Gimme a sec, gotta call these kids in Idaho.
"Gimme a sec, gotta call these kids in Idaho." Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

The Seattle Storm visited the White House today, where Biden said lots of nice things about them: The President called these hometown heroes and four-time WNBA champions a "force for change," saying that "they change lives" because they encourage people to get vaccinated, stand up for racial justice and voting rights, mentor the kids, fight to protect trans youth, and and and and

The Seattle Community Police Commission canceled their upcoming mayoral debate because mayoral candidate and former council president Bruce Harrell declined their invitation to participate. We'll have to find another forum to discuss this proposal from Bruce: "I would like every sworn police officer in Seattle to watch the 8 minutes and 46 seconds of George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis and voluntarily sign an open letter stating: The Inhumane Treatment of Fellow Human Beings Will Not Be Tolerated In Seattle."

We know it feels like pumpkin season this week: But put your knitted sweaters back in the closet; summer isn't over yet. September can be full of surprises, remember?

The King County Medical Examiner’s Office identified the three victims in last week's Tukwila apartment fire: Roberto Sellem, 41; Alixzandra Chalcraft, 22; and 3-year-old Elliott Chalcraft died from smoke inhalation. The cause of the blaze hasn't been determined.

Army arms get the jabby jab: Now that the FDA gave Comirnaty, the Pfizer vaccine, full approval, the US military announced it's requiring all service members to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. The timeline for vaccination requirements is coming "in the coming days," said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby this afternoon. The US Department of Defense, which has claimed it's the nation's largest employer*, reports 1,077,981 service members are currently fully vaccinated. (*Walmart is close.)

29 SPD employees have tested positive for coronavirus since August 4, according to new data released by the department. Maybe the employees are experiencing breakthrough cases; maybe the employees are unvaccinated... it's hard to say...

Meanwhile: "Mississippi health officials are pleading with residents not to take a medicine meant for cows and horses as an alternative to getting the COVID-19 vaccine."

The children are our future, and Jane Fonda is paying for a group of Boise High School students to take a climate change class at Boise State University. BHS student Shiva Rajbhandari wrote a letter to Fonda, asking if the celebrity could help financially support one student to take the course. Surprisingly, Fonda gave him a call and said she'd sponsor the whole group—with one stipulation:

“It was the craziest thing,” [Rajbhandari] told the Idaho Statesman. “Jane Fonda called me on my cellphone. She was like, ‘I want to pay.'”

She had one condition, though: The students needed to do more than learn about climate change. They needed to take action. She asked that they deliver a Greenpeace petition to Rep. Mike Simpson’s office calling for the federal government to eliminate fossil-fuel subsidies.

“So I was like, ‘Well, let’s do that,’ ” Rajbhandari said. “We are pros at organizing. Let’s make that happen.”

It took nearly 24 hours for the Portland mayor's office to respond about yesterday's right-wing crime spree in downtown Portland, and his statement... ummm... is not so good.

Netflix's live-action remake of the anime classic Cowboy Bebop will debut on November 19: IGN has the first images from the series here. The images are meh, but the original composer Yoko Kanno is making new music for this series, which gives us some hope.

Proud Boys leader Henry Tarrio has been sentenced to more than five months in prison for burning a Black Lives Matter banner stolen from a Black church during a pro-Trump rally in December.

Following the TERRIBLE decision to hire Mike Richards as Jeopardy host and his humiliating fall from grace, part-timer Mayim Bialik will be filling in until a permanent host can be chosen (AHEM, Levar Burton).

We know where we'll be Labor Day weekend...

Also, this:

The City of Seattle's $3 million contract they awarded to launch the Black Brilliance Research Project was awarded legally, announced Washington State Auditor Pat McCarthy's office this afternoon, but (and it's a big but) "the city exercised only the bare minimum of accountability and transparency" during the process. The state auditor examined the contract as a part of the city's annual accountability audit.

The Black Brilliance Research Project, originally spearheaded by King County Equity Now but contracted through the Freedom Project because of a 501(c)(3) complication, resulted in an almost 1,300-page report*: The report looked at how Seattle can set up a participatory budgeting process to vote on spending priorities, as well as questions like, "What creates true community safety? What creates true community health? What do you need to thrive?" (*While the report is almost 1,300 pages, "the vast majority of the report, more than 1,100 pages, consists of older publications or subcontractors’ reports, reprinted as appendices," notes the Seattle Times.)

That pretentious hurricane is headed back to the sea: Where it belongs. No deaths have been attributed to Hurricane Henri, reports NPR, but the big boy left federally-declared disasters in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Connecticut. Meanwhile, in Tennessee, the number of missing people is fluctuating after their historic flooding.

Rudy Giuliani's associate Igor Fruman will likely plead guilty in Manhattan federal court tomorrow for allegedly funneling foreign money "to US campaign coffers," reports CNN. Fruman originally pleaded not guilty. The gist of it:

It's not clear whether Fruman's guilty plea will include a cooperation agreement. An attorney for Fruman didn't immediately respond to CNN's request for comment.

Any assistance by Fruman to prosecutors could threaten Giuliani, who has been the subject of a separate ongoing criminal investigation by Manhattan federal prosecutors for more than two years.

Giuliani has denied wrongdoing. An attorney for Giuliani didn't immediately respond to CNN's request for comment on Monday.

Let's end with a little Yellow Magic Orchestra: If you like YMO, heads-up: the 2019 documentary No Smoking, a retrospective on YMO's Haruomi Hosono, is currently streaming online as a part of JAPAN CUTS: Festival of New Japanese Film 2021.