How much for a square foot?
How much for a square foot? buradaki / Getty

Political heavyweights weigh in on Amazon’s “unprecedented” spending to influence Seattle’s city council election: This morning, Bernie Sanders joined Elizabeth Warren in condemning Amazon for its massive spending in Seattle’s upcoming election. Representative Pramila Jayapal described the spending as “not just a thumb, but a fistful of cash, on the scales of democracy.” Their criticisms come right as Seattle voters are receiving their ballots in the mail. VOTE!

Who owns space? Vice President Mike Pence, the chair of the White House’s National Space Council, suggested today that the United States will continue to observe the Outer Space Treaty—which doesn’t allow claims of sovereignty on celestial bodies—but said that our partners should respect private property rights in space, reports GeekWire. He also talked about the Trump administration’s push to create the Space Force and didn’t rule out my theory that Trump wants to own the moon. (To be fair, I was not there to ask Pence if Trump wants to own the moon, but we all know Trump would love to give the moon a golden rebrand if given the chance.)

Bernie supports Tulsi Gabbard: Last week, Hillary Clinton appeared to say that Tulsi Gabbard is “the favorite of the Russians.” People won’t stop talking about it.

Beto isn’t doing well: He’s behind in fundraising and low in the polls, but don’t worry he’s not quitting…………

Nordstrom’s gigantic NYC store opens: In a risky move, Nordstrom opened a 320,000-square-foot women’s flagship store in New York today. The store is right by Central Park and Columbus Circle. There’s footwear on three floors! In ominous and related news, bidding starts on Barneys bankruptcy auction this week—wild times for retail. We’ll see if Nordstrom’s expensive and giant bet in NYC will pay off.

Brutal robbery in SeaTac: Eight people were tied up and two sexually assaulted during a Saturday night robbery at Bob’s Burgers & Teriyaki. The suspects haven’t been located by the police. Seattle Times has more here.

Netflix is basically blowing through cash faster than WeWork: The (soon-to-be-former) streaming leader had a projected $15 million content budget in 2019. Today, the company announced it will “offer approximately $2.0 billion aggregate principal amount of junk bond,” reports Variety, despite being $12.43 billion in debt at the end of last month. Netflix’s approach to a new wave of competition this fall has been to double down on content creation, which seems like a flop idea to me. How can Netflix compete with Amazon and Disney+ when, unlike both its competitors, Netflix doesn’t have any other products to sell? Great British Bake Off and Ozark isn’t enough to balance the books!

Speaking of WeWork: They’re getting bailed out. It looks like SoftBank will take over the “embattled work space company,” which isn’t too surprising. This deal would value WeWork at around $7.5 to $8 billion. About two months ago, the company was valued at ~$47 billion.

How many Slog commenters are Russian trolls? Today, Facebook publicly acknowledged that new operations based in Russia and Iran are engaged in “coordinated inauthentic behavior” on its platforms. The behavior—which Facebook said “showed some links to the Internet Research Agency (IRA),” a Russian “troll farm”—was aimed at impacting the United States’ 2020 election. Facebook removed the fake accounts, which allegedly had a total of ~246K followers and published around ~75K posts, and reported the accounts were working on both sides of the political spectrum. It looked like they intended to inflame divisive subjects, similar to the “coordinated inauthentic behavior” that influenced the 2016 election. Most of the removed fake accounts were on Instagram, which Facebook owns.

Was the $15 minimum wage the reason Capitol Hill’s Sitka & Spruce closed? “That plays a part in it but it’s such a complicated situation,” owner Matt Dillon told Capitol Hill Seattle Blog (CHS Blog). “The $15, you can stomach that,” he continued. “The minimum wage should be $25. The problem is trying to run a restaurant like Sitka.” So what was the problem? He says it’s “triple net reconciliation.” CHS Blog explains what the fuck that is here. TL;DR, as Mudede wrote, high wages did not kill Sitka & Spruce, Seattle did.

Jayapal declines to endorse Scott or Sawant: And endorses Gossett over Girmay. Boo!

Fun headline: Pentagon draws up plans for quick Afghanistan withdrawal in case Trump blindsides military. (JK it’s not fun, it’s terrifying.)

Vulnerability, but make it sell: Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle has been all over the news recently for opening up about the difficulty of dealing with UK tabloids as a royal. Now it looks like Markle and her husband, Prince Harry, will cash in on the attention with the well-timed release of their “candid documentary,” Harry and Meghan: An African Journey, which premiered in the UK last night and will be premiering on ABC in the US on Wednesday. The UK premiere got around 2.8 million viewers, Variety reports.

More royals: The Crown has released a new trailer for its upcoming third season. The series has undergone a full cast overhaul and is approaching the 1970s, groovy baby!

Chase Burns is The Stranger's former editor. He's covered everything from gay luchadores to chemical weapons to Isabella Rossellini's favorite pets.