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Robert Rubsam

@robrubsam.bsky.social

1.4K followers 290 following 790 posts

Writing on books, movies, the arts: NYT Magazine, Baffler, Washington Post, Atlantic, Liberties, Commonweal, Mubi, Paris Review, Nation, etc. [email protected]

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Robert Rubsam @robrubsam.bsky.social · 6d

Here, have 6000 words on Yasunari Kawabata: libertiesjournal.com/articles/the...

The High Art of Distance - Liberties

“Art, of course, lives in history,” said Elizabeth Hardwick. By which she meant that a novel emerges in its own time, and changes in its passage to our own. This — the likeness which is also an unlike...

libertiesjournal.com

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Robert Rubsam @robrubsam.bsky.social · 8h

NYFF63 Ranked

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Robert Rubsam @robrubsam.bsky.social · 16h

Hell yeah, this is the stuff

Reposted by Robert Rubsam

Roxana Hadadi @roxana-hadadi.bsky.social · 16h

from me -- a profile of Jafar Panahi, a filmmaker whose work has perfectly met our age of surveillance and interrogation and asks the imperative question of: Who are we, and what comes next? IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT = masterpiece, imo.

Vulture @vulture.com · 20h

Since his 2010 imprisonment, the director has been in an endless game of chicken with the Iranian regime. In his defiant new film, ‘It Was Just an Accident,’ a group of Iranians consider killing the man who tortured them in prison.

Jafar Panahi’s Cinematic Rebellions

www.vulture.com

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Robert Rubsam @robrubsam.bsky.social · 1d

Definitive October canon

Robert Rubsam @robrubsam.bsky.social · 1d

Genuinely one of the great bands

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Robert Rubsam @robrubsam.bsky.social · 1d

It's not as bad as it looks but hardly as good as it could have been. The campus/cancel culture stuff is thinly but pervasively applied, there are great performances, and it does eventually get to a deeper layer of compromised humanity, but boy does it take a while.

Reposted by Robert Rubsam

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 1d

"The liberty and security of our fellow citizens is our great object, and not the prompt execution of the laws. Indecision, delay, blunders, nay villainous actions in the administration of government, are trifles compared to legalizing the full exertion of a tyrannical disposition."

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Robert Rubsam @robrubsam.bsky.social · 1d

"We produce more stuff than ever before but our culture is essentially one mediated through images rather than things. And the things exist mostly in order to be captured in images again." www.ft.com/content/e637...

Why designers abandoned their dreams of changing the world

Design was once seen as a tool to improve lives — but as modernism has become marketing, that sense of social purpose has drifted away

www.ft.com

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Robert Rubsam @robrubsam.bsky.social · 1d

For comment, we turn now to US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent

Robert Rubsam @robrubsam.bsky.social · 1d

JCO-posting

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Robert Rubsam @robrubsam.bsky.social · 1d

I mean it's no, uh...The Canyons?

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Robert Rubsam @robrubsam.bsky.social · 1d

Why does he always look like this

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Reposted by Robert Rubsam

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 2d

one thing perhaps worth emphasizing is that under federal law an escaped enslaved person was a criminal. an "illegal," you might say.

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Reposted by Robert Rubsam

Aryeh @aryehcw.bsky.social · 3d

"Among the last actions by former President Joe Biden before leaving the Oval Office was commuting the death sentences of 37 convicted murderers.

Hours after President Trump took over, he ordered the life sentences of these men be made, in effect, a living hell."

www.wsj.com/us-news/law/...

Biden Spared 37 Killers From Execution. Trump Ordered Up a Lifetime of Torment.

Even America’s harshest federal prison, where inmates spend 23 hours a day in solitary confinement, was too good, one official said. “I’ve got no problem with gruel.”

www.wsj.com

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Reposted by Robert Rubsam

Akela Lacy @akelalacy.bsky.social · 4d

NEW POD 🎧: The Trump admin has executed 21 people it claims were “narcoterrorists.” It's a dark turn in U.S. drug war policy. It’s also in line with the U.S. legacy of killing innocent people chalking it up to “collateral damage,” says @radleybalko.bsky.social
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/l...

License to Kill: Trump’s Extrajudicial Executions

Podcast Episode · The Intercept Briefing · 10/10/2025 · 42m

podcasts.apple.com

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Reposted by Robert Rubsam

Juno Rylee Schultz @junoryleejournalism.com · 6d

David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems...
SIMON: What?
SHAPIRO: ...Or saying...
SIMON: You imagine that?
SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over.
SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level.
SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this.
SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.

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Robert Rubsam @robrubsam.bsky.social · 5d

Insanely sick that the government officials who not one week ago were complaining about "violent rhetoric" now believe they should be able to drone strike George Soros

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Robert Rubsam @robrubsam.bsky.social · 5d

Unfortunately one of the co-authors of Abundance appears to have beaten you to it

Reposted by Robert Rubsam

soul nate @mnateshyamalan.bsky.social · 5d

there’s something so beautifully American about our democracy’s last line of defense being coronary artery disease

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Robert Rubsam @robrubsam.bsky.social · 5d

Damn, Rachel Sennott on a Charli XCX project? How'd she get that job???

IndieWire @indiewire.com · 5d

Charli XCX and A24 have shared the cast and a 2026 release for their movie 'The Moment,' directed by Aidan Zamiri.

A24 and Charli XCX Confirm Cast for ‘The Moment’: Rachel Sennott and Alexander Skarsgård, Plus a 2026 Release

Charli XCX and A24 have shared the cast and a 2026 release for their movie 'The Moment,' directed by Aidan Zamiri.

bit.ly

Robert Rubsam @robrubsam.bsky.social · 5d

At @commonweal.bsky.social it's my first dispatch from NYFF, featuring: Sentimental Value, Jay Kelly, two Linklaters of variable quality and perhaps the worst movie I've seen since last year's New York Film Festival.

www.commonwealmagazine.org/rubsam-new-y...

Movies Love the Movies

The sixty-third edition of the New York Film Festival featured works from big-name directors exploring the relationship between art and life.

www.commonwealmagazine.org

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Reposted by Robert Rubsam

The Upshot @upshot.nytimes.com · 5d

NYT World:
The vast majority of cocaine is produced and smuggled elsewhere. And Venezuela does not supply fentanyl at all.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Why Blowing Up Venezuelan Boats Won’t Stop the Flow of Drugs

President Trump says striking drug traffickers from Venezuela will prevent deadly drugs from reaching the United States. But the major smuggling routes are elsewhere.

www.nytimes.com

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Robert Rubsam @robrubsam.bsky.social · 5d

The trouble with books is you actually have to read them

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Reposted by Robert Rubsam

David Hudson @dwhdaily.bsky.social · 5d

Today’s a good day to catch up with @robrubsam.bsky.social’s excellent 2023 piece on László Krasznahorkai’s collaborations with Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky:

mubi.com/en/notebook/...

Waiting for the Miracle: The Films of Béla Tarr, Ágnes Hranitzky, and László Krasznahorkai

In "Werckmeister Harmonies," recently restored and now touring the US, the trio excavates an unexpected grace from grit and grime.

mubi.com

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Robert Rubsam @robrubsam.bsky.social · 5d

Well hey, thank you David!