The only thing stuck in these pages is KNOWLEDGE.
The only thing stuck in these pages is KNOWLEDGE. Patrick Daxenbichler/Getty Images

Corrections officials face backlash after banning donated books: They said the books were being used to smuggle in things like drugs, porn, and tattoo guns and were responsible for the rise in contraband they saw in their prisons. But the Seattle Times crunched the numbers and it appears this has only happened three or four times in the last year. The Department of Corrections’ claim that this happened 17 times last year includes erroneous examples like an officer named Booker finding contraband and another report saying an inmate got “book’ed” for having contraband. It seems like they just did a control-F search for the word book in their records and didn’t bother to look much further.

It’s already wildfire season and Olympia has a new plan to fight them: Washington’s wildfire crews were too small and too underfunded to properly fight the many simultaneous fires blazing across the state. But this year, Hilary Franz, the state’s commissioner of public lands, is getting proactive and put forward a proposal that would raise over $60 million to support wildfire suppression and forest restoration. I’m glad we’re not just using prison inmates to fight our fires like California does (yes that’s a real thing they do).

First ever picture of a black hole taken: I never thought we would actually see a black hole in my lifetime, but hey, things move pretty quickly. Well I guess not that quickly given it took scientists two years to assembled this shot from a petabyte (1 million gigabytes) of photo data. We’ve only ever seen indirect evidence that black holes, which are super dense conglomeration of matter with a gravitational pull so strong that not even light can escape, exist. Now we’ve got a blurry headshot!

The fight for Trump’s taxes begins in earnest: Today is the deadline for the IRS to turn over Trump’s taxes and financial information on eight of his businesses to a House committee, but it’s not looking like that will happen. Trump is, after all, the IRS Commissioner’s boss. Both sides are gearing up for a long court battle that will wade into uncharted territory. Democrats are relying on a law that the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee can ask for anyone’s tax information for “legislative purposes” and the treasury “shall furnish” that information. Forgive the old time-y language, it’s an old law. This has been used many times before, but never on the president so we’ll see how this plays out.

Look at all that weather! We’ll have rain in the morning and rain in the evening. You might not like it but the plants sure do and hey, it might keep wildfires at bay a little longer.

Go M’s: The Mariners are supposedly having a pretty good start to their season. They improved their record to 11-2 last night, which is a new record for the club, and it appears Marco Gonzalez is the new pitching darling, or “ace” if you want to use a baseball term. He’s now 4-0 in starts for the team. I don’t want to jinx it by talking about it, but, then again, I don’t really care.

Sony unveils TV the size of a school bus: Because we don’t have enough fucking screens in our lives, Sony decided to make one so big, you might actually get winded walking from one side to the other. This thing is 16k resolution, which is at least four times higher than any tv you’ve ever seen. It’s not clear if they’re planning to sell these but for now there’s one Japan.

Now listen here you $#!%: Chicago has a long history of punk and hard rock music, mostly coming out of the iconic Metro Theater where I saw my first concert without parents around. One of the most famous heavy metal bands to come out of that scene is Disturbed with an opening scream everyone had mimicked at some point in their lives. What a great way to start your morning!

Now presenting Slog AM’s newest Wednesday tradition: If you’re a longtime reader of Slog AM, you might even remember when it was just called the Morning News. Not the snappiest title but it evolved into what you see today under Nathalie Graham’s watch. If you were a reader back then, you’ll definitely remember the weekly mantra of “send me your breakfast.”

In that same tradition, I’m starting a new Wednesday segment called “show me your mugs” where you, the loyal readers of Slog AM, send in pictures of your favorite, goofiest, raunchiest, most artistic, biggest, smallest, or all-around newsworthy mugs and I’ll put them in Slog! To kick things off, I thought I would take you on a quick tour of Stranger staffers’ favorite mugs starting with yours truly:

How does Slog AM have such error-free copy? Well Nathalie edits it every morning, but also this mug is Slog AM's official copy editor.
How does Slog AM have such error-free copy? Well Nathalie edits it every morning, but also this mug is Slog AM’s official copy editor.
Ben Demar was very upfront about this being his teenage daughters mug. Great mug, I feel like a Hufflefuck every morning.
Ben Demar was very upfront about this being his teenage daughter’s mug. Great mug, I feel like a Hufflefuck every morning.
Getting out of bed is scary so every morning is Halloween with Julia Zelmans mug.
Getting out of bed is scary so every morning is Halloween with Julia Zelman’s mug.
Kim Selling is really committing to the new Ugly Pet issue.
Kim Selling is really committing to the new Ugly Pet issue.
Some advice we can all live by from Evanne Hall.
Some advice we can all live by from Evanne Hall.
Nathalie Graham worked at the Cinerama for two years but didnt get this mug until arts writer Jasmyne Keimig gave it to her. Way to stay on brand!
Nathalie Graham worked at the Cinerama for two years but didn’t get this mug until arts writer Jasmyne Keimig gave it to her. Way to stay on brand!

Tonight’s best Seattle entertainment options include: The first dance in a series of social justice-related performances at the Wokeness Festival, a talk on Viking Warrior Women, and a solo show with La Luz frontwoman Shana Cleveland.

Timothy Kenney is a former Slog AM intern. He's written for multiple Seattle outlets, helped CNN cover a mudslide in Sierra Leone, and almost threw up on James Franco once.