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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
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 · 6d 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 · last wk.I 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 · 2w 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 · 2w 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...
no I don’t need to know the story of a pilot inside the asteroids ship, or what the asteroids are threatening, or any of that. that is not the point. I am the pilot and after about five minutes I have died three times in space. that is “Asteroids.”
Wario64@wario64.bsky.social · 2w agoAtari Makes Universal Movie Deal For 10 Iconic Game Properties -Asteroids -Adventure -Berzerk -Breakout -Centipede -Crystal Castles -Millipede -Missile Command -Pong -Yars’ Revenge deadline.com/2026/07/atar...
Bravely getting on stage with the brilliant and deranged Cole Escola, aka “Mayhem’s Muse” (apparently). Come out!
The New Yorker@newyorker.com · 2w agoEarly tickets are now on sale, with events taking place October 23rd through 25th and featuring leading figures from the worlds of literature, entertainment, and more. www.newyorker.com/news/press-r...
The final book in the author’s Harlem Trilogy is out now; read our recommendations from his œuvre. www.newyorker.com/books/what-w...
A Colson Whitehead Starter Pack
The final book in the author’s Harlem Trilogy is out now; read our recommendations from his œuvre.
newyorker.com
I was already resigned to AI ruining the internet but used booksellers are too much
404 Media@404media.co · 2w agoA book seller told 404 Media that, normally, on a good week, he’d sell about 20 books. Since April, he has regularly sold hundreds of books a week. While the seller didn’t have clear evidence that the purchases were being made by AI companies, the purchases made him suspect that they were.
“I’m a really lazy bitch, but I have a punitive superego. The two go together.” I profiled NYC’s own Colson Whitehead (@colsonwhitehead.com), who made me gumbo, opened up about his life, and showed me around the Harlem of his riveting crime trilogy www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
Colson Whitehead’s Big Score
As he closes out his Harlem crime trilogy with “Cool Machine,” the two-time Pulitzer winner turns again to the city that made him, and to the private ghosts behind his restless reinventions.
newyorker.com
"Steven Thrasher, an assistant professor and the Daniel H. Renberg Chair of social justice in reporting, accused the university of breaching his employment contract, including alleged violations of his academic freedom, denying his tenure appeal..." www.chicagotribune.com/2026/07/20/n...
Denied tenure and alleging discrimination, Northwestern University professor sues school and government officials
A Northwestern University professor filed a federal lawsuit alleging federal officials pressured the school to deny him tenure.
chicagotribune.com
Government-promoted anti-intellectualism is a common feature of fascist states, with “intellectualism” coded as feminine and/or Jewish/leftist.
NPR@npr.org · 2w agoIf an undergraduate program's graduates don't earn more than workers who never went to college, that program could be cut off from federal student loans. But is a degree just about making more money?
“The heaviest piece, a marble bust of the Emperor Hadrian, was still tangled in a carrying sling cobbled together from blue Ikea bags.”
Erin L. Thompson@artcrimeprof.bsky.social · 4w agoA few days before Christmas 2016, a grey Land Rover paused in front of a bank of mirrored windows at this checkpoint on the border between France and Switzerland. What happened next revealed just how looted art worms its way into museums. A 🧵 about my article: hyperallergic.com/why-do-so-ma...
I wrote about "performative reading," resentment, and how tech CEOs managed to make us so incurious, to their great benefit johnpaulbrammer.substack.com/p/on-perform...
On Performative Reading
Language, resentment, magic, and morals.
johnpaulbrammer.substack.com
Come see Lauren Collins and I discuss “They Stole a City,” her brilliant new history of the 1898 Wilmington insurrection—a white-supremacist coup with uncanny echoes today Tonight at 7pm at P&T Knitwear www.ptknitwear.com/events/50888
Lauren Collins presents They Stole a City, with Julian Lucas | P&T Knitwear
P&T Knitwear is a family-owned independent bookstore, podcast studio, event space, and cafe on Manhattan's Lower East Side .
ptknitwear.com
‘The reminder that people lived here for many generations before strip-mining and clear-cutting and other destruction opens up new – or very old – ways of relating to nature.’ @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social on America before 1776. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Rebecca Solnit · Before 1776
In 1848, the US seized the northern half of Mexico, from California to New Mexico, and imposed American law and the...
lrb.co.uk
The novelist as a thief of time: An important New Yorker profile of Gotham’s own Colson Whitehead/ www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
Colson Whitehead’s Big Score
As he closes out his Harlem crime trilogy with “Cool Machine,” the two-time Pulitzer winner turns again to the city that made him, and to the private ghosts behind his restless reinventions.
newyorker.com
The vote or die contingent is mad that people voted?
“I’m a really lazy bitch, but I have a punitive superego. The two go together.” I profiled NYC’s own Colson Whitehead (@colsonwhitehead.com), who made me gumbo, opened up about his life, and showed me around the Harlem of his riveting crime trilogy www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
Colson Whitehead’s Big Score
As he closes out his Harlem crime trilogy with “Cool Machine,” the two-time Pulitzer winner turns again to the city that made him, and to the private ghosts behind his restless reinventions.
newyorker.com