Temperatures are below average for this time of the year, reports Seattle Times. This makes perfect sense because we live in extreme times. It's either too warm or too cold. We're always breaking records because the old weather, the more human weather, is leaving us gone for good. Such is life in the anti-human Capitalocene. And what connects the changing climate with capitalism is this negativity to all that is naturally human. As the economist Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky pointed out over a century ago, the kind of economy we wake up in, live in, and are bound to die in is not about people. It's about machines. In this fact, we find the kind of anxiety that informs many Hollywood science fiction films.    

Speaking of capitalism, the Japan Communist Party knows how to party. This kind of energy is important because socialism and communism can be so (too) serious. Is this not the lesson at the heart of the Wachowskis' The Matrix? The revolution is so drab: the food is grueling, the clothes are in tatters, rooms are dank. Not so in the simulation of a consumer society. The food is rich, the threads are stupid-fresh, and the pads are to die for. 

Even a little snow couldn't stop this sort of thing in Seattle:

And expect more of this sort of thing (car-vs-snow) tomorrow and this weekend:

I can report that Columbia City presently has no snow, is very cold, and its falling sun is still out and bright. Now back to the news.

If you happen to be thinking about it, KOMO has this story for you: "How to prepare financially for job loss."

Seattle's Red Robin? It's in some hot soup. (Sorry, I could not help myself, I just couldn't—in the words of the Human League, "I'm only human, born to make mistakes.") The fast-food company has "agreed to pay $400,000 to 343 employees for alleged violations of secure scheduling and wage theft laws at its Northgate restaurant." According to the Seattle Office of Labor Standards, these violations allegedly occurred "between Jan. 1, 2018, and Sept. 7, 2022." KIRO has the whole story here.

What is this?

It looks like a nail if you ask me.

Yes, it is a nail. But do you know what it's for?

No. Please tell me. Throw some light on a brother.

It's one more for Boeing's coffin. You dig?

No, I do not.

To get up on things, read this post in Puget Sound Business Journal: "China’s rival to Boeing and Airbus cleared for mass production." 

Now I understand what's going on with this nail talk.

I knew you would.

Yeah, it's all right here:

The narrow-body aircraft China hopes will eventually break the duopoly enjoyed by the Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) and Airbus has been given the green light to begin mass production. 

According to a report from Reuters, China’s aviation regulator has awarded production certification to the new C919, the country’s homegrown passenger jet built by Commercial Aviation Corp. of China (COMAC).

What? Really? This is true? According to Science News, "Rats can bop their heads to the beat." The fact was discovered last month. Rats can feel it and express it "in time with the music of Mozart, Lady Gaga, Queen and others."

Science News:

“Some of us believe that music is very special to human culture. But I believe that its origin is somehow inherited from our progenitors,” says Hirokazu Takahashi, a mechanical engineer at the University of Tokyo, who studies how the brain works.

All of this brings up one of my favorite TV characters from the British television of my teen years (which were spent in Zimbabwe), Roland Rat Superstar. 

Are you looking for a job that pays real good? Well, the mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, is, according to ABC News, ready to pay $170,000 a year to a rat czar with "a virulent vehemence for vermin."

As for the rail labor agreement? Of course, the Senate rejected the legislation that included seven days of paid sick leave. Seven fucking days. America is the land of the lost.

Let's end PM with a tune produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, the Human League's "Human."