Now who's Soccer City USA? Eat your heart out, Portland. The 2026 World Cup is coming to North America, and Seattle will officially host six games at Lumen Field. We'll get four group stage matches in June, including one game featuring the US Men's National Team. Then, in July, Lumen will see two knockout matches. The 2026 games will be split between the US, Mexico, and Canada. Both Mexico and Canada will host 10 games a piece while the US hosts 60 games. The final match? That'll be held in New Jersey. Sorry in advance to the global soccer fans who will have to be subjected to New Jersey. 

More bad news for Boeing: The airplane manufacturer is hitting pause on delivering more 737 fuselages after discovering improperly drilled holes on around 50 planes. Spirit AeroSystems, one of Boeing's major suppliers of fuselages, made the discovery. I don't know much about airplanes, but I do know that I would like my plane to have properly drilled holes and doors that don't fly off. 

Bellevue man had Cold War-era rocket: This guy inherited an AIR-2A Genie rocket from his neighbor when his neighbor died. Not knowing what to do with an air-to-air rocket, the guy called the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio to donate it to them. The museum called the Bellevue police. When the cops showed up, they sent a bomb squad. Turns out the rocket was empty—no nuclear warhead, no fuel. The most surprising thing to me about this story is this guy was good enough friends with his neighbor that his neighbor left him a defunct rocket in his will. 

The light rail returns to normal: After three weeks of delays, closures, and overall general annoyances, Seattle's light rail service returned to normal on Monday. That means trains will arrive every 10 minutes now as opposed to the targeted-but-often-longer 26 minutes during the delayed service. Just so we're clear, 10 minutes is still too long for a reliable, frequent transportation system, but it's better than what transit riders just suffered through for nearly a month. 

A little Harrell Administration update: Former State Rep. and current Seattle Office of Intergovernmental Affairs Director Gael Tarleton will retire at the conclusion of this year's session in Olympia. 

Grammy things: At Sunday night's Grammy Awards, Taylor Swift won her fourth album of the year award, and then she announced she's already coming out with a new album called The Tortured Poet's Department. The name seems like it was ripped from a 2014-era Tumblr post. While accepting the Dr. Dre global impact award, Jay-Z roasted the Recording Academy for snubbing Beyoncé and never awarding her the album of the year award. Joni Mitchell, 80, performed at the Grammys for the first time. The Los Angeles Police Department arrested Rapper Killer Mike for "a physical altercation" and booked him for "misdemeanor battery" after he won three Grammys. 

Speaking of Swift: Forget her musical accolades and her once-in-a-lifetime celebrity, Taylor Swift is the queen of jet fuel, of guiltlessly spewing emissions into the atmosphere. If Swift attend's beau Travis Kelce's big football game this week, she'll fly 19,400 miles from Tokyo to Baltimore and emit more than 200,000 pounds of carbon dioxide—14 times as much as the average American household emits in a year—in the process. Keep that in mind if they show her on the big screen at the big game.  

Some performances of note: Miley Cyrus performed her song "Flowers," which won her a Grammy for record of the year. Tracy Chapman joined Luke Combs to perform her song "Fast Car." 

Layoffs at Snap: Yes, Snapchat somehow still exists. On Monday, parent company Snap announced layoffs of 10% of its global workforce. That's about 550 employees of the 5,367 at the company as of late 2023. 

The real work/life balance: Hey cubicle cogs and worker bees, sitting all day while working will increase your risk of death by 16%. Not only that, but for all-day sitters, the risk for cardiovascular disease is 34% higher than non-all-day sitters. Sign off of Slack for a bit to move your weary bones. At least make your company pay for a standing desk. Your life could depend on it! 

LA is the new Seattle: Sorry to my weather-averse friends and family still rotting in Southern California, but you cannot escape the clouds in an El Niño year. A second atmospheric river in a week is battering and flooding the Golden State. Meanwhile, things have been pretty dry up here in the Emerald City. We'll get some rain Monday, a pause Tuesday, and more to come midweek. It will all pale in comparison to the buckets falling on Los Angeles County right now. 

The memory card at the center of an Alaska murder trial: In 2019, a woman stole a memory card from a man's truck. On it were gruesome images and videos of a woman's death. In one of the videos, a heavily-accented voice says, “In my movies, everybody always dies... What are my followers going to think of me? People need to know when they are being serial-killed.” South African native Brian Steven Smith, 52, is now on trial for the murders of two Indigenous Alaskan women and the memory card is at the center of it. 

In happy dog news: While randomly checking shipping containers at a port, Texas marine inspectors heard barking and scratching. In a container 25 feet in the air, they found a dog who hadn't had food or water in around eight days. Given the junked vehicles in the container, the inspectors assume she was inside a car at a junkyard and accidentally got trapped in the shipping container. They've named her Connie the Container Dog. She's now up for adoption at Forever Changed Animal Rescue.  

A long-ish read for your Monday: Check out this Seattle Times article for a deep dive on Seattle-area startup Convoy's explosive demise and how the collapse impacted the small business-owning truckers the company built its business model off of. 

Sauna saves car crash victims: A car crashed into a Norwegian fjord near Oslo. A passing floating sauna headed toward the car and rescued its occupants, who were sitting on the sinking car's roof. The operator and two towel-clad floating sauna guests pulled them to safety. Then, they warmed up in the sauna. Ah, Norway.Â