R.D. Pohl
@rdpohl.bsky.social
Writer, critic, literary journalist, poetry editor. Trained as language philosopher. Follow at POETRY/POETICS/LANGUAGE/COMMUNITY (https://rdpohl.substack.com). Formerly with The Buffalo News, currently The Buffalo Hive, a non-profit arts & culture startup.
Public trust in the media in general has hit a new low across the political spectrum, with only 8% of Republicans and 27% of Independents reporting that they placed a"great deal or a fair amount of trust" in the mass media.
October 4, 2025 at 1:20 AM
Public trust in the media in general has hit a new low across the political spectrum, with only 8% of Republicans and 27% of Independents reporting that they placed a"great deal or a fair amount of trust" in the mass media.
Cindy Sherman, from 30 Essex St. in Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center on Buffalo's West Side in 1975 to the cover of The New Yorker's as "Being Eustace" [Tilly] in its "The Culture Industry: A Centenary Issue" a half century later.
August 28, 2025 at 10:02 PM
Cindy Sherman, from 30 Essex St. in Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center on Buffalo's West Side in 1975 to the cover of The New Yorker's as "Being Eustace" [Tilly] in its "The Culture Industry: A Centenary Issue" a half century later.
Nick Sturm : "The Poetry Foundation invited me to write an essay remembering Alice Notley (1945-2025). I'm grateful for the space to remember her in this way."
Link in comments.
Link in comments.
August 28, 2025 at 3:53 AM
Nick Sturm : "The Poetry Foundation invited me to write an essay remembering Alice Notley (1945-2025). I'm grateful for the space to remember her in this way."
Link in comments.
Link in comments.
Buffalo-based poet Rachelle Toarmino's second full-length collection of poems HELL YEAH drops in October from Third Man Books. Link to purchase in comments.
August 26, 2025 at 8:25 PM
Buffalo-based poet Rachelle Toarmino's second full-length collection of poems HELL YEAH drops in October from Third Man Books. Link to purchase in comments.
Easy to make jokes about Elon's hubris, but if Neuralink is going to hack the human limbic system— the complex network of brain structures located deep within the brain, responsible for emotions, memory, motivation, and behavior—then we are talking about more than AI superintelligence.
August 22, 2025 at 1:07 PM
Easy to make jokes about Elon's hubris, but if Neuralink is going to hack the human limbic system— the complex network of brain structures located deep within the brain, responsible for emotions, memory, motivation, and behavior—then we are talking about more than AI superintelligence.
With the Smithsonian brought to heel, guess the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities are probably next up for an ideological purge. In that likelihood, who among us would even want to apply for a grant?
August 20, 2025 at 2:08 AM
With the Smithsonian brought to heel, guess the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities are probably next up for an ideological purge. In that likelihood, who among us would even want to apply for a grant?
If social media is dead, then somehow Meta harvested $62.36 billion in 2024 in net profits from the corpse. Meta's defense in the FTC anti-trust case against it is that it can’t possibly have a monopoly on personal social networking—because personal social networking no longer meaningfully exists.
August 20, 2025 at 1:15 AM
If social media is dead, then somehow Meta harvested $62.36 billion in 2024 in net profits from the corpse. Meta's defense in the FTC anti-trust case against it is that it can’t possibly have a monopoly on personal social networking—because personal social networking no longer meaningfully exists.
Fight Club but for Humanoid Robots! Performance artist Chris Burden anticipated this in the 1980's, but I'd rather see this on the White House lawn on July 4th of next year rather than the UFC fight that Trump is planning. Would be more attuned to the Zeitgeist.
August 14, 2025 at 5:01 PM
Fight Club but for Humanoid Robots! Performance artist Chris Burden anticipated this in the 1980's, but I'd rather see this on the White House lawn on July 4th of next year rather than the UFC fight that Trump is planning. Would be more attuned to the Zeitgeist.
Watch the body language of both Putin and Trump in the public phase of the Alaska summit. Trump's entire public persona is dominance-coded. But in the 2018 Helsinki Summit, Trump clearly was deferential to the bigger bear.
August 14, 2025 at 12:59 PM
Watch the body language of both Putin and Trump in the public phase of the Alaska summit. Trump's entire public persona is dominance-coded. But in the 2018 Helsinki Summit, Trump clearly was deferential to the bigger bear.
"Many people sense that the United States is undergoing an epistemic crisis, a breakdown in the country’s collective capacity to agree on basic facts, distinguish truth from falsehood, and adhere to norms of rational debate." Argument by Dan Williams here is that algorithms are just part of it.
August 3, 2025 at 1:49 PM
"Many people sense that the United States is undergoing an epistemic crisis, a breakdown in the country’s collective capacity to agree on basic facts, distinguish truth from falsehood, and adhere to norms of rational debate." Argument by Dan Williams here is that algorithms are just part of it.
Heidegger, still not a bestselling philosopher in the Rust Belt!
August 2, 2025 at 9:52 PM
Heidegger, still not a bestselling philosopher in the Rust Belt!
Joyce Carol Oates, today on Twitter as to where her interest in writing On Boxing came from. It was from her dad, who was a friend of a Buffalo middleweight when she was a child. But, believe it or not, this comment thread was about women writers and the literary critic Harold Bloom!
August 2, 2025 at 8:41 PM
Joyce Carol Oates, today on Twitter as to where her interest in writing On Boxing came from. It was from her dad, who was a friend of a Buffalo middleweight when she was a child. But, believe it or not, this comment thread was about women writers and the literary critic Harold Bloom!
LitHub: Random House announced today that a brand new novel by George Saunders will be landing on bookshelves this winter, on January 27, 2026. Vigil takes “place at the bedside of an oil company CEO, in the twilight hours of his life, as he is ferried from this world into the next.”
July 26, 2025 at 1:33 PM
LitHub: Random House announced today that a brand new novel by George Saunders will be landing on bookshelves this winter, on January 27, 2026. Vigil takes “place at the bedside of an oil company CEO, in the twilight hours of his life, as he is ferried from this world into the next.”
I'd say the inflection point happens when your Führer shoots himself in a bunker (so to speak). Up until that point, the empire creates its own reality, however counterfactual. The economists, and the fact-checkers, and those who report the body counts—they're wrong until the moment they're right.
July 23, 2025 at 2:45 PM
I'd say the inflection point happens when your Führer shoots himself in a bunker (so to speak). Up until that point, the empire creates its own reality, however counterfactual. The economists, and the fact-checkers, and those who report the body counts—they're wrong until the moment they're right.
Martin Heidegger now 50% off at Rust Belt Books on Grant St. in Buffalo. They've got the Sein, if you have the Zeit. Which philosophers do you think they should deep discount next?
July 23, 2025 at 1:37 PM
Martin Heidegger now 50% off at Rust Belt Books on Grant St. in Buffalo. They've got the Sein, if you have the Zeit. Which philosophers do you think they should deep discount next?
Source material: How Superman Would End the War, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, for Look magazine, February 27, 1940. Superman was always an anti-fascist.
July 14, 2025 at 1:47 PM
Source material: How Superman Would End the War, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, for Look magazine, February 27, 1940. Superman was always an anti-fascist.
So apparently, META AI is attempting to coerce me into adopting an avatar that portrays me as the Lex Luther of the Left. 😂
July 11, 2025 at 10:21 PM
So apparently, META AI is attempting to coerce me into adopting an avatar that portrays me as the Lex Luther of the Left. 😂
Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist for The Buffalo News Adam Zyglis has been forced to cancel the closing reception for his exhibit at The Buffalo History Museum tonight because of credible threats of harm to him and his family. I was planning on attending.
July 10, 2025 at 8:24 PM
Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist for The Buffalo News Adam Zyglis has been forced to cancel the closing reception for his exhibit at The Buffalo History Museum tonight because of credible threats of harm to him and his family. I was planning on attending.
German philosopher and social theorist Jürgen Habermas (still writing at age 96) on the end of Modernity, the repudiation of Enlightenment principles, and--although he doesn't use this term--the rise of an anti-rationalist "Dark Enlightenment."
July 10, 2025 at 5:03 PM
German philosopher and social theorist Jürgen Habermas (still writing at age 96) on the end of Modernity, the repudiation of Enlightenment principles, and--although he doesn't use this term--the rise of an anti-rationalist "Dark Enlightenment."
Today's haul from Talking Leaves Books in Buffalo. Alina Stefanescu's My Heresies (Sarabande Books) @alinaetc.bsky.social
July 4, 2025 at 2:55 AM
Today's haul from Talking Leaves Books in Buffalo. Alina Stefanescu's My Heresies (Sarabande Books) @alinaetc.bsky.social
As per J. Dale Shoemaker at Investigative Post, these are ICE's enforcement parameters in the Buffalo and the Western New York area. Warrants are not needed, claims an ICE spokesman, and US Citizens must carry documents proving citizenship at ALL TIMES. No exceptions.
June 27, 2025 at 6:18 PM
As per J. Dale Shoemaker at Investigative Post, these are ICE's enforcement parameters in the Buffalo and the Western New York area. Warrants are not needed, claims an ICE spokesman, and US Citizens must carry documents proving citizenship at ALL TIMES. No exceptions.
J. Dale Shoemaker of Investigative Post: "If you hear of ICE traffic stops or arrests in Buffalo/Western NY, please DM or email me." jdshoemaker@investigativepost.org
June 27, 2025 at 6:15 PM
J. Dale Shoemaker of Investigative Post: "If you hear of ICE traffic stops or arrests in Buffalo/Western NY, please DM or email me." jdshoemaker@investigativepost.org
We've reached that part of the collapse of a constitutional republic where an authoritarian administration has persuaded the Supreme Court of the United States that the 14th Amendment does not mean what it unambiguously says. Words don't mean what they used to mean any longer.
June 27, 2025 at 3:35 PM
We've reached that part of the collapse of a constitutional republic where an authoritarian administration has persuaded the Supreme Court of the United States that the 14th Amendment does not mean what it unambiguously says. Words don't mean what they used to mean any longer.
Why buy this phone? BECAUSE ALL CAPS WILL BE THE DEFAULT MODE! At this point, I'm surprised the Trump Organization hasn't yet pulled a Sydney Sweeney and slapped its branding on bars of orange soap infused with drops of the president's bathwater. 😉
June 17, 2025 at 2:38 PM
Why buy this phone? BECAUSE ALL CAPS WILL BE THE DEFAULT MODE! At this point, I'm surprised the Trump Organization hasn't yet pulled a Sydney Sweeney and slapped its branding on bars of orange soap infused with drops of the president's bathwater. 😉
Just six days ago they pretended to be BFFs in the Oval Office, but each of these *outsized personalities* owns a social media platform and has a troll army of followers. This is the summer blockbuster we've all been waiting for. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has nothing on this. 😉
June 5, 2025 at 6:38 PM
Just six days ago they pretended to be BFFs in the Oval Office, but each of these *outsized personalities* owns a social media platform and has a troll army of followers. This is the summer blockbuster we've all been waiting for. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has nothing on this. 😉