I walked the length of Harbor Gateway, that thin strip that connects Los Angeles to the port

It’s hard to imagine any technology that has ever fucked it this badly, and purely through arrogance, it’s like if the people who invented the car decided to showcase its utility by driving over your family dog and then backing up and doing it again, and also the car sucked and was bad

def going on the reading list for this fall’s storytelling for action sports class

“The only benefit to being a journalist is that you get to call bullshit on powerful people. If you’re not interested in that, do something else!”

that is right, motherfuckers. the soul is BACK and it's beautiful.

The fuck is this, NPR?

From 2024:

You can tell he never read any fables or folklore or even played a little D&D — magical items usually carry a curse. Anyone know “The Elves and The Shoemaker?” In this version evil elves (AI) help the shoemaker (“author”) make terrible shoes. AI does your work but good luck selling your bookslop.

USC's OSINT Conference! Save the date.

Great piece from @jasonkoebler.bsky.social on how tiring it can be trying to figure out whether something was written by a bot. "Our brains are now performing untold numbers of calculations per day: Is this AI? Do I care if it’s AI? Why does this sound or look or read so weird?"

An all-time great

That special rare thing when you really hit if off with your students’ parents

If you're a transit psycho like me, then you might find this brilliant project by Jack Weiss just as satisfying as I do: it's a live music map of LA Metro Transit—every time a train arrives at a station, it plays ambient tones. It's absolutely wonderful metromusic.weisswideweb.com

I would’ve asked Santa first but that’s just me.

Interesting piece, but I resent how Peter Thiel is represented in the Gawker saga. Thiel didn't "emerge from the shadows" to magnanimously tell the NYT he funded Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker. He did it because my colleague and I exposed his involvement. www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/dig...

The ghost of Marshall McLuhan peeks out from behind a tree. He’s wearing a yellow suit and rubbing his hands together.

You know how people on Yelp will be like, "Empanadas aren't my thing, but this place is the bomb"? That's me, but with soccer, and with Nick Greene's wonderful writing

"openai.com" was once the personal homepage of a guy named glenn (2001), and "tiktok.com" was the quaint shared homepage of a couple as their relationship progressed from dating to married with a baby (2000). THREAD!!!

In late March, 18-year-old Tucker Collins was on his way to completing his first year of college at the University of Southern California (USC), unaware of the life-altering events that were to come. The full story: lataco.com/usc-student-... By Lizbeth Solorzano and @shoton35mm.bsky.social

excellent hed and subhed combo. just swatting away stupidity from go.

from the annals of getting high on your own supply (gift link) www.theverge.com/tldr/915176/...

Beth did have good taste

A Baltimore-based thread to explain one singular, overriding reason why American journalism is incapable of compassing and explaining the astonishing misrule and the implosion of all our governing norms. To wit: A few decades ago, as a police reporter covering the Baltimore department, a new...

It def helps me to leave a little signpost for my future self to know where I would've gone had I had more energy

A true porque no los dos moment

Is our company successful? Let me tell you about all the money we're spending!

I genuinely can't wrap my mind around how pathetic this is.

I used to write the WaPo editorials on US-Africa policy, as well on as human rights and politics on the continent. To describe hundreds of thousands of deaths on the continent as “messy” is an absolute abomination.

Real-life René Magritte painting

In some ways, we seem most human when caring for animals

Yet this is life.

Some guys have all the luck

how it started / how it’s going

This @the-independent.com story is such an obvious lift of mine that they didn’t even bother deleting my site’s referral URL. And no, they do not credit me for reporting it first or (intentionally) link to my story. In j-school, rewording someone else’s reporting was called plagiarism. 1/

Six word short story [Thousand Oaks Star, May 4, 1988]

This is a good lesson for journalists: Use plain language to state true things clearly.

Is the default assumption that a reminder is not gentle?

As ever, @annamerlan.bsky.social has written something timely and resonant. The quote from Dmytro Iarovyi had the odd effect of galvanizing me, by reminding me that my despair is not simply a defect, but is evoked by design.

I wrote about teaching writing and how AI can make us doubt each other’s humanity

guy methodically pulling out his own cue stick at the bar and proceeding to suck

Today @keithplocek.com, who teaches journalism at the University of Southern California, writes about Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, solipsism, his students using "AI" and the permission structure it gives us to doubt and devalue one another's humanity. www.welcometohellworld.com/sentences-th...

The Love Lines column in Lowrider Magazine was a gem. [Lowrider, Sept 1993]

This sounds unbelievable but its true: since Bezos acquired The Post, his wealth has grown tenfold and the Post has been cut in half. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-trust-...

Giving credit where it's due, this video was inspired by the skeet below.

Should I be working on an article? Yes. Am I making RFK Jr. memes instead? Maybe.

Y'all are all so focused on step 2 (maxin') and forgetting about step 1 (chillin' out) and step 3 (relaxin' all cool)

I’ve never understood this from a business perspective. Server space is cheap, and companies could run crap ads on the old articles basically forever. Maybe they’re worried about liability?

I tell my journalism students specifically not to do this. It's a hack move to make people sound dumb. Everyone talks like this — with the exception of maybe Pete Buttigieg — and it's an editorial choice to leave the little filler words in there.

Happy Valentine's Day! [Gay Community News, Feb 15, 1986]