Welcome to Hell World

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Down here in the everyday

If you give up looking

It makes a sound like a snake when it falls

Every day for the past year I have spent my waking hours in an aghast sort of stupor. Thinking: no one is arriving to stop this? Surprised anew. Still no one? Not even after this? Or this? Or this? And then I resign myself to that grim fact and wake

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Soil to bury our dead

I was on the treadmill when all of the TVs at Planet Fitness switched to coverage of Iran's strike on Israel. I'd never seen them do that kind of thing before. Even the ones that usually show commercials for Planet Fitness while you're at

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If Gaza is the new Vietnam then this is just the start

Similarities exist between 2024 and 1968, but our current moment is more akin to Vietnam pre-1965 — before the US really got involved.

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The scope of the destruction

Lurching somehow even further right

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Freed from the shackles of sense or expectation

Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis

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Presumably they find time to pray

No end in sight

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The voices of children can be heard from under the rubble

The eventual truth  We were going to have to put Jodie Foster down. Out of her misery they said. Send her up to the very same farm my parents conjured for me the last time this scenario played out when I was a child.   She hadn’t been hungry much

Laws that turn bodies into prisons

Wild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking Over America.

Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s Quest to Defend Pop Punk

People are discovering Dale Earnhardt Jr. is a big pop punk and emo head again this week after he tweeted out his playlist so I thought it would be fun to go back and read this interview I did with him for Noisey back in 2018. https://t.co/znGNao6gQt

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Your death will serve as its own justification

I have six new shorts and poems up at Flaming Hydra this week. Unforeseen DifficultiesFiction by Luke O’Neil The guilt He was in the garage jigsaw-puzzling the architecture of the bones. After some doing he looked upon his works and thought well that’s spooky. Nothing crazy but still.

Half the Story

Massachusetts passed historic police certification reform. But even with the POST Commission, the public can’t see which cops have been part of the “officer shuffle.”

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We live in danger times

Down below we have a lovely career-spanning essay on the music of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings and a review of their latest album Woodland. You'll need to be a paid subscriber to read it. You can also go directly to it here. Thank you for supporting this

She made me a country music fan

The music of Gillian Welch

When the chariot arrives you'd best enjoy the ride

The music of TV on the Radio

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Nothing more than a racist land grab

"A guy you used to hang out with and liked but weren't close to and haven't talked to in years and then is dead out of nowhere on Facebook" is one of those things I haven't gotten used to despite it happening

They might do something about it.

The breathless madness of fear

We believe in one another

The best of Oasis

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Stripped it clean of metaphor

the relative scarcity of moon

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What does saving democracy even mean?

Destruction and creation at once

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The contrast in courage is astonishing

The bravery of the remaining few

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What blood runs in your veins

The most perfect distillation of capitalism we've ever seen

Say hello to heaven

The best of Chris Cornell

Playing the victim

I am sincerely shocked they didn't pick the shitty technocrat lawyer and IDF volunteer with a bunch of scandals under his belt and instead went with the likable normal guy who seems to take pride in helping people. What is going on? Either way it's another

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People are sick of having to think about this dude every single day of their lives

You'll have to be a paid subscriber to read today's newsletter in full. I am sorry I know that is very annoying. I don't like it any more than you do. It's mainly about how Donald Trump is a racist piece of