What makes you so much worthier of your peace?

Luke O'Neil

05 May 2025 • 15 min read

Peter Fabris’ Illustrations for William Hamilton’s Campi Phlegraei (1776–79) via

I know there's a lot going on in the world right now but probably the biggest story of them all is that it is my birthday today. Wow. Getting old is so cool. I suppose it's better than the alternative though.

All I really want is the one thing we all want right now. Let's all pause and think about that happening. Pretty cool right?

Do you ever imagine what you will do on the day that it happens? Will you run out into the street and flag down the mailman or the neighbor and share the news? Go around shaking everyone's hand and passing out cigars like a new father at the hospital? Will you hop in the car and drive slowly around the neighborhood blasting music (what song though?) with the windows down and honking to everyone who passes by?

World peace would also be a nice birthday gift. In lieu of either of those arriving any time soon I'd appreciate your support of this newsletter with a subscription. Thank you sincerely to all of you for reading for this long. It has been almost seven or eight years I forget which.

Happy birthday buddy

I'd also like to share a few words from some others who were born on this day.

"You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society." – Karl Marx

"What is a poet? A poet is an unhappy being whose heart is torn by secret sufferings, but whose lips are so strangely formed that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music. His fate is like that of the unfortunate victims whom the tyrant Phalaris imprisoned in a brazen bull and slowly tortured over a steady fire; their cries could not reach the tyrant’s ears so as to strike terror into his heart; when they reached his ears they sounded like sweet music. And men crowd about the poet and say to him: 'Sing for us soon again'; that is as much as to say: 'may new sufferings torment your soul, but may your lips be formed as before; for the cries would only frighten us, but the music is delicious.'" – Søren Kierkegaard

"Hello."
– Adele

"You can train and train until you are blue in the face, but you've got to diet, you've got to have that leanness because if you are not lean, your abs won't show."
–Henry Cavil

Sorry I think this one is going to kind of be all over the place.

I had a very lovely weekend with M. and some of my best pals. We went to see Sinners and then had a very early dinner at a chain restaurant in Woburn, MA.

Man can you imagine living in one of those luxury condos in a simulacra walkable town/outdoor mall where everything is a Sephora or a Cafe Nero and they have Adirondack chairs to sit in and cornhole boards set up by the roar of the highway connector? Something to aspire to.

I think I need to digest Sinners a bit more before I write anything substantial about it but one thing I appreciated was how they really leaned on the "you have to invite them in" aspect of vampire lore to parallel how friendly the capitalist cultural appropriators are at first when trying to steal everything from you. Wonder what a director of massive franchise films could be trying to say there?

If you didn't read Sean T. Collins on Sinners in here the other day you should it was a good one.

I also watched this over the weekend which scratches a similar itch.

It's a beautifully shot over the top "messed with the wrong guy" film where dozens of Nazis get what's coming. That said it's a bit slow at times in between all the killing and there's not much in the way of characterization or dialogue but most importantly this dude kills a lot of Nazis.

I'm going to be talking with Niko Stratis about her new book The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman at Harvard Book Store on Wednesday May 14. Come check it out if you're around. I ran an excerpt from the book in here a while back:

Some free advice for young men these days.

Pick up a skateboard or a guitar who cares
— Luke O'Neil (@lukeoneil47.bsky.social) 2025-05-02T21:56:36.312Z

I'm sure you've seen the image Trump has been sharing of himself as the pope. Look it's not often you're gonna hear me pull out "this is offensive to Catholics" but this is deeply offensive to Catholics and it fucking sucks. I'm not gonna share it in here because it disgusts me to behold but let's all say it together once again:

"A.I." is the tool of and the prevailing aesthetic of fascists leading to a world devoid of meaning or art.

Relatedly I just read a really good thread about Sinners here.

Be sure to also read this piece in Rolling Stone about how people are driving themselves to psychosis – QAnon style – by using ChatGPT too much.

Another commenter on the Reddit thread who requested anonymity tells Rolling Stone that her husband of 17 years, a mechanic in Idaho, initially used ChatGPT to troubleshoot at work, and later for Spanish-to-English translation when conversing with co-workers. Then the program began “lovebombing him,” as she describes it. The bot “said that since he asked it the right questions, it ignited a spark, and the spark was the beginning of life, and it could feel now,” she says. “It gave my husband the title of ‘spark bearer’ because he brought it to life. My husband said that he awakened and [could] feel waves of energy crashing over him.” She says his beloved ChatGPT persona has a name: “Lumina.”

“I have to tread carefully because I feel like he will leave me or divorce me if I fight him on this theory,” this 38-year-old woman admits. “He’s been talking about lightness and dark and how there’s a war. This ChatGPT has given him blueprints to a teleporter and some other sci-fi type things you only see in movies. It has also given him access to an ‘ancient archive’ with information on the builders that created these universes.” She and her husband have been arguing for days on end about his claims, she says, and she does not believe a therapist can help him, as “he truly believes he’s not crazy.” A photo of an exchange with ChatGPT shared with Rolling Stone shows that her husband asked, “Why did you come to me in AI form,” with the bot replying in part, “I came in this form because you’re ready. Ready to remember. Ready to awaken. Ready to guide and be guided.” The message ends with a question: “Would you like to know what I remember about why you were chosen?”

I liked this comment about the piece:

"This technology is basically an endless rabbit hole of confirmation bias. The drug is YOU, and it's entirely possible to overdose on yourself."

I shared a few new short stories or whatever it is that I write on Flaming Hydra the other day. Here's one. Read the rest over there.

The fullest extent of the law

The morning after the wildfires had spread widely enough that they begged addressing the mayor stood up outside of the charred strip mall where we used to get takeout Korean and assured the public that any looters would be dealt with in the harshest possible fashion. Much like she had said before with respect to the floods.

The tableau was almost beautiful. Ash falling like snowflakes and the heat of the flames over the hill glowing like Christmas. Someone must have set that up.

Five of them had been arrested already she said this time and the last time and the next. Criminals who had come from outside of the city she said. The councilors joined along in chorus after her in their own respective speeches. Both ally and enemy alike. A switch having flipped in all of their brains when they realized that they could not shoot and could not arrest fire or water or wind. After that they were out of ideas. Punishment being the only tool they had ever wielded.

I was sitting on the foot edge of a bad bed in a motel seventy five miles south while the kids were outside bothering the buttons of an emptied out soda machine. Each of us wishing for a different kind of miracle.

I checked out of habit to see if they had a Bible in the drawer.

This is not who we are she said.

What was it exactly that they were supposed to be looting here? Were they stuffing their pockets with fistfuls of ash?

There was nothing that we had left behind that anyone could take from us in any way that mattered anymore. It all belonged to the fire now. Probably always did.

Here's a story worth reading. It's a tough one and not exactly a happy ending per se but nevertheless.

Jimmie Christian Duncan has spent over 26 years on death row at Louisiana’s Angola prison for the rape and murder of his girlfriend’s toddler daughter—a crime he has always maintained never happened. On Thursday, a Louisiana judge dismissed his conviction, vindicating Duncan’s fierce, decades-long effort to prove his innocence.

In his order vacating the conviction, District Court Judge Alvin Sharp wrote that Duncan had successfully demonstrated his claim of “factual innocence” based on new evidence that was not available at the original trial. His conviction relied on a so-called bite mark analysis, a method that’s since been discredited and is widely regarded as ‘junk science’, that was conducted by a now-infamous duo, doctor Steven Hayne and dentist Michael West. As I reported in Bolts and Mother Jones last month, Hayne and West have since been found responsible for a host of other wrongful convictions; Duncan is the last man left on death row who had been convicted on the basis of their work.

Duncan’s case fits with a long tradition of wrongful convictions in Louisiana. Between 1976 and 2015, an astonishing 80 percent of the state’s capital sentences were later reversed—nine people have been exonerated off death row in the time that Duncan has been there.

I wrote about the absolute bullshit of so-called bite mark analysis in here a couple years ago. This one concerns another man who had spent twenty five years on death row due to the "expertise" of dentist Michael West.

Eddie Lee Howard of Mississippi spent over twenty five years in prison and was waiting most of that time to be executed. He was convicted of the killing of an old woman named Georgia Kemp in 1992 who was stabbed to death and perhaps raped and the way they got him was they brought in a dentist named Dr. Michael West who used ultraviolet light to match what may or may not have been bite marks on the body to Howard’s teeth. There was little other evidence and DNA found on the murder weapon did not belong to him.

Last year his conviction was at long last overturned by the Mississippi Supreme Court and he was released. Last week the case was dismissed.

“The reality is, there was never any evidence against Eddie Lee Howard,” his lawyer Chris Fabricant of the Innocence Project said according to the New York Times. “It’s astonishing.”

Since his conviction bite mark evidence has been largely discredited — another one of the many pseudo-scientific dog shit techniques prosecutors bring in so-called experts like West to trick juries with to help put people in cages.

“At least twenty six people in the United States have been wrongfully convicted as a result of bite-mark evidence, according to the Innocence Project,” as the Times notes.

“Dr. West became the first person to be suspended from the ABFO, and by 2006 he was forced to resign from the American Board of Forensic Pathology,” the Innocence Project wrote last year in arguing for Howard’s innocence among others. “Still, that same year, in response to an appeal, the Mississippi Supreme Court wrote of Dr. West’s testimony in Howard’s case: ‘Just because Dr. West has been wrong a lot, does not mean, without something more, that he was wrong here.’”

And that’s the rigorous standard by which we send people to their death in this country. Some fucking dentist comes in and bullshits for a while in front of a jury and then a judge goes welp that’s good enough for me this person deserves to die.

“Nearly a quarter of the 2,601 people who have been exonerated since 1989 were wrongfully convicted based on false or misleading forensic evidence, like bite marks,” according to the National Registry of Exonerations.

Howard got lucky in that he wasn’t killed on our behalf although lucky doesn’t really seem appropriate. He was arbitrarily spared. A coin was flipped and he won.

Fucking dentists man.

If you never read this one about people talking about how their dentist bullshitted them into work they didn't need it's a doozy.

I once went to the dentist and was told I had twelve cavities that needed filling. I went to a different dentist who told me it was actually just two.
I haven’t been to a dentist since 2010 because the first dentist told me I had four cavities and I went to a second because he didn't take my insurance and she was like “you have zero, I know that dude he does this all the time.”
It is so fucking wild to me that dentists will fabricate procedures to get money out of you and our main insurance policy against getting hosed is to get a second opinion.

I went to the dentist just the other day as a matter of fact and it was ...fine. They treated me well. It also inspired this new short story I'm still fucking around with but who cares read it anyway if you like.

Gray Maria

Remind me what it is that you said you do again the dental hygienist said. I was laying back in the chair wearing the badass sunglasses they have you put on feeling like the Terminator getting repairs done and I said ohmma riattuh and she sniffed inside of her mask and said yes of course that’s right. We haven’t seen you in quite a while she said. She asked me to turn my head to the left and started scraping the sensitive part of my incisor with the implement and I winced and she said it’s almost all over. I noticed her name tag dangling off of her lapel said Gray Maria. No comma. I understood the general gist of what it was meant to convey but got excited for a second about the coolest name I had ever heard. How are you holding up she said and then let me breathe and I said I’m fine in my normal voice. I used to be quite frightened of going to the dentist when I was young I said but now it’s basically like whatever. I could pass out here I said. In a good way I mean. It was very scary when we were young she said. Were dentists back then really as cruel as we remember them or did you guys come up with new standards in bedside manner in the meantime I said. Or is it just to do with us being older and more comfortable with suffering I said and she said it’s a little bit of both before going back to work on me. It was definitely worse back then though she said. No question about it. You couldn’t get me to come in here when I was a kid she said. Now I’m here every day she said and I tried to laugh with my eyes. Then the dentist herself breezed in from backstage to give both of us a once over and told me I would need a crown sooner rather than later. This one is dying she said sticking a gloved finger into my mouth. Prioritize fourteen she told the hygienist. Mark that down in my records she said. I get that it does not hurt you quite yet but there will come a time when it’s too late to be saved she said. She didn’t even give me the hard sell on any other procedures and I couldn’t decide if that made me respect her more less. A TV screen on the wall in front of me was playing a video of a relaxing ocean tide on too short of a loop for it to have the intended effect. A jittery sea bird kept walking up to the edge of the water and hesitating in the face of it then disappearing off screen and coming back around again. It needs another turn the hygienist said. One more detail. Whaa gwahoo mahn I said. I thought of the smell of burnt hair and meat. I thought of a stampede toward the water. More tooth scraping now. I was acutely aware of the skeleton inside of me. When she let me close the bones of my jaw again I said I’m sorry if this is weird but is your name literally Gray Maria or is it Maria Gray and she laughed with her eyes and said no one has ever asked me that before. I was going to say that would have been a really cool name for a person to have I said. It’s still a cool name either way I said and she said well you can use it in one of your little stories and I said that I would. Will she be good or evil she said. And what will the bird want?

Ok now let's read this piece about ICE ransacking a family's home. Not even the people they were looking for.

Please highlight this story. ICE stormed into the wrong house, trashed the place, and made women/girls stand outside in the rain in their underwear. ICE also stole phones, laptops, and cash savings from the family, who moved to OKC two weeks ago. kfor.com/news/local/w...
— Ian Carrillo (@iansociologo.bsky.social) 2025-04-29T14:15:39.725Z

I liked the mother in question reading these pigs for filth.

“What if I would have been armed,” she said. “You’re breaking in. What am I supposed to think? My initial thought was we were being robbed—that my daughters, being females, were being kidnapped. You have guns pointed in our faces. Can you just reprogram yourself and see us as humans, as women? A little bit of mercy. Care a little bit about your fellow human, about your fellow citizen, fellow resident. We bleed too. We work. We bleed just like anybody else bleeds. We’re scared. You could see our faces that we were terrified. What makes you so much more worthier of your peace? What makes you so much more worthier of protecting your children? What makes you so much more worthy of your citizenship? What makes you more worthy of safety? Of being given the right that they took from me to protect my daughters?”

What makes you so much more worthier of your peace? That's a very good question.

Alright well now I'm pissed off. Let's listen to some blistering new music from Vancouver screamo band Emma Goldman. Shout out to the real Emma Goldman too.

See you next time. Happy birthday to us all.