by Charles Mudede SPD reports that a 40-year-old man was arrested on Tuesday for smashing to bits and pieces an estimated $240,000 worth of colorful plant sculptures at the Chihuly Garden and Glass. The incident, which occurred at around 11 pm, left shard s of glass on the museum's walk path. The report, however, doesn’t describe the method the suspect used to destroy the fragile art. Was it with a hammer, a rock, or his bare hands? But a security guard claims that the man attempted to stab them several times with shards of glass. The museum told KIRO Newsradio that it expects to “replace the damaged art in the coming weeks.”  Maybe the people running the Chihuly Garden and Glass should consider buying robot dogs (quadrupeds) to protect its world-famous collection of glass sculptures. This solution is not, of course, cheap. A robot dog costs between “$175,000 and $300,000” a pop (or “spot”). But they can patrol an area with great effectiveness and even inspect the art—make sure everything is in order. Some data centers in the US are already using these robots, which are made by Boston Dynamics and vividly recall one of the most terrifying episodes of Black Mirror, “Metalheads.” Yes, sir, the future is here. Beware of those robot dogs. They will fuck your shit up. SPD announced yesterday that they made an arrest in connection with the January shooting that left two Rainier Beach High School teenagers (Tyjon Stewart and Traveiah Houfmuse) dead at a Metro bus stop. Chief Shon Barnes said at least one of the boys might have known the shooter, who Barnes only describes as a “juvenile male.” The suspect didn’t attend the victims’ high school. Seattle-Tacoma International Airport said Hell No to a Trump video that blames Democrats for a partial shutdown that has impacted airport staff across the nation. The 30-second video doesn’t explain to travellers waiting in longer than usual lines at security checkpoints the nature of the shutdown: Democrats want to impose restrictions on what is essentially Trump’s private army, ICE. Nevertheless, Homeland Security claimed on its taxpayer funded website that Democrats are “holding American travellers hostage” for no good reason. The donkey party is just hopelessly addicted to shut downs that hurt workers and consumers. No mention is made on the website or airport video of the mayhem and deaths ICE's masked thugs recently visited on Minneapolis. I had to be the one to miss the little snow that fell on Seattle last week. I was out of town when it happened. I did, however, get to experience a terrific windstorm in Dundee, Scotland. It was so cold, so forceful, so biblical. I heard all through the night the North Sea howling like a gigantic ogre trying to break free from some subaqueous prison. I boggled at the fact that my hotel and the whole town, which has a university and a number of galleries, wasn’t plunged into complete darkness by a blackout. I also saw lots of Scots walking about the streets like it ain’t no thing. As for Seattle, it will get a little wind tomorrow and a lot of rain today, with temperatures between 50 and 56. It is nothing short of incredible that crows have entirely left the North Creek Wetlands next to UW Bothell. Something like 20,000 of these birds, which are too smart for their own good, flew to this area to roost for the night. I have seen this nightmare with my very own eyes. At dusk, on September 30, 2017, the sky suddenly turned black, and shit fell like rain, and all around was the din of crows saying lord knows what to each other (“And like just that, she left me, man, cold dumped me…”; “I found a packet of french fries near the fast food joint by the lake”; “I tell you, I’ve had it up to hear with that raccoon”). And now they are all gone?  Some suspect urban growth as the cause of their miraculous departure (more construction, more humans, more lights, more action). But that theory soon loses its force when one considers downtown Portland. The crows roost in the heart of that city, particularly in the winter months. So where did Bothell’s birds go? God only knows. Will King Charles visit the US in April to celebrate the 250th anniversary of US independence? The answer to this question is presently very much up in the air because of Britain's refusal to participate in a war that Trump started with Iran for reasons that are legally dodgy or just plain corrupt. Trump is now saying all sorts of mean things about King Charles’s “precious stone set in a silver sea.” It’s no longer “the Rolls-Royce of allies”; “this is not Winston Churchill we’re dealing with”; and the like. But why does Trump need the UK for a war he won weeks ago? What more needs to be done? The mission has been accomplished. The president has said this time and time again. What if the UK just believes him? Also, several members of parliament fear that a King Charles visit could seriously go sideways. As the world well knows, there’s no bottom with this American president. He could, for example, sic ICE on the king during a White House visit, arrest him for something King George III did back in the day, and put him in a jail cell with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro (kidnapped in January) and Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel (kidnapped in the near future). “The last thing that we want to do is have His Majesty… embarrassed,” said Emily Thornberry, a Labour MP.  The Long 20th Century, which is also the American Century, is pretty much over. The world is now more and more turning to China to lead global economics and politics. True, it’s not a democracy, but Beijing appears to present a less nutty option to what’s presently found in Washington, D.C.. According to a recent poll conducted by Politico, “swaths of the public in Canada, Germany, France and the U.K. have soured on the U.S., driven by President Donald Trump’s foreign policy decisions.” And there you have it. The history of capitalism: First the Dutch, then the UK, then the US, and now China.     Majority of Canadians say it’s better to depend on China than on the US under Trump. In other key allies - Germany, UK, France - a plurality say the same.   www.politico.com/news/2026/03...[image or embed] — Catherine Rampell (@crampell.bsky.social) March 16, 2026 at 8:41 PM       Spotted in Seattle[image or embed] — Raider (@iwillnotbesilenced.bsky.social) March 17, 2026 at 12:37 AM   Here is the economic story of my life. In 1969, I was born in a country colonized by the British (then Rhodesia; now Zimbabwe); and, when I moved to the US at age 4 (1973) with my family, I was a British subject. In 1981, I returned to the newly independent Zimbabwe and studied, in high school, Afrikaans, which is basically African Dutch (the language of Elon Musk’s people). In 1985, I saw the most amazing thing: the arrival of Chinese investments in Southern Africa. It initially took the form of a massive sports stadium and then, project by project, progressed to all areas concerned with infrastructure. By the time I left Zimbabwe in 1988, it was clear that China, rather than the US, which became the only superpower after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, was the future of African capitalism. Eventually it would become the future of global capitalism. And so, baked into my experience are all of the national forms that, thus far, have defined capitalism over the past 400 years: the Dutch, the British, the USA, and, now, the Chinese. Let’s end AM with a house masterpiece by Dennis Ferrer, “Hey Hey.” ...read more read less