As a pretty frequent Postmates/Uber Eats user in LA, I’ve always wondered how often the same driver ends up delivering to me more than once.

Do you regularly recognize repeat customers or addresses? And in a huge city like LA, is it actually pretty rare, or do you tend to work the same neighborhoods enough that it happens fairly often?

Also curious whether you remember certain houses/apartments because they tip well, have weird delivery instructions, are a pain to access, etc.

Thanks for delivering my food to me

I am a left-leaning Jew who, until about three years ago, considered myself a progressive liberal.

I'm asking this as someone who does not believe criticism of Israel, Netanyahu, or even anti-Zionism is inherently antisemitic. For purposes of this question, I'm deliberately not treating opposition to Israel, support for BDS, anti-Zionism, or harsh rhetoric about the Israeli government as evidence of antisemitism.

I'm focusing specifically on statements about Jews as Jews, conspiracy theories involving Jews, responses to violence targeting Jews, and continued political relationships with people responsible for those things.

What increasingly concerns me is that these incidents no longer look entirely isolated. I sense a pattern.

Two figures in particular have become useful political allies to candidates on the DSA and progressive left:

Hasan Piker has become genuinely influential in progressive electoral politics. Reuters recently documented how Piker and other left-wing streamers are helping candidates raise money, campaign, and reach younger voters. (https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/how-new-generation-left-wing-us-media-is-powering-progressive-candidates-2026-08-06/)

My concern here isn't that Piker is extremely anti-Israel. It's his rhetoric about Jews themselves and the way he has reacted when Jews describe antisemitism.

Piker has repeatedly used "inbred" language about Orthodox Jews, including describing "Messianic inbred ultra-Orthodox psychopaths." He has since expressed regret for using the term and says he intended it as an attack on ethnoreligious supremacists rather than Jews generally. (http://archive.today/2024.10.29-172219/https://jewishinsider.com/2024/10/popular-leftist-twitch-streamer-hasan-piker-steps-up-antisemitic-anti-israel-rhetoric/)

What makes that harder for me to dismiss as simply crude political rhetoric is how he has reacted to Jews describing antisemitism directed at them. While reacting to a statement from Jewish students at Columbia describing campus harassment, including being told they were "all inbred" and had "no culture," Piker laughed during their account. (https://youtu.be/aYaFtr_pe7s?t=7583) That strikes me as particularly relevant given his own use of the same "inbred" rhetoric about Orthodox Jews.

A similar incident occurred during Kamala Harris's 2024 CNN town hall. Piker saw an undecided Jewish voter wearing a hostage ribbon, predicted that she would ask about antisemitism, and then laughed when she thanked Harris for remembering the Israeli hostages and raised concerns about rising antisemitism. Rep. Ritchie Torres later cited the incident in a letter criticizing Twitch's handling of Piker. (https://www.mediaite.com/politics/hasan-piker-bursts-out-laughing-when-questioner-thanks-kamala-harris-for-remembering-the-israeli-hostages-i-called-it/)

None of those incidents individually proves that Piker is antisemitic, and he strongly rejects that characterization. But taken together, repeated derogatory language about Jews and repeatedly laughing while Jews describe antisemitism directed at them is difficult for me to write off as merely criticism of Israel.

Michael Beyer ("Mike from PA"), a DSA member and streamer, said: "Jewish is not an ethnicity. This constructed ethnicity, this demonic ethnicity, wholly invented." Beyer later apologized and said he misspoke and meant to criticize Zionist identity rather than Jewish identity. (https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/mayor-hopeful-huang-takes-donation-100000617.html)

What concerns me is that remarks like these haven't necessarily made either figure politically toxic within this movement. Instead, they have continued to function as campaign fundraisers, donors, interviewers and surrogates.

During Francesca Hong's recently concluded campaign for Wisconsin governor, she appeared with both Piker and Beyer and raised roughly $92,000 through the two livestreams: about $35,000 with Beyer and $57,000 with Piker. Hong's campaign condemned antisemitism but argued that appearing with someone does not constitute endorsement of everything they have said. (https://www.wpr.org/news/francesca-hong-hasan-piker-livestreams-antisemitism-governors-race-wisconsin)

Rae Huang, a DSA member running for Los Angeles mayor, accepted Beyer's maximum $1,800 campaign contribution after his "demonic ethnicity" comments and Twitch suspension were already public. Her campaign said she had no plans to return it. Huang and Beyer had also met through the Los Angeles DSA chapter. (https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/mayor-hopeful-huang-takes-donation-100000617.html)

Claire Valdez, a DSA-backed congressional candidate, subsequently sat for a lengthy friendly interview with Beyer after the controversy. (https://www.jta.org/2026/05/18/ny/rabbi-affiliated-with-jvp-activist-reportedly-chosen-to-serve-as-a-faith-liaison-to-mamdani)

There are also examples involving DSA candidates, campaigns and officials themselves:

Chris Rabb, a DSA-backed congressional candidate, campaigned in person with Piker. Separately, Rabb's campaign Instagram account reposted a conspiracy theory suggesting that the perpetrators of the Bondi Beach massacre at a Hanukkah celebration were themselves "likely Zionists." Rabb disavowed the post and said it had been shared without his knowledge by a former contractor with whom his campaign had since severed ties. The available reporting does not establish whether the contractor was terminated because of the post. I think that qualification matters, but I also think something appearing on an official campaign account is relevant when we're discussing political culture. (https://www.inquirer.com/politics/philadelphia/chris-rabb-bondi-beach-post-20260501.html)

Melat Kiros, a DSA-endorsed congressional candidate in Colorado, declined to characterize the deadly Boulder firebombing of a predominantly Jewish gathering as antisemitic, saying, "I don't know what was in the heart of the perpetrator." She later called the attack a hate crime and terrorist attack and has said she intends to combat antisemitism. Several progressive Democrats nevertheless publicly criticized her original answer as obviously wrong. (https://coloradosun.com/2026/06/27/melat-kiros-boulder-firebombing-comments/)

Carmella Charrington, a newly elected Brooklyn Democratic district leader, was not formally endorsed by DSA, which is important to acknowledge. But prominent DSA politicians Jabari Brisport and Eon Huntley campaigned with her and helped her make the ballot. Charrington shared material promoting Henry Ford's notoriously antisemitic "The International Jew," described the material as "the truth," initially defended it as containing "some facts," and repeatedly told a Jewish reporter questioning her about it to "get your rabbi." Brisport and Huntley said they were unaware of the material and condemned it after it became public. But by then they had already campaigned with her and helped elevate her candidacy. (https://www.jta.org/2026/06/29/ny/brooklyn-democratic-leader-draws-scrutiny-for-sharing-antisemitic-post)

Justin Yuan is the co-chair of Michigan's Huron Valley DSA. He wrote "Love Hamas. Simple as" shortly after October 7 and later argued against socialists feeling obligated to condemn Hamas. More directly relevant to my question, reporting based on labor federation meeting minutes says Yuan coordinated an effort to retract a statement condemning the harassment of Jewish University of Michigan Regent Jordan Acker, whose home and law office had repeatedly been targeted by anti-Israel demonstrators. Yuan subsequently appeared in a campaign video for DSA member Yousef Rabhi, whose Ann Arbor mayoral campaign was endorsed by Yuan's DSA chapter. Neither Yuan nor Rabhi responded to the report. (http://archive.today/2026.03.10-152406/https://jewishinsider.com/2026/03/yousef-rabhi-ann-arbor-hamas-supporter-campaign-video/)

There's also Graham Platner, a more ambiguous case. He was neither a DSA member nor formally endorsed by Maine DSA, but Maine DSA recommended its members vote for him, and local members later described him as potentially "the face of this movement." (https://time.com/article/2026/07/14/Maine-Democratic-Socialists-Graham-Platner-Senate-race-Democratic-primary/)

Platner had a chest tattoo closely resembling the SS Totenkopf, a Nazi "death's head" insignia. He insists he drunkenly chose the design in 2007 and didn't learn of its Nazi association until the controversy. But subsequent reporting substantially undercut that explanation: CNN uncovered deleted Reddit posts showing Platner participating years earlier in discussions specifically involving the Totenkopf and Nazi-linked military imagery, while an acquaintance said Platner had discussed his own tattoo as resembling a Nazi symbol more than a decade earlier. A former girlfriend separately said he called it "my Totenkopf." Platner denies those accounts. None of this proves he is antisemitic, but it makes his claim of total ignorance difficult to accept at face value. (https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/cnap/date/2025-10-24/segment/01) (https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/elections/2026/democrat-graham-platner-says-he-plans-to-withdraw-from-maine-senate-race-after-sexual-assault-claim/)

What moves this beyond a collection of individual controversies for me is how DSA leadership itself responds when confronted with the pattern:

Vox recently put essentially this exact concern to DSA national co-chair Megan Romer. The interviewer explicitly asked about the argument that DSA might not itself be antisemitic but could be "fostering a culture that allows your members to talk in ways that are."

Romer said DSA stands against antisemitism, but also explained that people are angry about Israel and that sometimes "people are mad and they're going to not nuance their words as much as they should." (https://www.vox.com/podcasts/494522/democratic-socialism-dsa-co-chair-megan-romer-wins-controversies-2028)

That response bothers me. Calling Jewish ethnicity "demonic," repeatedly calling Orthodox Jews "inbred," laughing while Jews describe being called "inbred," promoting classic conspiracy literature about Jewish control, or circulating conspiracies about massacred Jews are not simply poorly nuanced criticisms of Israel.

Obviously, appearing on someone's stream or supporting someone politically does not mean endorsing every statement that person has ever made. People can apologize. Campaigns can make mistakes. Individual incidents do not establish that an entire organization is antisemitic.

But I'm having trouble dismissing the accumulation of examples as meaningless.

If a rising political movement on the right repeatedly had candidates fundraising with personalities who described Black or Muslim identity as "demonic," called members of those groups "inbred," laughed while members of those communities described racist or anti-Muslim harassment, elevated candidates who circulated classic racist conspiracy literature, or seemed reluctant to identify violence specifically targeting those communities as bigotry, I don't think liberals would consider the surrounding political culture irrelevant.

So I'm not arguing that DSA members are collectively antisemitic, and I'm specifically not asking whether anti-Zionism itself is antisemitic.

My question is narrower:

At what point does a recurring pattern like this justify concern that a political movement has become too tolerant of antisemitism within its own political ecosystem?

And as DSA candidates become increasingly successful, are liberals applying the same standard to explicitly anti-Jewish rhetoric on the far left that we expect conservatives to apply to racist or anti-Muslim rhetoric on their right?

There was also a much longer article about Ghost Town by L.A. Material posted here recently:

https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/1v8nie2/inside_ghost_town_the_firm_clearing_venices/

Full L.A. Material Article (pdf)

I noticed a lot of people in that thread couldn’t read it because it was behind a paywall, so I captured the article as a PDF and attached it here for anyone who wants to read that story. It goes into considerably more detail and includes interviews with one of Ghost Town’s co-founders, satisfied clients, local residents, and homeless people.

The CBS report and L.A. Material article approach the company somewhat differently, so I thought it was worth sharing both and letting people form their own opinions. Please consider supporting L.A. Material directly if you appreciate their work.

I accidentally added several local Work/Codex chats to the wrong ChatGPT Project in the new desktop app.

With normal synced ChatGPT chats, the three-dot menu includes Remove from project. But local chats only show options such as Pin, Rename, Archive, Copy, and Continue in. They don’t appear on chatgpt.com, so the web interface can’t fix the problem either.

Dragging doesn’t work properly—the app grabs the entire Project folder instead of the individual chat. Archiving only hides the conversation, and copying everything into a new standalone chat is a pretty bad workaround.

This seems like a basic UX oversight: if the app lets users assign a local chat to a Project, it should provide an equally obvious Remove from project or Move to project action.

I’ve been trying to track down some replacements since I just lost mine. I placed an order through Adorama, since they’re out of stock on Amazon

Adorama emailed me and said: We are sorry to inform you that this item became discontinued from the manufacturer after your order was placed.”

this was my all-time favorite EDC pen - it had a pencil on one side and a ball point pen on the other.

Hoping they’re preparing for the O’Pen Mini 3 release or something.

I’m looking to buy my first real pair of work boots and would appreciate some recommendations.

For context, I’m coming from wearing Vans hi-tops with SuperFeet insoles. I’m often on construction sites, but I’m usually there more as an owner’s rep / project manager than as a full-time tradesman. That said, I do help friends out with renovation projects from time to time, and most recently helped with a full 2,000+ sqft restaurant/bar gut and remodel.

I did all of that in Vans, which I realize is probably ridiculous.

So now I want some proper boots I can break in before my next project comes about.

Ideal boot

• Comfortable for long days walking/standing
• Short-ish break-in period
• Waterproof
• Preferably wedge sole, since friends have told me wedge soles are more comfortable
• Safety toe would be nice - ideally light like composite, nano/carbon, etc.
• American-made would be preferred, but not required if the price/comfort tradeoff doesn’t make sense

I’ve been looking online at Thorogood 1957 waterproof moc toe wedges, Red Wing Traction Tred / Traction Tred Lite, Wolverine Hellcat CarbonMAX wedge, some Danner options, and some Ariat work boots.

I was thinking of going to my local Ariat Work store tomorrow to try some on, but I know Ariat generally isn’t American-made, so I wanted to check here first.

Given my use case, what would you recommend?