Julian Lucas
@jcljules.bsky.social
staff writer at @newyorker.com // editor-at-large @thedialmag.bsky.social, @cabinetmagazine.bsky.social // jes’ grew carrier https://www.julianlucas.com
My forthcoming book, The Jungles, (Out February 2) is full of revealing detail about the relationship between Monk and Coltrane, whose centenary is being observed now. wwnorton.com/books/978132...
The Jungles
A hidden history of twentieth-century American modernity that begins in a once-dynamic Black neighborhood in New York City with Thelonious Monk as its guiding star., The Jungles, Thelonious Monk and t...
wwnorton.com
It’s John Coltrane’s centennial today. Which Coltrane album are you listening to right now ? (There are no wrong answers.)
Siddhartha Mitter@siddharthamitter.bsky.social · 3w agoJohn Coltrane Born 23 September 1926 Hamlet, North Carolina www.youtube.com/watch?v=yagO...
It’s nice to have my work corroborated by another DNA test. What is also deeply gratifying is the vindication of Madison Hemings, Israel (Gillette) Jefferson who spoke of TJ and SH, & Fawn Brodie, who put the men’s recollections in her TJ bio that I read at 14 and got me started on this journey.
After seven years (!) at The New Yorker, I’m heading to New York Magazine to write full-time, and I couldn’t be more excited. My first day is Monday, but I’m already running around NYFF—say hi if you’re there.
New York Magazine@nymag.com · last mo.New York editor-in-chief David Haskell announced that Alex Barasch is joining the magazine as a features writer, with a focus on the business of culture. He will cover film, television, theater and more, writing across the print magazine and Vulture.
it’s sid meier’s civilization baby, we’re all just living in it
This is a gorgeous radio segment, with the fantastic Ravi Coltrane as a guest, along with lots of music. www.npr.org/2026/09/01/n...
Celebrating 100 years of jazz great John Coltrane
Coltrane would have turned 100 on Sept. 23. We speak to his son Ravi, also a tenor saxophonist, and we revisit a 1998 interview with Elvin Jones, a drummer who performed and recorded with Coltrane.
npr.org
They disinvented the VCR. You might think that the reason we don't have VCRs anymore is because VCRs were supplanted by DVDs, PVRs and streaming, but that's not the case. They had it in for the VCR from the very start, and they never stopped trying to kill it. Eventually, they succeeded. 1/
Trump accuses the Smithsonian of such heinous crimes as neglecting Flag Day, exhibiting foreign bird feathers, and impugning the honor of Mickey Mouse. What’s the truth? I joined four retired ladies from Citizen Historians to investigate www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...
Is the Smithsonian Really Trying to Destroy America?
Trump claims that the Smithsonian has fallen into the hands of Marxist radicals. A stroll through the exhibitions suggests otherwise.
newyorker.com
One irony of Republican hysteria over the Smithsonian is that its 1976 Bicentennial exhibitions—i.e., long before its supposed hijacking by woke activists—also critiqued racism and celebrated America’s identity as a “nation of immigrants”
Trump claims that the Smithsonian has fallen into the hands of Marxist radicals. A stroll through the exhibitions suggests otherwise. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...
Is the Smithsonian Really Trying to Destroy America?
Trump claims that the Smithsonian has fallen into the hands of Marxist radicals. A stroll through the exhibitions suggests otherwise.
newyorker.com
Trump accuses the Smithsonian of such heinous crimes as neglecting Flag Day, exhibiting foreign bird feathers, and impugning the honor of Mickey Mouse. What’s the truth? I joined four retired ladies from Citizen Historians to investigate www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...
Is the Smithsonian Really Trying to Destroy America?
Trump claims that the Smithsonian has fallen into the hands of Marxist radicals. A stroll through the exhibitions suggests otherwise.
newyorker.com
New from 404 Media: we solved which AI company is buying massive shipments of rare books, scanning and destroying them to train AI. We put an Apple AirTag in a rare book, followed it. It ended up at an Amazon facility. Its logo is a dinosaur ripping through a book www.404media.co/we-tracked-a...
We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility
We placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it, and found an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books.
404media.co
New study shows that — contra widely accepted narratives — there is NO EVIDENCE that professors change their students’ politics and make them more liberal through their teaching
i'll believe the right's claims about intellectual diversity when they start approving dissertations on the machinations of the evil scientist Yakub and not a moment sooner
look, I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up but I think I may have discovered something incredible on worldcat
We’re auctioning a limited number of MetroCard Vending Machines and MetroCard Express Machines! The auction is now open and offers must be received by Wednesday, August 19, 2026 at 8 pm EST. Learn more and bid on our website: mta.info/auction
The author of “Cool Machine” has become one of our most important writers without ever seeming to stretch for importance. www.newyorker.com/podcast/crit...
The Irony and the Ecstasy of Colson Whitehead
The author of “Cool Machine” has become one of our most important writers without ever seeming to stretch for importance.
newyorker.com
New: We found 50 cops who misused Flock cameras and other license-plate readers for personal purposes, often to spy on their girlfriends or ex-wives. He "watched every single move I made. ... Who do you turn the chief of police in to?" wapo.st/3S6rTuo
She left her ex. He secretly tracked her through a network of policing cameras.
Flock’s array of license-plate cameras was built to fight crime. But at least 50 law enforcement officers were charged with or accused of misusing it and other systems.
wapo.st
A U.S. government map of Africa mislabeled every country during a state department presentation at a global conference www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
Went on Critics at Large to talk about Colson Whitehead (and learn how to open heavy studio doors)
The New Yorker@newyorker.com · 2mo agoThe author of “Cool Machine” has become one of our most important writers without ever seeming to stretch for importance. www.newyorker.com/podcast/crit...
I am going to join the Women's Christian Temperance Union bsky.app/profile/catg...
Catherina Gioino@catgioino.bsky.social · 3mo agoI wrote about how much Americans wagered on sports betting in 2025 and how it’s more than they spent on movies, art, museums and music combined. Read my article @fortunemagazine.bsky.social fortune.com/2026/07/26/g...
In 1562, some Frenchmen took a group of Indigenous Tupinambá people from Brazil to France to show off their wealth. Instead of being impressed, the Tupinambá looked at the starving French peasants and wondered why they hadn’t yet slit the throats of their wealthy lords and burned down their houses
Ms. Betye Saar has left us. Three days shy of her 100th birthday. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/27/a...
Betye Saar, Artist Who Upended Black Stereotypes, Dies at 99
Working with dolls, family photographs, fabric scraps and other found objects, she became a leading figure in assemblage art.
nytimes.com
The NYRB Author’s Closet, a series of videos of the least camera-ready people in society mumbling inaudibly about Vasily Grossman.
Ned Resnikoff@resnikoff.bsky.social · 3mo agoNYRB should do their own version of the Criterion Closet for their book publishing arm imo
Despite the whining about “ historical accuracy,” the racist backlash to the casting in Nolan’s Odyssey is about the right wanting to justify racial hierarchy by projecting it into a past where it did not actually exist. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
Conservatives in 2016: TRIGGERED LIB???? Conservatives in 2026: We are installing trigger warnings in the Smithsonian
As *tech*, AI isn't exceptional. It's not exceptionally wicked. It's not exceptionally good. Take away the accompanying, galactic-scale stock-swindle, and we'd call AI's apps "plug-ins" and we'd use them and abuse them in the same way that we've used every other technology: www.normaltech.ai 1/
Worth reading @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social in full. We hear about "truth and reconciliation," but if we want to prevent a return to fascism after we regain power, we need "memory, truth, and justice." We must build a political culture, a national mythos, oriented against MAGA crimes. No amnesty.
Truth Without Reconciliation
Why did Brazil’s democratic institutions hold firm while those in the United States so quickly wilted?
bostonreview.net
I reviewed Emily Eakin’s “The Frenchmen” — a memoir / intellectual history / group biography of Althusser, Lacan, Foucault, Barthes, Deleuze, Guattari, Derrida, and De Man—for @newyorker.com
The New Yorker@newyorker.com · 3mo agoFrench theory, as taught in American classrooms, has acquired a reputation of forbidding difficulty and hauteur. A new history seeks to surface its human side. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
