Voting rights organizers back in July, a more optimistic time.
Voting rights organizers back in July, a more optimistic time. Getty Images / Alex Wong / Staff

Republicans have voted against voting. The Freedom to Vote Act just failed in the Senate. The bill would have created baseline national standards for running elections, reigned in the worst gerrymandering, and required certain millionaires to disclose which candidates they’d purchased. Democrats needed 60 votes to pass, which they didn’t get. But there’s a silver lining: The bill’s failure has once again demonstrated the harm of the filibuster, and now more congressional Democrats are talking about getting rid of it.

The homos have spoken. Seattle Pride has rated the candidates’ responses to a questionnaire for the upcoming election and given top marks to Lorena González, Teresa Mosqueda, and Nikkita Oliver. Why the high marks for González? Well, when asked how he will advance queer rights, lower-scoring candidate Bruce Harrell replied: “As Mayor, you will see me lead in elevating the stories and lived experiences of the LGBTQIA+ community…” stop stop stop, what does that even mean??? When asked the same question, González provided a list of specific actions she’ll take. Okay! Meanwhile, somewhere far far away, Sara Nelson did not respond to Seattle Pride’s questions. Musta been too busy laying people off.

Get ready for a surprise! Later today we’re dropping the trailer for SCOOP! … our new short-documentary film fest. Keep your eyes peeled for that. In the mean time, here’s little Edie doing her thing.

The hit-and-run teen of Maple Valley gets a hearing today. The fifteen-year-old is accused of deliberately hitting and killing a 53-year-old jogger in July, and now a second unspecified victim has been added to the charges. We’ve been trained to think of cars as such a natural extension of our bodies that we don’t give a second thought to the lunacy of putting a 15-year-old behind the wheel of a giant metal cage that can go 100 miles an hour.

Climate Pledge Arena has been a bit of a traffic flop. This is … not ideal. (But don't worry, pedestrians, they just installed new single-file sidewalks.)

Why are cops? Here’s a couple of NYC cops pushing a guy out of the subway because he asked them to wear their masks.

Seattle wasn’t the only city to have a hot summer. Cities around the world are melting under hotter temperatures, a new study finds, and it’ll only get worse. What can be done? Cities need to be planned with deadly heat waves in mind, experts say. Or we could just stop burning fossil fuels, hahaha just kidding, deadly heat waves it is.

You’re getting a raise. Minimum wage will increase next year in Seattle from $15 to $15.75. For a forty-hour workweek that’s an extra $30 per week. Don’t drink all your champagne at once.

Trump’s new social media site should be coming aaaaany day now. Doesn’t it seem like every six months Trump “reveals” that he’s starting a new social media site? The latest announcement is that it’s going to be called “TRUTH Social.” Within hours, this happened:

If I’m being honest, both ways of wearing it look a little odd. A TikTok star, and I’m not even going to bother trying to come to terms with my feelings about that phrase, wore her dress wrong for the premiere of the movie Dune. What she thought was a futuristic little leg-window cutout turns out to be a hole she was supposed to stick her whole leg through, like those nuclear technicians who handle radioactive waste. To me, it looks like a cutout for butt cheeks. Anyway, Dune will be available to stream starting at 3pm (weird) today. Here’s my thoughts on the film.

I can’t stop thinking about Facebook’s new name. Or at least, about the fact that it’s getting one. They say they want to rebrand to focus on the “metaverse,” a term that elicits unhappy chills even among those who do not know that it was originally coined in a dystopian novel. It’s such a predictably creepy turn for the company, dedicating themselves to a future that is instantly repulsive the moment you start trying to describe it. I love fooling around in VR, but I've learned that if you ask a room of 10 people about "the metaverse," at least 9 will have no idea what it is but will be certain that they don’t want it. Anyway, last night I got high and couldn’t stop laughing at the idea of Facebook renaming the company to “Chickens” and forcing their boss to go by “Mark Cluckerbird.”

Was anyone going to Kansas anyway? Alaska Airlines is cutting flights between Seattle and Kansas due to staff shortages — I’m sorry, I mean, due to their inability to pay enough to attract labor. Amidst a call for a new contract from the pilots’ union, the company just posted third-quarter profits of $194 million, the first time they’ve been profitable since the pandemic began. “We are thrilled” about the profit, said CEO Ben Minicucci, who presumably has no pressing business in Wichita.

Is there any escape from the stressful news of the day? Perhaps. You might try to escape from the hustle and bustle of the world by watching this bee build a tiny little home. That seems relaxing. Or at least it does until you start imagining hundreds of bees trapped inside of your clothing, which is an anxiety that troubled me for MONTHS after I saw a wild beehive as a child.

Parents are warned of a disturbing trend by police. A police department in Pennsylvania issued an alert that the latest TikTok trend is “hellmaxxing,” where thrill-seeking miscreants commit so many crimes that even hell doesn’t want them. The bulletin was issued by the same police department that recently went viral for claiming that people might pass out weed candies to kids at Halloween. The lesson: Keep your kids far, far away from those cops.