Most recently, both parties committed genocidal war crimes against Palestinians, Afghans, and Iraqis (i.e. white phosphorous). Trump does not cloak his genocidal intent in words about “women/human rights,” anticommunism, democracy, etc. The difference is stylistic, not substantive.

Could straight up just quote this entire essay. it is a READ! Love it! #respect /// When I read Peter Zinoman and Nguyễn Nguyệt Cầm’s translation of Vũ Trọng Phụng’s Số đỏ last spring, I delighted in how volatile and unknown it felt to me.

Sitting w this incisive necessary essay today. /// A community (including any community circumscribed by the borders of a country) is not an inherently ethical or egalitarian entity, and belonging cannot be left to its capriciousness.

Whoa, Nelly this is a biting review. On Ocean Vuong’s writing: It is why, despite his close identification with his characters and their class situation, he turns them into parodies (and their enemies into grotesques).

Been reading Denis Johnson’s Angels. Its depiction of sexual violence and poverty is so frank and unsentimental, devoid of any references to ‘trauma’ or other psychological terms we are mandated to sprinkle through our writing of anything, these days.

It could happen to anyone.

Foreclosure Gothic: Really tried with that one. Some cute moments, nice language. But ultimately keeping the loose ends loose only works if the reader is left with some philosophical question. You can only draw attention to form so much before people get bored w your mfa games. #sorrynotsorry

There are so many beautiful sentences in In Memory of Memory and The Years. I keep wondering why it is so difficult to have beautiful sentences in stories lean more plot-heavy. And subtext, too. Ideas?

It is as if it brings some relief to share all those scraps from the past as I remember them, half-wryly, the transfers dirty and rubbed away a good twenty years even before the kitchen was redecorated, and only now reanimated, illuminated again - fat little boy in a sombrero and yellow-green

A “primitive, regressed” state built by NYC and Israel tbh. .

Thinking about Hanif Kureishi. Strange, dickensian character.

All of this because the genocidaires are the only constituents the dems will never betray. #democracy #us #maga

Marshall McLuhan believed that new media were creating “an overwhelming, destructive maelstrom” into which we were being drawn against our will.

A review on Sophie Lewis’ book Enemy Feminisms. TL, DR; maybe historicizing feminism in the way we historicize everything, centering Europe/US as the telos of human achievement is um hurting us. . —

I really hate the way ‘dominant’ has entered the lexicon via the MAGA takeover of USian culture. It’s connotations couldn’t be further from the true meaning of dominant. I hate it. #bdsm

The most relatable villain you’ve come across is ________. #writing #novels #booksky #literature #litsky #books #writer #reader #bookreaders #readerscommunity #filmsky #cinema #moviesky #movies

Ms. Rachel is incredible. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

I’ve been listening to the Boring History podcast on spotify to deal with insomnia and all I can say is the dreams have been troubling. #solutions

📕 #Booksky: What book changed the way you see the world? 📗 #poll

Were people not online during Biden’s admin?

State-sanctioned execution

😍

Jaime pushed the child’s words away, afraid of the dark the bus was rushing into, confused at being swallowed up so quickly by her new life, fearful she’d be digested in a flash and spit out the other end in the form of an old lady too dizzy to wonder where her youth had gone. —

People still crowded at the bus’s door, people she hoped never to meet - struggling with mutilated luggage and paper sacks that might have contained, the way they handled them, the reasons for their every regretful act and the justifications for their wounds. — from The Angels by Denis Johnson

Great article by Laleh Khalili on @Sethharp’s book #TheFortBraggCartel, from @LondonReview archive.ph/w2KO3#sel... #TheFortBraggCartel,#sel...#authoritarianism #democracy #elections #democratic #fascism #MAGA

US Public infrastructure: the school-to-prison pipeline, the military-to-prison pipeline, the rehab-to-prison pipeline, the foster-care-to-prison pipeline, the mental hospital-to-prison pipeline, to living in a car-to-prison pipeline, the immigration-to-prison pipeline. . What’d I miss? #democracy

Just breathtaking

It's probably a good idea to listen to the people who were saying "abolish ICE" ten years ago and pay attention to what dangers they're pointing out now and maybe get on board with that stuff too

Fact check: the dems actually created the concentration camps - obama pioneered family detention — so why would they represent, ever, an opposition to it? it has always been about a difference in style. substantively, when it comes to immigrants, the working poor, Black folks, trans people,

"When the Obama administration opened Dilley in 2014" "When the Obama administration opened Dilley in 2014" "When the Obama administration opened Dilley in 2014" "When the Obama administration opened Dilley in 2014" "When the Obama administration opened Dilley in 2014”

If love can’t be directed toward x, or y, since xy can’t receive it, where does it go? Is it like that picture of a room piled with clothes I remember from middle school to explain the 2nd law of thermodynamics? It’s nagging me. #booksky

6 years ago today, we started isolating. Anybody remember #covid? We all talk about the sirens, 24 hours like broken records in BK, but for me I remember more the aching feeling that it would spread to parts of the country without sirens. And we’d never hear a damn thing about it. #covid

Red Maga and its frenemies, Blue Maga

been reading Annie Ernaux’s The Years aloud to Someone Special - thanks to bsky for the rec. Breathtaking. I would say she and Reinaldo Arenas - The Color of Summer - have come closest to writing that feels like film absent the desperation you see in USians trying to “get into the industry.”

Imagine if the nimbys of smug blue state utopias were like, Yah no prisons in my country. . #deepthoughts

The feeling when someone you know has written something lifted verbatim from life, as if it were theirs to trademark and publicize like a fake new fact, the roundness of the earth, for instance, or that women think. Over it.

[continued . .] This milieu of nonpolitical (or slightly opposition-leaning) intellectuals was the environment that produced active dissenters. It also played an important role when Communism began to crumble in the late 1980s.

Disclaimer: NOT a fan of Vaclav Havel at all, but I found this excerpt interesting:

Reading about the history of North Korea and every five minutes, I’m all, Wtf did I just read. In the best & worst ways too. #communism

the worst insults in US politics: you’re intersex/she’s “a man”/you’re hamas

The ratio of reading to writing optimal for writing: 5:1. The ratio of reading to writing optimal for reading: 1:1. #writing #novels #booksky #literature #litsky #books #writer #reader #bookreaders #readerscommunity #poetry #poet

The shit I read to understand genre. Sigh. #deepthoughts

Nothing irrevocable had begun. On the ground in the vicinity of the tall pyre scores of candles flickered in the upturned halves of coconut husks.

Excerpt from #DenisJohnson’s Triumph Over the Grave:

ffs

Tbh the darkest USian expression: Thank you for your service.

Lou Sullivan was a visionary gay trans activist, writer, speaker, and organizer who advocated for the recognition of gay trans people.

One of the fascinating aspects of rightwing hysteria about #trans people is that it is a perfect projection of the right’s effort to manufacture a generation of reactionary, insecure, violent white cis men: 🧵 (1)

Excerpt from Hot Wax by M.L. Rio: Suzanne burned rubber like she could outrun all the baggage, the creates and cable trunks that crashed against the tailgate every time she lurched into a higher gear, clumsy with the stick shift after all these years.

WashPo was a real pinnacle of non-embedded, non-zionist news prior to Bezos.