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erikmbaker.bsky.social
Erik Baker
@erikmbaker.bsky.social
4.4K followers 350 following 380 posts
Historian at Harvard, senior editor at The Drift, author of Make Your Own Job
erikmbaker.com
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erikmbaker.bsky.social
Erik Baker @erikmbaker.bsky.social · Jan 14
Today's the day! I poured everything I've got into this book, and now, eight years after I started working on it, it is officially published! I'm so grateful for everyone who helped make this book a reality - and to all of my readers for their support.
erikmbaker.bsky.social
Bruce Springsteen
Neil Young
The Mountain Goats
The Hold Steady
Big Thief
kevinmkruse.bsky.social Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 1d
Introduce yourself with five concerts you've seen multiple times

R.E.M.
OutKast
Radiohead
Beastie Boys
The Roots
chuckwendig.bsky.social Chuck Wendig @chuckwendig.bsky.social · 1d
Introduce yourself with five concerts you've seen —

NIN
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Soul Coughing
Poe
Tom Morello
November 28, 2025 at 1:01 AM
Reposted by Erik Baker
saraeckel.bsky.social
Really smart and thorough analysis of why Democrats get branded as elites and Republicans don’t.
erikmbaker.bsky.social Erik Baker @erikmbaker.bsky.social · 7d
👌💯‼️https://thebaffler.com/latest/one-elite-two-elites-red-elite-blue-elite-baker
November 22, 2025 at 1:44 PM
erikmbaker.bsky.social
👌💯‼️https://thebaffler.com/latest/one-elite-two-elites-red-elite-blue-elite-baker
November 22, 2025 at 4:13 AM
erikmbaker.bsky.social
November 20, 2025 at 4:39 PM
Reposted by Erik Baker
katelynburns.com
once you go TERF, you never post normal again
jane.meangirls.online Jane @jane.meangirls.online · 9d
once the transphobia brainworms set in it’s over, your brain is doomed
November 20, 2025 at 2:31 PM
erikmbaker.bsky.social
The garden of our love was an oasis in a desert of unsatisfying relationships, watered by trust and flowering in the form of all the things we would do together. Merriam-Webster defines "commitment" as
November 18, 2025 at 2:59 AM
Reposted by Erik Baker
pronounced-ing.bsky.social
The undergrads at the Crimson has consistently done a better job at investigating stories--big and small--than some of the legacy papers. Go college journalism.
joolia.bsky.social Julia Carrie Wong @joolia.bsky.social · 12d
gosh I wonder why they called her peril www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...
The Harvard Crimson Throughout the seven months of correspondence reviewed by The Crimson, Summers and Epstein referred to the woman Summers was pursuing in some messages by the code name "peril" but never used her name in messages directly describing the relationship. On at least two occasions, the two men discussed Jin's emails to Summers, which he forwarded to Epstein. In later messages, the two men appeared to joke about the probability that Summers would have sex with the woman, apparently Jin.
November 17, 2025 at 3:26 AM
Reposted by Erik Baker
theharvardcrimson.bsky.social
When former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers was pursuing a romantic relationship with a woman he described as a mentee, he turned to a longtime associate for guidance: Jeffrey E. Epstein.

Dhruv T. Patel and Cam N. Srivastava report.
As Summers Sought Clandestine Relationship With Woman He Called a Mentee, Epstein Was His ‘Wing Man’ | News | The Harvard Crimson
When former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers was pursuing a romantic relationship with a woman he described as a mentee, he turned to a longtime associate for guidance: convicted sex offender…
www.thecrimson.com
November 17, 2025 at 1:45 AM
erikmbaker.bsky.social
Harvard disgraces itself every day it continues to bestow the "University Professor" title on Summers
econmarshall.bsky.social Marshall Steinbaum @econmarshall.bsky.social · 13d
The emails have Summers reporting to Epstein about his attempts to date a Harvard economics student & to hit on her during a seminar she was giving.
November 15, 2025 at 10:04 PM
Reposted by Erik Baker
alienvsrobbins.bsky.social
oh man, Todd Snider. way too fucking young

open.spotify.com/track/5Kgoem...
Looking for a Job
open.spotify.com
November 15, 2025 at 9:10 PM
Reposted by Erik Baker
ceaubin.com
I have read a LOT of romantasy out of an intense and abiding fascination/need to understand What The Hell Is Going On With Women In My Age Group. This essay from @thedriftmag.com really nails it, without the sneering you usually find in litcrit on the genre.

www.thedriftmag.com/escape-artis...
Escape Artists
Romantasy at the End of the World
www.thedriftmag.com
November 15, 2025 at 11:56 AM
Reposted by Erik Baker
riteshwriter.bsky.social
Actually burst out laughing at this.

Brando Sando...you're so close to getting why your writing keeps getting rejected...
Authors of romance are not alone in feeling excluded by the establishment. The astonishingly successful fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson, whose books have sold more than 45 million copies, once asked, on his blog, “why is fantasy and other genre fiction looked down on by the literary world?” He described having been rejected from MFA programs at “most of the top schools in writing,” some of which he claimed categorically did not accept genre fiction. “You can’t use their rules to define what makes good literature, folks,” Sanderson declared. The genres of “genre fiction” contain enormously popular books while still functioning as subcultures, suffering their slights and maintaining their intricate codes of membership. Conquest of the bestseller list is no salve for the critics’ withholding of their approval, their taste, whether or not there is a “their” there.
November 14, 2025 at 10:58 PM
Reposted by Erik Baker
jackjenkins.me
Oh wow @reuters.com got the photo here:
“Faith leader, Michael Woolf, minister at Lake Street Church of Evanston, is detained by Illinois State Police during a protest against immigration actions, outside the Broadview ICE facility in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., November 14, 2025. REUTERS/Jim Vondruska”
November 14, 2025 at 9:25 PM
Reposted by Erik Baker
adamserwer.bsky.social
We Should All Become The Joker
November 14, 2025 at 6:14 PM
Reposted by Erik Baker
erikmbaker.bsky.social
I love all my children equally, of course, but this is honestly one of my favorite pieces we've published in a long while. So funny, so insightful, and the definitive essay on romantasy. www.thedriftmag.com/escape-artis...
Escape Artists
Romantasy at the End of the World
www.thedriftmag.com
November 14, 2025 at 3:49 PM
Reposted by Erik Baker
thedriftmag.com
“The heroines of romantasy are flicked, nuzzled, ridden, throttled, bitten, pulled, plowed, hit, filled, soaked, and — here’s a Maas favorite — shattered.” Daniel Yadin examines the genre taking over American publishing in a new piece from Issue Sixteen.

www.thedriftmag.com/escape-artis...
Escape Artists
Romantasy at the End of the World
www.thedriftmag.com
November 14, 2025 at 3:35 PM
erikmbaker.bsky.social
I love all my children equally, of course, but this is honestly one of my favorite pieces we've published in a long while. So funny, so insightful, and the definitive essay on romantasy. www.thedriftmag.com/escape-artis...
Escape Artists
Romantasy at the End of the World
www.thedriftmag.com
November 14, 2025 at 3:49 PM
Reposted by Erik Baker
beckyhammer.bsky.social
Once again had trouble narrowing down my four favorite mini-reviews in the latest issue of The Drift @thedriftmag.com
Anna Karenina on LibriVox It's never a bad idea to listen to the more-than-35-hour audiobook of Anna Karenina, but the version put out by LibriVox, a platform where volunteer readers narrate works in the public domain, is especially fun. Chapters are read by different people, and the vastly different levels of competence on display lend a touching, amateurish quality to one of the greatest books ever written. Come for the novel's deft psychological portraits, stay for the global accents, the shameless name-dropping of several readers' personal websites, and the staggering variety of ways to pronounce "Karenina." S.C.C. The Gulf of America's Google Profile The 7,066 reviews of this contentious body of muddy water once offered a glimpse into the minds of visitors unconcerned with its name. The *most relevant" posts were filled with child- hood snorkeling memories and vaguely spiritual musings; one satisfied customer wrote, "the Gulf has made us a part of her, and she IS a part of us." By contrast, a single-star review called the Gulf *'a constant disappointment... a thirty-year-old son who won't leave home." Earlier this spring, Google archived all but one of these comments, leaving the note: "Posting is currently turned off for this type of place." GEOGRAPHY P.A. Autos FONT This typeface, which replaced Calibri as the default font for Microsoft 365 in late 2023, is supposed to be friendlier, more trustworthy, and better suited to high-resolution screens. But to my semiprofessional eye, it looks like a squashed version of its predecessor, as if someone dropped an anvil on all those humanist letterforms. (The characters are certainly wider; Aptos fits roughly thirty fewer words on a page.) The font's recent success coincides with a change in its name. Rechristened for a town in Northern California that appar- ently "epitomizes the font's versatility, Aptos follows in the footsteps of fellow name-changers Norma Jeane Mortenson, Ralph Lifshitz, and even the British royal family, who became the Windsors only after ditching "Saxe-Coburg and Gotha for being too German. "Too German" might also have been a problem for this typeface, formerly known as "Bierstadt." Z.G. "Pod Save America" ads PODCASTING Presenter-read advertisements, the last vestige of amateur podcasting, offer a glimpse into a show's imagined audience. What can the selection of products hawked by former Obama aides teach us about the average liberal American male? That he wants to restore his gut lining by swilling cow colostrum in sungold apricot flavor, burn fat while lounging on his direct- to-consumer mattress in bamboo delicates, avoid hangovers that could impede productivity, eat chicory root inulin and tapioca starch cereal for dinner, and consume vegetables in powder form. J.A.
November 13, 2025 at 2:01 AM
Reposted by Erik Baker
thedriftmag.com
“The only durable response to Sudan’s famine lies with its own civilians, who must be empowered to resist the militarization of hunger,” Shahad Elfaki argues in a new Dispatch from Issue Sixteen.

www.thedriftmag.com/a-grotesque-...
A Grotesque Deadlock
Since the outbreak of war in Sudan in April 2023, nearly thirteen million people have been internally displaced and prices in Darfur have soared.
www.thedriftmag.com
November 13, 2025 at 3:46 PM
erikmbaker.bsky.social
"Everybody is gonna be happy. They're gonna feel like entrepreneurs"
November 11, 2025 at 6:36 PM
Reposted by Erik Baker
greggiven.bsky.social
Tapping the @erikmbaker.bsky.social sign
www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978067...
November 11, 2025 at 5:05 PM
Reposted by Erik Baker
thedriftmag.com
“The memory of my own voice would come back to me, the way I’d hurled it around: my father, my father, my father.”

Read Mimi Diamond’s Issue Sixteen story, online today:

www.thedriftmag.com/good-health/
Good Health
Fiction
www.thedriftmag.com
November 7, 2025 at 4:36 PM
erikmbaker.bsky.social
race.undark.org
November 6, 2025 at 7:26 PM
Reposted by Erik Baker
thedriftmag.com
You can read an excerpt of Book III in our most recent issue.

www.thedriftmag.com/day1144-1167...
Day #1144, #1167, #1403
Fiction
www.thedriftmag.com
November 6, 2025 at 5:00 PM
Reposted by Erik Baker
thedriftmag.com
Join us, @ndbooks.bsky.social, Krithika Varagur, Zain Khalid, Sloane Crosley, and Rob Franklin, on November 18 to celebrate the publication of the newest installment of Solvej Balle’s series “On the Calculation of Volume.”

www.mcnallyjackson.com/event/calcul...
November 6, 2025 at 5:00 PM