The face of a man thinking about retirement.
The face of a man thinking about retirement. Pete Holmes Selfie

Twelve-year incumbent Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes concedes: After abolitionist Nicole Thomas-Kennedy leapt over Republican Ann Davison to secure first place in the city attorney's race, Holmes read the writing on the wall and called it. That sound you hear is city prosecutors dusting off their resumes but then pausing briefly to wonder, "Wait...maybe...." and then returning to their dusting. Bradley Lane, former assistant city prosecutor at the City Attorney’s Office and current deputy prosecutor down in Pierce County endorsed Davison. I wonder if anyone currently in the office will come out in support of her, too.

Seattle Police Department chief Adrian Diaz only fired two of the six cops who attended a rally convened to undermine democracy and to overturn the will of the people in the 2020 elections. Diaz's decision to axe only the two cops who the FBI caught on video near the Capitol building during the riot followed the recommendation of Office of Police Accountability director Andrew Myerberg.

This is where the two cops stood during the insurrection.
This is where the two cops stood during the insurrection. Seattle Police Department

Myerberg declined to recommend discipline for the four others who merely attended the insurrection prefunc for fear of perpetuating uncivil discourse or some shit. You see, if he would have recommended firing all of them just for casually flying across the country in the middle of winter to attend Trump's "Stop the Steal" rally, and if Diaz then followed his recommendation, then cops would have probably gone through arbitration and gotten their jobs back, or else just moved on over to Bellevue, which would have only polarized this city more. Or something. The logic is sound, he assures us.

Community Police Commission executive director Brandy Grant said the commission was "grateful" Diaz fired the two officers but argued that "SPD must do much more to address extremism within its ranks."

Seattle's own Devlyn Thompson pleads guilty to hitting a cop during the insurrection: According to documents filed in federal court, Thompson joined a crowd in a tunnel pushing back against cops on 1/6. When the cops started pepper-spraying the crowd, “Thompson picked up a metal baton from the floor of the tunnel and swung it overhead and downward against the police line in an apparent effort to knock a can of pepper spray from an officer’s hand and stop the officer from pepper-spraying the rioters," the Seattle Times reports.

For any of you clowns out there thinking that Delta can't hurt us here in a high-vax region, please allow me to introduce you to Dr. Jeff Duchin, Public Health Seattle and King County's health chief: "We do have enough unvaccinated people to sustain a serious Delta surge that will cause preventable serious infections, hospitalizations and deaths," he said during his Friday press conference. "This virus is significantly nastier than previous COVID-19 viruses, and it’s challenging us in new ways. The bottom line: vaccines offer excellent protection against hospitalization and death from Delta. But if you aren’t vaccinated, you are more likely to be infected, hospitalized or die from COVID-19."

The King County Courthouse safety march was a rorschach: The march gave KOMO the opportunity to yet again blame poor people for the longstanding complaints about assaults near the courthouse. Speakers at the rally, including a few people who work for the prosecutor's office, trained their fire on city and county officials instead. Many of the demonstrators in the video below spoke generally about the need to address issues of gendered harassment and violence within the workplace but didn't appear to acknowledge the need for a very large injection of federal funds or increases in state and local taxes to stand up the housing and treatment facilities necessary to affect the change they seek.

King County Sexual Assault Resource Center spokesperson Laurel Redden said the group supports victims in their decision to participate in court proceedings virtually or in person, and called for the Court to include the voices of victims in any new safety plans. She also mentioned that the KCSARC "opposes the criminalization of homelessness, including simplified efforts to oust people from one location without better options to give them... The safety problem at the downtown Courthouse is not homelessness, but rather, assaultive behavior that is ignored or tolerated."

State Sen. Joe Nguyen, who's running against Dow Constantine for King County Executive, made a similar argument, referencing reporting from Publicola:

We know why people are living in the encampment outside the courthouse — JustCARE outreach workers on-site documented that many residents ‘arrived there after being removed from other locations without offers of non-congregate shelter that matched their situation.’ The County could immediately prioritize the supportive housing units created by recent hotel purchases for these residents.

Seattle Theatre Group wants to see your vax card: The nonprofit that operates The Paramount, The Moore, and The Neptune will "require proof of COVID-19 vaccination for all performances/events and will maintain the current policy of wearing masks, except when drinking or eating" as of August 12.

Seattle City Light promises to study dam removal: In a win for the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe, "Seattle officials have agreed to undertake an assessment on whether or not Seattle City Light should consider decommissioning or removing one or more of their three hydroelectric dams on the Skagit River," KING 5 reports. The dams don't include fish ladders, which kills the salmon runs and therefore the orcas.

The Olympics continue, despite all reason and good sense. Looks like track-and-field day, the New York Times reports.

Thank fucking god: The Washington Post reports that President Joe Biden's education department extended the student loan payment pause through January, which will allow some of us to save enough money to visit family during the holidays, assuming that the slack-jawed doofuses spreading Delta haven't forced lockdowns again.

The Taliban captured a rural capital in Afghanistan: Government forces appear unable to send in reinforcements as the Islamist group continues violently to take over key areas of the country, Al Jazeera reports.

Maybe Plato was right about the poets: Some lit mag I've never heard of published a creepy-ass poem by a dumb dude about The New Yorker's Jia Tolentino, and now literary Twitter won't stop subtweeting about it. The first two stanzas are freaky deaky: "I want to ask Jia / Tolentino to ask me to ask her // to ask me to let me / take, conditionally, her hand, the soft pink palm / of it: a gentle push against my Wonder Bread face."

In moments like these I turn to one of my favorite book critics: