Subscribe to ORB! It is cool and interesting and local (in the not annoying way) if you become a member and ever run into me IRL you can be like, “hey, I subscribe to ORB and I enjoy it” and I can be like, “me too!”

"The existence of aquatic “cryptids,” creatures unrecognized by mainstream science, requires a cloudy body of water to suspend our disbelief. Without this opacity, legends of these creatures would eventually go extinct..." www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org/theres-a-mon...

Our subscription drive is making progress! We added 25 new Founding Members in the last 24 hours, 1/10 of the way to our goal of 250! Only 142 to go!

It was also about the loss of Black power in Oakland, and how "Oakland" has come to represent "a place that was going to become something but didn’t."

"Freaky Tales" deserved better than to have been unwatched and forgotten. It was about Oakland in the 1980s, sort of, but it was also about the U.S. in the 2020s and the simple necessity of fucking up Nazis.

We have so many good ones! Here are ten: 'Who Made Caitlin Clark a Good White Girl?' @tcraggs22.bsky.social flaminghydra.com/who-made-caitlin-clark-a-good-white-girl/ 'Taking What Comes' @parkermolloy.com flaminghydra.com/taking-what-comes/ 1/

six months to the day after my charges were dismissed, the Department of Justice was granted yet another extension to file their appeal of that dismissal. https://timburkelegalfund.org/

"In the end there is no response to the fact of inequality, because to a man of humanity that fact is—in the word we all most associate with Shawn—inconceivable."

On "Squad Assembles" movies in general, which are secretly about full employment, and on "Sinners" in particular, which moves the Squad Assembles movie to Jim Crow Clarksdale and does something radical with the genre in the process.

Hard agree. It also feels like a good time to re-up Aaron Bady's incisive essay on Sinners for the @oaklandreviewofbooks.org. www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org/sinners-one-...

"I don’t think the NBA really cares... If the WNBA vanished, I don’t think Adam Silver would lose any sleep over that. If the NBA vanished, I think Adam Silver would crawl into a ball & cry himself to sleep." @wagesofwins.bsky.social is the expert WNBA economist that ESPN *won't* tell you about:

People said they wanted more culture pieces on Bsky, right? For COYOTE, I interviewed the @oaklandreviewofbooks.org and @meganwachspress.bsky.social for a behind-the-scenes account of how Megan's 7,000-word feature (!) on coal in Oakland came to be—a phenomenal work of longform journalism.

"Oakland is west of Bay Area and Palo Alto,." is an instant classic in my group chats.

I just subscribed to the @oaklandreviewofbooks.org — and you can, too! It’s new(ish). It’s (a) collective. It’s place-based. And Alysa Liu would want you to subscribe, I’m sure of it. www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org

Was not counting on being moved by any "Infinite Jest"-at-30 essays. And but then @pauline2k.bsky.social performed a tour de force of reparative reading. This is so lovely! www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org/infinity-plu...

This, from @meganwachspress.bsky.social, is so good. Starts off as an explainer picking apart a dumb NYT story about Oakland and winds up reimagining the very idea of a city in the dying days of the coal economy.

Just got in at the highest tier. They truly are doing things no one else is and it is glorious. LFG!

So, a quick note on Oakland Review of Books, or ORB: a handful of us are working to will it into existence, and--aside from a big boost to get started from our friends at @ebbooksellers.bsky.social--it's a self-funded operation whose goal is to exist and enable writing like this.

You might enjoy my little essay on Greatness in Art in the age of AI, AKA, "Sinners is Great, actually, but greatness doesn't exist, also." www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org/sinners-one-...

"'Sinners' is also, itself, a metadiscourse about Ryan Coogler’s journey through Hollywood. It’s a movie about making 'Fruitvale Station,' 'Creed,' and 'Black Panther'—a pretty stunning unbroken string of excellence—and then waking up one day to find himself making 'Wakanda Forever.'"

I wrote about prediction markets, where we’re at and how we got here for Defector

I have a piece today in Defector making the case for "more training" for ICE agents. A *lot* more training. defector.com/i-have-a-gre...

Thought this was a really smart, sobering piece from @tcraggs22.bsky.social. "Nostalgia for some older, bolder time is useless. Journalistic bravery is structurally produced. Cowardice, too."

"If Weiss is exceptional, it's only in her knack for making a spectacle of the sort of things that slicker operators in media say and do all the time without causing too much of a fuss." @tcraggs22.bsky.social on Bari Weiss and all the Bari Weisses: defector.com/bari-weiss-i...

There are Bari Weisses everywhere for those with the eyes to see defector.com/bari-weiss-i...

I foresee a lot of people writing "the transformation/moderation of Marjorie Taylor Greene" takes this year who'll forget that's she's arguably the most ubiquitous anti-semite in American life at the moment

MTG on the Epstein scandal—"elites doing horrible things and getting away with it"—may have an egalitarian air about it, but only if you fail to read it alongside the rest of her conspiracism. She's talking about the Jews. She's always talking about the Jews. flaminghydra.com/marjorie-tay...

TODAY: @tcraggs22.bsky.social on the various ways to read Marjorie Taylor Greene’s recent political transformation. “Alternatively, you could choose not to shove your head into your ass. She is talking about the Jews. She has always been talking about the Jews.” flaminghydra.com/marjorie-tay...

We launched Oakland Review of Books in 2025, starting with an events calendar and vibe reports and, as we've gone on, more and more blogs and reviews and even a few full-on bangers. (And The Oakland syllabus!) We've actually done a lot. But 2026 is going to be The Year of ORB!

#Oakland please reshare! ICE spotted near schools. Can you come stand in solidarity to protect our neighbors?

Ouch. www.wired.com/story/ai-pr-...

Nice piece of writing. Love the shout out to David Noble’s 1984 classic, Forces of Production: “Men behaving like machines paved the way for machines without men.” And this observation from @tcraggs22.bsky.social is exquisite: “The computer has never been innocent of the world that made it.”

I talked about "Kpop Demon Hunters," the Eighth Army's occupation of Korea & the origins of Kpop, the only person more driven by resentment than Michael Jordan (my mom), rooting for pretty (again), and the greatest natural athlete the world has ever known (Kim Jong-Il)

Riding my hobbyhorse into the sunset, via @redford.bsky.social's rad new podcast: Sports conspiracy theories are how fans do structural analysis.

🥲 I have a new piece out today with ORB! Would love for you to read it. Truly a labor of care on everyone’s part & I’m grateful for that & the insistence that off kilter, slightly dark work Around Books fits & is in fact, the point. ORB forever! Messy girls with mental health challenges forever!!

"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: