Jeff’s Mom Is Dead: Jackie Bezos, 78, died in her Miami home on Thursday after “a long fight with Lewy body dementia,” as Jeff penned in his Instagram goodbye to mommy dearest. Alongside her husband Mike, Jackie wrote one of the two checks to support her son’s startup in 1995. That $245,573 investment spawned billions for the couple and, as we all know, even more for their son. Despite having all the money one could want, death still came for Jackie as it will come for us all. 

My Step-Dad Predicted This: For years, my step-dad Ben has been convinced we will be able to upload our consciousnesses in our lifetimes. Good news, Ben. Tech start-up Nectome wants to preserve people’s brains and back-up their minds so one day the scientists of the future—hundreds of years from now, maybe even thousands of years from now—can upload those minds into computer simulations. Is that resurrection? Are you still the you that were uploaded? Not quite. Making everything even more complicated is the fact that in order to even get this procedure done, you’ll have to fucking die. Newcome founder Robert McIntyre said his “product” is “100 percent fatal.” If you want to kill yourself for the chance of an imprint of you to live forever as a computer simulation, you can sign up for the waitlist—it only costs $10,000. 

I like this take on the whole thing: McGill University neuroscientist Michael Hendricks had this to say about preserving brains for future generations to deal with: 

“Burdening future generations with our brain banks is just comically arrogant. Aren’t we leaving them with enough problems?” Hendricks told [MIT Technology Review] this week after reviewing Nectome’s website. “I hope future people are appalled that in the 21st century, the richest and most comfortable people in history spent their money and resources trying to live forever on the backs of their descendants. I mean, it’s a joke, right? They are cartoon bad guys.”

The Great West Seattle Jewelry Robbery: In broad daylight at around noon on Thursday, four masked thieves busted into Menashe and Sons Jewelers on California Avenue Southwest. They smashed and grabbed, breaking six different cases and snatching Rolexes, an emerald necklace, and gold jewelry. They made off with an estimated $2 million in merchandise. If you have any info on this group, the Seattle Police Department would appreciate the help. 

The World Humanoid Robot Games is This Weekend: The first-of-its-kind event kicks off in Beijing on Friday with “500 humanoid robots in 280 teams from 16 countries, including the U.S., Germany and Japan” competing—and showcasing their prowess in robotics, according to CTV News. The opening ceremony included a robot soccer match and it looked like shit. 

Four teams competed in the inaugural RoBoLeague World Robot Soccer League in Beijing, ahead of the World Humanoid Robot Games in August. The robotic players all operated autonomously, with no humans directly to blame for the terrible defending on show.

[image or embed]

— WIRED (@wired.com) July 1, 2025 at 6:24 AM

The Weather: This storm front of dreary, wet weather reeks of fall. It will deliver us all of August’s typical rainfall amount in just two days. Listen close. Beyond the pitter-pat of rain, you can hear it: Seattleites everywhere muttering, “We needed this. We needed this.” And when you think of the crab grass, the parched soil turning to dust in our parks, and the fires using it all as fuel across the state, you can’t help but think we did need this. The people who did not need this? Everyone who banked on Aug. 16 being a warm, dry Seattle Saturday to get married on. It’s good luck at least! 

The Traffic: A complete closure of I-5 north from the I-90 interchange to Northeast 45th Street will snarl commutes this weekend. Plan accordingly. The good news is that after this weekend, the freeway should fully open—which means goodbye to the two-lanes the stretch has been reduced to for the past month. 

Too Bad the Light Rail Isn’t Dependable: An issue with a “ventilation safety fault” has shut down Northgate, Roosevelt, U District, University of Washington and Capitol Hill stations. Riders will need to take shuttle buses if they are leaving from or heading to any of those stops. 

If I Had a Nickel for Every Time This Happened… A group text called “Mass Text” between Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and other law enforcement agencies accidentally added a random person to the thread. In it, they discussed an active search for a convicted murderer allegedly slated for deportation. Yep, that means they flung around a lot of sensitive information. According to 404 Media, this included “detailed information about the target they were looking for, and… ICE pulling data from a DMV and license plate readers.” And this was just a regular old text thread, not even an end-to-end encrypted chat like the Signal group a senior Trump administration official added the editor-in-chief from The Atlantic to. 

Gerrymandering, But for the Good Guys: California Gov. Gavin Newsom and all of that hair of his announced the Golden State is moving forward with a redistricting plan to counter the Republican-led gerrymandering effort and to secure a House majority. Two can play at this game. “We can’t stand back and watch this democracy disappear district by district all across the country,” Newsom said. While Newsom spoke, armed and masked federal agents gathered, seemingly in a show of intimidation. 

Border Patrol agents assembled outside a Los Angeles museum where Gov. Gavin Newsom was holding a rally and news conference on congressional redistricting. Local elected officials expressed outrage that the agents decided to stand there in a brazen show of force. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/14/u…

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— The New York Times (@nytimes.com) August 14, 2025 at 3:50 PM

More Tech Layoffs: Texas-based cloud computing company Oracle is cutting 161 employees in Seattle.

JD Vance’s Humiliation Tour Continues: JD Vance, who is somehow still on vacation, couldn’t dine at The Bull in Charlbury, Oxfordshire because a staff mutiny made management turn him away.

DC Sues Trump Administration over Occupation: Washington D.C.’s local government has filed a federal suit against the Trump administration and Attorney General Pam Bondi’s “brazen usurpation of the District’s authority over its own government.” According to the suit, Trump’s federalization of D.C. police and Bondi’s installation of an emergency police commissioner “exceed the narrow delegation that Congress granted the President in Section 740,” or the DC Home Rule Act that gives the president a 30-day period to control the local police if he declares an emergency, according to The Guardian. So far, that safety emergency looks like arresting a justice department employee and charging him with a felony for throwing a sandwich at an ICE agent. They sent 20 officers to arrest this guy. They heard he had a pound of turkey, a loaf of white and some dangerously sharp cheddar.

The White House posted an insane video of the police arresting the sandwich guy in a safe and wealthy neighborhood.

[image or embed]

— amanda moore 🐢 (@noturtlesoup17.bsky.social) August 14, 2025 at 9:49 PM

Meanwhile, Trump Meets with Putin: Trump and Russia President Vladimir Putin are meeting face-to-face in Alaska to chat about Russia’s war in Ukraine. It’s the first in-person meeting between American and Russian leaders since the Ukraine invasion happened in 2022. The meeting could determine the future of that conflict and Trump’s commitment to NATO.  

Sports Betting Is Such an Ick: In a time of year where there aren’t a ton of professional sports to wager on, people who need to make a sports wager to feel are turning to betting on the Little League World Series. Yes, children playing baseball. 

A Bullfighting Resurgence? Spanish bullfighting is seeing a complicated renaissance thanks to two popular matadors who fucking hate each other and who have been recently gored by bulls. Plus, the stigma associated with the sport—which is falling out of popularity especially with young and educated Spaniards—is increasing its appeal. Forbidden fruit and all that. Also, maybe society just thirsts for blood now more than it ever has. 

A Song for Your Friday: You deserve a ballad today.


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Nathalie Graham covers anything she finds fun, weird, or interesting. You can find a lot of that in her column, Play Date. Her work has also appeared around town in The Seattle Times, GeekWire, and the...

73 replies on “Slog AM: Bad Traffic for Seattle, Brain Storage for the Wealthy, and DC Sues Over Federal Police Takeover”

  1. @34 Catalina Vel-DuRay: Why do I have the uncomfortable feeling that Putin’s sock puppet, Felon Mu$k’s Mein Trumpf is going to hand over Alaska back to the Russians, all nicely gift wrapped? Is it just me?

    @42 &@43: Shhhh, Calvin dear. We all know how scared shitless of democracy you are.

    No need to parrot Felon Mu$k’s Mein Trumpf’s cue cards. You and your fellow MAGA ilk

    will be going over the side soon enough, and Taco Don and its loyalists will be laughing

    uproariously at you for being such gullible rubes.

  2. @47

    “(Everybody —

    please jump in with

    anything you believe I

    missed. I’m sure there’s a lot.)”

    ok. well

    since you

    Asked: you

    Missed the Gist:

    “How about showing these comments of yours to a responsible adult you interact with IRL and get their unvarnished opinion of how you come across to people?”

    if Memory

    Serves you’ve

    stated Repeatedly that

    you DGAF what tf Others

    may think of your sometimes

    Horrific & beyond the pale comments

    which

    I believe

    Should have

    no place here

    and tS’s comment history

    shows I’m Far from Alone

    and NO

    I will NOT

    subject myself

    to your grandiloquent

    & frequently abusive commentary

    to search for them to “prove it to you.”

    they’re

    Out there.

    Discover them.

  3. tensorna @47, you seem to have spent a lot of time and energy proving my point. There’s a resaon I said Friday was “ONE OF the most shameful days in American history.”

    Again, I would go back to what I said @45: “@tensorna, a little advice. Please don’t take this the wrong way. How about showing these comments of yours to a responsible adult you interact with IRL and get their unvarnished opinion of how you come across to people?”

    At least when you show your comments to that responsible adult, you’ll have one more comment to show them.

  4. Whoops, I made a couple of errors @47. The Eisenhower Administration violently overthrew the democratically-elected government of Guatemala, not Nicaragua. (The Soviet Union was trying to bring Nicaragua under Soviet influence at that time.) More importantly, the WWII summit at which an American President got played by a European dictator was at Yalta, not Malta. I apologize and state regret for these errors (and for the hundreds — if not thousands! — of American days which were far worse than Trump getting played by Putin).

    @45, @57: You first. @24, you reference a comment you made in another thread. Also in that other thread’s comment, you accused me of making an offensive statement, then grandly announced you would not even attempt to present any evidence to support your accusation. Should you ever find an adult IRL who’ll actually read your comment, do ask that adult if deliberately making accusations you have absolutely no intention of ever supporting comports with that adult’s idea of intelligent, respectful discourse amongst adults. Then let us know the adult’s answer, ‘k?

  5. tensorna @58, thankfully I have enough perspective on life to know that I have better things to do with my time than to gather enough evidence to “win” a meaningless argument with an obsessive personality on the Internet. I’m here to advocate for political issues, not to defend my honor. You must admit it’s a little weird to drudge up a comment I made “against” you in another thread in the context of the constructive feedback I’m trying to offer here, no?

    tensorna, can you promise me just one thing–that you will show your comments on this thread to a responsible adult you trust and get their perspective on them? I think you could use a little perspective right now.

    Anyway, I’ll let you get the last word on this thread as I know you are determined to do.

    P.S. I’m reminded of that saying. If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

  6. Before I ever made a comment in this thread, other commenters had already (and repeatedly) mentioned me in it. That suggests the criticisms made after I chose to comment have more to do with my critics’ personal agendas, than with my own chosen behaviors. For example:

    @55: “Do you realize that @42 and @43 are in defense of CKathes, who you give kudos to in @53?”

    Do you realize that I did not write @53?

    @59: It’s not your “honor” you should worry about, dear, but your credibility. Whether you provide evidence to support your accusations has little to do with me, but so much more with you. That you now try to deflect blame for your own failures onto others does not augur well for the quality of your “constructive feedback,” now does it?

    “You must admit it’s a little weird to drudge up a comment…”

    Back @24, you yourself were the one who “drudged up” your own comment from another thread, in vain attempt to show Libretto68 that you and I were not the same person. That was a fool’s errand, as there is no such thing as evidence Libretto68 will ever accept to show Libretto68 is wrong. Again, accusing someone else of your own behaviors does not absolve you of responsibility for them.

  7. Clarification to my comment @59 to the two people who are still reading this thread: “You must admit it’s a little weird to drudge up a comment I made “against” you in another thread in the context of the constructive feedback I’m trying to offer here, no?”

    OK, I see I was the one who was dredging (not drudging) up my past comment about tensorna on this thread. Apologies for my own confusion.

  8. @23: Do you still think that cressona and tensorna are written by the same human after tying to parse their volleys here? To think they’re written by the same (quite talented I would have to say) dude makes my head explode.

  9. @62

    a. back at @29 I wouldda Bet they were

    there’s just Way too much Overlap

    b. but after that volley

    I’d hafta say nah

    although there Are those

    w/ multiple personalities

    & that’s I suppose en-

    tirely possible here.

    and c. oh,

    there’s Plenty

    Enough Talent

    already Evidenced

    finally d: I

    gotta Wonder

    Which @tS writer’s

    gonna Crack this Case

    Clean up derr Schlogg

    and Who’s gonna play

    the Main ‘characters’

    in the Made-for-Hal-

    mark-teevee series

    brought to Us by

    Wait

    for

    it:

    Beacon fucking

    Plumbing – I wanna

    see Marshawn driving

    that damn Zamboni over

    Seattle’s frozen Roadways

    to the Fawking Rescue

  10. “Burdening future generations with our brain banks is just comically arrogant.”

    Reminds me of the brilliantly satirical movie, “Don’t Look Up,” wherein (Spoiler Alert!!) the only humans to escape the violent end of the world have been put into (cryogenic?) sleep, and sent to a faraway planet which supposedly can support them. As their spaceship makes planetfall, and the automated systems aboard start to awaken them from hibernation, the audience learns they’re all corporate CEOs, and their yes-men and -women. They emerge from their ship into a lush, earth-like world — and are all promptly eaten alive by local dinosaurs.

  11. I was out on friday so I tried to go back and read the comment section this morning and good lord… even by SLOG standards you guys were a clusterfuck of crazy.

  12. @55: I’m well aware that you were addressing tensy (@39). That’s an interesting choice of words though, Calvin, for claiming to defend CKathes, dontcha think? “Tear CKathes a new pussy”??

  13. @67: Read it again. I was asking tensorna why he’s attacking and insulting CKathes.

    “Why tear CKathes a new pussy just because of a different perspective on presidential summit history?”

  14. @67: “That’s an interesting choice of words though, Calvin, for claiming to defend CKathes, dontcha think?”

    TBF, it is all of the class he can muster. (See @42 and @43 for other examples.)

  15. @70: No, Auntie’s dressing you down for your freely-chosen use of language does not actually obligate me to say anything, but thanks for demonstrating your version of ‘logic.’

Comments are closed.