Sam Dean 🦅

Formerly @latimes, now writing a book on defense tech
(also co-founder and writer/editor at @gourmet_tweets)

[Sam Dean 🦅 @SamAugustDean]

@jacremes They’re too cowardly to categorize Destroyer

(also how are the unicorns industrial for babies this makes no sense)

[Air-Power | NatSec Ledger @NatSecLedger]

"For two years, the coverage of America's missile shortfall has followed a dependable script: alarming inventory numbers, a comparison to how fast China builds, and a call to action that quietly assumes the fix is simply doing more of what we already do.." https://t.co/bAb1jAIQ13

[Lara Korte @lara_korte]

The beloved stray cat that hangs out by the Pizza Hut on Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar has not only survived the Iran War, but has been purrmoted to "Senior Meowster Sergeant."

[TechCrunch @TechCrunch]

Ex-Anduril engineer raises $42M to build the Amazon of composite parts https://t.co/CxhCA2uIGv

[Jasmine Vojdani @jasmineshaadi]

this week, i asked lit mag editors how worried they are about finding AI in their slush piles and what they're doing about it @NYMag
https://t.co/AwhFrJP3cG

[aaron from queens 🇵🇸 @aaronnarraph]

Absolutely outstanding write-up by Bluesky's @/talevy.soccer on tomorrow's LA mayor election: https://t.co/SmPHpmnSzF

[Sam Dean 🦅 @SamAugustDean]

@MoiraDonegan Ya, though she had moved back to New York by the time she wrote about the Central Park Five and was still there when she gave this interview 15 years later (to be even more pedantic).

My point was just that she did call the California pot the same black as the New York kettle!

[Sam Dean 🦅 @SamAugustDean]

@MoiraDonegan Kind of a companion piece to Trouble in Lakewood, where she ties the LA riots and white suburban gangs to the local depression from the collapse of the aerospace industry

https://t.co/H67hiuTrZl

[Sam Dean 🦅 @SamAugustDean]

@MoiraDonegan Sacramento! But she did write a book about how California's stories about itself worked, too

I think this quote is her quick gloss on her essay on the Central Park Five (from an interview where Hilton Als asked about it) in her materialist media crit era

https://t.co/dDneaaCWMi

[Time Capsule Tales @timecaptales]

1980s footage of U.S. Special Forces speaking different languages

[Phil Stewart @phildstewart]

Pentagon spars with SpaceX over Starlink price hike during Iran war

(Reuters) - As U.S. kamikaze drones guided by Elon Musk’s Starlink network began to make visible gains in the war against Iran, senior SpaceX officials reached a conclusion: The Pentagon should be paying more for access to their satellite Wi-Fi network.

Within weeks of the United States launching its bombing campaign, SpaceX executives met Pentagon officials and argued the military had been paying about $5,000 for connection per terminal while effectively using a higher tier of service worth closer to $25,000, according to two sources familiar with the matter and Pentagon documents reviewed by Reuters.

The disagreement over Starlink’s use on LUCAS suicide drones - a cheap U.S. model comparable to Iran’s Shahed that can circle over a target area before diving to detonate on impact - is part of increasing tensions between SpaceX and the Pentagon over Starlink pricing in recent months, according to interviews with five people familiar with the matter and the documents.
@DavidJeans2 reports

[Mike Young @micyoung75]

The mechanism is specific and worth reading carefully.

Able-bodied adults without dependents must now document 80 hours per month of work, training, or volunteering to maintain SNAP. Job searching - actively looking for work - does not count. Miss the threshold over any three-month period: ineligible for three years.

The exemption that previously protected former foster youth from this time limit has been eliminated. A population already more likely to face housing instability, academic disruption, and unemployment now runs the same clock as everyone else.

The average SNAP benefit is $6 per day. That is what this policy fight costs at the individual level.

The bill that built this requirement cut $187 billion from SNAP in the same legislation that extended tax cuts for corporations and wealthier Americans. That contrast is in the record.

[Beff (e/acc) @beffjezos]

Feeling robbed of my path to citizenship right now after grinding a PhD and contributing to foundational AI + computing technologies for the United States for the past ~ 10 years.

Feels like robbing top and technologists like me of the opportunity to achieve the American Dream.

[Robinson Meyer @robinsonmeyer]

At the absolute peak of the water crisis in Flint, the city’s kids had average blood lead levels of 1.3 micrograms per deciliter. That was, obviously, a crisis — it was roughly 2x the average American child’s blood levels that year.

But from 1976 to 1980, the *average* kid in Los Angeles had average blood levels of 15 micrograms — and that was seen as normal.

And little wonder: In the era of leaded gasoline, lead levels in LA’s ambient air were 50 times higher than they are today.

That’s one of many staggering facts I learned from Ann Carlson’s new book, “Smog and Sunshine: The Surprising Story of How Los Angeles Cleaned Up Its Air.”

She tells the story of how LA cleaned up its air pollution problem — and helped solve the entire world’s air pollution problem in the process. For instance, the global end of leaded gasoline was in some ways a happy byproduct of the quest to eliminate LA’s smog.

The successful cleaning up of LA’s air is one of many environmental victories that have become so normal that we hardly notice them — even though much of the real progress behind that win actually happened in my lifetime (and the lifetime of my fellow Millennials).

Listen and get the whole story at @heatmap_news: https://t.co/ey9yYOn1n6

or wherever you get your podcasts: https://t.co/8ziYUVWArs

[Tulika Bose @TulikaBose_]

Well you’ll never guess who I spoke to

[Richard Baldwin @BaldwinRE]

Absolutely classic Dutch Disease symptoms👇

[Trae Stephens @traestephens]

Proud of my friends at @armada_ai for taking another exciting step forward!

[Tectonic @tectonicdefense]

Autonomy giant @shieldaitech announced that it’s been tapped by the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering (OUSW R&E) to build its Hivemind autonomy software onto LUCAS—the Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System.

https://t.co/eh4EsdlA7p

[Ben Welsh @palewire]

My stupid OpenClaw made itself a business card, with a little art direction from the boss. Sorry, I'm not over this stuff yet. More at https://t.co/vmwsLbyTB9