Oct. 20th, 2025 08:42 pm
some things i read today
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toastykittenAi Weiwei on "What I Wish I Had Known About Germany Earlier" - this was commissioned by Zeit Magazine, but when he turned it in, they canceled its publication. Hyperallergic published it instead:
ICE's recruits are "athletically allergic" - President Donald Trump’s plan to double the size of the ICE workforce has met a foe more powerful than any activist group. It is decimating new recruits at the agency’s training academy in Georgia. It is the ICE personal-fitness test.
More than a third have failed so far, four officials told me, impeding the agency’s plan to hire, train, and deploy 10,000 deportation officers by January. To pass, recruits must do 15 push-ups and 32 sit-ups, and run 1.5 miles in 14 minutes.
Playing dumb: on the price of our integrity - Apparently Jia Tolentino is now doing a "collab" with Airbnb, right after participating in a one-day fast for Gaza...and Airbnb is on the BDS target list. Additionally she just wrote a pretty intense review of Elizabeth Gilbert's latest messy memoir, that had some pointed criticism - On social media, many of the most chaotic and emotionally lawless people you’ve ever known are posting on a regular basis about having at long last achieved inner peace. Many among us, after observing this cringe-inducing side effect of regular self-narration at mass scale, have given up altogether on sincere ideas of personal epiphany. But even those who might seek to subvert that tone, or invoke it ironically, are negotiating the same conventions.
Anyway, from the article about Jia Tolentino's shilling for Airbnb - There could be a long read on this, but on a basic level, there is a growing temptation for journalists – thanks to social media and really, originally, thanks to Twitter – to see themselves as celebrities, and to enjoy what spoils come with lucrative brand deals and fan adoration (do you have readers or do you have stans?). It might not surprise you that the type of personalised, parasocial event Tolentino is running with AirBnb is already common amongst BookTokers and literary adjacent influencers, and Tolentino (though not seriously) could be telling herself that online figures do this all the time. There are risks when we outsource our beliefs – about ourselves, each other, the world – to those who are easily seduced by this bait; whose words we treat as gospel when they are actually very fallible, if not plainly shifty.
At the heart of bureaucracy lies a collective endorsement of power’s legitimacy, and therefore, individuals surrender their moral judgment — or perhaps never developed one. They abandon challenge. They relinquish dispute.
When conversation becomes avoidance, when topics must not be mentioned, we are already living under the quiet logic of authoritarianism.
Miles Bruner - On My Last Day as an Accomplice of the Republican Party - tldr; he stuck his head in the sand until he couldn't figure out what to do without a paycheck from Republicans, and then the reality hit home with the Dobbs situation when his wife got pregnant, but he still stuck it out because he needed a job for his family.ICE's recruits are "athletically allergic" - President Donald Trump’s plan to double the size of the ICE workforce has met a foe more powerful than any activist group. It is decimating new recruits at the agency’s training academy in Georgia. It is the ICE personal-fitness test.
More than a third have failed so far, four officials told me, impeding the agency’s plan to hire, train, and deploy 10,000 deportation officers by January. To pass, recruits must do 15 push-ups and 32 sit-ups, and run 1.5 miles in 14 minutes.
Playing dumb: on the price of our integrity - Apparently Jia Tolentino is now doing a "collab" with Airbnb, right after participating in a one-day fast for Gaza...and Airbnb is on the BDS target list. Additionally she just wrote a pretty intense review of Elizabeth Gilbert's latest messy memoir, that had some pointed criticism - On social media, many of the most chaotic and emotionally lawless people you’ve ever known are posting on a regular basis about having at long last achieved inner peace. Many among us, after observing this cringe-inducing side effect of regular self-narration at mass scale, have given up altogether on sincere ideas of personal epiphany. But even those who might seek to subvert that tone, or invoke it ironically, are negotiating the same conventions.
Anyway, from the article about Jia Tolentino's shilling for Airbnb - There could be a long read on this, but on a basic level, there is a growing temptation for journalists – thanks to social media and really, originally, thanks to Twitter – to see themselves as celebrities, and to enjoy what spoils come with lucrative brand deals and fan adoration (do you have readers or do you have stans?). It might not surprise you that the type of personalised, parasocial event Tolentino is running with AirBnb is already common amongst BookTokers and literary adjacent influencers, and Tolentino (though not seriously) could be telling herself that online figures do this all the time. There are risks when we outsource our beliefs – about ourselves, each other, the world – to those who are easily seduced by this bait; whose words we treat as gospel when they are actually very fallible, if not plainly shifty.
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