Dianne Feinstein is dead: The 90-year-old trailblazing California senator died. No, no, contrary to popular belief she wasn't already dead. Shockingly, Feinstein, who suffered a myriad of health issues in the last year, including shingles and encephalitis, didn't plan on retiring until her term ended in 2024. Seems like the universe thought it was time for some fresh blood.

Anyway, some things about Feinstein's legacy: She spent more than 30 years in the Senate and was California's longest serving senator; she was San Francisco's first female mayor; she found Harvey Milk's dead body after his assassination (though the two did not get along); she sponsored bills that banned assault weapons, protected millions of acres of desert land, and reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act, which created a nationwide AMBER alert network. Gov. Gavin Newsom will appoint her successor. With any luck, that person won't be someone who was alive during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency, isn't a fucking centrist representing progressive California, and won't cling to power far past the time when their cognitive abilities decline.  

Speaking of Gavin Newsom: The California governor signed a new bill into law that will make the minimum wage for Californian fast food workers $20. This is a huge win for workers and labor unions. As Newsom said, this is "an opportunity" to reward workers and "stabilize an industry." The law also establishes "a Fast Food Council that has the power to increase that wage each year through 2029 by 3.5%." The law applies to workers in restaurants with 60 locations nationwide, but weirdly it doesn't include "restaurants that make and sell their own bread, like Panera Bread." 

Landlords lose in court: Early in the pandemic, Washington landlords were all up in arms because Gov. Jay Inslee's eviction moratorium prevented them from kicking people out of their homes easily. Nine months into the moratorium, a group of Centralia landlords sued Inslee and Washington, "arguing the moratorium violated their property rights and exceeded the governor’s emergency powers," according to the Seattle Times. The Washington State Supreme Court determined in a 5-4 ruling Thursday the eviction moratorium "was legal and allowed." Chief Justice Steven González punctuated his position with the fact that "up to 790,000 people in Washington would have been evicted from their homes during the pandemic." 

You think it's been soggy in Seattle? Well, get off your high horse—it's flooding in New York. The Big Apple is under a flash flood warning as one to two inches of rain is expected to fall per hour until Friday evening. Every day we live we get closer to fully living out the plot to 2004's The Day After Tomorrow. By 2050, that movie will be reclassified as a documentary. 

Bad cop is off the streets but still cashing checks: Daniel Auderer, the Seattle Police Department officer who joked about a woman that a fellow officer hit and killed, has been removed from the streets and placed in "a non-operational position," whatever that means. Auderer is also the current vice president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild. 

Hammer-wielder attacks two at Beacon Hill light rail station: A man wielding a red hammer wailed on two people, a 63-year-old woman and a 60-year-old man, at the Beacon Hill light rail station. They were both hit in the head and taken to Harborview Medical Center. They are currently in satisfactory condition. The suspect is still at large. 

Okay, go off Harry the Husky: The University of Washington mascot participated in a pop-up activity in Red Square that's sent conservatives into a bit of a tizzy. Harry the Husky threw darts at a board plastered with conservative Supreme Court justices' faces on it. Good for you, Harry the Husky. Good for you. Be fucking boundless. 

Abortion clinic firebug gets five years: Lorna Roxanne Green, a college student who set fire to Wyoming's only full-service abortion clinic before it opened, will spend five years in prison and another three years on probation, according to her sentencing. Green broke into the building, poured gasoline around the inside, and lit it on fire. The damage cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and delayed the facility opening for almost a year. Green said she opposed abortion. 

McCarthy is still useless: The government is headed toward a shutdown. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy can't get the hard-right faction of his party to toe the line despite kowtowing to them constantly. McCarthy will go through the motions of proposing and voting on a short-term funding plan despite knowing he doesn't have the votes to pass it. The core of this issue—which will likely send the government into a shutdown—is a faction within the Republican party that is not interested in compromise, or, in other words, politics. Their goals, regardless of the lives they impact, are to "slash spending and remake the US government, which they view with growing enmity and criticize as 'woke and weaponized,'" according to the Associated Press. We are so fucked. 

Redmond neighborhood locked down: The suspect who shot a 50-year-old man in a Redmond neighborhood Thursday night at 9:20 pm fled into a nearby wooded area and is still at large. The police are searching for him but have told residents nearby where the shooting occurred (the 8600 block of Avondale Road Northeast) to stay indoors. 

Welcome to the dystopia: The food delivery robots are snitching to the cops. In Los Angeles, Uber's food delivery robots, which are run by Serve Robotics, sent videos of a crime they recorded to the police department. Those idiot robots bumbling along sidewalks and delivering your food are not your friends. They are constantly filming, and they will rat you out in court, where their footage can be used as evidence. 

This country has really gone to the dogs: In America, a Philadelphia Phillies fan can't even bring his emotional support alligator named Wally into the stadium to watch a game against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Is there no such thing as personal freedom anymore? 

English teen arrested for felling iconic tree: Well, this is some creative vandalism. A 16-year-old boy was arrested for allegedly chopping down a sycamore tree that stood for nearly 200 years next to Hadrian's Wall. 

Happy Friday: For your Friday, here is a nice public relations disaster for you to chew on. Linda Yaccarino, Twitter/X's newly appointed CEO, spoke onstage at the Code Conference. It was a train wreck. She dismissed concerns about Twitter/X (rampant anti-Semitism, declining ad sales) and was clearly rattled by having to respond to accusations made by Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, who said Elon Musk put him in danger when Musk suggested in a tweet that Roth sexualized children. There's so much. Watch the video if you want to cringe. And, while you watch, remember that Twitter X fired its internal communications team last year: