A painting of me

Fight against the theft of your soul

   13 May 2025, late afternoon

There is an impulse in moments like this to appeal to self-interest. To say: These horrors you are allowing to happen, they will come to your doorstep one day; to repeat the famous phrase about who they came for first and who they’ll come for next. But this appeal cannot, in matter of fact, work. If the people well served by a system that condones such butchery ever truly believed the same butchery could one day be inflicted on them, they’d tear the system down tomorrow. And anyway, by the time such a thing happens, the rest of us will already be dead.

No, there is no terrible thing coming for you in some distant future, but know that a terrible thing is happening to you now. You are being asked to kill off a part of you that would otherwise scream in opposition to injustice. You are being asked to dismantle the machinery of a functioning conscience. Who cares if diplomatic expediency prefers you shrug away the sight of dismembered children? Who cares if great distance from the bloodstained middle allows obliviousness. Forget pity, forget even the dead if you must, but at least fight against the theft of your soul.

I finished reading One Day, Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This by Omar El Akkad last night. The book is incredible. I was reminded a lot of Aime Cesaire’s Discourse on Colonialism. The main difference is we are living through the events of Omar’s book. Omar uses death and destruction in Gaza to frame his scathing criticisms of the West. Things have gotten worse, not better in Gaza. The world watches, as it always seems to, as genocide unfolds once again. It’s refreshing to read someone speak clearly about what is happening, what your eyes and ears lay witness too, while politicians or the media tell you what you understand to be true is not. It is frustrating and depressing to see how cyclical everything seems to be. These are dark days.

Comment  

  • The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans by Jeffrey Goldberg. 

    I had very strong doubts that this text group was real, because I could not believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans. I also could not believe that the national security adviser to the president would be so reckless as to include the editor in chief of The Atlantic in such discussions with senior U.S. officials, up to and including the vice president.

    So, quite literally.

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  • It Is Now or It Is Never. 

    Rachel Cohen’s resignation letter from her law firm, who is capitulating the Trump, is a good read.

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  • Is it okay? 

    Making the case for large language models. This was a good read on a topic that often feels very polarized.

    If super science is a possibility — if, say, Claude 13 can help deliver cures to a host of diseases — then, you know what? Yes, it is okay, all of it. I’m not sure what kind of person could insist that the maintenance of a media status quo trumps the eradication of, say, most cancers. Couldn’t be me. Fine, wreck the arts as we know them. We’ll invent new ones.

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  • Soy Right ascendant. 

    Everything is so terrible it’s hard to point to a particular article that sums up the terrible neatly. This one looks at the sort of right wing we are dealing with at the moment: abject loser machines, I guess.

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  • A Coup is In Progress in America. 

    The reporting about what is going on in America right now seems to really underplay what is taking place. And I think talking about what is happening plainly makes you sound like a crazy person. If everything Trump, Musk, and friends were doing was happening in Afghanistan it would be framed completely differently.

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Aftersun

   19 January 2025, late morning

I’ve seen Aftersun twice now. The first time alone during my big break, the second time last night with Shima. The film is slow, sweet, and sad. The audience watches a father and daughter on a resort trip in Turkey. The film is also presented, in some ways, as the daughter rewatching video clips recorded during the holiday. And perhaps the whole film is her trying to piece together the time they spent together. The film feels authentic and real, almost documentary. Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio play their parts perfectly. I watched an interview where they didn’t give Corio the entire script, just her parts, so she would be have the same understanding of the holiday as the character. I’m being pretty coy writing about the movie because I think it’s one best enjoyed with no expectations. I love the end of the movie. In some ways the whole movie is a slow build up for the last few moments of the film. You should watch this.

Aftersun official trailer.

Comment  

Reservation Dogs

   12 January 2025, evening time

I’ve watched Reservation Dogs twice now. The first time was with Shima. We zoomed through the first two seasons, and watched the third and final season as it was actually airing. We watched it all again with Mythilli over the past few weeks. The show is incredible. I would happily watch it all again right now.

Reservation Dogs follows the antics of a group of friends living in a reservation in Oklahoma. Their friend has died the year prior. There is lots of sadness and tragedy that permeates this show that is so funny. I love to see television that’s so well executed. You can see the creators had a real vision for what they wanted to do, and then they actually managed to do it. I think in different hands, a show about children in a reservation could have just been a lot of misery porn. This show is hopeful, at its core. People persevere despite the obstacles placed before them.

The first two seasons are mostly focused on the kids, and the show feels like it could have ended with the second season. But then they come back and did a third season that somehow manages to be even stronger. The last three episodes of the series are some of my favourite television. I can’t recommend this show enough.

Comment  

  • Sports Celebrate Physical Variation—Until It Challenges Social Norms. 

    Our bodies are festivals of variation. And in sports, we celebrate those differences—until we don’t. In certain sports, people are much more skeptical and far less accepting of variations among women athletes. With all our uniqueness, it seems strange to me that we laud some anatomical variations and are so hostile towards others. What matters is not whether a particular variation is common or rare, but how we perceive it in terms of the societal categories we have made. And because of our perceptions, some athletes end up adored. Others are shamed for some of the very characteristics that could help make them great.

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