We've built an entire economy around selling people the feeling of control through bets, hacks, subscriptions, and optimization. But the model only works if people stay desperate. New essay on control and agency, financial nihilism, belief markets, the manosphere, and spectacle during war.

Since everyone is talking about Generation Lead, here is Kevin Drum’s huge 2013 investigation that first exposed the connection to a broad audience www.motherjones.com/environment/...

This is an existential crisis for American higher education, & it remains maddening, if not sadly predictable that there continues to be <exactly> no loud, collective public action by university chancellors & presidents to speak out against & try to reverse these policies (Olson 1965, Akerlof 1970).

I think that as economists we should be a lot more concerned that everyone feels like they've got poorer when the data show they haven't. We certainly shouldn't just be assuming that the customers are wrong, rather than that we're no longer measuring things that are most relevant to wellbeing

American Taliban hard at work imposing theocracy.

Nationalism is the correct answer. apple.news/AcjjhqAljTEC...

Some great reporting on how oil & gas interests work with Democratic political leaders in PA to mislead the public on renewable energy and fossil gas. @kiley.bsky.social insideclimatenews.org/news/1104202...

The Climate Policy Paradox: Why Voters Reject the Tools that Economists Advocate Most A new Energy Institute Blog post and working paper by Joseph Shapiro, Maximiliano Lauletta, Ro’ee Levy and Dmitry Taubinsky. energyathaas.wordpress.com/2026/04/13/t...

Legal eagles noticed, and there’s been SOME mainstream coverage. But overall the political class has underreacted to this month’s OLC opinion, ordered up by Trump or on his behalf, declaring the Presidential Records Act unconstitutional. Things are likely being stolen and/or destroyed *right now*.

Criminal trials for Ice. We can cage them all in their own detention centers.

Refreshed gift link www.economist.com/leaders/2026...

Fed economists estimate that the tariffs in place through Nov 2025: -Raised core goods prices by 3.1% through February (i.e., all of last year's overshoot in this category) and core PCE by 0.8% -The pass through should be complete

Great summary of the cognitive dissonance of seeing the U.S. celebrate the Artemis mission while the current administration cuts science, by @chelseaeharvey.bsky.social in @eenews.bsky.social www.eenews.net/articles/art...

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Bad people, committing crimes everywhere. This version of America fucking sucks.

He used to have the finest intelligence services. Then there was Tulsi and Doge and Kegsbreath. Oh and he chased away our allies. Now he relies on sh*t AIs with ancient training data.

Courtesy of people who would rather have this than bear the thought that Black lives matter, welcome to the No Lives Matter presidency.

Last night I gave a talk at the Princeton Adult School on the legacies of the civil rights movement and the links to our world today. Just posted it on CAMPAIGN TRAILS:

The FY 2027 NASA budget request hides its science cuts by omitting mission names instead of explicitly zeroing them out. We did the work and found 54 missions cancelled in this proposal. This is another extinction-level event for NASA science. Full list: planetary.org/save-nasa-science

Trump was elected to wipe the trauma of the first black president from American history, a task which included scrapping the nuclear deal that had the US in a much better strategic position than before this needless, unconstitutional war of choice against Iran

"Eighty-five countries have sought a roadmap to phasing out fossil fuels. A conference this month offers hope they could unite," write Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope of @coveringclimatenow.org

The multitude of ways that jack up American healthcare costs (without improving outcomes) gift link wsj.com/health/healt...

If you care about Indigenous rights, #climatechange, fossil fuels, star knowledge, and/or #lightpollution, please consider submitting a comment against this horrific proposal.

What will happen to the 82 USFS experimental forests around the country? Many sites have decades-long experiments that are tracking how forests are changed by timber harvesting practices and climate change. As I say here, “you can't just pick up an experimental forest site and move it to SLC.”

I'm a bit of a broken record on this, but usurping the power of the purse isn't just one constitutional violation among all the many others. It is, uniquely and singularly, the death of constitutional government altogether. Game over, end of story, you now live in an autocracy.

In his role overseeing federal climate rules at the EPA, former oil and gas lobbyist Aaron Szabo has solicited input and specific regulatory language from oil industry groups that stand to gain from watered-down methane rules, ProPublica has learned. By @alexcuadros.bsky.social

Sign on freeway overpass in Los Angeles.

Tragic

My pilot just shared how happy he was to recently be saved by the word of his lord JC and I guess I can’t deny that I have a sudden urge to pray before this flight but uhhhhh not for the reason the pilot would like

Pretty surreal to explain how mass homelessness emerged in the 1980s from the deliberate defunding of housing and the social safety net—and then see this, today, from the White House: "It's not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all of these individual things."

Speaking of the Moon, this is out soon. Edited by @anaklimchy.bsky.social (and includes an essay by me). mitpress.mit.edu/978026255386...

The New York Times rolling up its sleeves to do the hard work of normalizing the idea that women should not have the right to vote.

NEW: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has taken steps to block or delay promotions for more than a dozen Black and female senior officers across all four branches of the military, according to nine U.S. officials familiar with the process.

In celebration of the successful Artemis II Trans-Lunar Injection burn, here's a 1965 proposal for a circumlunar mission - not too different from the Artemis II mission profile - from my spaceflight planning history blog No Shortage of Dreams. 🚀 spaceflighthistory.blogspot.com/2020/11/rend...

Speaking of dead worlds..

21st century Republicanism: promising new dead planets while destroying the only known living one.

the trump administration is selling this country wholesale to rapacious, extractive industries that will destroy our collective resources for private profit morethanjustparks.substack.com/p/breaking-t...

Of course. Nixon lovers.

A WIRED analysis of DHS records identified dozens of specialized federal agents who used force against US civilians during the largest known deployment of its kind in US history. www.wired.com/story/border...

Lots of noise, and a fair bit of nonsense, coming out around CH4 v. CO2 abatement. But missing in all of this is that reductions in CH4 emissions at any time are an unalloyed good: Good for climate, good for air quality, good for public health, good for the economy. We should be doing far more.

God it would be so funny if he's excommunicated right after this comes out.

PRESIDENT: "We should have a national database of all legal US gun owners." CONSERVATIVES: "YOU CAN'T DO THAT! THAT IS UNAMERICAN!! YOU CAN'T TRACK AMERICAN CITIZENS!!! IT'S AGAINST OUR LIBERTY!!!!" PRESIDENT: "We will have a national database of all legal US voters." CONSERVATIVES: [yawn]

The distinctively American language of politicized white evangelicalism this woman speaks is only about 50 years old. It was still considered a fairly embarrassing element of the GOP coalition in 2012 when it manifested in the form of Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann. Now it's the only note.

Every time I hear men talk about destroying this planet so they can travel to a dead one, I think about how miraculous the existence of Earth is, and how capitalists should never be permitted to make decisions about space exploration.

Trump is now nearly 2-to-1 underwater in approval ratings. (62% disapprove; 33% approve.) As a reminder: LBJ was just barely underwater when he decided, in depths of 1968 turmoil, that he could not run again. Different circumstances, but illustrates the unprecedented scale of Trump collapse.

Since the headline is a bit confusing, the NYT is reporting that on the same day we hit the girl's school in Minab, we also sent a missile full of tungsten steel pellets at a girl's volleyball tournament hundreds of miles away in Lamerd. Twenty one dead. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/29/w...

Mainstream journalists are abdicating their duty. Cartoonists are the real heroes of the moment.

fyi this isnt a one-off. the new york times CONSTANTLY does this. it is on purpose. citation -> www.dailykos.com/stories/2025...

Happening not because universities are being forced to dismantle humanities but because they are run by biz skool grads whose only sworn value is to the expansion of profit centers.

I’ve been a journalist for 27 years. I’ve reported major stories about mass surveillance, torture, war, the military-industrial complex, police black sites, etc. But this is the most important story I’ve ever had the horror/honor to work on. For it is a story about the current phase of a genocide.