Jason Read

Calling Cormac McCarthy’s authorial style a “mistake” that AI no longer makes is so funny

The Water Wars Are Here, And They're Not Woke The Iran War's latest horrifying component involves attacks on desalination facilities. A "not politically correct" conflict could render much of the region uninhabitable

The Trump administration heralds the Iran War as a Not-Woke War. Here’s what that means in practice.

The Affective Constitution of Knowledge: Or, What Bias Feels Like

Reposted for the morning crowd

www.unemployednegativity.com/2026/03/the-...

Me in black sweatshirt and jacket and Bento (dog) on beach

Me in black sweatshirt and jacket with Bento (dog) near marina

Me and Bento by the sea

Justin Fox Deposition (Part 3) in MLA-ACLS-AHA Lawsuit about the NEH YouTube video by ModernLanguageAssoc

It's stunning how ignorant the DOGE bros were who were sent into agencies. Justin Fox cannot even articulate in his own words what his "present understanding of DEI" is: he can't even formulate a coherent sentence about it. I wouldn't hire him for basic tech support. #NEH
youtu.be/jomaMvItnew?...

I once interviewed an expert on oil consumption that focused on consumers. He said low gas prices are a religion for Americans and they will do absolutely nonsensical things to access them, like drive miles and miles out of their way.

If you wanna lose votes as fast as possible, raise gas prices.

The Affective Constitution of Knowledge: Or, What Bias Feels Like

I wrote about bias and trust in institutions.
www.unemployednegativity.com/2026/03/the-...

Coming up in a little over a week. Monday March 16th 2026 17:00-19:00 GMT Spinoza’s Multitude, and Marxism’s with Michael Hardt Michael Hardt is known worldwide for his contributions to radical political philosophy, particularly with reference to the Autonomist Marxist and Deleuzian traditions, alone and in collaboration with the late Antonio Negri. In this seminar he will discuss the genesis of the idea of ‘multitude’ in Spinoza and its later significance in his own and others’ work. https://culturepowerpolitics.org/from-marx-to-spinoza-affect-ideology-materiality/

Coming up in a little over a week.
culturepowerpolitics.org/from-marx-to...

Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature by Alyssa Battisoni, Marx’s Ethical Vision by Vanessa Christina Wills, Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right by Jordan S. Carroll, and Un Taylorisme Augmenté: Critique de l’intelligence artificielle by Juan Sebastián Carbonelle

Books received this week

Opinion | America, We Have a Math Problem

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/26/o...

Otezla - SNL YouTube video by Saturday Night Live

Maybe I have seen too many drug ads on streaming services (or read too much science fiction), but I thought this was funny.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3QM...

Absolutely chilling story

When DOGE Unleashed ChatGPT on the Humanities

Huge NYT article on the back story of those two weeks in March/April 2025 when DOGE illegally terminated hundreds of NEH grants. Gift link!!

www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/a...

The "others" in Pluribus illustrate the two things that are most alien to contemporary American culture: collective solidarity and having an ethical code.

Me and Bento (dog)

Selfie with dog

there's so much bad in the world but there's also people who lift up and carry an elderly bat around every day so he can pretend he's flying again, and that's the part of the world I think is worth fighting for

That is probably a better way of putting it.

Are you kidding?

The budgets definitely got smaller, but for the most part they got creative with how to deal with it, time travel, etc. The last one, Battle is truly awful

I sometimes think that the division between metal and punk/hardcore is that the former writes songs about the devil, Lovecraftian monsters, and other imaginary evils while the latter prefers to write about the real evils of capitalism and the state.

A 180

Ape Like Imitation: Repetition and Difference in the Planet of the Apes

In my opinion Escape from.. and Conquest of... are two of the best, the latter is so good that it has been remade three times now.
www.unemployednegativity.com/2011/08/ape-...

The Primitive Accumulation of Prehistory: On the Jurassic Park films

Reposting because the Jurassic Park/World movies are on Netflix

www.unemployednegativity.com/2018/06/the-...

NYT Hed/Dek: Slurs Filled a Chat Created by a Republican Party Official in Florida After the secretary of the Miami-Dade County Republican Party created the chat for college students, it devolved into slurs against Black and Jewish people.

put it in a museum

Picture of me presenting my book The Double Shift: Spinoza and Marx on the Politics of Work at Space Gallery.

Something, something Baudrillard

It’s tiring that we are increasingly stuck organizing our intellectual lives around arguing for the value of having an intellectual life

"The working classes have always been the caring classes — not just because they do almost all of the caring labor, but also because, perhaps partly as a result, they actually are more empathetic than the rich. Psychological studies show this, by the way. The richer you are, the less competent you are at even understanding other people’s feelings. So trying to reimagine work — not as a value or end in itself, but as the material extension of caring — is a good start." . - David Graeber

"We've made 'do more war crimes' our official policy" should play well for the Nuremberg 2 judges