I missed a brilliant shooting star last night. It happened not long after 11 pm. I was asleep at this point. But in that other, less wonderful sky, the one outside of my dreams, the one we all share; in short, the one in reality: "...a massive green meteor [burned] up over Lake Union...  [It] looked like the biggest, most unbelievable shooting star I’ve ever seen!" But these events, if they are at all meaningful, must remind us that there is no such thing as outer space. We are space. The miles and miles that chunk of rock traveled before it flared and disintegrated over, of all places of space, Lake Union.


From Slog AM: "Another day, another beloved Seattle institution closure thanks to shitty landlords: This time, it's Full Tilt in Ballard. According to MyBallard, the joint is closing because the landlord won't renew their lease after 12 years in the location." But, wait. What about crime? That's the one and only thing small businesses are permitted to worry about. 

KOMO: "Seattle business owners fed up with crime hold town hall in Ballard." Any town hall barbershop about rent? About the mind-boggling inflation of property values? About brazenly greedy landlords? No. That you cannot do. You can only do bullshit at barbershops. And KOMO, a prime source of conservative news and views, will not cover anything that's remotely real shit.  

Seattle Weather Blog has these three words for you: "Rainy through tomorrow." Sunday was so Seattle—rain, rain, rain. Monday (MLK day) was sunny. Today was somewhere between Sunday and Monday. Tomorrow is expected to be one with Sunday. And is this not how death is? Two of the same (in death's case, nothingness) reuniting.

The people's wizard for real. They are called the "wizard of Lützerath." They could walk on mud. The cops protecting the right of corporate profits to continue to bring the only world that humans will ever call home to an end—the mud keeps pulling them down. What is this mud trying to tell them? (And keep in mind, mud thinks; the ground on the Moon or Mercury does not.) The mud is saying: When this world goes, you too go. There will never be a Mars for you. There are no other stars. There is just this world, this sun, and us, your messmates.

Global finance? If they can do this to white people in the richest European country? Now is a good time to imagine what they have done, are doing, will be doing to the people of color in the Global South.

HSBC has extended a revolving credit facility to an energy company that is tearing down a German village to expand a large coal mine, despite its promise to “phase down” fossil fuel financing.
An entire village in West Germany is set to be demolished by energy giant RWE in order to make way for the expanded lignite coal mine, sparking outcry from climate protestors who have sought to barricade the settlement of Lßtzerath in order to stop the development this week. 

One more mud wizard:

Greta Thunberg was arrested and briefly "detained by German police at a protest over the expansion of a coal mine in the west German village of LĂźtzerath." This was the second time she was arrested during this protest. In the words to Nas, remixing the words by T-La Rock: "[Greta,] whose world is this? The world is yours. The world is yours." All the young people out there, this is your only world. And also that of the mud wizard.

Republican with a gun:

Toddler with a gun:

Madonna begins her celebration of herself and greatness tour in Vancouver BC. The second show will be in Seattle, the first US show. And now I must say something of what I think is the most philosophical Madonna tune, "Material Girl." Of course, the word "material" has two meanings. One is related to the stuff of nature, of reality. Atoms, molecules, meat, wood and so on. This is not the sense in "Material Girl." Here, we have the moral meaning of materialism: the love of bling and money. But there is a moment in the song when the material we find on the periodic table and the material of a "gold digger" meet. It's when she sings: "A material, a material, a material, a material world." Just listen to it. It's so ghostly. Is materialism even real? Is it just spectral? But the same can be said of the matter of nature. What else does quantum physics show but the spookiness of reality?

Let's end PM with this bewitching tune by Klangkarussell, "Ghostkeeper":