Boston Review
@bostonreview.bsky.social
A magazine of ideas, politics, and culture, committed to the power of collective reasoning and imagination to create a more just world. Independent & nonprofit since 1975. Newsletter: bostonreview.net/newsletter Subscribe: bostonreview.net/memberships
The #BoardofPeace as a product of the #TrumpIsDangerouslyUnfitForOffice brand of lawless 'gangster imperialism.' www.bostonreview.net/articles/exi...
Exit and Exception
The Board of Peace’s model for governing Palestine reflects designs for a new world order.
bostonreview.net
“It’s that undeniable, if not wholly reliable, aspect of Mencken that I find myself reaching for in this year of another pointless war; of sadistic, libidinal 100% Americanism enforced at the barrel of a gun; of bootlicking the likes of which we haven’t seen since the reign of the Hanovers.”
Mencken Agonistes
Misrepresented by the right and misunderstood by the left, the Sage of Baltimore delivered scathing—and still bracing—indictments of American injustice.
bostonreview.net
The new US led legal international order with as many exits and exceptions as the holes in a Swiss cheese.
Boston Review@bostonreview.bsky.social · 2w ago“The destruction inflicted on the Palestinian people is decimating the guardrails that protected us all. Private sovereignty is advancing steadily, while national sovereignties—Venezuela, Cuba, and Lebanon—are undermined and others—Palestine—are preempted from being realized at all.” Noura Erakat:
Exit and Exception The Board of Peace’s model for governing Palestine reflects designs for a new world order. Noura Erakat
Exit and Exception
The Board of Peace’s model for governing Palestine reflects designs for a new world order.
bostonreview.net
Raimo Kangasniemi@rk70534.bsky.social · yesterday"...Board of Peace... political project, driven by market fundamentalists & a tech elite, to exit international law & popular democracy altogether. ...project from the charter cities & special economic zones championed by figures like Peter Thiel to #Gaza... www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTI2... #Israel
“A mental pentathlete.” That’s how Joyelle McSweeney describes the genre-defying Canadian writer Anne Carson—the winner of this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature, the subject of several BR essays, and a contributor to the magazine herself:
The Ecstasies of Anne Carson
Writing by, and on, this year’s winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
bostonreview.net
In 1986, when Eros the Bittersweet was published, it first stunned the classics community; then it stunned the nonfiction community; and then, & only then, deep into the 90s, reissued as “literature” & redesigned for a new audience, it finally stunned the poets. John D’Agata on Anne Carson:
Trying Its Darndest to Be Poetry
On Men in the Off Hours by Anne Carson.
bostonreview.net
“The economists find a ‘long-run equilibrium’ in which ‘all human knowledge is ultimately destroyed.’ A more immediately realistic risk for mathematics is the collapse of its publishing model in the face of a flood of superficially plausible papers generated by LLMs.” Mathematician Michael Harris:
Knowledge Collapse
AI companies are racing to mechanize mathematics. Where does that leave human understanding?
bostonreview.net
Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · 3d agoTerry Tao @teorth.bsky.social: Indiscriminate brute-force application of AI to mathematics is depleting the field of good questions without renewing this resource or providing commensurate value. OpenAI: We hear you. Here's a .zip file with 377 hasty AI solutions to important open problems.
“There were many Menckens: some confounding, some repellent, some still bracing as we confront the iniquities of a nation that remains, as he wrote during the last Roaring Twenties, ‘the greatest show on earth.’” @andrewholter.bsky.social on “social outrage” in this age of American sadism:
Mencken Agonistes
Misrepresented by the right and misunderstood by the left, the Sage of Baltimore delivered scathing—and still bracing—indictments of American injustice.
bostonreview.net
Kept waiting for "network state" to appear in this and was not disappointed. www.bostonreview.net/articles/exi...
Exit and Exception
The Board of Peace’s model for governing Palestine reflects designs for a new world order.
bostonreview.net
“The economists find a ‘long-run equilibrium’ in which ‘all human knowledge is ultimately destroyed.’ A more immediately realistic risk for mathematics is the collapse of its publishing model in the face of a flood of superficially plausible papers generated by LLMs.” Mathematician Michael Harris:
Knowledge Collapse
AI companies are racing to mechanize mathematics. Where does that leave human understanding?
bostonreview.net
Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · 3d agoTerry Tao @teorth.bsky.social: Indiscriminate brute-force application of AI to mathematics is depleting the field of good questions without renewing this resource or providing commensurate value. OpenAI: We hear you. Here's a .zip file with 377 hasty AI solutions to important open problems.
“One wonders whether Ayn Rand, who as a young woman in the thirties wrote fan letters to Mencken like he was Clark Gable, ever knew that her idol once brought his pen to the aid of Sacco and Vanzetti and Eugene Debs, or that he corresponded affectionately with Emma Goldman.”
Mencken Agonistes
Misrepresented by the right and misunderstood by the left, the Sage of Baltimore delivered scathing—and still bracing—indictments of American injustice.
bostonreview.net
Excellent assessment of H.L. Mencken from The Boston Review. www.bostonreview.net/articles/men...
Mencken Agonistes
Misrepresented by the right and misunderstood by the left, the Sage of Baltimore delivered scathing—and still bracing—indictments of American injustice.
bostonreview.net
Very pleased to have the 2026 Mencken Memorial Lecture printed in @bostonreview.bsky.social. Tried to think some about Mencken's messiness and his distinction in our present era of revived "100% Americanism"
Boston Review@bostonreview.bsky.social · 3d ago“There were many Menckens: some confounding, some repellent, some still bracing as we confront the iniquities of a nation that remains, as he wrote during the last Roaring Twenties, ‘the greatest show on earth.’” @andrewholter.bsky.social on “social outrage” in this age of American sadism:
How the Trump regime envisions the post-10/7 governance of Gaza isn't just something new for Gaza (and, by the way, illegal under the old paradigm of international law), but a new model for global governance writ large—and as such a new world order in microcosm. www.bostonreview.net/articles/exi...
Exit and Exception
The Board of Peace’s model for governing Palestine reflects designs for a new world order.
bostonreview.net
“It’s much too easy these days to declare oneself a nonconformist or a contrarian or an opponent of fashionable opinion and then get paid for it. Mencken reminds us that we should have higher standards for our iconoclasts. The real test arrives when the hungry striker is being beaten by cops.”
Mencken Agonistes
Misrepresented by the right and misunderstood by the left, the Sage of Baltimore delivered scathing—and still bracing—indictments of American injustice.
bostonreview.net
“It’s much too easy these days to declare oneself a nonconformist or a contrarian or an opponent of fashionable opinion and then get paid for it. Mencken reminds us that we should have higher standards for our iconoclasts. The real test arrives when the hungry striker is being beaten by cops.”
Mencken Agonistes
Misrepresented by the right and misunderstood by the left, the Sage of Baltimore delivered scathing—and still bracing—indictments of American injustice.
bostonreview.net
“There were many Menckens: some confounding, some repellent, some still bracing as we confront the iniquities of a nation that remains, as he wrote during the last Roaring Twenties, ‘the greatest show on earth.’” @andrewholter.bsky.social on “social outrage” in this age of American sadism:
Mencken Agonistes
Misrepresented by the right and misunderstood by the left, the Sage of Baltimore delivered scathing—and still bracing—indictments of American injustice.
bostonreview.net
🚨 We’re hiring a part-time editorial intern! 🚨 The spring internship runs from January to May; interns are paid and work in our offices in Cambridge, MA. Applications are due November 1. For more info and to apply, go here:
Jobs and Internships
Learn more about jobs, internships, and fellowships at Boston Review.
bostonreview.net
“The revival of coerced labor has a systemic component that no government has had the will to name. . . Slavery cannot exist without political protection. Indeed, it depends on it” Claudio Lomnitz on the Mexican state’s inability to grapple with forced labor:
Slavery Pure and Simple
A recent bombshell report documents brutal cases of forced labor in Mexico. Why can’t the government take it seriously?
bostonreview.net
A powerful piece by Claudio Lomnitz in Boston Review. His next @dukepress.bsky.social book will be out in the spring. dukeupress.edu/a-political-... www.bostonreview.net/articles/sla...
Slavery Pure and Simple
A recent bombshell report documents brutal cases of forced labor in Mexico. Why can’t the government take it seriously?
bostonreview.net
🚨 We’re hiring a part-time editorial intern! 🚨 The spring internship runs from January to May; interns are paid and work in our offices in Cambridge, MA. Applications are due November 1. For more info and to apply, go here: www.bostonreview.net/about/jobs-a...
bsky.app/profile/bria... I cannot tell you how obsessed I was with this film when I was 13. It was so surreal, disturbing and unique. I think I watched it alone and late (for a 13 year old). But it has stayed with me. I’ve never once seen it mentioned since then.
(Brian) Taylor's Version@briantaylor.bsky.social · 6d agositting with this piece by Andy Battle on Penda's Fen, Walter Benjamin, and an importance of the past in the work of liberation www.bostonreview.net/articles/and...
sitting with this piece by Andy Battle on Penda's Fen, Walter Benjamin, and an importance of the past in the work of liberation www.bostonreview.net/articles/and...
Angels of History
In the 1974 cult-classic teleplay Penda’s Fen, the past holds the key to escaping the catastrophic present.
bostonreview.net
🚨 We’re hiring a part-time editorial intern! 🚨 The spring internship runs from January to May; interns are paid and work in our offices in Cambridge, MA. Applications are due November 1. For more info and to apply, go here: www.bostonreview.net/about/jobs-a...
“Then as now, the enslaved worker becomes a discardable object, underfed and overworked until he dies. Coerced labor has death as its expected outcome. The disappeared person is not meant to come back, and during that process, people break.” Claudio Lomnitz on Mexico’s resurgence of slavery:
Slavery Pure and Simple
A recent bombshell report documents brutal cases of forced labor in Mexico. Why can’t the government take it seriously?
bostonreview.net