"In contrast to the classic notion of “guns versus butter,” we find little evidence that social spending is cut during military expansions. Instead, when societies rearm, they tend to choose guns and butter, resulting in higher debt, expenditures, and taxes." cepr.org/publications...

Mahabharata and Ramayana

Gen Z hikers keep getting lost up mountains www.economist.com/culture/2026...

The idea might boil Trump’s blood, but if he had heeded Barack Obama’s core advice to US presidents, “Don’t Do Stupid Shit”, he would be in a far better place today. My column, The Telegram, on how the Iran debacle could consume Trump’s presidency. economist.com/internationa... from The Economist

Japan the economic equivalent of one of those guys on instagram who just trains one trap but for making trains go fast www.ft.com/content/86a7...

Aaaaaaaargh!!!

Sweden squashed migration. The populist right wants to go further www.economist.com/europe/2026/...

Why do people think that the electricity companies won't just raise prices to capture the VAT cut?

Emo culture was not just a phase, as it turns out www.economist.com/culture/2026...

I like to think he's done this to make political journalists look stupid, and honestly I admire it.

One sign of how much the AI trade has matured from “plaything” to “enterprise tool” After DeepSeek, we were awash in “#1 in App Store downloads” articles as proof positive of the threat. Now, it’s all OpenRouter data...no one gives a crap that Kimi is literally behind Wingstop in the App Store.

Is it okay to be a Luddite? Thomas Pynchon asked in 1984. archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes....

India police battle ‘Cockroach’ protesters with batons, tear gas www.ft.com/content/7b19...

"Since 2016, the expected duration of working life in the EU has increased by 2.3 years" Life expectancy increased 1.0 years so it seems more workers will have to support fewer retirees ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web...

Wow this map of where Burnham is popular lines up with England's coal fields!!!

They don't like Burnham in the Thames Estuary www.economist.com/britain/2026...

New NBER paper examining demand flexibility programs on Britain's grid. Result is that it was only cost effective at times of intense grid stress, otherwise it was more expensive than other balancing options. www.nber.org/papers/w35485

One of the problems with our current planning vetocracy is that it encourages an architectural monoculture that ultimately pleases no-one, with a high floor and a low ceiling. A better system would probably produce more clunkers and more gems economist.com/interactive/...

India's first private orbital rocket Vikram-1 lifts off from Sriharikota mybs.in/2g7jiW3

Back in 2019 I made my fiance (now-wife) fill out time use surveys so we could check how we split domestic labour www.ft.com/content/0c9f...

Total woke cultural victory. We're bringing pronouns back. It is now illegal to be a white male. We're doing May Day parades just for HR ladies.

Gonna wait til it comes out on Winedark-ray

Seems like people conflate three things: the cost of paying for new generation (renewables are cheapest), the cost displacing fossil fuels in both generation and end-use (net zero) and the specific flaws in the British electricity market (lack of locational pricing, capacity market).

India's Wipro slips as weak forecast deepens IT slowdown fears reut.rs/4fEKPsZ

And this is the briefing. Bit terrifying, to be honest. www.economist.com/science-and-...

The rollout of high speed internet in Uruguay worsended early childhood development. But not because the kids spent too much time in front of screens, because the parents did. cepr.org/voxeu/column...

New paper argues that the "climate refugee" assumption is wrong and climate change is likely to reduce migration rather than increasing it. (Moving home is expensive, climate change makes people poorer). cepr.org/voxeu/column...

Selling Anthropic my rock that keeps bears away.

i don’t think there’s a much beef between argentina and england as the media are making out; none of these players were even alive when the drug-addict maradona cheated in a quarter final, let alone when argentina’s fascist junta failed with their illegal invasion of british sovereign territory

An addendum. Given that the evidence was that global and domestic supply chains were so responsive that the UK ends up with a glut of PPE, to better quality and much more reliably than it forecast - why does the inquiry propose a domestic manufacturing strategy in the name of “resilience”?

Case study in unintended consequences: whack up employer NI and the minimum wage and you help spread American-style tipping culture.

Martin Wolf arguing in the FT that the apparent outperformance of America's economy relative to Europe is largely due to hedonic adjustments to the price of tech. www.ft.com/content/b77c...

In terms of total time spent using Claude and GPT, India is far and away the world's largest user of AI.

Feel sorry for both the teachers and the students who are the guinea pigs for the impact of chatbots on education english.elpais.com/education/20...

Anyone taking this up? Apparently private banks in the US were shocked by the level of demand from America-based Indians but tax makes it less appealing for British Indians. www.ft.com/content/2002...

Trump’s plan for Europe is falling apart ft.trib.al/AekVcay

How late I could stay up without getting sleepy

If there is an AI race, has America simply lost? www.ft.com/content/9c8f...

“Australia accounted for almost 10 per cent of new global battery capacity in March, with about 2,000 home batteries being installed every day this year”

An incomplete list of falling objects in India www.economist.com/asia/2026/07...

Employers pushed staff to use AI more. That has backfired ft.trib.al/tsFW1Gq

The rise of the gen-z luddite www.economist.com/united-state...

An incomplete list of falling objects in India www.economist.com/asia/2026/07...

Some of the people celebrating American excess are not what they seem. www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

Henrik Ibsen! Harald Hardrada! Magnus Carlsen! Ole Gunnar Solksjaer! Roald Amundsen! Edvard Munch! We have beaten them all. Edvard Munch can you hear me? I have a message for you: We have knocked Norway out! Edvard Munch - your boys took a hell of a beating! Your boys took a hell of a beating!

Row row row your boat gently to the shore If you see three lions don’t forget to score

Not like Norway to have a single bit of good luck and then just try to survive off that