I wrote about reading Moby Dick aloud to a baby during the sad, hot summer of 2020.

TODAY: MOBY DICK WEEK BEGINS! with @benehrenreich.bsky.social. “I hoped that something of it would seep into her eager, fast-growing brain even if she didn’t understand or remember it, not the plot or any details, but something of Melville’s hunger for the world” flaminghydra.com/r/f7698fd3?m...

AND LASTLY: our NEWS ON FIRE roundup, today featuring @mariabustillos.com, @raxkingisdead.bsky.social and @benehrenreich.bsky.social flaminghydra.com/r/1caee83c?m...

ALSO: Subscribers, please don't miss our new NEWS ON FIRE feature in your email newsletter! With short news writeups brought to you today by @parkermolloy.com, @davidjroth.bsky.social and @benehrenreich.bsky.social, featuring the immortal phrase "The execution was somehow worse than the concept."

If you’ve read my reporting from Palestine you’ve almost certainly read about the people of Umm al Khair. Last week the Israeli military issued demolition orders that would erase the entire village.

Italian dock workers have done more to stop the genocide that almost ANY GOVERNMENT IN THE WORLD.

This is a brilliant (and very funny) piece of satire from @benehrenreich.bsky.social in the must-read @flaminghydra.com:

The United Nations employee who sabotaged the escalator and made our President pant and groan up the stairs like a dying badger should be severely chided!

For now it counts as satire… My latest in @flaminghydra.com: “Transcript of Official Testimony Before the House Anti-Anti-Fascist Committee” flaminghydra.com/anti-anti-fa...

Can’t help but remember interviews with many ICE detainees who told me that Tylenol was the only medicine prisoners were ever given, no matter the illness, no matter if they were dying.

TODAY: @benehrenreich.bsky.social has the transcripts of a future Congressional hearing. “ That’s right, Mr. Congressman. It was a Cracker Barrel. Wherever you find Cracker Barrel you will find Antifa personnel. It’s because of the Country Boy Breakfast.” flaminghydra.com/anti-anti-fa...

Threatening to get someone fired because you don’t like something they said is actually sniveling, cowardly, and pathetic.

No better way to honor a fallen free speech warrior than with an immediate crackdown on free speech.

I never hated myself enough to look at Charlie Kirk’s X feed but wow, it is 100 percent racist garbage to the very last minute.

Imagine saying “political violence is antithetical to America” again and again and nonetheless believing that words have some relation to events in the world.

Fellow Hydra @swordsjew.bsky.social is extremely good in today’s @flaminghydra.com flaminghydra.com/issue-371/#g...

TODAY: @benehrenreich.bsky.social considers the pigeon. “I don’t mean to presume, but I am suggesting that what you fear and despise about pigeons does not belong to them but to you. To us. Please direct your revulsion towards its proper object.” flaminghydra.com/r/334fd657?m...

Awdah published this piece last week. He was killed yesterday. “Our children ask us why this is happening, but we have no answers.” www.972mag.com/umm-al-khair...

The settler in this video shot and killed Awdah Hathaleen today in the West Bank village of Umm al Khair. I last saw Awdah in November. He was a teacher and an activist who struggled courageously for his people. He should have lived a lot longer.

When Rwandan politicians and propagandists were convicted and sentenced by an international tribunal for their roles in the genocide there I don’t remember anyone blathering about “big tents.” Just saying.

Great that more people are making noise but weird that so many who are not okay with famine were cool with mass slaughter.

Just finished Anne De Marcken’s It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over and cannot get over how excruciating and perfect a novel it was. Thank you @annedemarcken.com

The red-baiting and Islamophobic attacks on Zohran Mamdani by the Dem establishment and corporate media make it excessively clear that repressive, anti-democratic, fascistic tendencies are not just a Republican problem.

If this round is over, let it be remembered that even while under heavy missile fire from Iran, Israeli forces did not cease baiting the Palestinians they have been starving with food aid and then massacring them day after day after day.

Israeli massacres of starving Palestinians lined up for food have become a daily occurrence, the ghoulish humanitarian face of genocide.

“Do I not have the right to exist?” shouts man as he slaughters his neighbors by the dozen.

Eid and Awdah al-Hathaleen, both from the West Bank village of Umm al-Khair, flew into San Francisco yesterday at the invitation of a local synagogue. Both had valid visas but were told on arrival that their visas had been revoked and that they would be immediately deported. 1/

Great piece by @melissagiragrant.com: “For Bass, it seemed, the problem was not that the LAPD was violently policing those protesting ICE raids; the problem was Trump’s calling in the National Guard to do the same thing.” newrepublic.com/article/1963...

Probably worth noting that so far this week it has been local police (LAPD and county sheriffs) that have been assaulting journalists, brutalizing protesters, and repressing dissent without any help from Trump or the military.

Nearly 200 people arrested in downtown LA today alone. Help with bail if you can:

Anyone know of a bail fund for LA protesters that can be shared?

Thank you, Mr. President, but LAPD is quite capable of brutalizing the population on its own.

In LA as in Palestine, if you are worried by “violent protest” but can’t get worked up over the everyday outrages of state violence your subservience is showing.

Risking life and freedom to fight a cruel regime is in fact commendable.

Kids in LA showing more courage and integrity than the entirety of the Democratic Party so far.

You are so beautiful, L.A. www.latimes.com/california/s...

Love you, L.A.

“It is better to be hunted with your friends than to hunt with the enemy.” Lovely parable

I’m proud to be able to share this piece, written by my grandfather more than 75 years ago and published for the first time in @flaminghydra.com flaminghydra.com/the-fox-that...

Imagine waiting 600 days to bravely tell the world a genocide is a genocide.

Excruciating letter from Jonathan Pollak to a friend dying of starvation in an Israeli prison. www.haaretz.com/opinion/2025...

In our May issue: @benehrenreich.bsky.social reports from the West Bank; Maddy Crowell on conspiracy theories; Geoff Dyer on his mother’s birthmark; Emily Harnett on the first millennial saint; Audrey Wollen on Shulamith Firestone; @kunktation.bsky.social on Capital. harpers.org/archive/2025...

Late last year, @Harpers sent me to the West Bank to report on the state of the nonviolent resistance movement. Nothing I had seen over more than a decade of reporting there prepared me for the levels of fear and devastation I encountered. harpers.org/archive/2025...

Thanks, Maria. New piece in @flaminghydra.com, finished just in time.

sharp, fierce brilliance from @benehrenreich.bsky.social, read every word!

This is very good: “The plain fact is that our discourse about antisemitism is broken, divorced from reality, at once pedantic and illogical, a vehicle for smallness, moral narcissism, and confusion. Or else, perhaps, it is working exactly as designed.” nymag.com/intelligence...

This whole piece by @benehrenreich.bsky.social is so excellent that it is difficult to find a single excerpt to share that would do it justice in its entirety. And a relevant extension— www.thenation.com/article/poli...