DOGE was A LOT less likely to cancel contracts from companies that donated money to Republicans than companies that donated to Democrats.

Metapolitics

A Journal of Civilization

Yuletide reading 🎄👁️☢️

Extractive Capitalism, @lalehkhalili.bsky.social argues, is the system by which commodities (oil, ore, bauxite, coal, sand) are excavated, transported, processed and sold at markups that funnel profits to a narrow investor class while externalising costs on to workers, communities & the environment.

Hail St Nick

For the Japanese posters www.msz.co.jp/book/detail/...

Seems that many students too are happy for reprieve from what is effectively an injunction to cheat in the blizzard of ads celebrating use of AI to ”increase productivity“ and the repeated reminders their future bosses will expect this from them.

New paper out - on why there won't be a return to the golden age of inflation targeting. Empirical material focused on the Reserve Bank of Australia, but the argument applies broadly, I feel. www.ppesydney.net/content/uplo...

Feel this is in close footrace and about to be overtaken by the “it’s all gambling” belief.

Helping quadrapalegics was always proof of concept for a universal consumer market for his BCIs. We write about this in our book as part of Musk’s cybernetic imperative since 2015.

I deplore how the German and western political classes have abused Holocaust memory to the point that publics have lost faith in its lessons.

It was an honor to be interviewed in-depth by @lalehkhalili.bsky.social @proteanmag.com A key theme: how to analyze “extractive frontiers” from a world-systemic perspective attentive to both the structures of colonialism and capitalism—and to socio-ecological struggle proteanmag.com/2025/12/22/e...

Open Access link: direct.mit.edu/books/oa-mon...

This is the Jacobin out of office message

now reading : the history of a tenth of a second by Jimena Canales “it wasn’t until the 1850s that instruments could recognize a tenth of a second, and, once they did, the impact on modern science and society was profound.” press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Excellent.

‘what is offered is an ample buffet and a fifteen minute timeslot on a couch from Design Within Reach. “Can’t we all get along?” the post-neoliberal centrism asks. “Or, if not, can’t we still enjoy what we have for a little longer?”’ By @quinnslobodian.com

Heritage crackup is interesting because as I wrote in Hayek‘s Bastards:

pov you're the world's richest man: stop paying attention to this, money will soon not matter

Mood leaving 2025

A Ron Paul joint from 2001 www.congress.gov/bill/107th-c...

“The forever wars, US primacy, and neoliberalism were a vocabulary of what was not to be done any longer. And yet, in the 2020s, Washington continued the policies that occurred under these labels, transforming only their rhetorical packaging.”

@quinnslobodian.com: “While the MAGA grouping uses its power to stage a Gramscism from the right…the response of its targets is simply to ask for something softer; to try to meet them halfway in a foggy and nebulous language of community, storytelling, and place.” lpeproject.org/blog/post-ne...

Turns out the guys writing Industry are literally reading Mark Fisher (per New Yorker profile)

Closing out my year with a journal editor shocker 🧵 Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...

The evanescence of philanthropy is one of the macro trends of the next several decades that is probably going to have more cascading effects than realized.

Interesting Morozov critique of @abenanav.bsky.social on the challenge of the non-neutrality of generative AI www.theideasletter.org/essay/social...

ILL ⚔️ LLM

Exactly. It's the scaling up of an antisocial affect that's perversely collective. And the more you label it loneliness the more you miss the point

The week in review: @rohangrey.bsky.social and @amandaparsons.bsky.social on crypto, Sandeep Vaheesan on antitrust reform, @azohra.bsky.social and Madiha Tahir on why the U.S. wages war, and @quinnslobodian.com on the post-neoliberalism. Plus, more LPE news and notes in the 🧵👇

The loneliness epidemic is a sensory hypersaturation epidemic

“Can’t we all get along?” the post-neoliberal centrism asks. “Or, if not, can’t we still enjoy what we have for a little longer?”

made a graph about the return of psychoanalysis

fossil jewels

Interesting choice by the photo editor there

fresh audio product: • Thea Riofrancos @triofrancos.bsky.social , author of Extraction, on the complexities of lithium • Alyssa Battistoni @alybatt.bsky.social, author of Free Gifts, on the weird relationship between capitalism and Nature www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html#S...

Die PDFs von "Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe", Band 1-7: drive.google.com/drive/folder...

The list (in no particular order) of the books that I liked the most and read in 2025, with my reviews: Quinn Slobodian, Hayek's Bastards Gold, volk and IQs branko2f7.substack.com/p/gold-volk-...

For the New Statesman, I wrote about this thing we call capitalism. By way of Borges and Braudel, I review the mappings and musings in Sven Beckert’s and Branko Milanovic’s brilliant new books. www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2025/1...

I wrote a short piece on capitalism and the states-system for @phenomenalworld.bsky.social www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/bet...

proof(s)!

"I saw Praxis aspiring to big dreams of a new Mediterranean renaissance, but in practice mostly delivering parties in upscale cities in the United States." Vitalik's state of the Network State union: vitalik.eth.limo/general/2025...

lol

Andreas Malm and @triofrancos.bsky.social doing an online event for @haymarketbooks.org at the top of the hour, still time to sign up and stream. (Carton not able to make it, I understand). www.haymarketbooks.org/events/762-w...

🥳 and it’s live youtu.be/xVG8J71YYRw?... - feat. @cibled.bsky.social & Dominik Želinský 🎧 the scent of musk tempered with a liberal appreciation of haggis

Situating Argentine struggles within a genealogy of neoliberalism and resistance, our video of the week insists on feminism as a counter-power: a force that politicizes reproduction, debt, and joy as terrains of struggle. Feat. @veronicagago.bsky.social at @diagrammes.bsky.social buff.ly/7HgJXZo