Bigger is always better, right?

News • Slog AM/PM

Slog PM: Amazon Go Could Expand Into Airports, Theresa May Is Still in Power, Washington Has Fast Broadband?

by Nathalie Graham • Wednesday at 7:08 pm

We are very online here.
We are very online here. SrdjanPav/Getty Images

Three school lockdowns because of gun: There were reports of a gun on Issaquah High School’s campus. Three schools locked down in response. A 14-year-old boy was taken into custody. No firearm was found.

Amazon Go is on the up-and-up: The stores are multiplying. They may even start taking root in airports. That market of literally on-the-go shoppers could be a good one to tap. Experts told the Seattle Times that, without employees, Amazon could set their prices lower than other airport stores. That would increase competition and honestly be probably good for the consumer. A Dasani water bottle for $6? Shove it up your ass, N Terminal. (Disclaimer: I don't know how much Dasani water bottles cost in the N Terminal, but how far off can I be?)

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News • Enviro

Methane Leaks Plague Natural Gas Facilities—Why Are They So Underreported?

by Nathalie Graham • Wednesday at 6:24 pm

Is the sun finally setting on natural gas? (Not yet).
Is the sun finally setting on natural gas? (Not yet.) sasacvetkovic33/Getty Images

Natural gas is lauded as a solution to climate change because it's an alternative to coal. There's a huge, international market for it and, for the United States, natural gas is a big, fat money maker. That's how Donald Trump, and his spineless excuse for an Environmental Protection Agency, sees it.

Here in Washington, there are two proposed natural gas facilities slated for development—one in Tacoma, the other in Kalama. Environmentalists aren't exactly thrilled about them. In fact, they're pretty pissed. Natural gas is not the clean, Hail Mary solution to coal it's often marketed as.

First off, there's a shit ton (technical term) of methane in it. Technically, it's nearly all methane, a greenhouse gas that's way more—we're talking 87 times more—effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide over 20 years. Scientists have found that the extraction, transportation, and storage of natural gas actually releases more methane leaks into the atmosphere because of malfunctions that official reports, like those from the EPA, don't catch.

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Sponsored

Downtown Seattle is the Home for the Holidays

The most magical time of the year is here, and the Downtown Seattle Association is bringing a host of holiday activities downtown. From time-tested traditions to more recent additions, we’ve got something for everyone—even your dog. And it’s all set in the heart of the Northwest’s best shopping and dining experience.

Visitdowntownseattle.org/holidays for more information.

Enviro • 2020

The President of the United States Should Be This 15-Year-Old Girl From Sweden

by Rich Smith • Wednesday at 5:21 pm


Everyone is speculating about who should run for President in 2020. The answer to that question must include Greta Thunberg, a 15-year-old climate change activist who gave an interview to Democracy Now's Amy Goodman yesterday morning.

Goodman has been reporting live from the UN Climate Summit in Katowice, Poland, where global leaders have been discussing ways to implement the Paris Climate Accord. While representatives from the U.S. troll attendees by singing the praises of coal during their presentations, Thunberg has been schooling UN representatives about climate policy with a steely gaze and clarity of purpose that will likely be completely absent in the 2020 race for the presidency. Check this out:

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Film/TV

Don’t Screw This Up. See Roma in a Theater.

by Erik Henriksen • Wednesday at 4:24 pm

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See Roma, and see it on a big screen, and see it loud. Alfonso Cuarón’s first film since Gravity is decidedly less flashy—a semi-autobiographical drama, it’s set in the early 1970s and is almost entirely focused on Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), a live-in housekeeper and nanny for an upper-class family in Mexico City. But while Roma’s smaller in scope, it can be as jaw-clenchingly intense as Gravity, as melancholy and humane as Y Tu Mamá También, and as viscerally overwhelming as Children of Men. Roma is Cuarón firing on all cylinders.

Which brings me back to the “see it big, see it loud” thing: Roma is being distributed by Netflix, and the only way most will be able to see it is by streaming it at home. But by the time its end credits roll, it’s clear Roma is about as powerful a cinematic experience as one can have.

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Film/TV

Mary Queen of Scots Will Do Until Game of Thrones Comes Back

by Marc Mohan • Wednesday at 3:52 pm

mary.jpg

Mary Queen of Scots is the latest effort to bring 16th-century British historical drama into the millennial age, and for better and worse, it bears many of the hallmarks of such an effort: It's got two legitimate movie stars at its core, with Saoirse Ronan as the titular monarch and Margot Robbie as her cousin Elizabeth I.

Maybe it's just Westeros withdrawal talking, but I got a consistent sense that Mary and Elizabeth's rivalry compares to the one between Daenerys and Cersei on Game of Thrones.

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Comics

Catherine

by A. Camber • Wednesday at 3:29 pm

Based on a real-life story we heard at the recent Seattle/King County free health clinic at KeyArena.

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Music

Check Yo Self with Ice Cube at the Showbox Tonight

by Leilani Polk • Wednesday at 2:49 pm

Ice Cube, performing at the BIG3 Championship in Brooklyn this past August.
Ice Cube, performing at the BIG3 Championship in Brooklyn this past August. Al Bello/BIG3/Getty Images

Even though he’s been on the comedy-film track for a while now, Ice Cube will always have serious street cred for his tenure in N.W.A. (he’s considered the founding father of gangsta rap), and for the fruitful solo hiphop albums that followed (AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted and Death Certificate in 1990 and 1991, respectively).

His brash, pointed lyrical style is legendary, and he's just released his first album in eight years: Everythang's Corrupt. The cover art—a bloody hand gripping a $100 bill—indicates what Cube is about before you even take a listen, and the very first track, "Arrest the President," finds him tearing into the current administration with his trademark ferocity ("Arrest the president, you got the evidence / That nigga is Russian intelligence (Okay) / When it rains it pours / Did you know the new white was orange? / Boy, you're showing your horns / They're tryin' to replace my halo with thorns"). The rest of the album is more of the same on a broader political and social scale; police brutality against blacks, the opioid crisis, and the rise of the alt-right included.

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Savage Love

The Hole Truth: I Have Two Vaginas

by Dan Savage • Wednesday at 2:29 pm

Originally published on Jun. 28, 2007.

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I have two vaginas. I'd had a number of routine pelvic exams with my old doctor, but she never discovered it. My new gyno, however, discovered my "atypical anatomy" right away last week. The anatomical specifics are irrelevant to my question—everything is fully functioning, sex isn't painful, and everything externally looks completely normal.

I'm a straight girl in my early 20s and I've only had one sex partner. Sex was great, and only occasionally did I have to take the guy's dick and redirect him to the "better" vagina. We were each other's firsts—at the time I figured the occasional readjustment was par for the course. I didn't find out about my two vaginas (sounds like a sitcom) until after the relationship ended.

My question: Is this something I need to reveal to new partners before sex? After? Ever?

Very Abnormal Girl

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Transportation

Wow! More Super Sexy East Link Pics!

by Lester Black • Wednesday at 2:11 pm

Sound Transit is pouring wet concrete over I-90 to more efficiently build East Link.
Sound Transit is pouring wet concrete over I-90 to more efficiently build East Link. Lester Black

Is Bellevue about to become Seattle’s Williamsburg? That’s the question I asked in our feature last week. While I’m not sure Bellevue will ever look and feel like Brooklyn, it’s certainly about to drastically change thanks to Sound Transit’s new East Link train, which will connect Washington’s fifth largest city to Seattle with a 20-minute train ride.

East Link reminds me of the L Train that I would take when I lived in Brooklyn and commuted into Manhattan. Both trains cross over big bodies of water that separate major employment centers with areas that can house lots of people. And just like Manhattan has become extremely expensive while Brooklyn remains somewhat affordable, Seattle is also getting increasingly pricey to live in.

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Amazon

"We Got Played," New York City Councilmember Says to Amazon

by Katie Herzog • Wednesday at 1:44 pm

The New York City Council doesnt need Bezos Balls. Theyve got plenty of their own.
The New York City Council doesn't need Bezos' Balls. They've got plenty of their own. Charles Mudede

Oh, to be in New York City this morning.

GeekWire reports that Amazon executives got a good tongue-lashing from members of the New York City Council during a meeting about the forthcoming Amazon headquarters in Long Island City, a neighborhood in Queens, on Wednesday. Economic incentives from both the city and state could be worth $3 billion, and not everyone is happy about it.

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Blabbermouth

How Nancy Pelosi Won the Tinkle Contest

by The Stranger • Wednesday at 1:30 pm

Episode 178 talks about how Pelosi took on President Trump in the Oval Office, the dirt on William Barr, and The Favourite.
Episode 178 talks about Nancy Pelosi taking on President Trump in the Oval Office, the dirt on William Barr, and The Favourite. Mark Wilson / Getty Images


Eli Sanders, Rich Smith, and Katie Herzog talk about how Nancy Pelosi won her televised “tinkle contest” with President Trump in the Oval Office this week, and what it means for her chances to become House Speaker in January. Also discussed: Michael Cohen, Mueller, and Trump’s hush-money scandal.

After all that, Rich talks about the dirt on William Barr, Trump’s new nominee to head the Justice Department.

And finally, Jasmyne Keimig discusses the glories of The Favourite while Rich explains why he loved The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. Plus...

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Sports • Money

Rich Man Threatens to Move Phoenix Suns to Seattle If City Does Not Spend $150 Million on Arena

by Charles Mudede • Wednesday at 1:00 pm

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lavi37/gettyimages.com

This sounds familiar. Robert Sarver, who has a net worth of $400 million, and owns the Phoenix Suns—a professional basketball team—has threatened to move his team to either Las Vegas or Seattle if the city (which is mostly a suburb) does not spend a fortune "modernizing" the Talking Stick Resort Arena.

And it appears that Phoenix's city council has been paralyzed by the threat.

Steven Hsieh of the Phoenix New Times, and former news editor of this paper, writes:

The Phoenix City Council plans to delay a vote on the $230 million deal to renovate the Talking Stick Resort Arena, according to a council source. Interim Mayor Thelda Williams, as well as council members Laura Pastor and Debra Stark, will submit a letter to City Manager Ed Zuercher requesting that the council postpone the vote...

...Depending on who you talk to, the deal is either a giveaway to Robert Sarver, the wealthy and unpopular Suns owner, or a necessary investment in Phoenix's oldest and most iconic pro sports franchise.


The key city here is, of course, Seattle.

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Weed

Eight Stoner Gifts You and Your Friends Need This Holiday Season

by Lester Black • Wednesday at 12:35 pm

Stoner gifts are the best holiday gifts.
Stoner gifts are the best holiday gifts. Magical Butter

Stoners were easy to shop for during pot’s prohibition. Put a bow on an eighth of good weed and you were suddenly a masterful gift giver.

But nowadays anyone of age with an ID and some cash can buy pot in Washington State. A gram of weed has become the gift-giving equivalent of a Wal-Mart gift card. Don’t be that person.

Luckily for you, legalization has also brought about a new wave of fun pot technology and products. I’ve collected my favorite pot smoking accessories and gear, from expensive $300 machines to $10 accessories that will revolutionize your next joint.

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Music

Inbox Jukebox Track of the Day: The Raunchy Party Jam "That New Funkadelic" by Ice Cube, Who's Coincidentally Playing Seattle Tonight

by Dave Segal • Wednesday at 12:17 pm

Gorge on this raunchy, obvious homage to funk president George Clinton.
Gorge on this raunchy, obvious homage to funk president George Clinton. YouTube screengrab

Ice Cube, "That New Funkadelic" (Lench Mob/Interscope)

The conventional wisdom would be to feature "Arrest the President" off Ice Cube's new album, Everythang's Corrupt. The gears of justice are inexorably grinding toward that climactic conclusion, and the 49-year-old rapper/former N.W.A. MC extraordinaire delivers an aptly stern rebuke to the traitor in chief over an aptly ominous and starkly funky production: “Arrest the president / You got the evidence / That n*gga is Russian intelligence.” In an interview on Zane Lowe’s Beats 1 radio show, Ice Cube further elaborated on the concept of Everythang's Corrupt. “It’s not just corruption of the system. A lot of people…we are corrupting our bodies. We corrupting our neighborhoods. We corrupting our minds. There’s a lot of corruption going on that we got to figure out what kind of world we want to live in.” The only thing missing from "Arrest the President" are bars from Don Lemon and Rachel Maddow.

Although "Arrest the President" deserves heavy airplay and anthem status, that song doesn't reference George Clinton and Funkadelic, who play the Neptune Theatre tonight. Not only that, but Ice Cube performs tonight, too, at the Showbox. What are the odds? (Perhaps Ice Cube will slide on over to the U District for a P-Funk cameo.) So, this rare coincidence compels me to write about "That New Funkadelic," even if it isn't peak Cube.

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News • Enviro

Trump's Sweeping Changes to Clean Water Act Will Pollute America's Drinking Water

by Katie Herzog • Wednesday at 11:44 am

Yum.
Yum. Toa55/Getty

Bad news for Americans who drink water: The Trump administration announced this week that they will be ending federal protection for waterways and wetlands across the country.

The new proposal, which EPA head Andrew Wheeler announced Tuesday, will end an Obama-era expansion of the Clean Water Act. Under Obama, the definition of "waters of the United States," which the Clean Water Act regulates, was expanded to include the wetlands and tributaries of navigable waterways. This is important because small waterways feed into bigger waterways and are vital to keeping America's rivers and streams, as well as our drinking water, clean and unpolluted.

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