Tommy Craggs
Writer and editor. Late of "Game Theory With Bomani Jones" on HBO, Mother Jones (no relation), HuffPost, Slate, Gawker Media, Deadspin, etc. Subscribe to @flaminghydra.com. Email: tcraggs22@gmail.com.
- This, from @meganwachspress.bsky.social, is so good. Starts off as an explainer picking apart a dumb NYT story about Oakland and winds up reimagining the very idea of a city in the dying days of the coal economy.
- Reposted by Tommy CraggsJust got in at the highest tier. They truly are doing things no one else is and it is glorious. LFG!
- I say all this because--you knew this was coming--I hope you, who are reading this, might feel the same way, and help us out: www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org#/portal/signup
- Reposted by Tommy CraggsSo, a quick note on Oakland Review of Books, or ORB: a handful of us are working to will it into existence, and--aside from a big boost to get started from our friends at @ebbooksellers.bsky.social--it's a self-funded operation whose goal is to exist and enable writing like this.
- You might enjoy my little essay on Greatness in Art in the age of AI, AKA, "Sinners is Great, actually, but greatness doesn't exist, also." www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org/sinners-one-...
- Reposted by Tommy CraggsYou might enjoy my little essay on Greatness in Art in the age of AI, AKA, "Sinners is Great, actually, but greatness doesn't exist, also." www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org/sinners-one-...
- Reposted by Tommy Craggs"'Sinners' is also, itself, a metadiscourse about Ryan Coogler’s journey through Hollywood. It’s a movie about making 'Fruitvale Station,' 'Creed,' and 'Black Panther'—a pretty stunning unbroken string of excellence—and then waking up one day to find himself making 'Wakanda Forever.'"
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- Reposted by Tommy CraggsI have a piece today in Defector making the case for "more training" for ICE agents. A *lot* more training. defector.com/i-have-a-gre...
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- There are Bari Weisses everywhere for those with the eyes to see defector.com/bari-weiss-i...
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- MTG on the Epstein scandal—"elites doing horrible things and getting away with it"—may have an egalitarian air about it, but only if you fail to read it alongside the rest of her conspiracism. She's talking about the Jews. She's always talking about the Jews. flaminghydra.com/marjorie-tay...
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- Reposted by Tommy CraggsWe launched Oakland Review of Books in 2025, starting with an events calendar and vibe reports and, as we've gone on, more and more blogs and reviews and even a few full-on bangers. (And The Oakland syllabus!) We've actually done a lot. But 2026 is going to be The Year of ORB!
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- I talked about "Kpop Demon Hunters," the Eighth Army's occupation of Korea & the origins of Kpop, the only person more driven by resentment than Michael Jordan (my mom), rooting for pretty (again), and the greatest natural athlete the world has ever known (Kim Jong-Il)
- Riding my hobbyhorse into the sunset, via @redford.bsky.social's rad new podcast: Sports conspiracy theories are how fans do structural analysis.
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- There's an excellent crank theory that insists we're playing a lot of old music at least twice as fast as was originally intended, and I wrote about it (and about the collapse of the Western order) for Defector's music week: defector.com/are-we-playi...
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- Like all movies in the Squad Assembles genre, "Sinners" is a film about full employment. flaminghydra.com/issue-338/#a...
- Even more ashamed than usual of the alma mater. You can support Steven here: forms.gle/Rn9Rmq5fQUhq...
- There's wisdom in Super Bowl conspiracy theories if you know where to look: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
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- In re the social death of trans people being reckoned a "distraction" from meat-and-potatoes economic issues:
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- This, by Samantha Michaels, is excellent on Oakland politics in particular and on the politics of "crime wave" moral panic in general: oaklandside.org/2024/11/05/s...
- Here's something I wrote in 2020 about punditry's idpol contras that I don't recommend reading so much as printing out on absorbent paper, ripping into pieces, wadding up, moistening with saliva, inserting into a straw, and shooting at Jeremy Peters's computer www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
- This is about fighting in the NBA, but it’s also about democratic self-governance flaminghydra.com/issue-191/
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- Caitlin Clark has become the medium in which class, which is to say race, which is to say gender, is felt and fought over in the WNBA. defector.com/who-made-cai...
- I tried to explain why sports media in the gambling era just kinda sucks www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...
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- Caitlin Clark is the modality in which class gets lived in the WNBA flaminghydra.com/issue-110/
- My friend asked me about god for his newsletter, and I answered about communism. healings.substack.com/p/the-healin...
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- "a self-immolation in South Korea immediately enters into an infrastructure of meaningful death..and [is] thus prevented from succumbing to the pious obscurantism that has characterized the official response here in the US to Aaron Bushnell's political martyrdom." flaminghydra.com/issue-28/
- Newsroom culture wars are class wars: flaminghydra.com/media-proles/ (no longer paywalled, but you should subscribe anyway)
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- I wrote about a couple pricks and the proletarianization of media for @flaminghydra.bsky.social, a cool new thing you should subscribe to: flaminghydra.com/issue-4/
