Slog AM: Wilson Announces Budget, Boy vs. Bear, Gen Z Is Not Masturbating 

Lorax mode: A grassroots conservation organization has successfully saved a fuckload of trees on the Olympic Peninsula. After the Department of Natural Resources sold a 74-acre plot of state forest to Webster Logging, the Elwha Legacy Forests Coalition made a proposition: What if the group paid the loggers what they would make from chopping down the trees… but they didn’t chop down any trees? Webster Logging said sure. The group has managed to raise $563,000 and protect 29 acres of trees so far. The Lorax wishes he were this effective, but he is not very business-minded.  

Ex-Xboxers: As part of the 3,200-employee layoff Microsoft announced in July, 268 Xbox employees in Washington state lost their jobs. 

Bellingham boy battles bear: A mama bear came face-to-face with 12-year-old Robin Westgate in his family’s Bellingham backyard. She charged him twice, clawing his side and leaving puncture wounds on his hip. Robin fought back, punching, screaming, and gouging the bear’s eye with his thumb. His little sister, Riverly, heard the screams and went for help. His dad appeared. The bear charged him and bit down on his hand right as he landed “the hardest punch of my life.” The bear ran off. 

A quick note from The Stranger’s Cedar Attanasio, who tuned into Mayor Katie Wilson’s budget speech:

Facing a $175 million budget deficit, Mayor Katie Wilson announced a proposed plan to balance the city’s books, a $9.1 billion austerity budget. She wants to cut city services and keep taxes as they are, all while funding 66 more police officers. She said it’s time to get the city’s budget in order and not kick cost-cutting down the road. She’s kicking tax increases, like, say a city capital gains tax, down the road. What’s next? The city council is expected to weigh in on how to cut between one and eight percent from city departments. 

And, Seattle banned algorithmic pricing in grocery stores: Read the story here. 

Thanks, Cedar! Now, back to me. 

Grand Illusion finds new home: The beloved Grand Illusion Cinema, which left its University District home in 2025 after 50 years, is moving back to the neighborhood to take over the recently closed Varsity Theater. That’ll give the Grand Illusion, which used to only have one screen, three screens to play with. After a few improvements, the plan is to open up in November or early December and show movies every day of the week. 

World Cup cash: The FIFA World Cup officially brought in $889 million in total economic impact to Seattle this summer. That includes $109 million in state and local tax revenue. While the reality was about $40 million less than original estimates, that’s still a buttload of money. The city is considering it a win. It was a mixed bag for businesses.

The weather: Cloudy! 

The climate: Extreme heat from this year’s extreme El Niño will likely cause 450,000 deaths worldwide in the next six months. 

FBI hacked: Hacker group ShinyHunters claims it has breached the FBI and now holds personal data on all 5,000 FBI members. Embarrassing. The hackers also defaced the FBI jobs website, writing “this site has been seized by ShinyHunters” on it and announcing they’d collected personal data from the feds. Their MO is to attack targets and then extort them, but this time is a little different. “What we plan to do is not something I’d call extortion, maybe coercion,” one of the hackers told 404Media. ShinyHunters claims the FBI made “false claims” in an official report about the hacking group. The hackers are giving the FBI one week to “correct” or remove the report. 

At his UN visit, President Donald Trump told a CNN journalist, “You should not be here.” He went on: “I’m surprised that CNN is here covering me… You said you weren’t going to cover me.” That’s not what happened. Trump said CNN wasn’t going to cover him. He banned CNN along with MS NOW and Politico from the White House and removed them from White House pool duties, prompting a wave of news organizations to refuse pool duties in an act of solidarity. The banned outlets sued on Monday. 

A US District judge will hold a hearing today. In court filings ahead of the hearing, the White House wrote, “Access to the White House is a privilege—not a right” and that the banned outlets had breached the standard of conduct by “trafficking in verifiable falsehoods about national security and other issues, and publishing sensitive or classified information.” Again, that’s not what happened.

Ghouls: The Trump administration kicked 750,000 enrollees out of Affordable Care Act insurance marketplaces. JD Vance claimed many of these people were fraudulently receiving benefits or that these people did not exist. Vance says taking away all these people’s healthcare will save the country $2.2 billion. 

No one is jacking it: What’s going on? A Playboy Gen Z sex survey found that one in three men aged 18 to 29 haven’t rubbed one out in 90 days. The same was true for half of women in the same demographic. Are the gooners goners?

Dolly’s bad nephew: Dolly Parton’s estate has filed a restraining order against her nephew, Bryan Seaver, who was her former head of security. Seaver allegedly made some wild threats to Parton’s manager, who runs her estate, telling him: “I’m literally an international arms dealer and mercenary. All I do is warfare. Everyone needs to be worried about what I might do.” Seaver wrote to one of Parton’s lawyers: “I’m a killer.”

I cannot wait to see the new Nathan Fielder documentary: Reviled Theranos founder and human lemur Elizabeth Holmes invited Nathan Fielder and a documentary film crew into her home to document her every move in the 34 days before she’s sent to prison. This is going to be so bananas.

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