So, how about that weather? We had all of it yesterday. Sun. Rain. Hail. Thunder. Lighting. One crack of lightning set off a chorus of car alarms in my neighborhood. And if you were looking at Elliott Bay, you might have even spotted a totally-normal-in-this-part-of-the-world “tornadic waterspout.” Today promises to be far less exciting. Sun, temps in the 50s. The kind of April day we hope for but rarely get. Plus, tonight is our first post-8 p.m. sunset.
So take a look at this funnel cloud and then let’s do the news.
City Council Dares the Mayor’s Office to Be Better Than Everett: In council’s Land Use committee meeting on Wednesday, councilmembers questioned representatives from the mayor’s office about Mayor Katie Wilson’s proposed legislation that would allow her to open 4,000 shelter units during her term. There was, predictably, a lot of chatter about public safety. (City officials declined to go into detail, but did say they planned to have undercover police around the new tiny home villages to crack down on “mid-level drug dealers.”) But my favorite moment of the meeting was when Councilmember Dan Strauss used his time to claim that Everett was able to avoid getting mired in permitting and process, and stood up their new shelter within 48 hours of getting the tiny homes. And so he had one goal for the mayor’s office: Beat Everett.
Good News for Everyone but Ticketmaster: Washington Attorney General Nick Brown and 32 other states (plus DC) won an antitrust case against LiveNation on Wednesday. The jury found that the company, which owns Ticketmaster, has an illegal monopoly in concert and ticketing markets—which is why concert ticket prices seem so out of control these days. Next up: the court has to decide how to break up that monopoly.
There’s a New Mall Cop in Town: The City announced yesterday that they plan to contract with private security to patrol Golden Gardens and Magnuson Park overnight, from May 1 to September 30. Apparently, it’s to deter late-night “boom” parties at the parks, which have “loud music.”
Hate Crime Case Comes to an End: Remember last year, when we reported that police were investigating a hate crime outside of Pony Bar? Witnesses said three men circled the bar in their car, shouting slurs and firing a water pellet gun at people outside. Two people were charged for the hate crime last April, and according to Capitol Hill Seattle blog, court records show that they struck a plea deal in the fall, including a suspended sentence of a year in jail and two years of probation.
Iran’s FC Coming to Seattle? The head of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, confirmed yesterday that Iran will be coming to the US for the World Cup this summer. Iran had previously requested that their games be moved to Canada or Mexico—two countries that aren’t actively bombing them—but it appears that FIFA turned that request down. All of this came from Infantino, though. Iran hasn’t directly confirmed it.
Europe’s Jet Fuel Is Dwindling: And the head of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, says that they have about a six-week supply left, according to the AP. We should expect to see flight cancellations “soon,” he said, if the Strait of Hormuz isn’t reopened permanently. (He then made a painfully awkward reference to the band, Dire Straits, which I will spare you.) “Some countries may be richer than the others. Some countries may have more energy than the others, but no country, no country is immune to this crisis,” he said. “Everybody is going to suffer.”
Meanwhile, Trump got distracted by something(s) shiny: In the middle of a goddamn war, the US Commission of Fine Arts (whose seven members were all appointed by President Trump) will consider Trump’s proposal to build “the GREATEST and MOST BEAUTIFUL Triumphal Arch, anywhere in the World” today. It’d be 250 feet tall on a manmade island in the middle of the Potomac, covered in gilded lions and eagles. He also wants to paint the granite Eisenhower Executive Office Building white. Constructed beside the White House, its granite, slate, and cast iron exterior makes it one of the US’s best examples of the French Second Empire style of architecture, but Trump thinks the stone is ugly.
Hegseth’s War Posture: At a press conference this morning, “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth told reporters that the US military is “maximally postured to restart combat operations” if Iran doesn’t agree to a deal. We have less than a week left in the ceasefire, with no signs of an actual peace deal.
Did you know that we’re still bombing boats in the Pacific? Our military can multitask. On Wednesday, the US Southern Command struck a ship in the Eastern Pacific, killing three people that the government claims were moving drugs. It was the third strike in as many days, and the 51st since Trump started this campaign.
Oh No, Don’t Do That: Stanley Zhong, a coder who graduated high school with 4.42 GPA, a 1590 SAT score, and high rankings in several international coding competitions, was rejected from UW’s undergrad program, and shortly after that, Google offered him an AI engineering job that would typically require a doctorate. He and his dad determined that racial discrimination was likely the culprit for his rejection, so they decided to sue the university, but no lawyer would take the case. So instead, ChatGPT and Gemini are their lawyers. “ I’m going stand here and make a bold claim, based on our filing and the judge’s recent ruling, that I think AI is already on par, if not better, than the top lawyers in the nation,” his dad said, while going on to say that he has to comb through every document to search for fabricated quotes and other errors.
If any of that was your last straw, the road to Canada is finally open again, after getting clobbered by a landslide.
As usual, that was a lot. So here’s an entire article about seal whiskers. They make them extraordinary hunters because fish movements “leave behind underwater trails that a seal can follow to find the fish and gobble them up,” KUOW reports. “If you look at an airplane, you can see a trail left behind,” a biologist told KUOW. “And this is similar to what you have if a fish is swimming through the water column. You can’t see it—but you can sense it, with the whiskers.”
