Is this too big, Charles?
Is this too big, Charles? Getty Images/PeskyMonkey

The Great Seattle Umbrella Debate: It's back. Sunday, CNBC published an article, What to do in Seattle if you’re there on a business trip, that warned: "You won’t see many locals carrying umbrellas. To blend in, pack a rain jacket, a cap and wear water resistant shoes." Does this advice hold water anymore? Has it ever been true? What about Amazon, with their massive sidewalk-occupying orange umbrellas? Today, Geekwire wrote about how Amazon's big umbrellas have reignited a "stormy debate" about Seattle culture. Let's vote in a poll at the bottom of this prestigious evening news round-up.

Things are heating up outside of Showgirls: Incredible video taken today from inside the office of HistoryLink.org, according to the original poster.

Cement truck on fire in front of Pike Place Market from r/SeattleWA

The three-day strike at Swedish has started: Organizers say this is the largest strike of its kind in recent memory, with thousands of Swedish caregivers forming picket lines at seven campuses across the Puget Sound region. "The union has been negotiating with Swedish for 10 months now without reaching an agreement," writes The Stranger's Rich Smith, who visited one of the picket lines this morning. "Staffing and wage increases, which caregivers see as intimately connected, are still the major sticking points."

Libraries are having a renaissance according to Mic. I'm not sure I quite buy their thesis, but "a new Gallup poll found that people spent much more of their free time at the library last year than they did going to the movies, sporting events, live music or museums." It's probably just because we're poor.

The NFL got hacked: We're less than a week away from the Super Bowl (it's on Sunday), and "the NFL is dealing with a breach that saw the Twitter accounts for nearly half of the league's teams get hacked," reports CNN. OurMine, a hacker group that has previously attacked HBO and the New York Times, took responsibility for the attack, tweeting: "Hi, we're back (OurMine). We are here to show people that everything is hackable." Lol. Hack me, daddy.

The Center for Whale Research is worried that another southern resident orca is dead. “He was the first animal I could ever easily identify, the first I photographed. To think of being on the west side of San Juan Island and we will see L pod go by and he won’t be there? That is a seismic shift," said one whale watcher. "I’m not buying it," said another. “He may have wandered off to do his own thing, and will come back. I am totally just not giving up.”

Paging Dan Savage: These priests need to be put on blast.

How's that old impeachment trial going over in the Senate? Today, the President's impeachment defense concluded and Republicans are debating whether to call new witnesses. The New York Times reports that in a private meeting, McConnell "warned that allowing witnesses would blow the trial wide open and potentially prolong it by weeks." John Bolton, who upended the trial this week by claiming in an unpublished manuscript that Trump "tied the release of military aid to Ukraine to investigations into his political rivals... has made clear he would testify if called," writes the Times. It is still a "virtual impossibility" that the Republican-controlled Senate would convict Trump and remove him from office, leading many Republicans to want to avoid prolonging the process. Meanwhile, the President:

Morbid: Pour one out for the Challenger.

It's 19-cent burger week at Dick's Drive-in: Here's how it breaks down at their locations, per the Facebook event. They're 19 cents at the Capitol Hill location today, FYI:

Over a special three day period we're rolling back prices for cheeseburgers & hamburgers at select locations! Tag a friend & don't miss your local Drive-In's 19¢ day!

Tuesday, January 28th - Broadway & Wallingford
Wednesday, January 29th - Lake City, Holman Road & Queen Anne
Thursday, January 30th - Edmonds & Kent

Don't forget 19¢ hamburgers & cheeseburgers are exclusively available at the specific Drive-In on the specific promotion day.

The Stranger's Lester Black was on TV again: This time talking with New Day Northwest's Margaret Larson about what we should do about I-5. "For years, many thought Seattle traffic couldn't function without the Alaskan Way viaduct, but here we are in 2020 with the viaduct now completely gone," writes New Day Northwest's Joseph Suttner. "From one aging piece of infrastructure to another, some are turning their focus to Interstate-5 in downtown Seattle."

A 7.7 earthquake has rocked the Caribbean: The quake struck off the coast of Jamaica and could be felt all the way in Miami. There have been aftershocks, but they appear to be decreasing in intensity. A tiny tsunami (0.4 feet) was recorded in the Cayman Islands. More from CNN:

The earthquake appears to have been a "strike-slip earthquake," in which tectonic plates slide against each other. This limits the threat of a devastating tsunami, which are more associated with "thrust earthquakes," where a portion of the earth is thrust upward and causes the water to push up and outward, creating the tsunami.

Fly to China while you can: Or don't, you might not be able to come back. United has already canceled some China flights, but suspending all flights between the US and China would have huge consequences.


There's a lot of bad things going on in the world right now: but at least you're not this car.