Neuromancer, Chapters 13-15: Immortal No More
Last week ended with three mysterious figures, waiting for Case to get back to his hotel room.
Culture
Freddie deBoer.
Media criticism, politics, and social commentary.
Recent essays
30 of 70Nobody Owns Disability
and if adult academics and activists presenting formal papers at a conference are not fair targets of good-faith criticism, who possibly could be?
Germany Proves Again that Censorship Doesn’t Work
the German far right’s rise is happening in a country that has aggressively attempted to censor the far right for 70 years
Talking FOOTBALL with Neil Paine
the only sport I care about is back
Neuromancer, Chapters 10-12: A Doll’s House
Last week our crew left Earth and took a pit stop at Zion, a Rasta colony founded by construction workers who got sick of building luxury habitats for rich people and so one day decided not to finish the job.
When a Mentally Ill Person Kills, How Much Confinement is Long Enough?
a subscriber-only excerpt from All In Your Head
We Can’t Help Hurting People by Abandoning Basic Epidemiological Rigor
it’s never been less popular, or more important, to be willing to challenge claims about medical disorders and how they’re caused
Neuromancer Book Club, Chapters 7-9: The City of Dub
This is the stretch where the novel leaves orbit, literally and figuratively.
Sorry to Bother You
I had this friend - haven’t seen him in at least fifteen years, not for any reason other than that life happens and you drift - I had this friend and he was a recovering addict.
I Think LLMs Will Prove to Be Consequential Enterprise Software
but that’s not enough, is it?
Neuromancer Book Club, Chapters 4–6
three beings who are running on somebody else’s hardware
The Edu-Optimists, Part II: CREDO, the Pro-Charter Research Shop That Won’t Take No Effect for an Answer
how “days of learning” explains the education reform shell game
Neuromancer Book Club, Chapters 1, 2, 3 - Welcome to Chiba City
a man who hates his own body in a city that will happily sell you a new one
Perhaps "Woke 1.0" is an Admission of Past Mistakes and a Commitment to Doing Better
you can't make progress if you're obsessed with not being owned
My Dog Died During Lockdown
I’m tempted to say that Brooklyn was an odd place to ride out Covid, but I guess it was an odd experience everywhere.
Neuromancer Book Club: Before We Jack In
Welcome to the Neuromancer book club, and thanks for being here.
Disability is the Current Meta
one more time: human behavior is the product of incentives
"I'm Not the Kind of Person Who Criticizes That Sort of Thing"
avoidance as the inescapable political meta
How to Produce a Pangram 4 False Positive
they're impossible to 100% eliminate, but that's OK if we're chill and have integrity
All In Your Head Excerpt: Psychiatry and The Isolated Demand for Rigor
disorders without objective tests and medicines that work despite a lack of understanding of their physiological mechanism are perfectly common
The Project of Software is Complete
what is progress, when there are no more unique arrangements of 0s and 1s?
Please, Don't Screw Up Neuromancer (Which Will Be the Subject of Our Next Book Club!)
I ask for so little, God
Imposing Modern Progressive Morality On The Odyssey... and On Christopher Nolan
Nolan's film portrays Odysseus as a figure of conventional contemporary morals in much the same way cinephiles erase the conservatism from Nolan's work
I Wouldn't Say Pangram is Broken, But I Would Say That It's Brittle
it seems way too easy to provoke Pangram into contradicting its own results
Yes, David Ellison's Merger is Bad, But a Netflix Takeover of Warner Bros Isn't Much Better
The future of Warner Bros is again up in the air.
The Bear Fell a Little Too Deeply In Love with Itself
The lasting image of the now-completed FX series The Bear, for me, will always be the fourth season spectacle of the entire cast sitting under the world’s largest banquet table.
Subscriber Writing, July 2026
Hello folks!
Let's Avoid the Language-Policing Fingertrap In the Future, OK?
the more you forbid transgression, the more they want to transgress
Do the YIMBYs Want to Do Politics or Not?
with his YIMBY cap on, Matt Yglesias acts just like the DSA types he abhors
Call for Subscriber Writing, July 2026
It’s that time again!