Snapped this on a walk today but accidentally created some kind of heavy-handed Michael Moore esque social critique

I feel like 5x more affection for people's obviously, unfake-ably crappy hand drawn art now in an age of AI slop. Here are my sloppy but sincere drawings of ekiben, Japanese train station bentos.

For the past year or so I've been researching ekiben and Japanese train bentos and this illudstrated guide is my attempt to distill this all into a user friendly format. It has a short history of ekiben, my picks and favorites and tips on how to find them. please enjoy substack.com/home/post/p-...

I remember about 30 years ago, when I went on an elementary school field trip, you could basically fill a freezer with grunion from the take season, both from your own take and the take of others who didn't want the fish.

serious LA/socal question here - who is regularly eating grunions (these fish that seasonally squirm ashore here) and like, is there any way I could join you? Is there still such a thing as a midnight grunion fish fry?

Thanks to AAJA Los Angeles and the CCF for sponsoring this Rosemead screening on Nov 13. I’ll be doing a q and a with @josiehuang.bsky.social after. Come say hey! Tickets here: www.eventbrite.com/e/movies-as-...

Imagine me in all my effortful decorum parsing whether to use streamer slang about harmful addictive drugs and then being out-cool-guy’ed by Ezra Klein. Thanks to the council of youth who provided me with essential side-eye during this time

Give me an entire mockumentary style show about the NY Post headline meeting. Imagining some guy in suspenders pounding the table, red in the face, screaming "it has to be more racist," a terrified designer on the verge of tears reversing the direction of the "r"

Wrote about one year of newslettering frankbear.substack.com/p/one-year-o...

I’d love for it to be true. But I’m pretty sure that absolutely nothing will stop us from admiring rich and popular people. And being able to enjoy wealth and attention with a low follower count is really just a kind of elite privileged wealth aesthetic. www.newyorker.com/culture/infi...

It feels like we're in an age of content where the game is make an ocean of slop or disappear. It's the factory farming but there is 0 potential, even discussion of regulation. This slop on our feeds is a pollutant. We need an online space free of them, just as we need oxygen w/out carcinogens.

In short, the ANES data shows: 📉 Social media use is shrinking 💥 Twitter/X posting has moved ~50 points to the right 🧩 Platforms are splintering 🔊 Fewer people are talking — but those still talking are more politically extreme

The LA fitnesses in SoCal are just stunning this time of year

This was just posted by a CBS News producer on their Instagram stories.

I've written and deleted so many tweets this am bc desiring attention doesn't mean I have something to say, and honestly this is a caring and community-minded course of action that more of us need to consider. www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

Loved this story on how and why the Del Tacos in Barstow taste different/better by Farley: www.sfgate.com/food/article...

I was racially triggered into watching Love is Blind via Patrick Suzuki clips (Asian guy afraid to say he's Asian on Love is Blind) discourse and wrote this because I have no other way of reporting the crime: substack.com/home/post/p-...

Planters and landscaping continue to be installed under the guise of "civic beautification"... but the ugliness gives the game away. Their true purpose is the private co-opting of public land, as well as the displacement and erasure of our most vulnerable community members.

Were you thinking about sandwiches? Here is a guide to my favorite in LA, including their history and cultural origins: frankbear.substack.com/p/the-lunch-...

No Kings Protests good, actually

Zohran cool and all, but I'm curious, who would be the closest thing to LA's Curtis Sliwa?

Went to No Kings Day in Riverside and wrote about how we should let the protest be cringe frankbear.substack.com/p/let-protes...

Investigating LAPD-press incidents in Los Angeles on Saturday. No doubt LAPD violated court injunction. Just a question of how bad. So far I think only minor injuries to press. Still confirming. Not a passing grade regardless. Preliminary leads in blue at top. Please share evidence if you have!

Riverside #nokingsday

This was a fantastic story. Even just a small amount of tech literacy and caring makes an enormous difference in needy immigrant communities. Interviewing seniors in Chinatown I'd always be conscripted to open social media accounts and write quick emails.

mentally preparing for the inevitable paywalling, price hiking/enshittification of AI LLM's. It willl be a whole different paradigm of disparity when only the rich can afford to use generative AI

"And yet Táíwò’s own position misses something fundamental about the world we now inhabit. Shame does not operate in a vacuum...today, the sturdy ground that once formed shame’s foundation has collapsed." Helpful response by @eric-reinhart.com in @newrepublic.com newrepublic.com/article/2015...

big change about online news is that none of it talks to each other, not readers or publications. As we moves to influencer/newsletter/individual models, it's like we're all trying to cultivate fandoms, instead of readers, which is bad for various reasons - see any inscrutable streamer controversy

East coast media discourse: wow that n plus one salary!! West coast media: a job opening at a magazine? impossible

Scenes from the inland empire

Are you sick and tired of east coast bread elitism? Do you want to enjoy sandwiches without people trying to gatekeep and gaslight? Do you have some legitimate, respectful complaints about the Bay Cities Godmother? I made this LA sandwich guide for you frankbear.substack.com/p/the-lunch-...

That part of Good Hang with Amy Poehler where they talk about content to make them happy - it’s really Interesting because it reflects this hopelessly optimistic belief about content we all have. We know social media is a drug but we consume it hoping that it can be medicine

I wrote a guide to sandwiches on my newsletter, Lunch Box, and I'm pretty sure I've solved this whole thing. Looking forward to seeing the internet move on to some new topics after this.

I have a lot of complaints about the Bay Cities Godmother but I still put it on the list because LA loves the frontrunners. Order it fresh

Wrote a guide to sandwiches on Lunch Box and I'm pretty sure I've solved the sandwich debate here.

Learning to love LA's sandwiches is a lot like learning to love LA. A good sandwich supports it own weight, moves well, maintains structure through a bite and doesn't get soggy. On Lunch Box I wrote a guide to 10 sandwiches I've been eating for a while. open.substack.com/pub/frankbea...

the thing that sucks about the proliferation of AI content is that we don’t even have a way to downvote it or signal our conscious dislike of it. All of this is being decided on the subconscious level - if it tricks our brain, it gets to stay. That can’t be how a civil society makes decisions.

This plastic scrape graffiti virgin guadalupe on the menu of Super Tortas DF goes so hard

eventually politicians need to start advocating for criminal and civil penalties for people involved in fabricating stories to get citizens incarcerated. or, put another way: a society that would like to keep functioning has to discourage baldfaced lying, especially by authorities

This is the best analysis of news media and social media I've read in a long time - with some very good news for the relatively few news outlets taking the much harder path of building subscription businesses instead of attention businesses (yes, there is a big difference).

SCOOP / UPDATE — Disney saw more than 1.7 million total paid streaming cancelations during the period 9/17-9/23, a Disney source confirms to me. The total includes Disney+, Hulu and ESPN.

Ezra Klein wants everyone to be as alarmed as he is and start strategizing and playing political war games. Coates keeps pointing how that he’s set up the board wrong. Respect to klein for inviting Coates on and holding this L. His desire for dialogue seems sincere, but he’s not listening to anyone

I wrote about the surprising story behind a 127 year old ham sandwich ekiben, the history of Asian sandwiches and how none of it would be possible without a beautiful tea house waitress named Kane open.substack.com/pub/frankbea...

I wrote about the surprising story behind a 127 year old ham sandwich ekiben, the history of Asian sandwiches and how none of it would be possible without a beautiful tea house waitress named Kane

Mt. Whitney hikers love this Chinese restaurant pitstop that looks like a merry-go-round www.latimes.com/environment/...

"Common decency stigmatizes people that do not participate in it—removes them from voluntary association. We indeed have to live with one another, but terms and conditions apply." me on why Ezra Klein should be ashamed / why shame is Good Actually www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

My brain melted halfway through. can someone tell me how it ends? nymag.com/intelligence...

I wrote about losing my cat, then losing faith in society, and how getting my cat back motivated me to try to make things different open.substack.com/pub/frankbea...

New piece: I write about losing my cat and how helpless I felt when I had to depend on the average benevolence of strangers; how we’re all in this situation now, in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s death.

ben smith, boy, i dunno