Jack Sheehan

Opinion: Zohran Mamdani has lifted New Yorkers out of their pessimistic and reactionary funk The promise is simple: a city worth living in, that everyone can afford to live in

My instant reaction to Zohran's once in a lifetime win
www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2025...

ENCYCLOPEDIA - Your mangled brain would like you to know there is a boxer called Contact Mike.

YOU - Yeah? Any news on my wife's name? How about my mother?

ENCYCLOPEDIA - Nope.

As we await a verdict in the trial of Soldier F, another reminder that in 2010 the Bloody Sunday inquiry found

- the killings were unjustified
- none of the 14 dead (7 of whom were children) had guns
- no warnings were given
- no soldiers were under threat
- the troops were the first to open fire

Join us at Spring Bar in Chinatown as we celebrate the launch of Baffler no. 81, “After Words.”

116 Madison St., Manhattan
7–10pm

Goodbye to Old Gav The 2025 Irish Presidential Election

I wrote a potted history of Irish presidential elections, and my favourite political moment of all time, when Gavin Duffy couldn't remember how many people he had hit with his car.

Goodbye to Old Gav
open.substack.com/pub/jackshee...

Thanks pal! Hope you're well!

👑Javier Bardem at the Emmy's yesterday. Discussing the Film Workers' for Palestine pledge: "I won't work" with any company that is in business with Israel: "I cannot work with somebody who justifies or supports the genocide."
Can't stop the tide! #BDS #FreePalestine
Video: Variety

Had a few conversations recently that make me think, for the first time in ages, there are some exciting things happening in media. This is one of the highlights: Equator, a new magazine set up by Nesrine Malik, Pankaj Mishra, Jonathan Shainin and others. Sign up for info here: www.equator.org

‘We took the gloves off’: ex-IDF chief confirms Gaza casualties over 200,000 Retired general Herzi Halevi says ‘not once’ had legal advice constrained Israel’s military decisions in the strip

ex-IDF chief confirms Gaza casualties over 200,000

That’s 10% of the entire population of Gaza in 2 years

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

Hearts Touched With Fire: Horror and Hope in a Time of Genocide Move him into the sun– Gently its touch awoke him once, At home, whispering of fields unseen. Always it woke him, even in France, Until this morning and this snow. If anything might rouse him now T…

@jacksheehan.bsky.social on fighting horror and finding hope as slaughter in Gaza continues.

'The real “productivity gains” seem to come from layoffs and squeezing more work from fewer people not AI.'

Senate Probe Uncovers Allegations of Widespread Abuse in ICE Custody Led by US senator Jon Ossoff, the investigation cites hundreds of reports since January, including accounts of miscarriages, child neglect, and sexual abuse at ICE detention centers in dozens of state...

A United States Senate investigation has identified more than 500 credible reports of human rights abuses in US immigration detention since January, including alarming allegations of mistreatment of pregnant women and children.

Far right demagoguery - thanks to crucial, repeated validation from the political mainstream - has painted a target on the back of every man of colour in this country.

Everyone knows what is likely to happen next.

The secret to Baltimore's extraordinary year This April, Baltimore saw five homicides.

what's happening in Baltimore really gives the game away. a Dem major has drastically cut violent crime with a services-focused approach, even including police too, and none of these people give a shit popular.info/p/the-secret...

This week, we're reading; a review by @jacksheehan.bsky.social of @praddenkeefe.bsky.social's SAY NOTHING; an off-the-rails short story by Maria Margaret Alvarado; and an article by Anna Hezel on wellness capitalism cum hydration industry. These and more in our newsletter: buff.ly/TTiwRs6

All for Palestine Hope in a hopeless time.

Another essay about Palestine, this one with some hope.

open.substack.com/pub/jackshee...

The state no longer employs enough public health nurses to conduct routine checks on infants, but it’s investing in armoured vehicles to protect us from non-existent enemies, all so as - let’s be honest - to try impress euro-Atlantic elites.

It should be a source of profound embarrassment that a bunch of FedSoc lifers are taking a more vocal and principled stand against the corrupt Eric Adams deal than most elected Dems.

Philip K Dick was right part MCXXXVI

Ah yes, famously setting fire to the countryside is not “an attack on rural Ireland” but wanting clean water is

We need an international alliance against the US and its tech industry The United States must face consequences for economic warfare

The United States has declared economic war on some of its closest allies and Silicon Valley is itching to use the power of the state to defend its interests at all costs.

It’s time for an alliance not just to combat US belligerence, but to build a different vision for tech.

Outside the governor, is there no recourse in NYC to remove a mobster mayor who cut a deal with a terrorist to betray his constituents?

As the unofficial Dem strategy explainer on here I can't really tell you why Jeffries had such a wimpy response to the Eric Adams quid pro quo. At some point this just becomes a timid resistance to doing anything.

Never misses

But a little help certainly wouldn't hurt, and it's what Musk's attachment to Trump - not to mention a perception that he is operating with authority and impunity - is starting to deliver. Behind the scenes, it's informing the price of his company's debt. Last August, the Wall Street Journal reported that the $13 billion borrowed for Musk's acquisition was "the worst merger-finance deal for banks since the 2008-09 financial crisis." In late January, the Journal reported that banks are hoping to offload $3 billion of senior loans - the safest ones, in other words — at "90-95 cents on the dollar," which obviously isn't ideal but could be a lot worse. "Musk's recent rise in power and alliance with President Trump," the Journal suggests, "have seemed to help change the narrative around X's fortunes." Similarly, several advertisers that fled the platform - which, again, is not just full of stuff that's objectively touchy for big cautious consumer brands who have millions of customers who are Not So Sure About All This, but also run by a guy who told them to fuck themselves after they left - are coming back. Some, like Apple and Amazon, are doing so out of what appears to be political expediency, a sort of shadow president equivalent of throwing a million-dollar token into Trump's inauguration slush fund. Others, however, might suddenly be taking Musk's longshot lawsuit against former advertisers claiming an illegal boycott - amended to include Nestle, Tyson Foods, Shell, and others over the weekend! - a little more seriously than they did a few months ago.

Providing coding assistance is one of the few early ways Al firms have figured out how to make real money, and they also invest a lot in acquiring or licensing non-public training data. Musk owns xAI, an OpenAI competitor that is mingled with X in the form of Grok. It's raised a bunch of money, hired a bunch of talent, and made big steps to catch up with its more established competitors, including OpenAI, which Musk co-founded, split from, and has since been antagonizing. Every big AI company is hungry for data and losing money; even within that context, xAI has a lot of catching up to do, especially now that OpenAI is getting its first government contracts. You know what might help with all that? A vague, broad push in Al across the federal government spearheaded by people who have worked at Musk's companies. Or maybe a right of first refusal for a wider range of tech and software contracts across agencies? Petabytes of government-sourced training data would be a bonus.

Elon Musk's government rampage is also a massive bailout happening in plain sight: For X, for Tesla, for xAI, for the man himself nymag.com/intelligence...

I really really need you guys to make a conscious rejection of generative AI tools part of your ongoing political resistance.

Don't use ChatGPT. Turn off Gemini. Don't read the AI results forced upon you at the top of Google search. Don't use AI art generators or support anyone who does. Please.

Incredible that they continue to feed us the line "the highest rents of all time are actually a bad deal for landlords"

Has the American literary community, who for years have warned of the dangers of banning books, anything to say about this?