Authoritarian? Fascist? Totalitarian?

We must use must use these terms precisely. They are not simply the same.

• Authoritarianism
• Totalitiarianism
• Fascism
• Misunderstandings
• Clarity
• In the US
• Resources

Authoritarianism

“Authoritarian” is the broadest category.

In politics, the term “authoritarian” registers what widely differing regimes like the USSR, Gaddafi’s Libya, and contemporary Singapore have in common.

Authoritarianism names a way that power is applied: individuals or groups exercising power unchecked by rules, process, accountability for how it is exercised, or other institutional limits.

Misunderstandings

• Authoritarianism does not reflect institutions which are “too strong”; more commonly, it reflects institutions being too weak to act as a check on the exercise of power.
• Authoritarianism does not only describe governments, it also describes systems of power which we may not think of as “political”: religious cults, corporations, families, and other forms of social order.
• Authoritarianism does not mean power in the wrong hands, or applied to the inappropriate domains. Legitimate leaders acting in legitimate domains may still act as authoritarians; illegitimate leaders and action in illegitimate domains may not necessarily qualify as authoritarian.

Totalitarianism

The term “totalitarian” refers to a type of authoritarianism; neither all authoritarianisms nor all fascisms are totalitarian.

A totalitarian order pursues limitless exercise of power over every aspect of life. For example, East Germany was totalitarian in trying to put every individual under active surveillance by the secret police, in torturing people for deviance from government wishes in the minutiae of their private lives.

The term “totalitarian” points to the similarities between regimes with vastly different ideologies and projects — Stalin’s USSR, late Nazi Germany, ISIL, and the fictional society in Orwell’s 1984, for example.

Fascism

Scholars famously have a hard time tidily defining “fascism” because of how it adapts to particular conditions. Each fascist movement has idiosyncratic national and historical characteristics. To understand what stands behind those variations, I recommend spending time with Wikipedia’s suprisingly good index of definitions of fascism, or at least David Neiwert’s post framing the highlights, plus Neiwert’s other writing about its history and distinctive character.

Misunderstandings

To sneak up on a good understanding, it helps to first dismiss some misunderstandings.

Overlapping with authoritarianism and totalitarianism

Not all authoritarianisms are fascist, but fascism is inherently authoritarian, seeking unrestrained power justified by supposed necessity. Because fascist movements frame themselves as offering a kind of anti-politics which rejects “misuse” of state power “in the wrong hands”, fascists often cannot see their own obvious authoritarianism.

Likewise, fascists’ claims to reject totalitarian ambition can reflect a genuine misunderstanding of the implications of their own ideology. But after seizing control of a state, fascist logics tend to drive them toward totalitarianism.

Part of the far right

Fascism is a far right ideology. It stands on the right because it opposes equality. It qualifies as far right because it demands revolutionary change. But fascism is more than just a name for far right authoritarianism; it has other distinctive qualities.

Most military juntas are are far right authoritarians but not fascists, for instance, and neoreaction is a contemporary far right authoritarian movement in the US distinct from fascism.

Not a policy ideology

“Political ideology” refers to a few distinct things.

Some political ideologies have a vision of society & governance, like liberal democracy, monarchism, or theocracy. Others have a policy program compatible with multiple modes of governance, like neoliberalism, socialism, or Islamism. Some ideologies address both, like Leninism’s far left combination of revolution, authoritarian governance, and socialist policy.

Fascism does not just focus on society & governance, it has a radical distinterest in policy specfics. Though fascist movements sometimes address policy, they offer shifting, even incoherent positions in service of their pursuit of power. The fascist method often produces loud advocacy for absurd policies as a tactic which diverts attention away from policy questions.

Not an instrument of capitalism or “liberalism”

Leftists rightly dread how anti-left liberals and the capitalist class too often accept — or even court alliances with — fascists. But they are confused when they describe or even define fascism as an instrument created to defend the capitalist order against the left, or even as capitalism’s true face revealed.

Capitalist elites try to harness fascist movements for their own purposes but they neither author nor inspire them. Fascism is a mass popular movement.

Nor do fascists care about quotidian economic policy. Mussolini did not define fascism as “corporatism”. Fascists do feel deep ideological disgust at the left, but their resemblance to ardent capitalists ends there; to fascists, alliances with capitalist elites are tactical politicing in pursuit of power, lacking any true allegiance.

(I have a longer post addressing this common leftist misunderstanding in greater detail.)

Clarity

I think scholar David Griffin provides the most useful single thesis, summarizing fascism as “palingenetic ultranationalism”: a dream of violent, transformative national rebirth. He and other scholars find a host of characteristics common among fascist movements, but his description of that dream as the “core” of fascism helps see through confusion created by the ways in which fascist movements vary dramatically.

I have my own distillation of Griffin’s and others’ theories, describing fascism as a myth combined with a method:

Fascism’s myth

• our nation and its true people are great — unique, strong, noble, and rightfully among the first rank of nations
• thus in the inexorable violent contest between peoples our nation is destined to prevail
• but people alien to the nation corrupt it, sowing weakness & division out of hatred for the nation and its true people
• we must therefore violently purge the corruption, under a strong leader of profound insight, using violence and every other means possible
• that purge will eliminate national strife & petty politics, restoring meaning & unity to society, producing a rebirth into national greatness

In this we can see fascism’s disinterest in policy; it imagines a good society magically emerging once the nation’s greatness is unleashed, without having to fuss over nerdy details of regulations or government spending. It is an anti-politics politics.

This fantasy embraces simpleminded irrationalism:

The Conspiracy Theory offers a paradoxically comforting nightmare. Someone is in control of All This. The world can be made right simply by eliminating Them.

[⋯]

Since Nazis put The Jews at the top of the list of Those Who Corrupt, drawing on the Protocols and its decendants, it is tempting to imagine that antisemitism is part of the definition of fascism. But neither fascism nor The Conspiracy Theory are always or simply antisemitic.

Fascism’s method

Fascists twist the liberal-democratic institutions & sensibilities they hate in order to discredit & break them; they consider it a virtue to speak and act in bad faith, doing things like:

• lying brazenly and claiming that the press are motivated solely by politics, to make citizens stop trying to figure out what the truth is
• sowing violence in society, so that limits on the use of force by the state seem pointless
• yelling “fire” in a crowded theater, to make free speech seem naïve and dangerous

In the United States

We have a hard time seeing it, but the fascist sensibility has deep taproots in American political culture. We can see precursors to it in the logic of the Confederacy, and in the Klan in the Reconstruction era. We see echoes and rhymes with the fascist sensibility in the John Birch society and the “Patriot” movement.

And we have long had fascism itself. The 20^th century revival of the Klan was a fascist movement, arguably the first in the world. We had the American Nazi Party (and the even weirder Silver Shirts) directly inspired by Hitler. Few remember Timothy McVeigh as a fascist, but we should.

Our hesitation to name American movements as “fascist” partly reflects how our deep rhetorical commitment to liberal democracy complicates our distinctive national fascist voice. (Again, in this context “liberal” means neither “not conservative” nor “not leftist”; rather, it means universal rights and rule of law.) Since our politics constantly references “freedom” and “rights” and so forth, American fascism cannot directly reject libdem principle as most other fascisms do, instead our fascisms generally twist what those ideas mean.

Trump & MAGA

For a long time, I referred to Donald Trump and Team Trump as “para-fascist”. The resemblances to historical fascisms were too strong to ignore, but the differences gave me pause. Partly this reflected how Trump himself is barely interested in politics qua politics, driven instead by his personal narcissism. He is fascist in his fundamental urges rather than out of any considered ideology. The fascist qualities of his movement reflect the team he attracts, and how he adapts himself to appeal to his supporters.

As more and more pieces have fallen into place, it has become unmistakable that one cannot understand Trump-ism without reading it as a form of fascism. The slogan “Make America Great Again” perfectly distills Roger Griffin’s “palingenetic ultranationalism” thesis. A superb 2016 examination of Trump describes his characteristic lack of a policy program, accidentally making the case that he is fascist in the course of mistakenly suggesting that he is not:

Trump’s campaign is defined by the absence of a consistent ideological agenda, in favor of

1. raw venom at his (and therefore America’s) enemies
2. sweeping though incoherent criticism of the status quo and the establishment
3. a commitment to Making America Great Again so vague and apocalyptic that it borders on millenarianism

It adds up to a gigantic middle finger that many dispossessed are happy to get behind in the mistaken belief that it’s pointing at the objects of their resentments.

Not everyone who finds MAGA rhetoric appealing can be understood simply as a fascist, nor does all of American fascism identify or align itself with MAGA, but “MAGA” is the right way to name the fascist movement which we have to face.

Returning to The Conspiracy Theory, we should recognize how American fascism has adapted to the pseudo-philo-semitism of Christian nationalism.

Many contemporary fascists cast trans people as Them, a frightening and frighteningly effective innovation, since in amplifying fascism’s anxieties about masculinity, in being a small-yet-pervasive population, in and many other ways trans people fulfill the function of Them in fascism and The Conspiracy Theory even better than Jews do.

Though MAGA fascism now dominates US conservatism and the Republican Party, we should recognize this as unstable in a time of transition. Movement conservatism, the style of conservatism which consumed the Republican Party and US politics in the wake of Reagan and Fox News, sold itself to many voters with oblique dogwhistles which nourished fascist sensibilities, but was not itself fascist. MAGA is voters moving away from movement conservatism which failed to deliver what they wanted, putting the US into a major political reälignment. It is impossible to predict who will have a chair when the music stops.

Key resources

Linz, Julian J. (2000) Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes

A highly respected broad analysis.

Adorno, Theodor. (1950) The Authoritarian Personality

An immensely influential study of the psychology & sociology of authoritarian political orders.

Altemeyer, Bob. (2006) The Authoritarians

A refinement of Adorno’s themes which addresses, among other things, authoritarian patterns outside of fully authoritarian societies.

Arendt, Hannah. (1951) The Origins of Totalitarianism

The work which secured the significance of totalitarianism as a useful category.

Stanley, Jason. How Fascism Works (2020)

A succinct and lively overview.

Griffin, Roger (ed). (1995) Fascism

A hefty anthology collecting key sources on understanding fascism.

Griffin, Roger. (1993) The Nature of Fascism

My favorite single analysis.

Paxton, Robert O. (2004) The Anatomy of Fascism

The other seminal English-language analysis.

Neiwert, David. (2003) Rush, Newspeak, and Fascism

An examination of fascist elements in contemporary American conservatism pre-dating MAGA but anticipating it frightieningly well.

Kevin J. Elliott, Yes It’s Fascism (2025)

A good short read about the Trump regime at the increasingly indispensible Liberal Currents.

Refining this post

After originally writing this post I came to rely on it heavily, and have thus made numerous edits since.

In particular, the initial version made the misleading implication that the Confederacy and original Klan were simply fascist. Both differ from fascism in a number of ways, including a fraught relationship with the Westphalian nation-state. In refining the phrasing on that point and many other things, I have tried to bring greater clarity without destroying my original sense.

Nonviolence

Proper non-violence understands that violence is justified but believes that it is unwise. Non-violence means facing violence without returning it; retreating from confrontation is not non-violent action, it is passivity.

Too many people think that nonviolence means a white liberal quietism which drapes itself in a vague and false moral claim to reflect the logic of the Civil Rights Movement. Claiming nonviolence as an absolute value rather than as a considered tactic reflects a combination of ignorance and moral laziness.

Non-violence is vitally important because violence is not a way of getting where you want to go, only more quickly; its existence changes your destination.

There are a lot of ways that things could go in which we will need a lot of white bodies on the street facing guns. We need bourgeois white people like me standing at the front, braving the bullets.

2017 doesn’t make me confident that enough of us will step up, but it does give me hope.

Case #1 for nonviolence: it is working for BLM

The re-acceleration of street protest and reporting on it which emerged after the street execution of George Floyd has produced dynamics similar to protests of the Civil Rights Movement.

That the movement has been primarily and overwhelmingly nonviolent only underlines how the few outbreaks of vandalism (most notably the capture and burning of the Minneapolis Third Precinct police station) demonstrates that there is a huge capacity for popular violence which has been held in check.

That police in cities across the country have demonstrated repeatedly that they will engage in increasingly frantic brutality in response to nonviolent street protest has conclusively proved what anti-police advocates have been saying all along.

And the result has been that now clear majorities now favor vigorous reform in a way which was politically inconceivable just a year ago, and even more incredibly police abolition is on the table as something which popularly credible people are advocating and which opponents need to actively argue against. This is a huge victory, and the contrast of nonviolence was integral in demonstrating the reality of police culture and conduct.

White liberals’ clarity here is not what it should be, but it is improving every day; a turn toward broader violence in response to police violence would reverse that trend.

Case #2 for nonviolence: it is working against far right street demonstrators

In 2017, far right street actions tried to provoke street violence in order to feed their story about their strength and the ordinary conservatives to support them against the violent leftist hordes. Instead, overwhelmingly nonviolent counterprotest got bigger and bigger while those far right gangs fell apart over their inability to deliver sufficient thrills and glory to their members. The mess at the “Unite The Right” rally did not unite the right; massive popular turnout in nonviolent counterprotest against them which followed at San Francisco, then even moreso in Boston, embarrassed them and made them look silly and weak, breaking the far right street movements’ momentum until their resurgence this year.

These kinds of confrontations are happening again this year, but again the mass of nonviolent counterprotest has made far right would-be brownshirts look silly and weak. Instead of looking like brave badasses facing down the scary antifa thugs of their authoritarian fantasies, their exemplar is scrawny, panicked Kyle Rittenhouse flailing around wildly.

We have too many fascist true believers who accept their story but they have not been able to swell their numbers or persuade the inattentive white middle as they had imagined.

There are always going to be liberals who are King’s White Moderates who will find that any shadow of evidence of “violence” (which is usually only vandalism) allows them to rationalize their rejection of any action at all. One object of non-violence is to limit their ranks by keeping the facts off their side.

Case #3 for non-violence: what if things get very bad?

The hard test is the moment to come in the wake of the election. There are a lot of people on the right who are hungry for a shooting civil war against a “violent takeover by the radical left”.

Anti-left liberals will be tempted to side with the right against the left if they can be persuaded that we are violent. And yeah, some of them are going to be suckered no matter what we do.

But the longer the interval in which it is clear that the far right are bringing guns and blood while the left are not, the more it will erode the credibility of the far right. We don’t just need it to be true that they are the ones who shoot first; we need it to last long enough that it is clear even to people who are not paying attention that they shot first. If we can hold that line, the far right will lack popular support … which translates into an unwillingness for the US military to fire on US civilians.

It is our best chance for avoiding an authoritarian death spiral.

And if that fails — either through a failure to step up, or us getting stepped on — the calculus changes.

Up to that point, the ideal response would be a massive and entirely nonviolent movement. There is no getting that ideal, but it is useful to aspire to it. An overwhelmingly nonviolent movement is more plausible and still very good.

But after that point, if we move from the fascist ascendancy we have now to the fascist control we fear, then the only way to dislodge fascist power is through violent action.

That said, even in that eventuality, while we would need violence to win that war, the more active nonviolence there is in the resistance the better the peace we can hope for when we win. Nonviolence will always need recruits.

More

Distinctions

Quietism misrepresents direct action, vandalism, and defenses against violence as “violence”. Martin Luther King’s Letter From A Birmingham Jail is the most famous critique of the white “moderate” for a queitism which demands deferring vigorous action to a more convenient season which never comes. In turn, advocates for actual violence tend to misrepresent all nonviolence as quietism. Both misrepresentations perversely enables the other, narrowing our vocabulary of political action.

Vandalism

We must reject the obscenity of implicitly equating damage to property with bloodshed. A protest which breaks no bones, only windows, is not violent.

We must reject any romantic assumption that opposing the use of vandalism is a form of quietism, that embracing vandalism is doing more and necessarily better.

There are plenty of conditions which make vandalism a legitimate tactic for theatre and direct action. There are plenty of conditions which make vandalism legitimate but unwise. If a movement embraces a diversity of tactics which includes vandalism, inattentive people will fault the movement as “not peaceful” if anyone knocks over a single trashcan at a protest. These are strategic choices, not moral choices.

Forms of force

Urgent self-defense is distinct from proactive violence. Necessary, proportionate force is different from violent escalation. Without clarity about these kinds of distinctions, movement opponents will misrepresent all uses of force as unwarranted violence.

Two telling examples:

• Here in Portland we have militant antifascists who sometimes show up ready for a fight. They get misrepresented as scary hotheads when they are the opposite of that. Portland has a long history of fash chuds coming into the community to hurt people; our antifa militants are not looking for a fight, they ready for a fight in order to defend the community. And I have looked at a lot of anti-“Antifa” propaganda videos shared by the right, and inevitably they depict militant antifascists facing chuds starting fights, responding with minimum force, and giving the chuds every opportunity to retreat.
• I added this update a week after the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis. One way the right have tried to justify it is by pointing to her connections to anti-ICE organizers teaching de-arrest skills, misrepresenting that tactic’s use of force in self-defense as “violent insurrection”.

exigencelost

I’m getting really tired of the wise serene pacifist trope in fiction. Every committed pacifist, prison abolitionist, antiwar activist, etc I’ve ever met in real life has been vibrating with compressed rage at all times. Do you know what it’s like to believe deeply in your heart that doing harm to others is wrong and the goal of society should be to alleviate suffering for all people and live in the United States of America? IT’S NOT FUN. Show Us The Pissed-Off Pacifists.

Dude there might be a word for the emotion that is forged when someone’s deep abiding love and compassion for all people and living things welds itself into decades of built-up foaming fury at how those people been treated their whole life by those in power to create a sort of alloyed super-commitment to a set of ethical principles but i promise you “tranquility” is not that fucking word

Gandhi

My nonviolence does not admit of running away from danger and leaving dear ones unprotected. Between violence and cowardly flight, I can only prefer violence to cowardice. I can no more preach nonviolence to a coward than I can tempt a blind man to enjoy healthy scenes. Nonviolence is the summit of bravery. And in my own experience, I have had no difficulty in demonstrating to men trained in the school of violence the superiority of nonviolence. As a coward, which I was for years, I harboured violence. I began to prize nonviolence only when I began to shed cowardice.

International Center On Nonviolent Conflict

Choose Democracy

Erica Chenoweth

Non-coöperation library

Judith Butler | The Compass of Mourning

I defend a politics of non-violence, in the knowledge that it cannot possibly operate as an absolute principle to be applied on all occasions. I maintain that liberation struggles that practise non-violence help to create the non-violent world in which we all want to live.”

Protest, power, and the violence debate zine

An invitation to the Marvel movies (and streaming series)

A friend who is an astute watcher of popculture recently confessed to me that they have been intrigued by the phenomenon of the Marvel Studios films, but had not yet sat down to see them. This is a viewing order for the films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe fun for fans but designed for someone coming in cold like my friend — only glancingly familiar with either the movies or the comics they are based on — who is ready to commit to watching most or all of the films. Inspired by the “Machete Order” for watching the two Lucas trilogies of Star Wars — which treats Episode II & III as an extended flashback between V and VI, omitting Episode I entirely — this viewing order is different both from the order in which the films were released and from the chronological order of the events in the world of the films.

Marvel Studios and the fictive “Marvel Cinematic Universe” are interesting and unique for a number of reasons. There have been movie series with multiple sequels before, and superhero movies before, but the MCU is the first to capture the distinctly entangled series quality of superhero comics which fans love. Alan Moore, in his introduction to a collection of comics published in 1987, describes it better than I could:

There are great economic advantages in being able to prop up an ailing, poor-selling comic book with an appearance by a successful guest star. Consequently, all the comic book stories produced by any given publisher are likely to take place in the same imaginary universe. This includes the brightly colored costumed adventurers populating their super-hero titles the shambling monstrosities that dominate thier horror titles, and the odd girzzled cowpoke who’s wandered in from a western title through a convenient time warp. For those more familiar with conventional literature, try to imagine Dr. Frankenstein kidnapping one of the protagonists of Little Women for his medical experiments, only to find himself to the scrutiny of a team-up between Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. I’m sure that the both the charms and the overwhelming absurdities of this approach will become immediately apparent, and so it is in comic books
[⋯]
The continuity-expert’s nightmare of a thousand different super-powered characters co-existing in the same continuum can, with the application of a sensitive and sympathetic eye, become a rich and fertile mythic background with fascinating archetypal characters hanging around, waiting to be picked like grapes on the vine. Yes, of course, the whole idea is utterly inane, but to let its predictable inanities blind you to its truly fabulous and breathtaking aspects is to do both oneself and the genre a disservice.

This viewing guide is intended to highlight this quality of superhero stories, the sense that different adventures of different characters made by different creators fit into a sprawling world of wonders and adventure, delivering a story of its developing world across the whole series.

How to use this list

Marvel Studios’ movies famously include one or two post-credits bonus scenes. Many of them are in-jokes for comics nerds or teasers for later movies which may be screwed up by this watch order, so I encourage skipping most of them. I have marked movies with an asterisk when you do want to check out the post-credits bit.

For convenience, this post starts with just the list of movies, then repeats itself with notes on each of the movies & series.

In order to highlight the building narrative, the list is sequenced such that it leaves a lot of the best stuff for late in the series. If your patience runs short, skip ahead to Section B to taste the very best before dropping out. There are also ways to abbreviate the viewing binge less radically …

• Within each section, things are numbered only if the viewing order is important. In other cases, I just provide a list, starting with the ones I recommend most highly.
• Sections with Roman numerals deliver the initial long-sweep story across multiple films in a deliberate order. If you want to focus on that experience, run just through these and skip the lettered sections.
• Sections marked A, B, and S deliver bonus Marvel Studios movies which are not integral to the long-sweep story.
• Sections marked Σ & Χ deliver movies about Marvel characters which were not made by Marvel Studios. They make an interesting contrast which informs what the Marvel Studios movies are doing.

Overview

I — Introducing the Marvel Universe

1. Iron Man
2. Captain Marvel
3. Thor
4. The Avengers

II — The Ballad Of Steve Rogers

1. Captain America: The First Avenger
2. Captain America: The Winter Soldier

III — The Ballad Of Tony Stark

1. Iron Man 2
2. Iron Man 3

IV — The Problem Child

• Avengers: Age Of Ultron

A — Bonus stories

• Guardians of the Galaxy vol 1
• Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
• Ant-Man
• Doctor Strange
• Thor: The Dark World
• The Incredible Hulk

V — Civil War

1. Captain America: Civil War
2. Black Widow

B — Marvel’s best

• Thor: Ragnarok
• Guardians of the Galaxy vol 2
• Black Panther

VI — Infinity

1. Avengers: Infinity War
2. Ant-Man & The Wasp
3. Avengers: Endgame

S — Spider-Man

1. Spider-Man: Homecoming
2. Spider-Man: Away From Home
3. Spider-Man: No Way Home

Σ — Alternate Spiders

• Spider-Man &
  Spider-Man 2
• Into The Spider-Verse &
  Across The Spider-Verse

X — X-Men

1. X-Men: First Class
2. X-Men
3. X-2: X-Men United
4. X-Men: Days Of Future Past
5. Logan
6. Deadpool &
   Deadpool 2
7. Deadpool & Wolverine

VII — After the endgame

• WandaVision
• The Marvels
• Jessica Jones
• Guardians of the Galaxy vol 3
• Agatha All Along
• Ms. Marvel
• Loki
• Luke Cage
• The Falcoln & The Winter Soldier
• Wakanda Forever
• She-Hulk
• Hawkeye
• Captain America: Brave New World
• Thor: Love and Thunder
• Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness
• The Eternals
• Ant-Man: Quantumania &
  Secret Invasion &
  Iron Fist

More details

I — Introducing the Marvel Universe

A taste of the basic charms of these movies.

1. Iron Man ★★★★☆ *
   The movie which initially put Marvel Studios on the map. When it was released, Marvel Studios’ first experiment with the Blade movies with Wesley Snipes had done well enough but had not really opened up Marvel’s comics sensibility … Robert Downey, Jr. was considered a has-been … not even comics fans were enthusiastic about Iron Man … and director Jon Favreau was a small-time cult actor / writer / director. But Favreau was a nerd who respected the material, so the movie just worked and was a hit. And the post-credits bonus — then a surprise from out of the blue — teased the series of films which Marvel Studios hoped to build. In this viewing order, we go from that little extra scene into a flashback …
2. Captain Marvel ★★★☆☆
   Though this was released late in the series, it is a perfect demonstration of the basic charms of Marvel movies — action & spectacle, character melodrama, actors having fun hamming it up — plus it sets up a few things for an ordinary viewer which one had to be a comics fan to appreciate when encountering the films in release order.
3. Thor ★★★☆☆ *
   Most film industry folks were puzzled when Marvel got Kenneth “Henry V” Branagh to direct a superhero movie. It was the right move, bringing the right note of shameless Shakespearean melodrama. The story is simple but then-unknowns Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston turn out to be awfully charming, and the supporting cast all have too much fun.
4. The Avengers ★★★★☆ *
   With this film, the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink pleasures of the Marvel Universe unfold. Uber-nerd director Joss Whedon (not yet disgraced when this was made) made it work with his knack for character ensemble and deep love & understanding of genre tropes. Aliens! Mad science! Super-spies! Hammy pseudo-Shakespearean dialogue! Plus Mark Ruffalo delivers an acting miracle that powers a perfect narrative climax.

If you feel that these were fun but also have had enough, you could tap out here and count yourself as having given Marvel a try. But the best is still ahead, so consider sticking with it, or just leaping ahead to B — Marvel’s Best.

II — The Ballad Of Steve Rogers

One could binge the Marvel movies or chip away at this list at a leisurely pace, but these two are a matched set, playing off of each other in a way that demonstrates how superhero stories can exercise the same characters for very different kinds of stories. I recommend watching them in this order as a double feature, or at least within a week or two of each other.

1. Captain America: The First Avenger ★★★★☆ *
   This origin story set in the Second World War was released before The Avengers, but I think it works better — especially for non-fans — as a flashback after the ensemble movie, which introduces Captain America well enough even if you don’t know anything about him. Marvel once again reached for a cult director with unique qualifications: Joe Johnston had directed the underappreciated, deliberately earnest, dieselpunk retro-pulpy The Rocketeer, and he reprises that voice for this WWII story about a character created in 1941. Chris Evans as our hero makes it look easy to play a character who is an unequivocal good guy, in contrast to most of the interestingly flawed Marvel heroes.
2. Captain America: The Winter Soldier ★★★★★
   The first Marvel movie to really stretch what the setting and characters can do, this entry contrasts with its predecessor’s earnest tone by delivering as much a crackling 1970s paranoid political thriller as superhero spectacle. (One thing to notice, which this watch order undercuts, is how when it was originally released, we had experienced our heroes as a handful of exceptional individuals in a world otherwise much like our own; Winter Soldier made the Marvel world feel expansive, with weirdness hiding behind every door.)

III — The Ballad Of Tony Stark

• Iron Man 2 ★★☆☆☆
  Frankly a mediocre entry in the series. It’s not bad, but it is disappointing, so I recommend skipping it unless you find yourself loving RDJ as Tony Stark … or you are someone who cannot get enough of Sam Rockwell goofing around.
• Iron Man 3 ★★★★☆ *
  Writer / director Shane Black directed RDJ in the weird comedy-noir masterpiece Kiss Kiss Bang Bang back in 2005. Tapped by Marvel, he delivered a mix of big spectacle, twisty storytelling, and a character turn for Tony Stark which made RDJ work for a living, setting Tony up as interesting enough to serve as the backbone of the whole film series. It’s also worth noting that when Marvel announced that the villain would be The Mandarin — a character who is basically Comics Supervillain Fu Manchu — folks like me were Concerned about how badly racist that could go, but the movie subverted that problem more cleverly than they (or just about anyone) have managed again since.

IV — The Problem Child

This movie swings for the fences … and doesn’t really work. But it includes elements signficantly referenced in later films in the series, so while one can skip it, this is the one film in the series where I encourage you to ride out a weak film in service of enjoying the series as a whole. I recommend nibbling on it a few scenes at a time, which plays to its strengths and mitigates many of its weaknesses: watch a chunk of it when you have some idle time, or as an appetizer before watching a movie from Section A, to get to a point where you have have finished Ultron before digging in to Civil War.

• Avengers: Age Of Ultron ★★☆☆☆
  Yeah, it’s a bad movie, but there are a lot of good bits rattling around in it: smarter engagement with the themes of Frankenstein in the age of artificial intelligence than most movies entirely about that, some delightful scenes of our heroes just hanging out together, a direct rebuke to the inhuman callousness of the nearly-fascist Superman film Man Of Steel which was released while this was in production, and a couple of crackerjack action sequences. But the worst bits are bad. The effects for the face of killer robot Ultron are a queasy Uncanny Valley failure, undercutting a superb voice performance by James Spader. And one scene is a horrendous misfire which has Natasha “Black Widow” Romanov saying something gobsmackingly stupid and sexist.

A — Bonus stories

You don’t need any of these to make sense out of the story arc explored in the sections with the Roman numerals, but most of them are pretty good, they show more of the range of things that superhero stories can do, and the more of them you catch the better the callbacks and character stuff from later movies will land.

• Guardians of the Galaxy vol 1 ★★★★☆
  A showcase for Marvel movies’ capacity for exuberant fun speaking to our inner ten-year-old, threaded with surprisingly poignant notes. If Star Wars has broken your heart with disappointment, this picture may rekindle your enthusiasm for Wacky Adventures In Space. One can really watch this one at any point, since it takes place In Space, away from our other heroes; the characters don’t get folded in to the rest of the story until Infinity War.
• Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings ★★★★☆
  A demonstration of superhero sensibilities marrying well with other kinds of stories. If one has any love at all for xianxia or wuxia or kung fu movies, it reflects what Daniel Pinkwater said about Laurel & Hardy — one knows exactly what is coming but the delivery is so perfect that one cackles with delight when it arrives. (Oh, there’s a bunch of bamboo scaffolding on this building? I wonder what will happen!) It stands almost completely on its own, though there is an allusion to Doctor Strange which benefits a bit from having seen that first.
• Ant-Man ★★★★☆
  Loose goofy fun, with Paul Rudd characteristically charming and funny, bursting with setpieces more about cleverly playing off of our hero’s superpowers than the special effects. I must note that this was my young neice’s favorite. It does not draw much on other Marvel movies, but one should catch it before seeing Civil War.
• Doctor Strange ★★★☆☆
  The story is a little tepid and it does not get as much leverage as it should out of some of its actors, but it has a bunch of unique strengths. Our hero comes up with a very clever resolution at the ending, there are some dazzling unique visual setpieces which folks who found that Inception left a lot of opportunity for extravagant effects on the table will find refreshing. And not only does Strange play a big role in the Infinity movies, this movie sets up my single favorite callback in Endgame.
• Thor: The Dark World ★★☆☆☆
  This movie isn’t quite bad but it is weak entry is worth watching if you find that you love Thor & Loki … and it does set up a couple of really terrific callbacks in later, better movies.
• The Incredible Hulk ★★☆☆☆ *
  The first MCU film, though release timing had it come right after the original Iron Man; it turns out rough enough around the edges that they re-cast the Hulk’s alter ego Bruce Banner in the later films. But if you love the Hulk, Frankenstein, Ed Norton, or mad science you may find it interesting. (Don’t confuse this with the strange, gutsy, flawed Ang Lee film Hulk, which predates Marvel Studios!)

V — Civil War

1. Captain America: Civil War ★★★☆☆
   This picture exercises how superhero comics have a lot in common with long-running melodramatic soap operas, portraying larger-than-life characters who live in a messy, complicated world. Plus it finally delivers the truly extravagent superhero action setpieces fans are accustomed to seeing on the comic page with a lot of superheroes onstage together. The story works a significantly better if you have seen Age Of Ultron, and there’s a fun payoff if you have seen Ant-Man movie is also a plus, but neither is strictly necessary.
2. Black Widow ★★★☆☆
   This pretty-good spy thriller + family comedy-drama fits right after Civil War in the story sequence despite production problems which wound up deferring its release until much later. If you want to catch it, it benefits a little from watching it shortly after Civil War.

B — Marvel’s best

These three are generally understood to be the best Marvel Studios movies as movies. They benefit significantly from playing off of earlier movies in the sequence but are not necessary to feed the long story of the series.

• Thor: Ragnarok ★★★★★
  Somehow this candy-colored delight is both the most fun and funny Marvel movie while also managing to deliver another meditation on colonialism and a resonant story about family, community, and responsibility.
• Guardians of the Galaxy vol 2 ★★★★★
  A refinement of all the zany, vulgar charm of the previous entry, building to an ending with much more emotional resonance than one would expect. You don’t need to see vol 1 first to make sense of it, but it’s almost as good a movie so you probably want to.
• Black Panther ★★★★★
  An allegory of colonialism and global racial injustice through the lens of US Black cultural dreams and sensibilities, which sounds like eating your spinach … but enlivened by superheroes and the exuberance of the Marvel sensibility, it is instead a fun and inspiring modern myth which became a pop culture phenomenon for good reason. If you only see one Marvel movie, this is the one. And it makes a good segue to the end of the story cycle ….

VI — Infinity

This wraps up the initial big ten-year story arc Marvel Studios built with their movies. Though fans’ and Marvel marketing’s use of the word “saga” is overly grandiose, there really is a payoff here from working on such a big canvas. In comics, every few years comics publishers do a “crossover” story which ties together almost everything they publish, touching the stories in each character's individual books and then climaxing in a story which contrives to include as many characters as possible to play a role. This is both a sleazy marketing gimmick and, when it works, the ultimate expression of a unique thing that the superhero storytelling can do with its vast cosmology, numerous genres, and hundreds of characters with interlocking stories. It is a miracle that this works at all, much less as well as it does.

1. Avengers: Infinity War ★★★★☆ *
   Thanos, the space villain who has been knocking around the edges of the stories told so far, takes center stage in his quest for the Infinity Stone MacGuffins which have played a part in several of the movies. It is worth noting that structurally, Thanos is the protagonist of this movie.
2. Ant-Man & The Wasp ★★★☆☆ *
   A sequel almost as much fun as the original, with even more clever play with the implicitions of our heroes’ weird superpowers, if you like that sort of thing. Not an important movie in the Big Story, so you could skip it if you didn’t take a shine to the first Ant-Man film, but it’s nice to get a smaller story as a break between the massive spectacles of the two big Avengers movies … and the post-credits scene establishes it as bridging Infinity War to Endgame in an interesting way.
3. Avengers: Endgame ★★★★☆
   Most superhero stories begin and end with a stable status quo. This movie shows how the world and our characters were transformed by the events of Infinity War, reflects on where our characters came from, plays out what they do next, completes both The Ballad Of Tony Stark and The Ballad Of Steve Rogers, and makes a callback to Age Of Ultron so good that it makes watching that weak entry worthwhile.

S — Spider-Man

The three Marvel Studios Spider-Man movies are not strictly necessary to make sense of the big initial story arc, but are all good.

1. Spider-Man: Homecoming ★★★☆☆
   Another example of bringing life to stale genres by stirring in superheroics, in this case the teen high school comedy-drama. Not great but solid, with good performances by the cast and a superb twist at a key moment. Properly speaking this takes place shortly after the events of Civil War, but it doesn’t really hurt anything to watch at a different point.
2. Spider-Man: Away From Home ★★★☆☆ *
   More teen high school comedy-drama, not quite as strong as the first entry (and a few elements which disintegrate if one thinks too hard), but the lead characters are charming and the villain is interesting. Contains major spoilers for Infinity War, so best if you wait to watch this one after that.
3. Spider-Man: No Way Home ★★★★☆
   The best Marvel Studios Spider-Man feature. Since it plays with ideas from Spider-Man movies which Marvel Studios did not make, so I encourage catching at least one of the two Sam Raimi / Tobey Macguire movies first ….

Σ — Alternate Spiders

For rights reasons, Sony Pictures has made three distinct series of Spider-Man movies unconnected by style or story from the Marvel Studios version of the character. (Four if you count the so-bad-they’re-good Venom movies.) Alas, the two Amazing Spider-Man movies with Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker feature a few technical virtues (Spider-Man moves beautifully in them) but are clumsy enough that I cannot recommend them. Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3 with Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker is better than its reputation, but it too is disappointing enough to skip unless you fall in love with Peter Parker.

But these two pairs of movies are terrific:

• Spider-Man ★★★★☆ &
  Spider-Man 2 ★★★★★
  Raimi’s first entry is super and the second one is even better, in the running for best superhero movies ever in the eyes of many comics fans. In contrast to the Marvel Studios movies, these commit deeply to the melodramatic storytelling style of the comics of the 1960s.
• Into The Spider-Verse ★★★★★ &
  Across The Spider-Verse ★★★★☆
  The first is both one of the best superhero movies ever made and also one of the best animated features ever made: visually dazzling, bursting with love for superhero stories, and genuinely moving. The sequel is a hair short of that, but for honest reasons — it suffers the challenges of a second act in a three-act story, and sometimes groans under the weight of its ambitions — but that is praising it with faint damnation.

X — The X-Men

Before Marvel Studios began their MCU sequence, 20^th Century Fox started a series of films about this team of Marvel superheroes and their antagonists. Half of the dozen-plus entries in the series are only suited to superhero nerds, which is frustrating because the X-Men are among of the best and most beloved things in Marvel comics. But there are a few that are good, one very good, and one true classic. Disney’s acquisiton of Fox means that these characters will get rebooted in Marvel Studios films to come, so if you want a taste of a different style of Marvel movie than Marvel Studios has made, these are worth a look.

1. X-Men: First Class ★★★★☆
   The second-best X-Men film. It was made late in the series, but since it flashes back to the origins of the team in the 1960s, it is actually the ideal place to start, making its allegory of the Black, gay, and other liberatory social movements very direct. (I wrote a little review of it when it was new.)
2. X-Men ★★★☆☆
   The first film made in the series. Seeing it now, in contrast to the matured Marvel Studios approach, it suffers painful failure to trust the material, but at the time it was new fans like me were excited that it was one of the best superhero movies yet made, with gravitas delivered by Ian McKellen & Patrick Stewart, a star-making turn by Hugh Jackman, clever superheroic setpieces, and effective queer allegory.
3. X-2: X-Men United ★★★☆☆
   A follow-up that improves a bit on its predecessor, with more room for the performances to breathe.
4. X-Men: Days Of Future Past ★★☆☆☆
   A flawed, fun mess which ties together the casts of the flashback and later versions of the team. If you’re losing patience with the X-Men, skip this one, but it has some virtues, including a couple of terrific superhero action setpieces if you like those. After you see it, search YouTube for “quicksilver sweet dreams” to enjoy a sequel to its most memorable bit, snipped out from the gawdawful movie in which it appears.
5. Logan ★★★★★
   The last, and by far the best, film in this series. Not just a terrific superhero movie but a classic movie, period, re-framing the characters and world as a John Ford western. It benefits if one has seen the previous movies (especially X-2) but you don’t strictly need any of them.
6. Deadpool &
   Deadpool 2 ★★★☆☆
   A pair of gonzo, vulgar, refuge-in-audacity action-comedies which somehow work much better than they have any right to. They technically belong to this series but have a completely different tone. Worth seeing as a taste of superhero comics sensibilities in their silly Brechtian self-parody mode.
7. Deadpool & Wolverine ★★★★☆
   Going back to the well a third time really should not have worked, much less turned out the best of the series. Watch it after seeing Logan … ideally quite some time after, for reasons which will become apparent.

VII — After the endgame

With the conclusion of the big “Infinity Saga” arc, there are a growing set of feature films — plus an array of streaming TV series — informed by it. Covid, bad luck, and trying a few too many projects broke Marvel’s stride, undermining the consistency and the sense of an overarching story, but there is some good stuff worth catching. One can dig into most of these in any order after getting to the two Infinity films; I note the few cases where watch order makes a difference.

• WandaVision ★★★★☆
  Possibly Marvel Studios’ most gutsy experiment with what one can do with superheroes on screen, and it works, playing with sitcom conventions to deliver both wit and pathos to deliver a cleverly accessible version of David Lynch’s surrealist voice.
• The Marvels ★★★★☆
  Maybe I am a sucker, but I adore this trifle. It hits all of the formula elements deliciously, so shameless in its pursuit of fun that it lets Samuel L. Jackson bring his comedic side and has teen superhero Ms. Marvel get a phone call from her mom literally telling her, “you cannot have any more space adventures”. This comes after the events of WandaVision & Ms. Marvel, but you don’t need to see either of those first.
• Jessica Jones ★★★★☆ / ★★★☆☆
  The first season is somehow both entertaining and a sophisticated meditation on narcissistic abuse. The later seasons don’t have quite the same depth but do deliver the crime-drama goods.
• Werewolf By Night ★★★☆☆
  A shaggy love letter to old horror movies.
• Guardians of the Galaxy vol 3 ★★★☆☆
  This third installment isn’t quite as strong as the previous ones, but it still delivers the mix-of-tones goods. CW: There’s a bit of animal cruelty which is earned by the story, but if you cannot watch that sort of thing at all, best to skip this movie.
• Agatha All Along ★★★☆☆
  Shameless fun with witchy nonsense. If you like queer shenanigans — including Aubrey Plaza in her fully unhinged mode — it’s worth another ★. Spoilers for WandaVision, so catch that first.
• Ms. Marvel ★★★☆☆
  A surprisingly sweet story hitting a lot of the notes which make Spider-Man an enduring character — a reflection on nerdy adolescence, family, and friendship.
• Loki ★★★☆☆
  A witty, almost-nonsensical romp centered on Tom Hiddleston serving up thick slices of ham. Worth watching the entire thing just to get to a scene where Richard E. Grant miraculously blindsides you with melancholy tears.
• Luke Cage ★★★☆☆
  The showrunner of this mostly-pretty-grounded story about Harlem’s local superhero says that he will never get tired of seeing a Black man in a hoodie shrug off gunfire. The show demonstrates why without it feeling like a downer.
• The Falcon & The Winter Soldier ★★★☆☆
  A frustratingly uneven thriller. There is a lot of clever stuff in it, but after it opens a door to surprisingly interesting cultural politics, it disappoints by backing off from following through.
• Wakanda Forever ★★★☆☆
  It may have been impossible to follow up the cultural moment around Black Panther even without the premature death of star Chadwick Boseman. Unable to fill those boots, this film is still solid — and also serves as a fitting requiem mass for Boseman.
• She-Hulk ★★★☆☆
  A sitcom about being a lawyer who takes superhero / supervillain cases … while also being a superhero. Loose-unto-sloppy, but fun.
• Hawkeye ★★★☆☆
  A fun trifle, part Holiday Comedy With A Hapless Dad, part Buddy Action Comedy.
• Captain America: Brave New World ★★★☆☆
  A weaker attempt at the cocktail of superhero story and political thriller which Captain America: The Winter Soldier delivered, but entertaining enough, if only to see Harrison Ford having some hammy fun. This takes place after The Falcoln & The Winter Soldier and is a bit informed by it.
• Thor: Love and Thunder ★★☆☆☆
  A surprisingly weak entry getting the band back together from the sublime Ragnarok. There is fun in there, but unsatisfying as a whole.
• Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness ★★☆☆☆
  A messy entry that has its charms if one has developed a taste for specifically-superheroic tropes or enjoys Sam Raimi’s overspiced directoral style.
• The Eternals ★★☆☆☆
  This attempt at Big Cosmic Nonsense somehow doesn’t land right, but it has real ideas and is so gorgeously shot that it is an intriguingly noble failure. As with Age Of Ultron, I find it more gratifying a few scenes at a time.
• Ant-Man: Quantumania &
  Secret Invasion &
  Iron Fist ★☆☆☆☆
  The baseline for the MCU is popcorn entertainments a little better & smarter than they need to be; the lesser works are more weak than bad, entertaining enough for a lazy Sunday afternoon. But these are real turkeys.

Buy nice stuff

Want to buy nice consumer products from providers I like? Here are unsolicited endorsements of some of my favorite Stuff, and places to get Stuff.

• Other lists
• Stationery & pens
• Computer-adjacent office supplies
• Travel
• Everyday carry
• Toys
• Nerd art
• Clothing
• Grooming
• Housewares
• Consumables
• Everything else

Other lists

Indices like this one

• Cool tools — Kevin Kelly’s index of reviews of all kinds of things, talking not just about the qualities of the product, but about how and why it's useful, like tongue depressors or those glue sticks made of post-it note glue; many entries are just tips and tricks that don’t require buying anything
• Wirecutter — exceedingly in-depth reviews explaining what the best version is for numerous key products — especially electronics — including why that thing is the best and what difference it makes if you go for the best cheap or best spendy alternative
• The Future Of Stuff Store — particularly resiliently-designed products, especially ones which take advantage of cutting-edge materials; the creator also maintains an open list “some things that are really quite good”: “it’s just amazing how good the quality end of manufactured goods is, particularly compared to the landfill-fodder which is the norm”
• Better Living Through Design — various kinds of cunningly-designed kit; the bags and desk accessories are my particular weaknesses
• Pack Hacker — advice for travellers, relevant here because they have a huge library of thoughtful product reviews and recommendations
• Alex Kwa — the kind of minimalism nerd who has an article about how to wear only black; he has assembled a bunch of fun reviews & guides to one-bag travel, minimalism, and more
• The Strategist — a bit lifestyle-magazine-ish, but I forgive it because it has pretty darned good taste in a range of products
• Buy Me Once — many kinds of solidly-made stuff, again described with a bit of lifestyle magazine flavor
• The Ones — a site maintained by some hip but (mostly) practical industrial designers listing their favorite, rock-solid products
• The Sweet Setup — a guide to applications for Apple devices, including not just the best solutions but a lot of advice about using them well
• The Macrumours’ buyers guide — informed guesses about when new versions of Apple products will come out, reducing your chances of getting something and then feeling frustrated to see a spiffy new version released right after you buy it
• “What life-changing item can you buy for less that ^$100?” — a wooly but fun and helpful Reddit discussion
• Kitty Unpretty’s office supply recommendations — some smart eccentric ideas
• Independent map artists — a list of sellers of good weird maps
• Typeface lists — what folks colloquially call “fonts”; a bunch of good ones, and a bunch of type foundries which make good ones

Eccentric product catalogues

• Placed Atoms — a handfull of cool eccentric overdesigned tools; I keep a roll of the tape in my toolchest
• CW&T — a large handful of overdesigned items, including my favorite pen
• Uncommon Goods — nifty, charming, mostly pointless stuff
• Global Industrial Supply — full of treasures, including sturdy office stuff which is often surprisingly affordable
• Deutsche Optik — fancy military surplus and related weird cool stuff
• Varusteleka — odd Finnish military surplus
• The Sportsman’s Guide — more meat-and-potatoes military surplus and weirdness, featuring product descriptions with a dose of redneck whimsy
• Apex Surplus — cool rusty old stuff, mostly sold for use as movie props

Stationery & pens

Catalogues

• Jetpens — a huge catalogue of delicious office supplies from Japan, and has great indices and reviews of various essentials (you can see my personal favorites)
• Nico Neco Zakkaya — twee Japanese stationary and supplies
• Baum•Kuchen — deliciously fussy European & Japanese stationary and supplies
• Mochi Things — more Japanese-style stationary, office supplies, and more with a friendly & functional style
• Discount School Supply — tools for schools & homeschoolers which also have applications in a creative office, like groovy storage and cheap little dry erase boards
• 26 Market — a well-curated collection of fancy eccentric office supplies (and housewares) like ruled manila envelopes, folders with a pocket for each day of the week, waxed cardboard boxes, enameled metal lunchboxes
• Levenger — less reliably my taste than it used to be, and everything is a bit more spendy than it should be, but there is still some good stuff there

Pens

• The Pen Type-B — it is a crime that the website does not have a sound-and-video clip of the satisfying pop of sliding open my all-time favorite pen; it is designed to use refills with the ink for …
• Pilot Hi-Tec C — a very good gel pen available in various colors & formats
• Pilot G-2 — the Hi-Tec C’s cousin, IMHO the cheap pen best for graceful writing
• Zebra Mildliners — highlighter-style felt-tip pens in subdued colors, useful for highlighting, structuring written notes, and sketching
• Pilot FriXion pens — the only good erasable pens I have used, not just spiffy on the merits but also useful combined with …
• Pocket pens — I have a section on those under EDC below

Other goodies

• Rocketbook — an array of notebooks and other stationery made with reusable ”paper“ which easily wipes clean with a damp cloth if you use FriXion pens, supported by an app for easily scanning snapshots of what you write; though the “paper“ is plastic-y to the touch it writes very nicely so I love using the index cards for games and the Orbit pad for work meeting notes which I will transcribe into electronic form
• Chromalabel — an array of color-coding stickers … including kraft paper
• Studio Neat — a handful of very spiffy office tools; the unique things I recommend are their giant panobook “desk notebook” and matching-size panopad sticky notes
• The Cortex podcast store — offers a few nifty, unique bits of stationery including my all-time favorite notebook that isn’t the classic Leuchtturm 1917

Computer & office gear

Brands

• Anker & Belkin — the two big manufacturers I trust most for stuff like chargers, cables, and other USB accessories (and related kit)
• Elevation Lab — good cables and device stands; it is worth watching the video for their QuickDraw desk cable clip
• Twelve South — unique accessories for computers, phones, and other electronics
• Ergomi — an array of desk tools, especially interesting if one is on the go and needs to be able to bring one’s “desk” anywhere
• Gustav — when I was working a job which had me running from conference room to conference room with my laptop and other kit, I daydreamed about a specialized Laptop Bucket; too late for me, these folks make one, and a few bits of similar gear (Ikea also makes something similar)
• DTTO — cases for Apple devices, including the iPad Mini case I settled on after a long hunt: inexpensive, protective, grippy without feeling gross, with a stand good for both portrait and landscape use
• The Magic Sleeve — a cunning magnetic felt gear pocket/desk pad; watch the video to get seduced
• Conway Electric — nifty, very spendy extension cords and related gear with an Industrial aesthetic
• SuperCalla — USB cables with a set of magnets along the length which make them easy to wrap or fold neatly
• Native Union — makers of overdesigned tech accessories; I am tickled by their whimsical USB phone handset and their Anchor Cable with a weighted end
• Rolling Square — charging gear and similar; I keep one of their tiny multipurpose USB cables in my go bag, and they have a nifty modular magnetic arm for attaching phones, lights, and chargers to one’s laptop

Classical office supplies

• Grovemade — preposterously swanky desk accessories
• Scotch package scissors — good scissors designed so that one can also use them to open packages
• swivel stapler — a stapler where one can rotate the stapling mechanism 90° away from the lever to make it easy to staple booklets Fluidstance — a line of steel desk whiteboards which I have all over my desk (plus they make cool balance boards to stand on)

Input & output

• Elgato Stream Deck — a highly-customizable “keyboard” with tiny LED displays on each key which knows what application you are currently using to can give you shortcut keys and more; it did so much for my productivity that I eventually upgraded to the XL version
• TourBox — another programmable input device which knows which app you are using and can give you appropriate shortcut keys; their marketing materials do not explain that the weird button & dial design is meant to make it easy to identify the controls by touch with your left hand while your right hand is working a mouse or trackpad
• Keyboario & Ergodox — cool weird ergonomic mechanical computer keyboards; I have a few words which may help you decide if you want one of these
• Protoarc Foldable Ergonomic Bluetooth Keyboard — the best portable keyboard I have found; one can also find a similar, even lighter version branded a few different ways (GoTek Voyage, Targus, iClever, Perixx, Moko, Gomcv, etc) which is pretty good, but charges via micro USB, which I am trying to purge from my life

Videoconferencing

• Elgato Prompter — if you spend a lot of time on videoconferences, using this widget with your webcam will reduce your stress by enabling you to make “eye contact”
• On Air Warning — a little ecosystem with an app, dedicated buttons, and a status light for toggling one’s camera and microphone on and off; one can set the app to freeze your video rather than black it out, which I find convenient when doing something momentarily awkward at my desk
• AnkerWork speakerphones — the voice isolation on the S600 is uncannily good at filtering out all other sound; I presume that other models (and the headphones) use the same tech
• Logitech H390 headset — this inexpensive headset is surprisingly good, though I ordinarily rely on a USB mic Audio-Technica don’t make any more
• Airtime & Boom — useful tools for managing one’s outgoing image in a videoconference; a Setapp subscription includes the latter

Cable management

• Wrap-It cable labels — little colored bits of velcro stuff you can write on to identify what cable connects to what; I also like the velcro cable wraps in matching colors
• Cable Turtles — the tidiest and easiest way to make a long cable shorter
• BlueLounge — a bunch of well crafted solutions to your cable clutter; I dig their CableBox, though one can find equivalents which are less expensive
• braided mesh wire looms — the most convenient way to keep a bunch of cables tidy when stringing them all to the same place

Apple ecosystem apps

• SetApp — a subscription service which provides a big, well-curated catalogue of apps all for one fee, so whenever I need a little utility I start there because they probably have a solution — I have a few favorites:
  • Session — a pomodoro timer with a lot of little advantages, including strong Apple Shortcuts support which I use to automagically start and stop music
  • Bartender — a utility which manages the icons for background apps in the menu bar
  • Mosaic — a utility for tiling windows neatly
  • TaskPaper & Bike — a pair of crisp, simple notes apps made for graceful outlining (from the same developer!)
  • CleanMyMac — a longtime-classic tool for keeping one’s hard drive from getting crufty
  • TypeFace — a font manager for addicts like me
  • NotePlan — a notes app with sophisticated support for time-based organization, tagging, to-dos, et cetera; it has nerdy advantages like having its notes available in the filesystem as plaintext Markdown, and a plug-in architecture for lots of configurability, which I have been migrating to as a replacement for …
• Agenda — a notes app with comparable organizational tools to NotePlan and a bit more polish
• Mailsmith — A crisp email app with good support for GMail
• Things — a very graceful To Do app
• BBEdit — the classic plaintext editor
• Bear — a Markdown app really good for composing writing, with a good browser extension for doing clippings from web pages
• OmniGraffle — a drawing app built for making diagrams which I abuse to do a lot more; it has a Shared Layer mechanism useful for making a big batch of similar images / pages

Other goodies

• Ergodriven — the weird ridged floor mat I use at my standing desk every day
• Bellemond — makers of a superior alternative to the Paperlike tablet screen protector; it reduces glare and makes drawing & handwriting with the Pencil a lot better, though if one only writes on the tablet intermittantly, you may prefer …
• Astropad make a magnetic-removable equivalent tablet screen surface for writing which comes with matching pen tips, Rock Paper Pencil, an anti-reflective screen protector for iPhones which is admirably clear, and a few other interesting implements
• Desk service bell — the ding-for-service bell your parents told you not to ring when you were kid; I have one at my desk and ding it when I finish something

Travel

Clothing

• Bluffworks — makers of travel clothing that doesn’t make you look like a cyberpunk shadowrunner or safari nerd; their Gramercy Blazer has cunning pockets and uses a resilient technical fabric which looks and feels indistinguishable from wool suiting (and yes there are matching trousers)
• ScottEVest — makers of incredibly pocket-rich travel clothing; I like wearing their LightEST Vest under another jacket to keep my stuff handy and organized, there’s even a wacky system for threading cables through the lining so that it is easy to charge devices while they rest in pockets
• Aviator — makers of a lot of travel kit; I love their travel hoodie
• Mizzen & Main — another maker of technical fabric men’s clothing; I dig their dress shirts
• Flip My Tie — A brand of reversible neckties, to get a few more changes when travelling light

Other travel gear

• Matador — a bunch of clever travel tools; I have one of their pocket blankets and use their soap bags on the road
• Lifestraw Peak water bottle — a collapsable water bottle with a built-in lifetime filter which will ensure fresh water whether you end up on a hike in the woods or just in a city where the tapwater is nasty
• Nite-Ize Carabiners — an array of well-designed little clips with a million applications; I particularly like the Microlock S-biners for securing zipper pulls

Luggage

• Evergoods — my single favorite maker of bags and packs, cunning designers of camping gear who turned their attention toward stuff for civilians with a minimalist look that belies sophisticated organizational details; all their stuff is superb and their medium-size travel backpack is the best airplane under-seat bag I have ever used and their CIVIC Access Pouch 2L, is the best dopp-kit-size organizer I have ever encountered
• Tom Bihn — simple, superb soft travel gear; their Aeronaut 30 bag has taken me around the world (and the newer laptop-friendly Techonaut incorporates the improvements I daydreamed about when I did that), and their Synik 22 & 30 laptop / travel backpacks have super organization
• WaterField Designs — their design sensibility straddles classy enough to look professional without looking too fussy in more casual circumstances (especially in their use of waxed canvas); their videos explaining how their bags are meant to be used are worth a watch if only as explorations of thoughtful design; their Air Porter Backpack is a hyper-optmized under-seat carry-on to pair with a rolling case, and their newer Air Travel Backpack is the most professional-feeling one-bag solution I have seen
• Peak Design — camera gear and bags (and the phone cases mentioned above); I use their Everyday Backpack as the name describes; their travel backpack may be the most clever design of the type — note that Huckberry offers handsome variant versions
• Piorama — make some interesting eccentric bags; their A10 duffel has a system of drawstrings so one can expand it from a pretty-big 30L bag to twice its volume, their giant tote is the best design for that I have seen, and their Omni laptop sleeve has pockets and magnets which transform it into a useful desk organizer for office kit or whatever
• Aer — intriguingly designed travel & EDC bags a peer to the makers above, though cannot vouch for having seen them in the flesh; I dig their Capsule Pack
• Babboon To The Moon — bags for people who share my sensibilities about how bags should be structured but want something more colorful
• Freitag — an array of clever bags, each unique because they are made by upcycling the colorful tough canvas they use to cover trucks in Europe; the groovy stop-motion animations showing the bags in use are a delight even if you don’t want to buy one
• Mission Workshop — my favorite fancy bicylists’ bags; they also make some interesting technical clothes
• Saddleback Leather — gorgeous, heavy, sturdy leather luggage; I carried one of their backpacks for years and got compliments on it every day
• Away — the most inexpensive sturdy rolling pullman cases (or the sturdiest inexpensive ones) I have found; their Aluminum Carry-On is spendy but satisfied my lifelong lust for an unattainably expensive Zero Haliburton
• Sottos — makers of cases with huge wheels that make it easier to roll over surfaces like grass or cobblestones, and to lever-thump up and down stairs
• The Ogio locker bag — cleverly designed to organize gym gear and fit into locker just so — for years I had one which I did not even take back and forth, it just lived in my locker
• Notabag — a simple lightweight bag which folds up small and has a simple, beautiful design which makes it graceful to carry things in one hand, over one shoulder, or as a backpack
• Nanobag — by far the best packable tiny bags I have ever found; these easily pack down to almost nothing but the material is neither flimsy nor weird
• Eagle Creek — my favorite maker of packing cubes; you may prefer to use cubes from the same maker as your bag, but you definitely need packing cubes if you travel

Everyday carry

Keyring

• Craighill — a bunch of spendy, meticulously-designed stuff for a gent’s pockets and desk (their design videos are seductive) and they make several different keyring solutions
• Key Wrangler — a sturdy, unique carabiner keyring which puts keys on a straight bar, which is helpful if one’s keyring has turned into a pocket tool ring; for a compact key solution, check out …
• Keysmart — makers of a line of super-compact key holders; they also make my all-time favorite keyring multitool
• AirNotch Pro — a better tracker than the Apple Airtag for one’s keyring
• RovyVon flashlight — my favorite maker of tiny flashlights, though as Maurice Moves notes, we are embarrassed for choice of little flashlights these days from makers like Fenix and Boruit

Wallet

• Bellroy — the most thoughtfully designed leather wallets I have found; I carry their Hide & Seek bifold when I need more than just the essentials in my …
• Peak Design Mobile Wallet — a super-minimalist wallet which clings to my iPhone via MagSafe and provides a little folding stand
• AirCard — a tracker compatible with Apple FindMy which fits in a wallet card slot
• On-The-Go Notebook — a tiny notebook which fits into a wallet card slot from Rite In The Rain, using their indestructible paper

Pocket pen

• “Bullet” Space Pen — an EDC cliché, but they really do slip into a pocket nicely; I carry one in brass, which has patina’d nicely
• Skillcraft “US Government” ballpoint — IMHO the best cheap pen available, a true classic
• Pilot Vanishing Point — the only good retractable fountain pen, always the second pen I carry when I do because one cannot safely lend fountain pens to strangers
• Big Idea Design — makers of nifty EDC, notably including very nice mini-pens

Pocketknife

I have become a devotée of the pocket boxcutter as the right solution — the replacable blades mean one can always have a nice sharp edge despite abusing that handy blade. I have three options I like:

• Pichi Utility Knife — spendy but worth it; small, elegant, overdesigned, and fidget-tastic
• NexTool Explorer E20 — the one I carry most often; the built in “magazine” of replacement blades deploy easily, and the screwdriver & bottle-opener elements are useful despite catching on the pocket just a bit
• The Gerber Prybrid — the bulkiest, but also the best in the hand for demanding jobs

Sling

• Venture Sling 9L — the Bellroy sling which made me a sling bag user, though I switched to …
• Alpaka Vertex Pouch — a super-organized little sling bag I bring everywhere; more often than not, I have it tucked into a section I have set aside in my backpack for it (where I also keep an obsessively-curated mini toolkit in one of Alpaka’s pouches)
• Wave multitool & Raptor trauma shears from Leatherman — because yes, I am that prepared nerd; if starting over, I’d probably spring for the new Wave Alpha

Electronics

• Peak Design Mobile — a system of elegant, protective phone cases which lock to various stands and implements; if you use one of the newer MagSafe iPhones, these are compatible, which means that you can combine best-of-breed solutions to pair it with the slightly better magnetic card wallet / mini stand from …
• Moft — nifty portable stands for computers, tablets, and phones; I carry one of their Snap Flow notepads stuck to my iPhone with MagSafe

Covid safety

• Breathe99 — a silicone mask with good filter inserts and an integrated cloth cover which keeps one from looking too medical; the one I bring when I know I am going to be popping my mask on and off
• 3M Aura 1870 N95 masks — my favorite disposable masks, with the boxy Korean-style pleats for a comfy good seal, though one must put up with the dorky 3M logo on the white mask
• Nukit Torch UV — spendy portable battery-powered 222nm emitters sufficiently powerful to help protect a few people
• 4Lite Personal HEPA filter — the only personal filter I am confident provides substantial benefit, pointing a stream of filtered air at one’s face; it is a bit too bulky to routinely bring everywhere
• PureZone HEPA filter — the handiest real HEPA filter I know about; I honestly don’t know how beneficial it is, given its small size

Other EDC

• Nerdwax — squirt, microfiber wipse, and more for eyeglasses; the tortilla is my favorite of their many whimsical designs for cleaning cloths
• Reflexology pen — one can get an array of inexpensive blunt-ended sticks for very targeted massage; having one in stainless steel turns out to have an array of random applications
• Nite Ize — makers of a bunch of nifty keyring dinguses; their tiny locking double carabiners turn out to have a million uses
• Havhaf hair ties — not just the best hair ties I have found, these look nice waiting for duty on a wrist, and turn out to have occasional random applications

Toys

• The Kids Should See This Gift Guide — a curated list of cool toys for kids of all ages
• Norman & Jules — toys for actual children with a Montessori sensibility which I find seductive
• Art Of Play — unreasonably beautiful puzzles, games, and toys for grownups
• Unemployed Philosophers’ Guild — a range of nifty/cute/clever tchotchkes for nerds, if you need something like a Nicola Tesla action figure
• aroundsquare — simple, beautiful hand fidget stuff
• Areaware — beautiful toys suited for adults and kids, like wooden Blockitecture blocks, as well as playful home & office stuff

Nerd-ish art

• Made With Molecules — gorgeous, simple jewelry and tchotckes depicting organic molecules
• Bathsheba Grossman — elaborate little sculptures of mathematical forms
• Neurons & Nebulas — surprisingly nifty felt goodies
• Chop Shop — whimsey like a “MAKE THE LOGO SMALLER” T-shirt, and cool planet blocks like toddlers’ alphabet blocks
• Deux Écureuils Céramique — handmade ceramics with cute-and-witty designs
• Voidmerch & Boredwalk — T-shirts and such with geeky/gothy words on them which are actually witty, including my Hallowe’en costume
• 2046 Print Shop — T-shirts with crisp, almost-abstract science themes
• Plotterpen — abstract art created with a mechanical plotter
• CMY Cube — if you’re a color theory nerd, you probably already know about this thing; I have one and can report that it is delightful

Clothing

• Outlier — spendy-but-worth-it technical clothing in a mix of plain and eccentric designs
• American Giant — exceptionally well-made cotton basic clothes for men, including “the greatest hoodie ever made”
• Mack Weldon — more cotton basics; my enthusiasm for their One Mile Slipper proves that I am a middle-aged guy
• Quince — a big catalogue which also includes housewares; after a lot of experimentation, they have become my favorite maker of merino wool basics
• Hollow Socks — made from Alpaca fiber, I like ’em better than wool for the stuff one asks wool socks to do
• Cleverhood — nifty rain ponchos designed for bicyclists
• Woobie Coats — simple, very warm hooded coats cunningly designed to take advantage of existing mil-spec blanket material; inexpensive enough that you can buy them in bulk to give to your whole camping crew, or to houseless strangers
• Gustin — clothes “like they do not make any more”, in denim and other interesting fabrics; they keep expenses relatively low by pre-selling short runs, so their mailing list offers fresh temptations on the regular
• Vestige — T-shirts with abstract graphics that are just really nice
• Winkworth Ladies’ Goods — a Brooklyn designer of my acquaintance whose cozy / classy / sexy work I admire (and I gotta say that the models on their Instagram are all dreamy)
• Katherinesummer — nifty knitwear
• Camouflage wizard hats — useless but delightful

Grooming

• Hairstory — New Wash is a no-shampoo shampoo which will change the chemistry of your scalp; they also have other cool haircare stuff, including a really nice scalp brush
• Acne.org — a line of good, simple skincare products which are great even if you don’t have acne; I cannot describe what AHA+ does but it is great for your skin
• The Ordinary: Peeling Solution — if, like me, you sometimes feel tempted to take turpentine to your oily skin, this is the stuff you want
• The Tangle Teezer — does one thing very well; my hair will start to tangle in five minutes if I just stand still and will quickly turn to ’locs if I let it, but this magic device sets it right in just a few swipes
• Gilette Mach3 razors — in my experience, categorically better than any other disposable solution, but …
• Henson Shaving — after giving up on safety razors as hard on my skin while not shaving close enough, these beautiful precision-machined safety razors brought me back; in the long run, one saves money on the blades
• Edjy — a unique fingernail-cutter which produces a clean edge
• Glass nail files — better than emery boards for smoothing out that rough edge; the link points to a (relatively) sturdy version a friend recommeds
• Seki Ear Hair Trimmer — tweezers with a little coil between the gripping ends that make it easier to pluck hairs wherever they are causing trouble
• Beautiful Freak Cosmetics — gorgeous handmade bath & body products with a goth-y sensibility
• Mando Body Care — the best deodrant I have found

Housewares

• TubShroom — bath and sink filters which catch gunk without clogging
• Kaufmann Mercantile — a range of well-made housewares and “accessories” and whatnot
• Ikea 365+ food containers — one can mix-and-match nesting containers made of cheap plastic, strong glass, or stainless steel with lids made of bamboo, latching plastic, or silicone; containers have different heights but only a few different footprints, so there is no heartache matching lids to containers
• Ikea Kuggis boxes — simple storage boxes in an array of colors & sizes which stack nicely (their Uppdatera bins also stack neatly onto them)
• Skura — really nice kitchen sponges and related cleaning stuff
• Ovalware’s cold brew coffee maker is just a pleasing, solid bit of kit
• Purist Collective — nifty insulated cups & bottles for home or on the go
• Mighty Mug — the insulated travel cup I use at my work desk; it has clever suction device which keeps it from spilling when set on a smooth surface
• Gigogne Tumbler — stackable glass tumblers from French makers of classic nearly-indestructible glassware
• Onsen — waffle-style towels which sucked me in to a Kickstarter; they are really nice
• The Swag — a cotton bag which one dampens and uses to keep vegetables fresh in the fridge; surprisingly, it works
• WeatherPro storage bins — they are inexpensive, solid-enough, stackable, and the lids clip on almost-watertight

Miscellaneous consumables

• Slate Milk — shelf-stable lactose-free not-too-sweet quality chocolate milk in a can; these make such a great afternoon treat that I have a subscription
• Nickel Dime Cocktail Syrups & Portland Syrups — a treat I have taken to now that I have slowed down enough that I am enjoying soda concoctions more often than actual cocktails
• U-Haul paper packing tape — so much better than all other box tape that it is worth going out of your way; it sticks nicely to cardboard but does not tend to get stuck to other stuff, tears easily by hand, and you can write on it
• Hydro Seal Band-Aids & Tegaderm Dressings — are two different styles of hydrocolloid bandages which are flexible, comfortable, waterproof, and stay on for several days; I like to trim the edges as they progressively pull away so that by the time the whole thing finally drops off, minor wounds have usually completely healed
• Spenco’s moist burn pads — an essential adjunct to those bandages; they belong in every first aid kid because for a burn there is no substitute
• Biltong — it’s like jerky, but better; expensive, but worth it

Everything else

• Graf Lantz — a bunch of cool things made of wool felt
• Garrett Wade — such beautiful tools that their gardening implements tempt me to take up gardening
• Oxford Pennant — camp flags that are just cool
• Bibliotheca — an exceptionally handsome edition of the Bible, designed for one to enjoy reading; it uses an idiosyncratic Protestant translation which attempts to marry formal literalism with contemporary language
• Manta — by far the best sleep blindfolds; their Bluetooth sound mask is the most comfortable way to have personal sleep sound
• Upcart — a sturdy little folding dolly with a wacky triangular wheel design which enables one to use it to carry things up and down stairs
• PowerTye net — a net made of bungee cord with hooks designed to gather the net into shape
• Conceirge bell — you can buy one of these cheap and ding it any time you want
• Guasha massage wand — a useful massage tool which turns out to occasionally have other applications because it is a satisfying lump of stainless steel

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Of course the real reason I made this list is so I have a place to tuck cool stuff I find so I can go shopping for toys later. Or if you want to get me a present ….