Coming soon...

How being wealthy is You would tend to think that being wealthy beyond imagination has to feel pretty good. But apparently it does not even temporarily relieve the lacking? They're still miserable all the time no matter how much they win. As far as addictions go it's a pretty rotten deal. At least the usual kinds have remedies that take the edge off for a spell. What do they even get out of the money then besides other people's suffering? Ah shit never mind I see it now.

You would tend to think that being wealthy beyond imagination has to feel pretty good.

The Same Battle, Again • Protean Magazine A.C. Corey unpacks the misguided revolutionary and cinematic hopes pinned on Paul Thomas Anderson's "One Battle After Another"—each an expression of left melancholia and mania, of political and cultur...

"People with wireframe glasses like mine seem to have a lot riding on this movie being really good."

proteanmag.com/2026/02/24/t...

The Same Battle, Again • Protean Magazine A.C. Corey unpacks the misguided revolutionary and cinematic hopes pinned on Paul Thomas Anderson's "One Battle After Another"—each an expression of left melancholia and mania, of political and cultur...

A.C. Corey unpacks the misguided revolutionary and cinematic hopes pinned on Paul Thomas Anderson's "One Battle After Another"—each an expression of left melancholia and mania, of political and cultural restlessness, of the fantasy of resolution.

proteanmag.com/2026/02/24/t...

Anti-Convention: Richard Hell on Godlike • Protean Magazine Richard Hell's novel Godlike has just been re-released with a new afterword by New York Review Books. Andrew Holter spoke to Hell on his literary trajectory as a novelist and street poet, the sometime...

Richard Hell's novel Godlike has been re-released by NYRB Classics. Andrew Holter spoke to Hell on his literary trajectory, the inevitable Rimbaud and (Tom) Verlaine comparisons (and other noms de plume), the New York School poets, and his fearlessness of influence.

proteanmag.com/2026/02/13/a...

red script of questions • Protean Magazine In "red script of questions," poet Ali Choudhary creates a harrowing dialogue with the children of Gaza as they continue to endure Israel's genocide.

In "red script of questions," poet Ali Choudhary creates a harrowing dialogue with the children of Gaza as they continue to endure Israel's genocide.

proteanmag.com/2026/02/11/r...

we have an especially extraordinary poem for you all today

have to agree with Andy. we really really need our readers—our Patreon has dwindled to $1400 a month. that’s not enough to run a mag that pays writers fairly ($300+/piece). without this budget restraint, we could do so much more.

if you have even $1/month, every giver helps! patreon.com/proteanmag

@abbraxas.bsky.social looks like we may need to call you in for an airstrike yet again

Get more from Protean Magazine on Patreon Independent, ad-free leftist magazine: essays, interviews, art

This year marked the 8th anniversary of Protean's founding; it was also our busiest yet. Below is a selection of the best work that we published, online and in Issue V.

As ever, readers' generosity is the only reason any of this is possible. Support us by becoming a patron: patreon.com/proteanmag

This book by @lukeoneil47.bsky.social is full of beautiful, gut-wrenching prose. I'd call it Cormac McCarthy-esque.

Wondering what work is like for all those tasked with delivering those last-minute Christmas gifts? For @proteanmag.com I wrote this on algorithmic management, logistics work, and the possibilities for class struggle at the tail end of the supply chain x.com/brechtfast/s...

Extractive Frontiers: An Interview With Thea Riofrancos • Protean Magazine In this extensive, wide ranging interview, Laleh Khalili speaks with Thea Riofrancos about her new book Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism, the political economy of lithium mining, the poss...

In this wide-ranging interview, Laleh Khalili (@lalehkhalili.bsky.social) speaks with Thea Riofrancos (@triofrancos.bsky.social) about her new book, "Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism"—on lithium mining, prospects for a just climate transition, and more.

proteanmag.com/2025/12/22/e...

Please do not reply to me with a gif. If you reply to this post with a gif I will block you! Very small stakes but those are nonetheless the stakes.

Victor Serge, Turncoat? • Protean Magazine Andrew Holter interviews Mitchell Abidor on Abidor's new book, Victor Serge: Unruly Revolutionary, out from Pluto Press. "It seems like we in the English-speaking world, at least, have misunderstood s...

Andrew Holter interviews Mitchell Abidor on his new book, Victor Serge: Unruly Revolutionary (@plutopress.bsky.social). "We in the Anglophone world have misunderstood some pretty important things about Serge"—including, Abidor claims, his late-life reactionary turn.

proteanmag.com/2025/12/18/v...

The End of Resistance History • Protean Magazine As the Biden administration is swept into the dustbin, Charlotte Rosen wonders: what was the liberal Hashtag-Resistance "Twitterstorian"? And, as a product of the first Trump term, what did commentato...

saw the term "Richardsonism" on the TL; if you want to read something actually useful about the phenomena of H*ather C*x R*chardson, may I suggest (in @proteanmag.com): proteanmag.com/2025/01/20/t...

from what i've read, she would very much disagree with his central contention that capitalism has its origin in much older Middle Eastern markets—that's a point she explicitly rebukes in the book

we had a lot of fun picking books from Verso’s archive. and i got to talk about two absolute classics, Ellen M. Wood’s Origins of Capitalism and Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities.

many thanks to Verso for showing us around and for letting us give our little mini-lectures

VIDEO: The team behind @proteanmag.com (@jakeromm.bsky.social, @multiwhirl.bsky.social, @stevanzetti.bsky.social, and @walletcheck.bsky.social) visits our offices in New York City and makes their way through the Verso Archive, sharing some of the titles that have influenced their work.

On World-Building: Lessons From a Martyred Teacher • Protean Magazine Bayan Haddad once taught literature to Oudeh Hathaleen, who would become a teacher himself, as well as Palestinian community advocate and consultant on the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land. In ...

Bayan Haddad (@BayanHaddad) remembers her former student Oudeh Hathaleen—a Palestinian teacher, father, and community leader, murdered by an Israeli settler. Haddad testifies against the inhuman colonial violence that was the antithesis of Oudeh's spirit.

proteanmag.com/2025/12/08/o...

if you missed it—i want everyone to know about the extremely disturbing warrantless spying made possible by "Flock Safety," a policing surveillance startup that gives local cops (and even some corporations) an AI-enabled camera network, empowering them to follow individual drivers all around a city.

fucking hell. by which i mean to both swear like an Englishman and reiterate that we live in fucking hell

this month marks Protean's 8th year. the mag has been wholly reliant on many, many hours of our free labor. output is also limited because we pay writers.

i just lost my main day-job income (to AI, no less). unfortunately, without more support, it's just not viable to keep going like this forever.

Horizons of Youth Liberation • Protean Magazine Sarah Brouillette reviews Madeline Lane-McKinley's new book Solidarity With Children, out this month from Haymarket Books.Sarah Brouillette reviews Madeline Lane-McKinley's new book Solidarity With Ch...

So glad to have been able to write about Solidarity with Children by @lalouverouge.bsky.social for @proteanmag.com. Special thanks to Tyler Walicek, an extraordinary editor.

www.kptv.com/2025/11/20/i...

meant to add that this piece was also written with the help of Sarah's very smart and thoughtful son Ben! as one of Madeline's central points is that children should be our partners in solidarity, not our property, we thought it was more than fitting to enlist Ben and print his thoughts on the text.

i hope you'll read this compelling survey from Sarah Brouillette of the newest work from the always-astute and incisive Madeline Lane-McKinley—it's a tautly reasoned case for affording children greater rights and autonomy, reimagining social institutions that produce suffering and dehumanization.

The Case for Child Liberation Through Children‘s Books In troubling the idea of childhood, there is perhaps no better place to go than children’s literature. Children’s literature is where stories of childhood are produced, ostensibly, for children; it…

Sharing a practice of reading with children is also a practice of listening to children: “What are you thinking about? What are your questions?“ @lalouverouge.bsky.social

i love this. partly out of my deep love for archival anything. but it also brings to mind the flow state i achieve during hours of DSLR scanning 35mm and 120 film rolls