Weather Report #27: Chinatown-Meets-Hollywood in this Neo-Noir Novel and a Prescient Surveillance Thriller
Consuming 09/01/2025
Hello, dear reader! Welcome to Weather Report, a weekly column where I recommend a book, a movie, some possibly underlooked articles, and music for paying subscribers.
Here's what you're getting this week:
- Follow me on TikTok!
- Former governor Wanda Vázquez Garced and co-defendants sign plea agreement for watered down charge.
- Chinatown-meets-Hollywood in this neo-noir mystery thriller.
- Essays, articles, and columns about: Epstein emails, environmental collapse, and the looting of FEMA for immigration enforcement.
- A quietly prescient thriller about the national security apparatus that was supposed to be a warning but is now our reality.
- A podcast to compliment one of the articles I recommended.
If you're interested in seeing the recommendations – and supporting Heavy Weather's quest to keep tabs on collapse – you can become a paid subscriber by clicking the button below. Paid subscribers get access to the MEDIA LIST, a comprehensive list of every book, movie, and video game I've ever recommended. If you're already a paid subscriber, thank you very much! This newsletter would literally not be possible without your support.
Follow me on TikTok!
Last week, I went on a tear and adapted some of my articles into short-form video for social media. Thanks to a teleprompter, I didn't look horribly awkward and looked at the camera for the majority of the videos. If I'm being honest, I really enjoyed making these and liked that they're getting way more attention than this newsletter gets. So, I will be making more of them just not at that same one-a-day clip.
You can also find these videos on Instagram and YouTube.
@vaquero2xl Aquí los diferentes dispositivos que la Policía de Puerto Rico utiliza para desplegar gas lacrimógeno durante protestas. Vale la pena notar que todas son de CS, una composición quimica diferente al OC, que es lo que se usa en el pepper spray. #puertorico #protestas #news
♬ original sound - Carlos Berríos Polanco
Former Puerto Rico Governor Pleads Guilty to Misdemeanor
Former governor of Puerto Rico, Wanda Vázquez Garced pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor campaign finance violation. The charges are severely watered down from the original felony conspiracy, federal bribery, and wire fraud charges she was originally hit with in 2022.
As Bloomberg has previously reported, the federal Department of Justice ordered prosecutors to settle before the case went to trial. Vázquez Garced maintains that the prosecution's case fell apart, but the Assistant U.S. Attorney said that they were ready to proceed to trial if they needed to do so.
You can find Vázquez Garced's plea agreement here.
That's it for this week's free stuff. If you want to see the media recommendations and the link roundup, you can become a paid subscriber today.
