What a gift to speak with Mikey Muhanna of @afikra.bsky.social about my book On the Semicivilized: Coloniality, Finance, and Embodied Sovereignty in Cairo on this episode of Afikra www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfHc....

the US AI ecosystem will make Enron look like sticklers for accounting rules.

I left Gmail 8 years ago and for not a ton of money you can replace these features with a non-Gmail address by using Spark email and SaneBox: www.sanebox.com/signup/a8b31...

So great to talk with the wonderful Fatima Seck, co-host of Conversations in Atlantic Theory atlantictheory.transistor.fm/episodes, about my book On the Semicivilized. I am so grateful to you, Fatima, for your amazing questions. I learned so much from you! open.spotify.com/episode/2QAV...

No one leaving New York City because of Mamdani, say two top real estate CEOs

Over at @phenomenalworld.bsky.social, @ceaweaver.bsky.social offers a timely primer on housing politics and policy in New York City.

Such a fascinating conversation about the finances of academic publishing - highly recommend to anyone looking to publish a book (or designing grad seminars - uploading PDFs of books undermines to the whole ecosystem!)

Curtis Yarvin is planning flee the country. Steve Bannon is worried about returning to prison. Don't listen to anyone who says the fascists have already won. The future is not yet written.

A RADICAL VISION FOR MAMDANI’S NEW YORK CITY

If you buy anything at all from Tesla, you are endorsing a corporation that chose to give a trillion dollars to this man:

finance guys on twitter are like "can't believe zohran hired lina khan. she wants to make it illegal to bundle memecoin futures into junk stocks and sell them to public worker pension plans. the public won't stand for it."

SUPPORT MERIP: You can show your support for MERIP by picking up a poster or a tote bag today! All products printed locally in a union shop!

Systematic execution of hundreds in a hospital in Darfur, as RSF/Janjaweed take over the city of El Fasher (population ~250k) in Darfur. That adds to an estimated 150,000+ death toll from fighting, plus many more from famine. But Sudan is one of those places the outside world cares little about.

Hardwiring Normalization—Infrastructures, Extraction and Gaza’s Future www.merip.org/2025/10/hard... A must-read from the new issue of @merip.bsky.social by @rafeefz.bsky.social

I will start telling my students that the biggest chance for them to succeed in the future job market is to spend their entire (under-)graduate studies learning how to think for themselves. If they survive this hardship & frustration, they’ll eventually outdo everyone cutting corners #AI #ContraAI 🤖

“Larry Ellison’s Oracle & Peter Thiel’s Palantir now form a single operational spine for digital governance and defence, from cloud infrastructure to predictive analytics. And Trump’s Gaza peace plan looks like the vehicle thru which that spine could extend into Gaza’s reconstruction.” 10/16/25 …1/

The amazing ppl at IDEAS ON Fire are offering a free first book webinar.#academicsky

Balaji (a close associate of Thiel & Andreessen) leads the “network state” movement, which encourages tech elites to build their own “countries” by acquiring physical territory w/in host countries & building “parallel institutions” to replace existing ones in media, education, finance, & science 1/

Brett Kavanaugh is basically arguing tha there have been "sufficient remedies" for racism. This seems like a good time to bring up the @politico.com about how young Republicans have *remedied* racism. www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

A truly remarkable interview with my colleague Lana Tatour on race and the question of Palestine: rss.com/podcasts/2-p...

AFP (10 freelancers in Gaza across text/photo/video) : since the agency founded in 1944 we’ve had journalists killed, injured or imprisoned, but none of us can recall a colleague dying of starvation. Which is imminent.

In an effort to win this contest, China is building hegemony by exporting not just its green products but also in a structural shift exporting its technology, engineering, supply chains, and financing. phenomenalworld.org/analysis/bri... www.ft.com/content/e517...

Bombing a seed bank

Fascinating...

to call this a crime against humanity is true but inadequate — it’s a crime against all creation

"Iran has been subjected to the world’s most extensive sanctions program for the better part of the last decade."

Not an original point but worth saying again - there is not a single element in this picture that identifies any of these folks as law enforcement agents. No badges, no uniforms, no vests. Out of context it just looks like a bunch of random guys are kidnapping a mayoral candidate.

Trump declares war on cities “We must expand efforts to detain & deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as LA, Chicago, & NY, where Millions of Illegal Aliens reside. These, & other Cities, are core of the Dem Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base”

If you're following the GOP tax bill disaster, my latest in @crisesnotes.bsky.social traces how this effort builds on a longstanding campaign to weaken the IRS and consolidate fiscal power in the hands of the wealthy. This is the first in a series on DOGE, taxes, and the future of public governance.

This was always a likely tactic, but it also says a lot about the inability of the Israeli military to actually control and hold Gaza

Here's a long thread on an issue dear to my heart. This Tuesday evening I’m doing an Intellectual Publics with Macarena Gomez-Barris on publishing. Like last year’s conversation with Denise Cruz, or the prior year’s with Racquel Gates, we will talk about how to find a publisher, turn a thesis... 1/

“We were going to use technology to…overturn the monetary system,” Peter Thiel said in 2010, explaining the reasoning behind starting PayPal. He added that “we cld never win an election…bc we were …a small minority. But maybe you could…unilaterally change the world… thru a technological means.” 1/

Not dealing with this being almost out yet! The small box of author copies is on my desk; haven't done the requisite picture holding them. So far it has felt obscene to self-promote...for now, my endless gratitude to all who helped make it happen..more soon!

Israel carried out its plan to erase Gaza over the course of 18 months. Now that the plan has clearly fallen into place, the Netanyahu government is openly discussing ethnic cleansing. And still, Israel enjoys complete international impunity.

Israel has announced a "concluding" plan for Gaza that, if implemented, would amount a moral crime of historical proportions. There's still time to stop it — but America is looking away www.vox.com/world-politi...

NEW @crisesnotes.bsky.social PIECE: the very first Notes on the Crises Legal Research Memo led to New York City to fundamentally revise its lawsuit of the Trump administration just 7 days later. This is an extremely powerful proof of concept for the memo project. www.crisesnotes.com/new-york-cit...

Very happy to have this short piece on emergencies and state violence in #Egypt published - thanks for the opportunity

A crypto company part-owned by the Trump family stands to earn millions of dollars from a business deal involving a state-backed investment fund from the UAE. The arrangement amounts to “foreign policy for sale,” critics claim. www.wired.com/story/as-tru...

Among our exciting new titles out this May is "On the Semicivilized" by Julia Elyachar @jeelyachar.bsky.social . #MiddleEastStudies #Anthropology buff.ly/BWX6cDK

“In international relations, trade, security and markets, the themes are the same: the rest of the world is seeking to diversify, decarbonize, defend, and dedollarize.” NEW by @katemac.bsky.social + @70sbachchan.bsky.social on the month since Liberation Day www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/apr...

I think this kind of gives the game away.

Today is #IndieBookstoreDay ! We're grateful for our local indies @quailridgebooks.bsky.social , The Regulator Bookshop, Golden Fig, @flyleafbooks.bsky.social , Letters Bookshop, Rofhiwa Book Cafe & @epiloguebooks.bsky.social . Head to your own favorite indie bookstore today! buff.ly/L4rvO32

EVENT: Join MERIP and Villanova CAIS for a special Keynote Lecture from @keshavarziana.bsky.social on his new book, Making Space for the Gulf. Monday 4/28 at 4PM. In-Person Only

Everything @nathantankus.bsky.social is writing now is a must read, way beyond the world of finance and payments systems geeks. The translation work here is essential for our times. This piece on 4 million declared dead, "payment finality," and Social Security, well what to say....