Alex Sayf Cummings 🌹
@snapbell.bsky.social
Author of Democracy of Sound (Oxford, 2013) and Brain Magnet (Columbia, 2020), co-ed of #EastofEast (Rutgers, 2022); editor at Tropics of Meta; a little bit omnipotent 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️🇱🇾🇵🇸 she/her
Pinned
Okay. No more shenanigans. No more tomfoolery. No more ballyhoo. I'm actually coming over here
I'm excited to say that my essay about After Hours and Safe just came out in the UK's great illustrated film journal Beneficial Shock. I have been wanting to write about Safe in particular for years and years and years
November 11, 2025 at 3:05 PM
I'm excited to say that my essay about After Hours and Safe just came out in the UK's great illustrated film journal Beneficial Shock. I have been wanting to write about Safe in particular for years and years and years
It seems incredible to me to call a movie that's already made 200 million dollars a "flop" www.bbc.com/culture/arti...
One Battle After Another: Why this year's most acclaimed film flopped
Paul Thomas Anderson's political thriller One Battle After Another, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, has been critically acclaimed, but won't break even at the box office.
www.bbc.com
November 11, 2025 at 2:12 PM
It seems incredible to me to call a movie that's already made 200 million dollars a "flop" www.bbc.com/culture/arti...
It might be a little schmaltzy, but I'm championing this film because it's gotten kind of overlooked. It connected to something deep in me tropicsofmeta.com/2025/11/06/t...
‘The Life of Chuck’ and the Extraordinary Breeziness of a Dreamcatcher
The film offers a commitment to what is real, whether it’s as seemingly ironclad as mathematics or physics or if it’s as subjective as one being in an endless universe’s tiny meaning-seeking in the…
tropicsofmeta.com
November 6, 2025 at 6:43 PM
It might be a little schmaltzy, but I'm championing this film because it's gotten kind of overlooked. It connected to something deep in me tropicsofmeta.com/2025/11/06/t...
How fucked are things when I'm actually agreeing with a right wing senator from Kansas over a so-called liberal Democrat
www.politico.com/live-updates...
www.politico.com/live-updates...
Booker, Boozman to speak with David Sacks as Senate Ag nears draft crypto deal
Lawmakers on the Agriculture panel are nearing a draft deal on its portion of a sweeping crypto bill.
www.politico.com
November 5, 2025 at 1:59 PM
How fucked are things when I'm actually agreeing with a right wing senator from Kansas over a so-called liberal Democrat
www.politico.com/live-updates...
www.politico.com/live-updates...
I’m just being real right now. Curtis Sliwa is the GOAT. He lives in a studio apartment with like 17 cats, wears a red beret everywhere, and cheated at a matzoh ball eating contest. I don't think I could ever vote for a republican but I might make an exception for him
November 5, 2025 at 1:22 AM
I’m just being real right now. Curtis Sliwa is the GOAT. He lives in a studio apartment with like 17 cats, wears a red beret everywhere, and cheated at a matzoh ball eating contest. I don't think I could ever vote for a republican but I might make an exception for him
I went and voted today. It felt kind of pointless but I still did it. Much like sex
November 4, 2025 at 5:54 PM
I went and voted today. It felt kind of pointless but I still did it. Much like sex
Dick Wolf is my favorite indie band
November 4, 2025 at 10:27 AM
Dick Wolf is my favorite indie band
Dr. Emily Lu on Fanon's radical approach to psychiatry tropicsofmeta.com/2025/11/03/r...
Reading Fanon’s Psychiatric Papers
I never once encountered Frantz Fanon on the page in my nine years of Canadian medical training. He is not in the medical curriculum at all.
tropicsofmeta.com
November 4, 2025 at 8:07 AM
Dr. Emily Lu on Fanon's radical approach to psychiatry tropicsofmeta.com/2025/11/03/r...
This was the last column I published before COVID completely took over our lives. It feels really weird to look back at it now
tropicsofmeta.com/2020/02/01/o...
tropicsofmeta.com/2020/02/01/o...
Out of the Blue, Into the Black
The Good Place’s finale reminds us of things we never knew — like the impossibility of Heaven, and the reality of our singular, inescapable loneliness.
tropicsofmeta.com
October 31, 2025 at 7:04 PM
This was the last column I published before COVID completely took over our lives. It feels really weird to look back at it now
tropicsofmeta.com/2020/02/01/o...
tropicsofmeta.com/2020/02/01/o...
What is famine, then? Is it what at least a half or even two-thirds of Simmons's students at Riverside are experiencing, skipping meals to stretch their budget and avoid taking on more debt? s-usih.org/2025/08/i-go...
“I Govy, You Govy, We All Govy for Wegovy: Dana Simmons on the Dark History of Hunger in America”: Alex Sayf Cummings on Simmons’s *On Hunger* | Society for US Intellectual History
“They say you gotta stay hungry. Hey baby, I’m just about starvin’ tonight.” In Bruce Springsteen’s deceptively upbeat 1984 hit “Dancing in the Dark,” he describes a frustrated, working-class, would-b...
s-usih.org
October 30, 2025 at 1:51 AM
What is famine, then? Is it what at least a half or even two-thirds of Simmons's students at Riverside are experiencing, skipping meals to stretch their budget and avoid taking on more debt? s-usih.org/2025/08/i-go...
The incredible and absurd baked-in instinct toward reflexive propaganda about heinous acts in US/UK media still never ceases to amaze me
October 29, 2025 at 9:47 PM
The incredible and absurd baked-in instinct toward reflexive propaganda about heinous acts in US/UK media still never ceases to amaze me
Reason # 498,527,688 why I will never give a dime to the @nytimes
October 29, 2025 at 2:08 AM
Reason # 498,527,688 why I will never give a dime to the @nytimes
Around 2007 I had a freelance gig that took me to Trump Tower in Manhattan. In the hotel room where we met there were Trump branded bottles in the minifridge and i thought, oh yeah that’s that washed up guy who was on TV
October 28, 2025 at 10:17 PM
Around 2007 I had a freelance gig that took me to Trump Tower in Manhattan. In the hotel room where we met there were Trump branded bottles in the minifridge and i thought, oh yeah that’s that washed up guy who was on TV
@ebwhamilton.bsky.social When people ask me what I write about, I just say "zoning" and that pretty much shuts down the conversation
October 25, 2025 at 9:21 PM
@ebwhamilton.bsky.social When people ask me what I write about, I just say "zoning" and that pretty much shuts down the conversation
Okay. No more shenanigans. No more tomfoolery. No more ballyhoo. I'm actually coming over here
October 25, 2025 at 8:52 PM
Okay. No more shenanigans. No more tomfoolery. No more ballyhoo. I'm actually coming over here
It seems like people might actually be moving over here. As long as some real morons sign up, I'm all in
November 23, 2024 at 12:48 PM
It seems like people might actually be moving over here. As long as some real morons sign up, I'm all in
Soon the only extant species of bear will be the Bad News Bears
September 13, 2023 at 12:29 AM
Soon the only extant species of bear will be the Bad News Bears
The album that changed my life is The Velvet Underground and Nick
September 8, 2023 at 6:26 PM
The album that changed my life is The Velvet Underground and Nick
I don’t understand how anything bad could happen when people go to the desert in the middle of nowhere to recreate the Wicker Man
#burningman
i.guim.co.uk/img/media/82...
#burningman
i.guim.co.uk/img/media/82...
September 7, 2023 at 9:25 PM
I don’t understand how anything bad could happen when people go to the desert in the middle of nowhere to recreate the Wicker Man
#burningman
i.guim.co.uk/img/media/82...
#burningman
i.guim.co.uk/img/media/82...
Watching Taylor Fritz go on to the court was truly like watching Old Yeller get walked out to be put down. It's so crazy #USopen
September 5, 2023 at 6:11 PM
Watching Taylor Fritz go on to the court was truly like watching Old Yeller get walked out to be put down. It's so crazy #USopen
What an amazing episode… it’s hard to listen to this as a US historian and not as a child of an immigrant. The 14th amendment is the ship and all else is the sea. It’s a miracle that the birthright citizenship clause ever got passed podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...
Throughline: By Accident of Birth (2022) on Apple Podcasts
Show Throughline, Ep By Accident of Birth (2022) - Aug 23, 2023
podcasts.apple.com
September 4, 2023 at 12:00 AM
What an amazing episode… it’s hard to listen to this as a US historian and not as a child of an immigrant. The 14th amendment is the ship and all else is the sea. It’s a miracle that the birthright citizenship clause ever got passed podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...
Reposted by Alex Sayf Cummings 🌹
Labor Day reminder: If the min wage increased at the rate of inflation & productivity since 1960 it'd be $26 today—not $7.25. Meaning—billionaires & corps have stolen at least $19/hour from working Americans for 60 years.
We don't suffer a lack of resources—but an excess of greed.
We don't suffer a lack of resources—but an excess of greed.
September 3, 2023 at 6:55 PM
Labor Day reminder: If the min wage increased at the rate of inflation & productivity since 1960 it'd be $26 today—not $7.25. Meaning—billionaires & corps have stolen at least $19/hour from working Americans for 60 years.
We don't suffer a lack of resources—but an excess of greed.
We don't suffer a lack of resources—but an excess of greed.
Sunday funday, I’m gonna make Rob Ford my iPhone screen
September 3, 2023 at 8:07 PM
Sunday funday, I’m gonna make Rob Ford my iPhone screen
I wish the TED Radio Hour was just about Bill & Ted and Theodore Roosevelt
September 3, 2023 at 12:05 PM
I wish the TED Radio Hour was just about Bill & Ted and Theodore Roosevelt