What to do if you accidentally touch Rudy Giuliani
What to do if you accidentally touch Rudy Giuliani FatCamera / Getty Images

Rudy Giuliani has COVID. That’s according to Donald Trump, who revealed Giuliani’s test result on Twitter, a super normal thing to do. He’s been meeting frequently with Republican lawmakers over the last few days — in fact, the Arizona legislature will have to shut down for the next few days because Giuliani had so many unsafe interactions with lawmakers. At this point it kind of seems like Giuliani is having the most 2020 year of anyone on Earth.

California’s running out of hospital space. Stay-at-home orders went into effect last night as hospital capacity dropped under 15% in certain regions, and down to 6.6% in the San Joaquin Valley. Some businesses must remain closed; others can only allow in a small number of people at a time. Only essential travel is allowed. The orders will remain in effect for at least three weeks. We should be doing the same thing here.

Jenny Durkan wants to ban gas heat in new buildings. Seattle’s greenhouse emissions from buildings has risen by 8% from 2016 to 2018, and the mayor’s office wants new construction projects to use electric heat instead of gas. City Council will consider the proposal in the next few weeks.

Cars aren’t just deadly on land — they also kill millions of fish. A new study shows that a chemical in tires leaches out into roads, then gets washed into waterways where it kills up to 90% of salmon. In other words, all the time and money and resources that have been poured into habitat restoration is being sabotaged by motor vehicles.

You are here. The European Space Agency has released gorgeous new images of the galaxy, which includes around 300,000 stars as well as data that will allow astronomers to chart the movements of solar systems for over a million years into the future. Researchers also detected signs of "destructive processes" on the edge of our galaxy, which can't come soon enough as far as I'm concerned.

Historians are rallying to save a local archive that the Trump administration wants to close. The Federal Archives and Record Center is due to be shuttered and torn down — probably for condos. Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson says he’ll sue to stop the sale of the building, arguing that the federal government didn’t give proper notice to the public or consult with local tribes.

Free child care is still available to Seattle families this month. Funding has been cleared up for families who need child-care assistance — and the requirements are surprisingly generous. Even if you don’t think you’re eligible, officials are encouraging people who are interested in taking advantage of the program to call and inquire anyway. The program is estimated to save families over $700 per month.

The upcoming Monster Hunter movie has an inexplicable racist joke. What could anyone have been thinking??? The film, set to come out December 25, has a compltely stupid racist joke that references the childish “chi-knees japa-knees” rhyme. It’s an unbelievable choice, especially for a film based on a game franchise that is (well, was) wildly popular in Japan. It’s just so mind-bogglingly dumb — why be racist at all, especially for a “joke” that’s not even funny?

Microsoft plans to make more frequent changes to your computer. They’re rolling out this thing called “Windows Feature Experience Pack,” which is a bullshit name if I ever heard one, that will allow them to change how features operate on a regular basis instead of rolling changes into infrequent updates. For now, there are no plans to actually tell users what’s changing. You’ll just have to expect the unexpected, wheeeee!


New York firefighters say they’ll keep spreading COVID once a vaccine is available. A survey of the city’s 2,000 firefighters shows that more than half plan to skip the vaccine, even as infection rates have tripled among their ranks. The president of the union says that they probably don’t trust the vaccine, or believe they’ve already been infected.

A South Australia family found a koala living in their Christmas tree. Amanda McCormick came home to find the marsupial perched among the decorations — it probably climbed through a doggy door. A rescue group came and retrieved it, then released it immediately outside the family’s house, which I think is the funniest detail of the whole story.