Lawmakers agree to shelve the California Journalism Preservation Act, which aimed to revive the struggling news business by forcing Google to pay for news content it distributes.

Big Tech titans such as Elon Musk and Reid Hoffman are divided between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump but all too united in their selfish aims. We need a new model.

In "Mating in Captivity" and "The State of Affairs," Esther Perel dissects our hidden desires and impulses with intellectual rigor.

Santa Clara County fraudster Dennis Fountaine fled sentencing last month. Fountaine was convicted of three felony counts of grand theft by fraud. He also admitted to the aggravated white-collar enhancement for defrauding four victims of over $350,000.

Geopolitical tensions and technological constraints make the chip industry more complex to navigate. A groundbreaking engineer talks about it future.

X, formerly known as Twitter, is closing its headquarters in San Francisco and moving some of its San Francisco employees to San José and Palo Alto. The departure is another blow to a city that has been buffeted by high-profile business departures.

To improve survival for esophageal cancer patients, researchers are using artificial intelligence to improve screening for the disease.

Hollywood celebrities, including "Star Wars" star Mark Hamill, director J.J. Abrams and SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher sign a letter urging Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign AI safety bill SB 1047.

A divided FTC adopted a powerful rule that requires companies to make it just as easy to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up for one.

…Quarterback Robert Griffin III was closer to running all-out sprints Tuesday, but the big test remains over the next month when he adds cutting to his rehab.

…The Redskins signed receiver Donte Stallworth, as expected after a good two-day showing by the veteran wideout. The question is, can Stallworth make the final roster? It depends on how many receivers they keep, but the first four appear set: Pierre Garcon, Josh Morgan, Leonard Hankerson and Santana Moss. Aldrick Robinson’s speed, and the couple big plays he made last season, make him the leader at the fifth receiver spot. But Stallworth would provide insurance if one of the starters got hurt. The only drawback is that he does not play special teams. So it could be that, even if he makes the roster, he’d be inactive until a health issue arises.

Explore how on-target precision therapies improve patient outcomes and drug tolerability.

Nuclear architecture investigation provides insights into the role of nuclear bodies in RNA processing.

This new system raises the bar in high-resolution, high-throughput 3D imaging for cells and organoids, providing researchers with faster, more detailed, and more accurate insights into biological processes.

Optical density can be affected by sample conditions, the state of the measuring vessel, and instrument configuration.

By identifying Wolbachia in arthropods, science-enthusiast citizens can help researchers sample the bacteria’s hosts.

Alexander Fleming’s 1928 discovery of a mold with antibacterial properties was only the first serendipitous event on the long road to penicillin as a life-saving drug.

In this webinar, Alex Rimmer, Samuel East, and Catriona Jamieson will discuss how they developed low-cost, animal-free culture media for cellular agriculture.

In this symposium, an expert panel will discuss how sequencing and omics technologies enable unprecedented exploration of health and disease, from genetic disorders to cancer. 

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) signaled Thursday he may be ready to drop his nearly 10-month blockade of military promotions as soon as next week as many Senate Republicans have attempted to find an off-ramp for months, and patience is wearing thin.

BRETTON WOODS, New Hampshire — Former Vice President Mike Pence met with local New Hampshire politicians during his crisscrossing of the Granite State on Wednesday as speculations mount over his 2024 ambitions.

A judge ordered Cowboys for Trump co-founder Couy Griffin to leave his Otero County commissioner post effective immediately.

$12 million -- That's the whopping number of dollars Oprah Winfrey handed over to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the museum announced Tuesday, according to the Washington Post. Winfrey's name will adorn a 350-seat theater in the new museum, which is slated to open in 2015 on the National Mall. She already donated $1 million to the project in 2007 and has served on the museum's advisory council since 2004.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is holding a hearing examining the General Service Administration's site selection for the FBI's new headquarters.

On Tuesday, Metro General Manager and CEO Randy Clarke proposed a budget for the next fiscal year that includes massive layoffs and dozens of service cuts as the agency faces a $750 million deficit.

The Okemos school board in Michigan voted Monday to drop its teams' name, no longer calling them the “Chiefs.”

A tech conference meant to be the largest gathering of female technologists faced backlash when biological men identifying as "nonbinary" were seen attending the event.

Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, experienced a stroke during his trip to Mexico on Wednesday.

One of America’s enduring strengths has been its long embrace of technological innovation. From the widespread adoption of groundbreaking technologies such as the automobile and airplane, to the invention of common household appliances such as the dishwasher and microwave, America has never lost sight of technology’s critical role in driving economic development and societal progress.

A horned "devil comet" barreling toward Earth is set to explode in the coming days.

The Biden administration announced a $162 million investment in microchip technology on Thursday in an attempt to boost domestic production of computer chips.

The Nobel Prize-winning discovery of microRNA has reshaped our understanding of gene regulation. Learn what these tiny molecules mean for cancer research.

Small settlements scattered throughout the region show signs of trade, fortification.

Researchers confirm the terror bird fossil 20 years after its South American discovery, comparing the creature to a massive, carnivorous-like ostrich.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Fool's errand or heroic stand?

As promised, Microsoft today released .NET 9, the latest version of its free and open-source application platform.

The post Microsoft Releases .NET 9 appeared first on Thurrott.com.

I was excited to see Microsoft bring the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) back from the dead this past year: At Build 2024 back in May, it announced that it would continue investing in this 20-year-old technology, starting with support for Windows 11 theming that would arrive as part of .NET 9. In fact, I was so excited about this that I brought my .NETpad project back from the dead as well, and I spent much of the summer modernizing my Notepad clone with the new features. I wrote 24 articles documenting this work, but I was stymied by the half-assed nature of the improvements.

Microsoft released exactly one WPF update during the several months of .NET 9 development, and it never added any of the features I discovered were missing. And so as we headed into today's release of .NET 9, my excitement was somewhat diminished. My assumption was that we wouldn't see those missing features implemented until .NET 10, if ever.

Well, Microsoft just released .NET 9. As part of that release, it published updated documentation for WPF (and all the other .NET technologies). And to my surprise, there are some updates to WPF that address at least one of those missing features.

So let's take a look.

To add support for Windows 11 theming to a WPF project, you need to add a reference to the new Fluent theme resource dictionary in its App.xml file. It looks like so:

<Application.Resources>
    <ResourceDictionary>
      <ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
        <ResourceDictionary Source="pack://application:,,,/PresentationFramework.Fluent;component/Themes/Fluent.xaml" />
      </ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
    </ResourceDictionary>
</Application.Resources>

But with the shipping version of .NET 9, there's a second, more elegant way to add Windows 11 theming support. Now, you can access a new Application.ThemeMode property of a new styling API to toggle the app's theme mode between Light, Dark, System, and None. And that's fantastic, because it addresses one of those missing features: To date, .NETpad has adapted itself to the system theme (Light or Dark), but there was no way to let the user pick a theme mode. (For example, if the system was set to Dark and the user wanted the app to use Light mode.) With this change, I can implement that feature.

Fortunately, .NETpad is ready for this change, too: If you followed along with my work this past summer, you may remember that I implemented the user interface for switching the app theme into its settings interface, but left the UI hidden because it didn't do anything. But I always felt that Microsoft would need to implement this features, so I left the code in there. Granted, I didn't think it would happen this quickly.

The shipping version of .NET 9 also adds explicit support for the Windows 11 accent color (as configured by the user in the Settings app in Personalization > Accent color). As it is, .NETpa...

The post Modernizing .NETpad: .NET 9 Arrives with a Few (More) Small Improvements for WPF (Premium) appeared first on Thurrott.com.

Microsoft is once again trying to get Chrome users to share their browser data with its Edge browser on Windows.

The post Microsoft Edge Has a New Trick to Get Data From Chrome Users on Windows appeared first on Thurrott.com.

The November 2024 Patch Tuesday updates for Windows 11 versions 24H2 and 23H2 make it possible to use the Copilot key on PCs that have one to open other apps.

The post Microsoft Releases November 2024 Patch Tuesday Updates appeared first on Thurrott.com.

The 2024 Bainbridge Island Film Festival runs from November 7-10. by Charles Mudede

If catastrophe strikes on Tuesday, and all you can see is four years of gloom and more gloom, then it might be the right time to take a ferry to Bainbridge for two reasons. One, the November-colored waters of Elliott Bay will match and maybe even soothe your mood. (One thing you can always depend on is the love misery has for company.) Two, there is a festival, Bainbridge Film Festival, which features a superb distraction, the comedy Micro Budget.  Directed by Morgan Evans, who has worked for The Onion, the film cannot be praised for originality but for getting the most out of a concept that really should have no gas left in it: The mockumentary.

The plot: An Iowan, Terry (Patrick Noth), decides to relocate to LA to make a movie that can only be, when completed, unspeakably bad. His wife is very pregnant, he doesn't have enough money, and the sun has never shined on his imagination. He hires actors who have many rungs to climb before they come anywhere close to the D List, and the production moves from one absurdity to the next. 

During the filming process, the pregnant wife suffers, the actors suffer, and the members of the production team work without disguising their contempt. All, including the cousin shooting the documentary, are caught in the fantasy of a madman who should have kept his desires in the lowest drawer of his office desk.

We have been there and seen all of that. And yet, Micro Budget, is actually funny and, once in a while, reaches a region that can be called brilliant (particularly in the moments when the director attempts to meet what he imagines to be the woke standards of Hollywood). The film also has a priceless cameo. One you will never expect in a million years.

It's worth watching even if a catastrophe is averted on November 6.

The 2024 Bainbridge Island Film Festival runs from November 7-10.

The Stranger's morning news round-up. by Hannah Krieg

A perfect day for a biiiiiig walk: We could all use a little sunshine right now. Today, Seattlites can expect on-and-off sunny skies—I think the weather nerds of the PNW call it “sunshowers”—and temperatures in the high 50s. 

Council President Rinck: We got another ballot drop last night! Here in Seattle, Alexis Mercedes Rinck has only expanded her decisive lead on the City Council’s faildaughter Tanya Woo. And it's not just Woo that Rinck’s got beat. Her vote count trumps the combined total of the 2023 City Council victors and she’s got a 26,000-vote lead over Council President Sara Nelson’s 2021 campaign. Rinck may be a minority opinion on the council, but she represents more of the electorate than any other member.

Nail-biter: Washington’s 3rd Congressional District is still too close to call. U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez leads her far-right challenger Joe Kent by about 12,000 votes. We should have a clearer picture in the coming days, but for now the whole country is watching—this race is among the handful that will decide if Republicans retain their majority in the House. 

Another close one: It’s still a tight race for I-2066, the hedge fund millionaire's initiative that would ban the state from encouraging electrification.

Something good on Twitter: After a landslide victory, State House elect Shaun Scott has earned a meme.

???????? pic.twitter.com/RNI4iERKsK

— Shaun Scott ???????? (@eyesonthestorm) November 6, 2024

Joever: Yesterday, Vice President Kamala Harris addressed the nation to concede she had lost the 2024 presidential election. She kept her remarks very positive, very boilerplate Democrat. If she truly believed  Trump is the threat to the American people he is, she should have come for blood. But, no. The Democrats love to capitulate to the right. And, it's part of why they lost so spectacularly. They championed an extreme and inhumane immigration platform, shrugged their shoulders at Israel’s utter decimation of Gaza, and totally abandoned working people crushed by the weight of the affordability crisis. I know you’re smart and you already know this, but as the #Resist libs start to re-recognize the ever-present threat of fascism—the precarity of reproductive access, queer and trans liberation, immigrants’ rights, workers protections, and more—remember that the Democrats' constant sidesteps to the right landed us here. 

well, as long as you had fun! https://t.co/FtJ9HJ4T8P

— Lead Actor from Pixar’s Sodas (@ByYourLogic) November 7, 2024

Trump transition begins: President-elect Donald Trump’s allies have started lobbying for positions in his administration. According to CNN, Trump will use these positions to “reward” those who have remained loyal to him. That’s also a key feature of his plan: make the administrative state, or what they often call the “deep state,” more friendly, thus radically expanding the executive's power and efficiency. Some top positions seem narrowed down. Trump’s likely considering 2024 co-campaign manager Susie Wiles, his former budget director Russ Vought, CEO of the America First Policy Institute Brooke Rollins, or his former US trade representative Bob Lighthizer for White House Chief of Staff. Rumor has it he will also find jobs for loathsome little rat Elon Musk and anti-vax nut job RFK. Cool.

Off the hook: Trump’s victory may mean the end of his two federal criminal cases related to his attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election and his mishandling of classified documents. His team delayed the cases until after the election, banking on a victory so Trump could fire special counsel Jack Smith and end the cases. As for his New York hush money case, Trump is scheduled for sentencing later this month, but his team will likely argue he’s entitled to constitutional protections afforded to sitting presidents after his election. 

Solidarity: Yesterday, Cascade PBS workers staged an informational picket outside their workplace to pressure their bosses to meet their three demands in their contract: higher wages, better benefits, and strong workplace protections. And, boy, do they deserve higher wages. According to their press release, the Cascade PBS CEO made nearly seven times the average unit member’s salary in 2023. Greed is a fucking disease.

Today at noon, @CascadePBSUnion members used our lunch break to rally for fair wages and a fair contract. If you’re in the area, drop by and say hi - we’ll be the ones in the bright red shirts ✊ pic.twitter.com/ZR9pEwK6jV

— Cascade PBS Union (@CascadePBSUnion) November 6, 2024

In honor of our incoming commander-in-chief: He’s a theatre girly.

Columnist Meg van Huygen recommends the Nghiện (“Addiction”) at Ramie, a dry, leafy take on a Boulevardier that combines whiskey, Vietnamese amaro, yuzu bitters, vermouth, and rice paddy herb. by Meg van Huygen

Hey, look, it’s my cocktail column! It’s back after a seasonal hiatus and not a moment too soon, because… I heard y’all need a real stiff drink. Whewwwww. 

It’s just as well that this is late. Back in the spring, Ramie opened up in the old Omega Ouzeri space at 14th and Pine, serving new Vietnamese fare and craft cocktails, and I was a little reluctant to rave about a brand-new restaurant before the kinks had appeared. Now that it’s had a minute to settle in, Ramie’s running like a top…. and this little cocktail of theirs is still spinning around my mind.

Brought to us by Thien and Thai Nguyen, the chef-siblings behind Vietnamese desto-resto restaurant Ba Sa on Bainbridge Island, Ramie is named for a plant in the nettle family that’s native to Southeastern Asia and is usually used to make fabric. Where Ba Sa does contemporary Vietnamese classics with high-level sourcing and a few riffs on traditional dishes, à la Monsoon or Ba Bar, Ramie takes it a couple steps further. The completely bespoke menu has quickly drawn comparisons to Musang in re: waxing creative on the traditional stuff.

An example of the sibs’ inspired creativity is the cá chiên (“fried fish”), a butterflied branzino served with chimichurri made from perilla leaves, cucumber kimchi, fried shallots, and a custardy onsen egg that arrives in a little bowl of fish sauce, ready for you to mix it all up. The canh khoai mo, meanwhile, is a veggie risotto with ube puree, pickled fennel, herb oil, crushed hazelnuts, and a pesto made from sawtooth coriander and ngò ôm (also known as rice paddy herb—more on this later). You get it. All your favorite stars from Vietnamese Food have been recombobulated into a fresh new supergroup, and each dish is a mashup of their distinct talents and personalities.

This MO is extended to Ramie’s bar program as well. Led by Jen Rae—an alumna of Barnacle, Deep Dive, and Bateau, as well as the cocktail facet of experimental fermentation-themed popup Amino—the bar’s got a cool spread of cocktails that starts with well-loved concepts like the margarita or the Manhattan. But Rae’s folded in some botanicals that’re perhaps less commonly seen in Seattle’s cocktailscape, like longan, rau răm, fish mint, garlic chive, lemon basil, and calamansi.  

The one I love is the Nghiện. This word means “addiction” in Vietnamese, and the drink comprises Suntory Toki Japanese whisky, yuzu bitters, May Amaro from Sông Cái Distillery in Hanoi, and vermouth blanc that’s been house-infused with ngò ôm—that aforementioned rice paddy herb. This drink revs up like a whiskey-powered Manhattan but drives like a Boulevardier, with the earthy amaro and the sharp citrus-floral edges from the ngò ôm and yuzu bitters eventually blooming through the wall of booze. It’s a drink you want to take your time with. Inhale the air around it before you take a sip. Consider the innovative entrees. Contemplate your next move. 

Let’s take the Nghiện apart. You might already know the green-appley, lightly honeyed Suntory Toki whiskey, for relaxing times. The simple, clean yuzu bitters are by The Japanese Bitters out of Ichikawa, Chiba, Japan (they also make an umami bitters that really pops in a dry martini). The Mẩy Amaro comes to us by way of Hanoi-based Sông Cái, a gin distillery that’s spent eight years developing the liqueur. The amaro is inspired by the medicinal tinctures used by the Red Dao people in Vietnam, and it’s named for medicine woman Lý Mở Mẩy, who consulted on the recipe. A combo of sarsaparilla, lapsang souchong, galangal, rose petals, fig, poppy, orange peel, horehound, angelica root, and dandelion root, all macerated in a neutral spirit made from rice and molasses, it’s sorta like smoked root beer. If you’re a fan of the classic European amari, well, you may or may not recognize this one as being in the club. 

Originally from Portland, Rae has a strong background in wine, and it definitely informs her bar program. She switches between two different vermouths here—Yzaguirre Reserva Dry Vermouth and Vermut Lustau—and both are infused with the ngò ôm, a marshweed with flavors of lemon and cumin that grows throughout Southeast Asia. These choices are both dry as hell, made from coastal Spanish vineyards, with a bright yellow tone and mineral finish. 

 “I really like Spanish vermouths,” Rae says. “I think people really don’t know about them or even realize they exist.” 

They’re obviously not the usual suspects you’ll find in the vermouth slot behind most American bars, though. Where’s the Dolin and Carpano Antica?

“Yeah, the bar industry is very brand-driven,” Rae says, “and I actually think it’s a huge problem. Just like chefs, we have producers that we like, and it’s just as important when building a bar program, to bring in the right spirits for your bar program that you like and be less influenced by big brands.”

She also points to bartenders often catering to homogenized American tastes—that is to say sugar. “In the history of craft cocktails, they tend to be super sweet, even vermouth!” she says. “I think it’s really important when you’re behind the bar to create your own style and their own palate. So I’ll always be like ‘Mmmm, this needs to be drier or more savory.’”

“It’s not just about my personal preference, though,” she adds. “The style of food that we’re doing here is not Western, so it wouldn’t make sense to try to serve Western drinks made for a Western palate.” 

It’s not just the Nghiện that’s making trails on Rae’s cocktail list. The Hoa Anh Túc cocktail (“poppy” in Vietnamese) is a canny cover of a margarita, with tequila, tangerine, red aperitivo, peppercorn, lime, and garlic chive, then edged with black volcanic salt and garnished with a sprig of chive. Lots of frooty juice in here, but it’s tempered wayyy down by the piney, sharp peppercorn and the alliaceous twang of the chive. Among a handful of other artisan wines, she’s got a melony amber mtsvane-rkatsiteli wine by Dila-O in central Georgia (the Republic of), fermented in open clay qvevris with natural yeast, and a bright vinho verde by Quinta de Santiago—members of the Vinho Verde Young Projects group of vibrant young winemakers in Portugal. The drink menu feels cultivated and thoughtful, like someone spent some real time thinking about what you wanted for your birthday, hand to chin, gazing at the heavens. Except your birthday is your dinner. It’s just what you always wanted.

With an innovative New Vietnamese menu and a uniquely curated bar program, Ramie is a noble successor for Omega Ouzeri’s old spot, and they’re utilizing the space beautifully too. Seeing as the Nghiện is pretty much all unadulterated booze, it’s more of a dinner cocktail, so have a seat, order yourself some fishy dishes, and take your time with it. (Well, unless you’re an old barfly like me—it can be an à la carte bartop drink too, if you’ve got the liver for it.) Regardless of where you are with your addiction I mean personal relationship to booze, the Nghiện will rehab all your Western expectations of the cocktail classics.

See someone? Say something! by Anonymous

good boy, Mitten Bakery ????

"Who's a good boy?" you petting your cute dog next to me. I asked "Oh me?". You said, "Well if I get two good boys out of it ya!" - I didn't get ur #!

Smokin Hot at Smoker Dad

I Saw U at the Sunset Tavern at the Smoker Dad release show. You were wearing a tight jean skirt, and you told me I had a timeless beauty. Same, girl.

Barrettes at Hop Vine 10.28

I stared, we waved! I looked up how to sign “ur super cute” but was too shy. I like your hair, sweater, how you cover your mouth when you laugh!

I saw u x2 @ SBP

UW & Fremont. You were tall & brunette w glasses. I’m shortish and brunette w glasses. You seemed interested, I’m shy. But I’m interested too

Party at Porter

We were both on the floor at the Porter Robinson show. You were in front of me, tall and blonde. Thanks for making an incredible show even more fun.

Bus 49 Connection

Tall guy in tan sweater, wearing a black mask, purple-haired girl hoping to meet again. We made eye contact a few times in cap hill and I was too shy to look at you. Kinda felt like I was in a kdrama—wanna be my Lee Min Ho?

Dieu en Mouvement

BV Lincoln SQ: 3:30, Sunday. You were exiting. Tall, dark, a beautiful print coat, thin glasses, I said I liked your outfit. You are art in motion.

Fellow Magnetic Fields Fans

We sat in the balcony turret the first night of 69 Love Songs. Thanks for singing along with me! Hope you got to come back for Papa was a Rodeo.

Is it a match? Leave a comment here or on our Instagram post to connect!

Did you see someone? Say something! Submit your own I Saw U message here and maybe we'll include it in the next roundup!

The Stranger's only news round-up. by Nathalie Graham

International District stabbings: On Friday, someone stabbed five people in what appears to be a random, unprovoked attack in Seattle's Chinatown International District. The same person is believed to be responsible for other stabbings in the neighborhood that occurred between Thursday and Friday. In total, police believe the suspect stabbed nine victims in two days. Police arrested the suspect on Friday. His bail was set for $2 million.

Back at it: Around 300 people gathered over the weekend at the Space Needle for a rally against Donald Trump's re-election. It feels like we were protesting Donald Trump's presidency just yesterday. Time is a flat circle when your country keeps electing a fascist.  

Hundreds of immigrants, students, activists and union workers are protesting in Seattle against U.S. imperialism, violent policies against migrants, police violence and structural economic violence and exploitation by the capitalist class. pic.twitter.com/dZ9JFFPAii

— Guy Oron (@GuyOron) November 9, 2024

Wet, wet, wet: The rain is here. I hope you like it. 

????️ Showers are here to stay, with wet conditions on track through the week. #WAwx pic.twitter.com/0yM2lMdZH7

— NWS Seattle (@NWSSeattle) November 11, 2024

Income tax when? According to 2023 census data, the median wages for tech workers in the Seattle area last year was about $157,200. That's a $14,000 increase from 2022's tech-worker wage estimate, according to the Seattle Times' FYI Guy. Meanwhile, the median income for non-tech workers in Seattle was about $81,100 and only bumped up a measly $2,800 since 2022. 

Vaccinate your kids: Stop being stupid and get your kids their shots. Whooping cough is on the rise with nearly 1,200 cases documented statewide. Of those cases, over 80% are in children. "This is just the tip of the iceberg. We’re starting to see the impact of waning immunization," Dr. James Lewis, a health officer with the Snohomish County Health Department, told KIRO7. 

Help SIFF staff out: Go see a secret staff pick on Wednesday and throw a few bucks in the kitty to help support SIFF workers who are out of a job now that the Egyptian Theater out of commission. 

A pipe burst at The Egyptian and SIFF staff need our community’s support!

Join us on November 13th at 7pm for a free screening of a VERY secret and VERY good movie. Tickets are free, but please donate to the fundraiser linked on our web page! https://t.co/AjQjZHaWJf pic.twitter.com/GLANjC3Hrs

— Northwest Film Forum (@nwfilmforum) November 9, 2024

Analysis suggests Gaza dead are mostly women and children: New analysis from the United Nations Human Rights Office found that 70% of those killed by Israel in Gaza were women and children. The UN verified the details of 8,119 people killed in Gaza from November 2023 to April 2024. Of them, 26 percent were women. Around 44 percent were children, most commonly between five and nine years old. The report said the data indicates "an apparent indifference to the death of civilians and the impact of the means and methods of warfare." 

Wildfire to the East: Dry, windy conditions are to blame for a brush fire in New Jersey that now covers 39 acres. The blaze is currently 30% contained. Meanwhile, at least six more fires are burning in the state. And at the same time, two acres burned in the middle of Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, killing a teenage park ranger. Wildfires have increased in east coast states thanks to historic droughts. Boston to New York City and Philadelphia to Washington, D.C are under red flag warnings. The bad news is everything is going to get worse thanks to who we elected president. 

Meanwhile: A California blaze tearing through Ventura County is 31% contained and still covers 32 square miles.

Trump chooses UN ambassador: New York Rep. Elise Stefanik has been chosen to fill the role. Stefanik, who serves as House Republican Conference Chair, is a Trump loyalist with little foreign policy experience. Trump called her a “strong, tough, and smart America First fighter.” 

Bird flu in Canada: The first presumptive case of bird flu in a human has been identified in British Columbia. The infected person is a teenager who likely contracted the illness from contact with animals. So far, the virus hasn't spread from human to human. 

Another abortion horror story: A woman in Georgia was 18 weeks pregnant with her second child when she miscarried. Despite her bleeding and her risk of serious infection, doctors could not perform a routine dilation and curettage due to abortion laws. They had to wait 24 hours or until the woman seemed like she might die unless she received the surgery. Sure enough, they waited until her hemoglobin levels were perilously low and then operated. While she survived, the pain and fear she went through was not medically necessary. Her pain was legislated.

Wicked whoopsie: Mattel released special dolls for the new Wicked movie. On the bottom of the packaging, Mattel listed "Wicked.com" to drive people to the movie site. Only Wicked.com is a porn site that makes parody porn movies. Mattel said sorry. 

A song for your Monday: You like to groove, right?

Salami Rose Joe Louis plays Madame Lou's on Monday, November 11. by Dave Segal

Recording for Flying Lotus's Brainfeeder label, Salami Rose Joe Louis (Lindsay Olsen) has blazed a distinctive trail in that fertile sector of California's underground where electronic music and jazz converge. On early releases by this multi-instrumentalist and producer—such as 2019's Zdenka 2080—Olsen sings in a hushed, dulcet manner over sparse, melodious electronic music that wears its jazz inflections gracefully. Faint echoes of '90s and '00s introspective, minimalist IDM (intelligent dance music, if you don't know) acts such as Múm insinuate themselves, too. It's ultimately dream pop, but not in the cloying way manifested by the genre's try-hards.

With 2023's Akousmatikous and this year's collab with Flanafi, Sarah, SRJL's rhythms get jazzier and the instrumentation fuller, with help from Soccer96 and Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, among others. The songs are more kinetic while the vocals retain their breathy, Julee Cruise-like sweetness. The music's levitational feel and smooth propulsion belie lyrics about catastrophic ecological degradation and the dangers of propaganda/disinformation. Enchanting listeners through understatement and mutedly sparkling tones, Olsen offers the most pleasant dystopian sci-fi soundtracks extant. For this show at Madame Lou's tonight, she'll be joined by guitarist Flanafi, bassist Tone Whitfield, and drummer Luke Titus—most of whom played on the exceptional new Salami Live at 2131 North Kacey Street EP.

<a href="https://salamirosejoelouismusic.bandcamp.com/album/salami-live-at-2131-north-kacey-street">Salami Live at 2131 North Kacey Street by Salami Rose Joe Louis featuring Flanafi, Tone Whitfield, Nazir Ebo</a>

Salami Rose Joe Louis plays Madame Lou's Monday, Nov 11, 7:30 pm, $21, 21+.

"These pigs locked me up to see what color I'd rot into!" by Suzette Smith

Like any fan of Seattle hardcore band the Blood Brothers, I have found myself at a show, pressed up against a wall of people, shouting the wrong lyrics to their songs. For instance, on their hit "USA NAILS" there's a hook where you think you're singing a cheer-style "one, one, and two!" but the lyrics are actually: "These pigs locked me up to see what color I'd rot into!"

The energetic screamo group was active from 1997-2007, during which time they released five critically-acclaimed albums, completed several European tours, and even played a set on Jimmy Kimmel Live, overcoming the reservations of the show's freaked-out producers. Perhaps the best indicator of their success is the fact that their US reunion tour—which hits Seattle on November 14 and 15—is selling out in several cities.

Ever ones to cut the bullshit, Blood Brothers don't have a new record; they're playing the fucking hits. Still, the tour is timed with Epitaph's anniversary reissue of one of their biggest albums Crimes (2004) on vinyl.

When we sat down to talk to Johnny Whitney, who fronts the band with fellow singer/screamer/guttural whisperer Jordan Blilie, he noted that plenty of lyrics websites list incorrect verses for Blood Brothers songs. "It's hilarious how wrong some of them are," Whitney said. "The lyrics on Spotify are not even close to what I'm actually saying. Just buy the fucking CD, and look it up. Come on, people."

We spoke with Whitney and Blilie separately, over sprawling phone calls that we have organized into this piece. For clarity, we're listing their responses together, as we seek to get into the nitty gritty of this group's  danceable, screaming-nightmare material.

Foremost, Whitney and Blilie both began by gushing about the other three members of their band: frenetic drummer Mark Gajadhar, vigorous guitarist Cody Votolato, and ultra-versatile bassist Morgan Henderson, who is currently best known as a member of Fleet Foxes.

"I cannot fucking believe that I got to work with these guys," Whitney says. "I just took all those things for granted at the time. Everybody was, and still is, coming from totally different places [musically], but there was always something really special about all of us together that was there from the moment that we started."

THE STRANGER: Johnny, I've always gotten the impression that you're the major force behind the lyrics.

JOHNNY WHITNEY: I came up with the majority of the lyrics, but it certainly was collaborative between Jordan and I. I would freewrite as much as I could, to have material to draw from, and going back to those notebooks kept things as free and fresh and not contrived as possible. The drawback of that approach is the lyrics are very abstract and hard to parse direct meaning from, but that's also kind of the point. I found myself writing about the absence of answers, or the absence of concrete truths that you can hold onto.

A lot of times, my process would center around coming up with a cool idea: a song name or some common refrain that we would want to work into a song, like "Burn Piano Island, Burn." Something that has a hook or conveys an image or feeling. Then we would reverse engineer the lyrics from that.

JORDAN BLILIE: I would absolutely say that I felt like Johnny was the driver, and for good reason. He's really good. When you see someone who is in a flow state, you do your best to accentuate and collaborate, to help mold and shape and add your pieces. It was always stuff that I was really excited to dig into. It was just that rich and that vibrant. The challenge for me was what can I add to it, you know? It always pushed me to try and come up with the most creatively-inspired stuff that I could.

You two have such an engaging stage style. People would call it sassy, but that has always felt like a description from people who have never been to a play and can't recognize theater. Do either of you have a background in theater arts?

WHITNEY: I wanted to be a child actor—I actually auditioned for that movie Blank Check (1994). Actually, a year after Jordan and I met, we were both in a Jr. High production of Alice in Wonderland. He was the Mad Hatter, and I was the Mock Turtle.

BLILIE: Why would you say that? [Laughs]

"USA NAILS" was such a hit, and it involved a phone number everyone could scream. How did that come to be?

WHITNEY: The name and the "1-900-USA-NAILS" comes from the chain nail salon, but we reverse-engineered it into a song about somebody using their one phone call from the county jail to call a phone sex line. It's the idea of loneliness, disaffection, and parasocial relationships with things that exist solely for their own profit or gain.

And yet it's also danceable. There are these moments live where you have an audience of people shaking their asses and shouting "to see what color I'd rot into!" Did you start with that idea and work backwards, or just jam it into that moment of the song?

WHITNEY: At that time, the band would all sit together in a room and have a kind of song tribunal about how each part should go. Then, at some point, we'd have a semi -finished version and [Jordan and I] would just try to fit lyrics to the songs. Especially on Burn, Piano Island, Burn. Some of those songs needed an editor so bad, right? I wouldn't change a thing about it, but looking back, there are parts where it sounds like everybody's playing a different song at the same time, but it kind of works, right? And for the lyrics, sometimes we just had to make it work.

That wasn't the first time Jordan whispered his lyrics in a guttural tone, but it's one of the more emblematic, right? How did that start?

BLILIE: By necessity—I don't have much of a range, you know? I have this weird baritone. Very early on we were drawing from crust punk, where you just have two voices screaming. And we didn't put a whole lot of thought into even what the other person was doing. But then, as we continued to develop, the stuff became more complex, and there was more room for different sorts of shadings of what we could do vocally. So it was just finding out: What is it I can do other than scream at the top of my lungs?

WHITNEY: Jordan's part at the end just works right? He was very inspired by Jarvis Cocker.

BLILIE: Yeah, you can trace that right back to Pulp. If you listen to any Pulp song, there's gonna be some whispery storytelling, with the compression cranked up so you can kind of hear every lick of the lips.

<a href="https://thebloodbrothersofficial.bandcamp.com/album/burn-piano-island-burn">Burn, Piano Island, Burn by The Blood Brothers</a>

BLILIE: Some of my favorite moments of writing with Johnny are the ones that we would where we would crack each other up.

Can you give an example?

BLILIE: Every lyric of "Guitarmy." We really got a kick out of the idea of opening our major label debut with the words, "do you remember us?" Because of the audacity, the absurdity of it.

So you guys all started this band when you were in your teens.

BLILIE: Yeah, we started when we were like, 15-16.

Are there any lyrics that have not aged well, in your opinion?

BLILIE: I'm sure they're the ones that we're not playing. [Laughs.] This question reminds me of something one of my professors said. It was my first class at UCLA, Queer Lit from Walt Whitman to Stonewall. In class discussions my fellow classmates would critique writing from the 1800s for not satisfying certain criteria, and our professor would say: You cannot look at the text backwards. You have to look at it forwards. You can't apply current day criteria to something that was written when that criteria didn't even exist. You have to engage with it in the context of when it was written. I don't think anything we wrote is in a canon warranting that level of examination, but it's useful nonetheless. It's a way for me to remind myself that I was 20, and I had the tools of a 20-year-old. It helps me to not beat myself up too much about it.

WHITNEY: There's a story behind this. When we were doing the song "Camouflage, Camouflage" on Young Machetes, Jordan and I were going back and forth on the lyrics. He was like, "Yeah, I'm great with all this." But he put a line through one verse, where I say: "All the girls in Montreal are smashing skateboards in the street." And I was just like: Fuck you, dude. I'm gonna keep this in. But he was right, because it sounds stupid, and it's like, really horny and makes me want to light my skin on fire. So I'm changing it to something else, probably something different every night.

I wonder about imagery in Blood Brothers' songs that seems to be responding to beauty standards at the time. Like, in "Ambulance, Ambulance" you've got this blistering segue to the chorus: "What is love? / What is scam? / What is sun? / What is tan?"

WHITNEY: That's a double meaning. Because it's like tan—like suntan—but also tan is a blah color, right? It's like the color of a dentist's office wall. If you think of the idea of love being something that could feel on-fire, passionate, the color of a dentist's office wall is the opposite. Although, tanning does come into play in a lot of our lyrics. I've noticed as well.

Or on "Beautiful Horses" the lyrics are "gallop into your romance novels / dance atop heavy pectorals."

BLILIE: I think we were seeing an increasingly vapid culture, and we were trying to dig into that—dig into: What does it do to someone when they're bombarded by these sorts of images and messages? There was a lot of that in that writing; I can't say specifically with "Beautiful Horses," but I think "Trash Flavored Trash," would probably fit under that umbrella.

<a href="https://thebloodbrothersofficial.bandcamp.com/album/crimes-bonus-track-version">Crimes (Bonus Track Version) by The Blood Brothers</a>

In "Rats and Rats and Rats for Candy" there's an ongoing narrative of rats living inside a woman. It's like a play. There are characters. And the rats eventually chew out of her and try to find a new body to live in. I wondered if that was also about beauty standards or body dysmorphia?

WHITNEY: That song, it's about that, but it's also about manipulation, right? Not to get too personal, but I grew up with somebody who weaponized being sick—faked being sick—for their entire life in order to manipulate people and extract something they needed out of them. The character in that song is kind of a victim, but like a siren at the same time. They're trying to lure somebody in.

Is that person the rats, or are they Candy?

WHITNEY: The rats are in Candy. I mean, it's both.

What about "The Shame?" Your group resonates so much with "everything is gonna be just awful / when we're around" that you're putting it on t-shirts 20 years later. What does it mean?

WHITNEY: The whole premise of that song is having to sell yourself—how to commoditize yourself. It's about how you function in a capitalist society. You sink or swim by your ability to market yourself, make yourself desirable—whether it be in relationships, job market, blah blah blah. I've always been repulsed by that and was especially at the time we wrote it, which was in Venice Beach, while we were recording Burn, Piano Island, Burn. It was the longest time I'd ever been in LA, and that's the epicenter of being a self-salesman. That line encapsulates the feeling of being sold something. And you're in a position where, in order to survive, you have to be your own salesman.

Salesmen show up in other songs, like "The Salesman, Denver Max." That's another one that almost feels like a short story.

WHITNEY: I initially cribbed the idea for that song's lyrics from the Joyce Carol Oates short story, "Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?" It follows a narrative of a very dangerous, predatory man in the process of stalking and kidnapping somebody. “Denver Max” was a huge, uncomfortable gamble for me, because I wrote the entire song on my acoustic guitar, recorded it to a 4-track, and then played it for the guys—totally expecting them to hate it. It was really daunting to try to contribute as a songwriter; Cody, Morgan, and Mark are such talented musicians. I think they may have hated it; I don't really remember how we ended up recording it. It was nobody's favorite thing, but we just tracked it, and it sounded great and worked.

Have you read anything by playwright Caryl Churchill?

WHITNEY: Never heard of her.

"Live at the Apocalypse Cabaret" has a lyric in it that reminds me of her play Far Away, which has a scene of milliners making hats for people to wear at a public execution, so I always felt a symmetry there, because of the lyrics "the cross-eyed map of the afterlife is knitting tiny neck ties." 

WHITNEY: I'm going to be super honest, the songs that I'm the most familiar with the lyrics of, at this very moment, are songs that were going to be playing, because I've been rehearsing them. But I do remember, with that song, we were trying to be funny without being silly. Like, a cross-eyed map is a map that makes no sense, where you don't know where you're going. Knitting tiny neckties are noose ties. It's like dressing yourself up for death, right? It's trying to dress up something that's really heinous and horrible and incomprehensible, and also trying to navigate that, through a map that makes no sense.

At this moment you have cracked my understanding of a play you haven't even read. But I digress, I've read that "Celebrator" was a direct response to Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue."

BLILIE: That pumped up patriotism felt gross when taken in context with the images and much of the information that we were seeing come out of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Is that why there are so many mentions of amputated limbs on Crimes?

BLILIE: The bulk of Crimes was trying to engage with war so that's where you get a lot of that grizzly imagery.

Well, personally, it's so nice that you're touring right now. Blood Brothers are great for when you need to scream, but you can't. You can scream along to the Blood Brothers in your head, or out loud at a show.

BLILIE: I'm glad that we could be of service, in that regard. It's hard for me not to go into a really bleak mindset when I look at our current political landscape. I find myself equal parts enraged and terrified. And there are times when I have to just close all news down. I guess it is a good time to get up and scream.

The Blood Brothers play the Showbox Thurs, Nov 14 and Fri, Nov 15. Thursday's show is all ages, and Friday's is 21+. 

This story was originally published in our sister paper, Portland Mercury.

I've actually written a lot, but haven't wanted to publish most of it. So many reasons why the Dems lost. Maybe I should just list them.

1. Biden shouldn't have run again. There would have been a primary. Given the result of the election this week, we should have found out what support each candidate had with voters. We didn't get to choose the candidate. That said Harris ran a fantastic campaign.
2. Biden should not have shut down his campaign website. Rather than using it to raise money to feed to the media industry, they should have organized and listened, to develop new channels of communication with voters that were not dependent on journalism. Every time the Dems run a campaign, win or lose, they shut down their connection to the electorate. The voters' only role in the party was when they needed our money and our vote. We were not part of governing. Huge mistake. And I'm not just saying that now, I've said that about every Democratic campaign since Obama. This is probably the biggest single mistake the Dems keep making.
3. We needed a prosecutor at the top of Justice. I don't know what Garland actually did, but I'm sure it will all be swept out by whoever is Trump's AG.
4. Men's votes need to be sought and welcomed, specifically. So much has been done to alienate male voters, which is why so many voted for Trump. We could have had a bunch of them this year, if we had only spoken to them with respect.

I don't know if we can reboot the Democrats as an opposition party given all these problems. Whatever comes next is going to perform very differently from the party that lost this election. If we try to do it again the same old way, it will fail even worse. I think everyone knows this by now.

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