Police Officer no give me producer...
"Police Officer no give me producer..." Charles Mudede

Seattle Police Department Says: "...simple drug possession, is no longer an arrestable offense." This announcement follows "a landmark state Supreme Court" ruling that wants to bring to an end the arrest of people who unknowingly possess drugs. To protect those who don't know, we must, by default, decriminalize those who do know. That's the skinny. This (decriminalization) is, I think, a more politically viable way of reducing the power of our police forces. Defunding is fine and all, but it could really take forever to happen. But decriminalization is right there. We don't have to wait long for it to happen. Decriminalize sex work, and drugs, and jaywalking, and so on.

SPD:

Effective immediately, officers will no longer detain nor arrest individuals under RCW 69.50.4013 alone.

Officers will no longer confiscate drugs from an individual based only on a violation of RCW 69.50.4013.

Costco Representing Capitalism's Less Ugly Side By: Raising "its wage floor... to $16 an hour." Seattle Times has the story, but I have the concept. It is not hard to grasp (or, if we be philosophical at the time of writing, exactly 6 a.m., begreifen). It is something like this: The function of low wages is not to increase profits but to lock and keep workers in the bottom of a class structure that is, at the end of the day (or the final analysis), capitalism's raison d'ĂŞtre.

Technology Only Cements Capitalist Class Formations: For example, just 7,500 of Spotify's eight million "on-platform creators" earn $100,000 per year or more. No kidding. It's that bad.

This is how the "former CW and Condé Nast Entertainment president" put the bleak matter in the sunniest way possible:

Over the last four years, the number of recording artists whose catalogs generated more than $1 million a year across recording and publishing is up over 82 percent, to more than 800 artists. And the number generating more than $100,000 a year, that’s up 79 percent, to more than 7,500 artists
Spotify's CEO Daniel Ek sees the number of artists on his vast sonic plantation increasing to 50 million by 2025.

Best Buy Is Entering the Big Sleep: The retailer will cut 5,000 jobs this month and will close a whole bunch of stores this year. Those at the top of the company blame the cuts and closings on stiff competition from, of course, Amazon. This is nothing more than a very good example of "creative destruction," which is supposed to be to capitalism what the survival of the fittest is to Darwinism. Best Buy employs 120,000 Americans.

Governor Jay Inslee: Wants state Senate to be about that bill concerning the abolishment of the class-directed correlation between credit scores and insurance rates. The bill, before being amended, simply killed the correlation, whose purpose, in the final analysis, is to make poverty expensive. But after the amendments, the correlation is, according to KIRO 7, permitted but "it can’t be used against consumers if their numbers fall over the next three years." To his credit, Inslee wants the Senate to pass the original bill. Our very own Rich Smith, however, provided the details of the bill and its proposed dilution right here.

Vulcan Reminds Us Once Again That Capitalism Is Not In the Business of Producing Useful Goods, but rather products and social modes that reinforce its already rigid class structure. Brian Miller, the real estate editor for Seattle's Daily Journal of Commerce, reports that the company that Paul Allen left in the one and only world when he passed into the big sleep, Vulcan, plans to build another massive something in Bellevue.

More Boeing Problems in the Sky: According to The Hill, a Boeing 777 operated by Russia's Rossiya Airlines "made an emergency landing on Friday at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport after an issue was discovered with the aircraft's engine control sensor." If the name of that plane rings such a loud (and maybe even cracked) bell across the nation of your mind, it's because one of its kind had an engine burst into flames this weekend as it flew over prone Denver.


Biden Is Already Dropping Bombs in the Middle East: Does this mean the honeymoon is over? Or did it never really begin?

What the Director of the Excellent 1990s Flick, Metropolitan, Whit Stillman, has to say about the remarkably ugly golden statue of Trump that appeared at CPAC 2021...

Two Mudede Things You Can Do During Final Weekend of Black History Month: One, watch Charles Mudede's new film, Thin Skin, online at Northwest Film Forum.


Or You Can Listen to His Son, Eben Mudede, Talk About the Weird Attraction Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) Has for White Supremacists in the Age of Cyberspace: Eben's cousin, the rising socialist Munya Chiro, is also on the show, which is hosted by the guys behind the Seattle Sucks podcast.

Or you can do both.

"My Brain's the Cliff, and My Heart's the Bitter Buffalo": That's all I got to say. Some buffalo in the twilight of the tweet. That Modest Mouse tune in my head.