I'm Not Mad, I'm Just Disappointed
Hi!
The new administration has been as shitty and chaotic and brutal as I expected, and Elon Musk actually managed to sink lower than my already-basement-level expectations by outing himself as a Nazi. Religious leaders are posting about “the sin of empathy” and calling on people to “properly hate” other religious leaders who ask Trump to lead with mercy. All of this is bad, but it’s not shocking.
The one thing that has shocked me the most in the past couple of weeks is how eagerly the media and corporations have bent down to kiss the ring of the incoming president. If you think that’s an overstatement, I urge you read this breathless “analysis” by a CNN reporter about Trump’s “testosterone-fueled return to power,” making “hyper-confident move[s]” and giving “stunning, freewheeling news conferences” and I ask you to explain to me how this is any different than something state media would write in a dictatorship. The fact that Google is changing “Gulf of Mexico” to “Gulf of America” on its Maps product is another sign that the most powerful institutions in the country are simply bowing down to get out of the way of the would-be dictator.
The media is largely trying to tell us that we’re not seeing what is right in front of us by playing the both-sides game, and big corporations are re-segregating their institutions by repealing diversity, equity, and inclusion programs that were put in place to combat racism, sexism, and other forms of institutional bigotry.
Things are not great, is what I mean.
I have to acknowledge that I’m saying this from a place of privilege. People I know have already witnessed ICE raids and been stripped of human rights because they identify as trans, and other people I know have lost their jobs or are likely to lose their jobs because of the “shock and awe” wave of executive orders trying to unspool the last little scraps of progress that have been made by Democratic presidents stretching back to LBJ.
I also know that eventually, political and community leaders will step forward and bring a real fight to Trump and Trumpism. I don’t expect to see those leaders come from current Democratic leadership. Chuck Schumer is not going to save us. And I haven’t been able to listen to any of the Crooked Media podcasts since the election, for instance, because it’s pretty clear that Obama Democrats aren’t coming to the rescue, either.
There is a cavalry on the way. I believe that. Even though the media bizarrely gave Musk’s Nazi salute a pass, ordinary Americans responded with the appropriate amount of shock and horror. Probably the strongest institutional response to Musk’s action came from ordinary people on Reddit, who immediately banned links to Musk’s toxic social network. Good for them—I wish the media had even half the clarity and courage of convictions that they demonstrated. The BBC, for instance, said Reddit was responding to Musk’s “arm gesture,” which is a shamefully toothless descriptor of something that we all saw with our own eyes.
Despite everything you’re seeing on TV and in the papers, you’re not losing your mind—this isn’t a normal situation, things are unstable and their actions are unlawful, and Nazis are trying to steal democratic power from the people. I think a majority of people are disgusted and waiting for a person or a movement they can circle around.
But the cavalry is going to take time, and this last week-and-a-half has been pretty demoralizing. I predict a painful spring full of depressing headlines, and then we’ll have to see where the media and state and local leaders land in the summer, after the shock of the new fades off. For right now, it’s all so very crushingly goddamned disappointing.
I’ve Been Writing
For my Neighborhood Reads column, I wrote about Metsker Maps in the Pike Place Market, which is an incredible map and geography-themed store full of maps and books and map-and-book-related products.
I’m on the Pitchfork Economics podcast this month, talking with journalist Kurt Hackbarth about the surprising success of Mexico’s progressive left, which has stayed in power at a time of unrest by keeping broad economic successes at the forefront of everything they do. It’s an optimistic conversation during a pessimistic time.
I wrote about 24 of the most exciting books that are already on the schedule to be released in 2025 at the Seattle Times.
And I wrote about some of the most promising paperback releases of January.
I’ve Been Reading
(I’ve read a lot while on holiday in the past month, so I’m only going to touch on the most noteworthy books.)
Help Wanted by Adelle Waldman is probably the book that most surprised me this month. It’s a novel about the small political machinations that follow a shift in staffing at a fictional big box chain store in rural America. If you’re looking for big thrills or toothsome anticapitalist screeds, you’ll have to look elsewhere. But speaking as someone whose first job was at a Sears, Waldman absolutely nails the sticky interpersonal dynamics of work in a chain store. Modern American literary fiction doesn’t often devote itself to the working poor, and this book deserves credit for doing so with a lot of heart.
Jason Pargin’s I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom is a fun road trip adventure novel about a lazy young man who winds up driving a mysterious woman and her titular Black Box of Doom across country, kicking of a wild chase that threatens to destroy America as we know it. I really enjoyed how this one played out—I felt like I was watching a modern version of Cannonball Run or Smokey and the Bandit, with a lot of social commentary about incels and social media mixed in.
Backflash, a comic written by Mat Johnson and illustrated by Steve Lieber, is a fantasy story about a man who discovers that he can use nostalgia to mentally travel through time to witness events in the past. I didn’t see this book get a lot of coverage in the comics press, and that’s a real shame—it’s one of the more inventive graphic novels I’ve read recently. It’s funny and it addresses adult issues with a lot of insight and heart.
The Use of Photography by Annie Ernaux and Marc Marie is an interesting short non-fiction book written by a couple who document their passionate affair in photography. At the same time, Ernaux is undergoing treatment for breast cancer and the two realities—of unfolding love and growing fear—begin to interlace.
I was intrigued to learn about a popular young novelist who goes by the pseudonym Homeless, so I read their most recent novel, My Heart Belongs in an Empty Big Mac Container Buried Beneath the Ocean Floor. I daresay that the book, about a heartbroken young person who perceives their own depression as an ever-present cartoon whale, is not for me. But I would happily give this book to any young person who is struggling with learning how to be a person in their early 20s. Just as Mark Leyner taught me about the absurdity of modern life when I was a young man, I think Homeless is probably helping a lot of young people learn about sincerity and irony in modern times.
What I Want in a Music Service
I think I’m getting rid of my Spotify account. Last year, Spotify announced that it simply wouldn’t pay musicians whose songs were streamed less than 1000 times in any given year, which strikes me as outright theft. And the company has laid off a bunch of employees and instead stuffed their product full of broken AI.
For instance, if you wonder why your Spotify Wrapped absolutely sucked raccoon taint this year, it’s because Spotify leadership fired the human being who designed Wrapped and figured AI would do a good enough job. Instead, people’s Wrapped were inaccurate and half-assed.
One thing about me is that I absolutely hate listening to commercial radio because I can’t stand hearing the same music over and over again. My brain lights up whenever I find new and new-to-me music, and my brain feels itchy when I’m exposed to classic rock. Spotify used to do a great job of recommending new music that surprised and delighted me, but now the algorithm is so choked with paid promotions and dumbed down that it’s almost impossible to find anything interesting that I haven’t heard a million times before.
And even worse than all that, some people are accusing Spotify of actively producing music with AI in-house in an attempt to stop paying human artists for their work. Everything they’re doing is basically the opposite of what an organization intended to support musicians and people who love music would do.
At the moment, I’m on Apple Music and while the recommendation engine isn’t great, it’s also not hitting me with a paid promotional pop-up for a band that I have no interest in every time I open the app, either.
But there are three features that I would kill for in a good music service that to my knowledge no music service currently offers, and I thought I’d throw them out into the universe in the hopes that someone would create them:
1. A TRUE RANDOM SHUFFLE BUTTON. Everyone knows that shuffle is broken, right? When I hit “shuffle” on a playlist with three thousand songs, I shouldn’t hear the same two songs every time. This has been a problem going all the way back to the iPod days, when my beloved little Shuffle device continually returned to a handful of songs and seemingly would never play certain other songs. Why is a true “shuffle” feature so goddamned hard to implement?
2. A “PLAY ONLY NEW-TO-ME MUSIC” BUTTON. Both Apple and Spotify lean way too hard on playing music that I’ve already liked in all their recommendation playlists. This reminds me of the online retail problem where if you buy a waffle iron, every targeted ad you see for months afterward is trying to sell you more waffle irons because it assumes you must like waffle irons. Sometimes I want to hear only new things, and streaming services make that incredibly hard to do.
3. A “PLAY ONLY MUSIC BY WOMEN” BUTTON. It took me decades to realize that I just generally prefer music sung and performed by women, but most of the playlists presented to me by music streaming services are way overindexed in favor of male artists. I’ll occasionally find good women-only playlists on services, but I’d love to be able to create that experience whenever I want. (And I guess they could make a “PLAY ONLY MUSIC BY MEN” button, too, but clicking that button would frankly be sicko behavior.)
Anyway, I’ve done a lot of spiraling, complaining, and dwelling in darkness this email, so let me leave you with something that I absolutely love: I think FKA twigs’s new album Eusexua is the first perfect album of 2025. I’ve been listening to it end-over-end for the past week and I keep discovering new things to love about it.
If you prefer guitar-based rock, this might not be the album for you. It’s packed with electronic beats and feels very much like a club album, but at its heart Eusexua sounds like a deeply personal statement, and it refuses to be only categorized in one way.
I’ve always been an FKA twigs fan, but this album feels like an artist coming fully into her voice. If you enjoy Bjork or electronic-era Madonna, this could be your thing. And I also recommend listening to it as an album, from beginning to end. There’s a very intentional journey strung through these songs, and that journey has been a rare joy for me in a month that has otherwise been almost entirely joyless.
That’s all for this month. Please remember to take care of yourself, and please don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Paul