This is why Isaac Chotiner gets treated like Socrates for asking basic follow-up questions
Newsletter: Welcome to Hell World www.welcometohellworld.com Books: We Had It Coming (Fall 2025) https://orbooks.com/catalog/we-had-it-coming/ A Creature Wanting Form (2023) www.orbooks.com/catalog/a-creature-wanting-form
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This is why Isaac Chotiner gets treated like Socrates for asking basic follow-up questions
Platner: No one cares that you pretend to be remorseful as you sell out to lobbyists. Symbolic opposition does not reopen hospitals. Weak condemnations do not bring back Roe V Wade. Maine deserves better than Susan Collins.
I also wrote about more of my R.E.M. favorites for @lukeoneil47.bsky.social’s Welcome to Hell World in 2023 www.welcometohellworld.com/the-greatest...
hold on a minute
Jerry Nadler ends his remarkable career, conceding that his brand of politics on the Middle East is over. “I don’t know what to say at this point,” he said. “I can’t defend what Israel is doing.” www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/n...
I have posts going about Trump and Belichick's near future chances right now so wasn't sure what these were in response to at first
I'm as sick of this dude's bullshit as anyone else -- 6 rings though baby!! -- but it would be pretty funny to see him pull off one last Belicheat for the road.
This is a great read and got me into REM. Nightswimming makes it onto a few people's lists!: www.welcometohellworld.com/the-greatest...
I’m a cheeky little stinker mate. I am a wee little stinker mate.
I've got a leather jacket on
Can any one do one normal post ever?
I was talking about Belichick losing 60-6 tonight
I want it to happen just as much as anyone else. Not in a looking for secret clues dem-anon way but in a much cooler guy way to be clear.
What am I looking at here? What's the implication?
I am aware that many people in prison would prefer to go outside and work for a nickel an hour instead of rotting in a box all day but that doesn’t mean the working for a nickel should be applauded it means the rotting in a box should be eliminated.
At the beach earlier I got knocked over by a huge wave and hit my head hard on the rocks then got held under by the riptide for 4 minutes straight without oxygen to my brain. Now what's this I hear about there being Republicans who are pro-labor that the left should find common cause with?
I've wondered what happened to that turd for like twenty years. www.welcometohellworld.com/this-is-disg...
That’s baseball to me
Certain media types hate this place because, while they of course also get treated like shit on twitter, only like 1% of people on twitter even know who the fuck they are. But on here every single user knows them and despises them
I've wondered what happened to that turd for like twenty years. www.welcometohellworld.com/this-is-disg...
What if they not letting Trump speak because he had a Reverse Fetterman Stroke and hes woke now
Everyone likes to say that they have no idea what Michael Stipe is singing half of the time and especially so on the early records but that collaborative tension is and always has been part of the process of becoming an R.E.M. fan I believe. www.welcometohellworld.com/the-greatest...
Update: he’s still in-and-out, but the doctors say he’s stable. Woke up for a little bit & drank some water. We haven’t been able to communicate with him much, due to the pain meds. Letting him rest for now. The nurse just came back in, will follow up tmrw. Thanks for your prayers and kind words. ❤️
i think you know the difference between an open source non-profit and a venture capital backed platform that promotes nazis
So we agree that Kamala and all the other Democrats suck too. 🤝
Yeah like I said we both agree it should be illegal to run for president
It should be illegal for anyone to run for president besides the person I like I agree.
Are the things mentioned in question good and something you want politicians to do?
Ghost is exactly the same and you will save so much money dude.
Damn hope they’re ok
Oh wow hope she’s ok
I do not give a shit about Jill Stein but is literally any Democrat doing a single one of these things? Is Kamala?
There’s a great exchange in The Grapes Of Wrath where a farmer who’s been kicked off his land by a bank meets the guy getting paid peanuts to take it over. The guy is mewling like “well somebody was gonna do it if I didn’t!” and Steinbeck has such a beautiful, visceral, disdain for the character
You gotta get off Twitter bud
Someone slamming into you in NH on those death wish two lane no light 55 mph “highways” is certainly plausible however.
They’re calling it the most believable story ever told
fwiw my piece on leaving substack from april 22. It's gotten so much worse since then. www.welcometohellworld.com/i-gotta-get-...
Cool stuff!
"Benny Johnson is one of the web’s deeply original writers, as is clear from his body of work." —Ben Smith www.politico.com/blogs/media/...
When the waters of Hurricane Katrina began to rise many of the deputies guarding the inmates in Orleans Parish Prison abandoned their posts. Not before taking extra cautionary steps like handcuffing the prison cells shut. https://welcometohellworld.com/the-fascism-in-us-all/
It won’t solve every problem when it happens? Ok but it will solve a real big one.
This snippet is possibly the funniest thing I’ve ever read, no hyperbole
An international incident
Every year around this time I think I should try getting into college football then I can't figure out where the good games are on TV and say fuck it.
Don Jr. runs up to him unsure of what to do and all he can think of is to shake his father’s hand because that’s the only way they’ve ever touched and his hand is very cold. www.welcometohellworld.com/the-very-mom...
I can
Please read my interview with Luke O’Neil!! I asked him about typewriters and lefty trauma over the death of the sanders movement. Also this post is FREE for EVERYONE so you don’t have to signup or wait until September! www.typebarmagazine.com/2025/08/29/o...
"83.3% of LLM users were unable to quote even one sentence from the essay they had just written"
Here's a story about lowering a flag bsky.app/profile/luke...
Mhm mhm yep: "Those of us on the barricades of the news cycle I think sometimes delude and flatter ourselves that by paying vigilant witness we’re performing some necessary function." www.welcometohellworld.com/i-wont-ask-f...
🤷♂️
Don Jr. runs up to him unsure of what to do and all he can think of is to shake his father’s hand because that’s the only way they’ve ever touched and his hand is very cold. www.welcometohellworld.com/the-very-mom...
Maybe it’s a good omen
indeed
What a completely odd movie. It seems like bad pastiche but it is taking so many weird and confident swings. The number of choices made in making this. The music alone is so specific. Hm.
Just thinking about politics www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2je...
I wrote about how an enormous pile of wood chips has helped me get into sync with my new neighborhood, as inspired by the incredible Ruth Stout. “Like Stout, I believe that backyard gardening provides a canvas where we can share in (real) abundance, built up through care, community, and compost.” ❤️
What movie should we watch thank you.
Why do I pay for a subscription to something that often makes me cry when I read it? Does feeling not-so-alone in despair make the despair any better?
Living in America is like waking up in the supermarket from the Mist every morning. What new horrific bloodsucker at the window is this?
[Holding my "it's too close to the election to criticize any dems" card behind my back] If you want to criticize Newsom you can do it in the primary.
TODAY: @markyarm.bsky.social talks with @karenattiah.bsky.social about her Resistance Summer School program, and about what's going on at Columbia: "This is not an environment conducive to academic freedom at all, particularly if you’re a marginalized professor." flaminghydra.com/issue-384/#a...
If you are okay with this, if you think this is justified, if you think people living on the street have brought this upon themselves, if you think this is good leadership, you may be able to fool yourself that you care about others but you don’t fool me
Ma’am you have besmirched my integrity as a content creator.
I didn’t take it badly! I get you
I think so?
For @flaminghydra.com I talked to @jessesword.com, a lexicographer and, full disclosure, my friend, about the perfect word "clankers" and the extremely imperfect story that's being told about where it came from: flaminghydra.com/clank-clank/
Living in America is like waking up in the supermarket from the Mist every morning. What new horrific bloodsucker at the window is this?
FREE: Typebar Magazine's editor @wolfbridge.bsky.social interviewed @lukeoneil47.bsky.social about civilizational decline, the world's still-flickering beauty, and his new fiction collection www.typebarmagazine.com/2025/08/29/o...
There’s a poem about this that we all share every time. Every other month. Well it's a lovely enough poem that one poem but who gives a shit? What does it change? What can a poem do? I’m afraid the poets are on a very bad losing streak. They’re going to have to rewrite the record books.
This story has it all: aquaculture, Black Flag, Bernie Sanders, Star Trek as policy, John Hodgman, male tears, and a candidate citing Luthen’s monologue from Andor. Meet Graham Platner, the Maine oysterman trying to crack the senate. @grahamformaine.bsky.social newrepublic.com/article/1996...
Offering Ashli Babbitt a military funeral and revoking Secret Service detail for Kamala Harris in the same day feels pretty auspicious. apnews.com/article/ashl... www.nbcnews.com/politics/whi...
"I became a hater by doing precisely those things AI cannot do: reading and understanding human language; thinking and reasoning about ideas; considering the meaning of my words and their context; loving people, making art, living in my body with its flaws and feelings and life."
Thrilled to talk to Luke about DBD for Welcome to Hell World, revealing how Mads and I wrote these stories, discussing the art of opening and closing lines, and reckoning with humanity’s fate. Also, order Luke’s own forthcoming book, We Had It Coming—it’s a superlative collection of hard-edged gems.
This is admittedly a very funny post for Facebook to congratulate and reward me for sharing
by the way I'm only about 10 minutes into this Massachusetts Genre "murder show the likes of which they have on Netflix nowadays" ass show and I'm not sure it isn't gonna be awful. I like seeing P-Town and bars I've been to on camera though!
Have the brain of a dog like all our customers? Well then look at this asshole.
It actually just occurred to me he almost got the last guy killed
No one likes to think about the monarch, may he long live, dying. But he will, by the way, and probably sooner than later. And I just so happen to have been training to take his spot.
RIP Walgreens. You were often closer by than other stores.
"I used to teach the short story to college students, and they all seemed to think the last line should tie up everything in a big satin bow with the moral attached like a gift tag...But for me, the best short fiction works through discomfort. A reader shouldn’t know what it all means at the end."
Today I chat with @milesklee.bsky.social and @spookymeatball.bsky.social and about their gut-punching, romantic, horrific and funny new collection Double Black Diamond, the short story in general, how their collaboration process worked, and whether or not the world is indeed fucked.
Well she's a TV star on a fictional show and she's very racist and she had to Yoko a band, but it's uhhhhh the 2000s and it's ironic uhh
Mommy Kangaroo, Mommy Kangaroo, Separate the races, Mommy Kangaroo
Thank you I am still the best music writer in the world despite not doing it anymore. www.stereogum.com/2098672/deft...
www.stereogum.com/2320813/the-...
That’s sweet and thank you
Also today a short story by me. They all must delight in this kind of thing. They plural. The gun people. I wonder if they see anything beautiful in a bullet’s trajectory. How far they can fly. Killing people they weren't even aimed at. www.welcometohellworld.com/a-hole-in-th...
“The inability of art to capture the realism of the present anymore” - I swear it’s this, not my own personal inadequacies, that’s to blame for my struggle to write the kind of songs I want to be writing right now. Worth a read.
"I used to teach the short story to college students, and they all seemed to think the last line should tie up everything in a big satin bow with the moral attached like a gift tag...But for me, the best short fiction works through discomfort. A reader shouldn’t know what it all means at the end."
Haven't seen too many of Friedland's videos but am I right in thinking this is kind of rare sincerity here? And for good reason of course.
No matter how many times they come right out and say that Palestinians don't count this is still tough to watch.
🚨Border Patrol arrested two firefighters who were actively fighting a wildfire at the time. When the other members of the crew asked for a chance to say goodbye, a Border Patrol agent told the crew member “you need to get the f*ck out of here. I’m going to make you leave.”
Also today a short story by me. They all must delight in this kind of thing. They plural. The gun people. I wonder if they see anything beautiful in a bullet’s trajectory. How far they can fly. Killing people they weren't even aimed at. www.welcometohellworld.com/a-hole-in-th...
Today I chat with @milesklee.bsky.social and @spookymeatball.bsky.social and about their gut-punching, romantic, horrific and funny new collection Double Black Diamond, the short story in general, how their collaboration process worked, and whether or not the world is indeed fucked.
yeah it's quite good
Sadly no you ?