"Oakland is west of Bay Area and Palo Alto,." is an instant classic in my group chats.
05.03.2026 23:39
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"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...
Text from the above-linked story that reads: Still, it may be that the idea of “bankruptcy” contains more radical possibilities. Not in its legal form, not in the way it’s currently made available, and managed, in a capitalist system. But what is bankruptcy other than a legalized process of breaking contracts, canceling debts, and reorganizing obligations? If a bankrupt entity is dissolved, its debts are paid in an order set by law (or are not paid, to those at the bottom of that list); if it is reorganized, the debtor and creditors must renegotiate their terms, eventually producing a plan, a means of restoring itself to financial function, which a judge will, or will not, approve. You have to squint a little to see it, but bankruptcy subjugates private agreements to public values, either as expressed in bankruptcy law (the priority of claims) or in the public space of the courtroom. In practice, bankruptcy allows capital to do precisely that which the law, thus far, has not allowed Oakland to do.
More text from the above-linked story that reads: What could Oakland do if it declared bankruptcy on the coal economy, on its own terms? This would not be a municipal bankruptcy, not a courtroom proceeding in which the city shifts its obligations around, takes the bond rating hit, accepts that it will pay more for the money it needs to build schools and parks in the future, and pivots back to economic development at all costs. The city could reorganize as a place, first and foremost, where people live (and breathe), give up on the compulsion to redevelop the port, again and again, stop feeling the need to make use of its place on the Pacific circuit, and might begin, instead, with what people, here, need. Unlike Peabody, which can use bankruptcy to cut off any possibility of recompense for its past harms, Oakland might instead take the opportunity to recognize what it owes to Black residents of West Oakland for the asthma, the heart attacks, the dust, the noise, all the smells that were absorbed so that the port could run; Oakland might add that to the ledger of what must be paid to break the bonds of obligation to fossil capital.
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!
Bay Resistance Alert: ICE/DHS was observed present today *near* Hoover elementary in Oakland (please note that they did not attempt to enter any school) There is a request for a solidarity presence from schools during school pick up hours. Harriet Tubman preschool, 800 33rd street early dismissal Picket 11am- 11:45 Hoover Elementary 890 Brockhurst street entrance Picket 12:30 - 2pm YMCA preschool 3265 market Picket 2pm - 5pm
#Oakland please reshare!
ICE spotted near schools. Can you come stand in solidarity to protect our neighbors?
You have a knack
Gonna take the bait here and point out that the gap between athletes taking stuff to perform better and athletes accepting money to perform worse is so wide that you could roll Mark McGwire lengthwise through it.
What people were actually witnessing as they watched a particular product get worse—enshittify, to use Cory Doctorow’s coinage—was not the slow approach of some inexorable fate, as many believed. It was, as the tech writer put it to me, “evidence of a company doing very well by being very bad.” A lot of sharp people still don’t see it, in part because of a faith, not yet exhausted, in some kind of self-correcting market mechanism: A costly and degraded product would be punished somehow. It simply had to be. Forget generative AI. That faith is the biggest bubble of all.
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.”
A very 1980s tableau in which a little kid in a Superman shirt is standing on the lawn of a small house he could never dream of affording as an adult, next to a woman in a cream-colored knee-length dress, belted with cap sleeves, who will never tire of asking him when he's finally going to write a book. They appear happy.
The mom in question:
Full podcast is here! pod.link/1055903427/e...
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)
Regardless of how you feel about the above takes, do subscribe to the podcast. It's from @redford.bsky.social and @alexlaughs.bsky.social and @defector.com, and they make cool things: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/o...
Also, I got to talk about the early-aughts Sacramento Kings and my iron rule of sports fandom: always root for pretty.
Riding my hobbyhorse into the sunset, via @redford.bsky.social's rad new podcast: Sports conspiracy theories are how fans do structural analysis.