General Think Pieces and Poems
Lawrence Wright, “The Plague Year.”
Naomi Klein, “The Meaning of The Mittens: Five Possibilities” and “How Not to Lose the Lockdown Generation.”
Irene Butter, “I Witnessed the Rise of Nazism Firsthand. We Must Act Now to Protect American Democracy.”
Charles Yu, Mike Jaccarino, A. S. Hamrah, Eileen Myles, Judith Martin, Olivia Laing, Yinka Elujoba, Lauren Oyler, Jane Hu, Liane Carlson, David Owen, Christian Lorentzen, and Christopher Beha, “Life after Trump.”
Micah Uetricht, “Amid the Wildfires: Mike Davis’s Forecast for the Left.”
Eric Reinhart, “Pandemicity without Pandemic: Political Responsibility in the Exponential Present.”
Jericho Brown, “Inaugural.”
Dan Rather, “A Moment of Reckoning.”
Kyle Chayka, “How Nothingness Became Everything We Wanted.”
Adam Serwer, “An Incompetent Authoritarian Is Still a Catastrophe.”
Susan B. Glasser, “Obituary for a Failed Presidency.”
Tim Naftali, “The Worst President in History.”
Christian Lorentzen, “I Need Money,” review of Yesterday’s Man: The Case against Joe Biden, by Branko Marcetic.
Paul Musgrave, “America Needs to Prosecute Its Presidents.”
Matt Johnson, “Will the US Ever Recover from Trump?”
David Roth, “The March of American Kooks.”
Molly Crabapple, “Molly Crabapple on New York City Before—and One Day, After—COVID-19.”
Paul Rosenberg, “‘A Moment of Moral and Political Nihilism’: Theologian Adam Kotsko on Our Current Crisis.”
Michael Hardt, “War by Other Means.”
Lauren Russell, “Poetry for the Moment.”
Julia Barajas, “How a Twenty-Two-Year-Old LA Native Became Biden’s Inauguration Poet.”
Alexandra Alter, “Amanda Gorman Captures the Moment, in Verse.”
Virginia Jackson and Meredith Martin, “The Poetry of the Future.”
The Editors of n + 1, “The Politics Trump Made: A Reading List.”
George T. Conway III, “Donald Trump’s New Reality.”
And (re-upping) David Roth, “The President of Blank Sucking Nullity.”
Politics and Economics
Alexander Burns, “How Democrats Planned for Doomsday.”
Stacey Abrams and Lauren Groh-Wargo, “How to Turn Your Red State Blue.”
Peter Baker and Sabrina Tavernise, “One Legacy of Impeachment: The Most Complete Account So Far of January 6.”
Jim Rutenberg, Jo Becker, Eric Lipton, Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Martin, Matthew Rosenberg, and Michael S. Schmidt, “77 Days: Trump’s Campaign to Subvert the Election.”
Sarah Kerr, Natalie Reneau, and Aaron Byrd, “A Look Back at Trump’s Presidency in Six Minutes.”
Matt Flegenheimer and Maggie Haberman, “A First for an American President, and a First for Donald Trump.”
Richard Lardner and Michelle R. Smith, “Records: Trump Allies behind Rally That Ignited Capitol Riot.”
Peter Maass and Ron Haviv, “City of Soldiers.”
Thomas Colson, “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says the GOP Caucus Has ‘White Supremacist Sympathizers’ at Its Core.”
Moira Donegan, “AOC’s Powerful Plea for Republican Accountability Cannot Be Ignored.”
Mikael Nilsson, “Trump Is a Warning That Fascism Didn’t Die with Hitler and Mussolini.”
Jacob Silverman, “Why Are Journalists and Surveillance Researchers Helping the FBI to Catch Capitol Rioters?”
Neil MacFarquhar, Jack Healy, Mike Baker, and Serge F. Kovaleski, “Capitol Attack Could Fuel Extremist Recruitment for Years, Experts Warn.”
Bill Allison, “Organizers of Trump Rally Had Been on Campaign’s Payroll.”
Katie Benner, “Trump and Justice Department Lawyer Said to Have Plotted to Oust Acting Attorney General.”
Spencer S. Hsu, Tom Jackman, and Devlin Barrett, “Self-Styled Militia Members Planned on Storming the US Capitol Days in Advance of January 6 Attack, Court Documents Say.”
Mark Sumner, “Trump Defense Secretary Disarmed DC National Guard before Capitol Riot.”
Eric Tucker, “Joe Biden Orders Review of Domestic Violent Extremism Threat in US.”
Anna Massoglia, “Shell Companies and ‘Dark Money’ May Hide Details of Trump Ties to DC Protests.”
Eric Schmitt, Jennifer Steinhauer, and Helene Cooper, “Pentagon Accelerates Efforts to Root Out Far-Right Extremism in the Ranks.”
PBS News Hour, “How the Intelligence Community Views the Dangers of Domestic Extremism.”
Maggie Haberman, Kenneth P. Vogel, Eric Lipton, and Michael S. Schmidt, “With Hours Left in Office, Trump Grants Clemency to Bannon and Other Allies.”
Em Steck and Andrew Kaczynski, “Marjorie Taylor Greene Indicated Support for Executing Prominent Democrats in 2018 and 2019 before Running for Congress.”
Lara Seligman and Connor O’Brien, “Austin Ousts Pentagon Advisory Board Members as He Roots Out Trump Appointees.”
Jess Bravin and Sadie Gurman, “Trump Pressed Justice Department to Go Directly to Supreme Court to Overturn Election Results.”
Lara Seligman and Bryan Bender, “‘Really Quite Shocking’: Inside the Ugly Transition at the Pentagon.”
Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny, “Some QAnon Followers Lose Hope after Inauguration.”
Mike Giglio, “What’s Next for the Militias?”
Adam Liptak, “Supreme Court Ends Emoluments Suits against Trump.”
David E. Sanger, “Biden Bars Trump from Receiving Intelligence Briefings, Citing ‘Erratic Behavior.'”
Masha Gessen, “Putin’s Unchanging, Unthinking Response to Alexey Navalny.”
Nicholas Kristof, “We Are a Nation of Child Abusers.”
Deconstructed, “Could the ‘For the People Act’ Save American Democracy?”
And James Gallagher, “Fertility Rate: ‘Jaw-dropping’ Global Crash in Children Being Born.”
Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Bernie Sanders, “This Is the Agenda Democrats Should Pursue under Biden’s Leadership.”
Ben Burgis, “After Donald Trump, the Last Thing We Need Is Unity.”
Derek Thompson, “Biden Should Go Big, Fast, and Simple.”
Liza Featherstone, “If Joe Biden Moves Left, You Can Thank the Left.”
GameStop
Emily Stewart, “The GameStop Stock Frenzy, Explained.”
Matt Phillips and Taylor Lorenz, “‘Dumb Money’ Is on GameStop, and It’s Beating Wall Street at Its Own Game.”
Kevin Roose, “The GameStop Reckoning Was a Long Time Coming.”
Luke Savage, “The GameStop Fiasco Exposes the Fantasy That Capitalism Can Be Democratic.”
Rob Davies, “GameStop Shares Plunge after Ban by Robinhood App.”
Eric Levitz, “The GameStop Rally Exposed the Perils of ‘Meme Populism.'”
Zachary D. Carter, “The Redditors Have Revealed a Myth about the Stock Market.”
Slavoj Žižek, “Corruption for Everybody!”
And this tweet. . . .
Coronavirus
Lawrence Wright, “The Plague Year” (linked above, but it’s important enough to list twice–this is the most definitive history of the past year I’ve yet read).
Roni Caryn Rabin, “Americans Must Tighten Up, or Double Up, Their Masks, CDC Says.”
Ryan Cooper, “Don’t Look Now, but Vaccines Might Just End the Pandemic.”
Julia Marcus, “Vaccinated People Are Going to Hug Each Other.”
Matt Reynolds, “A Lone Infection May Have Changed the Course of the Pandemic.”
Donald G. McNeil Jr., “Fauci on What Working for Trump Was Really Like.”
Justin Feldman, “Coronavirus Is an Occupational Disease That Spreads at Work.”
Matthew Conlen, Denise Lu, and James Glanz, “Why Vaccines Alone Will Not End the Pandemic.”
Kate Santich, “Biden COVID Team Releases ‘Previously Hidden’ Florida Report.”
Royal Society for Public Health, “Survey Reveals the Mental and Physical Health Impacts of Home Working during Covid-19.”
Nuclear and Environmental
“Landmark Anti-Nuclear Treaty Enters into Force.”
“Biden Expected to Appoint Nuclear Deal Architect as US Iran Envoy.”
Laurence Norman, “Iran Has Started Producing Uranium Metal, in Violation of 2015 Accords, IAEA Says.”
Fiona Harvey, “Global Ice Loss Accelerating at Record Rate, Study Finds.”
Stanley Reed, “Shell, in a Turning Point, Says Its Oil Production Has Peaked.”
Peter Beaumont, “How Will Trump Pass ‘Nuclear Football’ to Biden If He’s Not at Swearing-In?”
Hyperarchival
B. M. Watson, “Please Stop Calling Things Archives.”
James Lee, “Opening the Anthropocene Archives.”
“An Extremely Detailed Map of the 2020 Election.”
“Maurice Jackson Pamphlet Collection.”
The Syllabus, “Digital Rights Archive.”
Joe Dobrow, “57,000 Books with Metadata and ‘Blurbs.'”
Lena V. Groeger, Jeff Kao, Al Shaw, Moiz Syed and Maya Eliahou, et al., “What Parler Saw During the Attack on the Capitol.”
Andy Greenberg, “This Site Published Every Face From Parler’s Capitol Riot Videos.”
Joan Donovan, “How Social Media’s Obsession with Scale Supercharged Disinformation.”
Tristan Green, “GPT-3 Is the World’s Most Powerful Bigotry Generator. What Should We Do about It?”
And enter an address or location and Bernie will appear there.
“History”
Caroline Kelly, “Biden Rescinds 1776 Commission via Executive Order.”
Science
Evan Nicole Brown, “It’s Not Every Day We Get a New Blue.”
Derek Van Dam, “Stunning Light Pillars Dazzle in the Northern US Sky.”
Dalya Alberge, “Dramatic Discovery Links Stonehenge to Its Original Site – in Wales.”
Dennis Overbye, “Did an Alien Life-Form Do a Drive-By of Our Solar System in 2017?”
And Andrew Anthony, “Meet Carl Hart: Parent, Columbia Professor–and Heroin User.”
J. Hillis Miller
Clay Risen, “J. Hillis Miller, 92, Dies; Helped Revolutionize Literary Studies.”
W. J. T. Mitchell, “In Memoriam: J. Hillis Miller and the Hospitality of Criticism.”
Eric Hayot, “Hillis Miller.”
Department of English, Yale University, “In Memoriam: Professor J. Hillis Miller.”
Office of the Dean, University of California, Irvine, “In Memoriam: J. Hillis Miller, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature and English.”
And my own, “Remembering J. Hillis Miller (1928–2021).”
Theory and Criticism
Nan Z. Da, “Disambiguation, a Tragedy.”
Ian Balfour, “Totally: Fredric Jameson on Walter Benjamin.”
Jessica Swoboda, “Practicing Acknowledgment.”
Alberto Toscano, “The Long Shadow of Racial Fascism.”
“In Conversation: Professors R. A. Judy and Fred Moten with Sadia Abbas.”
Robert T. Tally Jr., “On Jonathan Arac.”
Evan Kindley, “To Err Is Poetic.”
Tamsin Shaw, “The Psychologists Take Power.”
McKenzie Wark, “Cis Lit and the Trans Writer.”
Lee Konstantinou, “Autofiction and Autoreification.”
John Hay, Apocalypse in American Literature and Culture.
Robert Gottlieb, “Harold Bloom Is Dead. But His ‘Rage for Reading’ Is Undiminished.”
Alison Flood, “London Review of Books Editor Mary-Kay Wilmers Steps Down after Thirty Years.”
Literature and Culture
Lucy Feldman, “‘My Wine Bills Have Gone Down.’ How Joan Didion Is Weathering the Pandemic.”
Blair McClendon, Jenny G. Zhang, Matt Christman, Merve Emre, Rosemarie Ho, Sasha Frere-Jones, Sophie Haigney, Tausif Noor, “‘Speak to the Moment’: Art and Culture Under Trump.”
Sarah Mesle, “Dickinson’s Hair.”
Rebecca Nicholson, “Guns N’ Roses: How They Soundtracked My Last Gasp of Pre-Teen Freedom.”
Adam Lewental, “I Think Dan Brown Turned My Parents into QAnoners.”
Michael Hoffman, “Slashed, Red, and Dead” (on Rainer Maria Rilke).
Mathilda Cullen and Dominick Knowles, Stanzas for Four Hands: An Ophanim.
And Diep Tran, “SAG-AFTRA Approves New Influencer Agreement.”
Fiction, Poetry, Nonfiction
Blake Butler, DECADE.
Jake Wolff, “The Orphan Disease.”
kalirush, “RE: Thesis Defense Issue.”
Oscar Martens, “Exploring Shark Love with Tessa Yang.”
Eugenia Leigh, “My Husband Tells Me about a Man Who Doesn’t Kill Himself.”
Mike Corrao, Rituals Performed in the Absence of Ganymede.
Monique Laban, “The Failed Dianas.”
Bryan Lufkin, “Why You’re More Creative in Coffee Shops.”
Video Games
Stephanie Harkin, “Making Good Trouble,” review of Gamer Trouble: Feminist Confrontations in Digital Culture, by Amanda Phillips.
Hope Bellingham, “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Speedrunner Completes the Game 100% whilst Taking No Damage.”
Christian P. Haines, “Mourning, Melancholy, Edith Finch, and My Mother.”
Erick DeLapp, “Feeling Lonely? Wearing Cat Ears May Help.”
Sports
Kurt Streeter, “For Pro Athlete Leading Social Justice Push, a Victory and Uncertainty.”
Mark Stein, “The Harden Trade Should Work Out — but Maybe Not for the Nets.”
Humanities and Higher Educaiton
Humanities Works, “Myths and Realities: About Humanities Majors.”
Ryan Boyd, “What We’re Owed: John Warner on the Future of Higher Education.”
Sumana Roy, “Beyond the Guilt Tax: Revising the Postcolonial Syllabus.”
Erin A. Spampinato, “Love under These Conditions.”
“Higher Ed Under Biden-Harris: Live Updates.”
Don Troop, “Swift Vaccinations, a ‘Normal’ Spring, and Other Wishful Thinking.”
The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Tracking Colleges’ Spring-Reopening Plans.”
Paul N. Friga, “How Much Has Covid Cost Colleges? $183 Billion.”
Patricia McGuire, “Colleges Share the Blame for Assault on Democracy.”
Paula Rabinowitz, “The Associate Professor Trap.”
Carolyn Dever and George Justice, “How to Avoid the Associate-Professor Trap.”
Betsy Barre, “The Workload Dilemma.”
Emma Pettit, “Covid-19 Has Robbed Faculty Parents of Time for Research. Especially Mothers” and “Kansas Regents Make It Easier to Dismiss Tenured Professors.”
Vanessa Miller, “Iowa Lawmakers Advance Bill to Eliminate Tenure.”
“Higher Ed Under Biden: Live Updates.”
And Tom Bartlett, “Dead Man Teaching.”
Parenting
Jessica Bennett, “Three American Mothers, On the Brink.”
Laurel Elder and Steven Greene, “Parenthood and Politics in the Era of COVID-19.”
Lydia Kiesling, “This Parenting Book Actually Made Me a Better Parent.”
And Fest Things First, “The Brad.”
The Hyperarchival Parallax 