Luke O'Neil

Stopping Cop City, the murder of Tortuguita, and the trees that got us here

Today we have some great on the ground reporting from the protests against "Cop City" in Atlanta. First a couple things from me. Pay to support independent journalism please and thank you. Subscribe now Cops killed more people in 2022 than any year since we've counted.

I don't care where just far

I was looking through some old boxes of shit that I finally took from my parents' house a while back and it reminded me of a piece I wrote about the experience of going home to clean up your history for Boston Magazine a couple years ago. I decided

How to Throw Your Life Away

A version of this piece was originally published in Boston Magazine a couple years back. I went back in this week and made it worse. Consider subscribing to this newsletter for free or with a paid subscription if you can thank you. SUBSCRIBE NOW Also my new book of short

We had a really good scene down there for a long time

Today we're going to talk a lot about how we talk. I asked a bunch of people to tell me about their relationship to their regional accent. Whether like me they sometimes feel a kind of weird internalized shame about it and may have tried to lose it

How much death works

Autumn Harris' lungs were so filled with fluid they weighed four times what a normal person's lungs should weigh during her autopsy. The thirty four year old died in an Alabama prison in 2018 after going untreated for pneumonia by medical staff for weeks according to a

Paid-members only

You will get less than you desire and more than you deserve

Whenever I finish a film or TV series I immediately want to read as much about it as possible. That's true whether or not I loved it or I thought it fucking sucked. Sometimes trying to answer the question wait why did this fucking suck? is crucial. There

To be caught happy in a world of misery...

25% off a yearly subscription You might consider ordering my forthcoming book of short stories and poems A Creature Wanting Form. None of this shit below is in it. 1. The stripped-bare branches against the wintry backdrop of the hills like the airways of the human lung I thought kneeling

Paid-members only

Predator mesh breach

They were busy solving the case themselves

Did you miss this collection of the best of Hell World 2022 from our great freelance contributors that I shared the other day? The 2022 year in reviewWe all love and/or tolerate the Hell Worlds where I spend five thousand meandering words having the epiphany for the first time

Do you remember two kinds of Christmases?

Some selected Christmas readings from me while I'm waiting for the roast beast to cook. Written by me unless they were very obviously not. The bulk movement of air From my forthcoming collection A Creature Wanting Form available for pre-order now. We dragged the tree inside from the

The 2022 year in review

We all love and/or tolerate the Hell Worlds where I spend five thousand meandering words having the epiphany for the first time every time that I'm going to die one day, but one of the most enjoyable things I get to do now is edit and publish

They want to be able to enact a separate type of suffering

If you were a consumer of right wing media – or the legacy prestige media which is the same thing more or less – you might be under the impression based on the coverage over the last couple of years that every day thousands of children are undergoing gender-affirming surgery. It must

The 50 best emo/punk/hc/&c songs of 2022

As I was finalizing my post here just now I caught myself committing the cardinal sin of any best of the year list which is Being Mad. Moving tracks up and down a few slots here and there and frowning like a mechanic over a nice car that has been

Honduran water protectors detail their time as political prisoners

By the time they arrived in La Tolva, a maximum security prison usually reserved for the most dangerous criminals in Honduras, Orvin Hernandez, Porfirio Sorto, and six others were the most famous political prisoners in the country. After organizing their villages against an open pit mine constructed illegally in a

A Lifetime of Low / On Missing Mimi Parker

Help me pay great contributors like our fine one today with a subscription if you can please and thanks. Support independent writing If you missed the previous Hell World it was about working as a zookeeper. They’re counting on leveraging your passion for animalsHow much money do you suppose

Paid-members only

They're counting on leveraging your passion for animals

How much money do you suppose a zookeeper makes? Wrong it's way less than that. The average around the country is about $11.88 an hour according to ZipRecruiter. Starting salaries for some positions can be around $25,000 a year, although that goes up depending on your

Simply agitating for a more equitable and less predatory organization of society

hello IDIOT — Kids Write Jokes (@KidsWriteJokes) November 27, 2022 God that is such a good joke. hello IDIOT The economy of it. It reminds me of a passage from A Creature Wanting Form that goes like so: Kids aren’t especially funny although when I was young my sister who

Whatever it is that’s swimming down there

Please subscribe if you like what you read here thank you. This piece doesn't appear in my forthcoming book A Creature Wanting Form but it maybe should have (?) support independent writers Indigenous people in Alaska and other northern regions have been hunting whales for thousands of years which

Creating new rules on how they can hunt us

Here is a thread of verified fundraisers for the victims of the right wing terrorist attack in Colorado Springs over the weekend.   I often find it difficult to say anything new or novel in the immediate aftermath of yet another mass shooting. It makes a person feel insane to keep

Paid-members only

We got so good at killing them and making money off of it we almost ruined them and everything forever

In June of this year a 39 year old man named Steven Dierkes died after falling into a crucible of molten iron. It was just his ninth day on the job at the Caterpillar plant in Mapleton, Illinois. Caterpillar is one of the largest construction equipment manufacturers in the world

I’ve been sleeping with a shovel under the bed

This piece appears in my book Lockdown In Hell World. It was also published on Defector a good website. Support this newsletter please and thank you. Subscribe now I’ve been sleeping with a shovel under the bed. It wasn’t my first choice. I rifled through the shed out

The Hangman is coming

Down below a brand new short story from me. You can jump right here to read it on its own page if you like but you'll need to be a paid-subscriber to read the whole thing. First some other business. It's nice that things didn'

The Harvest

This story appears in my book A Creature Wanting Form. What is that she said and he didn’t immediately answer so she said it again. What is that she said this time like a drum beat what is that kick snare crash and not comprehending the words themselves but

Two short stories

The following appear in my forthcoming book A Creature Wanting Form available now for pre-order here. An international incident There was a shooting yesterday that was one of the ones that was big enough that we all had to know it had happened so they sent me out to lower

Members only

Schadenfreude is thin gruel in terms of sustenance