Welcome back West Seattle drivers: After a 30-month closure, the West Seattle Bridge passed a load test and the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) green-lighted the bridge to open Sunday. I’d tell you what time, but according to KIRO 7, SDOT isn’t releasing the exact time in order to prevent all you infrastructure heads from lining up for your inaugural drive.

Educational content: For more background on the West Seattle Bridge, might I suggest this TikTok from KUOW Week in Review host Bill Radke? 

In other car news: Urbanist Twitter isn’t going to like this car-centric Slog. Please know I'm an ally to the cause. Y’all scared me into getting rid of my car because I kept on having nightmares about hitting a pedestrian. ANYWAY! Traffic, unsurprisingly, will SUCK this weekend. KOMO can give you the details, but I’ll take this opportunity to spread the good anti-car word: Take the light rail to the stadium, you crazy kids!

Weekend activities: Do something fun, I beg of you. I feel like the five-day work week after a four-day work week is particularly brutal, so please enjoy your weekend. Lucky for you, our friends at EverOut have a few ideas for how you can do that! 

Hello E. Coli: HelloFresh, what the fuck did you do to your ground beef? At least seven HelloFresh customers in Washington got sick with E. Coli after the meal-prep service sent them ground beef that has been connected to an outbreak of the bacteria. Since the item isn’t currently being sold, the US Department of Agriculture won’t issue a recall, but I care about your health, so I’ll link you to this KING 5 article with more details. Take care!

Seattle but make it affordable: Earlier this week, Crosscut writer Josh Cohen spoke with Seattlites who have no reason to believe that they will ever own a home. Fair. Today, Cohen published a story about what it would take to lower the prices of homes in Seattle. Here’s what he found. 

Fuck a non-profit: Seattle-based filmmaker Amy L. Piñon will premiere her film And Other Oppressive Dynamics this weekend at the Northwest Film Forum. According to the South Seattle Emerald, the film dives into the toxicity that is working at a non-profit. I’m sure you know exactly the kind of work-family, anti-union, paid-in-fulfillment bullshit that entails. I might go watch it, you know, to heal. 

Speaking of healing: Washington schools will officially recognize mental health days as an excused absence this school year. This was sort of a gray area before, so some parents would lie to schools, worried that if their kid wasn’t vomiting, the school would just write off the absence as playing hooky. Crosscut caught up with one of the students who testified on behalf of the bill that uniformly legitimized mental health days as excused absences. She said schools could do plenty more work to promote better mental health among their students. 

Murray stops being flakey: Republican challenger for US Senate Tiffany Smiley has been very publicly butthurt that Sen. Patty Murray has been a little late to nail down plans for a debate. Can’t blame her, I confirm plans like three times before going anywhere. But! Today that has changed. The two candidates officially made plans to debate each other twice this fall. You can catch them duking it out in Spokane on Sunday, October 23 at Gonzaga University at 5 pm and then closer to home on Tuesday, October 25 at Seattle University at 7 pm. Hope Smiley feels a little more at ease now that the stress of planning is out of the way! 

ICYMI: Fall brings out the worst in the hateful snobs. They don’t want to see skinny jeans tucked into Uggs, or blanket scarves, or drink festive coffee with milk in it. They most definitely do not want candy corn. As the daughter of a candy corn aficionado, I really appreciated The Stranger’s Megan Seling coming to the candy’s defense today. 

Fact check: Today, my Twitter mutual, the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, tweeted misinformation about the location of the Shrek franchise. A quick Google search will tell you that Shrek does NOT take place in Washington State, but rather in Duloc and the Kingdom of Far Far Away. No need to thank me for correcting the record, just seeking the truth and reporting it.

West Virginia deserves better: The Governor of West Virginia signed a bill into law today that limits abortion with very few exceptions including certain medical emergencies and cases of rape or incest. Disgusting.

Marjorie Taylor Greene did what? The US House of Representatives' favorite QAnoner Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green is at it again. Thursday morning, Greene shared a video on Twitter of her debating about gun control and then kicking an 18-year-old who was asking her to explain “how the Second Amendment prevents gun violence.” Fun clip! 

Martha's Vineyard migrants update: As Will wrote in Slog AM, supervillain and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis flew roughly 50 migrants from Florida to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts to prove a point. The point? Probably that he’s an evil, evil man who does not see migrants as people. Anyway, this afternoon CNN reported that after being stuck on a small island for two days, the migrants got “voluntarily” transported to a military base for dormitory-style shelter and other support. 

Watch out, Alaska: A “historically powerful” typhoon could “bring seas up to 54 feet and winds up to 75 knots,” according to NPR. 

This is Lorde’s little sister and I promise that detail is important to the plot. Enjoy: