The brilliant labor journalist Sarah Jaffe recommends Cleanup on Aisle Five. Is this real life? Preorder: www.simonandschuster.com/books/Cleanu...

[email protected], one of my favorite writers, and the person who has done more than just about anyone to bring stories of economic hardship to the mainstream, said this about my upcoming book, Cleanup On Aisle Five.

AI is totally lacking in empathy. It’s not its business. Just like its inventors. The sooner people realize this, the better. You are just a data point and a source of money.

CLEANUP ON AISLE FIVE, about my year working in a supermarket, comes out one month from today! I'm counting down by posting some early reviews. I was thrilled when the great @nelsonlichtenstein.bsky.social agreed to read my book. Preorder link below.

Friends, If you are looking for a way to mark International Workers Day, might I humbly suggest preordering my book Cleanup on Aisle Five? It's about retail workers who are overworked, underpaid, and often ignored. Here's what the great Nelson Lichtenstein said about it. Preorder link in my bio.

get in loser we're getting Reconstruction right this time

Essentially Google and a few other big tech companies have made fantastic profits but the consequence is we have destroyed the existence of the free press as an institution capable of being a check on power and corruption, leading us inexorably into fascism and oligarchy. So, pluses and minuses.

OR JUST WRITE THE THING YOURSELF FOR FUCK'S SAKE IT WILL TAKE LESS TIME THAN WHATEVER THE FUCK THIS IS mashable.com/article/sinc...

my god www.nytimes.com/2026/04/24/b...

sure buddy

a teenage boy just made it clear to me that he thought the shirt im wearing was advertising the two separate concepts of guns and of roses

Shameful censorship of students by my alma mater. "The University of Utah required a student to remove the phrases “environmental justice” and “communities disproportionately affected by climate change” from advertisements for a school-sponsored Earth Day event."

When you get your first paper set from a new class and they are filled with awkward sentence constructions, sloppy quote integrations, ham-fisted transitions, and homonymic language errors.

Thrilled that my upcoming book, Cleanup on Aisle Five, has received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. “This illuminating debut turns Larson’s pandemic-era stint as a grocery worker into a rallying cry against corporate greed… Essential reading.” www.publishersweekly.com/9781668094501

10K jobs at the concentration camp. LOL. ICE wrote this in a press release and you laundered it as "journalism." Totally humiliating.

On this day in 1871, the Paris Commune began its brief history before a conservative government drowned it in blood. While it lasted, the Commune sketched out a new way to run a major city based on democracy and the public good, not private profiteering.

"My silence ends here." Read Dolores Huerta's statement about her decision to reveal that she was sexually assaulted by Cesar Chavez. www.thenation.com/article/acti...

"Detection tools communicate, even when instructors do not, that writing is a performance to be managed rather than a practice to be developed. Students learn that style can count against them, and that fluency invites suspicion." www.chronicle.com/article/ai-d...

Roughly 300 readers, free speech advocates and local organizers gathered for Let Utah Read’s annual “read-in” event at the Capitol. “We do not want the government controlling what we can and cannot consume,” one 16-year-old participant said.

Yep. The market problem writ large is exceptionally true in highered. But it won’t matter — and doesn’t matter — to those in charge right now because the point is to strip the institution.

I have so many stories I could share about this. I'm sure everyone does. newrepublic.com/article/2063...

Nick Shirley learned how to be a propagandist on his Mormon mission to Chile. “On the mission, I would talk with everyone — it didn’t matter who it is,” he said. “Now, in my YouTube videos, I talk with everyone as well.” www.sltrib.com/news/nation-...

I'm looking for people to interview whose budgets are extremely tight this year because of 1) Increased health insurance premiums, 2) catching up on student loans or being forced into a higher payment plan or 3) both. Contact me at mpotts at tnr dot com (monicabpotts.57 on signal) if this is you!

they're going to play an NFL regular season game in Paris next year

Here's our writing fellow Naomi Bethune on how attacks on Black journalists have a pedigree going back to the 19th century. prospect.org/2026/02/02/a...

There are over 300 anti-ICE protests organized for this weekend. ICE is occupying cities to extort voter roll information from the state and require local law enforcement “surrender” to federal authorities, as Stephen Miller put it. Society pushes back in defiance with low tech warning systems.

cowardly, vile www.sltrib.com/news/educati...

oh nothing just packing the court out of spite

The bravery of Minnesotans should inspire us all.

This essay is a wonderful read both for its specific claims about close reading and also for its broader claims on the critical importance of the humanities in a world turning increasingly inhumane. www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...

🚨NEW: A new poll Americans’ support for Medicare For All has intensified to the point where the old attacks may no longer work. As both parties legislate criticism of socialism, there has been a 50-point shift on a key question in just 6 years. This is YUGE. substack.com/home/post/p-...

Post the best visual metaphor for the Democratic Party that you’ve seen. I’ll start.

Torturing myself by watching Vance's Ole Miss q&a. Everyone got riled up about the hug, but look at this kid flashing a white power symbol and Vance guffawing.

@debbieberkowitz.bsky.social Can we talk about the ergonomic standard?

I keep thinking about @michaelhobbes.bsky.social's reporting from Utah in 2019. Even then, the state was retreating from Housing First—after being hailed as a success story—and embracing criminalization. In hindsight, Utah's involuntary "treatment center" is not a rupture but the next logical step.

Surfing in the desert. Sounds about right for the times we are living in.

In the past 10 yrs, teachers' wages DECREASED by $46/week after adjusting for inflation. Wages increased by $220 for other college grads Why are we penalizing teachers for working one of the hardest & most important jobs in our communities? We need to pay teachers more! www.epi.org/publication/...

Hakeem Jeffries says of Cuomo's attacks on Mamdani for living in a rent controlled apartment: "It's a legitimate issue that has been raised, and the [Mamdani] campaign is going to have to address it."

"The worth of an ideology can only be judged by its delivery." This is a good answer in a great interview that @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social gave the Nation. www.thenation.com/article/poli...

There have now been five separate formal determinations that the Trump administration has illegally impounded funds appropriated by Congress. @brycecovert.bsky.social looks at the real-world impact of these delays on the thousands of organizations who rely on that money. prospect.org/health/2025-...

We had a relatively unnoticed coup at the Justice Department last week. An antitrust division that was following the law has now been reduced to a puppet in a pay-to-play scheme involving MAGA influencers and corporate treasuries. On Organized Money we talk to the writer who broke open this story.

The University of Utah will discontinue 81 academic programs in response to the Legislature’s mandated budget cuts for higher education.

I wrote back in April that the best way to think about Trump's tariffs were as sanctions to shake down other countries. The final result reinforces this: Trump is using trade as a bargaining chip to win other policies, or even just the illusion of wins. Here's my post-Liberation Day update:

Canvas just became one of the most powerful surveillance, IP theft, & data monetization tools in the world. OpenAI bought a user-base locked in to long-term contracts. But they can’t make us use their trashware. Boycott. Luddify. Open source. Don’t let them have your work or your students.

From Dickens to Dean Koontz, Ed Simon explores prolific authors, their habits, and the persistent need to produce.

"It’s morning again in America. Federal agents snatch students off the streets. The White House boasts of banishing hundreds of people to a Salvadoran prison, ignoring the judges who demand due process." hammerandhope.org/article/trum...

At the DeSantis Everglades detention camp, people with green cards are being held in terrible conditions, with maggots in the food, the lights kept on 24 hours a day, and delayed access to medicine. One guy had his Bible taken and was told "here there is no right to religion."

Steering the country toward another potential financial crisis, the Trump administration has moved to completely gut the federal regulatory agency tasked with reining in financial institutions: jacobin.com/2025/04/trum...