Xander Lenc

Give Jane Fonda a gundam.

Please mister secretary don't do UC Berkeley next

War meme culture feels so different from traditional war humor, not just Kilroy-style silliness but the dark humor too. There's this absence of real solidarity, sadism is always present but usually it had an egalitarian quality to it. The memes just see war through the eyes of war profiteers.

If I ever post a finger-wagging lecture about the need for "empathy for the Department of War" please shoot me, because that means I am already dead and a skinwalker named Sam Altman has taken my place.

Not gonna lie, such enormously broad generalizations about weather in a country as large and meteorologically heterogeneous as the United States makes it a little hard to take you seriously.

Mural of Alysa Liu holding her gold medal with the words Shoutout Oakland in the green and yellow Oakland colors

Shoutout Oakland!

Hands off Iran, hands off Venezuela, hands off Cuba, hands off Palestine, hands off Yemen, hands off Greenland, hands off Canada, hands off Minnesota, hands off Nigeria.

The U.S. isn't seeking regime change because anti-regime protests in the country were failing, but because they seemed too close to succeeding. Trump knows that a truly free Iran poses a serious risk to American empire. The goal is cut off off that possibility and establish a Shah2.0 puppet regime.

I see the 7th George W. Bush administration is going well.

The insistent media narrative that Trumpism represented a decisive break with neoconservative warmongering is one of the biggest and most craven failures of mainstream journalism over the past decade.

John McCain is grinning ear to ear down in hell right now.

Hi I'm legendary performance artist Chris Burden and this is Jackass.

You absolutely do not need to say sorry when disagreeing with John "Torture Memos" Yoo.

Series Category Page

Apparently it's actually University of Wales Press? Not quite sure how this works, maybe Chicago is just a distributor.
www.uwp.co.uk/series/categ...

Tempting, ngl

Cover of "introducing the Medieval Ass" by Kathryn L Smithies." A beautiful medieval painting of a riparian landscape. In the foreground, a man rides a donkey on a bridge over the river.

Oh shit dawg it's a SERIES.

A book cover. The title is Introducing the Medieval Snail. The author is Julia Pineau. There is a medieval painting of three people in various medieval attire attacking a giant smiling snail on a tree stump in front of a castle.

This book comes out from U of Chicago Press later this year.

The book description reads "Fills a gap in medieval studies by exploring the significance of the snail."

The first chapter title is "What is a snail? A slippery scope."

I love medievalists.

Do you have any idea what might this might be about? They've apparently been pushing on police-related policy a lot. Even giving a lot of money for OPD specifically.

Her name is Sarah Yoell and she also seemingly spiked a city resolution supporting a statewide search for alternatives to for-profit utilities.

Oakland’s most influential lobbyists 70% of lobbying in the city last year was done by just 10 people. Here’s what they did.

One of the biggest surprises here is that the lobbyist that got city council to change their ban on high-speed police chases was working for... PG&E.
oaklandside.org/2026/02/23/o...

Niche opinion but nobody should apologize for cross-posting to multiple relevant specialty group email lists before conferences. Until we have a better system, that's literally their primary function, and apologizing just makes others more shy about posting.

I might need to change my answer to Babe. A nearly flawless film, George Miller was at the peak of his craft.

Boring choice, but Days of Heaven.

This is how I feel about about people who say they're dating AIs. If they are genuinely in love, shouldn't they be furious that their lover is the legal property of Sam Altman?

Alysa Liu‘s gold medal portends a Coogler ‘Sinners’ Oscar sweep, after which caretaker mayor Barbara Lee unleashes full Maoism to an eager populace as Oakland CA becomes the vanguard of the Woke 3 cultural revolution

Mea culpa

Oakland Review of Books ORBital. absORBent. fORBearance. motORBus.

Avenge me by reading oaklandreviewofbooks.org and following @oaklandreviewofbooks.org

Sorry I can't come to your cool event in Oakland today, I have to stay home and work on an Oakland events calendar.

I worry that they can't be exterminated short of a massive cultural overhaul because they provided the core grammar of all modern conspiracy theories.

I have to keep at least three Oakland neighborhood maps open when I work on the ORB calendar. At this point it takes me longer than any other part of writing calendar copy.