🔥 Your next bodega order, the working class, hot farmers, Amazon still F.O.S. and DSA is crushing.

Good morning. Here's your dispatch from the corners of the internet still fighting slop: Mamdani's Knicks parade speech that left half the city in tears, Amazon killing its own Sam Altman movie weeks before release, a democratic socialist wave that hit DC last week and meets New York at the ballot box today, the podcast you need on what "working class" actually means, Carney now holds the key to Toronto's waterfront, and the perfect soundtrack for your morning bodega order (we'd recommend the Brunson).

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Mayor Mamdani gave the best sports speech of the century at the Knicks parade. Last Thursday (June 18), hundreds of thousands packed the Canyon of Heroes for the city's first championship in 53 years. Mamdani stole the show with eight minutes at City Hall. He name-checked the deep cuts: J.R. Smith, Iman Shumpert, Mardy Collins, Toney Douglas. Then, standing feet from James Dolan, he gave a particular shoutout to Charles Oakley, whom Dolan has personally banned from Madison Square Garden since 2017. (Dolan reportedly stiffed the photo-op afterward. Earlier in the day, Mamdani danced "Lean Back" on Karl-Anthony Towns' float).

"So often when this city comes together, it is because we are forced to by a moment of tragedy or adversity. What a gift it is to be brought together by pure, unfiltered joy."

"What is New York if not your back up against the wall? A dream that feels just out of reach. A rent payment you don't know how you'll ever make. What is New York if not 99.6% of the world stacked against you? And who are New Yorkers if not people who hear those odds and smile, who look at a 0.4% chance of success and ask: why are you giving me a head start?"

A socialist mayor turning a basketball parade into a class-conscious anthem about the city's renters and immigrants. Someone make this man my mayor.

Amazon just killed its own Sam Altman movie. Artificial is Luca Guadagnino's (director of Call Me by Your Name and other well-known films) nearly-finished feature about Sam Altman's 2023 firing-and-rehiring at OpenAI. It stars Andrew Garfield as Altman, Monica Barbaro as Mira Murati, and Ike Barinholtz as Elon Musk. Budget around $40 million. Billed as "The Social Network for the AI era." And it's just been dropped by Amazon MGM weeks before its planned release. Amazon's official line is that the film would be "better served if it were released by a different studio." Conspicuously absent: any acknowledgment that Amazon announced a $50 billion partnership with OpenAI in February. Reports indicate the finished cut struck Amazon's Mike Hopkins as "darker in tone" than the script Amazon originally bought (i.e., Altman doesn't come off well). Netflix, A24, and Focus Features have already passed. As Spyglass put it: a $40M completed film, killed before release, after the studio's parent corporation cut a $50B check to its subject. In 2026, that looks so corrupt it looks like the point.

The democratic socialists are everywhere now, and today is New York. Last Tuesday, DSA-backed Janeese Lewis George won the Democratic primary for DC mayor. Her platform: universal childcare, rent caps, halting utility hikes, free buses for SNAP recipients. Trump openly threatened a federal takeover of DC if she won. Her response: "It is the people of D.C. who elect the mayor of D.C." Earlier this month, DSA member Nithya Raman advanced to the LA mayoral runoff against incumbent Karen Bass. In May, Chris Rabb won PA-3 running unopposed, becoming DSA's second nationally endorsed member of Congress. And today, New York votes. Polls are open until 9pm. NYC-DSA is running the largest socialist legislative slate in US history: seven State Assembly candidates, one State Senate candidate, and two Mamdani-endorsed congressional challengers (Claire Valdez in NY-7, Brad Lander in NY-10).

One name to know: Aber Kawas, running for State Senate in Queens District 12. Palestinian American community organizer, longtime advocate on the Not on Our Dime bill (originally introduced by Mamdani as Assembly member in 2023, when "people were telling Zohran Mamdani that his career was over". Her father was detained by ICE for nearly three years and deported when she was twelve. Her platform is called "Fighting for the World in the World's Borough," and it's a clinic in connecting hyper-local and international politics. The same Bangladeshi students who can't get to university because the US-Iran war caused a fuel crisis are her neighbours in Queens. Her line: "We are trying to actually stand up for humans, whether they are our neighbours in our own district or members of the countries that our neighbours come from." Read the whole Jacobin interview.

Worth your ears on why forming a party (and not just relying on people with values hoping they will not be corrupted) to sustain socialist politics is important: Confronting Capitalism on who actually counts as a worker. Vivek Chibber and Melissa Naschek's latest episode takes the bait of the Graham Platner Senate race in Maine, where pundits have been arguing about whether Platner himself qualifies as working class. They lay out the actual Marxist definition: workers are those who sell their labour for a wage or salary and have little to no supervisory authority over other workers. Managers, owner-operators, small shopkeepers, plumbers, and hairdressers all can belong to the middle class, not the working class. It’s not about having a college education or lack of one. It matters because populist appeals that blur the line ("everyone is working class except billionaires") end up making it harder to build the actual class coalition that wins. The whole episode is a clarifying half-hour, and it's the theory that makes campaigns like Kawas and Lewis George legible as more than vibes.

Carney now holds the key to Toronto's waterfront. Following up on last month's Bill 110 dispatch: Ford passed the bill, designated the Billy Bishop site a "special economic zone," and is moving to expand the airport to carry jets. But the law alone doesn't get him there. The Tripartite Agreement requires the federal government's consent. On June 8, Transport Canada opened federal public consultations on the airport's future. Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles has publicly called on Carney to use Ottawa's authority to block the takeover. Liberal MP Julie Dzerowicz (Davenport) has said publicly that federal consent will be difficult to secure unless safety, noise, emissions, Indigenous, and waterfront concerns are properly addressed. Mayor Olivia Chow continues to call the bill a power grab. The fight has moved from Queen's Park to Ottawa. Submit to the federal consultation before it closes.

Say it louder: Speaking of waterfront. Toronto’s floating bodega is making waves. Mentioned on Snaxshot’s latest, a short but remarkable piece about farmer’s thirst trapping. Could this wave of Abercrombie farmers save agriculture? Snaxshot put it best: “We’ve talked a lot on here about the pervasiveness of farmer cosplay, but seeing actual people who work in farms making it appealing for new generations by leveraging social media and content, it’s one of those happy news that may just restore hope in this sick sad world”

Soundtrack: Tierra Whack’s new record: Whack's Museum. Came out June 19. Black queer Philadelphia rapper, second full-length, the kind of experimental hip-hop that doesn't sound like anything else and somehow still works as morning music. NPR led their New Music Friday with it. Sixteen tracks. Each one is its own little world. Put it on the speaker and let the kitchen do its thing.

Solidarity forever,

The internet is cooked.