"The Oakland Review of Books is coming!" it says on our website, and if you haven't noticed, we've started publishing ever-so-slightly-more ambitious things as we ramp up towards really cutting loose. If you'd like to follow along, for the low price of $0 (American), you can get it in your inbox:

There's an excellent crank theory that insists we're playing a lot of old music at least twice as fast as was originally intended, and I wrote about it (and about the collapse of the Western order) for Defector's music week: defector.com/are-we-playi...

Good time to revisit @tcraggs22.bsky.social on this very topic at @flaminghydra.com flaminghydra.com/who-made-cai...

This is truly wonderful. It's about Sinners, yes, but it's about this moment, the power of the squad. www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org/all-hands-si...

in this week's newsletter, a plea for robin d.g. kelley to write about sinners maxread.substack.com/p/who-are-th...

As the world burns, a few of us are making an Oakland Review of Books. We don’t have money, but why not? We’re moving slowly. We're trying not to break things. But we’re trying to imagine: what if Oakland were enough and we cared enough to look? www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org

TODAY: @tcraggs22.bsky.social on the Squads Assemble school of cinema, and the social context that makes them so seductive. "They are a dream of everyone fits somewhere, costarring Ludacris." flaminghydra.com/r/442ea64e?m...

Like all movies in the Squad Assembles genre, "Sinners" is a film about full employment. flaminghydra.com/issue-338/#a...

Even more ashamed than usual of the alma mater. You can support Steven here: forms.gle/Rn9Rmq5fQUhq...

There's wisdom in Super Bowl conspiracy theories if you know where to look: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Gotta read @tcraggs22.bsky.social on Super Bowl conspiracy theories: "Just the other day, the comedian Bill Burr went on The Rich Eisen Show and started talking like Hal Holbrook in a parking garage." www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

In re the social death of trans people being reckoned a "distraction" from meat-and-potatoes economic issues:

Try free sample pieces!! from Flaming Hydra members incl. @jawnita.bsky.social @lesbrains.bsky.social @davidjroth.bsky.social @tcraggs22.bsky.social @annamerlan.bsky.social @anamariecox.bsky.social @hamiltonnolan.bsky.social @katzonearth.bsky.social flaminghydra.com/free/

This from Max Read is the best post-mortem I've seen. It's less that there's a YouTube or TikTok mind virus and more that the hegemony of precarity--whether macho hustle culture or back-to-the-land tradwifery--is native to it. The feed makes a small businessman of us all. The traditional fash base.

This, by Samantha Michaels, is excellent on Oakland politics in particular and on the politics of "crime wave" moral panic in general: oaklandside.org/2024/11/05/s...

Here's something I wrote in 2020 about punditry's idpol contras that I don't recommend reading so much as printing out on absorbent paper, ripping into pieces, wadding up, moistening with saliva, inserting into a straw, and shooting at Jeremy Peters's computer www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

This is about fighting in the NBA, but it’s also about democratic self-governance flaminghydra.com/issue-191/

TODAY: Violence, crackpots and the history of brawling in the NBA, by @tcraggs22.bsky.social flaminghydra.com/r/d210058c?m...

Caitlin Clark has become the medium in which class, which is to say race, which is to say gender, is felt and fought over in the WNBA. defector.com/who-made-cai...

I tried to explain why sports media in the gambling era just kinda sucks www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

worth the price of admission just for the receipts on 90s basketball media ("the young Black son of an NBA player was toddling onto the cover of Sports Illustrated beneath the question, 'WHERE’S DADDY?,'”) flaminghydra.com/who-made-cai...

Caitlin Clark is the modality in which class gets lived in the WNBA flaminghydra.com/issue-110/

My friend asked me about god for his newsletter, and I answered about communism. healings.substack.com/p/the-healin...

It sure is, by Tommy Craggs @tcraggs22.bsky.social

Nwanevu / Craggs double bill alert flaminghydra.com/issue-66/

Lots of unpaywalled pieces in this, a lovely sampling

Flaming Hydra has a paywall, but the wall is very low. $3/mo gets you my nonsense plus stuff from Dave Roth and Tommy Craggs and Osita Nwanevu and Amy Chu and a bunch of other talented folks. Writing for this pub is cool; reading it has been really, really enjoyable. I urge you to subscribe.

We could reframe the martyrdom of Aaron Bushnell, from @tcraggs22.bsky.social: flaminghydra.com/fires-in-rows/

"a self-immolation in South Korea immediately enters into an infrastructure of meaningful death..and [is] thus prevented from succumbing to the pious obscurantism that has characterized the official response here in the US to Aaron Bushnell's political martyrdom." flaminghydra.com/issue-28/

Newsroom culture wars are class wars: flaminghydra.com/media-proles/ (no longer paywalled, but you should subscribe anyway)

Free Flaming Hydra posts, for those wondering what is this fiery beast @tcraggs22.bsky.social on MEDIA PROLES flaminghydra.com/media-proles/ @modernistwitch.bsky.social on work-life imbalance flaminghydra.com/love-work/ k.e. harloe's interview with Barbara Smith flaminghydra.com/a-talk-with-...

in FLAMING HYDRA @tcraggs22.bsky.social the Shaft @lauriewoolever.bsky.social Tapas Trevor Alixopulos: ?? @ositanwanevu.bsky.social Oppenheimer @annamerlan.bsky.social Polyamory Ben Ehrenreich: War Arwa Mahdawi: Dumb Moves @davidjroth.bsky.social Desert @kimkelly.bsky.social Metal flaminghydra.com

I wrote about a couple pricks and the proletarianization of media for @flaminghydra.bsky.social, a cool new thing you should subscribe to: flaminghydra.com/issue-4/

Amazing new FLAMING HYDRAS to announce today @jwherrman.bsky.social @tcraggs22.bsky.social @katzonearth.bsky.social [bring on the sal volatile, I am gonna faint clean away] sign up to read this crazy new thing at flaminghydra.com