Autumn Serenade: When I stepped outside this morning, the air smelled like fall. It was a little damp, a little brisk, the sky threatened rain. But we’re still in that sweet spot where the light lasts longer than 12 hours and the summer sun still warms the afternoon. Today, we’ve got a high of 74. This is the weather that convinces people to move to Seattle. If you’ve been working on getting a friend to move here, now’s the time to invite them for a visit.
City Hall Wants to Watch You Teeter Home Drunk: And whatever else you do on Capitol Hill. City Council is voting on two bills this afternoon that would drastically expand the city’s video surveillance pilot program to include the Capitol Hill Nightlift District, Cal Anderson Park, and Garfield High School. If that pisses you off, public comment starts at 1 p.m. If you’re not sure if it pisses you off…
The Research Is in, and Surveillance Is as Bad as You Think It Is: You can tell that uncle that likes to say that “you only have to worry about surveillance if you have something to hide” where to shove it. Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck asked the Office of Civil Rights to assess the risks of increasing video surveillance in Seattle. The office found that research based in law, social science, and behavioral science does not support the argument that these surveillance technologies reduce felonies, violent crimes, gun violence, or human trafficking. But there’s a large body of evidence that shows that it is not neutral, and it carries “direct consequences for equal protection, privacy, and the freedoms of speech and association.”
Plus, Trump: The report also pointed out that “cities like Nashville, Austin, and Denver have chosen to move away from similar surveillance technologies due to the risk of federal co-opting of data and the undercutting of essential civil rights and liberties.”
My office requested that the Office of Civil Rights assess CB 121052 and 121053, and we wanted to share this report with the public.
“CCTV and RTCC technologies are not neutral instruments, as they carry direct consequences for equal protection, privacy, and the freedoms of speech and association.”
— Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck (@councilmember-amr.bsky.social) September 8, 2025 at 2:42 PM
The Little Engine The Could: Around midnight on Monday night, Sound Transit sent its first train across the I-90 bridge using its own power. It was moving slowly enough that people in hard hats and hi-vis vests could run alongside it, but it proved that it is, in fact, possible to run a light rail train across a floating bridge. The connection between the 1 and 2 lines is slated to open in early 2026.
“When I Turn 21 iam going to kill people”: That was one of the posts that led police to arrest a 13-year-old Pierce County boy over the weekend. Police discovered 23 firearms in his home, including high powered rifles. Some of the guns were mounted on walls. Others were kept in a gun safe. In images he posted online, he posed in the clothes of notorious school shooters. On Monday, the teenager was charged with three counts of second-degree unlawful possession of a firearm, one count of attempted threat to bomb or injure property, and one count of unlawful possession of fireworks. The incident “checked all the boxes of a mass shooter, but we were able to prevent it from happening,” sheriff’s spokesperson Carly Cappetto said Monday, according to the Seattle Times.
Fire Update: The rain pushed the smoke out of Seattle, but the fires are still burning. Right now more than 80,000 acres are burning in Washington state. The Bear Gulch Fire, which is the only major human-caused fire burning in the state, is the largest and still only 9 percent contained. This is more or less the fire season we expected, experts say, and it’s below the 10-year annual average. To keep it that way, the Department of Natural Resources would love it if we didn’t casually start more fires by ignoring burn bans. Cool, thanks.
Another Wonderful Secret: On Monday, the House Panel released Jeffrey Epstein’s “Birthday Book,” including a letter allegedly from Trump to Epstein, and as a result, the homepage of every major daily newspaper was plastered with a hand drawing of a woman’s figure that was clearly done by someone who only vaguely remembers what a woman looks like. Inside her shaky hourglass figure, there’s a dialogue between “Donald” and “Jeffrey.” It ends by saying: “A pal is a wonderful thing—and may every day be another wonderful secret.” Trump says he never wrote it. The White House says his signature isn’t his signature. “DEFAMATION!” the White House deputy chief of staff for communications cried. A “fake scandal,” claimed JD Vance. Meanwhile, the Birthday Book also includes a “partially redacted image of Epstein holding an oversize novelty check signed by ‘DJTRUMP.’ A handwritten message below that image reads ‘Jeffrey showing early talents with money + women! Sells “fully depreciated” [redacted] to Donald Trump for $22,500.’”
Exclusive: Jeffrey Epstein’s estate has given Congress a copy of the 2003 birthday book, including the letter with Trump’s signature that he has said doesn’t exist.
— The Wall Street Journal (@wsj.com) September 8, 2025 at 11:49 AM
Bible Study: Have you been looking for a way to spend an hour a week with 10 other Christian nationalists? On Monday, during his speech at his Religious Liberty Commission’s hearing at the Museum of the Bible, Trump announced his America Prays initiative. The WhiteHouse.gov website reads:
The Ask: What if one million Americans dedicated one hour a week to praying for our country and our people?
The Invitation: Will you join with at least 10 people to meet each week for one hour to pray for America?
The Opportunity: As we celebrate 250 years of freedom, this is an opportunity to rededicate ourselves to the principles that gave birth to this land of liberty.
Trump’s Prosperity Gospel: At the Religious Liberty Commission hearing, he did his best to show the powerful Christians surrounding him that he was a Man of God. And that if they continued to support him, he would inch us closer to a theocracy. “To have a great nation, you have to have religion,” Trump said at the hearing. “There has to be something after we go through all of this, and that something is God.” He claimed that students are “indoctrinated with antireligious propaganda” in public schools and announced the Department of Education would have new guidance about religion in schools, but didn’t say what that guidance would be.
A Song for Your Tuesday: This one’s hot off the presses. Jay Som released this new single while I was writing this news roundup this morning. And it’s a vibe. She’s playing at Neumos on December 19 if you want to catch it live.
I’m hearing all the libtards crowing now that we finally have proof that Trump’s birthday note to Epstein is real.
Oh, is that real like climate change?
Is that real like your cute, little fantasies that vaccines reduce the severity of COVID and masks prevent the spread of COVID?
Is that real like your so-called “laws” that are nothing more than random words on a piece of paper? Like our duly elected Supreme Court cares one whit about your stinkin’ “laws.”
I’ve got news for you libturds. When it comes to truth and reality, we take our marching orders from one man and one man only, our Lord and savior Donald J. Trump. Oh, and so what if we had to sacrifice a few virgins to him along the way! Whether it’s real estate or women, there’s nobody who knows depreciation like President Trump knows depreciation.
Disclaimer. This comment was generated with the help of MAGA-AI®.
@1 I 100% thought WereBackBaby wrote that until I got to the bottom. Good job.
1: Error: The most hard-core MAGA evangelicals reserve Jesus as the Lord and Savior, Son of God, and Donald Trump has the blessings of God to carry out God’s work. Hope you understand the distinction, otherwise your satire trips over itself.
What does it mean, crossing under its own power? The train wasn’t using electricity from the lines?
@4 It means as opposed to being pushed by a truck, which is how they do the first test run to check for physical obstacles.
It’s always so quiet here whenever trump’s pedophilia is in the news
While The Stranger badmouths “surveillance”, just yesterday it helped SPD quickly capture somebody who, at 5:30pm, randomly stabbed their victim in the abdomen after rushing them from behind. I guess TS would rather have the random stabbers run wild? And Rinck asking the Office of Civil Rights to “evaluate” the video technology is comically absurd. You might as well go on progressive Bluesky and ask if progressives have the best ideas. What do you think the answer will be? Perhaps TS and the city’s esteemed researcher could compare the relative likelihoods that this particular perp will stab another innocent victim when he is in jail vs not.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/man-stabbed-in-seemingly-unprovoked-attack-in-seattles-cid-police-say/
https://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2025/09/08/man-arrested-for-stabbing-footage-captured-by-real-time-crime-center/
Speaking of stabbings and surveillance, a horrible murder on a light rail train in Charlotte NC, that happened on August 22 and was completely ignored by major news outlets like the New York Times and CNN until yesterday (9/8/2025, 18 days later), was caught on the surveillance camera in the train (including the audio).
The murderer is a repeat felon, out of jail on cashless bail, who stabbed a Ukrainian refugee woman from behind, totally unprovoked. As he walked away from the murder, he can be heard on the surveillance video saying “I got that white girl, I got that white girl.”
If you get all your “news” from The Stranger, I can understand why you haven’t heard about it.
But I’m sure the killer totally can’t qualify as being a “racist” because he was obviously absolutely powerless, and all good Seattle “progressives” know, as an act of faith, that “racism = power + prejudice” is the only acceptable “definition” of “racism”.
Decarlos Brown Jr. was just trying to help Iryna Zarutska become more Progressive, by Dismantling her White Privilege, but her White Fragility got in the way of his knife.
The outcome was still Progressive though, because he Abolished her Whiteness.
6: What news? Did a picture of Trump with an underage girl surface or something?
If a white man stabbed a black woman to death on a train, and it was all caught on video, and the surveillance camera also caught the audio of him saying “I got that black girl, I got that black girl” as he walked away from the murder, I’m totally sure it would take 18 days for CNN and the New York Times and MSNBS to get around to broadcasting about it [eyeroll emoji].
@12 I’m not sure a violent crime in a city on the other side of the country needs national exposure.
@13 – well of course you don’t LIKE that it’s getting national exposure, that’s obvious, you seem pretty “progressive”. NEED is in the eye of the beholder.
Do you imagine that CNN and MSNBC and The New York Times would EVER ignore, for 18 days, a white man murdering a black woman on a train anywhere in the USA, all caught on video and audio, and you can hear the white man saying “I got that black girl, I got that black girl” as he walked away from the murder with blood dripping from his knife?
If you answer “yes”, that just proves how naive and goofy you are.
In other interesting news that Slog ignored (of course), Seattle Councilmember Alexis Mercedes-Rinck has chickened out of “The Great Debate” next month.
@8/9/10/12/14/doubtless more by the time I finish writing this
I’m not entirely sure what point you’re trying to make by bringing up a horrible crime that happened 3,000 miles away from Seattle (which was in fact widely reported at the time) but if you’re suggesting that white people are disproportionately victimized by people of color, I don’t think you’d be pleased with the outcome of a meticulous side-by-side historical comparison.
@16 – It wasn’t widely reported my major national news outlets until yesterday. Some local news outlets covered it. CNN and The New York Times didn’t touch it until yesterday, NBC didn’t cover it until today, MSNBC still hasn’t covered it.
The point I’m making, and try to read this carefully, because it’s REALLY EASY TO UNDERSTAND, is that if a white man murdered a black woman on a train anywhere in the USA, all caught on video and audio, and you can hear the white man saying “I got that black girl, I got that black girl” as he walked away from the murder with blood dripping from his knife, there’s absolutely no way those news outlets would have ignored it for a full 18 days (19 in the case of NBC, and still ignored by MSNBC).
They would have been screaming about it, all day every day, for the past 2 weeks at least, and for weeks and possibly even months to come, and if you don’t think that’s the truth, then you are naive.
It wasn’t reported by fox news or the ny post until yesterday either. Trump just mentioned it for the first time too and i don’t exactly think any of them as the type to avoid a story about a mentally ill black man murdering a white lady in a random act of violence, but the national far-right media missing out on a local news story doesn’t feed into the poor-me conservative victim mindset so the poor-me conservatives don’t see it. You’re gonna have to find something else to cry about i guess.
13: That George Floyd violent crime happened on the other side of the country as well. Talk about national exposure!
18: Here’s the full video of the stabbing for you to make light of. And it wasn’t random, the black man killed the White lady because she was White.
https://x.com/i/status/1965495500872057028
Accurately describing a crime is not making light of it but posting video to someone’s violent death is certainly in that ballpark. I’m sure her family doesn’t appreciate her senseless death being shared by sick fucks like you looking to score political points in the comments. Murder at the hand of a complete stranger is the definition of a random act of violence, even if the victim is a pretty white lady and the perpetrator is a mentally ill minority.
20: I don’t recall anyone complaining about the George Floyd’s death video being shared.
“pretty white lady” – your racist snarky sarcasm is blatant
All good white Seattle Progressives know, in their hearts, that Decarlos Brown Jr. was just trying to help Iryna Zarutska become more Progressive, by Dismantling her White Privilege, but her White Fragility got in the way of his knife.
The outcome was still Progressive though, because he Abolished her Whiteness.
re 21 – Correction: Nah, you’re not racist – just snarky.
21 Well you didn’t look very hard because a lot of people were repulsed by it. You can even find articles about the ways “good” (read: progressive) white people glorify black pain by propagating their suffering through the media, something that should be right up your alley. Calling a white woman pretty isn’t racist but I’ll give you a pass since no one has ever accused you of being attractive and this is clearly a foreign experience for you (calling someone pretty is a compliment).
All good white Seattle “progressives” know that it’s completely impossible for black people to be racist towards white people, at all, whatsoever, because white people have all the power, and black people don’t have any power, and the One True Definition of racism is “prejudice + power”, and Decarlos Brown Jr. was obviously totally powerless.
Therefore he wasn’t racist at all, because he had no power to oppress her life, and his uttering “I got that white girl, I got that white girl” was just his innocent observational self-dialogue on what he had just done. Why is this so hard for non-Progressives to understand??!?!?
Yup, Trump IS the Antichrist.
Yes, Lord, you can send the giant bucket of KFC chicken. You can clog up those arteries!
Or in other words, clots and prayers!
24: She wasn’t pretty you twit. She was glamour gorgeous. Pretty is something you say to your Mother.
‘“To have a great nation, you have to have religion,” Trump said at the hearing. “There has to be something after we go through all of this, and that something is God.”’
I certainly hope they weren’t expecting him to give money to charity.
@7: Yes, the video recorded in public (‘public,’ as in ‘NOT private, NO expectation of privacy, where anyone can already see you and you know it’) helped catch the suspect. But of course, if we actually apprehend persons who run around stabbing, we’re just advancing the carceral state blah blah blah shut up about that, it’s only a flesh wound, quit yer bitching you fascist Trump supporter…
NotMyopic/biped/loser you’re so fucking odd. The stranger is an alternative newspaper. Also SLOG is literally their blog to report a few current events. They do not need to report everything, and definitely not everything you personally deem newsworthy.
Calm the fuck down already, you’re so weird dude. You have such strange standards for this paper. Maybe get job, or a friend, or a hobby.
@29 – LOL you hate the truth so much that you want me to shut up. You can’t stand it that I’m mocking you and your stupid “progressive” pseudo-religious belief system in a way that can’t be argued against. You hate that I am committing heresy against your most cherished bullshit. HAHAHA!!!
@7 & 28 the article and blotter post don’t say surveillance cameras helped catch the perpetrator they just say video was captured that “will aid the investigation” (note future tense). Sounds like police caught this guy the old fashioned way, then tried to shoehorn in the surveillance to make it seem like it was a critical factor, conveniently right when the city is trying to expand the program.
Troll @30…
Oh FFS. People want you to shut up because you are tedious and you say nothing except “whataboutism”.
This is a local independent city blog, not the AP. It’s not what you say, necessarily, but mostly that you are being such a douchebag while saying it. Read the room.
Think about it… is this your 7th or 8th banning? Who else has come close? Are you going for the all-time banning award at slog? Or are you just craving the attention that you never got as a child? When you had to throw tantrums to get your parent(s)’ attention? Is this what ‘lifts your luggage’?
I think you just like to believe you are a big fish in a small pond trying to ‘own the libs’, but you spending all day, posting the same thing every day seems a little pathetic.
I would love to see you try to pull your shtick at some of the other blogs I read.
@17 Whether that’s true is pure speculation on your part. But if it’s correct, it might be due to an effort by responsible media gatekeepers to take extra care on reportage of crimes allegedly committed by Black individuals against white victims as it has greater potential for negative repercussion on the Black community as a whole (the vast majority of whom are law-abiding) than similar crime stories involving whites. Owing to centuries of negative stereotyping, there are millions of white people in this country who have been primed to believe that all Black people (or at least all non-elderly Black men) are potential violent criminals and who deliberately seek out and amplify stories such as this one to justify their racist attitudes to themselves and others. Based on what I’ve heard so far about this incident, I think the media outlets that decided it wasn’t a huge national story — and that it shouldn’t be sensationalized into one — made the right call.
@31 The blotter says they got video of the crime. That can only help the effort to apprehend and prosecute the offender. You’ve inferred a boilerplate statement that the video “will aid the criminal investigation” means the video was of no assistance in the perp’s capture but that is certainly not implied by the statement. The blotter says the crime was committed in the CID and then the perp was caught a mile or two away by the Lowes on Rainier. They likely had an accurate and detailed description of his physical appearance from the video, which would have helped them identify him so far from the scene of the crime.
Me @30
Shee-it… I had a few masturbation jokes lined up for the current troll, but I forgot to add them. Maybe next time.
(looks up current name… Hey! He’s bi! You go Glen Coco!)
Honest question… does ‘bi-ped’ mean you like both women’s and men’s feet? Would you give a man a foot massage?
How would that work? One at a time? One foot from each at the same time, then swap over to the other ones?
Inquiring minds want to know…
@34 “They likely had an accurate and detailed description of his physical appearance from the video”
Or from the victim and 911 callers. You think if the video was actually the key they wouldn’t have made that abundantly clear?
33: You’re heading down a slippery slope when you grant media outlets discretion on withholding news because of the public’s reaction. Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that had this story been mainstream would have resulted in any retaliations against blacks, because crime is going down (as libs say).
@36 I’m sure the victim and callers did offer descriptions of the perp, to the extent they could. The statement “The Real Time Crime Center captured video of the seemingly unprovoked attack.” seems pretty clear to me. I don’t know why you’re expecting some sort of parsing of the roles of witnesses vs cameras. Some people saw the perp, the cameras saw the perp, then the perp was captured a couple miles from the scene of the crime. That’s the story here.
@32 – I would absolutely LOVE to inflict my shtick on those other blogs you read! Please name them and/or post the links!
@33 – “Based on what I’ve heard so far about this incident, I think the media outlets that decided it wasn’t a huge national story — and that it shouldn’t be sensationalized into one — made the right call.”
Welp, it’s TOO LATE FOR THAT NOW.
@38 “I don’t know why you’re expecting some sort of parsing of the roles of witnesses vs cameras”
All I’m saying is your assertion that “just yesterday it helped SPD quickly capture somebody” is not supported by the blotter post. That’s obviously the inference SPD are hoping people will draw, but they did not say so.
@33 – “Based on what I’ve heard so far about this incident, I think the media outlets that decided it wasn’t a huge national story — and that it shouldn’t be sensationalized into one — made the right call.”
Actually, the media outlets deliberately ignoring this story is a large part of what made it a “huge national story”, because they were forced by shame to cover it. Therefore, for your purposes (total ignorance of the story), they initially made the wrong call.
@31 troll…
Try Pharyngula or Daily Kos and see how long you last there.
I’ll be looking for your dumbass.
@43 – “see how long you last there.”
Oh so they would censor my comments that mockingly prove how naive, illogical and stupid their belief systems are? Sounds about right.
@44…
Go see for yourself.
I’ve already been to DailyKooks years ago. They censored me and I wasn’t even being nearly as “offensive” as I have been here.
@42 Be that as it may, I think the instinct (if that’s what it was) not to sensationalize this story was a good one. Yes, it’s arguably newsworthy that the victim was a Ukrainian refugee, but it’s ironic that the voices screaming the loudest about this crime against one person don’t seem all that upset about the ongoing mass murder of Ukrainians by Russia. (I’m sure there are exceptions but I’ve yet to see Karoline Leavitt present juxtaposed images of Putin and a ruined Ukraine cityscape like she did the NC suspect and victim.)
@47 – weird how some people might be more concerned about something that happened in our own country than something happening on the other side of the world