Three dead, three crashes.
Three dead, three crashes. kali9 / GETTY

Three people dead in I-5 hit and run: At 2:15 a.m, there was a triple crash on the southbound I-5 near Lakewood. A 23-year-old man crashed into a Honda CRV and fled. The three people in the CRV died on the scene. The suspect has been arrested. He had no driver’s license and is suspected of being under the influence. Two more crashes resulted from the initial crash. Crews are working to investigate and clean up the scene. Expect lane closures to extend far into morning commutes this morning.

Have we been contacted? There was a mysterious boom and flashes of light in the sky reported near Gig Harbor just before 8pm last night. Some people said their homes shook. It wasn’t the weather, and there wasn’t an earthquake. The Federal Aviation Administration and Western Air Defense sector didn’t report any issues either. So, glitch in the simulation? Aliens?

Seattle appeals ruling on towing man’s truck: It was also his home. A Superior Court judge ruled that it couldn’t be towed and that towing it violated the state’s homestead act and the Eighth Amendment. The City of Seattle doesn’t think so, doesn’t want to set a precedent, and will be appealing the ruling.

Infowars sued by “Pepe the Frog” creator: All memes have an origin. Pepe the Frog, a cartoon drawing of a frog, had innocent beginnings. They were far from where Pepe finds himself now: the mascot of the alt-right. Pepe’s creator, Matt Furie, has consistently tried to rescue his character from the clutches of these hate groups to no avail. Now, Furie is suing Infowars for selling merchandise with Pepe on it. Alex Jones says the lawsuit is “frivolous.”

There is nowhere left to escape sexual misconduct: The chief of the U.S. Forest Service has resigned in the midst of investigations into allegations of sexual misconduct. Tony Tooke was at the helm of the agency for just six months. Allegedly, there is a culture of pervasive sexual harassment within the Forest Service. There were many complaints about Tooke. Not even nature is safe from male toxicity.

New online rape kit tracking in Washington: Soon, survivors of sexual assault will be able to track the status of their rape kits online. The system was created from legislation passed in 2015 to address a backlog of thousands of rape kits. It’s still in testing stages but will begin rolling out in mid-April. There will $1.5 million set aside in the supplemental budget over the next three years to address the rape kit backlog.

Resistance to trans-mountain pipeline extension begins: The $7.4 billion Kinder Morgan tar-sands oil-pipeline expansion would put 700 miles of pipeline through Canada. It would extend from Alberta to Burnaby, British Columbia and would triple the amount of oil transported from inland Canada to the coast. Thousands of protesters are planning a demonstration in Vancouver, B.C. on Saturday. It’s going to be like Standing Rock except this time the opposition has the support of local government. The province of British Columbia as well as the city leaders in Vancouver, Burnaby, and Victoria all oppose the pipeline. Nearly 7,000 Coast Salish Water Protectors have said they’ll be participating in the Vancouver protest.

Cool voter registration news!

List to Blabbermouth podcast! Texas, Tears, and Trump-Voter Makeovers

Women strike in Spain, shut down 300 trains: ¡Feliz Día Internacional de la Mujer! Women workers in Spain celebrated International Women’s Day with an unprecedented strike. The demonstration halted work to symbolically oppose gender inequality and sexual discrimination in the country. The slogan of the strike was “if we stop, the world stops.” Three hundred trains throughout Spain have stopped running due to the strike. Women in Spain are paid 13 to 19 percent less than their male counterparts. Is this more impactful than McDonald’s flipping its arches upside down to “W” for “women?” Who can really say.

Here’s a list of ways you can celebrate women today: Happy International Women’s Day in Seattle.

It sucks to live on the East Coast: The right coast is getting battered with a winter storm. It dumped nearly two feet of snow and has left millions from Maryland to Maine without power. That sucks! Here’s a video of the Northeastern Women’s Basketball team pushing their bus in the snow.

Senate hasn’t voted on gun control bill yet: Maybe that’s because they’re in the NRA’s pocket. The bill would raise the minimum age for purchasing semiautomatic rifles from 18 to 21. It would also enhance background check requirements for purchases of assault-style weapons. Here’s a list The Stranger compiled of the state senators who have received money from the NRA.

Jewish Disneyland planned in Israel: What Disneyland needs is a fresh, Old Testament makeover. Or, at least, that’s what American company ITEC Entertainment wants for its next theme park. Notorious anti-Semite Walt Disney is probably rolling in his grave. The park will be built with Jewish values and two rabbis are helping with the planning process. It will be based in Dimona, a city struggling economically. Dimona is also home to Israel’s nuclear reactor. Sixteen Jewish-themed rides will be built. Instead of Splash Mountain can we expect to see Splash Mount Sinai?

An update from my alley:

There was a lone abandoned glove. Nearby, a discarded, upturned blue construction hard hat. The inside frame was detached and lay a considerable distance away. The ground was freshly wet with rain.

Something happened here. I pictured potential scenarios: A construction worker fired from one of the numerous sites nearby, upset, chucking his hard hat. It was something I’m sure he wore with pride everyday. I bet he’d dreamed of the day he could dawn a construction hard hat, just like his dad. His dad had a yellow one. The blue was disappointing at first but he supposed he could only walk in his dad’s footsteps for so long. He had commuted two hours in the still-dark early morning every day to make it to the site by 6 a.m. He’d stopped kissing his wife goodbye before he left; she needed what little sleep she could get while the kids weren’t awake. When he got home he was tired, grumpy usually, but the cash was good and the work was worthwhile. His wife kissed his cheek when she placed a plate of reheated dinner in front of him.

They’d told him it wasn’t personal, it wasn’t because of the quality of his work or anything like that, they simply didn’t need him anymore. His knuckles whitened around his tool belt, he felt the anger surging through his veins. Seattle development is declining at the fastest rate in 12 years, they’d told him, it’s not you, it’s just the end of the boom. It’s all relative, you know? Most of the projects underway are wrapping up. There’s no need for you anymore. Then they shrugged and handed him his last check.

He hurled his blue helmet against the asphalt. The Seattle rain wet his hair for the first time.

Tonight’s best Seattle entertainment options include: The International Women’s Day Pub Crawl (whose proceeds support Northwest Abortion Access Fund and NARAL Pro-Choice Washington Foundation), a video game-inspired cabaret performance in Ms. Pak-Man: Out of Order, and local choreographer Kim Lusk’s debut full-length piece, A Dance for Dark Horses.

Nathalie Graham covers anything she finds fun, weird, or interesting. You can find a lot of that in her column, Play Date. Her work has also appeared around town in The Seattle Times, GeekWire, and the...