Eric Z.

Portland’s ‘War Zone’ Is Like Burning Man for the Terminally Online There’s more absurdity than menace on the city’s streets—at least for now.

Isaac Stanley-Becker traveled to Portland and spent time at the demonstration that Donald Trump wants to crush. What he found is an atmosphere that is more like a carnival than combat. Fox substitutes images from 2020 for what is happening, because actual images can't be reconciled with their claims

Yeah, exactly, same here. Before that I wasn't sure if the absurdism/grotesque would be our kind of fun, but now I'm totally ready.

László Krasznahorkai New Directions was founded in 1936, when James Laughlin (1914–1997), then a twenty-two-year-old Harvard sophomore, issued the first of the New Directions anthologies.

Looks like New Directions has published some, but I haven't seen 'em: www.ndbooks.com/author/laszl...

More.

www.instagram.com/reel/DPmLROm...

When you ask the new Nobel Prize in Literature winner where a new reader should start: www.theguardian.com/books/2025/o...

“An endless cycle of nonsensical conversation between characters who seemed trapped in their own madness.”

Nailed it.

Not an irrational concern.

Fact check: No one is chanting "Death to ICE officers" or anything like that. There is a carnival atmosphere. And Fox is maintaining editorial rigor in insuring that their viewers don't actually get to see it. This is what fascism looks like.

Congrats to Craig Taborn for being a MacArthur Fellow this year: perfect example of someone doing noncommercial and groundbreaking music who can keep doing it more easily with this funding. www.macfound.org/programs/awa...

486,000 people live full-time in an RV in 2025, more than twice as many as in 2021, per NBC.

Donald Trump Truth Social Post: Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers! Governor Pritzker also.

I will not back down.

Trump is now calling for the arrest of elected representatives checking his power.

What else is left on the path to full-blown authoritarianism?

I’m letting myself reread Against the Day as a treat in advance of the new one and I cannot stress enough that this right here is the mud I want to live and be buried in, sorry in advance for how annoying I’m about to become

Ugh, got this too late, but following for future ones!

You’re telling me there’s a documentary about Scorsese that came out this year and a movie called “Marty Supreme” that came out this year and they’re not the same movie?

It appears that the federal agents occupying Portland have people embedded with them charged with the task of producing stories presenting the government’s version of events. Ironically, this was the sort of work JD Vance did in Iraq before he decided he was against that war.

this is a very very big story because of the apparently totally fake story ICE/DHS put out about what happened.

Trump Canceled 94 Million Pounds of Food Aid. Here’s What Never Arrived. ProPublica obtained records from the Department of Agriculture that detail the millions of pounds of food, down to the number of eggs, that never reached food banks because of the administration’s cut...

27 million pounds of chicken

2 million gallons of milk

67 million eggs

That’s how much food grown by American farmers never made it to hungry families because of the administration’s decision to cancel deliveries to food banks.

projects.propublica.org/trump-food-c...

Tracy Letts on his new family drama, conspiracy wildfires and why he deletes all of his work The writer and actor, who returns to the London stage with ‘Mary Page Marlowe’, believes ‘plays are better than movies and movies are better than TV’

“I just turned 60! I’m not a bad boy! If my concerns were the same as they were when I was 25, wouldn’t that be weird?“ www.ft.com/content/6434...

“We’re going to keep our reckless adventurism here in America”

Playing Ice Cube’s “Ghetto Burd” over here in Southeast

Not long ago, the difference between journaling digitally or online and writing with ink and paper was a matter of convenience and having a present audience, but now pen and paper seems more prudent, even with relatively innocuous loggings of the day.

Opinion | If We’re in an Armed Conflict, Americans Deserve to Know More About It

Hennigan's points are all completely obvious. If we had a functioning Congress following the Madisonian concept, hearings would now be held to ferret out the factual basis and intelligence which predicates Trump's actions, and Congress would vote to grant or deny authority for Trump's war-making.

Clear desire to use the US military against Americans for authoritarian theater.

“82nd is like our top tier [quick reaction force] for abroad. So it will cause a lot of headlines,” he added. ‘Probably why he wants potus to tell him to do it.’”

It’s a reality show. Always has been. Not about enforcing the law but violent statecraft.

What Does Leonardo DiCaprio Want Now? How do you get the actor talking? Put him in a room with Paul Thomas Anderson. During hours of conversation, two era-defining men—on the record together for the first time—went deep. They cracked some...

“I always liked the structure of Les Misérables. You have a wild and crazy first act, and then you settle into the story, and you must pick up the pieces of the wreckage or you must reckon with the choices you made in the first act. This is a very good structure.” www.esquire.com/entertainmen...

Rural healthcare is even more fucked because who do you think serves these areas?

i hate when people think they have profound advice for an artist and it's just "don't release an album every year." flood the block, i don't give a fuck, people were releasing three LPs a year in the '60s.

The Tapes - The Trap [Italy / SynthWave - Experimental] (1983)

The Tapes - The Trap [Italy / SynthWave - Experimental] (1983)
https://redd.it/ina3h0
https://youtu.be/NEyYyuHtE4I

Chicago & Minneapolis, playing two shows this month:

Sunday 10/19 at Bryant Lake Bowl (Twin Cities) with 10 Items or Fewer (trio) @10orfewer.bsky.social

Wednesday 10/22 at The Hideout (Chicago) with Shredded Sun and Leigh Stein

That's that!

YouTube video by Assaf Kintzer The Black Tower (John Smith, 1987)

Finally made it to the weekly Church of Film at @cstpdx.bsky.social, and it was five surreal shorts from the 60s/70s80s, including this one with a cinematic language all its own: m.youtube.com/watch?v=k8so...