Not a live picture of Delta's planes right now. Credit: JOE RAEDLE / GETTY
Not a live picture of Deltas planes right now.
Not a live picture of Delta’s planes right now. JOE RAEDLE / GETTY

Oh god, not more orca news: It’s not good. It’s never good. These orcas, I swear. You’d think Shamu had it good. Another one of the southern residents’ pod is sick. This time it’s K25. I know what you’re thinking. Not K25! Yes. K25. He’s 27 and not looking good for his age. He’s thin, but not good-thin. Nope, he’s sick-thin. This is apparently because his mom (K13) died last year. But wait, it gets worse. At least three members of the pod are pregnant. Normally, that would be reason to rejoice. I mean, the whole thing is that these whales are dying off. But, we remember all too well what happened last time one of these gals had a baby. I don’t know if they can take it. J35, always in our thoughts.

Arsonist whose fire killed 4 Seattle firefighters released from prison: Martin Pang set a fire in a Seattle warehouse in 1995 to get an insurance payment, according to the Seattle Times. Four firefighters died fighting that fire. Pang will be released from prison on Thursday.

Man shot in the ass while fishing on Lake Washington: Fishing is already enough of a pain in the ass. It proved to be a literal one for a 36-year-old fisherman at Beer Sheva Park. He was shot at 12:30 a.m. by suspects who fled in a silver or gray SUV, according to witnesses. That probably scared away the fish. He was taken to Harborview Medical Center in satisfactory condition.

That dry Seattle summer is going to fuck up our fall: Apparently, the fall colors this year won’t be super vibrant. That’s my favorite part of the year so I’m upset. Not as upset as our trees, though. Apparently, they’re really stressed out from the lack of water and that’s why they can’t muster up the strength for a beautiful fall display.

August smoke steals the show at Oregon Shakespeare festival: O! The horror! The annual festival was choked out by wildfire smoke and had to cancel more than two dozen outdoor performances. Next year, since this is our reality now, there will be an indoor performance area for when the air quality gets bad.

NASA continues the search for intelligent life: But under a different name. Congress cut off funding for the hunt for extraterrestrials about 25 years ago, much to Fox Mulder’s chagrin, probably. They’re doing it again now. However, the search isn’t for life but for “technosignatures.” Basically, NASA is hunting for life advanced enough to create technological signs or signals.

It’s the age of the rebrand: Yesterday, Weight Watchers rebranded to just “WW.” Now, Dunkin’ Donuts is droppin’ the donut. It’s just Dunkin’ now. And don’t you forget it. Not like it really matters to us. The West Coast has remained relatively unscathed when it comes to Dunkin’
Donuts’ influence. Shit. We just went over this. I meant Dunkin’s influence.

File this one under ‘Jobs You Should Not Take as a Woman or a Decent Human Being’:

Looking into the Philadelphia Flyers’ new mascot’s eyes might tell you how you’re going to die: I’m not sure. But look at this hellspawn-on-skates. I should have mentioned this yesterday, but I was thinking of the children. Why weren’t the Philadelphia Flyers thinking of the children?

France doesn’t want to do deals with anyone outside the Paris Agreement: I wouldn’t want to do trade deals with those kind of people either, France. Unfortunately, I am one of them since our idiot president pulled us out of those accords. Emmanuel Macron didn’t mention the U.S. specifically when he told this to the UN but we could all read between the lines pretty easily.

Delta’s fleet is grounded across the country from a computer outage: Flights are grounded nationwide because of this issue. There are tons of tweets like this on Delta’s twitter. Poor Denise. This is worrisome because this happens a lot. When I told one Stranger editor the news he whispered, “This is how North Korea is going to get us.”

But let’s not forget:

The FBI just arrested a Chinese informant: Apparently he was working on behalf of China’s intelligence agency.

Hey! We have a newsletter for this shit now: Sign up. The button is literally right there. (Imagine that you can see me pointing to below this post.) Yeah! Right there.

Also, while you’re at it, if you want to have your breakfast featured in tomorrow’s Slog AM send a picture of it to Michael Bell (mbell@thestranger.com). Send it to him before 8 a.m. Okay, thanks! See you tomorrow morning in the newsletter.

Speaking of Michael: He’s not the only one with a cute cat. This is my brother’s cat. His name is Nimitz (the cat, not my brother. His name is actually Michael, too. My brother, not the cat). Nimitz is from Greece. He’s named after a naval captain ADMIRAL named Chester Nimitz. His sister (not pictured) is named after the captain Oliver Hazard Perry. Her name is Perry. I can have cat content too, okay?

nimitz.jpg

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...