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Six figures for the cops? According to PubliCola, the tentative Seattle Police Officers’ Guild (SPOG) contract “includes retroactive wage increases for the past three years that add up to a 23 percent pay increase.” That raise would vault brand new cops’ base salary before overtime from $83,000 to nearly $103,000. This pay will come out of the City’s already-in-the-red budget. The tentative SPOG contract also reportedly omits “many” of the accountability measures included in the contract the city council worked on with the Seattle Police Managers Association contract. 

Earthquake hits Taiwan: An earthquake between 7.2 and 7.4 magnitude depending on which measuring system you believe rocked Taiwan just before 8 am, killing nine people, injuring over 900, and trapping over 70 workers in two rock quarries. It was the strongest quake to hit Taiwan in 25 years. 

No place for asylum seekers: In King County, asylum seekers have no place to stay. Forbidden to work until the government grants them asylum in a months-long process, asylum seekers can’t pay for housing. For months, Tukwila’s Riverton Park United Methodist Church has housed people—over 1,000 have registered there since last year—but now they’re having to turn people away since there’s no space. Around 300 people are staying there currently. Elsewhere in King County, people staying in donation-funded rentals and rooms in the Kent Quality Inn face uncertainty as those donations run out. Where will they go? Some are gathering supplies to stay in a Seattle park if housing doesn’t materialize. 

The weather: Today will be a mix of cloudy, partially cloudy, and isolated showers. Maybe you will spy a rainbow and it will make your day.

Amazon ditches “Just Walk Out” tech: The futuristic cornerstone of Amazon’s grocery store experience was a lie. Amazon advertised this experience where a completely automated process tracked your moves in the store, watching what you grabbed and tallying your bill as you “just walked out,” nullifying the need for any pesky cashiers. However, it turns out the process wasn’t automated at all. Instead, over 1,000 people in India were watching the cameras and assembling bills for whatever you put in your basket. So, “Just Walk Out” is dead. Amazon Fresh will instead use “Dash Carts,” shopping carts with scanners and screens embedded in them to allow you to check out while you shop. They’ll also be adding self-checkout stations. 

An inside job: A truck carrying over 100,000 chinook salmon smolts overturned in Oregon and killed 25,000 fish. The good news is the truck crashed into a creek, so the surviving salmon just went about their lives. This tweet tells the story way better:

Let them look at the sky! New York’s state corrections department made the decision to lockdown prisons this coming Saturday during the total solar eclipse rather than let inmates enjoy the celestial spectacle. Now that’s criminal. They’re in the path of totality, too! A solar eclipse like this won’t happen on US soil again until 2044. Six inmates are suing, saying the order “violates inmates’ constitutional rights to practice their faiths by preventing them from taking part in a religiously significant event.” The suit is being heard in federal court. The filers include a Baptist, a Muslim, a Seventh-Day Adventist, two practitioners of Santeria, and an atheist. 

Speaking of the eclipse: Seattle, we had our taste of the path of totality during the last eclipse in 2017. We’ll only see a 20% eclipse here. Still, get some eclipse glasses and make sure to look at all the shadows on the ground. They’ll be shaped like little crescent moons. Unless, of course, there are clouds. If it’s cloudy, watch a livestream instead.

Return to work for legislative staff: Council President Sara Nelson wants legislative staffers to return to the office four days a week after four years of mostly remote and hybrid work. 

Aid slows after Israeli strikes: An Israeli strike killed six foreign aid workers delivering food to hungry Gazans. Now aid agencies are being more cautious, and two have suspended operations entirely. World Central Kitchen, the agency that employed the six slain workers, stopped its work—work that has fed Gazans 43 million meals since the start of this war. In the wake of the killings, World Central Kitchen turned ships carrying hundreds of tons of food around back to a Cyprus port. Famine continues in Gaza. These killings will make aid harder to come by. 

Right to not work: A bill in the California legislature will give employees a “‘right-to-disconnect’ from emails, texts and calls after work hours.” There would be exceptions to the law, like for emergencies or for jobs where people are on-call. However, all the start-up shills interviewed for this story opposed the bill because their fucked up grind culture is so baked into their identities. We should all have the same work schedule as Simone de Beauvoir:

United Airlines asks pilots to take time off: In May, United would like its pilots to make themselves scarce. Why? There have been delays in getting new planes from Boeing, and as a result the airline has had to reduce flight hours. Boeing, mired in manufacturing problems, is running a bit behind schedule. According to the Associated Press, United is “contractually due 191 planes this year and 127 next year but expects to receive only 88 this year and 64 in 2025.”

Hmmm… what to give you for your Wednesday: What about a bunch of free crossword puzzles? 

Nathalie Graham

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