One man to rule us all. Credit: SOUND TRANSIT
One man to rule us all.
One man to rule us all. SOUND TRANSIT

In a first, Facebook and Google are paying up for violating political ad transparency laws: Attorney General Bob Ferguson sued Facebook and Google after they failed to provide political ad information to The Stranger’s Eli Sanders. Now, to avoid future trial dates, the tech giants are paying a combined $455,000. Someone get Eli another Pulitzer.

Cher is thoroughly unimpressed by Facebook and Google, too: She’s boycotting the platforms because of the Russian-led disinformation campaigns on their platforms. She didn’t say it in quite those words, though:

Gonzaga University president didn’t know the school was harboring bad priests: Yesterday, the news broke that at least 20 Catholic priests who had a history of sexual abuse were sent to Gonzaga to retire. The university’s president has denied all knowledge about this. He said he knew there were “supervised safety plans” for some priests living at the Cardinal Bea House (where the bad priests lived), but didn’t know that any were Jesuits. A weirdly specific claim of ignorance.

Sound Transit is giving us a gift this holiday season: They’re altering the Orca card beep sounds. Just what I’ve always wanted! But, for real, there will be a different sound (one beep) for tapping on than the sound (two beeps) for tapping off. It’s a big day!

Climate change is making it so salmon can’t smell danger: Salmon depend on their sense of smell to uh, not die. Higher levels of CO2 in the water impact the way salmons smell. That’s happening because of climate change and ocean acidification (which, as you know, is a product of climate change.) Will the salmon survive??

Olympia school bus forgot a preschooler on board: The kiddo was left unattended on a school bus for over an hour. The bus driver didn’t do a cursory check of the whole bus after dropping off the kids. He was fired. Now, the Olympia School District is installing bus alarms on the buses that will go off unless the driver pushes the button located at the back of the bus.

Toto, we’re not in Washington anymore: Batten down the hatches, there’s a tornado in Port Orchard.

Some facts from some people who know what they’re talking about:

Some damage:

Transit official from other Washington will lead Seattle transit: Without further ado, the new SDOT director is… some guy named Sam Zimbabwe. He was a project-delivery officer in D.C. If the Seattle City Council approves, Zimbabwe will take over the shit fuck (technical term) of transit projects underway in the city.

I spent 11 minutes watching this: It’s kind of beautiful. No wonder the internet loves it.

Michael Flynn sentencing postponed: Trump’s former national security advisor wasn’t sentenced today. Instead, he got a stern talking to by the federal judge who was supposed to sentence him today. The judge said that he couldn’t promise that Flynn wouldn’t serve prison time and urged him to complete his cooperation deal with the feds.

Trump’s charity is shutting down: Surprise, surprise, the Donald J. Trump Foundation isn’t really the charity it claimed to be. It functioned more as a glorified checkbook, according to the New York Attorney General. Slate is reporting that Trump spent $42,000 of money from this “charity” to buy himself Tim Tebow memorabilia and portraits of himself, Donald J. Trump.

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Nathalie Graham covers anything she finds fun, weird, or interesting. You can find a lot of that in her column, Play Date. Her work has also appeared around town in The Seattle Times, GeekWire, and the...