Gatherings old (the hydros) and new (‘KEXP 50’); Amazon wants to buy the maker of Roomba vacuums; an early Amazon investor/consultant dies at 82; metro areas across the NW have severe housing shortages.

Seafair Torchlight Parade’s reassuring (if smaller) return; state AG Ferguson, Seattle Pacific U trade barbs; what Jon Talton gets wrong about Starbucks (and Seattle); Bill Russell RIP.

Charles Johnson co-creates an Afro-Futurist-Buddhist graphic novel; Teatro ZinZanni’s post-COVID, post-Woodinville comeback; wildfire forces evacuations near Soap Lake; a pro-choice state constitutional amendment isn’t likely.

Rejected, more elaborate ’62 World’s Fair plans; another big encampment sweep’s pending; Ballard High student wins $3 million settlement in sexual-abuse case; Starbucks union drives seen as models for other workers.

Thoughts on the re-released ‘Streetwise’; the regional heat-wave death toll climbs; a heat-stricken BC town succumbs to wildfire; Microsoft rebrands itself as ‘the anti-Apple.’

A rare sign of beauty amid the heat-borne misery; it likely won’t get this hot again this year; Councilmember Mosqueda wants to rename the city’s ‘single family’ zones; today’s mask-off day in King County.

Early primary-election votes show several progressives leading, Tim Eyman losing; Durkan and Best don’t want any significant SPD cuts; is Microsoft getting too cozy with the White House?; were violent feds sent to Portland just to appear in campaign ads?; Pat O’Day RIP.

Seafair’s major events axed for this year; record-high state unemployment rate; Portland OKs ‘tax the rich’ measure; what Washington’s big counties need to show before further reopening (and could nursing-home infection rates hold them back?).

Short Run cartoonists depict their social-distanced lives; government relief package isn’t enough to save some small businesses; local used-records king RIP; it’s been a month already and it feels like a decade.

The downtown ferry terminal will go bye-bye; pork farmers halted a big health probe; robots potentially threaten lots of jobs; a ‘hot, nasty summer election campaign’ is almost over.

In another massive e-missive: Death Cab’s tribute to young pipeline-blast victims; charges in a different kind of cyber-theft; no more ‘dress-coding’ in Seattle schools; Amazon’s Dash gets ditched.

Pearl Jam’s ‘Home Shows’ raise $11 mill; competing plans to ‘save’ the Showbox emerge; orca-rescue drive continues; an architect defends the stalled downtown streetcar project.

Seattle’s big, annual arts-travaganzas have come and gone, with subjects of identity and resistance scattered throughout. We touch upon that in Monday’s missive, as well as the sad decline of the hydros; alleged “shaming” harassment at an officially “inclusive” fandom convention; a phony Starbucks “meme” graphic; and how much Nikkita Oliver may have already changed local politics.

Apparently very few Seattle voters have sent in their primary-election ballots. If any of you are among those, get to it, darn it! We also mention an attempt to trash the Northwest’s public-power heritage; the ever-hotter Eastside state-senate race; the vanishing sword ferns; and “Why I Don’t Hate Seafair” part XXVII.

Wednesday’s MISCmedia MAIL doesn’t know any more than you about the sudden closure of the classic Guild 45th and Seven Gables cinemas. We do know a little about another police-brutality settlement; the International District’s “upzone” moving forward; what white liberals don’t “get” about the whole Evergreen State College to-do; and our big, boistrous birthday party (tomorrow, Thursday 6/8/17, at the tony Two Bells!).