Curated Nerd-Cool

I promised to intermittently share what I find digging through the crates of life. Here’s the best and most interesting of what I came across this week.

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Convergence Magazine and the Hegemonicon Podcast

Everyone is sleeping on Convergence—the most underrated zine out there right now. I discovered them when researching Grand Strategies of the Left and found them to be one of the best intellectual resources for progressives.

They also have a new podcast hosted by William Lawrence that is just the best shit for strategy nerds and strategically minded progressives. All his episodes so far have been bangers, but the one he just did reliving the Bernie vs. Warren clash in 2020 brought back a flood of sucky memories from 2020…but important to work through it all. Best podcast I heard the past couple weeks.

Jobs!

Inkstick Media

is hiring a Managing Editor, and a Domestic Extremism Reporting Fellow. I love Inkstick, so if you or someone you know is in the hunt for work, check it out.

Reading Politics and Policy

• Spencer Ackerman, “Biden's “‘Indispensable Nation’ Is on The Brink of A Wider War,” Forever Wars

  (you really should subscribe to Spencer’s newsletter—if you like me you’ll like him, and if you hate-read me you’ll love to hate-read him)

• Erin Heaney, “Winning White People to the Fight Against the MAGA Right,” Convergence

• Dean Baker, “Industrial Policy is Not a Remedy for Income Inequality,” CEPR

• Jeff Schurke and Sarah Lazare, “Republicans Are Using Anti-China Rhetoric to Undercut Striking UAW Workers’ Demands,” In These Times

• Elizabeth Tandy Sheerer, “Borrowed to the Hilt,” The Baffler

Non-sequitur

What You Missed In Substack Notes

Substack has a feature called Notes that’s a very Twitter-like social function. You can follow people, and you can interact with what people post (I think you can post too). I’ve started using it more, and except for a center-right lean of the content being shared around, it seems promising. So I’ll share here any big thing you might’ve missed from not being on Notes, like this:

Entertainment

The Peripheral, which I caught on Amazon Prime, is a mind-blowing sci-fi show based on the novel by the great William Gibson. Way more gripping than the average work of sci-fi. Freaking addictive. Can’t wait for season 2.

Suge Knight’s got a podcast!?!?!?! Apparently it drops at the end of the month. Suge is such a piece of shit. A horrible human. But an important historical figure in hip-hop. This podcast—which is being recorded from prison because he’s serving a bid for running somebody over (on film) during the the making of the Straight Outta Compton movie in 2015—is totally going to retcon hip-hop history; promises to be self-serving gossip. And I might have to listen to it.

“When We Move,” by Common (feat. Black Thought and Sean Kuti), has been at the top of my playlist this week. A song perfect for all moods, unless you want to be sad.