Let's ignore today's weather, which will experience a high of 74 and no clouds, no "merveilleux nuages." Let's instead look toward Saturday, which will be cool and cloudy. That said, here is the traffic report. Today, like yesterday, and the day before, there will be lots and lots of it. Expect misery especially on Denny Way, as every car a nightmare could ever produce tries to squeeze into I-5 all at once. As a consequence, expect the Metro's 8 bus to run way behind time. Tomorrow's traffic report will be exactly the same as today's.
The city doesn't want homeless people, and, according to an AP report posted in the Seattle Times, nor does the forest. The U.S. Forest Service will soon sweep "dozens of homeless people" out of "a federal forest in central Oregon." Now, we've heard a lot about how trees have something like a social network in the ground (mycorrhizal fungi connect their roots). Do these trees also have a kind of Safe Seattle? Do they drone on and on about how horrible the homeless are? When will someone do something? The forests are dying? But, seriously, what's wrong with people living with trees? Whose woods these are? They are everybody's. The homeless are not wanted inside or outside the city. These are the breaks.
For reasons that even baffle me, MyNorthwest, which usually sides with the rich on almost all issues, posted a story that discredits the idea that tax increases send those with more money than "a sucker could ever spend" packing. A study conducted by the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) determined that the “millionaire class” actually "grew by 38.6% in Massachusetts despite a wealth take and 46.9% in Washington despite a capital gains tax." Also, the wealth of these sky-high people "grew by more than $580 billion in current dollars in Massachusetts and $748 billion in Washington state between 2022 and 2024." In short, Jeff Bezos was all drama when he left our state for climate-prone Florida.
What is it that our governor has threatened to kill if it even shows its face in Washington's budget? A wealth tax that's "aimed at the state’s richest few thousand residents." Dems sometimes.
Speaking of class war, today is May Day. And if you have it in mind to let the man know that we are the people who rule the world, you can attend one or more of these events.
Speaking of May Day, what did the great Japanese Marxist Kozo Uno have to say about wages? They are not the same "as profit, rent, and interest." This is his Doctrine of Distribution, which gets to the core of the "capitalists-versus-workers relation." Wages do not accumulate like the forms of income enjoyed by capitalists.
Whenever I read about the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, which has been extended to Sunday, May 4 (it usually happens between April 1 to April 30), I instantly recall the world's first bubble, the Tulip Mania that gripped the Netherlands in 1637. This is the mother of the dot-com bubble, the housing bubble, and the present AI bubble. You can't have capitalism without booms and busts. The Tulip Mania crashed in February 1637. And all that remained was lots of unsold tulip bulbs and worthless paper.
Something else to worry about: an act of God. A study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on April 28, 2025, provides a grim picture of what the Big One will do to the Pacific Northwest when it hits (tomorrow? 100 years from now?). The quaking would be powerful enough to cause coastal areas to sink by as much as 6.5 feet. That's a lot. And it gets worse. This sinking, coupled with "climate-driven sea-level rise," would, in the worst scenario (high subsidence), increase the size of floodplains by 186 miles. The last Big One happened 425 years ago.
The oceans might turn purple in the future. It was, according to investigators at Nagoya University, green during the Archean Eon (4.0 to 2.5 billion years ago). It's presently blue due to the Great Oxidation Event caused by the first masters of photosynthesis, cyanobacteria (their relatives now hide in the leaves of plants—chloroplast). But our oceans could lose their present look because of "intense volcanic activity and low oxygen in the atmosphere." If that were to happen, if the oceans turned purple, then we would have to change the name of the one and only pale blue dot from Earth to Prince.
What's new on the President Trump Show? Dolls. Yes, dolls. (Nothing is safe in the age of MAGA, not even "America’s only metric highway"—kilometers are unAmerican or woke or something) Yesterday, Trump admitted that his tariffs will make consumer products more expensive and harder to find. But this would be a minor inconvenience. His excellence: "They made a trillion dollars with Biden selling us stuff. Much of it we don't need. Somebody said, 'oh, the shelves are gonna be open.' Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more." Dolls are for girls, anyway. This is what he's really saying. But what about a packet of Hot Wheels for boys? Would they also cost more? Or would the average American be reduced to two packs of toy cars instead of the usual 30? Come what may, you count on this: Wages falling as the cost of raising children skyrocket.
So, Trump is now attacking American materialism? Children and their parents have way too much stuff? It's time to cut back and be practical. Doesn't all of this sound a little like Jimmy Carter's 1979 "malaise speech"? The spiritual crisis in America; the "growing doubt about the meaning of our lives." Thirty dolls will not make you happy.
A good number of Israeli reservists, the BBC reports, have become war-exhausted. They now want Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to shut down the death-machine "and concentrate instead on reaching a deal to bring back the remaining 59 hostages being held by Hamas." Not one part of my life has ever seen peace in the Middle East.
How else can we end AM but with this song by Hole:
