Lev Gringauz

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz after touring "Alligator Alcatraz": "These detainees are living in cages. The pictures you've seen don't do it just. They are essentially packed into cages. 34 detainees per cage...they get their drinking water & they brush their teeth where they poop, in the same unit"

Minnesota’s flags will fly at half staff in honor and remembrance of Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman.

She woke up every morning determined to make Minnesota a better place, and she will be greatly missed.

law enforcement officials say they made a proactive check at Rep. Hortman's home after a lawmaker who lived nearby was shot and found a "police vehicle in the driveway with emergency lights and what appeared to be a police officer at the door coming out of the house." He was actually the gunman.

Walz announces that Rep. Melissa Hortman is dead as a result of a "politically motivated assassination"

Tulsa announces reparations for the 1921 ‘Black Wall Street’ massacre It took decades of research by historians and journalists — and reports by state and federal commissions — to uncover the violence that claimed more than 300 Black lives.

The city of Tulsa, home to one of the most horrifying racial-terror massacres in U.S. history and the people who tried to cover it up, has announced a $105 million reparations package.

Amazon suspends data center in Becker, Minn. The decision comes as state lawmakers said they'd reduce tax breaks for data centers. The massive project was celebrated by local officials for its economic benefits.

NEWS: Amazon has suspended its massive data center project in Becker as Minnesota lawmakers plan to roll back sales tax exemptions for the industry.

The company cited uncertain development timelines. www.startribune.com/amazon-suspe...

I don’t mean to be a caricature, but this just isn’t law. The Supreme Court is always making policy. But this is beyond. “This dicta in an emergency order will reassure the markets but just uh trust us on the law here ok no we’re not overruling Humphrey’s yet and when we do we’ll spare the fed.”

Hi! I wrote the MinnPost story being talked about here. Def agree there are a lot of people who do good work who don't get due credit from journo orgs.

Do just want to say the landlord story was listed as an example of the kind of work MV has done as a small aside in a much larger story

Hi, I wrote this MinnPost story. Was not aware of credit issues, and you're right, a lot of people do journalistic work and don't get due credit.

Also just want to say the landlord story was listed as an example of the kind of work MV has done as a small aside in a much larger story

My latest for MinnPost:

let them eat shitcoins

Trump Cuts Are Killing a Tiny Office That Keeps Measurements of the World Accurate A tiny but crucial agency that maintains physical coordinates like latitude and longitude in the US is struggling as the Trump administration forces out federal employees.

SCOOP from me: the mass exodus of employees from NOAA is decimating a tiny office that literally keeps our measurements of latitude and longitude accurate — and, former employees tell me, endangers the science of how the US understands global measurements:

Oh damn Rosen went full Jewish mother on Rubio.

This is more freedom, right?

Cato has published my comprehensive review of the ~240 Venezuelans the US government renditioned 2 months ago to Salvador’s notorious prison. We identified FIFTY who came legally, never violated any immigration law, but are imprisoned at the US government’s request and at US taxpayer expense.

political journalists obsess over the public’s lack of trust in our profession but strangely see that as downstream of things like “we didn’t talk enough about how biden was old” and not “many of us appear to be indifferent to a nihilistic attack on the constitution”

Elon Musk’s Grok AI Can’t Stop Talking About ‘White Genocide’ In response to X user queries about everything from sports to Medicaid cuts, the xAI chatbot inserted unrelated information about “white genocide” in South Africa.

In talks and in our online course thebullshitmachines.com, I worry about how the extremely high cost of training LLMs concentrates power in the hands of the very few to shape our information environment.

Grok going off the rails with talk of White Genocide is a striking example.

CFBP Quietly Kills Rule to Shield Americans From Data Brokers Russell Vought, acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has canceled plans to more tightly regulate the sale of Americans’ sensitive personal data.

SCOOP: CFBP just cancelled plans to implement new rules that would have tightened restrictions on what sensitive personal info data brokers are allowed to sell. The rule was proposed after data about US servicemembers was repeatedly exposed in which experts term a national security nightmare.

AWS enters into 'strategic partnership' with Saudi Arabia-backed Humain | TechCrunch Amazon says it'll work with Humain, the AI company recently launched by Saudi Arabia’s ruler, to invest '$5 billion-plus' in a strategic partnership.

Pretty incredible that Jeff Bezos' Amazon announced a "$5 billion-plus" partnership w/ a Saudi AI co launched by Mohammed Bin Salman and sent CEO Andy Jassy to meet with him less than 7 years after MBS murdered Jamal Khashoggi, a columnist for Bezos' Washington Post.

techcrunch.com/2025/05/13/a...

Hi Melissa, I'm a freelance journalist for MinnPost with some questions about Southwest Voices getting "reset" and editors being let go as part of that. Any chance we could talk? My email is Lev.gringauz@gmail.com thanks!

St. Louis County wildfire triples in size, destroys homes, as state under red-flag warning The fire near Brimson, Minn., was detected Sunday afternoon and the area evacuated.

A second fire, 800 acres in size and growing, was discovered Monday afternoon just northwest of Brimson, according to Superior National Forest officials

“.. Under this deal, it will now be cheaper to import a UK vehicle with very little U.S. content than a USMCA compliant vehicle from Mexico or Canada that is half American parts.”

@thehill.com @scottlincicome.bsky.social
thehill.com/business/529...

Screen shot of 10 day forecast for Red Lake Falls showing 90s for the next three days followed by a dip into the 30s and 40s

The weather-posting from Minnesotans is going to be wild in the next week

A few people have asked me how they can “Onion model” games journalism, since all of the good indie places are at a crossroads, so I thought, fuck it, let me walk through this.

Take this with a microscopic grain of salt, since I basically only play 2k, Rocket League and Balatro, but here’s an idea:

You literally sound like a communist

Update on this. Apparently the bill just passed the House... 409-2.

So, uh, yeah. A ton of Dems just gave the Trump FTC more power to censor the internet. Great job guys.

@theverge.com @reckless.bsky.social

Because I haven't seen anyone else talk about this: A lot of Wordpress users are seeing their sites down with an error seemingly because of a plugin update issue with WP Engine. Sites around the world affected, WPE posted about it shortly before 5 pm CT

Updates here: wpenginestatus.com

Life After HUGE: How the Twin Cities Improv Scene Is Evolving (and Even Expanding) Following HUGE Improv Theater’s Closure - Racket Last year, the Twin Cities lost its only dedicated longform improv theater. Where does it go from here? Well… everywhere.

i loved reporting this story so much—one of the rare features where you're laughing as you transcribe your interviews after. anyway, here's 3,000+ words about improv with insight from a dozen local performers!