blue rose you say...somehow i do not find myself surprised
features writer @ slate alex.sammon@slate.com
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blue rose you say...somehow i do not find myself surprised
participated in my first People Magazine exclusive, in which I am "man." people.com/what-happene...
Today in “One-liners That Absolutely Destroyed Me”: “Someone should invent a currency that’s just the amount that it is.” - @alexsammon.bsky.social
This shameful episode👇 set the stage for what Trump is doing today. Cynical Democrats and pundits claimed that D.C. couldn't be trusted to write our own criminal laws, legitimizing Republicans' insistence that we don't deserve home rule. A straight line from there to here. slate.com/news-and-pol...
Just two years ago after a crime hysteria pimped by Matt Yglesias and the Washington Post, Democrats in Congress and President Biden overturned a major criminal justice reform bill passed by the DC City Council – a bill that had been studied and in the works for years.
Congratulations to @alexsammon.bsky.social! He won this week's audience award for "My Scammer" at @slate.com slate.com/technology/2...
haha, thank you!
widespread adoption of crypto + proliferation of AI + softening of the labor market + enforcement “replaced by crypto industry toadies” = “It is a great time to be a scammer.”
thanks!
This is incredible.
'This whole march of human cultural production—incalculable progress—and the one constant that has survived and adapted and thrived? The scam. ... In the end, I arrived at a simple truth. Over the course of two months, “Cathy” had run me for $96.'
happy to be of service
Crypto is the scam enabler. It's where crooks hide money. It also does important cultural work by lubricating transactions with a magical get-rich-quick aura. It says you don't fully understand what's happening with your "earnings" because the rules are different in the cryptosphere. Duh.
Scam job offers requiring you to initially pay fees in crypto, "pay" you in crypto that you can't withdraw or access so you get nothing in the end, and use your labor to generate bogus click traffic and "clicks ... captured to beat captchas or overcome security measures that target bots."
no never! cathy wouldn't give up the gun even when i resigned. my guess is that the whole thing is just windowdressing and the point is just to send them bitcoin, and if they're paid a dollar a day then $96 is still worth the squeeze
You know those spam text messages you get, saying it's a recruiter with a job for you? what ... how does the scam work? @alexsammon.bsky.social took one of the jobs, and the story is *fascinating* Go check it out: slate.com/technology/2...
when your boss tells you to pursue a second career, you listen
i got one of those low effort spam texts from "Indeed," offering a low effort, well-paid remote job. I spent the last two months working in a Filipino clickfarm, for a very disappointed woman named Cathy. slate.com/technology/2...
What really happened inside 45 E 45th st? The real story will fill you with rage. slate.com/news-and-pol...
What’s left behind is a story of herculean accomplishment of civic service with few defenders, a parade of conservative opportunists, and a bunch of developers licking their chops, ready to turn 21st century Ellis Island into high end office space in a billion dollar deal.
Finally, as of July, all of the migrants have been evicted. Why did it happen? The government of Pakistan got a $7 billion loan from the IMF, contingent upon rapid privatization of public industries—first up, Pakistan Airlines, and the Roosevelt Hotel, which it bought in 2000.
In just over two years, 155,000 migrants passed through the aging Roosevelt Hotel. Eric Adams conspired to kick them out; Dr. Phil choreographed an aborted ICE raid of the facility, conservative media claimed it was Tren de Aragua HQ.
"The front end, which was also a trunk, came up right to my rib cage, a contact point that would have chagrined any high school football coach as bad tackling form: too high."
This by @alexsammon.bsky.social is a very good and funny piece on that tank: slate.com/business/202...
great piece
I wrote about the return of the war on terror, and its favorite mascot, recently rebooted just in time for us to lose another great conflict, our war with climate change. slate.com/business/202...
My long and combative dispatch from the American gulag archipelago, featuring the KKK, Hurricane Katrina, Hillary Clinton, Jesse Jackson, Ice Cube, and a very angry newspaper editor, where everyone tried their best to say nothing. slate.com/business/202...
There are plenty of prison towns in LA, but immigrant detention towns are new. Incredibly, they are the result of criminal justice reform: in 2017, w a Dem governor, the state closed some prisons. GEO immediately went to the feds, and got paid double to fill them with immigrants.
Like many others, its ICE detention center was formerly a prison that was closed repeatedly for abuse (of children), only to find new life generating twice as much money as an immigrant detention warehouse.
This is how the town of Jena came to rely on GEO Group—ICEs favored private prison operator—and how GEO Group buys its silence. Not just with jobs and tax revenue, but with free lunches, Christmas caroling, and doling out cash every three months.
Disappearance has become a feature of the Trump’s ICE raids, a process that often finds people in a prison network in central Louisiana. I got a behind-the-curtain look at the operations of American Siberia—the newfangled ICE detention towns where people are sent to disappear. 1/
i've been trying to reach you about your car's extended warranty
Hey *YOU*, Bluesky user! Would it shock you to know that the big money, corporate-backed centrist organs have decided that YOU are the greatest threat to the Democratic Party, and the reason it loses elections? They convened a gathering to make sure of it. slate.com/news-and-pol...
both Californians is just brutal
Read @alexsammon.bsky.social on a visit to Mahmoud Khalil, America's most famous political prisoner slate.com/news-and-pol...
My colleague @alexsammon.bsky.social from inside Louisiana's immigrant detention: slate.com/news-and-pol...
exclusive reporting by @alexsammon.bsky.social in @slate.com on what life is like for Mahmoud Khalil inside the remote ICE detention center he's being held, including the moment he saw his newborn son for the first time (via pictures that a friend snuck into the center) slate.com/news-and-pol...
How Mahmoud Khalil first saw photos of his son. by @alexsammon.bsky.social slate.com/news-and-pol...
Terrific feature by my first hire at the Prospect way back when, @alexsammon.bsky.social, who went down to Jena, Louisiana, home of a notorious ICE detention center, to see Mahmoud Khalil get a first glimpse at pictures of his child. slate.com/news-and-pol...
Gut-wrenching reporting from @alexsammon.bsky.social inside the ICE facility where Mahmoud Khalil is locked up, on the day Khalil was first allowed a glimpse of a photo of his newborn child: slate.com/news-and-pol...
Heartbreaking piece by @alexsammon.bsky.social from inside the ICE facility where Mahmoud Khalil remains illegally imprisoned for his free speech—on the day when Khalil first saw a photo his newborn son. slate.com/news-and-pol...
Really grateful for (and devastated by) @alexsammon.bsky.social's latest: a report from the remote ICE facility in Louisiana where Mahmoud Khalil is being held (among many others), detailing the first moments Khalil was able to "see" his son. slate.com/news-and-pol...
Amazing reporting and a great, maddening story.
How Mahmoud Khalil—detained by ICE in "the black hole" in Louisiana alongside 1000 others, refused by ICE to be present for his wife giving birth—first saw photos of his newborn son. slate.com/news-and-pol...
excited to announce that i am now a Features Writer for @slate.com :)
House Democrats voted 131-84 in a secret ballot vote to give the chair of the Oversight Committee to 74-year-old Gerry Connolly over AOC. Connolly has put out one tweet about the Jeffrey Goldberg / Atlantic bombshell today. He and his committee have not put out an IG post, reel, or YouTube video.
Yeah, @kenklippenstein.bsky.social has been all over the optics of the top Oversight Dem battling cancer at age 74, but the Zoom Room stuff is extra bad. He's a 30-min drive from CNN DC but he Zooms in from "grandmother's sitting room." It screams "guy who doesn't run anything."
@brianbeutler.bsky.social: “Dems need a Project 2029—a detailed plan they can execute upon inheriting a horribly corrupted govt. A plan to move fast & build things.” www.offmessage.net/p/the-succes...
corruption!
Smiling serenely thinking about @alexsammon.bsky.social's dispatch for @slate.bsky.social from the National Automobile Dealers Association's 2023 convention:
I’m most galled by the up-is-down chutzpah. In Jeffries’s world, swaddling chickenshit frontliners by making the party captive to Trump’s abuse is a power move, while taking unprecedented steps to express contempt is getting “run off the block” like cowards. That’s piss on your leg, not rain.
In which @alexsammon.bsky.social brings back the goods from the healthcare industry's public relations gala slate.com/business/202...
Nine weeks after Brian Thompson was murdered, the bigwigs of the health care industry bravely returned to Midtown Manhattan to celebrate the year’s greatest successes in public relations. I drank champagne and reveled with the Luigi Mangione Prevention Force. slate.com/business/202...
We call that Big Lib FTW!
The "Abundance" ideology being shelled by Klein/Thompson/Yglesias as the future of liberalism is rapidly being taken up by the fossil fuel industry, which is celebrating Big Oil's handpicked Energy Sec Chris Wright's Abundance Mindset as he pledges to bring back coal. oilprice.com/Energy/Energ...
Here, I spoke to undocumented immigrants in the restaurant industry, and some orgs who support them, about what everyone is facing right now www.eater.com/24359357/und...
i will post
whos that?
as @alexsammon.bsky.social notes in his latest slate.com/news-and-pol...
it's the only sort of battle they know how to win, and so they keep waging it, and they keep winning it, and their coalition keeps falling to pieces because that's the only rightful reaction.
It's data point 8429748 but is there any question that Democratic leadership would rather stand pat and get steamrolled by Republicans than move even an inch towards their juniors and win?
Scoop: Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong killed an editorial that was critical of Trump's Cabinet picks, weeks after he blocked a planned endorsement of Kamala Harris by the LAT editorial board www.nytimes.com/2024/12/12/b...
yeah wait a second am i extremely powerful
ahh yes, another day of Yglesias having a meltdown over something (correct) I wrote.
the real crisis of masculinity is a lack of confidence, suppressing wages
prices doubled real quick! he launched at $250
🥰
read the piece that has Fetterman freaking on main slate.com/news-and-pol...
the best surfer in the world!
why is no one on Bluesky talking about the new John John edit, is this the future liberals want or isn't it??
agree
Gottheimer leaving congress, Jared Polis preemptively ruining his 2028 presidential run by bearhugging RFK Jr.—today is actually a hopeful day for the future of the Democratic Party.
no youre not dude come on
i for one can't wait to see Matt Yglesias rebuild the party around the Banana Act
Not to be all big-brained about it but Matt Gaetz for AG shows you how profoundly unserious Joe Biden was about the task at hand. In the brief blip between Trumps, the pure and cartoonish politicization of state power, he chose Republican-lite to prosecute his own son.
ok i guess i'm back if we're really doing this
Obama's greatest Obungle was beating HRC with a *vicious* campaign in 2008 based largely on her having supported the Iraq war, and then putting her in charge of foreign policy and making her presidential heir apparent
One great thing about wartime is you learn the names of bureaucrats who are the most despicable, villainous henchmen in all of western civilization. Last week I'd never heard of John Kirby. Now i'll never forget that he's one of the world's vilest human beings!
my latest feature—my first for Harper's—a dispatch from the front lines of Mexico's avocado wars, which are actually California's water wars, where an incredible militant environmentalism has sprouted. harpers.org/archive/2023...
I wrote about Biden's Israel speech newrepublic.com/article/1763...
my latest feature—my first for Harper's—a dispatch from the front lines of Mexico's avocado wars, which are actually California's water wars, where an incredible militant environmentalism has sprouted. harpers.org/archive/2023...
Doctors Without Borders in Gaza says 100% of the patients it has treated in the past 24 hours have been children
They especially seem to hate the Drake management who invited Trump to speak, rating them a 2.8/5. In fact, Drake seems to be exactly the sort of place that could use a union. Instead they're getting a captive audience meeting from a fake populist. slate.com/news-and-pol...
NEW: Trump is about to begin his speech at Drake Enterprises, his answer to Biden's picket line appearance. The workers he's appealing to aren't union, but they do seem to hate Drake: "DON'T WORK HERE," "Beware", "Dead end", read Glassdoor/Indeed reviews. slate.com/news-and-pol...
Biden going to the UAW picket line is a big fucking deal; this is the strongest evidence we've seen that this is not the same old Democratic Party, but a profoundly changed group under Biden, who is striking against signature policies of Obama and Clinton. slate.com/news-and-pol...
that's true and hopeful; the problem is he has a shitload of money and can raise a shitload of money and new jersey is still a machine state which leads to odd incentives and dealmaking
I'd take Trone over Gottheimer 100 out of 100 times
going from senator menendez to senator gottheimer would be the exact opposite of peak performance. the mere thought of that chills my soul.
New: How the Newsom-DeSantis debate, once the most hotly anticipated political showdown of the year, a portal to the future of American politics, turned into a must-miss sideshow of two guys who will never be president (and who will probably never debate). slate.com/news-and-pol...
twitter is finally so bricked and sleepy i almost feel compelled to post here
this is one of the most profoundly embarrassing things i've ever seen, and i'm sorry for the people of Michigan-11 who have to be represented by this person, a middle school camp counselor for autocracy. https://twitter.com/AIPAC/status/1688997894437609472
go padres
this race is gonna be 16 months of Slotkin proxies lying to the faces of Michigan Democratic voters about who she is and what her record is and who she'll be a senator. It's gonna be mind-numbing beyond belief, and unfair to the Michigan Democratic party, which is so good and deserves better.
The Pride flag ban in the NDAA, which Elissa Slotkin voted for and then claimed, contra every Dem vote and all floor discussion, it was actually a pro-LGBTQ move, dies in the Senate. Supported by Manchin, opposed by Sinema—between those two is an accurate placement of her on the political spectrum.
Musk renaming twitter as X after he got ousted from PayPal for trying do the same thing is just so transparently pathetic I almost feel bad for the guy. A true loser in the purest sense of the word. For the good of society someone should shove him in a locker and give him a wedgie.
Don Davis being one of four Democrats to push through the otherwise doomed, arch-right NDAA is just perfect. A Mainstream Democrats/Democratic Majority for Israel manufacture who was avowedly anti-choice his whole career, claimed to have changed...and can't resist the anti-abortion NDAA rider.
this was what they wanted, it's how they decided to structure the policy, god forbid they see their political fates improved via the implementation of their own policy. shades of when Obama tried to obscure the fact that people were getting stimulus money in the '09 recovery.
Meanwhile, the *actual* EV pushback is coming from extremely Republican car dealers lobby, which Biden and co. have absolutely no strategy to contend with.
It's almost diabolically misleading: the Biden people, proving they know better than the left, decided to do anti-Green New Deal, so rather than getting a bunch of new, Dem-voting union members, they've subsidized red states and angered labor.
if we're being honest this site isn't working very well either...