Its a metaphor.
It's a metaphor. Géza Bálint Ujvárosi / EyeEm

Calm before the storm: Enjoy your commute to work today everyone, because it’ll never be the same. Starting at 10 p.m. tonight, the viaduct will close forever and grind traffic to a screeching halt.

Turns out people aren’t terrible: In a recent Seattle Times/Elway poll, people in King County really do care about homeless people despite controversy around last year’s proposed head tax. People overwhelmingly wanted to tackle the root causes of homelessness, like providing mental health treatment, rather than just throwing money at getting individuals off the street. There are more numbers and percentages than I could ever list here so just read the article and try answering the questions for yourself.

Real Change is changing: Speaking of solutions to homelessness, Real Change is struggling just like any other print newspaper. The paper has been going for almost 25 years and helps low-income and homeless people earn money by selling the paper on the street. You’ve probably seen people selling them. Sales are down because nobody carries cash anymore. Real Change founder Tim Harris told the Seattle Times, “We’re never going to go online, because the point is for people to buy a physical paper from the vendor on the street.” But changes are coming and soon you'll be able to buy a paper using Venmo!

Government is still very much shutdown: Today marks the 21st day of the partial government shutdown, making it tied for the longest shutdown in history. And based upon the recent breakdown in negotiations, it'll soon become the longest of all time. Today is also the first day that some federal workers won’t receive paychecks because of the shutdown. Some Trump administration officials have proposed band-aid solutions for furloughed workers like putting on a garage sale. I think that’s dumb, but I do really love garage sales. Democrats are launching a full-court press at Mitch McConnell who, let us not forget, has the power to reopen most of the government right now.

Air Force has buyers remorse: They recently bought a Boeing tanker that can refuel plans in midair, which by itself is pretty insane, but it's not all it's cracked up to be. The camera system that shows the boom operator how to insert the fuel line into a flying, swinging hole doesn’t work very well, which could make it impossible to refuel in some lighting conditions. That’s life or death. It’d be like trying to fill up your car at 70 mph and if you didn’t, you might die so I guess I understand the Air Force’s anger.

Burn your umbrellas: The only precipitation we’ll see this weekend is people crying about the impending doom of the Seattle Squeeze. You know how during Seattle winters, you don’t really know how sad the weather is making you until the sun comes out? Well, the sun is coming so get ready for an unsolicited sadness check!


Missing 13-year-old girl was found alive: Almost three months after she was kidnapped and her parents were found murdered in their home in Wisconsin. She supposedly escaped the house where she was being held and ran up to a woman walking her dog.

People aren’t fucking enough: To elaborate on what we covered in Slog PM, people might be fucking but they sure as hell aren’t making enough babies. The U.S. fertility rate is below what it needs to be to replace itself. Scientifically speaking, each woman needs to produce two offspring, one to replace you and one to replace your partner, but it really averages out to a replacement rate of 2,100 births per 1,000 women. If there is one thing I learned in my population biology classes it’s that men don’t matter and maybe they have a point.

Move over Kevin Hart: You’re being replaced by… nobody. Hart definitely won’t be hosting The Oscars after a disappointing string of non-apologies for homophobic tweets, but the Academy Awards hasn’t announced any replacement is considering just going ahead without one this year. Come on, you cowards, you all can’t find anyone else? What about Tiffany Haddish? Or Michelle Wolfe? I’m sure Meryl Streep could riff for a while and have the world eating out of her palm.

Gold medal for corruption: FIFA has a new challenger for most corrupt international sports agency! The 2020 Olympics are in Tokyo next summer but they used performance enhancing drugs (money) to get them. The president of Japan’s Olympic Committee is under formal investigation for having spent more than $2 million in bribes.

This week has felt like 80 weeks in one: This is how it feels to finally be heading into the weekend:

This weekend's best Seattle entertainment options include: The first-ever Tasveer South Asian Litfest, the comedy show Minority Retort, dedicated to comics of color, and a show with 23rd-century R&B visionary Nao.