Twenty-Five Things You Can Call a Concentration Camp Other Than “Concentration Camp”

Pity the middling white ego. Noticing nothing but oppression as far as the eye can see. Having its drive back from the Hamptons interrupted by marching Black people, hearing people speak Spanish at the grocery store, encountering homeless people in broad daylight who refuse to decrease the surplus population. Oppression is positively everywhere for this poor, disgruntled … Continue reading Twenty-Five Things You Can Call a Concentration Camp Other Than “Concentration Camp” →

Havana Notes

It is early afternoon in Havana, and someone hands us a small flier. It reads: We are a collective of artists that come together every night at a small, dark and decadent underground hideaway. It also happens to be the best dance floor in the city. Looking for something with a little more edge than La Bodeguita … Continue reading Havana Notes →

Of Unfinished Revolutions

Here’s a series of questions for my “fellow” Americans. Answer honestly. Do you really need to know what Prince Harry and Meghan Markle named their son? Should you even give a blue shit? Is the fact that you have twelve years to stop your city from sinking underwater in any way impacted by the naming … Continue reading Of Unfinished Revolutions →

Potemkin Village Lifestyles

“In her world, this is what her social circle did... Everyone's life was perfectly curated for social media. People were fake. People were phoney. And money was made on hype alone.” So says the defense attorney for Anna Sorokin – aka Anna Delvey. Sorokin was convicted last month of what amounts to one big scam of New … Continue reading Potemkin Village Lifestyles →

Here In the Empire

Poway, California. The final day of Passover. According to one eight-year-old child in attendance, the shooter aimed for the kids first. The rabbi was shot through the hand, losing his index finger, and reports say that at first he attempted to continue speaking from the front. A member of the congregation, sixty-year-old Lori Gilbert Kaye, … Continue reading Here In the Empire →

Civilization Never Happened

I. There is a truly noxious moment in Kenneth Clark’s 1969 BBC documentary series Civilisation. The art historian, knight, and life-peer stands across the Seine from Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral and ponders the meaning of the series title. “What is civilization?” he asks before peering over his shoulder. “I don’t know, but I think I can recognize it when I see … Continue reading Civilization Never Happened →

Class Struggle and the Limits of the Liberal Imagination

Shutting Down the Shutdown It looks like Trump is ending the government shutdown without getting his precious wall. Good. There are immigrant families and government workers breathing a sigh of relief right now. Which says a lot regarding a real and material common interest. It’s a temporary victory, for sure, but a victory. That being … Continue reading Class Struggle and the Limits of the Liberal Imagination →

Dérive 1: Lighthouse Realty Associates

Los Angeles is a city that should not exist. No desert was meant to hold an urban hub of this size. As its fifteen year (we may as well call it permanent) state of drought confirms, it is a non-location, a place that that manages to weirdly persist due to simple inertia over sustainability. The … Continue reading Dérive 1: Lighthouse Realty Associates →

Space Madness

Donald Trump wants The Expanse to be real. If there were ever a president who could watch a show about a solar system constantly at war with itself and miss the entire point, it is this man. Picture it: Trump, late at night, holed up in the President's Bedroom. Crumpled Big Mac wrappers litter the foot of … Continue reading Space Madness →

Ode to an Ancient Shark

The world’s longest-living vertebrate. Older than Shakespeare they said. (Initially…) Can we say she has a memory? What lives inside her instincts? What imprints and echoes? “The Arctic as we know it” is over. Soon it will be ice free. The permafrost becomes impermanent. Waters warm. Gasses trapped inside glaciers escape into the atmosphere and the process … Continue reading Ode to an Ancient Shark →