{"id":603,"date":"2026-01-06T21:00:45","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T21:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/?p=603"},"modified":"2026-01-06T21:00:45","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T21:00:45","slug":"catching-up-on-recent-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/06\/catching-up-on-recent-writing\/","title":{"rendered":"Catching up on recent writing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’ve been remiss in updating the blog! But for The Unpopulist, I wrote about joining the Portland anti-ICE protests<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This was very much not my typical Wednesday night. Though I live in Portland, where protesting is one of the city\u2019s favorite pastimes, my preferred mode of political activism is sitting in a coffeeshop typing words on a screen. I\u2019m less inclined to assemble in large groups in which my message is limited to what I can convey on a sign or t-shirt, surrounded by other protesters whose views may be at odds with my own. In Portland, the message of late had been reduced to pure absurdity, images of human-sized frogs staring impassively back at lines of federal officers in riot gear. As the protest went viral, I found myself intrigued to join. \u201cWhat is it like to be a bat?\u201d the philosopher Thomas Nagel famously\u00a0asked<\/a>. I wanted to know what it\u2019s like to be an inflatable frog.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

And for the Examiner, I reviewed David Wondrich’s new Comic Book History of the Cocktail<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Thanks to several decades of comic\u00a0book\u00a0saturation at the\u00a0movies, we all know the plot beats of a superhero epic. An intriguing origin. A rise to power. An unexpected fall followed by a journey in the wilderness. Finally, a heroic victory and return, coming back stronger and wiser than before.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not too much of a stretch to apply that story arc to the\u00a0cocktail, the subject of the latest book from drink historian David Wondrich. In\u00a0The Comic Book History of the Cocktail:\u00a0Five Centuries of Mixing Drinks and Carrying On<\/em>, Wondrich teams up with illustrator Dean Kotz to tell the story of the mixed drink, from the hazy origins of the first punches to the dark days of\u00a0Prohibition\u00a0and disco-era Harvey Wallbangers, to the contemporary revival of old-school drinks, forgotten ingredients, and culinary prestige in the bar world.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been remiss in updating the blog! But for The Unpopulist, I wrote about joining the Portland anti-ICE protests: This was very much not my typical Wednesday night. Though I live in Portland, where protesting is one of the city\u2019s favorite pastimes, my preferred mode of political activism is sitting in a coffeeshop typing words […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":604,"href":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603\/revisions\/604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}