What's that smell? That would be all the lavender blooming in Sequim. "Lavender Weekend" starts up there tomorrow. Grab your boyfriend, or your friend, or your dog, or your own thoughts and feelings and wander up there for an afternoon of parsing purples. The ice cream is good, the grass is soft, and the opportunities for cover album photos are immense. 

Ferg bagged another company: Washington banned "non-compete agreements for low and middle-income workers" in 2020, but Tradesmen International LLC, a staffing service headquartered in Ohio, entered into several such agreements after that date without telling some of the workers, according to the office of Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson. KING 5 reports that the company signed a consent decree requiring it to pay "$287,100 in restitution" to "about 1,200 workers at more than 300 businesses in Washington," mostly in construction. 

Remember when that Tacoma cop, Khanh Phan, plowed through a crowd of people in his cruiser at a drag race in January 2021? His son wrote that thoughtful piece for The Stranger arguing that firing him for that would be a just outcome. Don't remember? Then consider this your trigger warning: 

Yeah, the Pierce County Prosecutor declined to charge that cop with any crime: KNKX's South Sound reporter, Keri Plog, has the letter from the prosecutor:

Shut up and code: A few years ago, a libertarian computer science professor at UW saw that James Damore got a lot of attention for saying that biological differences between boys and girls accounted for the relatively low numbers of women in tech, so he jumped on that bandwagon and wrote an essay arguing that ladies don't like to code because they're ladies. Now he's back for more attention. He's suing the university, claiming that UW "punished" him for "stating on his syllabus that Native Americans have no historical claim to campus land," KIRO reports. Must be nice to live so comfortably that you choose to start drama just to own the libs. 

Did you hear about that thing at Barrio? The upscale taco place on 12th Ave fired nine employees last week after they walked out over an issue involving tip-outs, Capitol Hill Seattle Blawg reports. The conflict arose when the restaurant managers switched from 50/50 tip splits with back-of-the-house workers to 80/20 splits. The front-of-house workers didn't like that, and so some took a temporary walk and got canned for it. 

Low-low tides continue through the weekend: You KNOW West Seattle Blog has you covered with a list of premium tide pool times. 

Break me off a piece of that Ballard Market sign: After the owners changed the market's name to Town & Country Market, they're planning to auction off "individual letters from the 'Market' part of the sign," according to MyBallard. The auction runs from July 16 at 9 am to July 20 at 5 pm. The money will go to the Ballard Food Bank. 

City Council sends Ranked-Choice Voting and Approval Voting to ballot: This November, Seattle will vote on whether it wants a new voting system, and then, if so, which voting system it wants. Hannah will have more details tomorrow. In the meantime, here's some background. 

ICYMI: The Stranger Election Control Board has issued its legally binding endorsements. Your ballot should hit your mailbox by Monday. When it does, rip open the envelope and vote the way we tell you to!!

Republicans block bill to provide phone alerts for mass shootings: The GOP was willing to trade the lives of their grandmothers for indoor dining during a deadly respiratory outbreak, so I get that they're cool with mass preventable death. But you'd think they'd want to give the good guys with guns a head start, no? These days, it seems like they need at least an hour to act. 

Getting closer... Ivana Trump joined the shadows today. The cops think she fell down some stairs, according to The New York Times. The former president, her second husband, announced the death on his social media platform. 

Tell your friends: On Saturday, the nationwide suicide hotline number will switch to 988, the Washington Post reports. It's like 911, but instead of dispatching a cop who will hit you over the head, you can talk to someone who the state does not train to kill. Efficacy will vary by state. Washington has some catching up to do. 

Italy's governing coalition is on the verge of collapse: Giuseppe Conte, the leader of Italy's weirdo Five Star party (which hates austerity as much as it hates immigrants), did not like an economic aid package that Prime Minister Mario Draghi proposed, so he pulled his party's Jenga block out of the governing coalition in Italy's parliament. In response, Draghi offered his resignation to President Sergio Mattarella, declaring that "the pact of trust that had sustained the unity government had gone," according to the BBC. President Mattarella rejected the offer and told him to put the pieces back together again by next Wednesday. The right wants to seize the opportunity to gain power in the next governing coalition, and the left doesn't have it's shit together, so it's happy to wait this out a bit. But they can't wait too long without destroying the economy. Classic conundrum. 

Speaking of resignations, Sri Lankan president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, last seen hiding out in Singapore after protesters drove him out of the country for fucking up the economy, resigned from office via email today. "The announcement triggered jubilation in the commercial capital Colombo where protesters massed outside the presidential secretariat, defying a city-wide curfew," Al Jazeera reports. Protesters don't like Rajapaksa's back-up guy, Prime Minister Ranil, so they won't stop protesting until he leaves, too. 

Sounds like a good opportunity to end PM with Gigan's "Krazy World." First song I listened to after publishing the endorsements last night.Â