“A [Marsha] Blackburn spokesperson said she is against the public’s use of computer-assisted facial recognition to identify ICE officials but supports police use of the technology.” www.politico.com/news/2025/08...
Writing on books, movies, the arts: NYT Magazine, Baffler, Washington Post, Atlantic, Liberties, Commonweal, Mubi, Paris Review, Nation, etc. robjrub@gmail.com
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“A [Marsha] Blackburn spokesperson said she is against the public’s use of computer-assisted facial recognition to identify ICE officials but supports police use of the technology.” www.politico.com/news/2025/08...
Our city is currently led by Eric Adams and until June Cuomo had the best shot at succeeding him. Accepting a corrupt Dem establishment has brought the party to the place it is now, where it will sacrifice core constituencies to lose by less. We have clowns enough as-is.
It's minimal but by all accounts Sliwas is not a corrupt piece of shit, which makes him better than like 60-90% of NYC pols
Our times are dark not only because of the right's actions but because this evidently needs to be said to those who oppose it.
Reminder that unlawful deportation or forcible transfer of the population of occupied territory are grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Meaning all parties to the treaty—every country—are under an obligation to prosecute or extradite the perpetrators. Worth bearing in mind for Gaza.
More to come at the end of the month!
"Plenty of new TV novels, alas, betray a sincere admiration for television and the people who make it." www.nplusonemag.com/issue-50/rev...
Power pop just hits different when it's from the antipodes
Well we all know the answer to that
I believe this is in response to an ad where Cuomo shows "regular New Yorkers" the DSA platform
Though the real answer is that I put on a benefit show in my high school cafeteria headlined by Titus Andronicus within a month of the Monitor dropping
I apparently saw my friends open for the Wonder Years at a local Elk's Lodge but because they were one of 8 pop-punk bands on the bill that night I have no memory of it
Especially compared to like half the books on here...
NEW: CNN's now publicly released video analysis shows Israel's 'double-tap' attack on Nasser Hospital was, in fact, actually a triple-tap. They bombed the hospital, and then fired upon the rescue team and journalists with not one but two more shells.
Anyway: www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-QC...
Jane's Addiction can't be like Strauss, because Strauss is good
Neither of the Safdies are at NYFF this year either, which seems like a mistake considering they're both popular hometown boys
Yeah, it all is pretty stupid
NYFF either, though too be fair considering how many of us hated Poor Things it might be a smart move
Even if SSRIs are "contributing to violence" that violence would not be so deadly, so widespread, and so easy if Americans did not have such easy, cheap, and legal access to these tools of death. Yet we will never deal with them. Never! We have completely surrendered the future.
In a very real sense, all this shit—the new age body-purity physical fitness fixation—is both a cover and an outlet for the very real, very serious problems that harm us all (guns! cars! private health care!) whose solutions we have completely surrendered. We all know things won't get better.
Americana victorious
The ghoulish fixation on preexisting conditions and starving children in Gaza is bizarre. In all modern conflicts the death toll is measured in excess deaths. This is something I wrote about Congo's civil war almost 20 years ago:
It was a Sunday afternoon and Kill Bill was sold out
Okay Eric Adams
Okay I guess I can see why this new logo is controversial
On top of everything else, this is such loser shit
Let's be real: there isn't body armor fat enough for trump
The music certainly got better
We are all getting sent to the gulag by this guy
Not sure I buy a room full of Gen Z fans would be overjoyed that their favorite pop star played one song and then turned the stage over to a band that broke up 20 years ago
New Algernon...new Good Luck...the Obama years are back baby
Truly: if only
A late summer update on the substack open.substack.com/pub/robertru...
Will you eat the forbidden head cheese Quinn
Remarkably, Frampton imbued the two little mosaic angels with striking emotive detail. Perhaps owing to Frampton’s stained glass background, the rich ruby red wings of the angels are rather reminiscent of those on the angels in a typical Burne-Jones window. 6/7
Please read this
"Listen, we're not on a studio set. We're not on the backlot at Sony. We're in New York City, and it's going to feel like it." for @defector.com, i talked to the team behind @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social's campaign videos to learn their secrets (see: a lot of sincerity; and a dash of Tim & Eric)
Really great piece, Corey.
beyond the moral ghoulish ness I just don't understand the basic contention of how this is supposed to work as a defense. if a whole population of people was starving en masse, would one expect people with "pre-existing conditions" to be over or underrepresented amongst those who die first?
This looks like head cheese
I reviewed the quietly profound Stone Yard Devotional for @commonweal.bsky.social www.commonwealmagazine.org/charlotte-wo...
I am congenitally resistant to conspiracy thinking, but this really does feel like a eugenic plot. There is some dark, pseudo-Darwinian thinking on the right that equates illness with moral unfitness, and prefers that the weak die, indeed demands that they be culled. Truly a death cult.
Morning and Evening also a good intro to his experiments with simultaneity. FWIW Shining is probably my least favorite of his books thus far.
I don't think the government in that movie is working at all! It's full of self-seekers, bumblers, and narcissists, and they basically defeat godzilla by accident
Published a new old short story over on the substack: open.substack.com/pub/robertru...
“The studies imply that estimated life expectancy [in Gaza has fallen by more than 35 years, to half the pre-war figure. In percentage terms…bigger than…during China’s Great Leap Forward; in absolute terms it is similar to the one in the Rwanda genocide”
those damned outdoor pigs can't keep getting away with this
Trump talked to Andrew Cuomo about the mayor's race. Completely disqualifying that Cuomo would even take the call, even worse that his allies want Trump involved www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/n...
"The notion that we are powerless, that there is nothing that we can do, is an admission of pessimism that the powerful in Israel would love to encourage. If there is nothing that can be done to stop them, then there is no limit to what Israel can do."
"The deliberate policy of the Israeli government is to flood the world with so many crimes that it becomes almost impossible to hold on to any one for any length of time." jacksheehan.substack.com/p/all-for-pa...
Unbelievably condescending and contemptuous of its audience
Still think I did a good job here www.gawkerarchives.com/culture/dont...
A little Devils too, at least in that opening description. I also think she wants to be a 'cool' Verhoeven, a disastrous combo
This sounds like Ken Russell without the camp
And of course my audience cracked open at "she had a bottom that would make a toilet beg for the brown"
"I was furious about the Janet Jackson Super Bowl" "That was 20 years ago!" "Not to me"
"Did you get that?"
Every time I remember the Black Eyed Peas and Buffy TiVo bits I smile
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s visions of Hell: defector.com/kiyoshi-kuro...
The full list of all 18,500 children killed in Gaza, in video form. www.washingtonpost.com/world/intera...
Or are you too...scared?
Was more channeling your voice here
Wrote about some movies that scare me defector.com/kiyoshi-kuro...
According to this list you can also go to Pittsburgh
Many thanks, Tony! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Philly strangely not on the list, perhaps that will change cloudthefilm.com/buy-tickets
Can confirm you can still pay a sketchy NFT site to watch it, can also confirm it still rocks and rolls. Also not sure where you are, Matt, but I believe Cloud is opening in a good number of cities soon, probably the widest release Kurosawa has ever gotten in the USA
read @robrubsam.bsky.social on the “deadpan insanity” of Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Yeah, do it!
As ever, thanks man
As ever all praise to @brandyjensen.bsky.social
Wrote about some movies that scare me defector.com/kiyoshi-kuro...
Standing up for the smallest of minorities is important because when you accept the premise that one group are expendable because small or ‘insignificant’, you have accepted the idea of the expendability of human life in general, and the enemy will use your acquiescence to pick off yet more.
This movie has such a weird fakey look. Like my eyes recognize that's Austin Butler jumping on a pool table in a bar but for some reason I don't believe it
"its core is the kettle logic that’s at the center of all Holocaust denial: “It didn’t happen. But they deserved it.” So, there’s no genocide, but there are also no innocent people in Gaza, so who cares what happens to them anyway?" www.unpopularfront.news/p/eyeless-in...
Lovers in the Waves by Edvard Munch, 1896 #artbots #guggenheim https://botfrens.com/collections/212/contents/137366
“The worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip,” the world’s leading hunger monitor said in its strongest warning yet on the rapidly growing starvation crisis.
As always this is very kind, thank you Corey! You should read this one, it's a very good time whatever my hesitations.
Aguilar is a retired Green Beret lieutenant colonel and West Point graduate who started his career as an infantry platoon leader in Mosul with the 172nd Stryker Brigade in 2005-6, joined SF in 2008, was in 3rd SF Group as of 2015, and in 2017 competed for Best Ranger as a USASOC major.
In case this link has a paywall, have a gift link: wapo.st/3Uw8ws9
Reviewed a novel I greatly liked but did not ultimately love from a ferociously talented writer: wapo.st/3Uw8ws9
"Shelter in a detention environment" for those experiencing concentration into a camp.
there's this bedrock assumption among a lot of people that everyone believes in the same ideals (such as free speech), we just have different ideas of what they mean this is manifestly untrue, these people believe they have the absolute right to control what everyone else says
"French President Emmanuel Macron announced Thursday that France will recognize Palestine as a state, amid snowballing global anger over people starving in Gaza." stunning. apnews.com/article/fran...
Harrowing lead story and image on the Washington Post homepage right now. www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/0...
Now that's a cover
"there is no nation that feeds its enemies" Except for those nations who actually fulfill with their legal duties under Article 55 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/24/w...
It's time en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twe...
A gruesome bookend to the post-Cold War period. Images of skeletal children spurred the administration of George H. W. Bush to deploy troops to Somalia to allow aid delivery. Now the US government is aiding and abetting the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza by enabling Israel’s military campaign.
I wrote about songwriters and storytellers for @defector.com defector.com/craig-finn-c...
