Zach Rabiroff
@zachrabiroff.com
Writer for the Comics Journal, Flaming Hydra, Polygon, io9, etc.
www.zachrabiroff.com
www.zachrabiroff.com
Pinned
Vision blurred / Seeing good
The eyes of Zach Rabiroff; David Roth, cinéaste, shares rare holiday films
flaminghydra.com
This Christmas, I lost my job, lost my sight, and had some thoughts about Napoleon. A new essay for @flaminghydra.com called "Blind Spots."
flaminghydra.com/issue-468/
flaminghydra.com/issue-468/
I think this is right: the reason so many elected Democrats seem ineffectual and helpless right now is because they signed up to be orderly bureaucrats in a healthy democracy, and wound up standing in the Versailles tennis court while the Bastille burned down. It's just not in the job application.
I don’t think they’re misreading them so much as they are terrified of the implications because it means the status quo has to break. there’s no incrementalism for this. mass radicalization of this scale scares Democrats more than anything Republicans could do and I mean that literally.
Kind of feel like a lot of politicians, even in Minnesota, are misreading the implications of this moment. I feel like the past three days have been tremendously radicalizing for so many people. I have witnessed it even in my own small communities, it goes beyond just incandescent rage.
January 10, 2026 at 5:00 PM
I think this is right: the reason so many elected Democrats seem ineffectual and helpless right now is because they signed up to be orderly bureaucrats in a healthy democracy, and wound up standing in the Versailles tennis court while the Bastille burned down. It's just not in the job application.
Speaking of the jobs report, I've got like 1.5 months left before I'm plausibly homeless, so feel free to let me know if you've got any leads.
Hey, so, I've been fired. Now that I'm unemployed like the other half of Bluesky, if anyone knows of work for a writer, reporter, or nonprofit grants manager, I'd be much obliged. You all know where to find me.
January 9, 2026 at 10:42 PM
Speaking of the jobs report, I've got like 1.5 months left before I'm plausibly homeless, so feel free to let me know if you've got any leads.
Day by day against its own people, this White House is assembling the casualty count of a foreign war.
January 9, 2026 at 12:31 AM
Day by day against its own people, this White House is assembling the casualty count of a foreign war.
Meanwhile, what are we thinking the Supreme Court will do tomorrow: legalize racial gerrymandering, invalidate birthright citizenship, or decide that the president has unlimited power to tax foreign trade and keep the profits in a slush fund?
January 8, 2026 at 10:28 PM
Meanwhile, what are we thinking the Supreme Court will do tomorrow: legalize racial gerrymandering, invalidate birthright citizenship, or decide that the president has unlimited power to tax foreign trade and keep the profits in a slush fund?
Walz seems like a good man, and he's very good at tearfully wringing his hands in front of a microphone. But as long as he chooses to use exactly none of the power and authority he has as a governor, he's just a walking embodiment of a Very Concerned Letter.
Walz is broken but he was never cut out for this level of instititional conflict.
Nobody has proven themselves to be as pathetic as their critics claim as Tim Walz. Turns out you can just bully him into not running for re-election by spreading medieval antisemitic canards about a minority group in his state, then shoot a constituent in the face and he’ll do nothing.
January 8, 2026 at 6:08 PM
Walz seems like a good man, and he's very good at tearfully wringing his hands in front of a microphone. But as long as he chooses to use exactly none of the power and authority he has as a governor, he's just a walking embodiment of a Very Concerned Letter.
Reposted by Zach Rabiroff
Oh, word? Your years of accommodation to a totalitarian system have corroded your soul in a way that's manifesting in your joy of daily life? Damn, man, sounds rough.
January 8, 2026 at 4:52 PM
Oh, word? Your years of accommodation to a totalitarian system have corroded your soul in a way that's manifesting in your joy of daily life? Damn, man, sounds rough.
Man, what can you even say to something like this? Just no lines left in his brain between reality, fantasy, and second-nature racist lies.
January 8, 2026 at 3:46 PM
Man, what can you even say to something like this? Just no lines left in his brain between reality, fantasy, and second-nature racist lies.
Renee Nicole Good's funeral should be a day of national mourning. Her birthday should be a national holiday. She should be everything they tried to tell us Charlie Kirk was, and could never be.
January 8, 2026 at 2:51 PM
Renee Nicole Good's funeral should be a day of national mourning. Her birthday should be a national holiday. She should be everything they tried to tell us Charlie Kirk was, and could never be.
Reposted by Zach Rabiroff
She died more an American than her killers will ever live to be.
January 8, 2026 at 4:44 AM
She died more an American than her killers will ever live to be.
I took a whole class in college called "The Poetry of Witness" about poets imprisoned and killed because they chose to bear witness in authoritarian countries. And today the United States produced and extinguished one of its own.
Renee Good was a poet, someone who put beauty out in the world. And now she's gone. And these fascists are still here.
www.porkopolis.org/pig_poet/ren...
www.porkopolis.org/pig_poet/ren...
www.porkopolis.org
January 8, 2026 at 2:56 AM
I took a whole class in college called "The Poetry of Witness" about poets imprisoned and killed because they chose to bear witness in authoritarian countries. And today the United States produced and extinguished one of its own.
I wonder what theme music CBS news will use when they salute the brave men and women of ICE tonight.
January 7, 2026 at 10:59 PM
I wonder what theme music CBS news will use when they salute the brave men and women of ICE tonight.
The throughline from Venezuela to Greenland to Minneapolis is that these are deeply broken and violent men who want very badly to shoot someone helpless with a gun.
January 7, 2026 at 10:47 PM
The throughline from Venezuela to Greenland to Minneapolis is that these are deeply broken and violent men who want very badly to shoot someone helpless with a gun.
Minnesota elected officials can either arrest this ICE-uniformed killer, in which case they are on the side of their murdered people, or they can choose not to arrest him, in which case they are not. I don't think it's more complicated than that. They have already waited an hour.
January 7, 2026 at 7:35 PM
Minnesota elected officials can either arrest this ICE-uniformed killer, in which case they are on the side of their murdered people, or they can choose not to arrest him, in which case they are not. I don't think it's more complicated than that. They have already waited an hour.
ICE is murdering Americans and calling us terrorists while they shoot us. This is tyranny, and we need to make the choice to end it.
January 7, 2026 at 7:14 PM
ICE is murdering Americans and calling us terrorists while they shoot us. This is tyranny, and we need to make the choice to end it.
Reading descriptions of Hitler's physical decrepitude as the war started to close in on him and, uh, yeah, that is alarmingly familiar, huh.
January 7, 2026 at 6:44 AM
Reading descriptions of Hitler's physical decrepitude as the war started to close in on him and, uh, yeah, that is alarmingly familiar, huh.
We're maybe a month away from the first in a series of Conquest Checks, in which American voters become happy shareholders in our president's new, arbitrary pirate raids
January 7, 2026 at 12:30 AM
We're maybe a month away from the first in a series of Conquest Checks, in which American voters become happy shareholders in our president's new, arbitrary pirate raids
Reposted by Zach Rabiroff
I mean this with some sincerity: the only barrier between ourselves and a world war right now is one man's pulmonary artery.
January 6, 2026 at 8:55 PM
I mean this with some sincerity: the only barrier between ourselves and a world war right now is one man's pulmonary artery.
He'll demand a referendum among the people of Greenland and, if they don't hold one or if the vote doesn't go his way, he'll declare the election rigged and the island in need of liberation, and the reason I'm predicting this is that it's exactly what Hitler did on his way to war.
TRUMP AND HIS ADVISERS ARE DISCUSSING OPTIONS INCLUDING PURCHASING THE TERRITORY FROM DENMARK OR FORMING A COMPACT OF FREE ASSOCIATION WITH THE ISLAND - SENIOR US OFFICIAL
TRUMP WOULD LIKE TO ACQUIRE GREENLAND DURING HIS CURRENT TERM IN OFFICE-SENIOR US OFFICIAL
TRUMP WOULD LIKE TO ACQUIRE GREENLAND DURING HIS CURRENT TERM IN OFFICE-SENIOR US OFFICIAL
January 6, 2026 at 8:53 PM
He'll demand a referendum among the people of Greenland and, if they don't hold one or if the vote doesn't go his way, he'll declare the election rigged and the island in need of liberation, and the reason I'm predicting this is that it's exactly what Hitler did on his way to war.
This might be one of the best things Flaming Hydra has ever published.
TODAY: @josie.zone on a stunning, unfulfilled post-war quest for revenge. “Kovner aimed to turn the old antisemitic lie on its ear: he and his group really would drop poison into the water supplies of German cities. They hoped to take millions of lives” flaminghydra.com/inglourious-...
Inglourious Vengeance
“I’ve been looking, for the last few movies, to come to Israel,” Quentin Tarantino told the Tel Aviv audience before him on September 9, 2009. “And I figured this might be the movie to do it with.”
T...
flaminghydra.com
January 5, 2026 at 11:24 PM
This might be one of the best things Flaming Hydra has ever published.
Reposted by Zach Rabiroff
It would be great if people on this website could learn to process episodes of stress and uncertainty in a way that doesn't involve attacking and devouring one another like exotic fighting fish.
January 5, 2026 at 9:35 PM
It would be great if people on this website could learn to process episodes of stress and uncertainty in a way that doesn't involve attacking and devouring one another like exotic fighting fish.
Same set of issues had a running plotline about the Kingpin buying a media propaganda network in an obvious metaphor for Rupert Murdoch, by the way
January 4, 2026 at 7:28 PM
Same set of issues had a running plotline about the Kingpin buying a media propaganda network in an obvious metaphor for Rupert Murdoch, by the way
Ah, the progress of history
January 4, 2026 at 7:00 PM
Ah, the progress of history
So...what we were doing on Thursday, then
BREAKING: The U.S. won’t govern Venezuela, but will press changes through an oil blockade, Rubio says, after Trump claims of running the country.
Venezuela live updates: Uncertainty and legal questions remain after US captures Maduro
The Trump administration’s capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and claims that it will “run” the country are raising stark new questions about the legality of the U.S. actions and its future operations in the South American nation.
bit.ly
January 4, 2026 at 5:49 PM
So...what we were doing on Thursday, then