Sam Dean 🦅 Profile Banner
Sam Dean 🦅 Profile
Sam Dean 🦅

@SamAugustDean

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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
1 year
Bed Bath & Beyond blew one billion dollars on stock buybacks, a direct cash transfer to shareholders, in 2021. Now it's bankrupt, in no small part because of that $1B hole, and....no severance for workers who've been there for 20 years.
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
2 years
It is wild the degree to which labor law is treated as a set of strong but lightly enforced suggestions
@GunnelsWarren
Warren Gunnels
2 years
If we had "law and order" in America, Howard Schultz would have his $200 million yacht seized, put in handcuffs and required to apologize for illegally firing over 100 union leaders from a prison cell. The multi-billionaire union busting CEO isn't even pretending to obey the law.
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
11 days
By all reports this has been going on for hours at this point, with LAPD just standing by a few hundred feet away, letting this group of pro-Israel fighters try and tear down the camp and attack the campers with chemical sprays, fists, boards, fireworks.
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
5 months
Anduril's new drone is like a little autonomous jet fighter. It can be used as a missile, or fly back for another shot if it didn't blow something (and itself) up. Or you can put a sensor cluster on the nose and use it for high-speed surveillance. Pictured w/ @PalmerLuckey .
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
2 years
“That’s Latin, thank you”
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
11 days
Either this is what the mayor of LA wants to happen or the electeds who ostensibly run the department have no control over the 8,000+ armed cops of the LAPD.
@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
11 days
By all reports this has been going on for hours at this point, with LAPD just standing by a few hundred feet away, letting this group of pro-Israel fighters try and tear down the camp and attack the campers with chemical sprays, fists, boards, fireworks.
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
1 year
Has the fact that LA has a leftist accountant city controller who's auditing the LAPD's giant helicopter air force become common knowledge nationwide yet? The Kenneth Mejia story: worth following!
@lacontroller
LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia
1 year
Week 8 Update!
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
1 month
I took a buyout at the LA Times a few weeks ago. It was a wild five-year ride, and I'm going to miss working with the LAT's incredible journalists (and the @latguild crew ✊) I've got some projects in the works, but freelance assignments and job leads appreciated!
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
2 years
I remain grateful that Mike Davis spent a whole day with me earlier this year — and wish he could have stuck around for another few decades of books, polemics, rock hunts, hikes, and long afternoon conversations.
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
4 months
This is a bad week for journalism in the U.S., but we cannot forget: 83 of our colleagues in Gaza have been killed in recent months, in some cases seemingly targeted for assassination (along w/their families) by the Israeli military per @pressfreedom
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
25 days
Anyone remember how the New York Times wrote a story about how Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of the LA Times, tried to water down a story about his friend’s dog (maybe) biting someone? Well that dog-(allegedly)bites-woman story is finally out 🐶
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
11 months
Everyone should read this column from @anitachabria One stat worth memorizing, contra the “outsider” narratives: The California homeless population is more Californian than the rest of the state, with 66% of homeless people born here vs. 56% of the state pop.
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@anitachabria
Anita Chabria
11 months
Are homeless people flocking to CA for good drugs and lax laws? Nope. The definitive study from @ucsfbhhi , out today, found that 9 out of 10 people living on our streets are from the Golden State. And many of them are seniors that can't pay the rent. 4/4
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
1 year
So many layers of bullshit in the retail crime story. When I was reporting on this last year, one widely cited estimate of “organized retail crime” came from one decades-old FBI report — but nobody at the FBI could even point to a data source.
@RottenInDenmark
Michael Hobbes
1 year
Yet another article on "organized retail crime gangs" that does not include a single example of an organized retail crime gang.
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
2 years
As of Monday, I'll officially be on leave from the @latimes to head to the @Bagehots fellowship! 🤠 It still feels a little unreal, but I won't have access to my work email, etc — if you want to get in touch, just DM me here, or my email is findable.
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
9 months
GT Dave, the billionaire owner of GT's Living Foods, always says that his kombucha requires good vibes only, and is made with "100% pure love!!!" But a LA judge found the company exploited undocumented workers in its LA kombucha factory for years
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
1 year
Incredible scene in front of the NYT — solidarity from @MediaGuildWest
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
1 year
The funniest thing about the Peter Pham Elon reply is that he famously has no memory
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
9 months
lol the president of the UAW just went on this livestream to read out the contract proposals from Fiat Chrysler (aka Stellantis) and throw them in a trash can
@UAW
UAW
9 months
UAW President Shawn Fain Live Stream Update 8/8/23 from Detroit, MI
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
2 years
It is good to erase student debt, and more should be erased. It should not have existed in the first place. Also prop 13 should be repealed, the UCs should be free again, and the same goes for state schools from coast to coast. What a stupid world we’ve backed ourselves into.
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
1 year
Any good essays about the gen x obsession with camp postwar Americana out there? Thinking b-52s, pee wee, TMBG, early Coen bros, ren+stimpy, pete+pete, etc etc.
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
1 year
@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
1 year
So many layers of bullshit in the retail crime story. When I was reporting on this last year, one widely cited estimate of “organized retail crime” came from one decades-old FBI report — but nobody at the FBI could even point to a data source.
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
8 months
Well this is terrible! @MelodyPetersen unearthed the ways that understaffing at major pharmacies (CVS, Walgreens, etc) has led to MILLIONS of people getting the wrong drugs just in California
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
1 year
When did "open air drug market" become a set phrase? I understand why people use it, but I'm not sure that I've ever heard anyone call anything else an "open air X market" It always makes me think there must be an alternative, indoor swap meet-style drug market with booths.
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
7 months
I'm sorry Milo Yiannopoulos is Kanye West's political director, Dov Charney is the CEO of Yeezy, and they all live in a weird mansion in Silver Lake????
@Noah__Goldberg
Noah Goldberg
7 months
Update. After pub, Milo reached back out. He told me that he possesses five pairs of "fish flops" from Coddies in five colors. Called my story "weird and pointless" and "a strange waste of time" Confirmed he is Ye's director of political operations.
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
1 year
Don’t cross the @nyguild line!! ✊
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
9 months
Ok I think the discourse has cooled to the point where I can announce that the best Barbie was in fact Chicago feminist punk band Barbie Army, created by my aunt Mary in 1982
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
3 months
Good read on the apocalyptic media vibes, but the idea that "NYT is a cooking/games app with news on the side" is wrong. Look at the latest NYT revenue numbers: Subs w/news made ~$80 million per month Subs for games/cooking/etc only made $9.5 million
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
2 years
The sheer depth of California and capitalist history covered in @BigMeanInternet ’s Palo Alto is incredible meant to post this last week, on the October 10 anniversary of the event, but I had never heard of the Kern County cotton massacre before reading this
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
2 years
Got another chunk together! This is Mike Davis on his years behind the wheel of a truck, the Teamsters rank-and-file movement, and how he reluctantly got into teaching.
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
1 year
The amount of straight-up lying that goes into California ballot measure campaigns is wild. Any ideas how this could be stopped, short of getting rid of them altogether? The current ideas/measures seem totally unenforceable (and unenforced).
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
8 months
State Farm wants to raise home insurance rates 28% USAA wants 30.6% Allstate wants 39.6% California won't let them do it — yet — so they've all shut off new business in CA It's not just fires: read how inflation, reinsurance, and regulators got us here
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
2 years
My thesis for a new media funding model remains: Buy some totally unrelated and lightly profitable other business (like a parking lot) and use the proceeds to pay journalists. Subscribers get discounted parking (or whatever). Can't we passive income our way to a new tomorrow?
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
1 year
A good thread on that shaky "census data analysis" story going around that claims poor people moving from the south before 1940 somehow spread reactionary politics (Boston circa 1975 definitely didn't need any help!)
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
2 years
Happy Labor Day! ✊ I can’t imagine what it would be like working at the @latimes without knowing the @latguild and our strong contract had my back. It makes the paper better in every way. Let’s make it even better in Contract #2 ! #LATGuild
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
5 months
lol "US retail group retracts claim that half of $94.5bn inventory loss was from theft" Not the 1st time they've propagated bogus numbers — and the Organized Retail Crime convo is based on shaky data from an ancient FBI report that nobody can back up
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
11 months
Ye Olde Infographics
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
7 months
"If We Burn" is required reading for anyone interested in the tactics and strategy of protesting anything — and the street-level history of Brazil, Ukraine, Chile, Egypt, Turkey, Hong Kong, and more in the 2010s I got to interview @Vinncent about it:
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
7 months
Wow UAW prez just announced that the strike has gotten GM to agree to put their new battery plants under the union contract, one of the big pushes for the union
@UAW
UAW
7 months
UAW President Shawn Fain Livestream Update 10/6/23
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
1 year
AI's biggest threat to journalism is that we may simply die from exposure to so many idiotic AI takes
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
2 years
Incredible (but also correct) to see Mariam Rahmani’s translation in the @NewYorker best books — can’t wait to read her debut fiction too
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
2 years
Very true. Like this bus stop is busy enough that there’s a whole ass snack bar just to sell stuff to people waiting for the bus — but the city won’t put in shelter/shade?
@jawshv
josh vredevoogd
2 years
obviously examples of this all over the LA but just so irresponsible that there are no shade shelters at any of the stops around Santa Monica and Vermont - where people transfer between two of our busiest bus lines (4, 204) and our busiest rail line
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
1 year
@cdixon Isn't there a problem knowing whether GPT's response is true or not? Any given answer could just be plausible-sounding nonsense. Google points to sourcing.
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
2 years
California grows billions of strawberries each year — but climate change, water, suburbs, labor, and disease are all gunning for the $2 billion industry One company is betting that hydroponic berries will take over — and building robots to pick them 🍓
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
5 months
California cops and firefighters are taking their pensions to Idaho’s ‘Little Orange County’ @jackdolanLAT found the Idaho zip code with the most retired California state employees getting CalPERS checks (also love this photo by @GinaFerazzi )
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
10 months
Did you know: Meg Whitman, former Quibi founder, Ebay/HP exec, and California gubernatorial candidate, is the US ambassador to Kenya
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
1 year
@katienotopoulos right? which dovetails with the church of the subgenius genre of retro irony I'm talking about
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
1 year
This is like the political commentary of a dog who just got transformed into a human by a curse
@adamdangelo
Adam D'Angelo
1 year
AI is going to enable the creation and enforcement of laws 1000x as complex as we have today. This is mostly a good thing.
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
2 years
A lot didn't make it into the final edit. If you want to read more of this conversation, we also talked about living in Belfast during the Troubles, his unfinished projects, and his time as a truck driver. And it's never too late to read all his books.
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
1 month
I've skipped town for the time being (in Berlin for the spring), but looking to land back on the east coast. If you only have my work email, DM me 👋
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
2 years
What's the deal with Unit of Work, the venture-backed union organizing company? I looked into it @latimes — and was surprised to see vocally anti-union venture capitalist @TimDraper had invested, along with vocally pro-union VC (seriously!) @roybahat .
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
1 year
If Bass pulls this off, seems like a sign that you can’t buy an election in LA — and that the daughter of a mailman can beat the billionaire son of a multimillionaire
@latimes
Los Angeles Times
1 year
New: Karen Bass overtook Rick Caruso in the seesaw battle to be mayor of Los Angeles, with Friday’s vote tally showing the veteran lawmaker 4,384 votes ahead of the real estate developer in a contest that will not be settled until next week at the earliest.
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
2 years
(Credit: )
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
5 months
Much of it is standard corporate playbook, but as the head of the @wwunited said, it's a "mask off" moment on just how much Amazon expects positive press in exchange for its donations to nonprofits.
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
1 year
@adamdangelo Adam the point that critics are making is that this is a total and ridiculous misunderstanding of how laws are made, passed and enforced. The limit on justice is not compute or complexity, it’s power.
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
8 months
I love this quote — who among us could not make a decent living by ignoring all laws and running an illegal overpriced landlord operation
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
8 months
Great reporting from @jflem94 on the illegal AirBNB boom in LA
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
1 year
Me at the vegan bakery: wow what did you use instead of eggs in this recipe? Them:
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
2 years
Some heartbreaking details in this @latimes story by @SummerrLin and @SalHernandez on the #FairviewFire
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
1 year
Proud to sign onto this letter today, as a fellow journalist and former freelancer for the NYT For a deep dive on the anti-trans drumbeat at the New York Times that hundreds of us are talking about, read this @tomscocca piece:
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
9 months
The ruling is really something.
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
9 months
GT Dave, the billionaire owner of GT's Living Foods, always says that his kombucha requires good vibes only, and is made with "100% pure love!!!" But a LA judge found the company exploited undocumented workers in its LA kombucha factory for years
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
11 months
This is deranged behavior on the part of @thisisinsider management
@MeghanEMorris
Meghan Morris
11 months
B/c @insiderUnion is on strike, I did not finish *drafting* this story, including reaching out to my normal comms channel for comment. I'm horrified this story went out and urge you not to read it.
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
10 months
Great reporting from @dinfontay about what actually happened to Anchor — with details from workers on how corporate owner Sapporo made a bunch of bad operational decisions that tanked the business
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
2 years
What if we just had a parliament like a normal country
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
4 months
lol so petty
@latguild
L.A. Times Guild 🦅
4 months
L.A. Times management is hard at work deactivating our Slack accounts! We wouldn't have thought this was what they'd spend their time on today trying to put out a paper without us, but to each their own.
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
8 months
Still two weeks to read @ZekeFaux 's book to know exactly how wrong Michael Lewis is about crypto
@SilvermanJacob
Jacob Silverman
8 months
It's a bit more than 2 weeks till Michael Lewis' SBF book comes out and no one I've talked to has seen a galley
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
2 years
Laundromat could work. Liquor store? Maybe too circular.
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
2 years
@NeckarValue @TurnerNovak Maybe the cubs could have used a few more sentences
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
2 years
lmao @ the bay area pundits coming out with takes on SF crime when a national political figure is targeted for violence
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
1 year
@Econ_Marshall My guess would be the December spike is something about healthcare coverage/vacation days banked, and the summer dip is not wanting to get surgery when the weather's nice (or the docs go on vacation)
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
1 year
High time Americans start exercising our rights to do this and declare bankruptcy every 7 years 😤
@uncledoomer
doomer
1 year
loving this new grindset tiktok trend where you defraud banks for money.
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
1 year
@RFaughnder Oh wait, the name of the true untouched second-wave couch-having coffee shop just returned to me: Tanner’s coffee co, on sepulveda south of culver. The tradition lives!
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
11 months
Makes you wonder if some commentators see the poor and working class people of this state as outsiders to their own cities, and what that’s all about.
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
2 years
When the largest union in the Federation of Labor calls for resignation across the board, seems like it's only a matter of time (especially for Herrera). UTLA has called for the same. afaict @UNITEHERE11 has yet to say anything, though. (And crickets from @SenMariaEDurazo )
@seiucalifornia
SEIU California
2 years
The actions LA City Council members of Nury Martinez, Kevin de León, and Gil Cedillo, as well as Los Angeles County Federation of Labor President Ron Herrera are both painful to hear and disgraceful. These are not the values of the labor movement.
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
9 months
Should LA also get rid of single-family zoning??
@Neil_Irwin
Neil Irwin
9 months
Minneapolis is the only major metro area where inflation over the last 12 months is below the Fed's 2% target (1.8%). Construction of more housing is the reason.
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
1 year
@Bernstein The Third Way
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
11 months
Also much more US-born, at least in this study! 87% of homeless population vs 73.5% of California in general. This also should not matter for how we think of treating poor people living outdoors, but worth highlighting since foreignness is often trotted out as a fake fact.
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
1 month
The internet used to be a place for serious discourse
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
2 years
Since editors never get their due, want to say that it's an absolute pleasure to work with/for @jeffbercovici and @benmuessig . The LAT business desk punches way above its weight (imho) because of them and our great team. We're also hiring another editor:
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
1 year
Is there any one article that concisely summarizes what the anti-masking, this was all a mistake, etc crowd actually think is going on with the virus and mortality? Not the plandemic die hards, but people like the New Yorker writer. Genuinely curious!
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
9 months
Wow crazy story from @indurskyjake about Hawaii inmates denied parole because they haven’t gone through certain programs — that the state won’t let them take
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
1 year
Lavanya Nott, one of 48,000 UC workers on strike:
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
5 months
@obrien Yeah good point (also no idea why this is going lightly viral) — the companies selling to Alden and co are equal partners to the problem, many newspaper owners drove them straight into the ground.
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
1 year
The amount of grift and snake oil bullshit that cop consultants can sell to credulous/back-scratching fellow cops is insane. Anything pseudo-scientific that sounds fancy (and supports the existing agenda) can go national and ruin more people's lives.
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
2 years
First time at the Kent State shooting memorial. Kind of wild that they’ve kept the site a functional parking lot.
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
1 year
Many of the people having existential spirals about AI seem like they're just thinking about their life for the first time (and it isn't going well)
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
2 years
Has anyone developed a directory of bars in New York that are quiet enough for people who have friends they’d like to speak to?
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
9 months
Things we can all learn from the Mark Ridley-Thomas case: If you want to use a university as a money laundering service to get your unemployed son a fancy job you should NOT put it in writing! Never email!
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@SamAugustDean
Sam Dean 🦅
1 year
I guess if you mixed up 5 billion and 13 billion you might also mix up “being interviewed by a journalist in text” and “having a private conversation with a friend”
@SBF_FTX
SBF
1 year
23) Roughly 25% of customer assets were withdrawn each day--$4b. As it turned out, I was wrong: leverage wasn't ~$5b, it was ~$13b. $13b leverage, total run on the bank, total collapse in asset value, all at once. Which is why you don't want that leverage. ---
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