DId you change up your commute? Good. Stick to it or else. Credit: Aaron Eakin/Getty Images
DId you change up your commute? Good. Stick to it or else.
Did you change up your commute? Good. Stick to it, or else. Aaron Eakin/Getty Images

King County now has more than 500,000 foreign-born residents: According to Seattle Times FYI Guy Gene Balk, with King County placing third for highest immigrant population growth since the start of the decade. More than half of King County immigrants are of Asian descent, with the vast majority coming from India, China, Vietnam, and the Philippines. One in every four King County residents in now foreign-born; it’s even higher in cities like Bellevue and Redmond, where up to 40 percent of people are immigrants. Don’t tell the White House, though, or they’ll try extending the wall all the way up the West Coast.

And the crowd goes mild: The Seattle Squeeze didn’t exactly start with a bang, but you better believe it’s coming. A combination of people choosing to work from home yesterday and taking early/late buses helped spread congestion out, but that can’t last forever. It’s like any New Year’s resolution—how long can people stick to a plan? As more people stop working remotely or opt out of public transportation, traffic will get a whole lot worse. So stay woke, my friends, just like Crosscut’s David Kroman asking all the right questions.

In some uplifting education news: Governor Jay Inslee wants to beef up financial aid with $103 million in additional funding. The State Need Grant will transform into the Washington College Promise Scholarship and will guarantee financial help to all students whose families make less than $61,500 a year. You can still get federal financial aid on top of this scholarship and use the money for most two-year and four-year colleges. Don’t leave money on the table, people!

Enjoy the sun: Because you won’t see it again until May. Probably. I don’t know. I do know that the clouds are rolling back in tomorrow, so soak up that vitamin D today.

You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take: The coin flip kid at the Australian Open yesterday saw his opportunity and he fucking took it. I think he had just seen that episode of The Office where Michael is practicing his wave and goes for the full twirl. (If you don’t get that reference then we probably won’t get along).

More than 5,000 soldiers are just kind of hanging at the border: And according to the Pentagon, they’ll stay there through the end of September. You remember when Trump sent all those troops to the border last November to stop the caravan? And they all missed Thanksgiving for some pointless political exercise? Yeah, that’s going to continue for the next nine months.

Ebola cases reach 600 in second largest outbreak ever: The Democratic Republic of Congo in Central Africa is struggling to stop the outbreak, which has infected at least 600 people and killed at least 350. Ebola in the DRC is not new, in fact the virus is named after the the Ebola River in the country where western scientists first discovered it, but this outbreak is uniquely challenging. For one, it’s in an active conflict zone, so health workers and foreign aid can’t move freely throughout the affected areas. But we now have a Ebola vaccine, and almost 60,000 Congolese have been vaccinated since the outbreak started in August.

Close your eyes: Go back to a time when life still made sense and the world wasn’t an on-fire garbage can. If we go back exactly 10 years from today, you’ll see a plane floating down the Hudson River. One of the most heroic acts in commercial airline history celebrates its 10 year anniversary today and ABC has an interview with Captain Sully Sullenberger. But also shout-out to the copilot Jeff Skiles, you’re dope, too.

Trump’s pullout game is weak: The president announced we were pulling out of Syria, and then national security adviser John Bolton said ehhhh maybe not so much. Now the New York Times is reporting Trump is still trying to pull the United States out of NATO, which Russia has been trying to undermine for years. Trump’s been pretty silent on the subject lately, but he was privately complaining to his aides all of last year. Just so we’re all on the same page, pulling out of NATO would be a terrible idea.

Vape is life: A six-hour police standoff in the Bay Area ended after police delivered a vape pen to the suspect. Yeah, that’s right. I guess he knew he was headed to jail and might as well get arrested with a little head buzz going. The man allegedly poured gasoline all over a gas station convenience store and dropped a flaming piece of paper. He then led police on a high-speed chase to another gas station where the standoff ensued.

I went to Woodland Park Zoo for the first time ever and it was nuts! Check out these pictures I took.

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Tonight’s best Seattle entertainment options include: A live taping of the podcast Stuff You Should Know, an essay reading with Seattle metro bus driver and photographer Nathan Vass, and a concert with baroque revivalist and Bach expert Jeremy Denk.

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.