Its going to be a big week for Rep Jayapal.
It's going to be a big week for Rep Jayapal. Drew Angerer / Getty Staff

Our long national nightmare of infrastructure week is over. At last, Congress has approved an infrastructure bill, a colossal investment in various federal structures and facilities. The largest chunk of funding will go to roads and bridges — yes, that will probably mean expanding highways, a major driver of climate change. Washington will get $4.7 billion for highways and only $1.8 billion for public transportation. What’s next? Well, this week Rep. Pramila Jayapal is expected to take a lead role in pushing the Build Back Better Act, a followup bill that (if passed) will invest primarily in services for families, mitigating climate change, and providing health coverage.

Dan Strauss wants encampment trash pickups to stop. The City Councilmember has asked a volunteer group called “We Heart Seattle” to stop going into encampments and cleaning up trash — volunteers are not trained in procedures to handle potentially hazardous substances, Strauss says, and the efforts could “cause confusion” when trying to connect residents with services. The concern seems legitimate — what a nightmare it would be if someone got hurt, or worse, during one of these operations, and just imagine if some other truly hostile group of “volunteers” took a less gentle approach to “cleaning up” encampments. But whatever the city’s doing now isn’t working, and that isn’t likely to change since we’ve just elected a mayor committed to doing more of the same.

Just imagine the size of the veterinarian who gave him the shot. Big Bird tweeted this weekend that he got vaccinated. Well, good for him! (Sidenote, birds should be the only ones allowed to use Twitter.) Anyway, because we are in a nightmare timeline, conservatives are now attacking Big Bird 
 like they’ve been doing for literally decades. Come on guys, he’s only six years old.

Eight dead, hundreds injured at a Houston concert. The exact details are still a bit nebulous, but this weekend a crowd of 50,000 pressed so hard against the stage at Astroworld, a Houston music festival, that multiple people were killed. One possible factor may have been an insufficient security presence — a byproduct of staffing shortages, says event safety expert Steven Adelman (who was not involved with the Houston event).

A major fire in Auburn. No serious injuries or deaths reported, but around 100 people have lost their homes after a fire tore through the River Crest Apartments.

Southwest Airlines falsely reported a mom for “trafficking” her biracial daughter. Mary MacCarthy was flying to her brother’s funeral with her daughter when a Southwest Airlines flight attendant reported her for suspected human trafficking. Why would they do that? MacCarthy’s lawyer has a theory: “Had this been a White child, there would not have been a raised eyebrow,” he says.

Honk honk, abortion. There was an absolutely incredible segment on SNL’s Weekend Update this week, with Cecily Strong playing a clown who’s here to talk about abourtion. In addition to being an amazing sketch, it’s worth noting that in real life, Strong worked at a Planned Parenthood in Chicago.

Lol, “contact law enforcement.” Here’s a story of a guy who got his stolen bike back thanks to a cheap wireless tracker. Ballard’s Mike Taylor used an AirTag to track down his bike thief; he called police to let them know he’d found his stolen property, but they didn’t do anything so after a few hours he just went and grabbed it himself. Kind of a risky move! Cops said he shouldn’t have taken matters into his own hands, and should have just called them
 which he did, and they didn’t respond. I mean, of course they didn’t — cops never respond to stolen bike reports. You’re lucky if you get a “damn, that’s crazy.”

Joe Biden farts. I’m only including this item here because if I don’t, I know that someone will tweet at me “hey did you hear about this” and I want this to be the last time I ever have to think about this extremely dumb story: “Camilla Parker Bowles ‘hasn’t stopped talking about’ the 78-year-old’s ‘long fart,’ it has been reported.” The incident occurred at the COP26 summit, where world leaders gathered to (ostensibly) review the various ways in which the world is about to end, and the things they could but won’t do to prevent it.

The Four Seasons Total Documentary is so good. It aired on MSNBC last night, and it’s just an absolute ball. Some of the most fantastic befuddlement ever captured on film, and also a lot of toxic delusion. What could be more American?

Elon Musk may sell a bunch of his Tesla stock. Why might he do something like that? To avoid paying taxes, of course.

To enter cyberspace, you must first enter meatspace. Facebook, or Meta, or whatever they’re calling it now, is expected to open physical stores where you’ll be able to try out metaversey gear like VR headsets and glasses. I like the dumb irony of having to go to a place in person in order to access a virtual space — hey remember cybercafes? — but the truth of the whole metaverse phenomenon is that the term is kind of meaningless right now because nobody can really agree on what it means, aside from this one eight-year-old Roblox player.

Take a moment to remember Wunda Wunda. The character, played by Ruth Prins, hosted a Seattle children’s show in the 50s through the 70s. Prins, who was also a preschool teacher, passed away this week at age 101.