CHICAGO! I'll be taping my new stand up special on April 18th at The Den Theatre!

what a great city

When AT&T merged with TimeWarner, shows were cancelled, networks disappeared, and jobs were lost. @adamconover was just one of thousands of people who experienced this first hand. If Paramount merges with Warner Bros, it will happen again.

This is Matt Radecki. He did post-production on some of the best documentaries of the last 15 years: Icarus, 20 Feet from Stardom, Navalny. Guess who bought Navalny? CNN. You think CNN is going to buy the next Navalny if Bari Weiss is in charge?

Writer and actor @adamconover on media consolidation and the potential merger between Paramount and Warner Bros: "It's the death of a great American industry. Hollywood is what it is because it was an open market... And it's about to die."

"They require us to do background checks with their owned and operated background check company which charges us three times the amount of our background checks. We have to use their accounts payable company and the annual fee is $6000. They take a percentage of each invoice..."

We understand there's a candidate at our Administrative HQ in Norwalk talking about ballot processing. Meanwhile, we are here at the Ballot Processing Center where the votes are actually counted.

The LA mayor stuff is the dumbest conspiracy theory I've ever heard & makes no sense. Dem establishment/Bass wanted Pratt, not Raman, to advance. Bass crushes Pratt in a 1-on-1 by 18 pt, while Raman beat Bass by 4. Pratt's the rarity in LA less popular than the unpopular Bass!

cope, seethe, etc.

Nithya Raman took 40% of the votes in today's drop & has overtaken Spencer Pratt for the second spot. She's now up close to half a point. Bass: 15,691 (32.81%) Raman: 19,096 (39.93%) Pratt: 8,489 (17.75%) Pretty safe to say Raman has unlocked a spot in the runoff.

California — all paper ballots, vote by mail ballots signature verified before counting, post election audit (random sample 1% manual tally compared to tabulation system) prior to certification, up to 10-days of in-person voting — all publicly observable.

Another very big jump for Nithya Raman in today's drop where she took 40% of the vote. She's now just a hair over 1 pt behind Spencer Pratt & on track to overtake him tomorrow assuming a similar size drop. Bass: 19,312 (32.98%) Pratt: 10,336 (17.65%) Raman: 23,514 (40.16%)

“All of those real connections that you have with real people in your lives - like the person you are in your web of human society - you have a lot of leverage there, and so don't let these companies that would love you to believe that posting is all there is convince you that posting is all there is in life.” @adamconover

UPDATE in Los Angeles L.A. County adds another 59,930 votes in the Mayor’s race. This batch breaks: 38.57% for Nithya Raman ( 23,115 votes) 34.07% for Karen Bass ( 20,419 votes) 17.87% for Spencer Pratt ( 10,711 votes) Raman once again significantly outperformed Pratt, cutting his lead for second place by 12,404 votes in a single update. Pratt’s lead over Raman now stands at 20,672 votes, down from 33,076 before this update. Current totals: Karen Bass: 215,868 (34.98%) Spencer Pratt: 174,260 (28.24%) Nithya Raman: 153,588 (24.89%) Over the last two vote updates combined, Raman has gained 16,635 votes on Pratt.

"It will be a disaster. It will be the death of Hollywood." The Paramount-Warner Bros. merger will almost certainly lead to fewer productions, mass layoffs, and more. @adamconover explains⬇️

Raman is hitting her benchmark to overtake Pratt. At this point, it is fair to say she is favored, though outstanding turnout remains uncertain and the race is still tracking toward a very close finish.

I know some of y’all don’t go here but sad to see so many local reporters act like this is their first rodeo.

Finally an update in the direction Pratt would like, but still not the kind of distance he needs to be creating to sleep comfortably the rest of the week. Bass: 5,458 Pratt: 7,153 Raman: 4,823

Spent a lot of time discussing AI fiction & non-fiction at lunch at the Hay festival today -- my predictions are (1) openly AI-authored fiction will gain only a niche audience, not unlike "enhanced Olympics," due to stigma/low costs of copying (2) AI fiction will become strongly stigmatized over next year (if not already) with stronger "human authored" certifications becoming more common (3) the line between AI-authored and AI-"edited" or "assisted" really needs to be figured out.

Nithya has a proven track record of helping renters in Los Angeles, and she'll continue to help out as mayor! Vote for @nithya4thecity on Tuesday, June 2nd for mayor of Los Angeles.