George Yatchisin

Finally have written my review of John Darnielle's magnificent book and you can read it over at the California Review of Books. #themountaingoats #californiareviewofbooks calirb.com/this-year-36...

"The Peace President."

world-altering decisions are being made by a cabal of gambling addicts hell bent on self enrichment no matter the cost to humanity, we should look into that.

Updated:

For Trump, a military conflict with Iran would distract from:

-Epstein files
-His deadly deportation agenda
-Losing on tariffs at SCOTUS
-Tanking polls
-His devastating (and unpopular) budget bill
-Millions of people protesting his authoritarianism

When he's cornered, he lashes out. Be warned.

screenshot of a tv user guide, showing two channels under Tue 8PM: MSNOW - State of the union TCM East- Gaslight

Masterful Troll, TCM.

always bears repeating that this is NOT a financial decision. jeff bezos is worth over 250 billion dollars. he can afford to lose many millions and never even notice it. this is, at its core, a political and personal decision by bezos to destroy the post

hindsight is 20/20 but maybe selecting university presidents on their willingness to debase themselves for private donor money is related to the current difficulties in defending academia from fascism

Mitch "Turtle" McConnell Deserves
Most Of The Blame......

ICE are paid agitators.

There are a hundred more important things to say, and I tried to say some of them in my essay for "Thinking About...", but: invading a country for oil is also just atavistic at this point. Even if it worked, which it won’t, it still wouldn’t work.

We're going to need a bigger Hague.

Trump administration to dismantle key climate research center in Colorado Gov. Jared Polis warns that breaking up Boulder’s NCAR puts "public safety at risk."

In case you needed one more reason to loathe Russ Vought, the director of the White House’s office and management budget is dismantling a center praised as a “crown jewel” of climate research.

Stick through it to the very insightful end.

When they say Trump calling a reporter "piggy" is "just being honest," they are revealing a key feature of the reactionary mind: it believes, at a deep brainstem level, that *everyone* is awful & selfish & ugly on the inside. Everyone just suppresses it out of fear of social disapproval. Not Trump!

According to Fox News, if you are a racist Young Republican you are still a "kid" when you are 34, but if you are an Epstein victim, you are an adult when you're 15.

The Hounding by Xenobe Purvis Holt Review by George Yatchisin Xenobe Purvis can write spooky, but then there are all sorts of haunts, aren’t there? Her debut novel The Hounding, set during the 18th-century in Little Nettlebed …

My latest essay for California Review of Books is Halloween-time appropriate, a spooky tale about sisters in 18th century England who just might turn into dogs.... (Plus, sighthounds on the cover--how could I resist!) calirb.com/the-hounding...

The fact that most media types still live on Elon Musk's fascist-promoting Twitter platform and thus fail to understand just how much of an extremist Kirk was. Post-Musk Twitter is a bubble which showcases and promotes the most extreme voices imaginable which, in turn, gives the media a warped sense of what constitutes normal political and social discourse. It causes them to overreport and underreport a lot of things under the mistaken belief that the online stew in which they marinate is real life and the people who marinate there alongside them are normal and common; Despite Kirk's extremism, a lot of people in journalism and punditry engage in a professional tribalism which causes them to identify with other people who also spend too much time on social media, who do podcasts, and who show up in cable news green rooms alongside them. On some level they saw Kirk as one of their own even though he was, actually, involved in a completely different sort of project than legitimate journalists or pundits are. It's a more extreme version of what I've observed in sports media over the past 20 years or so in which reporters will almost always overlook the faults of a "fellow scribe" because, above everything else, they belong in the same club. It's an object example of failing to understand that we are what we pretend to be; and

Basic fear. The media's reticence to label Kirk an extremist has made it jarringly clear how afraid the media is of the people in power who share Kirk's extremist beliefs. How afraid of they are of drawing the ire of Trump, Vance, Loomer, Libs of TikTok, and the rest. Reporters and commentators are censoring themselves and are otherwise acting obsequiously so they aren't denied access, won't get sued, won't get fired, won't have their employer's broadcast licenses suspended or investigated, and won't have mobs turned on them. At first this might have been done in response to actual criticism, hostility, or active pushback from those in power, but it has quite obviously become an internalized fear that has dissuaded them from speaking criticially, let alone condemning, racism, misogyny, homophobia, antisemitism and the like. This may be the most significant and the most disturbing explanation of such behavior given the implications it has for democracy and free expression.

As I write in my newsletter today, there are several reasons why the media is utterly failing in its coverage of Charlie Kirk. These are the big three, however. www.cupofcoffeenews.com/cup-of-coffe...

I was given the great honor to guest edit the new issue of ANACAPA REVIEW! Check out these terrific poems. anacapareview.com

Ah, the writer’s life. Happy to learn that artistic endeavors were rewarded on St. George’s Day, though.

Same with this

Good thing he does, as the Dems in Congress sure don’t.

It's been a crazy run of acceptances for me lately, so here's another just published poem. Thanks to Jackdaw Review for including "Duplex for the Days of Dusk" in your new issue. www.jackdawpress.com

Podcast One project I’ve begun as Santa Barbara Poet Laureate, 2025-2027, is Poetry Pick to Click, a weekly podcast that originally airs on KCSB-FM (in Summer 2025 somewhere around 6:20 pm on Tuesdays). Each ...

Welcome to my Poet Laureate project Poetry Pick to Click, a weekly podcast that airs on KCSB-FM (in Summer 2025 around 6:20 pm on Tuesdays). Now I have the first 8 segments posted on my website Podcast page. Go and listen up, because we need poetry more than ever. georgeyatchisin.com/podcast/

A few thoughts on Trump nationalize state nat guard in LA talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/break...

Thanks for publishing my poem.

Thanks for sharing! And RIP David Thomas.

From the Pen of Our New Poet Laureate An ode to Santa Barbara from its newly anointed supreme scribe

Pleased the Indy has agreed to publish my installation poem as SB Poet Laureate. They always called city symphony films "poetic," so figured you could just do one as poetry itself. www.independent.com/2025/04/24/f...