Karel Čapek is great on dogs too. www.pookpress.co.uk/shop/dog-and...

A friend just sent me this perfect piece by Karel Čapek, trans. Dora Round, ‘From the Point of View of a Cat’.

To me this is by far the top explanation for Gen Z nihilism. If you don't brand and commodify every aspect of your life, you're falling behind. If you're not getting one over on the next guy in crypto or prediction markets, you're a sucker. Beyond Marx's alienation of labor--alienation of personhood

Wrote about a key factor of widespread establishment support for the 1976 coup in Argentina being born of panic at the evidence that labor activism was becoming independent and often directly hostile to the major parties and unions. gabrielu941371.substack.com/p/the-subver...

But look at everything we’ve gained

RFK Jr: Children who are circumcised early have double the rate of autism Trump: I've studied this a long time

every single person glenn talks with looks like what happens you select "randomize" in a Ubisoft character creator menu

Bong Joon Ho on AI 👀 deadline.com/2025/11/bong...

I thought this was an AI-generated parody at first. It is not AI-generated and it is not parody.

Fascinating piece by @pinstripebungle.bsky.social "[T]he bureaucrat-hero who bent the rules to save lives looms large. [they] are even held up in migration management circles as exemplars. Nobody reckons with how their actions would be literally impossible today." reason.com/2026/05/20/t...

I would have liked to quote some of this material in Against Money. We make the same point that the growth of wealth/capital in the aggregate is overwhelmingly about valuation changes, not accumulation. But it would have been nice to give some more systematic data.

I'm sure that someone who knows British politics could make sense of this; perhaps it's not that surprising. But still, from over here it looks like Ionesco's Rhinoceros. averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com/2026/05/the-...

Harry Konstantinidis presenting "Rates of Return and Racial Stratification of Business Ownership in the United States" at #JSE2026 @leiladavis1.bsky.social @umassamherst.bsky.social @sbs-umass.bsky.social @umassboston.bsky.social

basically the whole thing is the result of a conspiracy involving less than 10 bilious transphobes, most of them at The Atlantic or the NYT bsky.app/profile/kiss...

“The result is a skewed understanding of the world: a proliferation of what Mason & Jayadev brilliantly call ‘anti-knowledge’.” The Case Against Money jacobin.com/2026/05/agai...

Incredible, from @timbarker.bsky.social: The DNC post mortem or whatever it is does not even mention inflation as a factor in Harris's loss. ourtime.substack.com/p/dont-menti...

In Against Money, @arjunjayadev.bsky.social and I argue that finance plays a role in our economy equivalent to that of the central planning agency in the old USSR. Nice to see that we are not the only ones making that connection. www.ft.com/content/5490...

the number of trans kids in sports is like single-digit per state

… www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...

Over a year ago, I spoke with @rasheedabueideh.bsky.social about Dreams on a Pillow for a piece that was killed before it could be published. I am honored that he was willing to take the time to speak with me again in spite of that and tell me about his beautiful homeland: kotaku.com/upcoming-ste...

What are we doing here Tomas - this is their schedule. They sold half a yard of long bonds at historically high yields last week according to their website.

Saudi Arabia has discussed the idea of a non-aggression pact between Middle East states and Iran as part of talks with allies on how to manage regional tensions once the US-Israeli war with the Islamic republic ends, diplomats said.

"The podcast is not going well. Watching a few minutes of several of the videos immediately gave me flashbacks to the videos I was in at U.S. News, and served as a stark reminder that the executives running these media companies have zero clue what they’re doing." www.404media.co/washington-p...

found a whole operation of unmanned youtube channels making completely unchecked long form slop videos where the ai voice simulacra regularly trips up & does this for a full ten minutes every time. all the very legit comments are like "NO! THATS NOT TRUE! YOU LIE HE DID NOT" & never acknowledge it.

😨 "Meet Trisha Addicks, America’s most sought-after sorority ‘rush’ coach" "Thanks to social media, there’s more interest than ever in college sororities. In her new book, the sorority member and coach lifts the lid on this mysterious world"😨

Iran knew what it was doing when it located itself in such a contentious region

There is a pattern that recurs whenever a ruling class decides that their worldview should override evidence. Historically, it has killed millions. In its updated form, it is receiving billions in venture funding. open.substack.com/pub/monikabi...

data extraction for life, cognitive surrender for controllable serfs for life, labor expulsion for life what's not to love

NEW: I’ve written a call to arms. Journalists are being murdered in unprecedented numbers by a Western ally that operates with total impunity. Enough. Publishers & editors have failed us. But if we can’t speak up about this, what is journalism even for? open.substack.com/pub/broligar...

I'm pretty late to reading this, but this essay by @stevendotjs.bsky.social on AI, the tech industry, and the legacy of past choices and their consequences is both a solemn read, but also really relatable and funny: stvn.sh/writing/prog...

"If universal basic income enables even one more Einstein to become Einstein over the course of the next century, it will have paid for itself a thousand times over." www.scottsantens.com/the-angine-d...

It’s been a long day so I might be missing something here, but what the fuck does “Russian interference” have to do with ID requirements. Are we supposed to believe Moscow might send little green men to disrupt Wandsworth council elections www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Well, it’s easy to know what reform voters want because they’re on tv and in the papers the whole time, whereas according to the papers and tv pundits what Green voters want is pogroms and economic ruin

That’s what happened in Britain too: the Tories wrecked themselves driving this fucked, corrupt system into the heart of the earth, and the Brane Geniuses of the Labour right thought: Yes! Now is the ideal time for us to establish ourselves as unquestioned owners of this fucked, corrupt system!

Look at the US, where the Republicans were first to spot that the old “Neoliberalism, engine of freedom and prosperity” stuff was not going to fly any more, so they leaned hard into racism and crushing enemies. Leaving the Dems happily holding the bag for a fucked and obviously corrupt system.

It turns out this process map I made years ago was very wrong, because it includes a part about the Sensibles tidying up.

Which year of this century was better, less horrifying, less cruel and less stupid than the one that preceded it? At a stretch, I have got “maybe a brief economic pickup in the early 2010s” and “End of Covid lockdown, maybe” and I wouldn’t waste energy defending either of those.

The people running Labour and their media friends already proved that they would work themselves sick to smash Britain into PM Boris Johnson and diamond-hard Brexit, rather than concede an inch. Do you think the same people will balk at now doing the same thing to avoid the posh National Front?

I would ask: if Sir Keir may well have destroyed Labour’s brand and wrecked it as a viable national political organisation, then how come we all had to put up with five years of plainly ludicrous drivel about how he had rescued it instead?

If all the papers were cheering because the SNP or the Greens had been taken over by a tiny clique of union flag waving English nationalists/petrochemical lobbyists who keep saying Scotland is rubbish and fossil fuels are awesome: would nobody smell a rat?

As previously noted: do we not think it’s weird that the main left party is dominated by very right wing professional class cranks who quite openly despise their colleagues and members, and work to disempower and insult them? And that the national press goes crazy, if those people are ever removed.

Excellent conversation between @unlearnecon.bsky.social and @hettieobrien.bsky.social - it really makes you want to read the book & it gets you angry as to why this model of capitalism has been allowed to gobble up so many businesses that impact our lives. Have a watch. youtu.be/tyNFosOFUDM?...

"Thompson now concedes that even where planning reforms have passed — to “legalise” housing — housing isn’t getting built." 😮 thefifthestate.com.au/columns/spin...

One of the authors of Abundance went on an angry rant about my rent control article, seemingly without reading it. Wonder if he knows about my negative review of his book? (Which I actually read!) Links: www.currentaffairs.org/news/rent-co... www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nxzd...

Literally the best email I've ever received. No notes.

Really telling that London Labour have gone for a retro "Special Branch" style for these smear "dossiers" they are putting out - like they saw the Spycops inquiry revealing Special Branch spying on the left for decades and thought 'that looks fun'.

In totally unsurprising news, Richard Dawkins is developing AI psychosis. Paywall bypass: archive.is/6RdK9

Whoa. www.cornellsun.com/article/2026...