Caleb Crain

@calebcrain

Into #birding, #CrossFit, & sometimes writing. Wrote the novels "Necessary Errors" and "Overthrow" More at & . New short story!

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Caleb Crain@calebcrain· 3d

What is implied by the fact that in San Francisco, where Google is headquartered, its map application doesn’t know about the Airtrain that connects the commuter rail to the airport, and thinks I should walk?

Screenshot of a Google Maps route to the airport, suggesting you have to walk from the BART to the airport

Caleb Crain@calebcrain· 7d

The pleasure he must have taken in this particular lie: “But if I go, you go. Right?”

When asked by reporters during that flight back to the United States about why they had flown on the old Air Force One to England, Mr. Trump claimed he had wanted the troops stationed at the U.K. base to see the new plane. When pressed on why the window blinds had been directed to be shut on the flight from Turkey, Mr. Trump said that he knew of no specific threat, but described himself as under constant siege from Iran.

“I’m number one on their list, before you,” he told the reporters. “But if I go, you go. Right?

Caleb Crain@calebcrain· 20d

59-year-old white male in glasses and a multicolored riding a bike with a small black dog in a cerulean backpack

Caleb Crain@calebcrain· 21d

Tell me that you’ve never kept a diary and don’t really know what one is without telling me you’ve never kept a diary and don’t really know what one is. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/27/u...

“It also paints a portrait of Dr. Fauci as obsessed with himself, reveling in his own importance and the celebrities he knows”

Caleb Crain@calebcrain· 25d

The FDA’s new science advisors are quacks who sell ozone therapy and energy healing.

F.D.A. records show that the six committee members who sell peptides include self-described longevity physicians who market peptides for overall health, and even for some specific diseases. Some of their clinics also offer other unproven treatments such as ozone therapy and energy healing.

Caleb Crain@calebcrain· Jul 16

Narrator voice: In fact, the wildfire smoke didn’t clear out.

Screenshot of the EPA’s AirNow app, showing that air quality in NYC remains “unhealthy”

Caleb Crain@calebcrain· Apr 18

Schrödinger’s Strait of Hormuz

A photo of a print NYT headline saying the strait is open next to an IPhone NYT headline saying it’s closed

Caleb Crain@calebcrain· Apr 13

What rough beast . . .

Headless, four-armed backlit creature with Statue of Liberty antennae strides toward us from the sky, in the background of Trump’s recent AI slop self-as-Jesus meme.

Caleb Crain@calebcrain· Apr 8

Clearly he’s guilty as hell.

Screengrab from a NYT article unmasking Satoshi as Adam Back

Caleb Crain@calebcrain· Mar 3

Timeline synergy

A Bluesky skeet from Zach Everson summarizing the profiteering by the Trump family, followed immediately by a skeet from Helen Kennedy saying yikes about the Dow’s plummet this morning

Caleb Crain@calebcrain· Feb 13

New puppy!

Tiny black chihuahua mix puppy going to town on a giraffe chew-toy.

Caleb Crain@calebcrain· Jan 21

Line drawings of three animals from the Montreal Cognitive Assessment

Caleb Crain@calebcrain· Jan 9

No greater form of friction-maxxing than biking around Brooklyn with your puppy in your backpack

Selfie of a bearded grizzled man in an orange jacket and bifocals with a small black puppy peering over his shoulder from a backpack

Caleb Crain@calebcrain· Dec 29

Jimmy Carter—America's Morandi? (This looks woefully underpriced. I do not understand rich people.) onlineonly.christies.com/s/american-c...

Jimmy Carter, "A Still Life (Angry Pomegranate)." A painting of a small table with a yellow tablecloth, on which are a glass jug, a pomegranate with a gash, and four glass vases—very much in the style of Giorgio Morandi.

Caleb Crain@calebcrain· Dec 21

Same, honestly.

Screengrab of the NYT website's front page, where an opinion article that would take 19 minutes to read is titled "TK," which is journalese for "to come," i.e., we haven't figured out what to say yet.

Caleb Crain@calebcrain· Dec 2

In the category of gifts for myself I can't afford: a 1956 postcard to Frank O'Hara from either James Schuyler or Joe LeSueur, $500 (sounds to me like Schuyler, but I don't know the handwriting of either, and I haven't read LeSueur's letters) www.abebooks.com/servlet/Book...

P.S. Another dream about J. Dean: When will I get him out of m life?
14 Feb.
Dear Frank,
The publication date of John [Ashbery]'s book has been announced — I thought you'd like to hear —March 21st. We'll have pre-pub copies + I'll send you one as soon as they come in. I've convinced them they should put in a large order! Also, I'll send you Chester [Kallman]'s book, if you like; it'll be in soon. — And anything else you want — Just tell me! Love, J.

Caleb Crain@calebcrain· Nov 28

Visiting the ruins of the first Shaker settlement in America, as one does

Photo through the window of an abandoned power house at the Watervliet Shaker settlement. Sun falls in through large-paned windows onto a disintegrating floor.

An array of identical, weathered marble headstones in the Watervliet Shaker settlement. Mother Ann Lee is buried here, though her grave isn’t visible in this photo.

Caleb Crain@calebcrain· Nov 17

OED bingo is when you look up a word and find the passage you’re reading as one of the usage examples. But I just won Dictionaries of the Scots Language bingo, which is when you look up a word and the author you’re reading is the only person ever known to have used the word.

GRADUWA, -AWA, n. A graduate, specif. in medicine, a qualified doctor. Used only by Galt.
[′grɑdəwɑ]
Ayr. 1823 Galt Entail lxx.:
'Deed, my lad, an ye gang on in that deleerit manner, I'll no only gie you a bed, but send baith for a doctor and a gradawa, that your head may be shaved, and a' proper remedies . . . gotten.
Ayr. 1826 Galt Lairds xi.:
For mair than a month he was thought beyont the power o' a graduwa.

Caleb Crain@calebcrain· Nov 7

Help, I am getting ads for the Nicomachean Ethics in my Instagram feed

Part of an FAQ from an ad trying to sell me a bilingual edition of Aristotle

Caleb Crain@calebcrain· Oct 26

I'm competing this Saturday in my gym's annual Halloween fundraiser, to benefit Brooklyn Community Housing & Services, which provides support & safe, clean housing for people who are unhoused or at risk. My team's costume theme is Baywatch! Please donate if you can! bchands.org/cfsbk-fight-...

A shirtless middle-aged novelist in a bright red swimsuit, holding a bright red whistle, as he pretends it isn't late October.

Caleb Crain@calebcrain· Oct 25

For no reason, here is a paragraph from the Wikipedia article about Prague’s Stalin Monument that you might enjoy:

Paragraph about the demolition of the Stalin Monument in Prague: “Stalin died in March 1953,[7] two years before the unveiling of the monument, and the process of de-Stalinization began shortly after its completion.[2] The monument, therefore, became a liability to the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.[6][2] As ordered by the Soviet Union, it was taken down with 800 kilograms (1,800 lb) of explosives.[6][2] The remains of the statue are stored in chambers beneath the site.”

Caleb Crain@calebcrain· Oct 22

Also reminds me of the poster for “Birth of a Nation”

Poster for the racist movie “Birth of a Nation,” showing a Klansman on a rearing horse

Caleb Crain@calebcrain· Oct 22

Today the NYT gave twice as much space in print to Munich’s Oktoberfest as it did to the USA’s No Kings marches this weekend.

Photo of a two-page photo essay in the NYT about Munich’s Oktoberfest

Caleb Crain@calebcrain· Oct 21

He has no intention of ever moving out. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/u...

The East Wing was one of the last pieces of the White House complex he hadn’t yet started to make over in his own image. The Oval Office is dripping in gold and so is the Cabinet Room. The Rose Garden looks like Mar-a-Lago. There are massive flag poles in the backyard and in the front. He’s been tweaking the White House residence upstairs, too. He’s directing renovations at the Kennedy Center, and now he wants an Arc de Triomphe-style arch built on the other side of the Potomac.

Caleb Crain@calebcrain· Oct 20

Found a photo of it in my reel! The sign on the lower left in yellow said, “Jesus Is My Only King.” The black sign above and behind it is also Christian. And note the verse from Leviticus in the center.

A photo of the crowd on 7th Avenue in NYC at Saturday’s No Kings March, showing several Christianity-themed signs

Caleb Crain@calebcrain· Oct 19

Also, as of 9:20pm, the NYT is still illustrating its article about today's march with a photo of the predecessor march in June (note raincoats). www.nytimes.com/2025/10/18/u...

Screenshot of the NYT's article about today's No Kings march, which is illustrated with a photo from a similar march in June, when it rained (in the photo, protesters are wearing raincoats)

Caleb Crain@calebcrain· Oct 18

No Kings in New York

A homemade 3-D sign of Trump in jail, labeled “Trump library”

A model of an infant Trump holding the globe in one fist and cash in the other

Caleb Crain@calebcrain· Oct 13

So I wasn‘t hallucinating.

Photo of a Sophie Calle art book with a weird-size page

Photo of a Sophie Calle art book that has a dozen pages reprinted from a Paul Auster novel in a different trim size and on different paper stock

Caleb Crain@calebcrain· Oct 8

Chilling insight by @barbarafwalter.com: "Once citizens view their own government’s security forces as an occupying army, violence becomes inevitable. Trump’s team knows this… They’re trying to trigger the very unrest that would justify further crackdowns." via www.nytimes.com/2025/10/07/o...

Screenshot from a NYT article by Thomas Edsall, quoting Barbara Walter of UC-San Diego: "The quickest way to piss people off is to send soldiers into their neighborhoods especially when there’s no reason for them to be there. It’s inherently provocative, and Trump and his team understand this. Research by the political scientist Robert Pape shows that the single most powerful predictor of suicide terrorism is the presence of foreign troops on local soil. People hate, hate, hate that. They hate the humiliation, the powerlessness, the feeling of being occupied.

"Once citizens begin to view their own government’s security forces as an occupying army, violence becomes inevitable. Trump’s team knows this. In fact, that’s the point. They are not trying to restore order; they’re trying to trigger the very unrest that would justify further crackdowns. In the end, violence serves their ultimate end: They want to create the illusion of disorder so they can tighten control and stay in power indefinitely."

Caleb Crain@calebcrain· Sep 25

When you compare the average frailty at a given age of people from different generations, you see that “average frailty levels have decreased in England but not in the US.” Left: Average frailty by age and cohort, US. Right: Average frailty by age and cohort, UK