone with a screwdriver.” The lawsuit also alleged excessive force, racist policing, and negligence.
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The next phase of COVID in Washington: The state has released a vague but nice-sounding plan for the “next phase” of the pandemic, including continued monitoring, updated guidance for schools and businesses, keeping up the pace of vaccines, and ongoing testing. (The state’s online ordering website is still up, by the way, and you can order up to two kits per month). Read more in The Seattle Times.
Want to take a ferry to Victoria, B.C.? Once again, you can. The Victoria Clipper plans to restart Seattle-Victoria service on April 15, along with fast ferry service from Seattle to Friday Harbor(!!!!!!!), KING 5 reports.
Speaking of ferry riders: Washington State Ferries says half of its passengers are “not even wearing [a mask] or considering wearing it.” KIRO reports “travelers in the San Juans aren’t so much of a problem, but it’s a definite issue on both Bainbridge and Kingston routes.”
Let the pot shops use the fucking banks already: After a spate of cannabis shop robberies, Washington State Treasurer Mike Pellicciotti is backing a bill in the U.S. Senate that would allow pot shops/dispensaries to take credit and debit cards instead of requiring them to sit on tons of cash, according to KOMO.
Last weekend for Girl Scout cookie booths, so says West Seattle Blog, which has a link to find cookies near you.
Every homeowner is an investor: “Home value appreciation in 2021 was higher than median wages in 25 of 38 major metropolitan areas,” says a new Zillow report. In the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue area, the typical home’s value grew by about $131,000 between December 2020 and December 2021, compared to the median pretax income in 2021 of $65,000.
Chase and Jas are revamping the Unstreamable column: A source close to the column says Chase and Jas will return to publishing weekly, with each writer writing about one film. Matt will join the group to offer an unstreamable TV recommendation, and the group will also include a formerly unstreamable recommendation that made its way into the stream. Good luck, you beautiful champions of physical media.
Thanks for all your Unstreamable feedback so far! We’re getting more responses than we expected 🥰
The column will be back next week — and we’ll return to publishing it weekly🤘It’ll include new stuff, like an extra byline and more unstreamable TV suggestions. https://t.co/teALoEH473
— Chase Burns (@chaseburnsy) March 18, 2022
Washington’s redistricting commission cannot stop sucking: A new report from Melissa Santos over at Crosscut reveals that the bipartisan commission “appeared to have withheld some text messages” they should have sent the outlet when it asked. April Sims, the commissioner that House Democrats picked to represent their interests, also deleted some texts, “potentially breaking the public records act.”
Looking for something to do this weekend? Go Celebrate Asia at the Seattle Symphony at 4pm on Sunday. Now in its 14th year, the musical spectacle features two new works: The U.S. Premiere of Tan Dun’s Trombone Concerto, and the world premiere of Reena Esmail’s Violin Concerto, “a work about the elements being rendered out of balance by humanity’s influence on the planet.”
Mainstream liberals finally offer their definition of “free speech:” In their latest contribution to the most tedious discourse of all time, The New York Times Editorial Board finally just came out and said it. Free speech, they argue, is the right to speak without fear of “being shamed or shunned.” (Now there’s a definition Seattle’s business class can get behind.)
Times Editorial Board doesn’t understand free speech rights pic.twitter.com/PtAD72WExP
— Jody Rosen (@jodyrosen) March 18, 2022
Liberals and conservatives used to back up their screeching criticisms of college lefties protesting Nazi speaking gigs by saying soft stuff like, “Only good ideas can beat bad ideas!” Now, they’re just admitting what they’ve always meant by that, which is, “Only my ideas are good, and my fear of rejoinders is tantamount to government censorship.” In the piece, the board goes on to argue, essentially, that states banning LGBTQ books and slashing curricula that challenge dominant narratives = the fear of being “shamed or shunned” by people in the marketplace of ideas. These people are demanding safe spaces from people who actually need safe spaces. And who are these people? As David Roberts argued on Twitter, for the most part, it’s white men in power, and those who seek the real, material benefits that come from caping for them.
In practice, only one kind of person in the US has ever expected — would ever *dream* — that they could say whatever the fuck they want in public without fear of social consequences. That kind of person is feeling slightly constrained now. Thus the current moral panic.
— David Roberts (@drvolts) March 18, 2022
Look at all this divisiveness perpetuated by the left: Tsk, tsk.
This is not an episode of Jerry Springer. It’s tonight’s Ohio Republican Senate debate.
“You’re dealing with the wrong guy,” Mandel says to Gibbons before calling him a “pussy.” pic.twitter.com/AbbyQpwXvu
— Natalie Allison (@natalie_allison) March 18, 2022
States face a shortage of ballot paper: The “snarled” supply chain has states and local jurisdictions requesting paper way earlier than they normally would in the hopes of avoiding yet another major challenge to the democratic process this year, Politico reports. Though a “spread-out primary calendar” will help deal with the issue, everyone’s going to be hurting in November if problems persist.
Omicron hit Black Americans hardest: A Washington Post analysis of a new CDC report found that “Black adults in the United States were hospitalized at rates higher than at any moment in the pandemic” during the Omicron surge, and were “four times as likely to be hospitalized compared with White adults.” As it has throughout the pandemic, COVID has resurfaced dramatic disparities in the health care system, and the country continues to fail to make progress.
Biden rattles saber at Xi: The President of the United States hopped on a Zoom call with the President of China and warned him of “implications and consequences if China provides material support to Russia as it conducts brutal attacks against Ukrainian cities and civilians,” though he didn’t elaborate, according to The New York Times.
Speaking of those brutal attacks: Russia hit “a warplane repair plant about 50 miles from the Polish border,” the Times reports. The invaders also successfully cut off Ukrainian access to the Sea of Azov, a strategically important body of water that connects port towns in the south to the Black Sea, according to the BBC. Russians also made it to the center of Mariupol, a port city on the Sea of Azov that has taken heavy fire and casualties for the last couple weeks. The UN now counts up 6.5 million Ukrainian refugees, Al Jazeera reports.
In lighter news, at 36 years of age, I decided to watch a season of ABC’s hit series, The Bachelor: I finished the dramatic, two-part conclusion last night, and all I have to say on the matter is that I’m glad the silly little courtship between Clayton and Susie, who was obviously his pick from the jump, introduced me and the rest of the world to Gabby Windey, who possessed a sweetly impatient conversational style I found endearing. Her support for the other women in the show genuinely moved me to tears at a few points, and, spoiler alert, I look forward to watching her attempt to find love on the next season of The Bachelorette alongside Rachel Recchia, who, of the 30 other contestants, seemed to love Clayton the most.
Speaking of monoculture: I’ll leave you with a dark and spacious love song from Justin Bieber that I think punches above his weight. The audacity to begin the song with a recording of Martin Luther King, Jr. saying, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” floors me, but I’ve been listening to it nonstop for three days.
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