A W. Philly apartment building was destroyed in a suspected arson right after its tenants were evicted and the building sold to shell company. What is this, the ‘70s? Great reporting by Ryan Briggs and William Bender. www.inquirer.com/news/phil-pu...

oh thanks @defector.com , i love to generate outsized page views and/or new registrations. finding this in the (shockingly readable) annual report was a nice little surprise :) defector.com/defector-ann...

work on the creative project that pays me money and that i am under contract for and that people like????? no thanks, im busy thinking about my creative project that im kind of bad at and somehow costs me money and that nobody asked for

This is Bad (source: network.fintechtakes.com/library/3d38...)

I loved this story about how one bin store in West Philly launched this massive conversation about the future of the neighborhood. Great reporting from @jkjenkinney.bsky.social in her @phillymag.com debut:

NEW: The private jet that flew 10 shackled migrants to an Eswatini prison last weekend is owned by Israeli-American billionaires with close ties to Trump. It’s oligarchs all the way down. My first for @zeteo.com: zeteo.com/p/this-famil...

So much tear gas that people who aren't even protesting are getting sick when they leave their homes to run errands: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

"Jones, 27, is among the residents left at 7500 S. South Shore Drive who are trying to piece together what remains after an early morning, high-powered federal immigration raid led to the arrests of dozens of their neighbors at their South Shore apartment building."

please listen to sophie kazis's maddening investigation into the BBC axing a doc about Israel's systematic attacks on Gaza's hospitals. a rare chance to see behind the scenes as these decisions are made, influenced by fear of pro-Israel lobbyists and critics. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

More than 1800 detainees are missing after the closure of Alligator Alcatraz. Their families and lawyers can’t find them and they’ve vanished from the ICE database. Feels like this should be a much bigger story www.miamiherald.com/news/local/i...

"I just want to say, go birds, fuck ICE and free Palestine," "Hacks" star Hannah Einbinder at the #Emmys

i can't explain it, but to me, the unending proliferation of new reese's manifestations — many of which are just mash-ups of their own products or brand collabs — is a recession indicator.

Update: 1,040 rounds of nonlethal ammunition were fired by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) at anti-ICE protesters in DTLA on June 8th. 669 were 40 mm rubber bullets. They were pulling rounds from boxes as shown below. The dept documented causing only six injuries from the muntions.

If I were editing a column about Charlie Kirk’s political genius, I would tell the writer he needed to quote Kirk’s actual political beliefs. If the writer responded that doing so would weaken or distract from his argument, it’d be a pretty good sign that the column was not ready for prime time.

New York magazine asked me to explore Roblox and report back on what the hell is going on in there. I found kids are bombarded with covert ads, casino-style manipulation, and nonstop enticements to spend their parents' money. nymag.com/intelligence...

still fuming about this

Keefe commissary prices —the nation’s leading provider of automated commissary management services— surge up to 88%.

everything is bad but ELECTRIC NEBRASKA brucespringsteen.net/news/2025/br...

This is a truly wild and upsetting ride about the perverse power dynamics that can emerge with surrogacy www.wired.com/story/the-ba...

The tragedy of “stomp clap hey”:

The Guardian has today printed the names, and where possible, images, of all the media workers killed in Gaza, as part of an international day of action involving more than 150 media organisations. www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

I considered writing a long carefully constructed argument laying out the harms and limitations of AI, but instead I wrote about being a hater. Only humans can be haters.

We were going to do another big marketing stunt for THE TOXIC AVENGER UNRATED. Instead, Toxie, whose life was upended by crushing medical bills, has joined forces with Undue Medical Debt to erase at least $5 million in un-payable medical debt for those who need it most. Learn more:

Say their names: Mu'adh Abu Taha, Maryam Abu Daqa, Muhammad Salama, and Hossam Al-Masri. Israel killed FOUR journalists today, as they bombed Nasser, as they have bombed every hospital for two years now. They’re among 275 journalists murdered by US-Israel

Many of the men deported to CECOT said they are permanently changed: struggling to sleep, drink water or leave their homes. One man broke into tears describing how he had a panic attack the first time he walked down a busy Venezuelan street.

So much think-piecing and op-ed'ing about data centers. I wish folks knew that some scholars have been studying these things — as real estate, as geopolitical battlegrounds, as ecological disasters — for a decade+. Mél Hogan, Alix Johnson, Ingrid Burrington, Jen Holt, Patrick Brodie, et al

I often find myself saying "what a time to be alive" but friends, today, defector.com/it-took-many...

Why we need more journalists to think critically about policing. Cuz according to this, the travesty is that the military isn't in the racially coded "high crime" areas.

"My beloved city Gaza stands on the brink of a full military occupation by the Israeli army. Their plan is to force us all to leave our homes and move into tents... We do not know what will happen to those who resist. We may be living our last days in Gaza City" www.aljazeera.com/opinions/202...

"The moment I had long dreaded finally arrived: the day I’d have to dismantle my childhood." defector.com/living-throu...

beyond the moral ghoulish ness I just don't understand the basic contention of how this is supposed to work as a defense. if a whole population of people was starving en masse, would one expect people with "pre-existing conditions" to be over or underrepresented amongst those who die first?

there is a man dancing his heart out on my septa bus rn. he is in the ZONE. and unless septa is TRULY FUNDED, this is the batshit kind of nonsense i'll miss on my commutes

“You sound real corny being scared of the subway.” www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/the-subway...

Good reporting on what are basically stripped down non-competes from the white collar sector applied to a wider range of skilled jobs and service sector jobs jacobin.com/2025/08/corp...

most American possible beach experience

"The surge in layoffs in 2025 is due to a mix of government downsizing, corporate restructuring and the growing effects of artificial intelligence. Public agencies, tech firms and retailers are leading the cuts." www.newsweek.com/us-hits-high...

uh oh, new "it's on consumers to stop littering and start recycling" just dropped

It's profoundly saddening to read that AP will no longer be assigning or running book reviews because readers don't engage with them enough and they take too much effort to plan and assign. People complain about critics as gatekeepers; wait until all that's left is marketing.

An entire news crew working for Al Jazeera was killed by Israel as they sought to bring the world firsthand reporting from #Gaza. Among them was prominent journalist Anas Al-Sharif, who had been previously smeared and threatened by the IDF. #NotATarget Full statement: cpj.org/2025/08/isra...

the overriding goal of @aftermath.site (and other sites like @defector.com, @404media.co, and @hellgatenyc.com) is to make just enough money to make more articles. media didn't need to collapse so spectacularly – that's squarely on the shoulders of management – but it did need to reorient

Just a polite reminder that we owe the concept of zombies to voodoun/Haitian cultures as an externalization of the fear of being compelled to labor beyond what was supposed to be the Absolute Freedom of death.

obviously independent show is My Job so it has worked for me (other than not having health insurance) but! if people have to pay $5-10/month per podcast to employ all of us, we are going to have fewer podcasts, mostly by already-famous people with preexisting audiences 👀

Wanna see a crazy chart? Of course you do. Spending on constructing datacenters and manufacturing facilities for computers & electronic products in the US now exceeds the entire retail and wholesale industry and almost as much as the rest of the office and manufacturing sectors combined.

To state the obvious, Western journalists, writers, and filmmakers need to talk more about our colleagues being murdered in Gaza and the West Bank. You can do it from pure self interest if you want: every journalist murdered with impunity is a precedent which is headed in your direction

“This isn't just an issue for people who rent cars; look at it as a sign of things to come, as companies — and governments — around the world start using AI to replace human labor, even when the tech isn't remotely ready for primetime.” And we know that humans frequently defer to AI’s “accuracy.”

a few years ago i was so fed up with the event listings in philadelphia that i started sending out my own simple weekly email - inspired by the great nonsense NYC mailing list. i can't tell you how HUNGRY people are for this. i barely promote it and it's grown to hundreds just by word of mouth.

Digital Puritanism is in full force on this story. The internet gleefully doxxed these people, Polymakert is betting on their divorces, and brands like Chipotle and NEON are using them as advertising. We shouldn't be doing this.

You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane All they will call you will be deportees