Przeworski says it cleanly, clearly, and convincingly. What then must we do? www.dissentmagazine.org/article/how-...

The battle between "sneaking regarder" and "hurler on the ditch" as terms of art for describing American political commentary.

the ideological death throes of a dying discipline lashed to an academy that is collapsing under the weight of its own hypocrisy.

For @billkristolbulwark.bsky.social @mcopelov.bsky.social or anyone else who's interested in the full exchange with Bannon, it's in the screen caps in this tweet below. It's quite something: bsky.app/profile/greg...

1/This is Transatlantic leadership! In historic move, German Chancellor Merz calls out US: “democracy is under pressure, freedom of expression is being questioned, and the independence of the judiciary is being repressed“. www.reuters.com/technology/g...

interesting.

How it started. How it's going. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/26/b...

It's an interesting time to be teaching a course on the political economy of AI.

1. This piece by Roge Karma is absolutely worth reading - www.theatlantic.com/economy/arch... . If the Supreme Court allows Trump to fire Lisa Cook, the consequences are likely to be disastrous. key points:

Very important point here from Sam Berger: "a government shutdown does not provide the Administration any additional legal authority to fire federal employees, limit review of its actions by federal courts, or freeze funding once full-year appropriations are provided." www.cbpp.org/research/und...

Xi's new NDC calls for only 7-10% ghg reductions by 2035. This is deeply disappointing, more consistent with 3 degrees C of warming than 2.5, let alone 2 or 1.5. Of course Trump is worse and this is still directionally correct, but this is pathetic for the state that wants to be the climate leader.

En deux décennies, les sociétés européennes se sont transformées. Sans s’en rendre compte, les #démocraties du continent se sont développées en s’appuyant directement sur des infrastructures d’information et de communication américaines. @himself.bsky.social legrandcontinent.eu/fr/2025/09/2...

A thing about authoritarian information environments is that you definitionally no longer can know what is true based on what the authorities say, and everyone eventually adapts to this

the political economy of bad thinking, a really great piece about the *hostile synergy* between B and X from Henry

This is the best piece I've read on "Blueskyism," Twitter/X, and the broader Bluesky-X dynamic.

An actually thoughtful and insightful discussion of BlueSky culture and what makes it distinct, from @himself.bsky.social : open.substack.com/pub/programm...

www.programmablemutter.com/p/the-villag... Blueskyism and Sewerism as alternatives.

This.

🔴 NEW: Larry Ellison’s £257m bet on Tony Blair Our investigation with @lighthousereports.com reveals how the Tony Blair Institute has been accused of pushing the interests of tech tycoon Ellison — Trump’s “CEO of everything” — and his company Oracle democracyforsale.substack.com/p/inside-the...

"In truth, neither Congress nor the executive can claim to represent the undivided will of the American people. It is arguable whether such a thing even exists in the American system, as the public is not a single entity but an ever-shifting set of groups and interests"

Perhaps he, too, is an “extraordinarily generous friend” etc, as well as also of course being a devoted liberal of the “You are free to flourish as an illiterate priest-ridden, goat-herding peasant on a remote Spanish hillside (while I stay in Cambridge, MA of course)” school of liberalism.

I _think_ it was me who Mairpilled @daschloz.bsky.social @samrosenfeld.bsky.social at a Princeton workshop back in 2016 ...

i genuinely do not think liberalism has a chance of survival if all it means — and all it offers — is genteel technocracy. liberalism cannot be an enemy of technocracy, but it cannot allow the means to become the ends.

I'm deeply sympathetic to the general "liberal pluralists of the world unite" message. Identifying liberal pluralism with the more repulsive aspects of the dead establishment is a massive fucking intellectual trap, as amply illustrated here.

"To illustrate the panic, an Emirates flight from San Francisco to Dubai delayed its take-off to allow worried passengers to disembark" on.ft.com/4mB7xCP

Where it started/where's it going

the discussion of AI agents as systematic points of sensitive information leakage is particularly good.

How humiliating this all is. The retching convulsions of a diseased administration, hacking up its bile and blood-streaked phlegm in front of the whole world.

The Aaron Swartz production function www.programmablemutter.com/p/the-aaron-...

One interesting thing that’s happening is the US using all its financial tools (sanctions, tariffs, ESF) to try regime change/maintenance in BZ and AR pretty much simultaneously, based entirely on perceived ideological correspondences in the domestic politics of US, BZ, AR.

I'm not the first to notice the reinvention of @wired.com from mouthpiece of tech ideology to showing everyone else how to do journalism today, but this cover is something else. The inclusion of their own hagiographic covers in the back is a nod to that shift, which is beautiful. Also…

"few [SV CEOs would talk]. ....not a single slot was available for the next three weeks, four weeks, six weeks … One CEO notorious for logorrheic gabbing to reporters told me he was trying to “decompress” on politics. “But any time you want to talk AI or AI agents, please let me know!” he said.

Topical commentary from 1852 www.marxists.org/archive/marx...

This is a great explainer of the background - someunpleasant.substack.com/p/homo-econo...

I wrote about Michael Shellenberger turning me into a secret CIA agent for his “censorship complex” hoax, profiting from harassing me behind a paywall. He blocked me on X and unsubscribed me from his Substack while doing so. He has never retracted his lies. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

want

In the modern day, the person closest to going through what Spinoza went through isn't a comedian who couldn't get specials for 2 years for raping someone, it's Mahmoud Khalil

I sometimes think that the one adjective no-one would ever apply to Donald Trump is "classy." That's a source of both weakness and strength.

The Aaron Swartz production function www.programmablemutter.com/p/the-aaron-...

Whisper it softly - as it really doesn't fit the narrative - but the AfD has markedly underperformed in a series of recent mayoral elections in Germany's eastern states. Often where the rival candidate was a dynamic local figure commanding broad "popular front" support.

On a very bad Saturday for DOJ and the would-be autocrat openly and repeatedly topping Watergate. Plus the links! @mattglassman312.bsky.social @normornstein.bsky.social @himself.bsky.social @nataliej.bsky.social @smotus.bsky.social and more: goodpoliticsbadpolitics.substack.com/p/trumps-lat...

I joked the other day that all the Post's editorials are just "what if this bad thing were actually good," and will you look at that

I really liked the Jared Shurin definition that includes 'Cyberpunk is a type of sci-fi where technology instead of transforming the power structures of society, reinforces them'

If Trump is conducting sensitive government business via Truth Social DMs, it raises the obvious question of how good Truth Social's encryption is, who has been trying to listen in, and how?

"I'm begging you" language is a strongish signal that the writer is more interested in burnishing their self-satisfaction than trying to persuade others.

Only Fools and Slow Horses would make for an entertaining television production.

For some reason I'm on Jared Golden's "might give me money" list. It might be good to ask @hakeem-jeffries.bsky.social why he is doing a Whiskey Tasting fundraiser for the only House Democrat to vote _for_ the Republican budget.