Subscriber Writing, February 2025

Hello folks! Here’s the latest bimonthly roundup of writing written by subscribers, for the month of February 2025. Readers, please take a little time and see if any of these descriptions appeals to you. I’ve discovered so much great writing through these roundups, and many who submit things report that they’ve gotten a lot of readers this way. If you aren’t a subscriber and you want to take part in this opportunity in April, you know what to do.

Folks, the time has arrived where I just can’t possibly fit all of the entries into one email of the size accepted by Gmail and other major services, so there will be a “continue reading” link at the end of the email. I have gone to great lengths to prevent this in the past, including mercilessly cutting down your synopses and removing pictures and the Subscribe button, but with more than one hundred and ten submissions this week, that’s not gonna cut it. But that’s OK! People will click through. The ones who weren’t going to read this post will discard it and the ones who were will click through. So it’s all good.

Nigel Bernard, On Current Employment in the Federal Government

I’ve been a Fed for 18 years. The current environment is, well.. I have thoughts.

Jarrod Baniqued, Drop the Late Front Radio Room

A lengthy gonzo investigation involving 1990s news satire, writing therapy, and ChatGPT

Dhruv Methi, I fixed my chronic procrastination in an evening

Instead of deploying "productive" strategies to circumvent resistance, I figured out how to dissolve it altogether

Manic Pixie Dust, Let’s Talk Gender

Trans rights are human rights

Pretty Good Blog, The Greatest Heist

Our hero leaves a trail of destitution and misery in his wake as he fulfills his basic social obligations.

Thaddeus Haas, PSA: Everything is Burning

The one thing no one tells you about the California fires that ripped through greater Los Angeles is that there isn't any way to put them out. And here's why.

David Roberts, I Stole A Girl From Another Guy

That girl is my wife Debbie.

Karin Tamerius, How to Stop Panicking About Trump

A political psychiatrist identifies five strategies almost no one is using to keep calm and carry on.

Luke T. Harrington, Every book I read in 2024, ranked (definitively)

Looking for something to read this year? I got you, fam

Doctrix Periwinkle, Chickens come home to roost

A literal story about groceries and feral chickens on a small island, that is also a metaphor.

Mari, the Happy Wanderer, Dystopia? Just Say No! Screens, AI, VR, and the Whole Catastrophe

A personal story, a South Park allusion, and a dystopian advertisement encourage us to put down the screens and see one another face to face.

Sara Eckel, How to Surrender Without Giving Up

Optimism has never been my strength--I read the news. So I was happy to learn that you can find peace even if you don't have hope.

Mark Dominus, Surnames from nicknames nobody has any more

The “John” and “Peter” in “Johnson” and “Peterson” are obvious, but what about Watson, Hobson, Gibson, and Simpson?

T Scott, Grief & Gratitude

Where does Gratitude come from? How do we make use of loss?

Jimmy Nicholls, The slacker's manifesto

Why work just isn't worth it

Steven Aoun, Something Wicked Comes This Way

Wicked and the problem of evil.

The Ivy Exile, The New Coke Revisited

On the branding apocalypse afflicting progressive institutions, and lessons from marketing on turning things around

Benjamin J. Smith, ChatWSB: Reading William S. Burroughs in the Age of A.I.

A.I. is everywhere. William S. Burroughs saw it coming.

Christopher Jay Jones, Road Trip -

One writer's quest to get letters published in newspapers in every U.S. state and territory, turned into a deep dive into the waning days of local print journalism.

Liav Lewitt, The Eve of Eternity

Eve awakens in the Garden of Eden, and quickly discovers that an eternity of this is more than she can take.

Chris, Bad Lies

When someone tells you an obviously bad lie, they're not trying to deceive you - so what are they doing, then?

Twerb Jebbins, Slopping the Hogs: Anti-Intellectualism, The Culture Industry, and Nietzsche

We’re all worried about AI and while it's easy to blame technology, the problem has always been Adorno and Horkheimer's Culture Industry, which treats art like a distant afterthought on the road to profit.

Peter James, The Best Part Of Quitting Comedy

I quit performing stand-up comedy a year ago. There have been many benefits, but one stands out above the rest.

Thaddeus Squire, Four Ways the Nonprofit Sector Can Tell the Trump Administration to F**k Off (Legally, at least for now)

Some dodges and weaves for the grassroots nonprofit community to avoid the gaze of the Great Orange Eye.

Amod Sandhya Lele, Globalization was never inevitable

What seemed impossible in the 1990s is a commonplace today.

Jonathan Kissam, The blood left on the tracks

On the 50th anniversary of Bob Dylan’s greatest album.

Thomas Barrie, What do video games teach us?

Medieval history and stochastic terror on the Xbox 360

Julie Faulstich, Women and Leadership (part one)

A personal essay reflecting with humor on how women have come so far and yet still have to navigate so much cultural ick, including refining your personal "mom-itude"

Derek Wagner, Because It Is My Nature

My first pro-market sale, a SF flash fiction story from a kaiju’s perspective.

James Ruchala, Review of Doc Watson: A Life in Music by Eddie Huffman

A review of a new biography of an Appalachian virtuoso guitarist and singer.

Nick Roman, Anatomy of a UFO Hoax

An examination of how UFO conspiracy theorists lie, and how to pull those lies apart at the seams.

Danny Wardle, Against the Disability Language Wars

I argue that there's nothing at stake in the debate over person-first and identity-first language among disability and neurodiversity activists.

Barrett Hathcock, How to gig inside

Sometimes you have to gig inside, this is what to do

Triangulation, The Psychological Roots of Trump's Appeal

When people believe fakeness is increasingly around them, they seek "charisma" as a signal for authenticity

Ryan Self, Like her husbands, Jackie Kennedy Onassis was appalling

Rich and disturbing deails in a new book shed light on the darker side of a revered figure in American life.

Nile Arena, Stay With Me Now, Old Crimson Pal

A short story about modern love appearing in the most recent issue of Purely Liminal Magazine.

Ryan Zickgraf, The Case for Social Drinking

Gen-Z is increasingly taking up weed and doomscrolling instead of having a beer with buds at a bar. Here's why it's a social and political disaster.

Gabriel Kahane, More or less beauty

What is the role of the artist in times of crisis?

Nicholas Reville, Addiction Predictions for 2025 and Beyond

Predictions on painkillers, GLP-1s for addiction, compounding and more.

Brian Howard, Unsolved Mysteries: Simply Irresistible

Two of the greatest mysteries in music history, both contained within the same song. RIP Robert Palmer.

Trevor Jackson, Never Too Much

A review of Martin Wolf's book The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, arguing that democracy and capitalism are not mutually reinforcing and that Wolf's market liberalism leaves him unable to think through his own analysis of the problem.

Colin Sweeney, There Oughta Be a Law Against Sunny Southern California

A LA native comes to terms with cataclysm.

Nicky von Hartz Shapiro, Get It?

The hypermodern lessons of "Don Quixote"

Matthew Clayfield, Terms of Service

A novella about the 2020 accusation of rape in Australia's Parliament House. Also a noir novella grounded in heartbreak.

Zach Holbrook, The Innsmouth Conspiracy of Olaus Wormius

This is an adaptation. In it, I reimagine/rework the story content of the Innsmouth Conspiracy, a campaign for the popular LCG Arkham Horror.

Eric Stinton, The Pit

An essay about a cockfight I attended where I saw one of my students, which vaults into meditations on class and culture and the limits of being a teacher.

Amy Letter, What You Do Today Matters

If you feel like everything is hopeless and that there's nothing you can do to make things better, you might want to read this.

Matthew Vernon Whalan, Gay People “Are Looked Down on as Lesser People” in Alabama Prisons

Prisoner in Bullock Prison Discusses How Gay People are Sexually Enslaved, Raped/Abused, Traded, and Discriminated Against in Alabama Prisons

Liz O'Connor, The Paradigm is Shifting

How the philosophy of science explains apparently inexplicable political chaos.

Megan Anna Neff, ADHD: Difference, Disability, or Both?

A short essay where a neurodivergent psychologist wrestles with the strengths and limitations of the neurodiversity movement as it relates to her experience with ADHD.

Zeke Kinclaith, The End of Outrage

In which I discuss what's really weird about the present moment from a historical perspective, and how outrage does nothing to help it.

Michael Strambler, As Is

Reflections of a psychologist and dad on a range of social and cultural topics, including schooling, mental health, sociopolitics, and parenting.

Kody Cava, If Prison Abolitionists Are Principled They Should Welcome Trump's Pardons

An attempt to heighten the contradictions of prison abolition by taking it to its logical conclusions while also critiquing the left's widespread adoption of "prefigurative" politics.

Jean Good, Fired Up 3.0 - Final Thoughts

What to do when we are unprepared and chaos approaches

David Berreby, Is Generative AI a Leisure-Class Pastime?

A look at the divide between elites with bandwidth to f*ck around with AI and ordinary workers being forced to cope with the new tech as best they can

James Mills, Predictions for 2025

56 Predictions for the next year, and beyond: the U.S., Palestine, Africa, Science, Culture, bureaucracy, capital, Hollywood, technology, etc.

R.B. Griggs, Homo Digitalis

How digital immersion is changing our nature

Nigel Bowen, No, you're not special. Yes, AI is coming for your job

Freddie is right about most things, but he's wrong about AI

Ernest Davis, Verses for the Information Age

A collection of light verse, mostly about high tech and its discontents.

Daniel Sunkari, The Paradox of the White Gaze

Exploring how progressive ideas like "white gaze" and Orientalism cover for intra-group problems like caste

Rice, I nearly won a tournament as a poker villain

An experience where I failed to ingratiate into a group I got the W on, in Poker

Brian Kennedy, Essays on Antichrist

Poetic Reflections and Reportage on America in an Age of Antichrist

Tolly Moseley, Third Place Relationships

Too much Internet makes us antisocial, but physical gathering makes us whole. Third places are not work, not home, but the hangout spot, so in this piece I talk about them.

Hubert Horan, Can Uber Ever Deliver? Part Thirty-Four – Tony West’s Calamitous Legacy at Uber and with the Kamala Harris Campaign

Documents the role of Tony West in blocking legal consequences for banks involved in the 2008 crash, in covering up Uber efforts to attack a woman who had been raped by an Uber driver, Uber efforts to undermine California Supreme Court and Legislative efforts to provide basic legal protections for "independent" drivers, and in ensuring that the Kamala Harris campaign was serving tech oligarch demand to overturn Biden efforts to enforce antitrust laws

William Schwartz - Sook-Yin Lee with Chester Brown on the story behind the film version of Paying For It

An interview I recently conducted with artist behind Paying For It and his ex-girlfriend who created the new film adaptation. Paying For It is a philosophical, political depiction of Chester Brown's experiences with sex workers as a paying john

Owen O'Brien, Thy Fearful Symmetry

An emotional and narrative deconstruction of Super Bowl LIX

Jeremy Rice, (Untitled)

A love note to an unknown poet

T.J. Elliott, Next-Gen Bureaucratization

Bureaucracy, The BBC, Elon, and Me: the current 'musking' going on in the federal bureaucracy and its distinct potential for disaster.

Otilia Jones, Dispensary of Poetry

A short poem about dispensing poetry for mental clarity.

Chris Dalla Riva, Did Frank Sinatra Really Perform at My Grandma's High School?

I spent multiple months trying to verify my now-deceased grandmother's claim that Frank Sinatra performed at her high school in the 1940s

Brendan Ruberry, A Secret History of the IRA, by Ed Moloney (Part I)

In this quasi-review of Ed Moloney's opus, I take the reader inside the ill mind of longtime Sinn Fein (and IRA) leader Gerry Adams, beginning with his humble origins and following his improbable rise to the top of the militant republican heap over the course of Northern Ireland's Troubles.

Christopher J Feola, AI Boogaloo: The 2024 Election was Irrelevant, Part Deux-The third wave of tech innovation is upon us, as legions of nerds are busy chaining LLMs together into entirely new types of information tools; digesting reams of bureaucratic speak into neat summaries accompanied by bulleted high points is right up their alley.

Already Happened - Why did Slavoj Zizek write copy for Abercrombie & Fitch in 2003?

What happens when maps become territories and mediums become messages, and how to use that to your advantage.

Dr. Laura L. Walsh, REFRAMED,

REFRAMED turns psychology into real life practice. I won’t tell you how to do it, I’ll show you - by reframing the old stuck stories and giving you a fresh perspective.

Dan Hoyle, What Would Robin Williams Do?

What I learned from the Nigerian Press Corps while living there, the time Robin Williams came to my show, and how does Humanism respond when getting crushed by fascho culture?

Dana Leigh Lyons, Sharing About Sobriety Isn’t “Proselytizing”

An honest exploration of what it means to talk about sobriety without judgment or pressure—and how sharing about any health-conscious lifestyle isn’t automatically “purity culture” or “politically coded,” either.

Oscar Brigstocke, Do Humans Have a Comparative Advantage Over AGI

Reflecting on human purpose in the far future

Thomas Hummel, “Weeds”

A poem about the way we look at each other

Burke Bindbeutel, There is a there in Here

Bas Devos's movie shows us a different side of the Belgian capital

JAB, Fracking the Poor -

An argument that the cryptic ways companies exploit people in the 21st century is like fracking, but directed at human health instead of deposits of natural gas

Hal Johnson, Anatomy of a Dungeon

How an old-school Dungeons and Dragons dungeon works, or should work: its ecology, history, and purpose.

Jeffrey Scott, Saving Your Marriage Starts With You: A Husband's Journey

A husband reflects on the work he did to save his marriage, sharing personal insights and lessons for other men who may be struggling in their own relationships.

Matt Lutz, Don't Just Let Radicals Dictate Your Opinions

Being “center-left” on social issues isn't just "whatever the left says, but less." It's a distinctive, coherent, and attractive political philosophy.

David Brendan O’Meara, Exile, Obsession and Silence

In which Fr. Niall Bresnahan fails at his new assignment; Nora Eunice Magliano develops an unhealthy interest in bankruptcy law; and Sister Eunice Larkin witnesses the dismantling of her life's work.

Dirk Hohnstraeter, Remembering someone I never knew, being where I’ve never been

A tasting experience that quietly touched me

Xander Paul, Echoes of an Older Internet

A review of Reddit's absorption of internet third spaces and its implications for forging digital connections with others who have shared interests

Joe Ballou, The Worship of Wealth

A Tour Through Decades of Media Saturating Us with Messages to Pursue Wealth and Riches Above All Else

Tim Small, My All American City

A short account of the demographic transformation in the 1970s of the LA suburb where I went to high school.

A.J. Archer, MEN HAVE CALLED HER CRAZY ★★☆☆☆ / ROOMS IN THE FIRST HOUSE ★★★★★

The market demands a self-pitying traumaporn woman memoir, so Connecticut-based visual artist Anna-Marie Tendler has one to sell us.

Anthony Marigold, The Rebels Need to Topple the Literary Establishment

Literature needs controversial writers to progress.

Eva Sylwester, Weekend Entertainment Guide 12/27/24 + New Moon 12/30/24

The messy part of a potential collective increase in telepathic capabilities: if Sheila in Accounting telepathically hears you having an erotic thought about her at work, does she have a right to report you to Human Resources?

Drew Ransom, You Should Care

Personal essays ruminating on modern culture, queerness, and whichever other topics are buzzing in my brain.

Andrew Doris, Some nuance on intersex Olympic athletes

There has to be a line. Testosterone probably makes the most sense.

Bram E. Gieben - Clown World: Shame, Masculinity, Trump and Andrew Tate

On Matt Shea and Jamie Tahsin's book Clown World, and what it tells us about masculinity in crisis.

Jack Blueman, Georgism as a Historical Framework

An essay (split into three parts) examining why Georgism, despite a high degree of initial popularity, never developed into a historical theory in the same way Marxism did.

Luke Allen, What Do We Actually Stand FOR??

It’s long past time to move beyond "resistance". We need a vision for the future.

Joshua Pauling, Life in the Cyborg Age: A Conversation with Josh Pauling

An interview about my new book on technology, that touches on the impacts of the digital revolution on education, home, and family life ,and what we can do about it.

Aron Blue, That Time I Got in a Bar Fight at Glasslands

How being called a liberal brought out the worst in me

Mike Johnson, Noah Smith’s Sister Souljah obsession is weird

Observations about centrist writers, their fascination with an outdated (and shallow) political callback, and what it can tell us about their knowledge of modern society.

First Toil, then the Grave, Conservatives do not have a monopoly on fear of crime

As a literal-minded person, I am once again asking for connotation not to completely supplant denotation

Duverger's Lawman, Half of Americans don't understand marginal tax rates. Why doesn't the Democratic Party try to do something about this?

Some thoughts about a misunderstanding of marginal tax rates that is widespread among Americans, and likely leads them to vote Republican more than they would otherwise

Joshua Pressman Jacobs, Autocracies, Diminished Dynasties & Billionaires tarnishing Super-Stars Legacies

There certainly is still politics in sports, despite people saying this is the “post-woke” era!

Ramon Gonzalez, How should companies judge and punish *us*?

Signing companies up to give their customers clear explanations, use gradation in punishment, do contextual review of a user's full history, and share data on volumes and outcomes

Daniel Gonzalez, Death Row Restaurant

A novel satirizing capitalism's obsession with authenticity and 1980's culture that reviewers have called "The Bear" meets "Mindhunter."

Justin DaMetz, A Clear Threat to American Democracy

The Trump-Musk war on our courts and our Constitution

Steven McFann, Mojave Heat

An unfortunate accident sends a young man down a dangerous path in the High Desert

Metaconcepts, Critical Theory’s God Problem

Looking for a murdered god in Foucault's genealogy

Nicholas Daly Clark from My Cowardly Resistance, On Pooping my Pants and Trump's "Mandate" to Wreck the World

A story about almost pooping myself that's really about why we won't have midterms

Dan Mrazik, Crosswoods

An adventure through original crossword puzzles, "'crosswordese" trivia, cryptic dabbling, and more. Get lost in the words.

Desystemize, If You’re So Smart, Why Can’t You Die?

What does AI tell us about the word “intelligence?”

Cathy Reisenwitz, Our intelligentsia has abandoned our illiterati

The class angle that Bloomberg ignored in their story about the podcast bros who helped elect Trump

Nikki from Mainstream Media, Freddie DeBoring Advocates Going Back to the Toilet Age

A response to Freddie’s essay on toilets and iPhones