In her victim impact statement, George Floyds 7-year-old daughter said, I ask about him all the time.
In her victim impact statement, George Floyd's 7-year-old daughter said, "I ask about him all the time." Brandon Bell / GETTY

As the heat dome clamps down, Inslee lifts COVID-19 restrictions on public buildings: Inslee says any place a local government agency or a nonprofit company labels "a cooling center" may now exceed the current 50% capacity restriction on indoor gatherings, according to the Seattle Times. For-profit businesses may not avail themselves of this authority.

And in case you need to see that list of Seattle cooling centers one more time: Here it is.

Do you know the difference between heat exhaustion and heat stroke? Now you do, thanks to the Washington Emergency Management Division:

If you feel hot, just imagine how hot Seattle's steel bridges must feel!!! The Seattle Department of Transportation plans to bathe the city's steel bridges twice a day between noon and 5 pm on days that exceed 85 degrees over the next several days. Expect brief closures on the University, Fremont and Ballard bridges during that time. Traffic in the middle of a heatwave sucks, but if SDOT doesn't hose off these bridges then the excessive heat will cause the metal to expand, which will lead to problems with opening and closing, which will only lead to more traffic.

Want a DIY air conditioner? KING 5 to the rescue. So easy, even a broadcast journalist can figure it out. Stranger writer Matt Baume said he built three of these once and they "did nothing," so think of these swamp coolers as just one more fucking thing you're not going to get to this weekend cuz of this damn heat. Update: A reader wrote in to tell me that this device isn't a swap cooler, which is an evaporative air cooler, but rather a DIY air conditioner—so perhaps it works! I regret the error and shall tender my resignation immediately.

The Northgate station bridge went up last weekend! This fancy new bike/ped bridge will cut the walk from the college to the station by over 15 minutes, and also make it easier to get to the mall.

Fife cops shoot and kill a person they suspected of stealing a utility truck: KIRO 7 dutifully reproduces the police narrative, which follows a "suspected car thief" who allegedly jacks a truck from a Coca Cola bottling plant, initiates a "slow-speed chase," rams through a gate, and then a few minutes later gets shot by a cop: "Video from the scene showed the parking lot sealed off with crime scene tape and bullet holes were evident in the door of the stolen truck."

King County Regional Homelessness Authority CEO Marc Dones has good taste in poetry.

It's gamma time: While other states are watching the delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 tear up unvaccinated people, WA State health officer Dr. Scott Lindquist is "raising the flag" about the gamma variant, which is causing "more breakthrough cases proportionately, and hospitalizations" right here in Washington state, reports the Seattle Times.

Wanna see some pics of Orcas? You know West Seattle Blog's got 'em.

The truth is still out there: We learned a couple things about a congressionally mandated preliminary report on UFOs: 1) The Feds don't call them UFOs, they call them "unidentified aerial phenomena," or UAPs. 2) They found no evidence of aliens. That said, the report "did not definitively determine what the military personnel saw" in its examination of over "140 incidents over the past two decades," reports Axios. Researchers guessed the phenomena could be "the result of sensor errors, spoofing, or observer misperception" or else "a breakthrough aerospace technology by a potential adversary." Hillary Clinton must be thrilled.

New human species found: Meet "Dragon Man," a member of "a human group that lived in East Asia at least 146,000 years ago." Chinese researchers discovered his skull in northeast China back in the 1930s, but scientists have only now gotten around to analyzing it, the BBC reports. They're calling him "our closest evolutionary relative," and the size and thickness of his big-ass skull "suggests he was powerfully-built and rugged."

Hennepin County judge gives Floyd's murderer 22.5 years: The murderous former Minneapolis cop will spend 14 years in jail and the rest on supervised release, according to the Star Tribune. After a 90-minute hearing, district judge Peter Cahill said public opinion did not influence his decision to put Derek Chauvin behind bars for 7.5 years longer than the state's sentencing guidelines recommended, citing "four aggravating factors" prosecutors had pointed out. Floyd's 7-year-old daughter, Gianna, offered the first victim impact statement: "I ask about him all the time." Chauvin offered his "condolences" and said "there's gonna be some other information in the future that would be of interest," but his lawyers didn't clarify when asked for a follow-up. Benjamin Crump, one of the Floyd family's lawyers, said: "This historic sentence brings the Floyd family and our nation one step closer to healing by delivering closure and accountability. For once, a police officer who wrongly took the life of a Black man was held to account."

DOJ sues Georgia over new voter suppression law: They argue the law, which "targeted Democratic-leaning voters and disproportionately impact[s] people of color" violates the Voting Rights Act because it's racist as hell, Politico reports. "Garland and Clarke notably alleged that the new provisions in Georgia are intentionally discriminatory: meaning that the Justice Department believes it can prove that the state legislature purposefully sought to diminish the voting power of African American voters."

Biden to Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah: Our troops may be leaving, but our money ain't going nowhere. Al Jazeera reports on Biden's meeting with the "embattled Afghanistan leaders," wherein he reasserted the US's commitment to the country. Biden plans to have almost all troops out of the country by July 4, "ahead of schedule," while leaving a contingent of 650 US soldiers "to provide security for the US and international diplomats in Kabul." A Taliban official told the outlet they felt as if they had the "'right to react' if the US keeps troops in Afghanistan after September 11," Biden's original date for withdrawal.