Who is she Credit: Hagen Hopkins / GETTY

Ashley rode along with Seattle’s dual dispatch team: By “rode along,” I mean they didn’t get a single call in five hours because the City hasn’t fully bought into this pseudo police alternative. The six social workers who compose the Community Assisted Response and Engagement (CARE) team are supposed to respond to low-priority calls alongside cops and then take over the scene if the cops say it’s okay. The program aims to save police a little time so they can focus on higher-priority calls. Read more about it here.

The more the merrier: A new paper from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Southwest Fisheries Center argues that the two types of killer whales that frequent Puget Sound are distinct enough to be classified as two species: The plentiful Bigg’s killer whales and the endangered southern residents. Scientists have observed that the two groups do not interact, differ in size and jaw structure, eat different foods, and have different migration patterns. Genetic analysis shows there has been no gene transfer between Bigg’s and residents for at least 350,000 years.

Hate crime help: The City and state are giving the Wing Luke Museum a combined $100,000 to cover smashed windows from an alleged hate crime last year. In September, Seattle Police arrested Craig Day Milne after he allegedly took a sledgehammer to the museum while shouting racial slurs, according to KING 5. Anti-Asian hate has risen since the beginning of the pandemic. A Pew survey from last year found that 32% of Asian Americans surveyed knew another Asian person in the US who has been threatened or attacked since COVID-19 began. Another recent survey of 1,000 Asian Americans in New York City found three-quarters of respondents altered their lifestyles to avoid becoming the target of a hate crime.

Pay up: Instacart has agreed to a $730,000 settlement with the Seattle Office of Labor Standards for allegedly violating the City’s gig worker sick time ordinance. The company also owes the office an additional $18K in municipal fines. About 5,560 workers will split the settlement.

Husky bites Cougar: University of Washington scooped up Washington State University’s athletic director Pat Chun for a six-year contract doing the same job, according to reporting from ESPN. The deal comes the week after Troy Dannen left UW for University of Nebraska. Chun had been at WSU since 2018, and he worked at Ohio State for 15 years before that.

Twelve Palestinians drowned trying to retrieve aid, says Palestinian Health Ministry: Video obtained by Reuters shows crowds rushing toward the beach in north Gaza, heading into deep water to reach the dropped crates. People in Gaza are desperate for food, with some foraging for weeds and others consuming animal feed. UN authorities say that because of Israel’s severe restrictions on aid, every Gazan is experiencing crisis-level food insecurity. At least half are at risk of famine. A UN-aid spokesperson told reporters last week that soon 200 people a day will be dying of starvation.

Analysis reveals New York Times’ lackluster reporting on trans issues: Media Matters and GLAAD reviewed a year of NYT stories that mentioned anti-trans legislation in their headlines or first paragraphs. Two-thirds of the time, those stories didn’t quote a trans person and 18% of the articles quoted misinformation from anti-trans activists without adequate fact-checking or additional context. Six articles did not report the anti-trans background of sources, including extremist rhetoric and actions.

Supreme Court probably not going to limit abortion pill access: During 90 minutes of argument before the court Tuesday, Justices seemed skeptical that the anti-abortion doctors and organizations who brought the case had standing to begin with. They’re claiming moral harm from an FDA policy that expanded access to mifepristone, saying that patients who take abortion pills might then visit the hospitals and emergency rooms where they work. Not even Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett seemed swayed. If the court hypothetically sided with the plaintiffs, it would be the first time any US court second-guessed the FDA’s authority to regulate drugs, according to the New York Times. 

RFK Jr. names Nicole Shanahan as running mate: I’m devastated that we’re not going to see NFL quarterback and noted doofus Aaron Rodgers on this ticket. Instead, we get a 38-year-old Silicon Valley lawyer and entrepreneur who most people outside of tech circles have never heard of. That’s way less fun. Shanahan, like Kennedy, is a vaccine skeptic who claims not to be an anti-vaxxer but who questions their safety nonetheless. Unlike Kennedy, she’s the ex-wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and she has deep pockets. Last month, she told the New York Times that she gave $4 million to a pro-Kennedy super PAC to help pay for a Super Bowl ad she helped produce.

Six presumed dead after bridge collapse: Officials said that the construction crew working on Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge when it collapsed yesterday were immigrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico. Only two of the men have been found so far, and the Coast Guard has suspended the search for the other six, who they believe fell into the freezing water below. NBC News reported that as rescuers searched for survivors, brainiacs like Andrew Tate, Alex Jones, and Trump’s former national security advisor Michael Flynn circulated wild speculation and conspiracy theories about what caused the ship’s sudden loss of power. 

Vivian McCall is The Stranger's interim Editor-in-Chief. In her private life, she is a musician and Wii U apologist. If you’re reading this, you either love her or hate her.

12 replies on “Slog AM: Puget Sound Whales Could Be Different Species, Gazans Drown Trying to Retrieve Aid, RFK Announces Running Mate”

  1. ‘A UN-aid

    spokesperson

    told reporters last week

    that soon 200 [Gazan] people

    a day will be dying of [forced] starvation.’

    oh.

    thank

    Gawd they’re

    NOT the Chosen People

    also thank

    Gawd WE, the

    Peeps aren’t Sponsoring

    a REAL Genocide! cuz We’re a

    Christian Nation — & how’d That

    Look on Our Collective Resumes?

    tho I

    gotta

    Wonder:

    just whom

    would Jesus*

    be most Pissed at?

    *remember

    That guy?

  3. When officers arrived, SPD said the suspect, Craig Day Milne, was still on the scene and told police, “The Chinese have been torturing [me] for years and [I have] to do something.”

    Having been in the CID a lot the last few years, I’m going to surmise that Craig Day Milne is unhoused, mentally unstable, on methamphetamines and/or opiates, and has not, in fact, been tortured by the Chinese for years.

    Is there a point to charging a crazy fucker like that with a hate crime? Is his racial animus real, or just a psychotic delusion?

  4. @3:

    Does it really make any difference? Rather than use the mental state of the perpetrator as the determiner, it seems to me their effect on the individuals, their business and the community at-large would be more relevant. After all, even crazy people can still be bigots.

  5. @3 sounds like he’s a racist piece of shit

    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/man-charged-seattle-sledgehammer-hate-crime-arrested-anti-asian-attack-rcna105627

    “Craig Day Milne, accused of smashing the windows at the Wing Luke Museum in Seattle’s Chinatown-International district, was arrested in 2013 on charges of physically attacking an Asian man in a locker room, repeatedly punching him at a Shoreline, Washington, recreation center, according to the charging documents.”

    Maybe there’s no need to seemingly defend the POS?

  7. @2, my main takeaway from the RFK Jr. VP unveiling?

    Now I’m not only questioning Cheryl Hines’s marital choice, I’m questioning Sergey Brin’s marital choice. But I guess so is he, considering that he and Nicole Shanahan are no longer married.

  8. @5: hadn’t known about that attack. that’s prob why he’s been “tortured by the chinese.” I just don’t see that literally crazy fuckers are capable of taking a lesson from hate crime charges. that’s one of the key purposes of incarceration: deterrence. don’t do it again.

    if the hate crime charge means he actually goes to jail, versus just probation for property damage, then great.

  10. @#6: Strangely the bridge collapse will have that effect, ~25% of U.S. coal is exported through that terminal, every other bulk terminal on the Eastern Seaboard is at capacity, so yes, this will put a dent in coal exports.

  11. @9 There was a piece in the New York Times a couple weeks ago with several Trump voters being very interested in RFK Jr. as they perceive him as a political outsider. Calling a Kennedy a political outsider strikes me as ironic, but if it peels away a bunch of Trump voters in swing states, I’m all for it.

  12. The killer whale species thing is silly. It reflects the 10s of millions of dollars put into and hundreds of people staring at these whales. If they’re that important to those people then they must merit a Western taxonomy species description. In practice it doesn’t mean anything under the Endangered Species Act since the groups are already recognized as distinct population segments. It is pure researcher ego.

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