Portside

Conversations about cancel culture so often frame things in extreme terms for the sake of catching those Substack subscriptions and Twitter likes; they tell people exactly how to be outraged. But Field conducts discourse like a symphony.

The updated definition may help foster a healthier food supply if manufacturers add more vegetables or whole grains to meet criteria or develop products that meet the updated definition; it may help consumers identify healthier food choices.

The new series Fire Country revolves around an incarcerated California firefighter. Based on a real program, the drama is made possible by California’s budget priorities: few resources for climate protection or fire services and abundant investment in prisons.

For all the news about the invasion of Ukraine, US observers scarcely know the price of war, but as San Francisco poet Beau Beausoleil writes, that won’t last forever.

This book situates the climate crisis in a socioeconomic context, showing, writes reviewer Chen, how events like big wildfires are "important signifiers of an unfolding global calamity that urges the public to challenge the status quo."

Based on Joyce Carol Oates’s novel, Andrew Dominik’s film Blonde ignores the assertive and hardworking real-life Marilyn Monroe and instead gives us a lurid tale of perpetual victimization.

Derek Kaplan always had a knack for baking since he was a teen but took a detour to become a firefighter before reigniting his passion for piemaking. When he wasn’t helping the good citizens of Miami, he would bake out of a shared industrial kitchen. Soon, menus across Miami would proclaim: “We proudly offer Fireman Derek’s Famous Key Lime Pies.”

The new Oprah Winfrey–produced Sidney Poitier documentary, Sidney, is a gushing tribute film, not a fully rounded portrait of a human being who had weaknesses to go along with his many strengths.

“The debts we make are never paid, for us behind the wall,” write the incarcerated poet Cory Lambing, offering a glimpse of what it’s like to be inside.

This new book, says reviewer Haile, surveys "the existence of non-binary gender ideas, roles and behavior across cultures and from different time periods."