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alonsonichols.bsky.social
@alonsonichols.bsky.social
1K followers 1.1K following 1.9K posts
Photographer, Artist, sci-fi nerd, dog lover and curious wanderer
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alonsonichols.bsky.social
This type of misrule is stealthier than dictatorship - and potentially sturdier. Peru's political power brokers can point out that the machinery of democracy is still running and competitive elections will come soon. They can deflect blame onto one another. Even if the elections wipe out their political protectors, Peru's illegal economies will likely recruit new ones. Robust global demand for Latin America's leading illegal commodities — cocaine and gold - means they will never want for cash.
October 24, 2025 at 6:25 PM
alonsonichols.bsky.social
These same political power brokers promise draconian crackdowns on gangs, but do nothing to curb the illicit economies on which they thrive. Meanwhile, they have modified Peru's Constitution dozens of times, subordinating other branches of government to the legislature, which has become the perfect vehicle for advancing their shared interests.
October 24, 2025 at 6:24 PM
alonsonichols.bsky.social
The recent history of Peru and several other Latin American democracies including Brazil, Colombia and Mexico shows there is another, even more insidious way freedom can die for large parts of society: when the state is unable or unwilling to constrain predatory private powers - narco-traffickers, illegal gold miners, human smugglers, corruption rackets - and the officials and politicians who go into business with them.
October 24, 2025 at 1:59 PM
alonsonichols.bsky.social
I’ve seen this painting numerous times, but Guernica takes on a particular resonance in our current times.
A photograph of Guernica, Pablo Picasso’s 1937 painting depicting the aftermath of a bombing during the Spanish Civil War.
September 11, 2025 at 11:32 AM
alonsonichols.bsky.social
drop an alien thats not from star wars or Star Trek
A still image of one of the aliens from the film District 9. The alien is holding one of its young and standing the the rubble of the ghetto where their kind has been segregated and their species crash landed on earth.
August 8, 2025 at 3:42 PM
alonsonichols.bsky.social
Painting #14 - Artist Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series (1940-41). On view at MoMA; 5th floor
Painting 14 from Migration Series by Jacob Lawrence (1940-41). A white judge sitting behind his bench looks down upon a pair of Black people before him. Text reads: “Among the social conditions that existed which was partly the cause of the migration was the injustice done to the Negroes in the courts.”
June 24, 2025 at 6:13 PM
alonsonichols.bsky.social
Painting #50 - Selection from artist Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series (1940-41). On view at MoMA - 5th floor.
Jacob Lawrence Migration Series #50: Painting of two white police officers with their batons raised striking a Black man lying on the ground. Text reads: “Race riots were very numerous all over the North because of the antagonism that was caused between the Negro and white workers. Many of these riots occurred because the Negro was used as a strike breaker in many of the Northern industries.”
June 24, 2025 at 6:08 PM
alonsonichols.bsky.social
Painting #4 - Selection from artist Jacob Lawrence’s migration series (1940-41). Installed on the 5th floor at MoMA.
Painting #4: “The Negro was the largest source of labor to be found after all others had been exhausted.” Painting of a bare-chested Black man in profile with a sledge hammer raised above his head, poised to hit a spike into the ground. The background is a green wall with a window that partially frames him.
June 24, 2025 at 6:02 PM
alonsonichols.bsky.social
At top: photo of a grave’s headstone. Caption reads “The grave of Cicely, a 15-year-old 'Negro servant' of the Rev William Brattle, a treasurer at Harvard College, at the Old Burying Ground just outside Harvard Yard on 27 April 2022, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Photograph: Charles Krupa/AP” Text below: Cellini suspects the reason he was fired is simple: "We found too many slaves." The university was afraid that identifying descendants would bankrupt the university and so each name that his team identified was "expensive", he said. The work that he oversaw is "just the tip of the iceberg", he added, estimating that the numbers of living descendants could be about 10,000 people. Cellini had just come back from Antigua a couple days prior, where his team had visited the site of the Royall plantation as well as four other plantations with ties to the university. They also found a hundred additional names of enslaved people with ties to the university in public archives, he said.
June 21, 2025 at 4:49 PM
alonsonichols.bsky.social
Come on, now…
Black man holding his head in his hand with a smoking cigarette, eyes closed, in exasperation
June 12, 2025 at 1:10 AM
alonsonichols.bsky.social
Zuck: the average American has three friends.
May 2, 2025 at 3:52 AM
alonsonichols.bsky.social
As America loses the superficial liberal flavor of pop culture, we're losing culture's transformative power entirely. Good storytelling challenges its audience; it encourages people to question their assumptions instead of accepting the status quo. The surprises matter because characters are changed by what they find; the mere novelty isn't the point. We're left with a future in which completely Al-generated families undertake increasingly surreal rituals designed to recall distantly remembered household traditions. This isn't about ideology. The algorithm doesn't care what you watch-just that you never stop watching. Just keep the screen on. Auto-play to infinity.
April 29, 2025 at 4:22 PM
alonsonichols.bsky.social
THENEW REPUBLIC Industry surveys bear this out. More people are leaving Hollywood than ever before. Decades of experience are being wiped away in real time. Employment in Los Angeles's film, television, and sound sector dropped around 30 percent between 2022 and 2024, according to a report by Otis College of Art and Design. New York, a lesser hub for decades, has seen its own entertainment industry similarly dive: After the historic strikes of 2023, when members of the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA stopped working for months, direct production employment was 41,800, 25 percent lower than prestrike level. It seems doubtful either hub will recover. But the problem of people leaving the entertainment industry goes beyond a geographic shift. People are disappearing from the entire category of entertainment. Consider those YouTube channels pumping out Al-generated narration over crazed-but-optimized imagery.
April 29, 2025 at 4:22 PM
alonsonichols.bsky.social
THENEW REPUBLIC But that was the point, I think. Democrats and progressives mock the junior varsity nature of Trump's team, taking pleasure in the fact its members weren't good enough to succeed in prestige media, just podcasts and 30-second sharable spots. We don't want to believe the prestige media don't matter anymore. What's happening now is different from tonal shifts of culture that have occurred before. (24's celebration of torture during George W. Bush's reign to Glee's embrace of queer high schoolers during Obama, for example.) One difference this time is the aggressive nakedness of the backlash. If Conover's and Hughes's conversations with studio insiders suggested that the industry was retracting its interest in diversity—and even "messages" — the insiders were just saying out loud what anyone can see on screens. A crew member on
April 29, 2025 at 4:21 PM
alonsonichols.bsky.social
THENEW REPUBLIC Politically, the real pop culture contest today isn't between who has the best entertainment franchise-the Reaganesque frontier stoicism of Paramount's Yellowstone or the perverse feminism of Showtime's Yellowjackets, say-it's between who can effectively move their audience: Rogan or MrBeast? Liberals aren't even competing on this front. I'm not sure they even know it's there. Trump's appearances on these podcasts helped him because they brought him into an environment. He was joining them. Harris, of course, didn't go on Rogan, and when she did venture into the podcast sphere, it often felt as if she was trying to convince that audience to join her. Since Trump's reelection, liberal pundits have focused on the signifiers of support Hollywood has traditionally supplied: the label ribbons, the performative representation, and whether or not Disney includes content warnings on racial stereotypes present in its classic films. But the rise of the right-winger as trusted hangout interlocutor, and the way the connection he offers shapes how audiences move through the world, are different from the "Jifferent hat came halloame" cionalino of
April 29, 2025 at 4:19 PM
alonsonichols.bsky.social
The biggest hit of 1974 was Blazing Saddles, a movie that some anti-woke sorts say "couldn't be made today." I think they're right, but it's not the "un-PC" comedy that's the problem, though the fact that the leading man is Black might be. The real problem is that the horses don't talk, too. One of the striking things about the top-grossing films of the 2020s is how many of them replace identifiably human characters with superhuman or animated characters or CGI monstrosities.*
April 29, 2025 at 4:19 PM
alonsonichols.bsky.social
So much here but one thing sitting with me: the persistent dehumanization that has long marked our culture now accelerated and amplified through technology and its wider consequences.
“We’re not waiting for a post-human entertainment future—we’re already in it” - Ana Marie Cox
THENEW REPUBLIC In that context, of course reactionary influencers dominate; they offer what Hollywood no longer does. The bros and their brethren-Jordan Peterson, Logan Paul, even trad wives and crunchy anti-vax health grifters —give the illusion of human connection. These conservative cultural leaders meet disempowered white people where they are — unhealthy, lonely, and lost in a culture they feel doesn't welcome them. The YouTubers and podcasters offer tools for navigating day-to-day life (health supplements, homeschooling, "masculinity" pep talks) alongside scapegoats to blame for their struggles (trans people, Anthony Fauci). They supply a shortcut to empowerment, an external enemy to blame. It's working. Mass culture was never perfect, never entirely progressive, much less revolutionary. It can numb as well as inspire us—but at least it provided a shared language. To fully grasp how far we've fallen, consider the typical product that Hollywood once made and why it was able to make it-not because of ideology, but because of a stable economic foundation. As America loses the superficial liberal flavor of pop culture, we're losing culture's transformative power entirely. Good storytelling challenges its audience; it encourages people to question their assumptions instead of accepting the status quo. The surprises matter because characters are changed by what they find; the mere novelty isn't the point. We're left with a future in which completely Al-generated families undertake increasingly surreal rituals designed to recall distantly remembered household traditions. This isn't about ideology. The algorithm doesn't care what you watch-just that you never stop watching. Just keep the screen on. Auto-play to infinity. THENEW REPUBLIC what we've learned in the past eight years is not so much that conservative content is more appealing, but that it is still trying to make an appeal. It's trying to hit emotional buttons and, astonisningly, connect with people away from the screens they're in front of. It might even get them to do something while not in front of a screen. Pink slime doesn't seek to connect, it just glides right over. It has no intuition. It can't answer some need. Only humans can do this. In fact, much of the conservative entertainment that's broken through to the mainstream works because it seeks to do more than soothe. For better or worse, the bros and their trad-wife cousins in this quasi-counterculture inspire loyalty based on a sense of community. And we are so starved for intimacy and the delight of discovery that when actual humans run into view, they can tell their audience to worship or attack. Here's a provocative question: Will we eventually miss conservative entertainment, too?
April 29, 2025 at 4:17 PM
alonsonichols.bsky.social
Is he still talking?
Photos of a Black man holding his head in fatigue with a cigarette in his hand.
April 2, 2025 at 8:58 PM
alonsonichols.bsky.social
Meme of a Black man looking exhausted with his head leaning into his right hand which is holding a lot cigarette
February 23, 2025 at 1:00 AM
alonsonichols.bsky.social
Happy Black History Month from my mother’s house to yours.
An 8 ounce jar of blue Ultra Sheen hair dressing with the white cap.
February 17, 2025 at 1:15 AM
alonsonichols.bsky.social
More of this please. Issa Rae is a real one
Screenshot of IG story from Issa Rae cancelling her appearance at the Kennedy Center: Hey D.C. Fam, Thank you so much for selling out the Kennedy Center for "An Evening With [Me]". Unfortunately, due to what I believe to be an infringement on the values of an institution that has faithfully celebrated artists of all backgrounds through all mediums, I've decided to cancel my appearance at this venue. All tickets will be refunded. Thank you so much for understanding and I hope to see you soon. Love, Issa
February 13, 2025 at 6:29 PM
alonsonichols.bsky.social
With alt text from Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler
Chapter 11 of Parable of the Talents From EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery. Page 177
January 29, 2025 at 5:46 PM
alonsonichols.bsky.social
January 27, 2025 at 2:27 AM
alonsonichols.bsky.social
This might be a start…
Playlist of 80s pop and R&B music
January 27, 2025 at 2:21 AM
alonsonichols.bsky.social
= The Harvard Crimson attention after a Crimson investigation reported that Cellini, the director, had accused Vice Provost for Special Projects Sara N. Bleich, who leads the Legacy of Slavery initiative, of instructing HSRP "not to find too many descendants." Cellini later repeated his allegations in an op-ed in The Crimson. The sudden move came just one week after HSRP representatives met with the prime minister and governor general of Antigua and Barbuda to discuss a pot ntial ground research presence in the country after HSRP identified "several hundred people" enslaved in the island nation between the 1660s and 1815. That number added to the more than 300 individuals enslaved by Harvard affiliates that HSRP had already identified. As of September, HSRP had also identified more than 100 living descendants. This is a developing story and will be updated. Clarification: January 23, 2025
January 23, 2025 at 8:39 PM