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Noah Berlatsky

@nberlat.bsky.social

24K followers 4.6K following 37K posts

he/him, bylines Public Notice, Chicago Reader, Observer, CNN.com. Poetry collection: Not Akhmatova (Ben Yehuda, 2024) Substack: www.everythingishorrible.net Poetry: https://www.everythingishorrible.net/p/poetry-publications-noah-berlatsky

www.everythingishorrible.net

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Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · Jul 26

the best way to keep up with my work is to follow my newsletter

www.everythingishorrible.net

alternately you can follow my patreon (same content, different platform:

www.patreon.com/c/noahberlat...

Everything Is Horrible | Noah Berlatsky | Substack

Culture, politics, and misery. Click to read Everything Is Horrible, by Noah Berlatsky, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.

www.everythingishorrible.net

Reposted by Noah Berlatsky

Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 2h

Karl Jacoby @karl-jacoby.bsky.social · 11h

History faculty at Columbia & Barnard decrying the harassment of @mark-bray.bsky.social: "This is the first case in recent memory of a historian who has fled the country after receiving death threats on account of the history that they teach."

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 2h

re upped this today; talking about Sartre's insights into antisemitism and the way that he participates in antisemitism (mostly by speaking for Jews when he doesn't know very much about Jewish people or Judaism.) www.everythingishorrible.net/p/sartre-as-...

Sartre as Antifascist, Sartre as Antisemite

The good and the not so great in Sartre's *Anti-Semite and Jew*

www.everythingishorrible.net

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 2h

(I read lots of genre fiction. I'm just saying.)

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 2h

the thing is...genre is also boring in its way; you know what's coming. there's a predictability to the event which can be grating.

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 2h

well, I like drone music too!

mundanity and nothing happening can be aesthetic experiences. you can enjoy the representation of tedium because it's funny, or because it feels true, or for any of the reasons you enjoy art.

Reposted by Noah Berlatsky

Yashar Ali 🐘 @yasharali.bsky.social · 11h

1. Scenes of jubilation as former Palestinian prisoners return to the occupied West Bank and Gaza after being released by the Israeli government as part of the ceasefire deal.

Reposted by Noah Berlatsky

John Pfaff @johnpfaff.bsky.social · 11h

The lengths of self-protection Chicagoans have to undertake is criminal. What constant pulsing background fear that masked armed agenst raiding, say, schools does to kids and everyone else is real, and destructive.

But thin manpower gives room for real resistance--as we also see in Chicago.

Reposted by Noah Berlatsky

John Pfaff @johnpfaff.bsky.social · 11h

Arguably, Trump 2.0 is all about stochastic authoritarianism.

He lacks the ability to punish multiple cities with an iron fist. He can't even really punish all of ONE with an iron fist. ICE and associated unnamed Fed LEOs roam Chicago, but only strike a limited number of places at a time.

Reposted by Noah Berlatsky

John Pfaff @johnpfaff.bsky.social · 11h

Obv, the lack of a 287g isn't protecting Chicago from absolutely horrific actions by Fed LEOs.

But the lack of 287g's, and the general lack of federal manpower, does greatly limit the ability of the Feds to impose national rule.

Reposted by Noah Berlatsky

John Pfaff @johnpfaff.bsky.social · 11h

Which is, of course, why ICE is trying to deputize local police to do their work for them: the notorious 287(g) agreements.

But if you have a good sense of what US pop density looks like, you'll see that outside of FL, LOTS of ppl live in green (terminated) or blank (never had a deal) areas.

Map of 287g agreements. Red and orange are hard to tell apart, and not a fan of circle size to distinguish things here, but it gets the point across. Source: https://www.ilrc.org/practitioners/national-map-287g-agreements

Reposted by Noah Berlatsky

John Pfaff @johnpfaff.bsky.social · 11h

There's a reasons all our stories of horrible raids and abductions come mostly from Chicago and, now, Portland.

Bc, due to Federalism, the Feds simply lack man-power to deploy police-state tactics widely.

The article has ~10,000 new Fed LEOs being deployed for "immigration." US has ~650,000 cops.

Reposted by Noah Berlatsky

John Pfaff @johnpfaff.bsky.social · 11h

What Trump is doing is very bad. But I want to push back against some of the numbers here.

ICE did not hire 10,000 agents. It WANTS to. That it keeps running ads suggests it is struggling. And when it does, it seems to cannibalize local police, who don't like that.

More significantly:

Peter Sterne @petersterne.com · 12h

"(Officers) refuse to recognize local or court authority. A judge says you can’t arrest journalists. Watch us. A judge says we have to wear badges. No. State law says we can’t drive around in unmarked vans? Too bad. Elected officials who want to see what is going on should prepare to be arrested."

Purge, Merge, and Surge

Trump is creating a omniforce of armed loyalists to establish his police state

donmoynihan.substack.com

Reposted by Noah Berlatsky

Molly Jong-Fast @mollyjongfast.bsky.social · 11h

Solidarity is the only way

Reposted by Noah Berlatsky

Jenny Rae Rappaport @jennyrae.bsky.social · 11h

I must explain that this is not accurate, particularly the part about Ellis Island. I cannot speak to the Chinese diaspora angle, but many of us have family whose names were expressed in non-Roman alphabets when they immigrated. This is a long thread, but I literally do this for a living. 1/

Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · 15h

Lots of us have great-grandparents names who were absolutely changed when they came here, and when people say otherwise, they're assuming your great-grandparents name was in the Roman alphabet.

Robyn Pennacchia @robynelyse.bsky.social · 15h

Now, more than ever, it's important to understand why so many the myths we tell ourselves about immigration are actually very harmful.

First of all, your great-great-grandparents names *were not changed* at Ellis Island. No one there had the authority to do that.

Reposted by Noah Berlatsky

Acyn @acyn.bsky.social · 11h

Mockler: Did he ask Garland to go after someone? Trump sent a dm to Pam Bondi. This is unprecedented.

Downey: Garland, who sent the parental rights memo

Mockler: Biden, asked him to do that when?

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 11h

many atheists (like me!) don't beleive those things anyway! it's one of those things where if your shoes aren't untied, don't even trip.

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 11h

doesn't mean all atheists think that, but I think it's a good reason for atheists to question the idea that religion is responsible for all ills, or that converting people to atheism would solve our problems.

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 11h

fascism is often historically intertwined with darwinism/social darwinism/eugenics, all again materialist philosophies which see race as a scientific truth and as a spur to violence.

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 11h

so do atheists. at least some of them.

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 11h

TESCREAL is a materialist utilitarian philosophy that argues that future lives are more numerous and more important than current ones. It's also eugenicist, which is a materialist scientific philosophy which argues for culling.

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 13h

oh it's super controversial. people lose their shit.

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 13h

sigh

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 13h

Dune is a racist, colonial novel; Herbert has a certain amount of self-awareness and some anticolonial commitments, but his love of pulp betrays him and I think in that respect the novel is largely a failure.

Rachel Feder @rachelfeder.bsky.social · 1d

Tell me your most unhinged literary opinion, as a little treat

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 13h

we're out there!

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 13h

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKKd...