The danger of living close to nature.
The danger of living close to nature. BRENDAN KILEY

Judge Dismisses Claims of Some Oso People Who Lost Family and Homes to the Deadliest Mudslide in the History of this Country: Yes, we should have sympathy for the people who died and lost homes in the mudslide. But we should also ask this: Why did those people decide to live in the middle of nowhere? Oso is a very wild-looking area. Anything that's neglected for a few days is soon absorbed by a thriving nature. And one will find here and there homes that are clinging on the side of hills. Safety, it's often said, is in numbers. Such numbers do not exist in Oso. People who live there live away from people. This is the choice they made. So, it is not surprising that a judge last week tossed out of his court a claim that attempted fix some of the blame for the Oso losses on Snohomish County government officials.

Seriously, if you are the type who got out of a car and looked at some wild piece of property that's for sale in Oso, looked at all of those hills and trees around the property, looked at the thick mists above you and the even thicker mud beneath your boots, and thought this will do fine, this is where your home will be, than it is hard to believe that warnings from government officials about the dangers of nature would have changed your mind in the least bit about the place. Most of us who look at Oso for the first time—as I did in March, 2014—get the idea right away and just want to get the hell out of there. This is not civilization, these hills hate humans, this is no place for a home.

One High-Speed Chase Ends: With a 3-car crash. Another, which also involved a stolen car, ended with two crashes and a death. And what did the police find in the second monstrously mangled stolen car? "$500 worth of counterfeit bills." The dead man "was a known counterfeiter."

Pedestrian Hit on Rainier Avenue: The day after Rainier Valley Greenways held a safe streets rally in Columbia City, a pedestrian was struck by a car on Rainier Avenue South and South Massachusetts Street. This person, who is said to be 30 years old, was "taken to Harborview Medical Center with life-threatening injuries." As for the SDOT, which has done little to improve the situation on Rainier Avenue or life in the city in general? That organization is the enemy of all enlightened urbanism in Seattle. It is like the headquarters for an occupying army. The city is for people, and the army that's occupying the city and its true inhabitants is made up of cars that take up lots of space and constantly press to move at high speeds.

We Are Now In the Middle of a Heat Wave That Will Hopefully End On Saturday Night: KIRO offers a list of public places that will cool you.

Which Popular Weatherperson Will Tell Us That This Ban On Charcoal and Wood Fires at all Washington State Parks Has Nothing to Do With Global Warming? Cliff Mass, of course. Nevertheless, "all of Washington's state parks are under an extreme fire ban." Even in park-designated fire rings, charcoal and wood fires are banned. There will be no fucking around in the age of global warming.

A Sad Island Village in Alaska Votes To Leave Ancestral Lands Because Global Warming Is All Too Real: The vote involved 169 people, 89 of which decided the best thing to do about rising sea levels was to get up and go to the mainland. 78 wanted to stay and see what happens next in these strange, strange times. Now the decision has been democratically made, the village has to face its next big challenge: Where will it find the funds to move from an area where whole houses have fallen into the water?

The World's Most Famous Philosopher on Donald Trump: Slavoj Žižek is a philosopher. He has written big books about Hegel and the forms and manifestations of human ideology. This is what the philosopher recently had to say about a very dumb American politician who represents millions of dumber Americans, Donald Trump:

Did you notice, if you are old enough (and I am) that in the 1960s and that upheaval, usually the radical protestors were using dirty words to shock the establishment. Now it's almost the opposite, the more you go to the right, the more they are vulgar. I think we should proudly accept and shamelessly exploit this fact. No, we the Left—whatever remains of it—are the only true defenders of simple common decency. We are the moral majority in practice.


Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort Resigns: The Washington Post is reporting that just two days after Trump's third campaign shake-up, the chairman and chief strategist for the campaign, Paul Manafort, has resigned. Manafort has been recently tied to "pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians and oligarchs."

The German Interior Minister Wants to Ban Burka: Why? Because Germany, in this minister's eyes, is an open society, and the burka is for places that are not open but very much closed. Being open means being free, and being free is being the most European a European can be. The burka says one thing chete: I'm a bad European.