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The Ohio-based corporation that does business as Krueger—sorry, I mean Kroger—has put two more Fred Meyer’s on the chopping board. These ones are in the Seattle area: one in Redmond, the other in Lake City. I visited the former not too long ago to buy wine for a family event. This Fred Meyer’s was, on a Saturday, a pretty busy place; and something of a festive atmosphere (people selling this, and people selling that) surrounded it. The store is really huge, and so when it goes under in mid-October, it will leave an equally huge commercial black hole in the neighborhood. Maybe we should start thinking about socializing our crucial food centers? Which politician in America is saying something like that?
Enjoy today’s moderate weather (a high of 73 is expected) as much as you can because summer will reassert itself in the coming days. Next week has it in mind to make life miserable with temperatures around 85. Rain will be out of sight, but certainly not out of mind. This morning, high and cream-colored clouds cover much of the sky; this afternoon, however, they will surrender their cooling powers to the giant center of our solar system.
KIRO reports that Seattle is down to its last week of 8 pm sunsets. After that, each day will, by losing three minutes of sunshine, crawl towards those long winter nights that are cold and wet and invigorating for vampires like me.
We have nothing against Christians who place the love of others above all else. But we will have nothing to do with Christians who just want to hate. And so it is, the haters, the Christians who only know how to throw stones, will do their “LET US WORSHIP” thing, not at Cal Anderson Park as initially planned, but at Gas Works Park. This is somewhat fitting. The first park represents urban diversity; the second, the rusty past. Vivian McCall reports that Mayor Bruce Harrell and Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth played a role in the change of location. Indeed, the last thing Harrell needs right now, in the fight for his political life, is a repeat of the anti-trans event that happened in May and ended with 23 arrests.
One More Thing: The name of this anti-LGBTQ+ group, LET US WORSHIP, reminds me of a grocery I visited long ago in some forgotten rural part of Oregon. It was called Lettuce Meet You.
The superpowers of eelgrass? Best believe that. Eelgrass, which is also known as seagrass, and is famous, at least to me, for its wonderfully wavy (if not cinematic) movements in watery twilights, has been the subject of a 4-year study that’s now in its final year and, for the most part, determined where in San Juan County the underwater plant is thriving and where it’s doing so-so. This is important to know because eelgrass has, according to the lead researcher of the project, no less than three superpowers. The always engaging Salish Current reports: “First, eelgrass meadows are ‘essential marine habitat’ for many species of fish and invertebrates. Eelgrass is an important nursery and foraging area for multiple species. It provides habitat for key species impacting the entire food chain, including endangered species such as the Southern Resident Killer Whales.” I know this isn’t the stuff of Superman or Batman or Captain America or what have you. But these powers are not imaginary but real, substantial, and life-changing. We spend much of our time watching on all manner of screens fictional people with powers that amount not even to a hill of beans when it comes down to what matters. In short, Marvel or DC Comics should make a movie about eelgrass.
Target didn’t have to do this. It really should have known better. It is, after all, based in the city that gave us Prince, The Time, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, and The Family (“those screams of passion“).
Target caved to Trump, sold out their core customers, and torched their own brand.
They chose this path, and now they’re paying for it. I’m still not shopping there.
www.cnn.com/2025/08/20/b…— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline.com) August 20, 2025 at 4:06 AM
Uranus Is Fecund When It Comes to Moons: We already knew it had 28 of them when NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope recently spotted a new one that might not have existed at all until it was seen. (For my meaning, check out John Wheeler’s concept of a participatory universe.) The big ball of ice that’s 1.5 billion miles away from us now has 29 moons. The new one is pretty small—six miles wide. But it’s still a moon, and we should welcome it to the family that is our solar system. “Welcome to your life. There’s no turning back.”
A quick note about the participatory universe. The mid-century American physicist John Wheeler believed that we create the universe around us as much as it creates us, the observers. I’m not sure about this, but I do think our reality is culturally constructed. What is the meaning of this? Let’s go to Richard Feynman’s famous lecture “Atoms in Motion,” which contains a little science fiction. He imagines “a cataclysm” where “all of scientific knowledge [is] destroyed” and what’s left is one scientific sentence that a person down to their last breath must communicate to the future. It is: “All things are made of atoms—little particles that move around.” But if this apocalypse has the destructiveness Feynman imagined, then he should have known that this final scientific statement would be nothing but a waste of breath because science is by its nature social. Belief, even of atoms, is social—indeed, specifically, cultural. It’s madness to think that atoms could exist outside of our culture, which is a community of shared truths, and nothing more. This means saying atoms exist, without a community, is as empty as saying God exists, without a community. If only one person believes, then, Feynman, they are no better than Cassandra.
And this is how far the GOP will go to not face certain unappetizing facts about their supreme leader. Pussyfooting the matter is proving to be more demanding than walking on water.
So now five states, mostly southern, all with Reoublican governors, have said they will send National Guard troops to DC.
Keep in mind, these states have cities with far higher violent crime rates than DC. I repeat, these states have cities with far higher violent crime rates, yet they are sending
— DJ Bull (@d3djbull.bsky.social) August 19, 2025 at 2:05 PM
Because I ran into my brother Jace last night in Columbia City, let’s end AM with a classic from the golden era of Seattle hiphop, Silent Lambs Project’s “Mic Choke”:
