toastykitten

The thing about having followed the news over the past year and a half on Gaza has left me sufficiently skeptical of most things I’ve read in legacy media, including the big ones like New York Times or even NPR. Like, are they accurate on day-to-day stuff in the US? Sometimes? Anything that has to do with cops? Absolutely not. If it’s something to do with basic non-political stuff, maybe. This leaves me sometimes with having to dig through multiple social media sites, multiple news sites, multiple analysts, to actually arrive at the truth. Which, no one really has time for that. I only do it because the actual truth matters to me. 

Case in point: the contention of whether the budget for LAFD was cut by $17 million. This has played out over the past few days with even Chris Hayes weighing in on BlueSky, and then deleting the post because he got confused. 

1.  He cited the Politico article claiming that Democratic mayor Karen Bass was taking heat from “far left activists online” and asserted that they were flat out wrong, without actually linking to the budgets. 
2. Over the next day or two, the “far left activists online” pushed back, as did the LAFD fire chief going on TV and various news shows saying that the overall budget cuts did hamper the emergency response.
3. Also not mentioned in the news story is right-wing assholes citing DEI for somehow the huge fires not getting put out and blaming the fire chief because she’s gay and somehow that means she’s incompetent. 
4. The LAFD chief got called into a closed door meeting with the mayor, leading to rumors spurred by the Daily Mail that she’d been fired or forced to resign. The mayor has denied this.
5. Yesterday, the LA city controller Kenneth Mejia laid out everything on social media - 61 civilian positions were eliminated as a result of the new budget, raises were allocated after the budget, but haven’t been transferred yet, because they’re being held for the liability and litigation payouts for LAPD. 

Like, do I have the capacity to analyze whether Mejia is accurate on what he claims? No, I do not. I have to trust that he’s telling the truth because of his prior record, and that the charts and budgets he’s showing are accurate. I liked his campaign and if I lived in LA still I would have voted for him. But you know who’s supposed to actually make a judgment and tell me if things like that are true? The so-called “mainstream media”. 

Hey if you live in Los Angeles, please take a minute and submit your thoughts on LAP D's Video Policy Survey.

There's a policy fact sheet you can peruse, but honestly, I felt pretty strongly already about it anyway.

This LAist post on "Why does everyone hate hipsters?" and Stuff White People Like pretty much sums Silverlake up for me right now.

I find this whole hipster-hatred thing amusing. Do people really get worked up over whether someone's dyed hair actually "means something"? It is also amusing because among my friends, we all kind of secretly want to be hipsters who are into the cool little indie bands, the ironic t-shirts and also have ginormous trust funds. Maybe it's really the ginormous trust fund part we want.

We went to the Super King Market yesterday - no sign of hipsters anywhere - just a good old-fashioned supermarket catering to mostly Middle Easterners and Latinos. (They had Mexican Coke! Jackpot!) It was huge! And there were so many good deals - 3 pounds of oranges for 99 cents! They looked good, too. The Persian cucumbers for under a dollar a pound! Giant cans of pickled things! It was all so good. I think we will make it our regular grocery store for now. However, if you go there I would stay out of the seafood section. It was kind of gross - the fish were actually graying. They had a sizable deli and even a Hawaiian BBQ counter.

The next thing I need to find is an authentic Asian supermarket nearby that has a live seafood tank in the back.

I love the extra hour we gain in the fall. It means I actually wake up not grumpy for a few days. Anyway, I have today off!

We went to Park's BBQ, and almost everyone made it. The staff was pretty nice (be warned the receipts are in Korean so maybe next time we might do separate checks), and the kids liked the food, too. It was a lot of fun, delicious, and everyone bonded over the awesomeness that is Battlestar Galactica. I know, I know, we're such dorks.

Afterwards, we visited with Mark's aunt and uncle. If there's one conversation you can't get away from in California, it's real estate. So there was a lot of discussion of that over the weekend - we even checked out a couple of open houses around his parents' area, and then briefly considered moving down there again. It's not like Los Angeles is even remotely affordable for the average person, but at least you'll feel less ripped off. We saw a house with a gorgeous view, a pool, large rooms, decent kitchen, about forty years old - $850,000. (Supposedly real estate in Los Angeles is totally taking a beating - many of the signs we saw had "reduced price" on them.) $850,000 in the Bay Area is what you get for a shitty tiny two bedroom, one bath, no view, no pool, barely a backyard, that hasn't even been remodeled or updated in the past forty years since it's been built. $850k is a fixer-upper. *sigh* In San Francisco it might buy you a two-bedroom condo.

I don't know. I really, really want to stay in the Bay Area. Eventually I'd like to own a home. With a yard. But it's not going to happen as soon as I'd like it to.

I also got to play around with Mark's cousin, little Anthony, kindergartener, owner of inch-long lashes. He had a best friend, named Zack, who was around his age, who was also really cute. I ran around chasing them, and then when I took a break to talk to Mark's aunt, they came up and asked me, "Can you come and get us?" It was a fun weekend overall.

While watching Ebert and Roeper review The Road to Guantanamo I made a prediction that Roeper would make some asinine comment about how imbalanced the movie was or some stupid shit like that. And lo and behold, as soon as Ebert finished giving his positive review along with his opinion about how appalling it was that shit like that was happening in the US of A, Roeper interjects with "Well, I don't know that we know exactly what's going on down there, but for these three people it's really messed up."

Fuck you, Roeper.

Did you know that actor Sung Kang owns his own restaurant in L.A.? It's supposed to be pretty good, at least according to that site. Hmmm...we will have to check it out and maybe I will get to see my favorite BLT alum in person.

Does anyone know or care about the current LiveJournal controversies as of late? The breastfeeding icon one I thought was stupid, I thought people were making way too big a deal out of the voluntary ads, but I'm annoyed that every time I log into LJ I get that stupid reminder that I "could get more stuff with ads!", the whole Vox thing is confusing me, and I'm starting to wonder why SixApart can't just integrate all the services into one place, because I seriously do not want to sign on to another social network. I have enough accounts as it is, and in fact I'm thinking about deleting my myspace and possibly my delicious accounts. LibraryThing is staying - I might actually pay up for the lifetime account.