Rain, glorious rain: For the first time in seemingly forever, it's wet out there. It's a nice reprieve, in my opinion. The sun will be sweeter tomorrow, trust me.
Wet weather will move across the area early Monday morning thru Monday night bringing rain showers. Wet roads are likely during the morning commute. Use caution, give space, and allow for extra time while driving. Drying and warming conditions are expected later this week. #wawx pic.twitter.com/OTIztXuMWx
— NWS Seattle (@NWSSeattle) July 28, 2024
💧RAIN ON THE DRIEST DAY OF THE YEAR 💧
— Seattle Weather Blog (@KSeattleWeather) July 28, 2024
It almost never rains in Seattle on July 29, but the luck runs out this year.
Plan on 0.10-0.20” of rain tomorrow—mainly in the morning. Highs will stay in the 60s.
Shooting in the CD: A man died Sunday morning from gunshot wounds. Police found him near 25th Avenue South and South College Street at 4:30 am.
Shooting at Yesler Terrace: A man died Saturday at 12:30 am after being shot near East Spruce Street and Broadway.
Arrest made in a different shooting: On Thursday, a 30-year-old man was shot and killed during at art gathering in Pioneer Square. On Friday morning, a different 30-year-old man turned himself in to the police. He showed up to the West Precinct office and handed himself over as well as the gun he brought along with him. Police haven't said what role he played in the shooting, but we can sure guess.
Gluttonous data centers sap Washington energy: Places in Washington with a seemingly abundant supply of clean energy are struggling. In Grant County, a new power-hungry data center is gobbling up the hydroelectricity supply. Now, the county's utility company must consider violating a law that calls for utilities to be carbon neutral by 2030 or risk rolling blackouts for residents. This problem is not isolated to Grant County and is happening around the state as new data centers—incentivized by tax breaks passed in Olympia—move into the state. The state government not only brought these environmental nightmares into the state, but Gov. Jay Inslee even refused to study the environmental impacts by vetoing a plan to do so. The Seattle Times has more here.
A scary sentence: "Our existing hydro system is pretty much tapped out," an energy consultant said in that data centers article. "So you’ve got a dilemma of how you’ll meet this additional load from data centers with clean resources or, frankly, with any resources.”
Simone Biles does her thing: Well, I'm not sure which of Biles's qualifier events to show you, so I'll just plug in all of them. Biles leads the gymnasts so far with an overall score of 59.566 in qualifying events.
WHAT. A. PERFORMANCE.
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) July 29, 2024
Simone Biles ends her night with a stunning uneven bars routine. #ParisOlympics pic.twitter.com/bMSoCiUtEF
WOW. 😲
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) July 28, 2024
There are no words for Simone Biles. #ParisOlympics
📺: NBC, E! and Peacock pic.twitter.com/sOWzVez7dL
The POWER in Simone Biles' vault. 💥
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) July 29, 2024
📺 #ParisOlympics on NBC and Peacock pic.twitter.com/rBoKiBfEul
Still not over Simone Biles beam routine 🤩🔥
— Complex (@Complex) July 29, 2024
pic.twitter.com/lVFDIbXBQy
Biden means business: On Monday, in a Washington Post op-ed President Joe Biden called for a constitutional amendment that would limit the power of the executive branch and correct a ruling by the Supreme Court that grants presidents immunity for anything they do while in office. "We are a nation of laws—not of kings or dictators," Biden wrote in a statement. He also stated his support for Congress to create term limits for Supreme Court justices. He favors 18-year terms. Fuck yeah, let's do it, Joe, let's take the lame out of lame duck.
Two winners claim victory in Venezuela election: Incumbent Nicolás Maduro and the opposition party running against him both claimed victory in Sunday's election. The National Electoral Council declared Maduro the winner six hours after polls closed, saying he won 51% of the vote and opposition candidate Edmundo González only secured 44%. However, the opposition's party has doubts about this—they thoroughly believed they had won the election in a landslide victory. The US and the European Union have yet to officially recognize the results as well. This will be Maduro's third term. His last re-election in 2018 was also mired in claims of illegitimacy.
Keep your skin on: A Belgian tourist learned the hard way never to wear flip flops in a National Park. While walking on Death Valley's sand dunes, the man lost his shoes. Bare feet hit 123-degree sand. Skin sloughed off. It melted. Other tourists had to carry the man to safety. It was too hot in Death Valley for a helicopter to land, so park rangers drove him to higher altitude where a chopper took him to the hospital. He suffered third-degree "full-thickness" burns on his feet.
Vandals target French telecommunications: A sabotage of French telecom networks disrupted service for about 11,000 people. It's unclear whether this attack and Friday's attack on French rail lines are connected. Authorities believe Friday's attack was orchestrated by far-left militant groups.
Hey, cool: The Olympics have 191 openly LGBTQ+ athletes competing. That's a record. The majority of those queer Olympians are women.
California blaze is the biggest: Sorry to Oregon's Durkee Fire, but the Northern California Park Fire is now the biggest blaze in the US, burning more than 350,000 acres.
ICYMI: The US Women's National team is soooo back. They trounced Germany in their second group stage game of the Olympics, 4-1. I'll let you watch the highlights. They're in Spanish because the NBC highlight video was copyrighted:
Bad apple alert: Sonya Massey, a 36-year-old Illinois woman, called authorities on July 6 to report a prowler at her home. Sheriff’s deputy Sean Grayson, one of the responding officers, threatened Massey and then shot her in the face after she allegedly "rebuked" Grayson. After shooting her, Grayson did not administer aid to her. It turns out this guy was discharged from the army for serious misconduct, had a history of driving under the influence, and was told he needed “high stress decision making classes" when he failed to obey a command at a different Illinois sheriff's office. History had proven Grayson made a piss-poor first responder. Last week, Grayson was indicted by a grand jury "on three counts of first-degree murder and one count each of aggravated battery with a firearm and official misconduct."
A podcast for your Monday: The Marshall Project and Tradeoffs created a podcast series about the rise of unarmed first-responder teams. In the wake of George Floyd's murder, unarmed crisis response teams bloomed across the US. Now, there are around 100 of these teams, and at least one operates in every major city. So, do they work? And, if they do, how do we scale them? That's what the podcast aims to answer. (If you're lazy, you can read some of that analysis here).