Slog AM: Japan Airways Aircraft Hits Delta Aircraft at SeaTac, DOGE Has Entry to NOAA’s Servers, Seattle’s Snow Is Nonetheless Disappointing Us 

I have to start the morning with Trump (I’ll later dig into Musk). At current, it is virtually unimaginable to maintain up together with his outrages, and, in some sense, that is spectacular. He’s not a younger man, however his willpower to ensure that “hell is empty” is, to say the least, Herculean.  He started the week by threatening essential buying and selling companions with tariffs that will tank the North American economic system briefly order; then he introduced a plan that will displace 2 million Palestinians and, within the course of, flip your entire US authorities right into a gargantuan gentrifier. I don’t know what this manic man will do immediately or tomorrow. However what I do know is that Trump isn’t doing his job, which is usually boring. He refuses to do the common, uninteresting, and technical stuff (the stuff that preoccupied Biden), as a result of, in fact, this is able to preserve him busy and out of the information.

Fox Information Be Like: “Precisely one week after a passenger aircraft and Military Black Hawk helicopter crashed midair close to D.C., killing 67, a Japan Airways aircraft and Delta Air Traces aircraft collided on the bottom in Seattle.” Rattling, Fox. You are feeling the end-timey fever too? Feeling “nearer to god in a good scenario”? We used to listen to nothing about airports for years and years, and now that the chief you relentlessly championed is gutting the federal government from prime to backside, the scales are falling out of your eyes? Nicely, the incident at SeaTac was nowhere close to as dramatic and lethal because the mid-air collision in D.C. This one occurred on the bottom. A wing hit a tail. Nobody was injured. In truth, a passenger informed KING 5 that it “felt like we had been in a automotive accident, like a fender bender.” This incident is less than Trump-snuff; it is not going to seem on his present.  

And it do not cease. The South African-born billionaire, Elon Musk (also called the ghost of Apartheid), is now going after, of all issues, the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the “federal company accountable for forecasting the climate.” Why? Musk’s newest and presumably strongest enterprise, the Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE), needs to search out and root out something to do with the satan known as DEI. In response to ABC Information, DOGE additionally has entry to NOAA’s servers (there is perhaps DEI within the machines). And it will get worse. DOGE despatched brokers to search for DEI-related “posters and indicators” in NOAA’s  loos.

It’s stunning to me that America was mainly purchased by a person from my a part of the world, Southern Africa. Certainly, he, like I, attended personal colleges, lived in “low density” neighborhoods, and had our beds made by servants. However he got here to America with goals that had been clearly a lot larger than mine. He grew to become the nation’s primary capitalist. And I grew to become a mere socialist author in Seattle.   

Not all white South Africans are evil:

Man from South Africa shares his ideas on Elon Musk and Trump. pic.twitter.com/h2CiWcosAs

— Boston Smalls (@smalls2672) February 5, 2025

Within the phrases of Tears for Fears, let’s “discuss concerning the climate.” There was some snow throughout that a part of the evening when one wakes up solely to comprehend {that a} dream revived the useless folks they had been speaking to solely a second in the past; however now (6:33 am) it is: “right here comes the rain once more.” The winter wonderland will principally be passed by dawn. All in all, snow has been underperforming this season. It isn’t just like the snow of outdated, the snow that knew bury us and convey the town to a week-long standstill. Certainly, the snowmen of this sorry season have a life expectancy that is dismal. It is a couple of hours or so.  

21,227 Western Washington households are rising from “the dominion of the fading apparition” to search out they’re with out energy. They can not recharge computer systems and telephones; they can not activate the range and brew a “cup of ambition.” So unhappy, so chilly. Additionally, the Washington State Division of Transportation studies that “vehicles [are] sliding and changing into caught on the roads.” 

KIRO studies that the SPD has two deadly hit-and-runs on its arms. The primary one occurred on February 1 in Ballard and concerned a pickup truck and a pedestrian. The collision introduced the lifetime of a 39-year-old man to an finish. The opposite hit-and-run additionally occurred on February 1, however this time in Bitter Lake. A 42-year-old man was struck and killed by what witnesses described as a really quick automotive. However let’s transfer on. This form of factor is permitted in our society. Vehicles hitting pedestrians would not generate the type of hysteria that petty theft does. And that is to be anticipated. We reside in a tradition that is socially engineered to worship the automotive.

Let’s take pleasure in for a second the opening sentence to a narrative on MyNorthwest: “The saga of two donkeys who had been reportedly stolen from a property in Bellevue continues.” Let’s depart it at that. True, I’ve quite a lot of literary tips in my bag, however none can surpass the originality of that sentence. My tips are humbled.

How we could finish? With a observe that can be featured within the “Transient Historical past of Want, Lust, and Longing in Rap” present on the Clock-Out Lounge on Tuesday, February 11.