Robert Rubsam
@robrubsam.bsky.social
1.4K followers 290 following 780 posts
Writing on books, movies, the arts: NYT Magazine, Baffler, Washington Post, Atlantic, Liberties, Commonweal, Mubi, Paris Review, Nation, etc. [email protected]
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Reposted by Robert Rubsam
akelalacy.bsky.social
NEW POD 🎧: The Trump admin has executed 21 people it claims were “narcoterrorists.” It's a dark turn in U.S. drug war policy. It’s also in line with the U.S. legacy of killing innocent people chalking it up to “collateral damage,” says @radleybalko.bsky.social
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/l...
License to Kill: Trump’s Extrajudicial Executions
Podcast Episode · The Intercept Briefing · 10/10/2025 · 42m
podcasts.apple.com
Reposted by Robert Rubsam
junoryleejournalism.com
David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)
SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems...
SIMON: What?
SHAPIRO: ...Or saying...
SIMON: You imagine that?
SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over.
SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level.
SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this.
SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.
robrubsam.bsky.social
Insanely sick that the government officials who not one week ago were complaining about "violent rhetoric" now believe they should be able to drone strike George Soros
robrubsam.bsky.social
Unfortunately one of the co-authors of Abundance appears to have beaten you to it
Reposted by Robert Rubsam
mnateshyamalan.bsky.social
there’s something so beautifully American about our democracy’s last line of defense being coronary artery disease
robrubsam.bsky.social
The trouble with books is you actually have to read them
robrubsam.bsky.social
Well hey, thank you David!
Reposted by Robert Rubsam
joemenn.bsky.social
The president's antifa expert tells Holocaust jokes and uses neo-Nazi codes like 1488. www.splcenter.org/resources/ha...
Reposted by Robert Rubsam
tyleraking.com
The literal reading of this statement is Pam Bondi is planning extrajudicial executions of random protesters.
premthakker.bsky.social
My gosh. After the US bombed multiple boats in the middle of the ocean, murdering people on grounds that they were allegedly "carrying drugs," the US Attorney General says "Just like we did with cartels, we're going to take the same approach, President Trump, with Antifa."
robrubsam.bsky.social
hmmm never heard about that happening before
robrubsam.bsky.social
Containing an extrapolation from Elizabeth Hardwick, reflections on the literary influence of the great Kanto earthquake, and some personal history, from Kawabata's time to mine:
robrubsam.bsky.social
This essay was rejected by another publication over two years ago, and it's only grown woolier and wilder since. This is exactly why I love reading and writing for @readliberties.bsky.social, they still publish the kinds of ambitious, asynchronous work others won't.
robrubsam.bsky.social
Endless thanks to @celestemarcus.bsky.social and Leon and everyone at @readliberties.bsky.social for salvaging this assemblage of memoir and travelogue and criticism and literary history from the draft I first sent over two years ago. We read and write and work in time, and they gave me theirs.
robrubsam.bsky.social
Reading habits are a bit like box office in that both provide people with a public-facing standard that conviently frees them from doing the actual work of reading, watching, and thinking
robrubsam.bsky.social
These people should just become life coaches and leave the rest of us alone
Reposted by Robert Rubsam
rgoodlaw.bsky.social
"At the Pentagon, some military lawyers, including international law experts within DoD’s Office of General Counsel, have raised concerns about the legality of the lethal strikes on suspected drug traffickers....

Multiple current and former JAGs ... told CNN that the strikes do not appear lawful."
Exclusive: Classified Justice Department opinion authorizes strikes on secret list of cartels, sources say | CNN Politics
The Trump administration has produced a classified legal opinion that justifies lethal strikes against a secret and expansive list of cartels and suspected drug traffickers, according to multiple peop...
www.cnn.com
Reposted by Robert Rubsam
helldude.bsky.social
its truly remarkable, you have to really take the measure of it and it's almost hard to comprehend it, but the president of the united states is having texas invade illinois and oregon just to make twitter content