Make sure you stay out of the fucking bus lanes, you monsters.
Make sure you stay out of the fucking bus lanes, you monsters. KELLY O

Coming to you live from Olympia! I'm watching the sunrise over Puget Sound, which is a much better view than the windowless walls of my room. I may never leave here. Good thing I have wifi. But enough about the gorgeous colors I see before me, you came here for the news.

Indonesia’s national airline looks to cancel multibillion-dollar purchase of Boeing planes: A planned purchase of 49 Boeing 737 MAX 8s, the planes currently under investigation following two fatal crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia, is on shaky ground as Indonesia’s national airline tries to cancel it. They cited low consumer confidence in the safety of these jets as the main reason for not buying planes that have already killed over 300 people. I can understand their reasoning. My first question when I step on the plane to fly home to Chicago this May will probably be, “what model is this plane?” Boeing is working on a software patch and installing safeguards to avoid the automated nosedive suspected in these two crashes, but those fixes are still a few weeks out.

Prepare for Seattle Squeeze 2.0: Do you catch the bus in the tunnel under downtown? Not anymore! Do you catch a bus above ground downtown? Get ready for a whole lot more people. Buses are being kicked out of the tunnel and rerouted on surface streets starting tomorrow to make way for construction of the convention center expansion. Will this surpass the closure of the viaduct for commuting inconvenience? Only time will tell.

Farewell:


Memorial established to honor five-year anniversary of Oso landslide: It is still the deadliest landslide in U.S. history, claiming 43 lives in just a few short minutes. Loved ones will gather Friday to remember the people they lost five years ago. If you don’t remember, a mountainside broke loose near Highway 530 in Snohomish County in 2014. The Seattle Times covered the disaster and won a Pulitzer Prize for their work, but today reporters are more focused on the people who gathered to dedicate a memorial of 43 trees to the victims. Several relatives are angered by what they see as an inadequate memorial with one saying, “they deserve better than some trees on a busy highway.”

An active shooter training in Indiana went terribly wrong: Instructors at an Indiana elementary school added a dangerously unnecessary sense of realism to a mock mass shooting drill by shooting teachers in the back with plastic BB pellets. The teachers were participating in a training exercise where local law enforcement walked them through an active shooter drill before asking them to kneel down and then “sprayed across their backs with plastic pellets without warning.” Now two of the teachers are speaking out to a local paper to prevent this from happening at other Indiana schools. Just for context, New Zealand had one of the deadliest mass shootings in their history about a week ago and they responded by banning assault rifles and most semi-automatic guns. So yeah, you could say America is taking a different approach.

Anti-vaxxers get booted from GoFundMe: The popular crowd-funding site has banned people soliciting money to spread misinformation about vaccines. A spokesperson said these campaigns were pretty rare to begin with, but hey, it’s still a step in the right direction. Some active anti-vaccine influencers (if that’s a thing) used the site to underwrite their misinformation campaigns about the science behind vaccines so now they’ll have to find a corporate sponsor like the rest of us. On an unrelated note, this blurb is brought to you by coffee and Daylight Saving Time.

I’m not crying, I just have allergies: Well I might be crying, but this sunrise is pretty beautiful so I’m allowed to shed a few tears on the grave of toxic masculinity. Some of you may be feeling seasonal allergies coming on after Seattle’s record-breaking temperatures led to abnormally high pollen concentrations in the air. These will probably dissipate somewhat with the incoming cold, wet weather, but you might as well check out this sweet pollination calendar Crosscut published. We’re all dreading grass allergy season.

Speaking of cold, wet weather: It’s inbound. This might call for that rain jacket you carelessly threw in the back of your closet.


The European Union postpones Brexit: But a shit show is still looming. They pushed back the deadline to April 12, but Prime Minister Theresa May has the monumental, if not impossible challenge of getting Parliament to actually vote for a plan. It’s been three years since the British people voted to leave the EU, but no one has figured out how the fuck to actually do it. There’s no indication that May’s current plan will get anything but the two previous and resounding “nay” votes so it seems Britain remains in a quandary. That seemed like a proper British word to use.

This weekend's best Seattle entertainment options include: The musical Marie, Dancing Still, a stand-up show with Maria Bamford, and the 20th Annual Washington Cask Beer Festival.