Flaming Hydra

Today: Hamilton Nolan, author of the newsletter How Things Work, and the book The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor; and Misha Angrist, a senior fellow at the Initiative for Science & Society and associate professor of the practice at the Social Science Research Institute at Duke University (the views he expresses here are his alone).

Like anyone else, I receive spam emails from sweepstakes purveyors, princes from faraway lands, and myriad other phishermen. But occasionally there will be a real show-stopper, rising above the fray by dint of its perverse language and awkward come-ons. This one from 2023 might be my all-time favorite. How did Grace Hopper manage to get a glimpse of my incandescent smile? How did word of my “eminence” reach her?

We’re not just motorcycle lawyers. We’re motorcycle riders. We don’t just practice law; we “practice” motorcycle riding. Not that we need much practice with that last one—we’ve been riding motorcycles for a long time. Did I go to law school? Yes I did. But I needn’t have. Most of the stuff they said, I had already learned while sitting on my motorcycle. “If you go faster than the speed limit, that’s illegal,” the professor would say. I didn’t even need to write that down.

Today: Rax King, the author of essay collections Tacky: Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have to Offer and the recently published Sloppy. Rax King The Tragedy of Heterosexuality by Rax King When I think about what most straight men prize in the women they desire—youth, slimness, blondeness, whiteness—I feel helpless rage.

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Every day, somebody tries to scam me. Often it happens more than once a day. I fell for a scam recently by clicking through on a party e-vite and obliviously entering my Gmail password. While my account was temporarily hacked, it sent out the same e-vite to everyone I have ever contacted. Humiliating! It never ends! Will we never have a presidential candidate who promises to crack down on these fraudsters?

We are sick in our souls. The other day New York Times columnist and podcaster Ezra Klein interviewed Christopher Rufo, the professional racist whose recent campaign of lies about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Ohio was rewarded on June 25 by the right-wing Supreme Court majority, who gave the Trump administration carte blanche to rescind temporary protected status for every immigrant.

Today: Sam Thielman, a reporter, critic, essayist, and editor, and graphic novel columnist for the New York Times; and Miles Klee, senior writer at Wired, author of the novel Ivyland, and co-author, with Mads Gobbo, of the story collection Double Black Diamond. Sam Thielman Miles Klee I’ll Show You the Life of the Mind by Sam Thielman We are sick in our souls.

Today: Tom Tomorrow, the creator of the weekly political cartoon, This Modern World; and science journalist, columnist, podcast host, and science fiction writerAnnalee Newitz, author of Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind, The Terraformers, and Automatic Noodle.

We’re living in the future I’ll tell you how I know I read it in the paper fifteen years ago – John Prine 1. Billboards and billionaires solemnly inform us that we are “living in the future.” You can see the phrase in AI ads and business plans; you can read it in New York Times headlines.