First it was a fire, then it was a color, and before too long it became a regime unto itself
As familiar as they are, these orange maps can only depict a rehearsal, a prelude. In the pre-vaccine moment the Covid maps were terrifying, but examining them, you could imagine a future after orange. One feels very different looking at the climate maps. There is no de-escalating from orange.
The overdose crisis as a logistics problem
The people we’re supposed to meet aren’t at the CVS parking lot, even though traffic made us ten minutes late. It’s a sunny summer evening, and we’re over in the fancy neighborhood by the lakes. Thunderclouds are piling up on the horizon. When they do show up — a young couple, man and woman — I like them instantly. They came here from North Dakota for a couple weeks, a year, who knows. They’re visibly in love, giggling the whole time and glancing at each other.
July 10, 2023
I’ve had an equally hard time shopping recently at supermarkets and at bookstores.
January 25, 2023
“Minorities Unite! Fight for Democratic Rights!”
There is a symmetry between Corky Lee’s passing and the rise of Stop Anti-Asian Hate: the departure of Asian America’s greatest documentarian and its most visible recent efflorescence. Years earlier, the brief window of postwar Asian American radicalism seemed to have already swung shut. Today, our most notable figures are corporate CEOs and conservative politicians, the eponymous Asians rich and crazy, so the artists, revolutionaries, and workers preserved in Lee’s prints can feel as elusive as their author. No matter how distant an Asian American poor people’s movement may seem, his prints still vibrate with radical temporality and potential.
September 2, 2022
I came to see the official indifference to the public’s health as not a bug but a feature of this society.
Thunderous applause shakes the town square
After getting in line at 9 AM and standing under a disgusting fine drizzle for almost three hours, Monique, too, got her shot. Just before nightfall she began to get chills and her temperature went up. After taking one paracetamol tablet and twenty drops of diazepam, she fell asleep.
And had a dream:
I say, Dad, quite honestly, fuck the snowplow
And in the moment of me and my father, I see myself, I see my face in a tiny square in the corner of my phone and I’m flushed, I’m this red angry thumbprint listening and trying to think things through and waiting for it to all be over, and he’s in his bed holding the tablet or whatever they gave him at this terrible angle where I just get the underside of his chin and his hair splayed out on either side, it’s like the underside of his chin is a tiny featureless face jutting up out of the hospital gown, some weird eyeless monster, and all I’m hearing is wheeze wheeze crackle crackle.
Everyone on TV was just going through the motions. It felt like watching the death spiral of civilization.
What is missing is a motive
I could not direct you to the key evidence that exonerates the Wuhan Institute, and it might not exist. But this is also the crucial point. There are too many lacunae in the lab-leak explanation for the theory to stand on its own: proponents must fill the gaps with their own projections and beliefs.
How Hollywood killed celluloid
Eventually DCI scrubbed celluloid film almost entirely from the film industry, ushering in the most significant technological shift since the introduction of sound. The digital revolution transformed nearly every aspect of filmmaking for Hollywood and independent filmmakers. This revolution was invisible, and it was designed to be that way. Its success depended on audiences never noticing at all.
February 21, 2022
It’s on the side of good, it’s basic freedoms, this is important stuff
Some people think it’s fake, her eyes are fine and it’s a trick, and some people think her eyes are legit fucked but not because of the vax, and some people think her eyes are fine but the vax could theoretically do that, and basically every mathematical permutation of these possibilities you can think of.
What will the long-term political consequences of the vaccine mandates be?
