Seattle news

• Stevens County asks the almighty for help in fighting fires

  25-08-2015 23:41
  
  Commissioners in fire-stricken Stevens County,  in northeast Washington, have passed a proclamation for a day of prayer, saying that “no one controls the weather except God.” The appeal to the almighty evokes the Rev. Pat Robertson’s bid to turn away a 1985 hurricane set to strike the East Coast, and Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s 2011 call for help from upstairs in relieving his state’s drought. Perry officially proclaimed three “days of prayer for rain in the
  
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• Letters From Ashley Madison Users

  25-08-2015 23:40 via thestranger.com
  Thank you for understand and speaking out against the judgmental glee that has overwhelmed the internet regarding the Ashley Madison hack. It made my heart feel so much better to read your words.My name was on that list and I have been suffering ever since it was leaked.
  I signed up five years ago. It was a time when my relationship with my wife was emotionally and sexually deficient. In fact, she had had two extramarital affairs herself during this period of time.Now, when it comes to Ashley Ma
  
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• Lawrence Lessig Wants to Hack the Presidency

  25-08-2015 22:43 via thestranger.com
  
  If he can raise a million bucks in two weeks, Lessig will run for the presidency. His platform's one plank: make elections more equitable. George Koroneos / Shutterstock.com
  You might know Lawrence "Larry" Lessig if you've recently taken a constitutional law class at Harvard, or if you were among his graduating class at Trinity College, Cambridge; Wharton; or Yale Law. If you never got around to accessing the highest reaches of academia, you might know him as the guy who founded Creative Commons
  
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• Felicia Day: Less Weird Than She Thinks She Is (Actually)

  25-08-2015 22:02 via thestranger.com
  
  Felicia Day's writing reads like a chat log. She wanders through stories, using all caps and italics. She drops tangentially relevant memes onto the page. The name of her autobiography, You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost), is as cumbersome as that of an emo band. But those things work on the internet and—as she will explain at length—Felicia Day is mostly about the internet.
  Like other autobiographies, YNWI(A) focuses heavily on Day's childhood. Day thinks that she "was rais
  
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• Trump builds three-to-one lead in New Hampshire, taunts Bush on Twitter

  25-08-2015 21:19
  
  Billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump, his demise predicted by the nation’s pundit class, has pulled out to a three-to-one lead over other Republicans in the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire presidential primary, according to a new survey of Granite State voters by Public Policy Polling. “The Donald” has 35 percent, far ahead of Ohio Gov. John Kasich with 11 percent and ex-Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorino at 10 percent. The Republicans’ early frontrunners, ex-
  
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• Soldiers Are Fighting Climate Change in Central Washington

  25-08-2015 20:14 via thestranger.com
  
  This picture of the Cascades was taken yesterday from a plane flying out of Sea-Tac.Mark Reddington/LMN Architects
  In 2008, the American economist James K. Galbraith described in his book The Predator State how the function of the economist in the near future will be like that of the economist during World War II—that being to plan and manage an economy that's hugely mobilized to face or overcome a great adversary. Other humans in Germany and Japan were the enemy in World War II. In the fu
  
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• Sen. Murray will support agreement on Iran not developing nuclear weapons

  25-08-2015 20:06
  
  Washington Sen. Patty Murray, a member of the Senate Democratic leadership, announced Tuesday that she will vote for the agreement negotiated by the United States and five other world powers under which Iran agrees not to develop nuclear weapons, in exchange for an easing of economic sanctions. The decision follows by a day the announcement by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nevada, Senate Democratic leader, that he will support to Iran accord. Only two Senate Democrats, Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-New York and R
  
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• Department of Homeland Security Helps NYP Raid and Shut Down Rentboy.com

  25-08-2015 19:48 via thestranger.com
  
  ABC7NY:
  Authorities carried out a major prostitution sting targeting a website in Manhattan Tuesday morning, raiding the company headquarters and arresting seven people accused of selling sex and laundering money. The CEO of Rentboy.com, Jeffrey Hurant, and six other employees were taken into custody at their homes across New York City, and bank accounts and millions of dollars were seized. The company, which billed itself as the world's largest male escort service, is located at a walk-up on W
  
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• This Is the First Place a Killer Whale Was Ever Harpooned and Taken into Captivity

  25-08-2015 19:30 via thestranger.com
  
  This is the easternmost point of Saturna Island, where Moby Doll was captured in 1964. Christopher Frizzelle
  The very first orca taken into captivity wasn't harpooned. She was a distraught killer whale who wandered solo into Newport Harbor, California, in 1961 and was scooped up by human beings who thought, "Why not?" A marine park down there called Marineland, which doesn't exist anymore, got a call that there was an ailing killer whale in the water, went out and netted her and put her on a fla
  
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• The Drag Race for the Republiganza Nomination

  25-08-2015 19:21 via thestranger.com
  
  Donna Tramp, Baby Genital, RandPaul.
  All the GOP candidates in drag—including Carly—is my favorite thing on the internet today. Click through for Chris Christie, Rick Santorum, Marco Rubio, and more.[ Comment on this story ][ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]
  
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• Islamic State Has Killed at Least 30 Gays by Stoning, Firing Squad, Beheading, and Pushing Men from Tall Buildings

  25-08-2015 18:40 via thestranger.com
  
  Turkey opened its border to fleeing Syrians in 2014. This photo of Turkish soldiers at the border was taken in September 2014. Syrian gays have reportedly fled into Turkey and elsewhere. fpolat69 / Shutterstock.com
  In horrifying news:The Islamic State extremist group has claimed responsibility for executing at least 30 people for sodomy, the head of an international gay rights organization said Monday at the first-ever U.N. Security Council meeting spotlighting violence and discrimination agains
  
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• That Washington State Law I May Have Broken Might Be Unconstitutional

  25-08-2015 18:37 via thestranger.com
  
  When I posted a picture of my ballot on primary election day on Slog and Twitter—showing that I had voted for John Roderick, contra the SECB's endorsement of Jon Grant (a post that swung the primary election for Roderick, right?) and encouraging others to fill out their ballots and get them in the mail—lots of people on Twitter let me know that I was breaking the law. (People on Slog could give a shit about the law—Sloggers were smoking pot and gay marrying long before it was
  
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• The Morning News: The NRA Sues Seattle, Amazon Launches One-Hour Delivery, and Okanogan Wildfires Break State Record

  25-08-2015 17:57 via thestranger.com
  
  Council Member Tim Burgess, shown here marching with Grandmothers Against Gun Violence, says that the city anticipated the National Rifle Association lawsuit. City of Seattle
  The National Rifle Association Sues Seattle Over New Guns and Ammo Tax: The lawsuit, filed Monday in King County Superior Court, argues that the new "gun violence tax" passed by the Seattle city council is a "piece of propaganda" that violates the state's jurisdiction. An NRA lawsuit is no idle threat: When the city council
  
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• Rep. Suzan DelBene uses poaching of African elephants to solicit contributions

  25-08-2015 04:29
  
  U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene, a Democrat, is using an age-old symbol of the Republican Party — the elephant — in a somewhat strange e-mail solicitation for political contributions. A pair of recent e-mail blast from “Team DelBene” begin with the House member lamenting that 100,000 elephants were slaughtered between 2011 and 2014,  and then have DelBene declaring in the boilerplate Stand-Up prose of political fundraising: Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash. “I’m standi
  
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• What’s wrong in Seattle right now

  25-08-2015 03:48
  
  First, not everything in this list of things wrong in Seattle is due to local policy or politics. Some things are wrong now because of other forces playing out regionally and even globally. However, many projects are in this list due to a process that started down a path with high hopes that turned out to be delusions … and are now leaving us with big bills and long delays. Some things wrong here are no one’s fault, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be bandying them abo
  
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• Tunnel Update: Bertha's Front End Is Going Back in the Ground Today and Tomorrow

  25-08-2015 03:22 via thestranger.com
  
  A closeup of Bertha's new face being lowered into the pit. SB
  Welp, another recovery goal has been met for the broke-down, downtown tunnel boring machine: Bertha's repaired front end is now reuniting with the rest of its body. Seattle Tunnel Partners (STP), the state's contractor, started lowering Bertha's 2,000-ton cutterhead and drive unit into the rescue pit this afternoon—a complex positioning job that will wrap up tomorrow.Once Bertha's new facial transplant makes its way into the pit
  
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• Savage Love Letter of the Day: A Married Woman

  25-08-2015 03:17 via thestranger.com
  I've been married to my husband for one month now, though we've been a couple almost six years. We are in the process of moving and I've stayed behind to pack up, while he's looking for apartments in our new city. We agreed that I should go through our old iPhones and get any pics off of them and just toss them, or try to sell them. Well I found no pics on his, but I did snoop on his email to find out if he had pay stubs in there and saw a folder called "work." I opened it and found on four sepa
  
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• The leader of “Nuns on the Bus” makes a stop at Whidbey Island

  25-08-2015 03:10
  
  One of the most influential, and unofficial voices in the Roman Catholic Church will deliver a lecture on Wednesday night at an Episcopal Church on Whidbey Island. She is Sr. Simone Campbell, for 51 years a member of Sisters of Social Service, and organizer of the Nuns on the Bus caravan.  Campbell and a small group of nuns took to the road in the spring and early summer of 2012 touring districts of prominent members of Congress (e.g. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin) to protest planned cuts in
  
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• How Am I Supposed to Eat This Sandwich?

  25-08-2015 03:05 via thestranger.com
  
  This is the 12-hour brisket sandwich on gluten-free "bread" from Slab Sandwich and Pie. It is delicious, but nearly impossible to eat. KR[ Comment on this story ][ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]
  
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• With Bravery and with a Very Serious Face on, Jeb! Joins a Long Line of Republican Heroes Coming Out Against “Political Correctness”

  25-08-2015 00:49 via thestranger.com
  Let's all just "chill out" about political correctness, okay? Jeb! has had it up to here with all this back talk, and he's not going to take it anymore. Hey, I got an idea, media: How about you start paying some of the bills around here, then you can come up and start talking about using "terms" that don't further reduce our political discourse to racist and sexist name-calling. Okay? Has he made himself clear?You know what. No. That's it. You're grounded. That trip you had planned to Wild Wave
  
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• Ashley Madison Hack: All Fun and Puritanical Games Until Somebody Gets Dead

  25-08-2015 00:49 via thestranger.com
  
  Reuters:
  At least two people may have committed suicide following the hacking of the Ashley Madison cheating website, Toronto police said on Monday, warning of a ripple effect that includes scams and extortion of clients desperate to stop the exposure of their infidelity... Police declined to provide any more details on the apparent suicides, saying they received unconfirmed reports on Monday morning. "The social impact behind this (hacking)—we're talking about families. We're talking abo
  
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• Bertha going back underground

  25-08-2015 00:43
  
  Bertha's cutter head and drive unit headed back underground Monday afternoon, thanks to the help of a "super crane."
  
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• Pat Robertson: Stock market plunge is God’s punishment for Obama administration backing Planned Parenthood, abortion rights

  25-08-2015 00:15
  
  The Monday plunge of the Dow Jones Industrial Average was not caused by apprehension over China’s economy, or the fall of the Shanghai index, but is God’s way of punishing the Obama administration for funding Planned Parenthood and back abortion rights,” TV evangelist Rev. Pat Robertson told his national program “The 700 Club.” Robertson, a 1988 Republican presidential hopeful, reported on weekend anti-Planned Parenthood protests at clinics across the country and th
  
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