Smells like grandma.
"Smells like meemaw." Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

AMAZON HAS A CORPSE FLOWER?!?!?!: Apparently, they have many. The smell of death is heavy inside Bezos's Balls. One of them, named "Morticia," bloomed last year, and it was quite a thing. More than 5,000 people visited to see the bloom in action, reports GeekWire. The extremely rare plant, which blooms only once every 7 to 10 years, emits an odor that is reminiscent of rotting human flesh. You can wait for this corpse flower, named Bellatrix, to bloom by watching this livestream here. Amazon anticipates that it will bloom Wednesday night. If you'd like to smell decaying flesh, thanks to Amazon, you can make an appointment to see it for free. I'm going.

Harry Reid wants to ITMFA: The former Senate majority leader has changed his earlier approach, which cautioned against impeachment proceedings. Today, he told USA Today: "It’s not the right thing to do nothing." Someone tell Nancy.

Washington State threatens to take the US Department of Energy to court over Hanford cleanup: The Department of Energy (DOE) has allegedly failed to meet court-mandated cleanup deadlines at Washington State's Chernobyl, Hanford, according to a press release sent out by the nonprofit Hanford Challenge today. Hanford Challenge's executive director, Tom Carpenter, warned in the release: "DOE clearly wants out of the cleanup, and is proposing to relabel high-level waste at Hanford as low-level waste and pour concrete in tanks in order to do so." SCARY?!

Just as scary: Ballard.

We won't be smoked out by that giant Washington fire: As Slog AM-writer Timothy Kenney mentioned this morning, there's a giant fire raging through Central Washington. The fire started Monday night and has caused hundreds of evacuations, burned several structures, and grown to nearly 5,000 acres. The good news for us east west of the Cascades is that we probably won't be smoked out by this one, according to weather predictions from the ol' Cliff Mass. And good news for those of you who hate summer (and want to quench fires): Juneuary is coming. Rains over Western Washington, Oregon, and BC are expected to start Wednesday and last through the weekend.

Apparently this is true:

Joe Biden's climate change plan accused of plagiarism: The Democratic front-runner (I'm suspicious of this, but I'll put a pin in that for now) released his climate change plan this morning. The plan proposes eliminating net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, CNN reports. The Washington Post writes that it embraces the framework of the Green New Deal. But people quickly picked up some similarities between Biden's plan and other reports:


Business Insider then found another instance of apparent plagiarism, to which the Biden campaign told Business Insider that they quickly added the "proper citations" once they were made aware of the issues. More outlets have found instances of alleged plagiarism in the plan.

We need "votes and laws, not thoughts and prayers": That's what Virginia governor Ralph Northam announced today following last week's Virginia Beach mass shooting. He's calling a special legislative session this summer to vote on a package of gun-control legislation. But Northam, a Democrat, faces a "Republican-controlled general assembly in the middle of a legislative election year," reports AP, so his chances of getting "votes and laws" seem slim. That said, he's pushing for every single lawmaker to go on record whether they are for or against his proposals during the special session. He hopes that keeps them accountable and prevents bills from quietly being killed in subcommittee. At this point, traveling to Mars seems more achievable than gun control.

I'm no stockbroker: But wasn't Trump supposed to bring back factory jobs? Markit is reporting that the US factory sector has grown at its weakest rate since the 2009 recession.

ARE YOU READY, KIDS?!?!?!?!!?: The internet's favorite meme-able sponge is getting a spin-off. SpongeBob SquarePants is scheduled to debut a prequel series, tentatively titled Kamp Koral, reports Deadline. The show will be based around a 10-year-old version of SpongeBob during a summer at sleepaway camp. Nickelodeon has reportedly ordered 13 episodes of the series, which will begin production this month. Kamp Koral will be CG-animated, a departure from the 2-D animation of the original show.

ICYMI: SpongeBob is a queen of memes, a concept that didn't quite exist when SpongeBob SquarePants premiered in 1999. New SpongeBob memes pop up every week. Maybe every day. Right now, this SpongeBob meme is popular. I don't really get it.

Another cutie in a hat: