Alec

Investigative journalist // Tortured fiction writer // Food truck connoisseur // LA to Spain and back again // USC Grad // DM for story tips and book recs

[More Perfect Union @MorePerfectUS]

US corporate profits have hit a record high of over $9 trillion the first half of this year, while workers’ slice of the pie has recently sunk to historic lows.

[Ronan Farrow @RonanFarrow]

Georgia audited its own data center tax breaks and found that the state gave up $474 million in sales taxes in one year—and got back just $41 million from the industry. At least 38 states have deals like this. (It's not clear whether all that money the state waived was needed to attract the construction: in Georgia's case, by the state's own estimate, 70% of the data center construction would have happened anyway.)

[More Perfect Union @MorePerfectUS]

NEW: America’s biggest berry empire doesn’t actually grow berries.

Driscoll’s is the middleman that controls the genetics, reaps the profits, and then shifts blame.

A whistleblower alleges the Canadian government repeatedly flagged their berries for exceeding pesticide limits.

[Ryan Alexanderplatz @ryanhasbadtaste]

“I believe with 𝘩𝘪𝘨𝘩 confidence that the drone technology we have carelessly, greedily spread will soon be visited upon us. Artificial ‘intelligence’ will make mass murder even more 𝘸𝘰𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘧𝘶𝘭.”

— William T. Vollmann, A Table for Fortune

[Amy Siskind @Amy_Siskind]

Wonder why Hegseth fired senior staffers at Stars and Stripes? It’s because of reporting like this:

“Nearly six months after the U.S. Navy evacuated 1,300 family members from Bahrain at the start of the Iran war, officials are saying the evacuees cannot return for the foreseeable future and should find new homes elsewhere. The evacuation has left families in limbo and forced military officials to improvise solutions for support programs that were never designed to sustain a displacement lasting this long. Some evacuees say they have spent tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket for basic living expenses. Others are sleeping on the floors of temporary housing, while their cars and furniture are stranded in Bahrain or aboard ships unable to leave the region.”

https://t.co/RDPGHi5gzn

[Equator @Equatormag]

City of Sweat, by @aruna_sekhar and @ishantankha
“Resilience is coming up against hard limits of survivability.”
https://t.co/eXU7k1pwzi

[Melanie D'Arrigo @DarrigoMelanie]

Teachers can only write-off up to $350 worth of classroom supplies on their taxes…

… while CEOs can write off the entire cost of their private jets and yachts.

This is what it looks like when our politicians are owned by billionaires and corporations.

[James Edward Hansen @DrJamesEHansen]

The El Nino is off the charts. Can people see the real issue and accept the implications? We may be getting closer. See the Bigger Problem – https://t.co/rsyLt8z4XS
Also available on Substack:
https://t.co/lqgU6bog2i

[ProPublica @propublica]

NEW on “Paper Trail”: Hundreds of immigration agents stormed a Chicago apartment complex overnight last year, some rappelling down from a helicopter.

Trump officials claimed they successfully arrested “terrorists.”

We uncovered a very different story.
https://t.co/B7xDaO2I8v

[Jon Lovett @jonlovett]

A story that should make your blood boil. LA has lost 57,000 jobs in film and TV during the four years Karen Bass has been mayor. But it still took Mayor Bass almost THREE YEARS to appoint a film czar. Now shows set in Los Angeles are being shot in ... New Jersey.

In the debate last night, the mayor talked about how much she wants to do as mayor, after four years of being the mayor. Homelessness is up, the population of the city shrinking, we're not paving roads because the city can't build a ramp for less than 50 grand, and we're WAY behind on the city's own plan to build new housing even as the mayor caves to NIMBYs to try to fight development all over LA.

So Bass spends the night pandering to a small group of mostly white and wealthy homeowners in Sherman Oaks. But those homeowners are ALSO angry about rising homelessness and declining services which are in fact downstream of their policy preferences! It's a farce.

The fundamental question for LA is: who will govern with the urgency and aggressiveness that reflects the actual scale of the emergency in this city? Bass hasn't. Nithya would.

https://t.co/UHmi4HI4gU

[Brittany Terwilliger @Brttnyblm]

My novel that comes out next year - I started it in 2018! Keep at it.

[Rozina Ali @rozina_ali]

I wrote about the DoJ's shocking use of material support laws in the Prairieland case, how this charge has been abused in the past, and what this suggests for Trump's crackdown on leftwing political dissent.

https://t.co/TBM7xVlsCM

[Seth Harp @sethharpesq]

Calm down, Joey. Lower your voice. No one's saying American sailors should be more pampered. Photos of inedible slop, rusty hulls, corroded latrines, and leaky pipes aboard US Navy ships just prove that a $1.5 trillion defense budget is completely wasted on the corrupt Pentagon.

[Jason Koebler @jason_koebler]

Exclusive: A rare bookseller suspected his books were being bought by AI companies. He stuck an AirTag in a book and we tracked it to a secretive Amazon facility in Las Vegas where they scan and destroy books called VGT3:

https://t.co/WXSo0zB6JF

[Nicholas Kristof @NickKristof]

President Trump has kicked 1.5 million children off food stamps over the last year; I saw the pain everywhere on a 1,000-mile road trip. But I also saw heroism: local food pantries, teachers, churches and others trying desperately to push back the night. https://t.co/p1rGUwofNc

[LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia @lacontroller]

"WHY CAN'T OUR POTHOLES, SIDEWALKS, STREET LIGHTS, ANIMAL SHELTERS, PARKS, CITY FACILITIES, & MORE GET FIXED?!"

[The Intercept @theintercept]

Somewhere in a sweltering desert, cockroaches scurry around the cell of Carlitos Ricardo Parias. He holds up a plastic bottle, gazing at the worm-like creatures swimming in his drinking water. His other arm is turning purple from a gunshot wound for which he says he hasn’t received proper medical care. His gulag isn’t in a distant Soviet or banana republic. It’s about an hour and a half from Disneyland, in a small California town called Adelanto.

[Isaac Saul @Ike_Saul]

This is an actual example of gaslighting. There is no 30 foot wall inside the park bc of the people who fought off the original plan. And the “road” they are planning is coming with 4-6 foot wall barriers along the river and through some of the most coveted parts of the park. So the destruction is very real. And it’s all entirely unnecessary, given that the park and the entire Big Bend sector (where there are plans for 30 foot walls! And taking private property!) is the most secure sector on the border.

[Reuters @Reuters]

Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank diverted a spring that was a lifeline for the Palestinian village of Fasayil, cutting irrigation pipes in June and converting it into a tourist attraction, leaving nearby farms barren https://t.co/yzqIHVNnla

[Writers Against the War on Gaza @wawog_now]

We are humbled to present the largest oral archive of testimony from Gaza produced since the genocide began, a collective memorial to the journalists who gave their lives to tell their people’s stories. LISTEN: https://t.co/qTS04mJsON