We’re talking about crows, right? Now obviously no one should be shooting crows in a residential neighborhood near schools, but I bet some people didn’t have the horrified reaction to that story that ����Xվ 7 was going for. Because they’ve heard the beautiful sound of a crow during their lifetime, probably just a few minutes ago.

Their cawing sounds like a demon coughing, like a witch falling into a volcano, like an out-of-tune accordion combined with a Lynx caught in a clamp trap. OK, my editor is telling me that’s enough examples.

Everything I’ve learned about crows has come from people vociferously defending them from my crow bigotry. Crow apologists will often highlight how smart they are, including their ability to remember faces and pass on memories. Did you know that some crows have the ability to make little tools? Good for the crows. Dolphins are very intelligent as well, but has a dolphin ever woken me up at 7 in the morning when my alarm wasn’t supposed to go off until 8? No, they keep to themselves. Dolphins are cool that way.

It’s legal to own chickens in Seattle, but they’re bad neighbors

Crows have also been known to damage crops, , and drive lonely men (sorry, being told that was a raven, not a crow). So the question is this: Is it ever OK to hunt them?

It depends. There are plenty of rules with regards to crow hunting, likely set by the crows themselves. You can only hunt crows with firearms, bow and arrow, and falconry, and not from a car or aircraft (I thought this was America?). You can’t kill crows on your private property unless . And you can only hunt crows in Washington state during (September to December), but it’s always established crow hunting season at my place. You just have to believe in yourself.

If you move into a recently built house, bring your neighbors cookies

Now before a crow comes after me with the crow version of Gloria Allred, let me just say that I’ve never actually killed a crow and probably (probably) will never get around to it. That’s a whole thing. I have caught and eaten plenty of fish and once slapped a howler monkey, but that’s about it. Would I meet a hitman in a dark underground garage and hand him a picture of a crow with a wad of cash in an envelope? Maybe.

In lieu of hunting, it may be ideal to first , including hanging shiny objects in your yard, playing recorded crow distress signals (surely your neighbors won’t mind), removing food and water sources, using motion sensor sprinklers, or placing decoy predators like a fake owl (but how do I get rid of the fake owl?). Writing articles does absolutely nothing.

The best approach is to find one of those people who love defending crows, pay them a few dollars to stand in your yard fondly gazing at the crows, and then watch as the crows get creeped out and never come back.

On Twitter 

But then machines much different than the ones that tore down the house show up the next week and you realize your neighbor is now a construction site. It probably won’t take that long. Two hours tops, maybe three.

This has been the daily schedule for the house being erected next door the last four months:

7 – 11:30 a.m.: Beautiful collage of hammering, drilling, and sawing
11:30 a.m. – 1 p.m.: More hammering, drilling, and sawing with bad rock music in the background
1 p.m.: Lunch (still bad rock music)
1:30 – 6 p.m.: Trees sacrificing themselves to the construction site, followed by hammering

Now let me be clear: No one is actually doing anything wrong here. It’s not like owning chickens in a city or having kids who should be sent to boarding school (God, I whine a lot). The contractors are simply doing their job and it’s not like I can tell them to keep it down or build the house somewhere else and then just airdrop it into place when finished.

It’s legal to own chickens in Seattle, but they’re bad neighbors

The only thing that would help get rid of the noise faster is picking up a hammer and helping out (Local headline the next day: “Unhelpful Man Dies in Accident on Construction Site”).

The forward thrust of civilization is a constant and that means houses must be built regardless of the selfish bum next door who wants to sleep a little later. Surely the building I’m living in had to be constructed at some point, and that noise likely irritated neighbors who lived here before me.

But putting logic and reason aside, who do these future, hypothetical house owners think they are? They’re being bad neighbors without even living there. Right now, they’re nowhere near their future home the rest of us have to listen to being built, and do they think we’re going to forget?

Usually when people move into a new house, neighbors welcome them to the area by bringing over cookies or pie. It should be the opposite in this case. Since we had to endure the noise of their house being built, they should bring me cookies when they move in — every week, for as long as it took to build the house. That’s just common courtesy.

Washington schools should reopen because my neighbors’ kids are loud

And they never get to complain about any noise I or anybody else makes next door. So what if I own a dozen rock tumblers and a howler monkey in my apartment?

There’s little to be done in the meantime. When my girlfriend was over the other day and heard the noise, she remarked, “I understand that it’s annoying, but you don’t need to get so angry.” (She says that to me about a lot of things.)

So I continue to wear ear plugs most of the day and blast my own awful music in an attempt to drown out the sound, none of which works. It’s probably best to just wait it out. They’ve got the roof up, so it shouldn’t be too long until the house is done, the owners move in, and I knock on the door and say, “I’m here for my cookies.”

On Twitter .

Chicken squawking is about as complicated as an annoying neighbor sound can get, because you can’t ask them to keep it down, call the cops, or leave a cliched passive-aggressive Seattle note. Chickens would just peck at the note or poop on it.

Here’s what appears to be the schedule for my neighbor’s chickens:

7 a.m. : Morning squawking that resembles a demon death rattle
8 a.m. : Chickens arguing with a dog next door
9 a.m. : Head chicken sacrificing the weakest member of their flock

Like many who live adjacent to chickens, I found myself looking online in a panic to see whether owning chickens is legal in Seattle, not because I’m interested in owning chickens, but because I’m interested in having them evicted. One learns while yelling, “Oh, come on!” at the computer screen that , that any chicken housing must be located at least 10 feet away from the house next door, and that roosters are not allowed. Roosters, apparently, are the loudest, so I suppose I should be thankful.

Washington schools should reopen because my neighbors’ kids are loud

It may be legal, but owning chickens in a city when you live on a small or average-sized lot is a bush league move. It breaks the implied social contract between city neighbors, wherein you’re not supposed to hear sounds of farm animals in the city, just like people living in the country don’t expect to hear congestion honking or rave music. There’s a time and place for chickens, and tightly-packed residential neighborhoods is not one of them.

Now I’m not going to lie, I’ve had some vaguely evil thoughts with regards to these chickens, like absconding with them and . And while I’m aware that admitting this in writing would make me the number one suspect should something unfortunate happen to these chickens, the problem with any such act is that chickens are easily replaceable emotionally, and don’t have the same attachment as dogs or cats do.

So even if I were to send the chickens to Bolivia in a box (), the family next door would probably quickly replace them, as one would goldfish or a shoelace.

Washington schools need later start times, since they keep waking me up

I’m sure there are numerous reasons why people mistakenly think it’s cool to own chickens in a city, like fresh hen eggs, some hazy sense of environmentalism, and being that hip urban guy who owns chickens. But it’s not, you’re just a bad neighbor and few within earshot of your chickens enjoys their company (maybe the cat).

Perhaps you’re thinking: How can you complain about chickens with all that’s going on in the world? Because they’re right there. If you and I were on the phone right now I’d hold the phone to the window and you’d understand.

Short of writing a whiny article like this one, there’s not much to be done. The chickens can just strut around all day while squawking with that dumb look on their face, and I can only glare at them from my apartment, also with a dumb look on my face. So if you have city neighbors with annoying chickens, I have no advice. But however you handle it, remember one thing: Never accept any of the fresh eggs from the neighbors if offered. You do that and you’ve already lost.

On Twitter 

But I don’t actually care about the kids’ education, I’m just tired of hearing them screaming all day next door. Here’s what appears to be the schedule for my neighbor’s children:

8:30 a.m. : Jumping and screaming on trampoline
9:30 a.m. : Brother and sister yelling at each other
10:30 a.m. : More jumping and screaming on trampoline
11:30 a.m. : Boy hitting a rock with a stick
12:30 p.m. : Exasperated mother yelling at kids to stop fighting

Last year before coronavirus hit I complained that kids need later school start times, because I was tired of the screaming kids at the school nearby waking me up early every morning. With the school now closed and quiet, I’ve been forced to rethink my whining.

Washington schools need later start times, since they keep waking me up

You see, pre-coronavirus there were hundreds of kids yelling and screaming all day a couple blocks away, and now there are two children making the same racket all day 20 feet from me. I’m not sure which is worse. But at the moment I strongly feel that these kids need to go back to school, for the sake of their education or something.

Perhaps you think I’m being needlessly selfish during what are clearly difficult times. Of course I am. Consider this though: the boy next door has the exact same voice as the . Remember that kid? Imagine living next to that. Imagine that movie without the bully ever getting his comeuppance, and jumping on a trampoline all day a few feet away from you.

Many parents may find this sentiment abhorrent, and yet I know there are others who are absolutely tired of having their kids around 24/7. It’s okay to admit it. Part of the reason society has schools and babysitters and playgrounds is just so parents can get away from their children. One mother even confessed to me half-jokingly: “I don’t like my kids anymore.”

The interplay between mask etiquette and mask fatigue

The concern over coronavirus in schools is certainly serious, and I don’t want kids to risk their health or anybody else’s simply because I have terrible single-panel windows. But even that much revered , noting that kids often have mild to no symptoms if infected (though we have to worry about them infecting parents too). Perhaps we could have some sort of phased reopening, starting with my neighborhood.

There’s little more important than America’s youth getting a good education. So please, won’t somebody think of the children? I know they’re our future, but if that future could take place a little farther away from me, that’d be great.

On Twitter 

Trying to make my own mask felt like trying to start my own space program. Like all desperate folks, I eventually turned to the internet and ordered a neck gaiter after learning that neck gaiters exist. Now it suffocates me everywhere I go.

When is the right time to wear a mask? Should we throw one on whenever there’s movement nearby like we’re all in the movie Predator? Or should we take a more subjective approach and just look out the window? “Today feels like a mask day.”

The consensus seems to be that it’s best to wear one when going into a building and anytime you’re not able to socially distance in public, like in a human pyramid or a bouncy castle.

Congestion tolling should be based on why you’re driving downtown

There are various shades of coronavirus mask strictness. Some seem to be the types who put on masks the moment they open their front door as if they’re an astronaut donning a helmet for a spacewalk. Others appear to happily stroll around mask-free, making the latter group incredibly nervous. I tend to only wear masks indoors , and while outdoors I just cross the street whenever someone’s approaching like I’m afraid they’re going to mug me.

What’s amusing is that sometimes you can see a mask-wearer smugly giving a mask-free person a glare, with that person judging them back as sad, paranoid people. Both are likely right, and I can be guilty of it too when I get nervous. For instance, the other day in a convenience store someone not wearing a mask stood right behind me at the counter and I had to resist the urge to kick them backwards like a horse.

QFC’s new self-checkout cameras may send you back to human checkouts

As with cars or the internet, masks may inevitably give us an anonymity that makes it a little easier to be rude to people. The constant itching and ability to smell our last meal certainly don’t help. But like cars and the internet, few fights will actually break out. It’s hard to throw a punch when you’re still social distancing.

We seem to be stuck with these damn things for the next little while, and it’s a shame, because I kind of miss seeing people’s faces. Let me rephrase that, I miss seeing women’s faces. Men can walk around in beekeeper suits for all I care. That’s the odd thing about the masks: They do display an inherent caring for humanity by helping prevent infections, but the sight of people covering their faces also casts an inhumane pall.

Hopefully one day when this virus business is over, we’ll be able to gather again, free our faces, and throw ourselves a nice mask burning celebration. God, it’s going to stink.

On Twitter

Those days may be over as the result of a proposed House bill, which would give protections to children operating lemonade stands on private property. Introduced by Rep. Luanne Van Werven, R-Lynden, it would prevent any agency from trying to force the kid entrepreneurs into getting a license or permit.

Washington state drivers may get apple-themed license plates

“A city or town may not adopt or enforce an ordinance, order, resolution, or rule that prohibits or regulates, including by requiring a license, permit, or fee, the occasional sale of lemonade or other nonalcoholic beverages from a stand on private property by any person under the age of eighteen years,” .

Not that these kids can do whatever they want. The little tycoons are free to sling lemonade as long as their stand doesn’t operate for 30 days or more a year, and don’t sell spiked versions of the drink (which would probably make them the most popular lemonade stand in the neighborhood). Issues such as backwards letters and misspellings wouldn’t be addressed.

QFCs in Bellevue and Kirkland to begin growing produce in-store

What compelled the creation of such a bill? An angry parent.

Rep. Van Werven of a constituent in Bellingham who contacted her after an “overzealous bureaucrat” approached his daughter selling lemonade and told her she needed a permit. The girl didn’t like dealing with government officials any more than adults too, and packed up shop that day out of exasperation.

It will be determined in the next coming weeks if the bill moved forward to the floor, not that there are any kids operating lemonade stands at the moment.

on the internet, two seemingly enormous sea lions can be seen stretching out on a poor little boat sailing through Eld Inlet near Olympia. It was captured by Joshua Phillips and posted recently on the Instagram page of the company he works for, . The video has since received more than a million hits, .

Police book ferret and man after bungled North Seattle robbery

“The boat is so close to sinking. If that thing eats three more salmon it’s done for,” someone can be heard saying in the video.

No one knows how or why the sea lions came to be on the boat. They may have stolen it for a joyride or perhaps rented it and were filming a music video.

Small planes are flying kokanee salmon to Orcas Island hatchery

, a third sea lion actually tried to board the nearly sinking boat but was not let aboard by the other two, much in the same way Kate Winslet wouldn’t let Leonardo DiCaprio on her raft at the end of Titanic.

It’s not clear if that rejected sea lion was ever able to find his own boat.

 

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A post shared by (@fishingjosh) on Dec 17, 2019 at 4:28pm PST

Last Wednesday at a hardware store on Aurora, security guards confronted two men they witnessed trying to steal power tool battery packs, which, you know, can be expensive. After they were approached and realized you totally can’t do that, the two men attacked security; one used his elbows, and the other decided it was an opportune time to throw his backpack with a live ferret inside, .

Small planes are flying kokanee salmon to Orcas Island hatchery

Who throws a ferret? This guy did. There’s no word on whether the ferret wound up hitting anyone or how it felt about being abandoned by an owner it thought it was cool with.

In the midst of the fracas, the suspects dropped some of the merchandise and hightailed it out of the store. Officers caught up with one of them, a 29 year-old man who claimed he did not know the ferret-wielding suspect nor his flying ferret. He told police they only met a few hours earlier.

The great Woodland Park Zoo red panda escape

The police did not interrogate the ferret with any kind of a good cop / bad cop routine in a dark room with a bright light or anything. Instead, they simply turned it over to the Seattle Animal Shelter where it’s being rehabilitated from its brief life of crime as a projectile.

Boeing gave their large-scale robotic system the old heave-ho recently after years of messing up the assembly of the 777X fuselage. They plan to defy convention and actually use human machinists to do the job, who probably taunted the robots on their way out. Fortunately the robots were unaffected since they lack emotion chips.

New restroom at Sea-Tac one of 10 finalists in national restroom contest

The robot employees were tasked with stitching large curved metal panels together for the fuselage, along with drilling holes and applying fasteners, . The robots worked on both sides of the fuselage section; one would insert a rivet while the other fastened it in, all while not exchanging a single word of friendly workplace banter.

Though that may sound like a simple enough task, the robots couldn’t handle it and often damaged the fuselages like klutzes, leaving them incompletely assembled and requiring humans to cover for them. It costs the company millions. Boeing will now to use humans in their place, but will allow the robots to complete smaller-scale tasks like drilling holes and maybe vacuuming up afterwards.

QFC’s new self-checkout cameras may send you back to human checkouts

This is the second instance of bad news for robots in the past few months after Terminator: Dark Fate failed at the box office.

Why did the parents rush the field? Probably because they’re all disappointed that their kids aren’t better football players. But at the time, it was apparently due to a missed call.

“A bunch of the fans and parents were on the field, and there’s probably about four or five people that are actively trying to run up to me and attack me,” the referee told the Candy, Mike and Todd Show, understandably not wanting his name to be mentioned. “And then there was a woman from the Federal Way side that got ahead of everybody else and came at me at a dead sprint, so I just took off running because if she got a hold of me, that means everybody else would have gotten a hold of me. I wasn’t going to let that happen.”

Washington schools need later start times, since they keep waking me up

To be fair to the passionate (crazy), field-charging parents, he did miss a pretty big incident when one of the Federal Way players got body-slammed and no penalty was called, not that that warrants Federal Way parents charging the field. Booing and swearing would have been more appropriate. Maybe even throwing your drink (or a chair, ).

Nonetheless, the Lord of the Flies atmosphere only escalated from there. The referee knew the field was no longer the place to be at the moment, and hightailed it out of there straight to his car.

“I’m sprinting across the field and trying to keep my distance, and as I’m crossing through the gate trying to get off the field, one of the guys who was chasing me started a fight with someone else who was trying to keep them away from me. Everything just kind of snowballed off from there.”

Advisory vote on fireworks ban in unincorporated Snohomish County passing

He got to his car and sped away just as numerous police began arriving on the scene to find approximately 70 parents involved in the melee, setting a wonderful example for their kids. The referee hopes some of the parents are charged, though he’s seen this type of enthusiastic fandom before and will keep refereeing regardless.

“I’ve been refereeing little league football for about five years, and there’s always one or two people who can’t control whatever anger or issues they have going on with themselves, and sometimes it does spill onto the field,” he said.

“I will keep refereeing under certain circumstances, if parents can be kept away from the field in the stands, if there’s added security or more coaching staff to keep the fans under control. I love refereeing football, I love watching the kids get better, learn and progress. I love being able to help them move in the right direction.”

No one was seriously hurt during the brawl, but the parents will probably have a hard time disciplining their kids from now on. It’s hard to make your kid clean his room when you attacked a referee.

Listen to The Candy, Mike, and Todd Show weekdays from 3-7 p.m. on ����Xվ Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

It didn’t go over well with employees to say the least, and this week Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced that Mercurys Coffee will void all of its existing non-compete agreements, arguing that the practice limited employment options and mobility for workers and unfairly limited competition for labor, .

The company will also have to pay $50,000 to reimburse the Attorney General’s Office for its attorneys fees and costs associated with the investigation. No free coffee was part of the deal.

Washington’s best grocery bagger headed to national competition

Not only did Mercurys Coffee simply require employees to sign non-compete agreements, they even went so far as to file several lawsuits against workers who found employment at other coffee shops. It’s fair to assume that the employees probably didn’t bother to ask for recommendation letters.

In particular, Mercurys filed suit against a former barista who had made $17 per hour and left for a competitor about one and a half miles away. They also threatened to sue another former employee who left to work at a nearby Starbucks.

E-scooters could help commuters access thousands of jobs across Seattle

“Non-compete agreements targeting low-wage, hourly employees give companies an unfair advantage at the expense of workers,” Ferguson said. “Any company that makes their employees sign unfair contracts should expect to hear from my office. A coffee shop barista, or any low-wage worker for that matter, should not fear retaliation just for moving to another job that’s better for them.”

Mercurys Coffee has about 120 employees in eight locations across King County, who are now probably much less hesitant about looking for another job.

The event took place in Tacoma and there wasn’t a self-checkout robot in sight. Instead, nine of the best baggers came from all around the state, from places like Ralph’s Thriftway in Olympia, QFC in Enumclaw, and Rosauers Supermarket in Yakima, none of which have those chips I like.

How do you determine the best bagger? It’s not just about speed apparently, because the groceries still have to be intact and edible afterwards. The judges measured for proper bag building technique, speed, distribution of weight between bags, as well as style, attitude, and appearance. The bags were so well packed you’d just want to stare and never unpack them, unless something had to go in the refrigerator, of course.

Small planes are flying kokanee salmon to Orcas Island hatchery

Repeating as champion was Spokane’s own Henry Johnson from , who took home the $2,000 cash prize and in February gets a chance to represent Washington state at the national championship in San Diego for a $10,000 award. His key to being a supreme bagger is something I don’t have the ability to do when bagging my own groceries: Thinking ahead.

“I’d say what makes an efficient grocery bagger is someone who can always be moving their hands yet always be thinking about where each item is going at the same time,” he said.

That aside, not all groceries are created equal and he doesn’t relish seeing one particular item come down the conveyor belt.

“The most annoying item to bag is big loads of meat, especially when the customer wants them in paper bags. It can be a really awkward fit and the meat is usually pretty sticky.”

Cans are heaven, though.

“When I see a large number of cans coming down the conveyor belt I’m genuinely pretty stoked because I know it’s going to be a pretty straightforward and satisfying load to bag. I just double up a couple of paper bags and one by one fit the cans in next to each other; it can be pretty satisfying to do.”

Washington schools need later start times, since they keep waking me up

Washington state has certainly made its presence known at the national championship with four titles, including in 1989, 2013, 2015, and 2016, . You might even call us a dynasty.

I asked Henry about something I could embarrassingly win a competition at: Pretending to look busy and acting like I’ve never used a debit card machine before so I can lazily avoid helping the bagger. He didn’t seem too bothered by selfish customers like me.

“It’s my job to bag groceries, I don’t expect customers to get too involved; in fact, I’d rather them not because then I don’t have to be unsure on what they’re going to take out of the load so I can plan out the whole order how I see it best,” he said. “But of course, if they want to help out because they have some specific preferences, then that’s perfectly fine, it can be fun doing it together.”

So if you find yourself at Yoke’s Fresh Market in Spokane, definitely head to Henry’s lane.

We’ve transported the scaly little guys with fish ladders, salmon cannons that use tubes to shoot them around dams, and now we’re trying aircraft. Local pilots have begun flying kokanee salmon to an Orcas Island hatchery, the latest effort by King County to ensure their survival. These are just small aircraft and not commercial flights, so there’s little chance of them being accidentally served.

“We are crossing land, air, and sea to try to save our native kokanee salmon,” . “It is inspiring to have volunteers join our coalition to prevent the extinction of a salmon species that is important to our history and habitat.”

Salmon cannon could restore the population in the Upper Columbia

Preventing extinction is as good a reason as any to book a flight. The county teamed up with conservation partners and local pilots to fly the Lake Sammamish kokanee salmon from an Issaquah hatchery to one located on Orcas Island, where the nine-month-old fish will be raised to adult so their offspring can later return to Lake Sammamish to boost the fish population. It’s like a fish version of the movie Interstellar.

What can they expect at their new four-star lodgings? Clean, cool springwater, and protection from the hazardous conditions in Lake Sammamish that biologists believe are hurting the population, including high temperatures, low oxygen levels, and voracious non- native predators, who will probably have to find a new lunch option.

Seattle Public Utilities rescue two goldfish from storm basin

The flights are being operated by LightHawk, a nonprofit organization that offers flights to help with conservation efforts, though they’ve never flown fish before.

“For salmon recovery, LightHawk often flies media, scientists, elected officials, and more but this will be our first time flying fish,” said Christine Steele, Western Program Coordinator for LightHawk. The fish didn’t have to wait to board and were transferred in specially designed coolers that provide oxygen for the duration of the trip.

In May 2018 Executive Constantine announced actions to prevent the kokanee salmons’ extinctions after biologists were startled to find during a count that the population had dwindled from 18,000 to fewer than 20 kokanee within five years. The hatchery program should up those numbers so they survive and have more kokanee to talk to.

But I don’t actually care about the kids, I just keep getting woken up early by the school in my neighborhood. Here’s what appears to be the schedule at the school a few blocks away from my apartment:

7:30 a.m. to 7:45 a.m. : Screaming
7:45 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. : Yelling
8:00 a.m. to 8:15 a.m. : Screaming and Yelling
8:15 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. : Some sort of thing involving drums and screaming
8:30 a.m. to 8:45 a.m. : Loud gym teacher who clearly hates his life

And everyone one of these events begins with a deafening PA announcement that sounds like what you’d hear in a dystopian science fiction movie.

Schools don’t always make ideal neighbors, and living near one is like living near a frat house that only throws parties at 7:45 in the morning. There’s little I can do about it, but it’s fun to needlessly complain: You can’t call the cops on a school or bang on the wall with a broom or knock on the door and ask them to be quiet. Schools have so many doors I wouldn’t know which one to knock on. I also can’t go over there and yell at them to keep it down because then I’m yelling at kids and suddenly I’m the bad guy, not that this article hasn’t already created that impression.

How Washington schools are stealing your children’s dreams

Imagine a neighbor who’s not only really loud, but announces every 15 minutes on a PA speaker what they’ll be doing, and that somebody needs to come inside. “We’re going to be playing beer pong now. Also Jeff, your girlfriend is calling. What do you want me to tell her?”

Granted, I know there are people reading this who think that schools make wonderful neighbors, for they raise our children and show them the way or something, and how can I be so selfish? Just because I want to sleep a little later doesn’t mean that all 5,000 plus schools in the state of Washington should have later start times. Doesn’t it, though? No? I feel like I’m losing people.

If I were a parent or student and/or had the ability to step outside my narrow, selfish bubble, I might have a different opinion. But I already graduated from school and put my time in, so there’s no need for me to be rising this early to the lovely dulcet tones of screams and yells and “He hit me!”

Congestion tolling should be based on why you’re driving downtown

Both the and the are totally on my side, though their studies on later start times are concerned about the kids getting more sleep for health-related reasons, and not a bum in his thirties who doesn’t like getting up before 8 a.m. Imagine how much better this article would have been had I slept properly last night (not much).

So please, won’t somebody think of the children? Because they keep waking me up in the morning. I know they’re our future, but that future can start 30 minutes later.

The bathroom was part of the first stage of the $658 million North Satellite Modernization Project at Sea-Tac, and now it’s one of 10 finalists in , not that any restroom is helped by becoming a highly-trafficked tourist trap where people take selfies.

Nordstrom at Northgate closed on Friday

The contest considers cleanliness, visual appeal, innovation, functionality and unique design elements in assessing the best places to take care of business. What makes the Sea-Tac restroom stand out? That would be the quartz multi-station lavatories, a rainwater harvest system that provides 750,000 gallons annually to the restrooms, as well as separate sinks inside the ADA stalls and family spaces with changing tables.

There are no plans as of yet for a worst restroom in American contest, but perhaps one of the older bathrooms at Sea-Tac could be eligible.

Some of the stronger competitors in the Best Restroom contest include the Terminal B restroom at New York’s La Guardia Airport, where the stalls have been expanded so people actually have the room to bring their luggage in with them. Then there’s the Nashville Zoo Peru exhibit lavatory, where a floor-to-ceiling glass window offers a view of six cottontop tamarins, and offers the tamarins a view of humans going to the bathroom. Clearly the tamarins have the raw end of that setup.

Gordon: Congestion tolling should be based on why you’re driving downtown

Whoever wins will find themselves in America’s Best Restroom Hall of Fame and earn $2,500 in facility services from Cintas to help maintain their award-winning restrooms, which they’ll probably need after this contest.

To vote and see the other porcelain competitors, head to

Because so many people are trying to get into the theme park that is downtown Seattle, the city wants to charge drivers during peak times, like when they have the gall to head to work. On the on-ramps, a sign attached to a gate would tell you to open all your windows, and then a giant robot arm would pick up your car and shake it until all the wallets and loose change fall out, while a street sweeper pushes everything into an adjacent sorting machine (that could be off, I haven’t read the proposal).

SDOT unveils early research on congestion tolling in Seattle

But as critics note, in mostly tolling people who are trying to get to work and can’t afford to live in downtown Seattle, this proposal seems like yet another Seattle policy punishing those it’s claiming to help, like the wildly profitable soda tax that made my daily purchase of Mountain Dew Liberty Brew rather expensive.

Excuse-based congestion tolling

If you’re going to toll, it should at least be based on why people are driving downtown. Different tiered passes could be issued based on your excuse. Driving downtown for work? No charge. Heading downtown for a traffic-blocking protest? Big charge. Meeting a friend? When’s the last time you saw them? Last week? Then just meet them in Ballard or Fremont or something.

For instance, sometimes I head downtown for a haircut at a place I like, but it’s a totally unremarkable haircut and I’d have no issue paying a congestion toll whenever I do. Or perhaps you have relatives in town and they want to go to Pike Place. That’s toll-worthy too, because when they find out there’s a toll, they’ll either decide to do something less crowded or offer to buy lunch as recompense (win-win).

QFC’s new self-checkout cameras may send you back to human checkouts

How any of this would be implemented is up to the engineers who spent more time in school than I did. People would probably lie about why they’re going downtown, but by the time this is in place the toll robots will be able to scan your face for truthfulness. If not, we’ll just need to check references.

Sure, congestion tolling has somewhat functioned in cities like London. The difference though is they have a far more developed public transit system and everyone there flies on umbrellas and brooms to work anyway. Here, it’s more difficult for those outside the city to make it in without a car, and short of a futuristic system of air tubes whisking us to and fro, our current herd of buses and trains is not able to handle it.

My totally-feasible, excuse-based system will only hurt people who have bad reasons to go downtown, like shoplifting, meeting a friend you don’t actually like, going to a job interview you know you won’t get, or driving a parade float. Roads will be clearer, needless plans will get cancelled, and the city will be able raise plenty of money for what will probably be another toll.

Walking into their grocery store these days makes you feel like Jim Carrey in The Truman Show. A virtual flora of screens with the words “Recording in Progress” populate every corner of the store, filming customers and their little baskets from angles they didn’t know existed. The Bellagio is more subtle with their security.

One screen will show you walking in the beer aisle from 10 feet away, and then another leaving the beer aisle, looking back at yourself to see how big your bum is. The most striking of these are at the self-checkouts, because they’re pointed directly at your face, and display it right back during those very non-photogenic times when customers are negotiating the delicate process of scanning items.

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QFC has just about had it with people absconding with their food. Last year, customers noticed that numerous QFCs changed their hours from 24/7 to closing between 1-5 a.m, and were informed by employees that it was a response to thefts and drug activity in the area. Now this futuristic security is at 12 QFCs in Washington.

“The updated camera technology found at several of our QFC locations functions no differently than the existing security cameras already in use at all of our stores,” a QFC spokesperson tells MyNorthwest. “They are simply an evolution of our current and existing strategy.”

Security cameras at grocery stores are certainly nothing new, but when it seems like there are as many screens as customers and it’s right in your face, it feels a bit different.

There’s a screen at the entrance, and a few in nearly every single aisle, even along the meat section. And of course the most prized items in any grocery store — alcohol and razor blades — have multiple cameras hovering right above them.

With so many screens, it’s better to note where they’re not. There seem to be none in the cereal or chip aisle, probably because it’s hard to fit a giant box of Cheerios under your coat. There are no cameras located inside the frozen food freezers or attached to your shopping carts and baskets.

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Do you know how you open an egg carton to see if the eggs are intact? There are no cameras in there, either. And they’re not inside the candy bins or submersed in the hot soup.

With the self-checkout cameras, QFC may inadvertently be saving the jobs of the human checkers, where there are no security screens pointed at customers. Few people like seeing the expression on their face while buying junk food that embarrasses them.

To avoid having your soul captured by these, you could wear a hat and sunglasses, move back and forth quickly like an idiot, or somehow reprogram the cameras to feature a fake static shot, like Keanu Reeves did on the bus in Speed.

In any case, it remains to be seen if having as many cameras as a red carpet impacts customer shopping habits. It will certainly cut down on stealing. I’m too scared to even sample a grape.

And so it was for a pair of scrappy twin red panda cubs at Woodland Park Zoo, who found themselves standing atop a branch that broke and carried them to freedom just outside their exhibit Wednesday evening, .

Normally in these situations, the runaways hop a bus to Mexico, dye their fur, and keep a low profile with an under-the-table job. But Zeya and Ila were not quite that resourceful.

When they landed on the ground after falling from the tree, the twin pandas used their newfound freedom to climb up different, adjacent trees, showing no interest in actually leaving the zoo. Nonetheless, a 15-hour panda standoff ensued.

That’s because both didn’t want to come down from their individual trees. It’s not often that you get a tree to yourself. Zeya was lured down from her tree around midnight, but Ila — clearly the brains behind the operation — squatted in her tall tree until the next day.

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No firefighters were called, and zoo officials did not cut the tree down to send a message to the other pandas. Instead, they tempted the furry fugitive with apples — her favorite food — and she headed down on her own around noon, which was the tree’s checkout time anyway.

Once both animals were secured, they were returned to their exhibits, and probably exchanged ripping tales of the adventures they had just a few feet outside the cage.

Highlighted on a , the Mole was an experimental mobile trash-compactor that may have been the inspiration for the Tatooine sandcrawlers in “Star Wars”. From the r/Seattle sub-Reddit:

TIL about King County’s experimental mobile trash-compactor, affectionately known as ‘The Mole.’ Sold at auction in the early 1970s, the Mole is rumored to have been purchased by George Lucas’s film company and to have served as the model and/or inspiration for the Star Wars Tatooine sandcrawlers.

Back in the 1960s, King County established the about 20 miles southeast of Seattle, in an effort to make advances in converting waste to renewable natural gas. They soon developed “The Mole,” a dystopian-looking 150-ton trash compactor that buried garbage as it crawled across the landfill.

Here’s how the giant, much less cute WALL-E worked: Refuse was dumped directly into a hopper, which accepted 100 cubic yards at a time. The hydraulic re-actuated piston exerted 200 pounds per square inch of pressure over its 7-by-7 foot face. This compressed the refuse under 1.5 millions pounds of thrust, and extruded it through the rear of the machine, 15 feet underground, where it was never seen again.

The squeeze is roughly equal to 20 bulldozers, or 12 fully loaded railroad box cars neatly piled on top of the other. “Now that’s a thrust,” the video presenting it says.

While the Mole was a pioneering early foray into efficiently handling waste, it was ultimately found to be ineffective in the soil of Cedar Hills, and was later sold at auction in the early 1970s. That’s where the fun, unsubstantiated rumors begin.

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, numerous people believe the Mole was purchased by George Lucas’s film company, and became the inspiration for the giant sandcrawlers in the first “Star Wars” film. As hardcore “Star Wars” fans may recall, the Tatooine sandcrawlers also sucked in scrap waste, and occasionally droids.

It’s not a theory that’s been confirmed by Lucas or any of the droids involved in the film, no matter how much Washingtonians might want it to be true. The Mole could not be reached for comment.

Though the immense 1960s machine is now compacting garbage in the sky, the Cedar Hills landfill is still going strong, taking in refuse from nearly 70 percent of King County residents, and turning it into natural gas provided to upwards of 19,000 homes.

Both versions are below. Do you think we have a case?

This wasn’t simply a case of a college students blowing smoke at their pet rats during a party. It was an actual study. Researchers were totally wearing lab coats at the time.

“We were interested in looking at the effects of prenatal cannabis exposure in a rodent model of maternal cannabis use,” Assistant Professor Ryan McLaughlin told ����Xվ Radio. “We’re trying to look at the long-term repercussions of using cannabis during pregnancy and how it might effect the offspring and their cognitive functioning in adulthood.”

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, researchers exposed pregnant rats to cannabis vapor twice per day, once in the morning to take the edge off and once in the early evening, presumably when the rats got off work. The researchers then waited for the mothers to give birth — which only takes 21 days for rats, as opposed to nine long months for humans — and then another 70 days for the babies to grow up to full-term adults.

That’s when they put the new adult rats into little, probably horrifying conditioning chambers, and measured their cognitive responses using a system of levers, lights, and sugar pellet rewards. While the rats managed the first round of tests, they did struggle during the second when learning new strategies were involved.

“What we found essentially in our task was that this is where the cannabis exposed animals were impaired, in that they took significantly more trials to learn this new strategy,” McLaughlin said. “It’s important to take this data with a grain of salt, but at the same time, I do want to stress that we really don’t know what cannabis is doing to developing offspring during these developmental periods.”

“It isn’t necessarily a harmless drug,” he said. “There are harms associated with this drug, especially when it interferes with a system that’s very important in neuro-development.”

So don’t smoke marijuana while you’re pregnant, but you already knew that. Don’t give it to your pregnant rat, either.