This is true in so many ways. I made a similar point regarding Cash and N.W.A: "In the last verse, unrepentant to the end, he laments that he “can’t forget the day I shot that bad bitch down.” He regrets only getting caught. Whole piece here: tmcdermott.com/music/the-se...

Great overview of enshittification and how we got here from James Gleick: www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

I sat next to Wilkens at a game once and every time he opening his mouth something smart fell out. Including when he ordered nachos.

DeLong referencing Hayek? We're in deep shit.

My daughter works for this theater company, so y'all better start buying tickets. playbill.com/article/the-...

Love this tagline from the NYRB's review of the current Godot: "One last thing: I respect bold staging choices but if you’re going to do Waiting for Godot there really has to be a tree." www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...

I was fighting fascism with the power of love and kindness and just really getting my ass handed to me. proteanmag.com/2025/11/01/w...

🧵 This is trending on Korean socials

Excellent piece by Sam Adler-Bell: "We Americans love these stories for their psychic parsimony: They redeem the violence underpinning the social order while allowing us to remain, at once, tut-tutting bystanders to its cruelty and deliciously complicit in its excess. nymag.com/intelligence...

friends with large accounts, I'm not going to pester you personally but just generally speaking, I would sure appreciate a signal boost on this thing. We seem to have leveled out, and since this is a one-shot (won't be in bookstores) I'd like to get it out there as much as possible.

Fascinating piece on coffee as a stimulant: psyche.co/ideas/why-we...

Only in baseball would somebody say anything remotely like this from Tiger manager A.J. Hinch: "Some big emotional swings, and an absolute gut punch right to the face." www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/...

Please read this excellent essay: "The U.S. is drifting into an undeclared war of assassination across half a hemisphere, led by unaccountable officials who equate explosions with effectiveness."

It's useful to think of fascism as a form of "participatory anti-democracy." It's a populist movement that gets ordinary people fired up about being part of a world-historic movement that uses state power to punish perceived enemies & impose total order over perceived chaos. bsky.app/profile/seth...

Third Man has reissued Ben Edmonds’ book about the making of this masterpiece thirdmanrecords.com/products/wha...

I've writtten a lot about my father, Mac, over the years. Here. from a book about baseball, is my favorite passage: "He liked problems, which is not the same as saying he was great at solving them. He never lacked for an idea and he was not a man afraid of a difficult solution. off-speed.com

You can't imagine a version of Los Angeles without immigrants. It's a city of immigrants and has always been. It's people like this guy: tmcdermott.com/home/zero-do...

"What we’re witnessing isn’t just administrative incompetence — it’s the systematic replacement of expertise with ideology." 🧪

JFC

What a cool story and reminder that the Post Office is a service, not a business: www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

AI will solve all the world's problems. On the other hand: www.science.org/content/blog...

Excellent - and frightening - piece by Franklin Foer: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Vance on the NatSec party line

This new movie sounds charming: www.theatlantic.com/culture/arch...

SunTzu had lots of things right —and he mastered the art of brevity:

Must read: www.theatlantic.com/internationa...

I’m not really surprised by anything the admin has done, but I expected the vibes to be closer to “private equity stripping a company down for parts” rather than “meth head stripping the walls for scrap metal”

Excellent piece here on a concept new to me, national globalism, in The Atlantic www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Here's my dispatch from the other side of Guantanamo Bay -- the one with the prison and war court, not the migrant camp -- on last month's hearings in the 9/11 case. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/04/u...

From the wonderful Bruce MacKinnon! 🇨🇦 #cdnpoli #uspoli #tariffs

An attorney for the US government, arguing to delay action on plea deals for three men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks, actually uttered these words in court yesterday: "“We worry that the military court is ready to spring into action." The court began proceedings on this case in 2008.

Greed had become kindling - the brilliant Mark Arax in the NYT www.nytimes.com/2025/01/17/o...

Still stunned by a court censor's decision to black out a statute the Justice Department lawyers were citing as legal authority for their federal court appeal.

An exceptionally weird thing happened today at the Guantanamo war court, a place where weird things run wild. Attorneys representing the United States participated in a hearing the point of which was to make preparations for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) to plead guilty Friday.

Not that Google was ever good, but this cartoon is a good summary of now.

AI is such a perfect distillation of capitalism: a massive dedication of resources to make and maintain a product that no one needs, prompting companies to desperately try to create demand they can then supply, ultimately deteriorating our ability to think, create, or explore.

Great piece by Justin Taylor on the Dylan Archives in Tulsa. Taylor, btw, has wonderful novel out now - Reboot. www.bookforum.com/print/3102/t...

This being Black Friday, a little blatant self-promotion. I've written four books across a wide range of subjects. They all make excellent gifts. You can read about them at tmcdermott.com

For those who haven't followed the very twisted road at Guantanamo, a good summary here from Carol Rosenberg. Spoiler alert: It's very fucked up. Carol's NYT coverage and John Ryan's in the online magazine Lawdragon are essential reads; actually, the only reads. www.nytimes.com/2024/11/22/u...

This Horgan essay on Infinite Jest is fabulous: johnhorgan.org/cross-check/...

Breaking my social media fast to say that I'm part of this anthology, Disability Intimacy, coming spring 2024! Many thanks to editor @sfdirewolf.bsky.social for inviting me to contribute an essay. Excited to see @rokwon.bsky.social include it in her annual list of anticipated books by women of color

Only in LA would a fast food executive - a manager, not an owner - receive this excellent LAT obit by @DanielNMiller. On the other hand, double double! www.latimes.com/california/s...

Nice piece on 9/11 families: www.nytimes.com/2023/11/18/u...

How dumb am I? My two favorite professional sports teams are the Clippers and the Mariners. That's dumb. www.theviewlevel.com/p/the-marine...

Nice poiece here on 9/11 families: www.nytimes.com/2023/11/18/u...

The Guantanamoi trials bumble along. From Carol Rosenberg: www.nytimes.com/2023/11/17/u...

Only in LA would some fool set fire to a freeway. Good day for this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa7E...

From STAT: A USC scientist compares a failed and approved Alzheimer's drug and finds the drugs nearly identical efficacy. www.statnews.com/2023/11/16/b...