The Weather: Ah, crisp, wet, and gray. What month is it? The rain shouldn’t be much of a bother, but pack your rain jacket if you’re going to the big game tonight.
Also Pack Your Pride Flag: It’s the Pride Match at Lumen Field Seattle Stadium tonight at 8 p.m. Seattle’s World Cup organizing body, which is not affiliated with FIFA, designated the match as a Pride celebration long before it knew Egypt and Iran were playing, two countries where homosexuality is illegal. The two countries’ soccer federations reportedly tried to get FIFA to scrub the Seattle Pride Match label from any branding around the game or external activities. FIFA did not allow that. What FIFA does allow? Rainbow flags at the matches. Since it’s not an official FIFA designation, there won’t be any official Pride Match decor or celebrations in the stadium. But there’s nothing stopping anyone from bringing their own flags from home.
Seriously, Turn That Stadium Rainbow: Here’s what FIFA told me in a statement: “The FIFA World Cup 2026 is an inclusive event that welcomes people from all backgrounds… General statements of human rights, including rainbow flags and other flags representing sexual orientation and gender identity, are permitted…”
Down at the LGBTQ Corral of Pike and Pine: The fences are up. The Honeybuckets have moved back in. Pride festivities will move into the neighborhood for the week. Here’s how to celebrate.
Tinder Box: Investigators may know what caused Wednesday’s house explosion on Whidbey Island, which injured three firefighters, destroyed a second home, and damaged a third. It’s a classic situation: a lit cigarette may have ignited the 700 pounds of fireworks stored in the house.
Wait, That’s Not Supposed to Be a Tinder Box: A lightning strike sparked a fire near the Hoh Rainforest in Olympic National Park. The blaze covers 86 acres. A wet weekend could slow it down, but firefighters don’t expect the rain to fully extinguish the fire.
Danny Westneat Discovers Rich People: Welcome, comrade. In his latest column, Seattle Times writer Danny Westneat wondered aloud about how the state’s capital gains tax is raking in so much money if rich people are supposedly fleeing the state’s wealth taxes running and screaming. This 7 percent tax on capital gains over $278,000 raked in an unprecedented $1.5 billion in 2026. That far exceeded last year’s $584 million. It also contradicts the narrative slung around about wealth taxes, that they’ll make rich people pack up and take their buckets of money elsewhere. Westneat finally gets it. Here’s one of his takeaways: “The rich around here are just really rich and getting richer. Some are leaving but the rest are getting far richer, faster.” We’ve all been saying this.
Complaintless in Seattle: The light rail is running so smoothly that not one rider sent a complaint to Sound Transit on its busiest day ever when the USA faced off against Australia in the World Cup last Friday. If things are so perfect, why not build the trains to Ballard? Seems like some politician could leverage this data about people loving and using the trains to revive those efforts.
Venezuela Quake: The death toll is climbing from the back-to-back 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes that struck Venezuela. At least 589 people are dead and thousands more are injured. Survivors are digging through the rubble for survivors. Thousands are missing.
AI Search Feature Says Trump Died of Rabies: The search engine DuckDuckGo’s AI feature invented a reality where Donald Trump died from rabies earlier this month. According to this bot, JD Vance gave Trump the disease after RFK Jr. said it could “confer superpowers.” Both Vance and Trump have died of rabies, the bot says. The story possibly originated from the subreddit r/poisonai, where redditors are trying to trick the AI bots that scrape Reddit posts and comments to “learn” by filling the sub with misinformation and falsehoods. One of the stories they’ve been pumping is that JD Vance died from rabies.
Is Gen Alpha Slang Just Minionese? The Guardian thinks so. A new story purports that the gibberish words spoken by those yellow fucks known as the minions in DreamWorks’s Despicable Me franchise have linguistically infiltrated Generation Alpha. Sure, believe what you want. My main takeaway from this story is that the next movie in the franchise, Minions & Monsters, features a “15-minute sequence spoken entirely in Minionese.” Parents of the world, I am so sorry for you.
Have You Seen Her? Gracie, a giraffe, has been missing for over a week. A ranch northwest of San Antonio, Texas misplaced Gracie, who, again, is a giraffe. The ranch owners are offering a $5,000 reward for Gracie, a giraffe in Texas no one seems to be able to find. Bring her home. She has rounded ears, and is a giraffe, if that helps.
I’ll Take Things That Didn’t Happen for $1,000, Alex: After Trump’s project to turn the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool blue actually turned it green, maintenance crews tried to fix it with hydrogen peroxide which appears to have made the pool’s coating flake off in big chunks. Instead of using deductive reasoning to figure out what went on here, Trump blamed mystery vandals, claiming the liner at the bottom was “cut with a sharp knife or razor” by a mystery vandal. Now, a senior National Park Service official is echoing that baseless claim. The Guardian made a reflecting pool color tracker in case you want to keep tabs on the progress.
I suggest they read my article about dirty lakes, which includes a whole section about how the city of Seattle fixed the algae blooms in Green Lake.
Sad: The Federal Emergency Management Agency official who said he teleported to a Waffle House has been ousted from the agency. Waffles are on us next time you drop in, king.
A Song for Your Friday: Have a gay weekend!
