This was a cool exercise—writing about which books share DNA with “On Fire and Under Water.” Grateful to the @wirobooks.bsky.social for inviting and hosting me. With mentions of work from John Woods, Ivy Pochoda, @jordanharper.bsky.social, and Delfina Cuuero.

Oh, wow, I missed this news. LA hotels & airports launched a misleading campaign to gather signatures to overturn the $30 min wage bill for the Olympics. Unions countered with a massive *signature withdrawal* campaign—and won!

if you ate food from 2005 you could become ill. but in 2005 you ate it all the time

From Hunter S Thompson's obituary of Nixon:

you guys

This looks like the Trump administration is assassinating poor migrants searching for a better life in America. If that's right, it would fit with co-President Stephen Miller's views. "Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" - that is the real America 1/

Keep in mind there's nothing preventing the US from doing nonlethal searches and seizures. The Coast Guard and sometimes Navy often does this. In the time between the 1st and 3rd deadly US strike, sailors from the USS Jason Dunham stopped and searched a ship. The strikes are a deliberate choice.

3rd deadly US strike on a boat in the Caribbean. As with the others: -in area US military operates freely -where arrest has relatively low risk, and greater strategic value -no US legal rationale, or even attempt to offer one -blatant violation of international law -no evidence US knew who they hit

Evidentially premeditated killing is something to be joked about rather than requiring a legal justification.

“Is Rebecca Pidgeon’s performance in THE SPANISH PRISONER good?” - the greatest thread in the history of forums, locked by a moderator after 12,239 pages of heated debate,

I still think the best idea for progressive donors is to just revive every alt-weekly in the country and staff them with 10 reporters each.

Ellen being one of the most abusive bosses in the industry was a Weinstein-level open secret, for approximately as long

A woman protesting outside the ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois, was brutally assaulted by goons who used mace and sting balls on her.

Conservatives are obsessed with paranoid fantasies about sicko service workers fucking with them because their entire ideology is based around abusing them, it’s like a class version of their fears of white genocide

Trump posts on Truth Social that he’s ordered another strike on what he claims is a drug trafficking boat. He’s presented no evidence that his victims in the three previous strikes were running drugs. Drug trafficking is also not a capital crime. Trump is murdering people in international waters.

moments ago, ice agents again came out of the broadview detention/“professing” facility to escort a silver suv out of the lot. one of the agents picked up and threw congressional candidate kat abughazaleh to the ground.

Let’s rock

Japan has a wrestling camp for kids where at the end they have a show match in front of their parents to show off what they learned. Thought you'd enjoy this.

See you there!

National day of remembrance for Charlie Kirk motion passed the Senate by unanimous consent. Zero Democrats objected, which would have stopped it. Tommy Tuberville is presiding — and smirking. www.c-span.org/networks/?ch...

simply the best human beings have ever looked

james cameron walks up to whiteboard with TOEJAM and EARL written on it. he erases the "and" and writes Vs.

By the way, you can in fact run a media business where people give you money for goods and services. 56k+ people give The Onion ~$100 and we give them a year of newspapers. This business didn’t exist last year in this way. People will pay for good shit. Now’s the time to break glass and go for it.

a key reason they see an opening for such a blatant speech crackdown is that they already did one to Palestinian and anti-genocide activists and it got enthusiastic bipartisan approval

looks like she's waiting to ambush a ronin with a babycart

The most utopian thing I can imagine at this point is a strictly segregated media environment of propaganda slop and the people who don't mind it (nobody likes it) and then an entirely separate economy of people who actually like reading, listening to music, watching films etc.

There’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for people to build on the rubble of what’s being destroyed before our eyes. Private corporations bending over to forcefeed everyone government-approved speech is evil and amoral, but more than anything this creates boring, inauthentic, unwatchable shit.

it's the same picture

The uniting theme of the supposed age of AI and the M&A/private equity apocalypse is that the world is controlled by people who literally cannot imagine ever deriving joy or meaning or satisfaction from any activity or pursuit for its own sake if it doesn't make money.

Its just a bunch of fascists who haven't sat through a movie since the 1980s fellating each other in a joint effort to Make Line Go Up -- like Jesus Christ get a hobby, leave us alone!!

It physically nauseates me to see trade reporters cover the potential Paramount-Warner merger as mere asset shuffling and not a fucking death knell for this industry. It's absolutely maddening to see short sighted, hateful ghouls sell off the thing you built your life around for parts.

On Fire and Under Water is #8!!! in all short story anthologies, thanks to everyone’s support! Thanks so much, and if you haven’t ordered yet, here’s the link: a.co/d/3Rn3IeR

It's funny because the wafer to ice cream proportion doesn't look like it could possibly be right but when you take a bite you realize they know what the fuck they're doing and you're an idiot

one relevant starter pack: go.bsky.app/2Fq4P6e

Heavy on the "at least"

just finished A Violent Masterpiece & want to tell you it whips ass. thought I was losing it because it reminded me of things like Strange Days & William Gibson's Pattern Recognition as much as James Ellroy - until I saw Jordan describe the novel as treating present-day LA like a cyberpunk dystopia

D and it’s really not close

THIS IS WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT! THIS IS HOW YOU OPEN A MOVIE! THE REST MAYBE SHIT BUT IT DOESN'T MATTER AS THEY NAILED THE OPENING AND NOW I AM PUMPED FOR THE REST!

Our friends at BOLO Books are bringing you all the absolutely incredible cover reveal for ON FIRE AND UNDER WATER, edited by @curtisippolito.bsky.social, coming Sept 30th! Check out the full reveal here (and preorder when you're done gawking at this beauty) bolobooks.com/2025/09/cove...

I have no earthly idea who did them originally but we need that gallery of the 2010s Three Kingdoms TV series characters as Dril quotes on here

This is the first time I've missed Twitter.

I don’t think I actually recommended my own book but I wouldn’t put it past me

Book recs by JORDAN HARPER! * Nineteen Seventy-Four by David Peace * Tapping the Source by Kem Nunn * Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell * Bury Me Deep by Megan Abbott * All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby * Everybody Knows by Jordan Harper

TEENAGE GIRLS CAN BE DEMONS today! 13 coming-of-rage stories including the return to print of "Benny Rose the Cannibal King" about the monstrousness of adolescence and those who will do whatever it takes to get away, or get even. Out now from Titan Books! 😈 tinyurl.com/prhdemons

our first entry in our new weekly series "Until It's Done". Written by Zohran's truly world class speechwriter the great Julian Gerson, we'll be spotlighting New Yorkers throughout this city's history who never relented when it came to fighting for a better city for everyone. we hope you enjoy it

I know everything is awful right now but trust me when I tell you that you need to listen to two guys absolutely HYPE UP this dude's double-handed squeegee technique

Hi guys, did you already know there are competitions for window tinting? With better commentators than most of the tennis matches I’ve watched on ESPN? (Low bar I know) Anyway if you need to procrastinate harder than you’ve ever procrastinated before, I got you

it's happening