Erik Baker

at a certain point it becomes an abstract strategy game with a word theme

Thanks, Sara!

Really smart and thorough analysis of why Democrats get branded as elites and Republicans don’t.

👌💯‼️https://thebaffler.com/latest/one-elite-two-elites-red-elite-blue-elite-baker

once you go TERF, you never post normal again

The garden of our love was an oasis in a desert of unsatisfying relationships, watered by trust and flowering in the form of all the things we would do together. Merriam-Webster defines "commitment" as

The undergrads at the Crimson has consistently done a better job at investigating stories--big and small--than some of the legacy papers. Go college journalism.

As Summers Sought Clandestine Relationship With Woman He Called a Mentee, Epstein Was His ‘Wing Man’ | News | The Harvard Crimson When former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers was pursuing a romantic relationship with a woman he described as a mentee, he turned to a longtime associate for guidance: convicted sex offender…

When former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers was pursuing a romantic relationship with a woman he described as a mentee, he turned to a longtime associate for guidance: Jeffrey E. Epstein.

Dhruv T. Patel and Cam N. Srivastava report.

Yes, I heard countless stories during the years I spent organizing for union protections against harassment and discrimination. Some of my closest friends even sued the university over its failure to protect them!

Harvard disgraces itself every day it continues to bestow the "University Professor" title on Summers

Looking for a Job

oh man, Todd Snider. way too fucking young

open.spotify.com/track/5Kgoem...

Thanks so much, Claire, glad you enjoyed it!!

Escape Artists Romantasy at the End of the World

I have read a LOT of romantasy out of an intense and abiding fascination/need to understand What The Hell Is Going On With Women In My Age Group. This essay from @thedriftmag.com really nails it, without the sneering you usually find in litcrit on the genre.

www.thedriftmag.com/escape-artis...

Authors of romance are not alone in feeling excluded by the establishment. The astonishingly successful fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson, whose books have sold more than 45 million copies, once asked, on his blog, “why is fantasy and other genre fiction looked down on by the literary world?” He described having been rejected from MFA programs at “most of the top schools in writing,” some of which he claimed categorically did not accept genre fiction. “You can’t use their rules to define what makes good literature, folks,” Sanderson declared. The genres of “genre fiction” contain enormously popular books while still functioning as subcultures, suffering their slights and maintaining their intricate codes of membership. Conquest of the bestseller list is no salve for the critics’ withholding of their approval, their taste, whether or not there is a “their” there.

Actually burst out laughing at this.

Brando Sando...you're so close to getting why your writing keeps getting rejected...

Oh wow @reuters.com got the photo here:

We Should All Become The Joker

Escape Artists Romantasy at the End of the World

I love all my children equally, of course, but this is honestly one of my favorite pieces we've published in a long while. So funny, so insightful, and the definitive essay on romantasy. www.thedriftmag.com/escape-artis...

Escape Artists Romantasy at the End of the World

“The heroines of romantasy are flicked, nuzzled, ridden, throttled, bitten, pulled, plowed, hit, filled, soaked, and — here’s a Maas favorite — shattered.” Daniel Yadin examines the genre taking over American publishing in a new piece from Issue Sixteen.

www.thedriftmag.com/escape-artis...

Escape Artists Romantasy at the End of the World

I love all my children equally, of course, but this is honestly one of my favorite pieces we've published in a long while. So funny, so insightful, and the definitive essay on romantasy. www.thedriftmag.com/escape-artis...

Anna Karenina on LibriVox It's never a bad idea to listen to the more-than-35-hour audiobook of Anna Karenina, but the version put out by LibriVox, a platform where volunteer readers narrate works in the public domain, is especially fun. Chapters are read by different people, and the vastly different levels of competence on display lend a touching, amateurish quality to one of the greatest books ever written. Come for the novel's deft psychological portraits, stay for the global accents, the shameless name-dropping of several readers' personal websites, and the staggering variety of ways to pronounce "Karenina." S.C.C.

The Gulf of America's Google Profile The 7,066 reviews of this contentious body of muddy water once offered a glimpse into the minds of visitors unconcerned with its name. The *most relevant" posts were filled with child- hood snorkeling memories and vaguely spiritual musings; one satisfied customer wrote, "the Gulf has made us a part of her, and she IS a part of us." By contrast, a single-star review called the Gulf *'a constant disappointment... a thirty-year-old son who won't leave home." Earlier this spring, Google archived all but one of these comments, leaving the note: "Posting is currently turned off for this type of place." GEOGRAPHY P.A.

Autos FONT This typeface, which replaced Calibri as the default font for Microsoft 365 in late 2023, is supposed to be friendlier, more trustworthy, and better suited to high-resolution screens. But to my semiprofessional eye, it looks like a squashed version of its predecessor, as if someone dropped an anvil on all those humanist letterforms. (The characters are certainly wider; Aptos fits roughly thirty fewer words on a page.) The font's recent success coincides with a change in its name. Rechristened for a town in Northern California that appar- ently "epitomizes the font's versatility, Aptos follows in the footsteps of fellow name-changers Norma Jeane Mortenson, Ralph Lifshitz, and even the British royal family, who became the Windsors only after ditching "Saxe-Coburg and Gotha for being too German. "Too German" might also have been a problem for this typeface, formerly known as "Bierstadt." Z.G.

"Pod Save America" ads PODCASTING Presenter-read advertisements, the last vestige of amateur podcasting, offer a glimpse into a show's imagined audience. What can the selection of products hawked by former Obama aides teach us about the average liberal American male? That he wants to restore his gut lining by swilling cow colostrum in sungold apricot flavor, burn fat while lounging on his direct- to-consumer mattress in bamboo delicates, avoid hangovers that could impede productivity, eat chicory root inulin and tapioca starch cereal for dinner, and consume vegetables in powder form. J.A.

Once again had trouble narrowing down my four favorite mini-reviews in the latest issue of The Drift @thedriftmag.com

A Grotesque Deadlock Since the outbreak of war in Sudan in April 2023, nearly thirteen million people have been internally displaced and prices in Darfur have soared.

“The only durable response to Sudan’s famine lies with its own civilians, who must be empowered to resist the militarization of hunger,” Shahad Elfaki argues in a new Dispatch from Issue Sixteen.

www.thedriftmag.com/a-grotesque-...

Thank you!

Here's the end of the last proper chapter of my book lol

"Everybody is gonna be happy. They're gonna feel like entrepreneurs"

Lmaoooo

Tapping the @erikmbaker.bsky.social sign
www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978067...

Good Health Fiction

“The memory of my own voice would come back to me, the way I’d hurled it around: my father, my father, my father.”

Read Mimi Diamond’s Issue Sixteen story, online today:

www.thedriftmag.com/good-health/

race.undark.org

Day #1144, #1167, #1403 Fiction

You can read an excerpt of Book III in our most recent issue.

www.thedriftmag.com/day1144-1167...