The Palestine hunger strikers have been on hunger strike for over 60 days and are close to death. They have not even been convicted of a crime - they are being held on remand (pre-trial) for more than twice the max time allowed, and counting…🧵

it’s happened even in high tech industrial policy, the pentagon, places usually more sheltered from looting www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...

Don’t be fooled — everything has changed for the global economy: strong FT oped from Gita Gopinath. The lesson from Brexit is simple: "Structural damage reveals itself slowly, and always too late to be reversed." www.ft.com/content/9c82...

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has finalized a deal exempting U.S. multinational corporations from paying more corporate taxes overseas.

A lot of yikes here to end the year in the PMI commentary but this is a new one in large data center buildouts pushing up prices and curbing availability of resources for other sectors.

simpler times

french duality

Heba Muraisi, on day 54: “[I]can feel myself get weaker as each day passes" with "bruising on her arm and constant body ache"…is losing the ability to "form sentences, and struggling to maintain conversation". She vows to continue until their demands are met. www.thenational.scot/news/2572535...

fresh audio product: some of the best of 2025: Emile Torres, Quinn Slobodian, Femi Taiwo, Kristin Du Mez, Anatol Lieven, Laleh Khalili, Susannah Glickman www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html#S...

I see there’s a post about microplastics going around with a photo of drinking straws, so here is my semi-regular reminder that the 3 biggest sources of microplastics are tires (45%), synthetic clothing particles (35%) and paint (~10%). Lay article attached:

The U.S. Navy will lead the design, along with me, because I’m a very aesthetic person,” Trump said. news.usni.org/2025/12/22/t...

The great Jim Hansen predicts that global average temperatures will jump 0.23 degrees Celsius in a single year, between 2026 (which he projects will see warming of 1.47 degrees C) to 2027 (which he projects will see 1.70 degrees C). open.substack.com/pub/jimehans...

An approach Marx himself glossed as "a shuffling to and fro a confused mass of statistical materials."

A Trump-appointed judge was so upset with the living conditions in which ICE detained an immigrant in Long Island, New York, that he threatened to hold the government in contempt. “I have never encountered anything like this." trib.al/2LMHIj6

"The global return of war and skyrocketing defense spending are defining features of the chaotic present. The Trumpist offer of a world drowned in oil has few takers as catastrophes accelerate; climate has increasingly become central to national economic and security strategies"

this is great and gets at how much of the post-neoliberal project is a kind of Weekend at Bernie’s for staffers in search of a policy program grounded in a politics that no longer exists and should never have been tenable from the start

this was a really great opportunity for me as a grad student! they have a fantastic expansive set of archives and the community is lovely

this is great and gets at how much of the post-neoliberal project is a kind of Weekend at Bernie’s for staffers in search of a policy program grounded in a politics that no longer exists and should never have been tenable from the start

NEW: The FDA won’t tell Americans where their generic drugs are made, so ProPublica did it instead. Use information from your prescription label to locate the factory and see if the plant has a history of inspection violations.

It's claimed that today Cambodia shot down a Thai military drone - allegedly an Aeronautics Defense Dominator. Israeli made. Find a conflict, find Israeli drones, guns, and surveillance technology.

It is a bit pathetic that the American Left has had basically nothing to say about this stuff

You should read this story about deaths due to poor dialysis treatment at a federal women's medical prison. Medical neglect in prison is widespread and unimaginably barbaric. (I had to file a FOIA lawsuit for the mortality reports mentioned here too) www.themarshallproject.org/2025/12/16/w...

Crucial intervention from @azohra.bsky.social and Madiha Tahir lpeproject.org/blog/beginni...

*🦋 meme* Is this industrial policy?

This is basically the Platonic ideal of a penny stock scam www.wsj.com/business/dea...

Every new tech bubble is somehow more miserable than the last www.wired.com/story/border...

"The so-called Deutschlandfonds, which will be anchored in state development bank KfW, ... seeded with about €30bn in public money and loan guarantees." Textbook derisking to ensure infrastructure will pay off for US private equity. Genius move by SPD finance ministry. www.ft.com/content/52c7...

‘Netanyahu’s abiding fear is not that peace can never be achieved but that it might be.’ Jacqueline Rose on her encounter with Benjamin Netanyahu. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

An ICE agent in Minneapolis pinned a pregnant woman’s face into the snow and knelt on her body. She was also dragged across the pavement by her wrist.

once again, people should read naomi klein's "doppleganger" and stop making the same mistakes. we can't control what they do, but we do have fucking agency here.

Military Keynesianism with casino characteristics.

US dramatically escalates air strikes on Somalia under Trump this year https://aje.io/092g55

next, drones

One of the Oracle (ORCL) Stargate data centers in Michigan doesn't have financing after Blue Owl (OWL) pulled out. Increasing signals that capital is starting to turn away from the sector having gorged for the past year.

I wrote a piece on LLMs, citation metrics, and the institution of science. It's been up for a couple of days, but it is officially "out" now.

Stop it, Lincoln, he's already dead! "The slave-breeders and slave-traders, are a small, odious and detested class, among you; and yet in politics, they dictate the course of all of you, and are as completely your masters, as you are the masters of your own negroes."

Tomorrow, the House of Representatives will vote on a bill that bans gender-affirming medical care for any transgender person under 18, and threatens any medical professional providing this care to youth with 10 years in prison. Tell Congress to protect trans youth and vote NO.

this story is just bullet point after bullet point of naked corruption

If you’re looking for a last minute holiday gift for the Earth science/climate person in your life, I would never say any of these things about my book but other people have www.harpercollins.com/products/the...

"China investment decline deepens as Xi Jinping attacks ‘reckless’ spending" www.ft.com/content/2f3d...

So, El Fasher looks like one of the worst single event atrocities to happen this century so far, but the evidence has come in such a trickle it seems to only now be getting verified

they're still going lmfao

🫡

I was absolutely delighted that @nathantankus.bsky.social asked me to write this for Notes on the Crisis after he read my paper. I hope you’ll enjoy reading it (and subscribe to NOTC!).

always a delight to chat with Doug! This time about the private equity-ization of the Penagon.

Switzerland says Palantir poses a "devastating" risk. fackel.substack.com/p/swiss-govt...

always a delight to chat with Doug! This time about the private equity-ization of the Penagon.

fresh audio product: • Anatol Lieven analyzes the Trump national security strategy • Susannah Glickman on the transformation of the US government into a private equity firm (NYRB interview here) www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html#S...