Slog AM: Try to Stay Cool, More Washington Journalists Strike over AI, and How Not to See ‘The Odyssey’ for the Right Reasons

It’s a Hot One: Too hot even, dangerously for some. The city hasn’t updated its summer heat safety website since August of last year, but it still has handy links to cooling centers and the like; just ignore all the old dates they mention. It’s today and tomorrow that will be the worst according to the National Weather Service.

Workers at State’s Largest Employer (the State) to Walk Out: Governor Bob Ferguson’s austerity fantasy met reality this weekend. The state workers union, the Washington Federation of State Employees, pledged its 52,000 members will walk off the job on August 31 in protest of Ferguson’s negotiators claiming during contract negotiations that the state won’t spend any more money on employee compensation. Ferguson’s response? “No comment,” according to the Seattle Times. The parties have until October 1 to sign a new contract.

Union Journalists at 3 Washington Papers Pledge Strike Over AI: Adams MultiMedia may be one of the lesser-known newspaper conglomerates, operating papers in mostly smaller communities, but they’re up to the same tricks as bigger fish like McClatchy and Hearst. Workers at the Skagit Valley Herald, Anacortes American, and Stanwood Camano News pledged to strike by unanimous vote over the weekend. According to the Skagit News Workers Union, Adams told them “There is no limitation on the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) by the Employer with respect to any newsroom function, including the generation of news content.”

Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery Merger Blocked: At least for now, as the antitrust lawsuit filed by numerous states, including Washington, progresses. In related news, ProPublica reports that the FCC bigwigs responsible for greenlighting the Paramount-Skydance merger (which got us into this mess of media consolidation under a Trump loyalist) accepted tens of thousands of dollars in definitely not bribes from Paramount’s CEO. The FCC has yet to approve the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger.

Washington Court Blocks Kalshi for Violating Gambling Laws: Washington Attorney General Nick Brown sued in March claiming as much, and on Monday the court agreed, at least preliminarily. Kalshi, the not-gambling company, told the Seattle Times the state lacks the authority to regulate so-called “prediction markets.”

Latest Idaho Marijuana Ballot Initiative Fails Catastrophically: Idaho organizers continued their trend this year of failing to collect enough signatures for marijuana reform to go before voters on the ballot, which they have failed to do every election cycle since 2012. Things appeared more promising this year, as 2026’s organizers had millions of dollars (from a single donor) to pay signature gatherers, something prior campaigns lacked. They needed roughly 71,000 signatures and submitted over 150,000 to make sure to clear the validation hurdle that usually cuts out a quarter or more signatures during counting. 

But, according to the Idaho Secretary of State, only 58,024 Idaho Natural Medical Alliance signatures were valid, and they also failed to meet a minority rule threshold that requires a certain percent of signatures come from each legislative district. Organizers blame one of the vendors they hired to gather signatures, and there are enough discrepancies that the Idaho Secretary of State referred complaints to the Idaho State Police for possible criminal prosecution. 

Where Do Cops Go When They’re Fired? In Washington, they disproportionately go to Indian Reservations, according to a new report from InvestigateWest. Tribal police hire them at a rate four times higher than their contemporaries. How can they do this when a cop loses their badge? The Tribes are sovereign and “can hire officers who aren’t certified by Washington state and don’t meet the Criminal Justice Training Commission’s requirements.”

That is to say, the recognized tribes can: The United States Supreme Court declined to hear the Chinook Indian Nation’s petition for federal recognition this spring, one of hundreds of tribes the federal government still refuses to negotiate with, The New York Times reports.

Our Age of Woke is Coming to an End: There are plenty of legitimate reasons to avoid Christopher Nolan’s latest movie, and no, I’m not referring to the diverse casting of the Homeric Cinematic Universe’s innumerable Glupp Shittos (Himesh Patel and John Leguizamo were born for this). There’s the Marvel Studios costumes, Nolan’s terrible dialogue rewrites, the script’s reimagining of both Greeks and Gods to be Catholic in morality, and the focus-puller’s inability to keep up with Anne Hathaway’s acting (I would never fail you like this, Anne). 

But the film’s greatest sin is that much of it was shot in Western Sahara, which was illegally annexed from the Sahrawi people by the monarchy of Morocco as a colonial police state. Moroccan revanchists pinched the land off a collapsing, fascist Spain—itself a former right-wing police state beloved by the Hollywood producers of films like El Cid and 55 Days at Peking for keeping labor costs low by murdering trade unionists en masse during and after the Spanish Civil War. The theft of Western Sahara was so blatant that for decades not even the US recognized the country as part of Morocco—that is until the US did just that under the first Trump administration (Biden affirmed it) in exchange for Morocco opening relations with Israel. Nolan is now doing PR, for money, for Morocco’s monarchy in the same way Hollywood did for Spain’s generalissimo.

Some Sahrawi independence activists have responded by calling for a boycott. Exiled Sahrawi film director Brahim Chagaf had this to say about The Odyssey being shot on stolen land: “That is the great contradiction behind this landscape: while a few privileged people like Nolan can turn it into a movie, others are still waiting for the day when we can simply return to it.” Read more at Africa is a Country.

Israeli Legislature Approves Gender Segregation on Campus: According to Haaretz, “along with gender-segregated tracks in graduate studies, the law enshrines segregation in public spaces,” and does “not constitute discrimination but fall under universities’ ‘freedom of action.’” Here we see the scope creep of Apartheid: when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a person.

Gandahar Remastered: Everyone knows René Laloux’s Fantastic Planet. So goofy! Laloux didn’t make a lot of films; it’s hard as an animator outside the mainstream. But in 1987 he released Gandahar, made in production with the talented animators of SEK Studio in North Korea. Janus Films has remastered the film and recently released a trailer.

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