Dr. James Hooks

In 16 months, I have lost my mentor, my uncle; my hero, my father; and now my heart—Kingsley. Those who know me understood the symbiotic relationship between my dog and me. He’s been at my side for just shy of 20 years, and has been the most consistent, loving presence in my life. Here’s his story

This is lovely. Great writing from James.

"Heroes come from wherever children can find them." What an incredible read and tribute.

I cried big fat tears as I read this and THEN cried even harder as I read it out loud to my wife and kids. Dr. Hooks perfectly captured how I’m feeling today.

Please take a minute and read this magnificent piece from Hooks on the passing of Peter Cullen. Thanks to @tfuinfo.bsky.social for sending my way Our Robot Dad by @jameshooks.bsky.social medium.com/p/our-robot-...

Rest in peace, Peter Cullen. Til all are one. 🕊️

We’re only on Earth for a brief, accidental moment. Make magic.

A government can begin removing a name from institutional memory long before anyone touches a hull. People simply stop using it, document after document and meeting after meeting, until the number begins to sound ordinary and the name begins to sound provisional. This is how a man disappears twice.

Intellect, as we operationalize it, can be measured. What can be measured can be credentialed. What can be credentialed can be hoarded. Wisdom, the inconvenient cousin, keeps showing up in the wrong bodies, in the wrong zip codes, out of the mouths of people who never took the test.

You inherit the obligation to remember accurately. You inherit the burden of asking questions that make a room go still. You inherit the temptation to become the thing that wounded you. Every generation receives that final temptation in a different language. Mine speaks fluent outrage.

Americans picture wrongful conviction as forensic failure. The mechanism that does the actual work is older than any machine and costs nothing at all. Somebody says a thing.

Finally, someone is going to talk to Mitch McConnell

White people had and have been trained to read Black proximity as depreciation, and an entire industry learned to profit from the lesson.

Marriage begins with a promise so old most people no longer hear how strange it is. When the body fails. When age arrives. When illness comes through the door and will not leave. I will stay.

This was the founding bargain. Liberty for some. Labor from others.

We honor birth because birth flatters us. Old age accuses us.

There was no funeral. No room where people gathered and said his name. No eulogy. No burial with its small, crucial permission to weep in public. No casseroles, no condolence cards, no good chair to cry in. No ceremony to mark the end of a man’s life because I was not allowed to give him one.

Notice how the most celebrated and successful space mission in *decades* was run by at least 50% “DEI hires”—not all white men? And not even all Americans. Maybe diversity *is* strength . . .

NYT reporting that under this ceasefire each ship will pay $2M to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. It was $0 before Trump launched this illegal war. 100-130 ships pass the Strait daily. Trump just gave Iran an extra $100M-$130M per day. Masterful gambit, sir. Impeach and remove this fascist—NOW.

To whoever did this at the #NoKings in Boston: Thank you.❤️ It made me tear up. And we must to be reminded of needless damage to humanity that results directly from the careless, bellicose bluster coming from the Pentagon and White House.

Easy to say when you’re a) 62 b) a civilian with no military service

This is an excellent summary of the US War on Iran current situation. I’m an existentialist and borderline absurdist and even I struggle with the current moment. This summary is just fantastic.

There is a particular absurdity to Donald Trump—a man who avoided Vietnam due to “bone spurs”—dancing on the grave of Robert Mueller, a decorated combat veteran, @JonLemire.bsky.social argues.

The price of a good dog is a broken heart at the end.

There are deaths that break your heart, and there are deaths that indict the world. I have known both.

You don’t lay off 40% of your staff because of AI. You do it because you mismanaged your headcount, or greed. Or both.

“I am somebody” shaped how millions of us saw ourselves as kids, including me. That message mattered. It still does. Rest in power, Jesse Jackson 🙏🏽

“My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected and the despised, They are restless and seek relief.” www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2...

We are encouraged to believe that distance equals improvement. That what is far away is finished. That what is commemorated is complete. And so the nation learns to point backward with confidence, to gesture toward anniversaries the way one gestures toward receipts —proof that payment has been made.

ICYMI: The US is currently holding three times as many people in immigrant detention as were detained in the Nazi concentration camp system in spring 1939 — six years into the Third Reich, and just before the start of World War II.

It's such a shame that Marvel Studios simply have no conceivable access to a large group of talented artists who have honed their skill in drawing superheroes month after month after month after month in a creative culture nurtured since the 1940s.

I wish Democrats would start just speaking the truth: “ICE is killing American citizens in public for exercising their freedom of speech because Donald Trump wants to be a king. This isn’t about immigration—Trump wants to make it illegal to oppose him, and to stay in power until he dies.”

Alex Pretti died a hero. He should have lived continuing being one.

#MLK understood the American talent for revision begins with the ordinary shrug, the gentle forgetting, the soft insistence that nothing is actually taken, only “adjusted,” “rebalanced,” “returned to normal.” He stands in judgment over this January.

Dear Black people, they’re coming for us too.

Say her name, not his. Claudette Colvin. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/u...

the ICE officer calling a woman he just murdered a “fucking bitch” is visceral, but imo the most material new information in the latest video is that she very clearly turns the wheel away from the officer right before it happens

Bobby Drake should really consider changing his superhero name

They will say: Maduro deserved it. Maybe. They will say: Venezuelans celebrated. Some did. But popular relief is not the same thing as legitimate authority. Crowds can cheer the fall of a tyrant and still awaken the next morning under foreign control. medium.com/@jameshooks/...