This otter, famous for holding his sausage hostage, is dead. We miss him.
This otter, famous for holding his sausage hostage, is dead. We miss him. Nuno Valadas/Getty Images

If you had to hazard a guess, how many times do you think light rail escalators have broken this year? I'll give you a hint. The number is in the thousands. The amount of time they've remained broken is significantly higher. If you also have a sinking suspicion that the escalators were engineered with duct tape, glass, bird bones, and a lot of best guesses, then boy, do I have a story for you.

Seattle EMTs have called off their strike: The EMTs who work for American Medical Response only make a hair above minimum wage and many don't have great health benefits. The EMT's union has been trying negotiate a contract since January. A strike was planned for tomorrow but AMR has agreed to meet for further negotiations. That's happening tonight.

Masturbating and slam-dunking Oregon Zoo otter dies: Goodbye Eddie, you will be missed. The 21-year-old otter lived a long and full life, far-surpassing the life expectancy for male otters which is typically 15 years. Eddie is lost, but not forgotten. His legacy of shredding on the b-ball court and beating his meat in public will live on forever. I can only hope my obituary is this poignant.


(My favorite part of this video is when a woman in the background says, concerned, "maybe we should give him some privacy.)

Uncle Ike's says they found more contaminated pot: The weed retailer claims to have found three pesticide-ridden vape cartridges from Ionic that had over five times the legal limit of pesticides in them. Lester Black called around to find out where the tainted pot came from. No one seems to know. Or, at least, no one will fess up.

Mother Nature was angry this week: Pour one out for the poor sods who got their houses ripped up by a rare Washington tornado. Also the folks whose trees couldn't handle the wind. A tribute to their pain:





We're under a wind warning until 7 p.m. tonight in Seattle: The wind will hit up to 60 mph but is expected to die down. 160,000 Puget Sound Energy customers have lost power.

The GoFundMe for Trump's wall has raised nearly $7 million: Mexico isn't paying for the wall, but some dumb shits on the internet are!

Are we all going to die? The Defense Secretary Jim Mattis resigned. He said it was because he didn't agree with Trump's politics. Yesterday, Mattis attempted to stop Trump from withdrawing troops from Syria, something Putin called "the right decision." Never a good sign, that's for sure. Analysts, according to the New York Times, are saying this is a boon for ISIS.

Is this good? Is this bad?: The U.S. is now saying it's going to withdraw 7,000 troops from Afghanistan. That's about half the military presence that the U.S. has there currently. That means there will be more soldiers-coming-home videos. But also fewer U.S. troops to train and advise counterterrorist Afghan forces? I need someone to tell me the answer.

Headline of the week: Alabama police department blames Satan for spike in homicides

The French police are tired, might join in with protesters: They're being overworked and working overtime with all these yellow vest protests going on. French officials are meeting with police unions to work out a deal. The police have threatened to just quit and join the protests.