Mayor of leaving an entire city on read
Mayor of leaving an entire city on read nortonrsx / getty images

Jenny Durkan repeatedly blocked text-message archiving. For two years, city departments told the Durkan administration that they needed some money ā€” not much, under a million ā€” to improve the archiving of text messages in order to comply with state law. And for two years, the Durkan administration shot them down. Now here we are, with texts from last yearā€™s tumultuous summer mysteriously missing! What are the odds??? Anyway, this sure does look bad for Durkan, but just imagine how much worse whatever it was she wrote could have been.

Is it time to stop talking about eating the rich metaphorically? A new report indicates that the wage gap between CEOs and everyone else widened dramatically during the pandemic. (The CEO of Doordash, for example, got nearly half a billion dollars last year. I do not say he ā€œearnedā€ half a billion because no human is capable of actually earning such wealth.) CEO payouts increased by a little over 14 percent, while everyone elseā€™s wages went up by less than 2 percent. In unrelated news, the people of Tlatelcomila cooked humans in a mix of annatto, pipiĆ”n, and chilies.

Over two dozen people say local celeb chef Edouardo Jordan subjected women to sexual misconduct. The Seattle Times spoke to 28 people who say Jordan touched or harassed female employees. He says he tried to kiss one woman on a business trip and doesnā€™t remember any of the other allegations. Jordanā€™s restaurants include Salare, which is closing July 3, and also soon-to-merge Lucinda Grain Bar and JuneBaby.

The Pulse nightclub will become a national memorial. This weekend was the fifth anniversary of the horrible shooting. Biden says heā€™ll sign a bill making it a national memorial. Thatā€™s cool, thanks, could you maybe also sign a bill banning assault weapons? So far there have been 270 mass shootings in America this year; just this weekend, various shooters killed at least eight people and wounded 48. What is WRONG with us?

Protesters blocked an Israeli-owned cargo ship from unloading. Itā€™s not clear what kind of cargo is on the cargo ship ZIM, but whatever it is probably wonā€™t be unloaded in Seattle. Pro-Palestine protesters say that their goal is to make Israeli occupation as costly as possible.

The Five Nights at Freddy guy is also a Trump guy. Scott Cawthorn, creator of the popular horror game, has written a nonapology for donating thousands to Donald Trump, among other Republicans. The grossest part of his statement: "Even if there were candidates who had better things to say to the LGBT community directly, and bigger promises to make, I believed that their stances on other issues would have ended up doing much greater harm to those communities than good." Oh thank you for having our best interests at heart.

Seattleā€™s teachers union has endorsed Nikkita Oliver for district nine. I hate to break it to you, but weā€™ve got an election coming up. The Seattle Education Association likes Nikkita Oliver, which is probably good to know if education and/or labor unions are important to you. (Stranger Election Control Board meetings are currently in progress, with endorsements coming soon.)

Right-wing mediaā€™s seized on a Seattle candidateā€™s mental health crisis. Years ago, King County Council District 9 candidate Ubax Gardheere experienced what she recently described as ā€œpostpartum depression and ā€¦ a mental breakdown,ā€ during which she boarded a school bus and made threats of violence. Conversatives are DELIGHTED to have a reason to talk shit about a Muslim woman of color running for office. Gardheereā€™s crisis is long behind her ā€” but weā€™re still waiting for an explanation for why incumbent Reagan Dunn has spent his entire time in office being the absolute worst.

The Republican hunt for Critical Race Theory continues. Parents and teachers rallied in Portland to support ā€œCritical Race Theory,ā€ a term that has now become so overused by so many groups with an axe to grind that it basically means nothing. Republicans have turned it into the new Thing To Be Afraid Of and have taken to applying the CRT label to anything that is not white supremacy. For instance, Floridaā€™s idiot governor, Ron DeDantis, just pushed the stateā€™s Board of Education to ban teaching ā€œthat racism is embedded in American society.ā€ What a dumb country.

Farmers' Market comes to South Delridge. Take a break from the relentlessness of bad news to appreciate the very pleasant new South Delridge Farmersā€™ Market, which will be popping up at Hope Academy every second Saturday from now until November. Related: Who do we have to talk to about making the Capitol Hill market an all-weekend thing? Since moving into its new space, itā€™s been completely DELIGHTFUL but the hours are far too brief.

Did this guy REALLY get eaten by a whale? A Cape Cod lobster guy says he spent 30 to 40 seconds inside a humpback whale before getting spit out, which is ā€¦ I guess itā€™s possible? Humpbacks have weird fleshy mouths, kind of pelican-like, but their necks are too narrow to swallow a person. So this would be kind of like putting an Amiibo in your mouth ā€” gross, but not really eating, exactly. Also he doesnā€™t appear to have suffered any ill pressure-related effects from a rapid ascent from the ocean floor, which is a bit weird.

Lots of videogame reveals at E3; nothing you can actually play right now. You do not need to read any of the news about E3, because itā€™s all pre-commercials for stuff that youā€™ll see even more commercials for in the future. But if youā€™re curious about what the next couple of years of big-budget games will look likeā€¦ some highlights that caught my eye include a sequel to the excellent Outer Worlds, Slime Rancher 2 in 2022, Microsoft is making an X-Box refrigerator (?????), thereā€™s a Guardians of the Galaxy game coming in October, and a Mario + Rabbids sequel in 2022. People who like games where you go pew pew and shoot stuff will also have many options, none of which are distinct enough for me to care about.

Victory for the Kraken! The U-District dive bar known as the Kraken Bar & Lounge has successfully stopped the new Kraken hockey team from opening a bar called the Kraken Bar & Grill. The new hockey-themed bar will instead be called 32 Bar & Grill, because 32 is the freezing point of ice; and it will be your standard gigantic corporate bar, seating 300 people (!) with 17 TV screens. Seems like the kind of place where drinks are suuuuuuper affordable. In comparison, the original Kraken Bar & Lounge has pinball machines, a meat smoker, and crusty bartenders.