A mass shooter killed five people at a Colorado queer bar this weekend. The shooting occurred late Saturday night in Colorado Springs, a town that’s home to numerous conservative and homophobic organizations, including Focus on the Family. The gunman is in custody. No word about a motive or any connection to the bar, though experts say politicians spouting anti-trans rhetoric may have been a factor.

As mass shootings go, the number of victims is slightly higher than average, but it’s about equal to a normal weekend’s worth of gun violence in America. In other mass shootings this weekend, one person was killed and six were injured in Mississippi, four were killed in Virginia, one was killed and another injured at the University of New Mexico, one person is dead and five are injured after a freeway shooting in Arizona, two were killed in Ohio, and one person was killed at a hotel shooting in Portland. There was also a non-mass shooting in Bellevue.

How compromised is the Supreme Court? There’s an astonishing report in the New York Times suggesting that Justice Samuel Alito was the target of a coordinated espionage campaign by American conservatives who installed spies in Alito’s orbit. They called it the “Ministry of Emboldenment,” and the plan was to lavish justices with favors and donations, which yielded access to the justices and intel about upcoming rulings. Most of the allegedly involved parties deny everything.

Fitting. This weekend was World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims, and during a memorial ride in Portland a hit-and-run driver struck one of the participants. Seattle advocates are observing the day right now at City Hall.

Water is overrated. We saw one report of water outages around Eastlake last night, though it didn’t appear on SPU’s outage map. It should be back up and flowing now. Also: just a reminder from your friendly neighborhood sewer enthusiast that after a water outage you should always run the faucet for a little while until there’s no discoloration. I think water systems are super interesting because we tend to completely ignore them when they’re working, but there are so many ways that they can go horribly wrong.

Leaves don’t know when to leave a party. Like a guest who can’t take a hint when the host starts brushing their teeth, leaves seem to be sticking around longer than expected. It’s a phenomenon called “marcescence” and it looks pretty gross! Expect more warm-ish weather this week, with temperatures in the upper 40s and low 50s and intermittent rain around Tuesday and Friday.

Twitter is still bad. This weekend, Elon reinstated Donald Trump’s account, though Trump has said he won’t come back. Kanye is back on Twitter now. My prediction is that Twitter will not come to a crashing halt all at once but will become overrun by The Worst Possible People, and anyone with any sense will gradually flee until it’s a vast, awful wasteland, like the comment section of any blog after 2010.

Make this session a good one, please. We’re still weeks away from the start of the 2023 legislative session, but here’s a little recap of how Democrats picked up two additional seats. Hopefully this means they’re out of excuses for not ending exclusionary zoning this year. There is also, alas, some bad news around the state, with a one election conspiracy-believer winning the race for Mason County auditor. Washington now has an election-denier overseeing elections on the peninsula. 

The mouse has spoken. Bob Chapek is out as CEO of The Walt Disney Company and Bob Iger is back in. Iger was CEO from 2005 to 2020. I’ll always remember him for his role in the coming-out episode of Ellen in 1997, when as chairman of ABC he defended putting an “adult-content” warning on episodes that featured same-sex kisses. Here she is interviewing him years later, and the entire time I feel like she’s choking back white-hot fury. (The story of what went down behind the scenes with her show is in my book, by the way.)

Congrats to Green Lake. This weekend was the grand opening of the new and improved loop around Green Lake. More of this, please, particularly in historically underserved areas.

Speaking of which … SDOT quietly pushed back the construction date for a protected bike lane on MLK Way. Work was supposed to be starting now, but it’ll have to wait until the middle of next year. According to SDOT, the delay is due to logistical issues with the feds (because they’re paying for part of it) and WSDOT (which always seems to find a way to ruin bike/ped projects). Meanwhile, SDOT is keeping busy by blocking crossings and crosswalks, forcing pedestrians into the street. They’re also conducting a survey right now on a Ballard Bridge project that rejected pedestrian improvements.

“SDOT wants you dead.” Neighbors are still a bit miffed at the loss of their crosswalk at a dangerous intersection on Capitol Hill. After numerous collisions, including a recent crash that sent a pedestrian to the hospital, someone laid down their own pavement paint. The City removed it the next day. Now, markings are back: chalk messages reading “safe sense of safety” and “SDOT wants you dead” and “am I next?” Now, obviously, nobody at SDOT really wants you to die. It’s just that people do die as a result of SDOT’s actions. So far this morning, drivers around town have sent two pedestrians to the hospital, and an elderly woman hit by a driver in West Seattle this weekend has died.

So long. Jason David Frank, who played the Green Ranger in the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, has passed away at 49. 

And one for Mahler. My favorite comment about this video is “I can’t tell if this is a case of not enough gays being consulted or too many gays being consulted.” 

Matt Baume covered geek culture, queer news, and city infrastructure, and would leap at the flimsiest of excuses to write about furries. A writer, podcaster, and videomaker, he resides on Capitol Hill...