Happy first day of school to Seattle, and first week of school for much of the rest of the region. Are you confident in the mask and vaccine requirements as a student, parent, or school employee? Are you a teacher hoping that the last year and a half of distance learning didn’t leave students unprepared?

Anyway, please wash your hands right now and get vaccinated if you’re eligible.

Good morning to everyone except Compassion Seattle. I don’t know enough about the legal case to have an opinion on the merits. But I do know that their garage initiative was garage. So I’m glad it won’t be on the ballot.

It does mean that the City Council and mayor need to step the hell up. They need to do more to house people. It’s well past time.

Anyway, please wash your hands right now and get vaccinated if you haven’t yet.

Good morning you beautiful people. What a lovely, drizzly morning. Walking down wet streets for the first time in forever. How fantastic. Anyway.

I was in the Central Library for longer than just grabbing a book and leaving for first time since it completely shut down. It’s just the lower level and the computers. I don’t know why this in particular, but it made me sad how slow the reopening is going. Like, how long until I can just grab a random book of poetry, read a few and put it back? I know there’s a deadly disease, so I’m glad they’re taking their time. But it’s such a great location when it can be.

Please wash your hands right now and get vaccinated if you haven’t yet.

What the actual fuck is going on in the Klickitat County Sheriff’s Office? Like how do you combine all of that bullshit into one office? Like, weird COVID-19 garbage should be enough to keep him away from office, and it’s not even the height of his garbage. It’s really incredible. Just lawlessness. Terrible person, and terrible office.

Anyway, please wash your hands right now and get vaccinated if you haven’t yet.

Good morning. Now that the mask mandate is back in Washington, I want to make sure you do one simple thing. Please, please, please don’t take your mask off to sneeze. You absolute fuckers.

I mean, come on. You have a mask on for a reason. And sneezing into the bus or plane, or whatever is the exact opposite of that reason.

Anyway, please wash your hands right now and get vaccinated if you haven’t yet.

I am mostly on board with Governor Inslee’s vaccine and mask mandates. If anything, they could lean harder on vaccination. I also don’t love making vaccinated people wear masks, but it’s better than not having an enforcement mechanism for the unvaccinated. Still, keeping the pressure on for state employees to get vaccinated is a good step.

Anyway, please wash your hands right now and get vaccinated if you haven’t already.

Good morning to everyone who didn’t protest homeless people using the Silver Cloud. Seriously, fuck them. Awful, awful people who should be ashamed of themselves. Protesting in favor of an empty building. Demanding people still live on the street. Fuck off.

Anyway, please wash your hands right now and get vaccinated if you haven’t yet.

I am back from a lovely vacation. But I did forget to hit Publish.

Anyway, it looks like the heat wave was probably more deadly than we originally thought. I guess those heat events are here to stay. Or at least more common. Pffft

Anyway, please wash your hands right now, and get vaccinated if you haven’t yet.

Happy Thursday, everyone.

Carl has access to WiFi for a few minutes edition.

Here’s one.

Enjoy.

Over the next few weeks, I will be on vacation. So the open threads will probably be a bit more sporadic. I will be flying for the first time in a couple years, and I really wish more of you had been vaccinated.

Anyway, just a heads up that these threads will be later and potentially weirder than normal.

Anyway, please wash your hands right now, and get vaccinated if you haven’t yet. Make a plan today.

Good morning to everyone who got vaccinated. And a gigantic fuck off to the rest of you (those with legitimate medical reasons — not some bullshit you saw on Facebook — excluded). We’re going backwards because you are whiny pathetic shits. So mask mandates are probably back, because you pieces of shit couldn’t act responsibility. Hospitalization is up because you wanted to impress bots on social media.

Honestly, if it’s some made up religious reason, stay in your house. Don’t ever leave. If it’s worth it to you to cosplay the end times, you also can’t buy anything, so stay the fuck away from retail workers.

If you haven’t yet had the vaccine, for God’s sake make an appointment today.

I was going to write about how your ballot should have arrived if you live in Washington, and get it postmarked or dropped off by August 3. That’s still true, but I want to talk about masks.

I still wear one inside. I am vaccinated and that’s much better protection than a mask. But the mask provides a bit more protection against breakthrough cases. So I still wear it grocery shopping, in the common areas of my apartment building, etc. I don’t wear glasses or have stink breath, so wearing one isn’t bad for me. You might have made a different calculation, and that’s fine.

So this morning, I got some food at a coffee shop near me. And the barista was very insistent about how it wasn’t necessary. We went through several rounds of “You don’t need to wear that.” “I know.”

It seems weird to push against masks, just in general. There are still a lot of non vaccinated people, even in Seattle. And maybe one employee isn’t a lot, but I don’t like it.

Anyway, yes, the vaccine is still the single most effective way to fight COVID-19. So please get vaccinated if you haven’t yet.