Monumental Instability, or War of the Memorials

Unmanned Drone (2022) by Kara Walker, a The Brick in East Hollywood, February 2026.

As if to underscore the barbaric, cruel madness of the attack on Iran—the clearest indication yet of the end of Pax Americana, the once painfully slow and now surprisingly rapid decline of US power and supremacy—we have the nation’s […]

Silicon Valley: A Living History

Googlers Against Genocide, several dozen of whom were fired recently after some inspiring protests mounted in and against their venal employer.

Malcolm Harris’s remarkable book, Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism and the World, is not only one of the best histories of California anyone has written, he’s also a fantastic writer. […]

Chronicle of Deaths Foretold

The disastrous new center bike lane on Valencia Street.

San Francisco street engineers have begun implementing what the world’s best-known bicycling diplomat, Copenhagenize’s Mikael Colville-Anderson, called the “worst infrastructure I have ever seen anywhere in the world.” The new center-of-the-street two-way cycle path on Valencia from 23rd to 15th is a disaster. It […]