Matt Pearce
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mattdpearce.com
Matt Pearce
@mattdpearce.com
54K followers 1.1K following 1.7K posts
May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house. Opinions are my own (but they are correct)

https://mattdpearce.substack.com
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the lib economic buzzword of the cycle shifting from “abundance” to “affordability”
Animorphs cover of boy transforming into horse
November 7, 2025 at 3:24 PM
mattdpearce.com
“It’s like dealing with a winter storm—if a storm were to hit dozens of major airports all at once.”
Paul Giamatti in “San Andreas”
November 7, 2025 at 2:47 PM
mattdpearce.com
[exhausted air safety expert crushing a cig and speaking to me as if I’m a sixth grader] You ever seen Godzilla? Imagine a hundred Godzillas at all the airports.

www.wsj.com/business/air...
Some airline industry officials compared managing the planned reduction to dealing with a winter storm—if a storm were to hit dozens of major airports all at once.
November 7, 2025 at 2:45 PM
mattdpearce.com
A word of thanks for our great election workers everywhere. Photo by my old LAT colleague Gina Ferrazi.

www.latimes.com/california/l...
A woman wearing AirPods holds a ballot just a couple inches from her eyes, as a stack of more ballots rests next to her. Caption: An election worker inspects a mail-in ballot at the Los Angeles County Ballot Processing Center on Tuesday in City of Industry. (Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
November 5, 2025 at 2:57 PM
mattdpearce.com
Just checking the latest news on bluesky dot com…
Francis Fukuyama, watching you lib the fuck out
November 5, 2025 at 2:00 AM
mattdpearce.com
But sometimes baseball's proper proportions of "mass suffering" to "fleeting ecstasy" fall out of celestial balance: Your team wins, a lot. Somehow my friends and neighbors in L.A. get to root, over and over again, for winners. With the game's greatest-ever player, Shohei Ohtani, the Dodgers seized victory again last night thanks to a completely different Japanese phenom, Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Watching good players make my city happy creates a sense of disorientation. Where did these guys even come from? Will we ever run out of fireworks? Oh it seems like LAPD brought out those riot horses really fast? The story of L.A. baseball fandom is that the face that meets the police baton was deliriously happy.
November 3, 2025 at 2:49 PM
mattdpearce.com
The pervasive disjointedness among media workers and democracy promoters alike seems less about frustrated aspirations than some basic breakdown in cause and effect, the vacant explanations of what's good and will be rewarded. No useful rubric for accurately predicting how the world will self-improve with our timely assistance. I dog-eared a page in Pynchon's "Vineland" about the anomie of an old craft when subverted, "made cruel and more worldly, bled of spirit, once eternal techniques now only one-shot and disposable, once greater patterns now only a string of encounters, single and multiple, none with any meaning beyond itself." During a conference break, I chatted with an accomplished acquaintance from the world of literary journalism about how she was doing. She said she couldn't think of anybody right now who has her dream job. She's also increasingly reading novels. We're seeking something in fiction we can't find in the world. I think it's freedom.
October 27, 2025 at 1:20 PM
mattdpearce.com
Looking for some grounding after the Charlie Kirk assassination, I picked up DeLillo’s “Underworld,” but didn’t find quite the book I had set out to look for, but something better.

mattdpearce.substack.com/p/writers-an...
Over the years I've grown increasingly hostile to the constricted perspectives lone gunmen force on our lines of vision. Not through the necessary reporting of journalistic fact, but the hostage-like role of the media consumer encountering the work product of attention-hijackers across all platforms. Video of a famous person getting shot says — what, exactly? Have I become wiser by encountering snuff footage and the shooter's shitty little ironic manifestos? When did nihilists start doing so much growth marketing?
October 20, 2025 at 2:26 PM
mattdpearce.com
Stuck on a jetbridge waiting to board, I study an airport hieroglyph warning of an ancient and perverted danger.
An unexplained airplane safety graphic showing a cartoon man hanging like a baby in some sort of BDSM airport harness
October 15, 2025 at 2:36 PM
mattdpearce.com
DeLillo, “Underworld.”
They filled the tank and bought charcoal, food and bottled water. They found the office of the refuge manager at the far end of town and Matt went in and received a permit and signed a liability release. This was called a hold harmless form and it basically pointed out that if they were killed and/or injured during live-fire exercises while they were in the refuge, it would be the giddiest sort of childlike illusion for either or both of them and/or their survivors to think for even a minute about receiving compensation.
October 14, 2025 at 1:44 AM
mattdpearce.com
Some extra notes on the late Kaleb Horton, plus a dive into Ezra Klein and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ conflicting visions of who their journalism is for.

mattdpearce.substack.com/p/the-measur...
It bothers me there isn't an independently reported obituary yet, some kind of arm's-length acknowledgement of this life and its conclusion. The death was already deeply painful for those who knew Kaleb, his family, his loved ones; the survivors have assembled some small literary pyres to push back the void. But as a fellow writer, when I think about the idea of a talent passing unrecognized by our culture's remembering machines, I see something that scares me. Here there once lived a man who awaits the stranger's appraisal.
October 13, 2025 at 5:34 PM
mattdpearce.com
The most obvious conclusion is that it has now become more than evident that citizens are withdrawing and disengaging from the arena of conventional politics. Even when they vote, and this is less often than before, or in smaller proportions, their preferences emerge closer and closer to the moment of voting itself, and are now less easily guided by cohesive partisan cues. For whatever reason, and there is no shortage of hypotheses offering to explain this change, there are now fewer and fewer standpatters, and hence more and more citizens who, when they think about politics at all, are likely to operate on the basis of short-term considerations and influences. Electorates in this sense are becoming progressively destructured, affording more scope to the media to play the role of agenda-setter, and requiring a much greater campaign effort from parties and candidates. What we see here, in short, is a form of voting behaviour that is increasingly contingent, and a type of voter whose choices appear increasingly accidental or even random.
October 6, 2025 at 9:45 PM
mattdpearce.com
obtained this on a random @sharonk.bsky.social rec and am vibing with it
RULING THE VOID THE HOLLOWING OF WESTERN DEMOCRACY PETER MAIR
October 6, 2025 at 9:34 PM
mattdpearce.com
The police narrative of Mark Sanchez’s stabbing is truly bizarre, in the sense of “ah I see why they charged the guy who got stabbed.”

apnews.com/article/nfl-...
Details of the confrontation were disclosed in the affidavit, based on video footage and the truck driver's statement to police. The video showed a man believed to be Sanchez running in the alley toward the truck, the affidavit said. The driver works for a company that specializes in commercial cooking oil recycling and disposal, and he was performed his work duties, it said. Sanchez opened the truck door and began talking to the driver, the affidavit said. Sanchez told the driver he couldn't be at the loading dock and that Sanchez had spoken to the hotel manager, the document said. Sanchez smelled of alcohol and his speech was slurred, the driver told police. Sanchez followed the driver from side to side of the truck, the court document said. When the driver darted toward the driver's door, video showed Sanchez "grabbing and throwing" the driver toward a hotel wall, it said. The fight continued against a dumpster and Sanchez threw the driver to the ground, it said. Sanchez climbed into the truck but got out when told by the driver he wasn't allowed in, it said. Sanchez repeated that he spoke to a manager and didn't want the driver to replace fryer oil, the document said. Sanchez tried again to get into the truck and blocked the driver from calling his manager, it said. Believing he was in danger, the driver grabbed pepper spray from his pocket and sprayed Sanchez's face, it said. Sanchez wiped his face and advanced toward the driver again, it said. The driver then pulled his knife and stabbed Sanchez as the ex-quarterback came at him, it said. The driver fell onto pallets on the ground, he told police. "While P.T. was on the ground, he could only see the feet of Mr. Sanchez coming at him, making P.T. realize that he was in a life-or-death situation," the affidavit said.
October 5, 2025 at 8:06 PM
mattdpearce.com
I’m just practicing technology!
is etymonline Search Log in technology (n.) 1610s, "a discourse or treatise on an art or the arts," from Latinized form of Greek tekhnologia "systematic treatment of an art, craft, or technique," originally referring to grammar, from tekhno-, combining form of tekhne "art, skill, craft in work; method, system, an art, a system or method of making or doing," from PIE *teks-na- "craft" (of weaving or fabricating), from suffixed form of root *teks- "to weave," also "to fabricate." For ending, see -logy.
October 5, 2025 at 7:54 PM
mattdpearce.com
October 5, 2025 at 3:22 PM
mattdpearce.com
Kaleb Horton’s mom has written some comments and asked to spread her thanks for everyone online who’s been sharing their appreciations: “you all made my suffering feel more bearable. Thank you so much and God Bless you all.”

@lukeoneil47.bsky.social @nedraggett.bsky.social @alexnpress.bsky.social
Deborah Horton 12:06 AM Matt, I do not have much of a social media presence and have no idea how to deliver a message to all of the amazing people who have sent me messages and been so kind and supportive so if that is something you are able to do I would so appreciate it. I am so overwhelmed with my world just ending but you are all so kind and so supportive of Kaleb and I feel so inadequate to honor him with his peers. Just pass along any way that you can that you all made my suffering feel more bearable. Thank you so much and God Bless you all.
October 2, 2025 at 3:25 PM
mattdpearce.com
DeLillo, “Underworld.”
"There's a word in Italian. Dietrologia. It means the science of what is behind something. A suspicious event. The science of what is behind an event." "They need this science. I don't need it." "I don't need it either. I'm just telling you." "I'm an American. I go to ball games," he said "The science of dark forces. Evidently they feel this science is legitimate enough to require a name." "People who need this science, I would make an effort to tell them we have real sciences, hard sciences, we don't need imaginary ones." "I'm just telling you the word. I agree with you, Sims. But the word exists." "There's always a word. There's probably a museum too. The Museum of Dark Forces. They have ten thousand blurry photographs. Or did the Mafia blow it up?"
October 2, 2025 at 1:52 AM
mattdpearce.com
AI slop horrible and bad but also Kaleb was a stone-cold shitposter and I believe in my heart he would have found this one fucking hilarious
Info Petite Nation Kaleb Horton: The Future of Canadian Sports 3 days ago
October 1, 2025 at 9:35 PM
mattdpearce.com
This one may actually be the bigger insult to Kaleb
a fake as hell AI slip biography of John Prine on Amazon for $4.99 (don’t buy, dummies)
October 1, 2025 at 9:32 PM
mattdpearce.com
Kaleb was an obsessed observer of "old" California, which is often just the California that's still hanging out around the back: Think of the glammest neighborhood you can, then drive five miles in any land-bound direction. But also all the strange and ragged characters we either import or manufacture for cultural distribution - the Merle Haggards, the David Lynches, the Harry Dean Stantons whom he often wrote about. Kaleb himself was a screw-loose guy cursed by an extremely particular congenital defect: He was a born magazine writer long past the day when being a magazine writer was something you could make much a name for yourself doing. If you are a Californian and care about literary journalism and hadn't heard the name Kaleb Horton, well, that's part of the whole sad story.
September 27, 2025 at 7:38 PM
mattdpearce.com
watching the new Mussolini series on Mubi and googling stuff and just a reminder that nationalist cranks have always been like this
As part of his campaign to overturn tradition, Marinetti also attacked traditional Italian food. His Manifesto of Futurist Cooking was published in the Turin Gazzetta del Popolo on 28 December 1930. 281[291 Arguing that "People think, dress[,] and act in accordance with what they drink and eat", 130) Marinetti proposed wide-ranging changes to diet. He condemned pasta, blaming it for lassitude, pessimism, and lack of virility, 311 - and promoted the eating of Italian-grown rice. 132! In that as in other ways, his proposed Futurist cooking was nationalistic by rejecting foreign foods and food names. It was also militaristic by seeking to stimulate men to be fighters. 301
September 21, 2025 at 3:33 PM
mattdpearce.com
When The Onion's editorial board convened to discuss the tumultuous events of the previous month, one conclusion became evident: The world stands at a crossroads. Two visions of our collective future stand before us: On one side is a free and enlightened society, dedicated to the principles of openness, tolerance, and debate; the other is built upon ignorance, fear, and the suppression of dissent. Today, the path forward could not be clearer. Simply put, we need mass censorship now.
September 18, 2025 at 7:43 PM
mattdpearce.com
Sometimes I laugh about the time @brandyjensen.bsky.social wrote a lede for the ages and then we get to the next line and see what it’s actually about

yalereview.org/article/bran...
TOO OFTEN THESE DAYS I find myself in the position of defending someone I think is annoying from someone I know is dangerous. Most recently this happened with polyamorous people, the
September 18, 2025 at 12:58 PM
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mattdpearce.substack.com/p/notes-from...
As shocking as it all is, there is little new to remark upon here, apart from the Trump administration's accusatory but incompetent hysteria in the early hours of the event, or the shameless McCarthyism against Kirk critics who spoke a little too honestly their feelings about a career partisan after his grotesque killing. In any act of terror the victims die first, followed quickly by the ability to think and speak plainly. Assassins are murderers but thieves too, carrying away the public comprehension. But only because we allow ourselves to be carried away.
September 18, 2025 at 12:12 AM