Tommy Craggs
tcraggs22.bsky.social
Tommy Craggs
@tcraggs22.bsky.social
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.
Reposted by Tommy Craggs
I wrote about prediction markets, where we’re at and how we got here for Defector
January 27, 2026 at 7:23 PM
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I 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...
I Have A Great Idea For Retraining ICE Agents | Defector
The several thousand federal agents currently running rampant in the Twin Cities have so far achieved little in the way of legitimate law enforcement objectives, but they have been rather more success...
defector.com
January 26, 2026 at 5:18 PM
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Thought this was a really smart, sobering piece from @tcraggs22.bsky.social.

"Nostalgia for some older, bolder time is useless. Journalistic bravery is structurally produced. Cowardice, too."
Bari Weiss Is The Symptom | Defector
Who says Bari Weiss doesn’t know how to run a newsroom? “My general view here,” the CBS News editor-in-chief wrote in a memo before shelving the now-infamous 60 Minutes report on El Salvador’s CECOT c...
defector.com
January 12, 2026 at 5:21 PM
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"If Weiss is exceptional, it's only in her knack for making a spectacle of the sort of things that slicker operators in media say and do all the time without causing too much of a fuss."

@tcraggs22.bsky.social on Bari Weiss and all the Bari Weisses: defector.com/bari-weiss-i...
Bari Weiss Is The Symptom | Defector
Who says Bari Weiss doesn’t know how to run a newsroom? “My general view here,” the CBS News editor-in-chief wrote in a memo before shelving the now-infamous 60 Minutes report on El Salvador’s CECOT c...
defector.com
January 12, 2026 at 5:00 PM
There are Bari Weisses everywhere for those with the eyes to see defector.com/bari-weiss-i...
Bari Weiss Is The Symptom | Defector
Who says Bari Weiss doesn’t know how to run a newsroom? “My general view here,” the CBS News editor-in-chief wrote in a memo before shelving the now-infamous 60 Minutes report on El Salvador’s CECOT c...
defector.com
January 12, 2026 at 5:19 PM
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I foresee a lot of people writing "the transformation/moderation of Marjorie Taylor Greene" takes this year who'll forget that's she's arguably the most ubiquitous anti-semite in American life at the moment
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...
January 7, 2026 at 3:56 AM
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...
January 7, 2026 at 3:26 AM
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TODAY: @tcraggs22.bsky.social on the various ways to read Marjorie Taylor Greene’s recent political transformation. “Alternatively, you could choose not to shove your head into your ass. She is talking about the Jews. She has always been talking about the Jews.” flaminghydra.com/marjorie-tay...
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s True Colors
There was a long story in the New York Times Magazine about Marjorie Taylor Greene’s apostasies against the Trump White House last week that seems to have attracted mainly those with a kink for arguin...
flaminghydra.com
January 6, 2026 at 10:42 PM
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We 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!
December 31, 2025 at 3:32 PM
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#Oakland please reshare!

ICE spotted near schools. Can you come stand in solidarity to protect our neighbors?
November 19, 2025 at 6:50 PM
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October 28, 2025 at 5:21 AM
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Nice piece of writing. Love the shout out to David Noble’s 1984 classic, Forces of Production: “Men behaving like machines paved the way for machines without men.”

And this observation from @tcraggs22.bsky.social is exquisite:

“The computer has never been innocent of the world that made it.”
Ed Zitron Gets Paid to Love AI. He Also Gets Paid to Hate AI
He’s one of the loudest voices of the AI haters—even as he does PR for AI companies. Either way, Ed Zitron has your attention.
www.wired.com
October 27, 2025 at 3:40 PM
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)
My old dear friend Tommy Craggs (@tcraggs22.bsky.social) is navigating this moment of Big Korean Energy in sports, fandoms, parenting, and culture by becoming an insufferable 삼촌. Just kidding! Kpop Demon Hunters and Dialectics! A convo made for us. Listen to the whole ep wherever ya get ya pods.
K-Pop Demon Hunters & Dialectics: A Love Story
YouTube video by The Mash-Up Americans
www.youtube.com
October 22, 2025 at 5:50 PM
Riding my hobbyhorse into the sunset, via @redford.bsky.social's rad new podcast: Sports conspiracy theories are how fans do structural analysis.
October 21, 2025 at 5:36 PM
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🥲 I have a new piece out today with ORB! Would love for you to read it. Truly a labor of care on everyone’s part & I’m grateful for that & the insistence that off kilter, slightly dark work Around Books fits & is in fact, the point. ORB forever! Messy girls with mental health challenges forever!!
This stunning piece by @eafreem.bsky.social exemplifies the kind of "books writing" ORB wants to publish: it's written around and through and about A Book, but is less a "review" than an effort to understand what it means to live in the world (in Oakland) and how books are part of the way we do it
"After I had sent a few customers home with Cassandra, I started to feel a bit uneasy. Should I be warning them? Am I obligated to tell adults to brace themselves? Call of the void, that’s a thing we all have, right?" www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org/cassandra-at...
October 15, 2025 at 4:57 PM
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"The Oakland Review of Books is coming!" it says on our website, and if you haven't noticed, we've started publishing ever-so-slightly-more ambitious things as we ramp up towards really cutting loose.

If you'd like to follow along, for the low price of $0 (American), you can get it in your inbox:
ORB ⧹O⧸
The Oakland Review of Books is coming!
www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org
September 23, 2025 at 6:43 PM
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...
Are We Playing It All Wrong? | Defector
At some point in the thick of the pandemic, I became briefly obsessed with a silly-seeming online controversy over what is known as the double-beat theory. The argument concerns classical music, which...
defector.com
August 13, 2025 at 5:14 PM
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George Packer hates this book! Buy it today! Out tomorrow wherever books are sold.

Bookshop: shorturl.at/ykg4a
Amazon: shorturl.at/0d7A3
Barnes & Noble: shorturl.at/EFA9I

www.theatlantic.com/books/archiv...
How Not to Fix American Democracy
A new book argues for making the U.S. a “true” democracy, but fails at the essential strategy of persuasion.
www.theatlantic.com
August 11, 2025 at 2:22 PM
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August 4, 2025 at 2:35 PM
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This is truly wonderful. It's about Sinners, yes, but it's about this moment, the power of the squad.
www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org/all-hands-si...
All hands
Like any movie in the Squad Assembles genre, "Sinners" is secretly about full employment
www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org
June 19, 2025 at 4:07 PM
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in this week's newsletter, a plea for robin d.g. kelley to write about sinners maxread.substack.com/p/who-are-th...
June 13, 2025 at 8:18 PM
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As the world burns, a few of us are making an Oakland Review of Books. We don’t have money, but why not? We’re moving slowly. We're trying not to break things.

But we’re trying to imagine: what if Oakland were enough and we cared enough to look? www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org
ORB \O/
The Oakland Review of Books is coming!
www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org
June 13, 2025 at 3:12 PM
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June 13, 2025 at 3:09 PM
Reposted by Tommy Craggs
TODAY: @tcraggs22.bsky.social on the Squads Assemble school of cinema, and the social context that makes them so seductive. "They are a dream of everyone fits somewhere, costarring Ludacris." flaminghydra.com/r/442ea64e?m...
Get together / Play a show
Tommy Craggs on foxhole solidarity, and Rax King at the Dew Drop Inn
flaminghydra.com
June 12, 2025 at 12:38 AM