A special friendship between two terrible people!! Credit: Dong-A Ilbo/Getty
A special friendship between two terrible people!!
A special friendship between two terrible people!! Dong-A Ilbo/Getty

Damning internal documents released by Boeing: This Seattle Times report is a doozy. And a must-read. After pressure, Boeing finally released hundreds of pages of internal messages related to the certification of the 737 MAX 8, the plane that would cause multiple fatal crashes. The documents show that Boeing wanted to do the bare minimum to help airlines train on the new plane, refusing to provide flight training simulators to airlines like Malaysia’s Lion Air Group, whose flight would end up crashing in Indonesia. This was one way to cut costs and cut corners. “There is absolutely no reason to require your pilots to require a MAX simulator to begin flying the MAX, ” one employee wrote.

No confidence in the plane: The bleakest part of these documents is how they reveal how Boeing employees saw the 737 MAX 8. One employee described it as a plane “designed by clowns.” One said that he wouldn’t put his family on the aircraft. Oh, and also how Boeing had the option to add software that would have fixed the glitch that allegedly caused the fatal crashes and the aerospace company chose not to because of costs.

Oh good: Washington State lawmakers are going to obey the Public Records Act this legislative session. Even though that seems like an obvious (and legal) thing to do, the legislature has been embroiled in a legal battle with 10 news organizations over its supposed exemption from the law. The Washington Supreme Court ruled recently that the lawmakers must obey the Public Records Act. This goes against their practice of withholding documents.

Post offices are closing their lobbies overnight: Post office lobbies used to be 24/7 across the board so that PO box users could come and go whenever they pleased. But 12 of 28 post offices across the Seattle area have decided to lock up at night because homeless people have been sleeping in their lobbies.

Robotic pizza-making start-up closes Seattle office: Zume is a pizza robotics company. I have no idea what that means. I do know that it doesn’t seem to be working out for Zume, a company somehow valued at $2 billion as of last November. Zume is laying off half of its workforce—including the Seattle engineering office—and will be shifting away from pizza robotics and focusing on food packaging.

Snow today? Not really for the lowlands. If anything falls here, it will turn to slush or won’t even stick. Areas north of Seattle are seeing some flakes. But, boy, look at what’s going on in the mountains:

Looking forward: Here’s the weeklong snow forecast.

Families of Seattle crane-collapse victims sue: The families of Sarah Wong, 19, and Alan Justad, 71, have filed wrongful death lawsuits in King County Superior Court. Their family members were killed in April when a tower crane that was being disassembled fell across traffic. The two families are seeking unspecified damages.

Hacking the US election will be a thing again: While American defenses against hackers have gotten better since the 2016 election, so have the hackers. The first time around, hackers could be sloppy, since they were catching America off guard. Now, not so much. But, even while defenses have improved, America is still vulnerable; campaigns haven’t taken up pricey cybersecurity defenses across the board, and the American public is fucking dumb and can’t discern between what is fake and what is not fake news.

This is comedic genius:

Meghan Markle has left the UK: The Duchess of Sussex has hightailed it out of her majesty’s stomping grounds after she and her husband, Prince Harry, announced they would be essentially leaving the royal family. She’s now in Canada. Which, I guess, is still technically the Queen’s stomping grounds, but way more inconvenient to get to. Harry has stayed behind to host the draw for the Rugby League World Cup 2021 next week.

In other news: British lawmakers reached a consensus and voted to approve Brexit legislation. The UK will be exiting the European Union at the end of the month.

Oregon man really good at multitasking: He made a series of loud outbursts in a restaurant and then began masturbating. He fought off cops when they arrived, while still masturbating, and it took 15 police officers to detain him and get him to stop rubbing one out.

Some perspective for the climate-change skeptics in our midst: This is a handy tool to wield whenever someone talks about how cold it is and thus how climate change can’t be real.

Headline of the week: Missouri lawmaker introduces ‘My smoking hot wife’ to legislature.

Authors offer money for White House press briefing: Stephen King and Dan Winslow will each donate $100,000 to charity if the White House press secretary holds a one-hour press conference. Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham has not held a press briefing in more than 300 days.

Trump asked South Korea to wish Kim Jong-un a happy birthday on his behalf: President Donald Trump visited briefly with South Korea’s director of the National Security Office. In the meeting, he asked the director to tell South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, to wish Kim Jong-un a happy birthday from Trump. Apparently, Kim Jong-un had sent Trump a birthday card last year.

Things I will be reading: This deep dive into the secret life of one of New York’s top real-estate moguls.

A fun fact for your Friday: Giving dolphins LSD will not help them communicate with humans. Scientists tried it.

This weekend’s best entertainment options in Seattle are: A David Bowie Birthday Bash with BowieVision and SOS, an anniversary party for Cloudburst Brewing, and a night of comedy with Patton Oswalt. See more on our EverOut Things To Do calendar.

Nathalie Graham covers anything she finds fun, weird, or interesting. You can find a lot of that in her column, Play Date. Her work has also appeared around town in The Seattle Times, GeekWire, and the...