Guns, beer, and football--that's the American way. Credit: Mat Hayward/shutterstock.com
Guns, beer, and football--thats the American way.
Guns, beer, and football—that’s the American way. Mat Hayward/shutterstock.com

GOP Lawmakers Introduce Bill in Olympia That Will Permit People to Bring Guns to Sporting Events at CenturyLink Field and Safeco Field: Danny Westneat of the Seattle Times calls the bill insane, but he also notes that we happen to live in insane times. If the country can put a person like Trump into power, then our lawmakers could very well beat the odds and pass a bill that allows men and women to booze like mad and yell at bad calls or fans of the opposing team while packing. The emboldened Trumpists claim that guns will make stadiums safer. But stadiums are already pretty safe. Indeed, the tough restrictions on firearms make you safer in the stadium than outside of it, where there are no such restrictions.

So, what is all of this nonsense about? A hatred for the city and its ways. This hate is targeted at big stadiums because they are only found in prosperous cities. Unable or unwilling to deal with the real causes of rural poverty, such as passing bills that make it difficult to collect taxes from the rich, the Trumpy lawmakers turn to the city and with the frantic energy of a rabbit humping a tree stump, attempt to puncture its “bubble.”

Seattle Still So White: As Bellevue has become Washington’s biggest “minority majority” city (its white population is now below 50 percent), Seattle continues to be one of the whitest big cities in the US (its white population is 66 percent). The reason for this, according to the Seattle Times, is found in the fact that Seattle has become too expensive for low-income people of color. As their numbers fall here, they continue to grow there, in cheaper South King County. As a whole, King County, which has a population of 2.1 million, has become more diverse. Exposed as outdated by this demographic data is Seattle’s still common conception of Bellevue (it’s less cool because it’s more suburban than cosmopolitan). Bellevue, however, is in the future; and it’s Seattle that continues to be stuck in the past.

Iran to Buy $16.6 Billion Worth of Planes From Boeing: The deal was inked yesterday and is considered to be the most obvious economic benefit of Obama’s nuclear agreement with that Islamic nation. Trump is not a fan of this deal, and it’s not known if he wants to do to it what he plans to do to Obamacare. Also, Trump is not getting along with Boeing.

There’s a Tree Well at Snoqualmie Pass Area: And a skier fell into it and died. He was in his 40s; he was alone when the deadly accident happened. A tree well is “a void loose snow around the trunk of a tree enveloped in deep snow.”

A Man In Banff National Park Flees Pack of Wolves on Snowmobile: He lived, but he will never forget that moment of real danger, that sudden and sharp and heart-pounding transition from being a human (the animal that eats almost everything) to being food (the animal that is finally eaten). The focused eyes of the wolves, their sharp teeth, their pursuit. And all that was between him and them was the machine. If it had cut, then the bites all over, then blood on the snow, then the white clouds above, then the night that will never end.

Why Colonizing Mars Is a Very Bad Idea: Those who support Elon Musk‘s plan to colonize Mars because they see it as the best chance to avoid extinction forget one important thing: life on Mars would not be worth living. Why? Because being a human is really about being with millions upon millions upon millions of non-human organisms that provide a bunch of biotic services that are so ubiquitous that we take them for granted. If you go to Mars, these services will not be there, and so you will spend much of your time on that dead and red place doing all of this dumb stuff that organisms on Earth do just like that and for free. Worms, for example, constantly work the ground. They make it so soft, so nice, and so lively. All we have to do is wake up and there it is: lots of useful soil. Imagine having to perform this and other services yourself, all of the fucking time. It would just drive you nuts. On Mars, you would become a slave to your own survival.

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...