Marla Lepore

Harold and Maude is a movie that speaks specifically to its time, but which I mean any time between 1971 and forever. Rest In Peace, Bud Cort.

Another London, by Hari Kunzru Excavating the disenchanted city

If you want a break from snow or ICE, I have a #longread in the current @harpers.bsky.social about a mystical drift through London. Includes Blake, Hawksmoor, the Sex Pistols, Derek Jarman, John Dee and conversations with Alan Moore and Iain Sinclair harpers.org/archive/2026...

a list of journalism job openings for Posties & anyone looking Turns out that Twitter is still good for something...

handy round-up of journalism job openings shared on the other place

open.substack.com/pub/deezlink...

Gerrymandered-to-hell territory

Elon Musk’s Nashville Tunneling Venture Has the Mayor Hoping No One Dies The Boring Co. is about to embark on its most ambitious tunneling project yet, but critics worry the company is woefully underprepared.

"Home said Davis’s description of limestone’s properties and the challenge of tunneling through rock of varying hardness was divorced from reality. Boring’s public assertions about how tunneling machines work in conditions like Nashville’s are 'definitely not true,' he said." ah details

"cowardly, plain and simple."

Five classes you took in college

Early Modern Family in Europe
Shakespeare's Histories and Comedies
Introduction to Opera
Introduction to Astronomy (barely went, regretted that later!)
English Lit Seminar - Icelandic sagas!

The only other Marla I was aware of as a child. Love that she kept working in reservations at United Airlines for the first couple of years, just in case!

'Batman' blasts Bay Area city council over ICE's involvement in Super Bowl "I'm f—king demanding that you act with some semblance of a f—king spine."

Another one

The Two-Sentence Outline that Defines the Form: An Interview with George Saunders  - The Rumpus “Usually, I try to make things as brief as I can (my model is one of those wind-up toys and I wind it up and drop it on the floor and it races right under the couch. The end). But with this, and with ...

I found some weird hope in this realization, too (re: the Sy Hersh Netflix doc): "we are not some perfect country that has recently fallen from grace ... forever, certain people have been trying to drag the whole shebang into the light. That—those people, with a hope of something better—is real."

Where to find warming locations in Nashville In a rare move signaling the major impact of the winter storm, Metro has opened cold weather warming locations across Nashville.   The Nashville Fire

UPDATE: Nashville adds transportation service to reach warming centers.
wpln.org/post/where-t...

MR WRONG: That's the way it is. Indignity Vol. 6, No. 4

The News Is Bad but Also the News the News Is on Is Bad www.indignity.net/mr-wrong-thats-the-way-it-is/

Fortunate man / Despairing diversion Jonathan M. Katz on journalistic ambition, and meme master Tom Tomorrow

Fame, the hunger for knowledge, the desire to shape history, to see the truth and to tell the truth: the dimensions of ambition are vast and contradictory

If you're a journalist and/or read journalism: @katz.theracket.news at @flaminghydra.com. So good.

Free to read:
flaminghydra.com/issue-481/

YouTube video by Richard Hell & The Voidoids - Topic Blank Generation (2017 Remaster Audio) (Remastered)

#MusicChallenge
#70sTop30

13. Eventually more of a novelist/poet/essayist than a musician, but gave us some classics, none more so than this.

youtu.be/v9FkQLjOSZ8?...

The one musician Iggy Pop called "the light of my life" Iggy Pop was operating on his own frequency throughout the 1970s. That was until he met one musician who became somewhat of a brother.

"David [Bowie]'s friendship was the light of my life. I never met such a brilliant person. He was the best there is.” 🖤

faroutmagazine.co.uk/musician-igg...?

I know - I need to tackle that too.

I love a "difficult" book, and I feel like I have to take this on ... eventually. I did love DeWitt's "The English Understand Wool," but I still don't know what I think about "Lightning Rods."

The Benefits of Reading a ‘Hard’ Book The true pleasure of literature can be found in bizarre, demanding works such as Your Name Here, by Helen DeWitt and Ilya Gridneff.

I’m ringing in the new year at @theatlantic.com with a big essay on the value of a challenging book, my yearly reading resolutions, and Helen Dewitt’s long-awaited Your Name Here www.theatlantic.com/books/2026/0...

Same

“You should know that there is little you can seek in this world, that there is no need for you to be so greedy, in the end all you can achieve are memories, hazy, intangible, dreamlike memories which are impossible to articulate. When you try to relate them, there are only sentences, the dregs left from the filter of linguistic structures.” ― Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain

“You should know that there is little you can seek in this world, that there is no need for you to be so greedy, in the end all you can achieve are memories, hazy, intangible, dreamlike memories which are impossible to articulate...” - Nobel prize winner Gao Xingjian, born on this day

Blackeyed peas and greens

Blackeyed peas and greens. If nothing else, 2026 started off with good eatin'

Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot, and Other Observations

Brigitte Bardot's 30 years of sympathy for the far right Convicted five times for racist remarks, the actress – whose foundation announced her death on Sunday, December 28 – remained one of the only French celebrities to openly embrace far-right views.

Will be interesting to see who lionizes the five times convicted for inciting racial hatred Bardot. But hey, she loved animals.
www.lemonde.fr/en/obituarie...

Goodtime Jesus Jesus got up one day a little later than usual.

I love that donkey

James Tate - Goodtime Jesus #poetry

Sharing that googled Wikipedia page for the skeptics

I think people ought to know that we're anti-fascist, we're anti-violence, we're anti-racist and we're pro-creative. We're against ignorance. Joe Strummer

Joe Strummer 🖤

Ginger cat chilling in the sun

Ginger cat with her belly in the sun between the shadows

Emmylou Hairy always finds the sun (or the slices of sun). #cats

It's an unsettling doll leg lying in a pile of leaves. Looks way more realistic than one would prefer.

For the past several weeks, every time I've taken Lucy for a walk, we've had to pass this unsettling doll leg.

Also, Unsettling Doll Leg is the name of my new band

This life gives you nothing Your attention is all you have. Wasting it is annihilating. Blackbird Spyplane saves literacy in a monumental Year-End Essay.

A terrific essay. I still don't think I'm ready for Proust, but it's inspired me to put down the phone in the morning and pick back up where I left off in Anthony Powell's monumental "A Dance to the Music of Time."

The Kennedy Center, a Living Memorial to JFK, Is Renamed After Donald Trump White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed the Kennedy Center board had unanimously voted to rename the living memorial for President John F. Kennedy after sitting President Donald Trump

Once again appreciating People's refusal to sugarcoat things: “The Kennedy Center, a living memorial for murdered President John F. Kennedy ... opened as an interactive memorial for the late president, per Public Law 88-260, which explains why no other memorials are permitted within the center.”