Office of Inspector General issues report on CHOP: Yesterday, the Office of Inspector General put out its third of five planned reports reviewing the police response to the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. Mike Carter broke down the highlights for the Seattle Times, but in my opinion this is the money quote from the report's 81 pages:

'SPD officers are expected to be public safety professionals, ready to protect and serve the community,' the report concludes. 'The community expectations transcend the circumstances of any particular moment, including situations where SPD is criticized or community members reject their presence as unjust and hurtful.'

The pandemic is over: Lol, jk. The 'rona is still out here killing an average of 421 Americans each day over the last week. But the City of Seattle will end its emergency proclamation at the end of this month, in line with Governor Inslee's timeline to do the same at the state level. The end of the emergency means the end of additional protections against economic catastrophe for workers and renters. Check out Hannah's piece on which pandemic-era protections council members are looking to make permanent.  

An appropriately bleak observation: Yesterday, Charles wrote about television's most recognizable spacefarer's response to finally entering the endless void on one of Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin tourist trips. I've always found William Shatner a surprisingly insightful guy despite my introduction to his acting coming in the form of Boston Legal's zany Denny Crane, and Captain Kirk's rumination on the vastness of space did not disappoint. 

Could it be? Good governance approaching? KUOW reports that the Biden administration will be releasing the student loan forgiveness application form by the end of this month. The administration says it will not require borrowers to dig up their years-old Federal Student Aid ID or FAFSA application documentation. Instead, the Department of Education will match applicant information to records the government already has that confirm borrower income and loan eligibility, making me wonder yet again why we need to do our own taxes. The administration anticipates it will process all those applications by January 1, when the pause on student loan payments ends.

My condolences, Ms fans: Seems like yesterday's playoff game was a real heartbreaker.

This is not a bit: It's sometimes hard to tell with Eric André, but the lawsuit he and fellow comedian Clayton English filed yesterday alleging racial discrimination in the way Clayton County police "randomly" search passengers at Atlanta's airport for drugs is no joke. They're seeking an end to the cops' practice of stopping and interrogating passengers on jet ways, which the lawsuit alleges happens to Black people at a rate far higher than their representation among air travelers.

Hmm, we're really doing this? After Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman discussed needing to use real-time captioning to help him understand people while he deals with lingering auditory processing issues from a stroke over the summer, Politics Twitter lost its collective mind. Apparently we have to find a reason to both-sides this race, and exhibiting some unfiltered ableism is how the national media decided to "balance" their coverage of Fetterman's opponent killing hundreds of dogs. 

Biden proposes protections for gig workers: Yesterday, the Department of Labor proposed a new rule that would allow regulators and courts to more easily classify gig workers at companies like Lyft and Uber as regular employees. That classification would entitle them to all sorts of protections and benefits that the app-based corporations don't want to provide, since treating people humanely costs more than ruthlessly exploiting their labor for your own profit. Speaking of profits, stocks for the major ride-share companies plunged after the proposed rule was announced. 

Supreme Court takes another swipe at mail-in voting: The country's worst national institution invalidated a ruling that allowed mail-in ballots to be counted in cases where voters had forgotten to write the date on the outside of the envelope. The dispute originated from a relatively minor judicial election in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, but effectively nullified the ruling that would have applied in federal elections in Pennsylvania this fall, such as the US Senate election that could decide control of the chamber. Great democracy we live in, folks.

In even worse Supreme Court news: Just read the whole thread I drop below. Those six conservative freaks in robes are up to some really heinous shit now that they seem to have lost any concern for maintaining their legitimacy:

Bad apple update: A San Antonio police officer turned himself in yesterday after prosecutors charged him with two counts of aggravated assault by a public servant stemming from a viral video that captured the cop shooting at a teenager in a McDonald's parking lot. The officer's police chief was quick to establish that the act of firing on a vehicle that was moving away from the cop contradicted department training and represented merely "a failure for one individual police officer." The officer had been employed with the department for about seven months.

Freight strike could be back on: After several unions accepted the compromise the Biden administration orchestrated to avoid a strike from railroad workers nationally, workers represented by the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division rejected the deal on Monday. If they strike, it could cripple the economy and supply chain ahead of the winter holiday shopping season. The workers are not satisfied with the new contract's limited time off for sick days, as expressed by this based quote from their union president's statement:

They resent the fact that management holds no regard for their quality of life, illustrated by their stubborn reluctance to provide a higher quantity of paid time off, especially for sickness.

Results are in: According to NASA, DART, the vending machine-sized spacecraft we blasted into an asteroid that presented no threat to Earth, achieved its intended goal of altering that space rock's orbit. Take a moment to join our rocket scientists in sneering at the dinosaurs, as presumably this means we won't be so vulnerable to the fate that rendered them delicious planet-killing fuel for our automobiles. 

Speaking of darts: Yeah, I know this is a stretch. But the news can be a bummer and I'll take any excuse to plug one of the few moments of recent television that brought me pure joy.