This is a video of an interview I recently gave in Amsterdam to university students... www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMX8...

📣 We are pleased to announce the launch of our Nation-Building Policies Research Platform. We hope the research & analysis we have conducted over the last few years, will be a public good for the academic community for many years to come! [Link below] 1/2 #NationBuilding #Research #AcademicSky

As seen in MWC26.

FCC has been bending over backwards to accommodate the demands of a select few US firms in the satellite space for a while, and now it threatens the EU for its proposed Space Act. This from MCW in Barcelona: www.politico.eu/article/top-...

I think about this Tony Benn speech much more than I used to

New punk song lyrics, hot off the press: acme-journal.org/index.php/ac...

The Man Who Stole Infinity In an 1874 paper, Georg Cantor proved that there are different sizes of infinity and changed math forever. A trove of newly unearthed letters shows that it was also an act of plagiarism www.quantamagazine.org/the-man-who-...

Dystopia, imagined: www.linkedin.com/posts/aicand...

On the Birth of a Son By Su Tung-Po Families when a child is born Hope it will turn out intelligent. I, through intelligence Having wrecked my whole life, Only hope that the baby will prove Ignorant and stupid. Then he'll be happy all his days And grow into a cabinet minister. h/t@Lauren Gilbert

The FCC just opened public comments on SpaceX's plan to launch a million satellites to do AI compute in space. Under the current proposal, an environmental review won't be required. Please consider submitting a public comment to oppose this damaging plan. darksky.org/news/two-sat...

& then today is one of my favorite Memory Days on the Calendar, highlighting one of my very favorite Americans: Happy W.E.B. Du Bois Day! 🗃️

Great initiative!

this RAM crisis feels like it’s going to ruin consumer electronics over the next decade. Bloomberg reports that Sony is considering pushing the PS6 release to 2028 or even 2029 www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Will be busy for a while…

Let's celebrate #DarwinDay by reminding ourselves that everyone has moments when they feel worse for wear. Darwin wrote to Charles Lyell in 1861: "But I am very poorly today & very stupid & hate everybody & everything." www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-L... So, hang in there, #academicsky! 🧪🌏🐵

I wrote a big explainer on the economics of space data centers for you. It's the story I've been wanting to read about this big space infrastructure project, and I hope it will help people understand what's really going on here: techcrunch.com/2026/02/11/w...

Rethinking Economics, the movement changing how the subject is taught

Whatever he builds there--if at all--would just be a cargo base for his space shipping company. But this sounds too dry, so he just embellishes the narrative with endless fantasies plagiarized from sci-fi movies.

New essay by @steffenmurau.bsky.social on Trump admin's misunderstanding of dollar hegemony—and four possible futures for the international monetary system. 1/ www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/tru...

Ah, yes. My default mode whenever I am too overwhelmed by the news: www.santafe.edu/news-center/...

🚨 The political economy of finance summer school is back, 3rd year running! Better still: We're bringing it to London via @lse-ei.bsky.social. 𝐓𝐨𝐩𝐢𝐜: Finance & democracy 𝙳̲̲𝚊̲̲𝚝̲̲𝚎̲: 4-5 June 2026 𝘈𝘱𝘱𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘦: March 1. Link below. We've got brilliant instructors as usual. Please spread the word!

Useful. From Alex Dryden @soasuni.bsky.social via @rtebrainstorm.bsky.social www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2...

I had to stop reading for a bit when I got here because I started to cry. Alex Pretti seems to have grown up to be everything his parents could have hoped he would be. And then they killed him literally because he was good and decent, brave and righteous.

SpaceX's Starlink dodged 300,000 collisions in 2025. That's nearly 40 maneuvers per satellite, and it's rising fast – possibly hitting 1 million maneuvers in 2027. "If they make a mistake, we’re in really big trouble.” Story by me in @newscientist.com www.newscientist.com/article/2512...

while the richest person on the planet cannot shut up about satellites, we mere mortals (w. @joschabels.bsky.social) are left to study the pesky cables here down on earth in the mud (or rather on the seabed). Check what we found out in our new open access paper in Globalizations: lnkd.in/ep4q94XK

We are deeply saddened by the sudden passing of our colleague Matthias Koenig (1971–2026), Professor of Sociology at Heidelberg University. Matthias was at the forefront of comparative research on diversity governance, and his empirical and theoretical contributions were widely recognized... 1/2

‘Terrible things are happening outside… Families are torn apart; men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared. Women return… to find their families gone.’ Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Trump explicitly says we are not interested in Greenland's rare earth materials. So what is he after? 1) Oil, and 2) Trade routes. For oil, see www.independent.co.uk/news/world/e...

Here we go... www.dw.com/en/ryanair-e...

AkademikerPension announced it will sell its U.S. Treasuries, worth $100 million. Do Danish pension funds sit on a giant pile of Treasuries that they could dump? Sorry to inform you: no. In fact, they've been selling U.S. bonds for years: $3.2bn in Jan 2023; down to $890mn in Jan 2026. 1/2

Yesterday it was cows using tools, today its penguins using satellite imagery.

More Davos speak.

Translating Davos speak www.ft.com/content/ab4f...

I'm with the FT's Katie Martin and Pimco on this.

The first sentence will be the Davos 2026 summary when people write about it in the future.

Oh, the times...

Well, Rosa Luxemburg warned everyone a long time ago with "socialism or barbarism" and here we are, yet again: www.ft.com/content/dede...

Macron already in mourning mode for the Atlantic order: www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...

Also see: www.ft.com/content/beea...

This is an interesting exercise. But we should be clear that if the Fed wants yields on a particular tenor of Treasuries to be some value, that value is what the yield will be. Sales by the ECB or PBOC will have no effect whatsoever.

This is quite hilarious.

This coming crisis was already predicted by Giovanni Arrighi, Jason W. Moore and Richard Lachmann--first names that come to mind among many in the WST tradition. But when Kagan writes about it, it makes it into the headlines and everybody gets excited. Sigh.

c) can Europe afford the fallout from weaponised firesales? this is by far the hardest question for two reasons: 1. Open equity Euroarea funds w cross currency vulnerabilities 3. European banks w USD funding vulnerabilities

MUST READ thread before Monday night's forecasted G4 / SEVERE geomagnetic storm. Auroras could be seen as far south as the U.S.-Mexico border at times. Widespread mid-latitude displays are possible. Here's what you need to know to have a successful aurora chase tonight! 🧵 #heliophysics #aurora

We are currently experiencing a severe (G4) geomagnetic storm! This is in addition to the severe solar radiation storm already ongoing. (Now would be a hilarious time for the Sun to throw out another large flare, to cause the simultaneous trinity of space weather effects).

Financial war in response to trade war and territorial threats? More and more people appear to be calling for it. So I updated my post on U.S. Treasuries holdings—now with the latest data. benjaminbraun.org/posts/treasu...

IR papers that explore the implications of texting while drunk will soon follow.