What, me worry?
"What, me worry?" Pool / Getty Images

Auf Wiedersehen, Merkel. Longtime German Chancellor Angela Merkel will have more time to stroll casually by a lake while refusing to take Joe Biden’s phone calls. This weekend’s vote (elections on a weekend? Whatever next?) delivered a big win for the Social Democrat Party, a leftward shift. It will take several weeks for the new government to take shape (still faster than in the US!) and the new Chancellor is likely to be Olaf Scholz, whose politics are not dissimilar from Merkel’s. “I’ll be darned,” Biden said in response.

Three killed after a Seattle-bound train derails. Train-related deaths are vanishingly rare compared to the dozens killed every day by car drivers, but a derailment this weekend in Montana has killed three and hospitalized seven. No word on a cause, though from photos it looks like a switch from one track to the other might’ve been involved.

Yes, another fire in White Center. A fire broke out at an abandoned building just two blocks from where the Lumberyard burned last July, and where several other fires have occurred over the last few months. A neighbor claims to have security footage showing someone walking from the building right before it goes up. Hey, that seems like a clue.

The big winner at The Tonys was Dear Evan Hansen, which won a special award for “Oldest Man.” Just kidding, it was Moulin Rouge! and The Inheritance, as well as Gen-X theater nerds who got to see a montage of the last twenty-ish years of hits. Here are some highlights.

Three dead outside a Des Moines bar. This weekend three people were killed in a fight at a bar about 20 miles outside Seattle. Other mass shootings this weekend included multiple in Chicago, one in Oakland, another in Utica, one in Chattanooga, also one in Riverside and one in Athens, Tennessee. Mass shootings killed 10 people and wounded 31 this weekend. Federal gun safety legislation is stalled.

Ready to go to Northgate? The new stations open this weekend, unlocking a whole new route north to the U District, Roosevelt, and a parking lot. We’ve been waiting for this for a long long time — here’s a clip from the 1992 movie Singles in which the idea of a Seattle rail network is treated as a laughable joke. Well, who’s laughing now, Fictional Seattle Mayor Tom Skerritt?

Keep your eyes out for fried chicken. Some rotten person has stolen the food truck belonging to Spice on Curve. It was parked overnight at the Super 24 in West Seattle. What kind of stinker steals a food truck? Ugh, despicable.

Now that is a name I haven’t heard in a long time. Apparently Sherry Pie is booked and busy, appearing this weekend at Aunt Charlie’s in New York. According to the venue, she was booked by a guest, and the venue owner had no idea that in early 2020 she was busted for posing as a casting agent and tricking aspiring actors into performing sexual acts on camera. Uncle Charlie’s has since deleted the photos of Sherry from their social media. To be honest, I think the larger scandal here is that a gay bar in New York would unironically use the slogan “live, love, and laugh.” What, was “bless this mess” already taken?

The Post Office gets worse this week. Republican efforts to destroy the Post Office take one more step closer to culmination this week, with slowdowns, reduced hours, and higher prices going into effect as of October 1.

Everyone looks scared in this interview. Drew Barrymore interviewed the cast of Dear Evan Hansen on her talk show, which still exists, and dressed up as a character from her 1999 film Never Been Kissed to lend the whole thing an additional strangeness. It reminds me of how, when Roger Ebert first reviewed the movie Pink Flamingos, he wrote, “stars simply seem not to apply. It should be considered not as a film but as a fact, or perhaps as an object.”

New Monster Hunter DLC looks fine, but when do I get to dress my palamute up as Tingle? Capcom has revealed a new Monster Hunter Rise expansion, slated to land sometime mid-2022. It looks very fun, sort of a gothic vampire-castle map with some kind of new blood-sucking dragon guy. Interestingly, it’ll launch on Switch and PC at the same time. Capcom is also teasing new “hunting moves,” which might mean new silkbind moves? Yes, please. Can’t wait to go flipping around inside this bisexual castle.

The new iOS has water noises built right in. Huh! That’s neat. You can now set up your iPhone to play the sound of rain, the ocean, a stream, and more — handy for those of us who find it difficult to focus unless there’s a background noise dulling distracting/intrusive sounds and thoughts. (That Gizmodo article doesn’t mention it, but you can add a background sounds button to the Control Center for easy on/off. I can’t express what a fucking relief it is to have something like this.)

Here are some lovely photos from this weekend’s Night Market in the C-ID. Why don’t we have one of these all the time??? This should happen every weekend, at least.