This is the real deal Pacific Northwest....
This is the real deal Pacific Northwest.... 400tmax/gettyimages.com

How wonderfully windy and balmy dusk was yesterday. And then there was rain at night. This is the only Pacific Northwest I want to know because it's the only Pacific Northwest I can love. The pattering on the roof, the long-dark mornings, the soggy air, the crows returning to the city. And more rain is said to be coming by way of a long atmospheric river. We will be wet for days, the experts say.

Which COVID wave is this? I lost count. Is it the fourth? The fifth? Be it one or the other, it appears to be finally concluding its summer-to-fall run at least in our state, which, according to the Seattle Times, has seen a "50% drop in COVID infections".

Yes, yes, Mike Lindblom, some businesses will struggle during the construction of "the RapidRide G Line bus corridor", but this is still not a story. Nothing in transportation compares with the number of disruptions caused by the madness of improving car mobility.

A Seattle man was crushed to death by a truck backing into a property. The driver did not see the fence behind them was closed, nor did they see the family member between the fence and the truck's fifth-wheel trailer. KIRO: "Seattle Fire responded and attempted life-saving measures, but the 73-year-old man died at the scene."

How hard it is for America to stop being America.

As American trucks get bigger, American sperm quality is declining, according to "a 16-year study of US sperm donors". The study was conducted by the Reproductive Medicine Associates of New York.

The number of hit-and-run collisions Snohomish County had in just one day? Four. That day was yesterday. What will it be today?

A number of people in Bellevue heard explosions last night. Was it a terrorist attack? Or had the American civil war (Eastern Washington versus Western Washington) began? No. Nothing of the kind. The "explosions were propane tanks outside of the building" that was on fire. The Bellevue Fire Department gained control of this fire at around the time rain started falling—8:30 pm.

A shooting that began in a Tacoma alley at dusk claimed, at its conclusion, four lives. The police are looking for the killers.

More guns:

A prop the Hollywood star Alec Baldwin discharged on the set of Rust, a Western about some figure who is remembered because he was bad and killed people, really killed a person (the film's cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins) and wounded another (its director, Joel Souza). Baldwin is the film's star and producer. The Hollywood Reporter reports: "Sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to the Bonanza Creek Ranch set near Santa Fe, New Mexico, at 1:50 p.m. MT after a 911 call indicated an individual had been shot on set." The gun apparently fired blanks.

CNN learns from a prop master how a prop gun can be deadly:

"Prop weapons do have a dangerous factor to them even though they're a lot safer than using a live firearm on set," says Joseph Fisher, a prop master who works on movie sets and has handled weapons in the military and with the NYPD. "Typical prop load will be about 25 to 50% of the gunpowder in an actual projectile load that would be used in a regular weapon."

Seattle director Megan Griffiths has this to say about the incident:

I often get pushback when I demand completely disabled, non-firing weapons on set, but this is why. Mistakes happen, and when they involve guns, mistakes kill. No gun ever needs to fire on set. Muzzle flashes are the easiest & cheapest visual effect. Why are we still doing this? What a horrifying, infuriating, completely avoidable tragedy.

Something to put in your noggin:

The hits do not stop with Dan Patrick, the nutty Lieutenant Governor of Texas. This time it's his bounty for proof of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election that Donald Trump soundly lost. And guess what happened? Fraud was indeed found, but it was committed by a single Republican. The tipper, "a progressive poll worker in Pennsylvania", got a $25,000 check from Patrick, apparently a man of his word.

But it seems nothing can stop Texas from keeping on keeping on: "Texas attorney general Ken Paxton says ‘overthrow’ put Joe Biden in White House instead of Trump".

But let's leave all of that and return to the Pacific Northwest, whose rain, low clouds, bodies of water, long nights, short days are captured so perfectly in "Angel of List", an ambient track by Vancouver BC's Loscil: