Boeing Machinists Say Hell No: Or as Goldy more delicately put it last night, they "told Boeing to go fuck itself." Seattle Times has more detail here. Some great photos of machinists cheering in the P-I. A few days ago in Line Out, Trent Moorman wondered what Boeing's "super-rich, sniveling, serpent-beast" CEO's theme song should be—any obvious tunes he forgot?

Kshama Sawant's Lead Grew Yesterday: She's now ahead of Richard Conlin by 402 votes. If the mood on the second floor of city hall was "apoplectic" when she pulled 41 votes ahead on Tuesday, now it must be officially apoplectic-er.

Further Horrors in the Philippines: A story from inside a hospital without electricity.

Obama Changes His Mind on Health Insurance: And will allow people who want to keep their shitty plans to keep their shitty plans—after all, that was his promise all along. But insurers "would be required to notify the policy holder of alternative available coverage options."

Janet Yellen's Confirmation Hearing: The future Fed chief is being grilled this morning. Follow along here.

Kirkland Nurse Faces Federal Charges: She allegedly "stole liquid painkillers from vials and replaced the missing drugs with other substances, most often saline solution," authorities contend. One of the allegedly stolen drugs was fentanyl. Unrelated to these particular allegations, here's a link to Brendan Kiley's investigative report on fentanyl from 2011.

That British Spy Found Padlocked in a Body Bag Three Years Ago? Authorities still have no idea what happened, but are saying now that it was "probably" just an accident. Huh.

Explosion in Poland: "A gas pipeline exploded in a village in western Poland Thursday, setting fire to homes, killing three people and injuring 10," the AP reports.

Mary Lambert on Macklemore, Poetry, and Body Image: Did you read this profile of her in the New York Times yesterday?

Happy Birthday, Moby-Dick! (Or can I just call you The Whale?) The great American novel was published on this day in 1851, and was a huge flop, as you probably know. It sold fewer than 3,000 copies in Melville's lifetime, earning him only $556.37. As Rebecca Brown pointed out in this wonderful piece on artistic failure a few years back:

When it was first published in 1851, Moby-Dick was, in terms of commercial and critical reception, a terrible failure. It was big, sprawling, philosophical, biblical, encyclopedic, and weird. It was, that is to say, not at all like the earlier "successful" novels Melville had written. Melville's first novel, Typee, a fictionalized account of his real-life adventures in Polynesia (naked ladies! Cannibals!), was a hit in both the United States and Britain, and his publishers and readers were thrilled when he brought forth a sequel, Omoo. Now, I am not at all dissing popular fiction. I love some of it. What I am dissing is the fact that some writers are punished when they try to expand their repertoire to include other things besides what's popular.

When Melville deviated from the kind of popular adventure he'd once written, critics called his work "trash," said it was "muddy, foul, and corrupt." One newspaper headline even blared: "HERMAN MELVILLE CRAZY," and members of Melville's family arranged for a consult with a doctor about his sanity.

But Herman Melville had not gone insane. He had simply needed to write outside the standard "formula for success" books most people wanted.