This is King Countys count of COVID-19 hospitalizations. The seven-day average is 24 hospitalizations a day. Get vaccinated.
This is King County's count of COVID-19 hospitalizations. The seven-day average is 24. Get vaccinated.

A King County judge struck Compassion Seattle from the November ballot: According to the Seattle Times, the proposed charter amendment violated state laws related to city budgeting and land use authorities in way that was "not even close." A spokesperson for Compassion Seattle said the campaign will not appeal, so the sloppy and cynical attempt to write sweeps into Seattle's constitution and to burden the city with an unfunded mandate to build 2,000 units of shelter or housing in a year will not appear on the November ballot.

This is a huge win for anyone who didn’t want Tim Burgess and a bunch of downtown corporations to force the city to spend a bunch of money on wholly inadequate solutions to the homelessness crisis just to maybe slightly reduce the number of tents people can see when they're standing in line at Sephora. This is a huge loss (for now) for Tim Burgess’s shadow campaign against Lorena González, but, hey, there’s always the Recall Sawant campaign to lean into.

Want to address homelessness effectively? Legalize apartments citywide so we can build more housing, and convince local, state, and federal politicians to make massive investments into public housing. That's it. That's the answer. We've known for a while now that King County needs to spend $1 billion more per year for the next ten years to increase the region's affordable housing stock, we just haven't done it yet.

Bruce Harrell's next "effective communications effort" will be brought to you by a BP board member, a big-time Republican donor who invested early in Amazon, a Republican/former King County Prosecuting Attorney, and all the same rich people who funded Burgess's (Rich) People for Seattle PAC in 2019. In an email, Tom Alberg, Chris Bayley, and Paula Reynolds encouraged their wealthy followers to join them in supporting Harrell for Mayor. "Bruce has strong support in the business community; he’s known to us and listens to us," they write.

They then link to Burgess's condescending endorsement of Harrell, instruct people to donate to a pro-Harrell PAC, and offer this stirring dismount: "The PAC must mount an effective communications effort beginning after Labor Day, so please act quickly to lend your support. We know it can be discouraging to watch what goes on at City Hall. But we dare not give up or turn away; there is far too much at stake."

Dr. Jeff Duchin coming through with a COVID-19 update: Even though they're uncommon, you've been hearing a lot about "breakthrough cases," and maybe that's got you down on the life-saving potential of the vaccine. If that sounds like you or someone you know, then please take a gander at these graphs, which show that case and hospitalization rates for the unvaccinated dramatically exceed those of the vaccinated. As Dr. Duchin writes, those not fully vaccinated are six times more likely to test positive for COVID-19, 37 times more likely to wind up in the hospital for it, and 67 times more likely to die from it.

T-mobile CEO Mike Sievert is "truly sorry" for sucking at securing customer data: Hackers accessed "Social Security numbers, birth dates, names and driver's license information" from tens of millions of the Eastside cell phone company's customers in the latest breach, KING 5 reports.

Seven men molested as boys in a Centralia foster home settle for $9 million: Insurance companies for Kiwanis International, "a nonprofit organization devoted to helping children around the world," and the state paid out the money after the men said they were "molested by other boys, by staff and by directors, including Charles McCarthy, the head of the facility, who died last December," KIRO 7 reports.

Wildfire exposure causes pregnant people to pop early: Smoke from wildfires contributed to the preterm births of nearly 7,000 people in California, according to a Seattle Times analysis of a paper published in Environmental Research. "The finding adds to a growing volume of research that suggests the long-term effects of wildfire smoke pollution are pronounced and costly to people’s health," Evan Bush writes for the Times.

This is how theyre going to get ya.
This is how they're going to get ya. SDOT

If you're driving, you better start slowing down around schools: Starting Sept. 1, the Seattle Police Department will turn on the 14 traffic safety cameras the city posted up near schools. "School zone safety cameras only operate when the school zone flashing beacons operating. We set the flashing beacon schedule based on when students arrive and leave school grounds," according to SDOT.

Long live Essex:

Want to destroy the GOP? If you believe, as Clint Didier or Loren Culp do, that basic rights descend from a christian God and not from decisions we make as a people, then you, too, can see politics as a parlor game to attain cultural power rather than as the avenue through which we build civil societies, and then you, too, can lead people to disease and death via horse paste without the guilt that attends those who actually want to improve the lives of others through collective action. But if you defund God.......

170 people killed, 200 injured in Kabul airport attack: That's the latest death toll from the New York Times, which does not include the 13 U.S. soldiers killed and the 15 wounded. Officials said the suicide bomber waited until American soldiers frisked him before detonating his 25-pound vest. Despite the deadly explosion, crowds of people hoping to get spun up returned to the airport today as the August 31 deadline looms.

"Specific, credible” threats remain at Kabul airport: Pentagon spokesman John Kirby relayed that information and not much more on Friday, though the Islamic State in Khorasan Province claimed responsibility for the attack. That group is rivals with the Taliban, and so they probably wanted to take the opportunity to raise their profile and create chaos. Despite their terror-mongering, "the US says it evacuated approximately 4,200 people in 12 hours" today, according to Al Jazeera.

Category 4 hurricane barreling straight toward New Orleans: Hurricane Ida will likely bring "140 mph winds, flooding rain, and an ocean surge up to 15 feet" to the shores of the Big Easy on Sunday, the 16th anniversary of Katrina, the Washington Post reports. That's some bad poetry. We're talking about “life-threatening inundation," and “potentially catastrophic wind damage." The mayor says people need to find their safe spaces by midnight tomorrow.

Justice Stephen Breyer needs to retire yesterday: The smug 83-year-old with an unrivaled sense of self-importance said he "hopes" to retire before he dies, Politico reports. This person, who is supposedly one of the brightest legal bulbs in the country, said he doesn't want to be replaced by someone "who will just reverse everything I’ve done for the last 25 years," and yet he also fears a retirement announcement might undermine the legitimacy of the Court. Anyone who believes that any American sees the current Supreme Court as a "legitimate" entity suffers from delusions and must step off the bench immediately.

Guess where the world's northernmost island is? Just above Greenland. The BBC reports on a group of scientists who discovered the island in July after they wound up on an island about half a mile north of where they thought they were. "Mr Rasch told the BBC that from a scientific perspective it was 'not a big deal'"