Jeff Sharlet
@jeffsharlet.bsky.social
Bestselling author of THE UNDERTOW: Scenes from a Slow Civil War; THE FAMILY, also a Netflix series; C Street; THIS BRILLIANT DARKNESS; & SWEET HEAVEN WHEN I DIE. AI stole them all. Professing @ Dartmouth. That's not my cat.
Friends. I, too wrote off Digger trailers as a pretentious ham-fisted satire about climate change & oligarchy starring actors unaffected by the troubles of the industry. Turns out it might be one of the smartest, funniest, most tragic films about storytelling and I was just being a judgmental bitch.
Now having seen Digger I find the bad and ambivalent reviews utterly depressing. It's so good it's like a 2025 movie, a year of great, weird films. I wonder if the response is like that to Don't Look Up--which was funny and smart and very good. Digger is Brazil to Don't Look Up's Dr Strangelove.
And I'm grateful for this beautiful, painful, necessary book, which I think I may have the honor of being the first teacher to assign. Local VT/NH pals, mark your calendars--Janet will be speaking at Dartmouth Jan 21.
Janet Reitman@janetreitman.bsky.social · 8h agoI am deeply grateful to the amazing @jeffsharlet.bsky.social for these beautiful words.
Students made their first minicomics in my intro making course - mostly standard format but this student, a first time maker(!), did something so off the charts I’m still reeling from it! & he made like 12 of them for his classmates! A paper engineering feat of flipbookery as well as killer drawing!
Found a Joan of Arc Bread & Puppet pamphlet I don't remember acquiring
Very grateful to go on @onthemedia.bsky.social to discuss Chris Rufo, his “Indian Question,” and why Rufo deserves more of the media’s scorn and disdain, and less polite sit-down interviews on New York Times podcasts www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm...
Polarization Is Not Our Biggest Problem | On the Media | WNYC Studios
During an I.C.E. operation in New York City, officers shot a man in a car while a child sat in the back seat. On this week’s On the Media, coverage of I.C.E. has decreased since the s...
wnycstudios.org
Worth noting here that Andrew Kolvet, spokesman for TPUSA, also endorses state-murder-as-spectacle, after defenders of Charlie Kirk insisted *his* call for such executions as mandatory viewing for kids was just banter (there's video; it wasn't) & that saying otherwise was defaming his memory.
Gil Durán@gilduran.com · 3d agoRemember when Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale called for public executions? www.thenerdreich.com/joe-lonsdale...
Whoa. @haleaziz.bsky.social has the scoop on a truly insane plan to use some military training ships for deportations, with people presumably shackled or locked in cells for days at a time as they transit to Central and South America. Each journey would be staggeringly expensive — and dangerous.
Trump Administration Considers Using Ships to Deport Immigrants (Gift Article)
Journeys to destinations including El Salvador and Venezuela could take days and cost millions. Officials cautioned that discussions are still preliminary.
nytimes.com
To put this in perspective chestnut trees used to be dominant species in the United States. Billions of trees were killed by fungal blight and now fully grown America chestnuts are functionally extinct. There is no getting them back. Ever. All for a data center. www.gadgetreview.com/one-of-ameri...
One of America’s Last Chestnut Groves Is About to Be Destroyed for a Data Center
A rare 200-tree American chestnut grove in West Virginia may be cleared for data-center development, but the project denies the site is on its land.
gadgetreview.com
Hard to keep up but important to do so to remember why you fight but also to remember to fight--the temptation to think, "oh, he's gonna be toothless" because of bad polls or infirmity is too strong. He may be personally failing but he's still a wrecking ball.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 3d agoJust today: - The Trump admin announced the first public execution since 1936. - Trump tried to incite a race war against Somalis. - Trump said anyone using the phrase AI is "THE ENEMY" - The NYT reported on a potential ICE plan to deport migrants on military boats and ferries.
Charlie Kirk gets his wish. He said, in earnest, that executions should be televised and mandatory for children as educational.
Kyle Griffin@kylegriffin1.bsky.social · 3d agoWASHINGTON (AP) - Pentagon says the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan will be livestreamed in December.
I've been immersed in research on Reconstruction in Lousiana and it's a very difficult truth to absorb that the white terrorist movement in the South was among the most successful terrorist movements in global history. Took 10 years but it won a total & complete victory through murder and atrocity.
Last words of Jamaal Howard, who was executed tonight in Texas:
Mainstream political journalists, committed even now to a horse race that Trump openly speaks stealing, call Rubio's Athens speech 2028 positioning. Yes, and--he'd like to be the contender if that becomes the option. But all his great man talk is designed to flatter a boss who may decide to stay.
Rubio's Athens speech was unabashedly white supremacist. Astonishing to me that reporting references his invocation of the Spartan "300" without noting the fetishized role the idiot movie--a fiction based on a fiction, a comic book--plays for the murder-minded wing of the Right.
"A fool's freedom" is a persuasive phrase
Alejandra Caraballo@esqueer.net · 4d agoI'm becoming increasingly alienated and detached from it all. Everyone just argues about the discourse of the day and nothing changes. Rinse and repeat every single day. It's a fool's freedom. It gives us the illusion of control by making us feel like we have agency when we actually don't.
"Sorry about your dead kid. Hey, you want to see my fancy party room? Look at that gold! Lotta gold. I got a new helicopter, too! Do you feel better now about sacrificing your child on my altar? Worth it, right? Look at that gold."
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 5d agoTrump on his meeting with Gold Star families: "I invited them out to check out the new helipad, check out the new ballroom, and check out the new helicopter"
It's pub day for my pal @janetreitman.bsky.social's astonishing THE INHERITANCE. Here's a review from the great @anandwrites.bsky.social that gets at what's brilliant about the book itself and the increasingly rare storytelling tradition in which it now towers. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/06/b...
Book Review: ‘The Inheritance,’ by Janet Reitman (Gift Article)
Following the lives of ordinary citizens, a new book by Janet Reitman fashions an intimate, morally complex portrait of an insecure America.
nytimes.com
ICE has detained more than 500 U.S. citizens.
More Than 500 U.S. Citizens Have Been Detained, Including Handcuffed or Held at Gunpoint, in Trump’s Immigration Crackdown — ProPublica
The government doesn’t track how often immigration officers detain U.S. citizens. So ProPublica did. We’ve found more than 500 Americans who were held against their will during this Trump administrati...
projects.propublica.org
The clearest and most succinct expression I've read of how, beyond the clear fascist rhetoric, the Prairieland prosecutions have terrifyingly expanded federal legal power, beyond the point many feds even wanted to go.
Janet Reitman@janetreitman.bsky.social · 7d agoLaunching a book whilst closing a @nytmag.bsky.social piece is about as daunting as it gets, but the strange, terrible story of the #Prairieland defendants took a while… this is the chilling, long term impact of the 25-yr #waronterror. Gift link below: www.nytimes.com/2026/10/05/m...
Reviewing my files, I feel like I really need to update my collection of great profiles. Partly it's gotten out of date because of how much celebrity/important person profiles, which I'm not much interested in, dominate more than ever. Recommendations of brilliant portraits from last several years?
The hasidim really have some hats. Check out that rabbi on the right's beaver tornado shtreimel. That's what I call a chapeau. (Sable or marten, apparently, but you get the drift.)
Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani@mayor.nyc.gov · last wk.Last week, I was invited into the homes of Jewish New Yorkers across the city to celebrate the holiday of Sukkot.
Another couple of billion years and we won't even remember what the fuss was all about.
From the growing rightwing belief that UK and US should not have entered the war to the kinda crazy increase in outright holocaust denial--there are some insane numbers--to the too-broad enthusiasm for bring-it-on let's-have-a-war-cuz-we'll-win, as applied anywhere.
Bill@bill-of-lefts.bsky.social · last wk.The loss of living memory of the Second World War is absolutely catastrophic
Debris. Detritus. Doom scroll: What if we read our doom scrolls not as portents of what is to come but as records of that which remains? // Another miniature essay, fwiw. www.instagram.com/p/DeF9d6mjGME/
An Israeli drone is surveilling and pursuing Syrian journalists documenting Israeli violations in southern Syria.
There's been a lot of talk about the DA's prosecutorial failure in the Cornell rape case but I haven't seen much about this. Cornell police edited out key info when they passed on Jane Doe's statement, omitting her use of the word "rape." The head of Cornell PD is now top brass at Ithica PD.
Heba Gowayed هبة جويد@hebagowayed.bsky.social · last wk.Anthony Bellamy is now Deputy Chief of Ithaca pd
