Woke up this morning wanting to swallow your own tongue? Here, then, I wrote this for you!

Read Kevin Schoenmakers' review-essay on "workers' literature" in translation: chinabooksreview.com/2026/05/21/w...

China’s middle classes are anxious about the economy, and to make sense of what is happening they are turning to workers’ literature. I reviewed two recent books that have been translated into English.

For my latest feature, I wrote about the Chinese math kids turned AI superstars: their (and my) STEM education, their allegedly boring life, aspirations for an AI-powered world, and anxieties over money and politics. restofworld.org/2026/chinese... via @restofworld.org

1/ Totally fascinating story from NYT on how homeowners associations and private property are spaces for political resistance in China: www.nytimes.com/2026/04/27/w...

Formosa Review: Beijing expels New York Times correspondent Vivian Wang over Taiwan row – ’as she was outside the country reporting from Seoul’

THREAD: The IEA global energy review 2026 * CO2 record high, but growth nearly ground to halt * Clean energy shaved 3bn tonnes off CO2 * Fossil-fuel power pushed into reverse * Age of Electricity "confirmed" * "Extraordinary" solar growth * Batteries up 40% * EVs up 20% 1/10

Something extraordinary – yet predictable – has happened over recent days on Facebook. Fake accounts that usually post anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim content generated using AI to fuel division and hate in UK are now pushing out AI-gen content asking: "Should the UK produce its own fuel again?"

New from me: No increase in global coal power generation after Hormuz closure - solar and wind growth covered the fall in gas-fired generation. The record buildout of clean energy in 2025 helped mitigate the impact of the Hormuz closure.

“Most of my published work appears already to be inside these models, shaping their outputs in ways I never agreed to and will never fully understand. Grammarly just had the bad manners to put my name on it.”

New NBER paper finds that US crash deaths rise by ~15% on dates of major album releases. Distraction from smartphones is a likely culprit. www.nber.org/papers/w34866

More than a dozen children—most of whom were born to surrogate mothers—were found in an L.A. mansion. Ava Kofman reports on the mysterious couple behind this story. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/VOPv86

Particularly when CBP agents have already been caught wearing Meta glasses to immigration raids even without facial recogntion www.404media.co/a-cbp-agent-...

"For years, a cottage industry of political observers has contorted itself to obscure and occlude the obvious. That regardless of what others see in him, Trump’s entire political career...cannot be understood outside the context of his bitter, deep-seated racism." (gift link)

⚠️ The CIA World Factbook has been shut down. (link: www.cia.gov/stories/stor...)

DOCTOR: I told him he needed to get out to a show, that was how he would cure his depression. CHOTINER: So you learned this technique in school? DR: No, not— listen it was good advice. Pagliacci was in town. C: Right. Is it standard to give advice before learning a patient’s name? DR: Now look

Jew in Amsterdam here. Please use Anne Frank as a comparison point to explain how state persecution of scapegoats impacts children, that is the point of her example, thanks

Low oil prices, a global glut of crude, a strong ruble, and sanctions are all weighing on Russia’s oil and gas revenues. Here’s what that means for the Kremlin’s budget. meduza.io/en/feature/2...

NYT says ICE shot him in the back: An “agent aims his own firearm at Mr. Pretti’s back and appears to fire one shot at close range… A third agent unholsters a weapon. Both agents appear to fire additional shots into Mr. Pretti as he lies motionless… At least 10 shots appear to have been fired…” 🎁🔗

It's hard to even explain what a disaster this is for the US economy in the short-term — as well as US innovation and industry in decades to come. Immigrants and foreign students at our universities are—as always have been—the wellspring of American invention and innovation.

Seven MPs of Geert Wilders' Freedom Party (PVV) quit the party and start their own parliamentary party group in the Dutch House of Representatives. They refer to the fact that Wilders is the only party member of the PVV and the lack of results. www.dutchnews.nl/2026/01/dutc...

Power demand in China hit a new peak in 2025 but all of the growth was more than met by renewables, so coal-fired power generation actually fell. www.reuters.com/sustainabili... 2/2

2025 was an exceptional year for the Earth's climate ⬆️ Warmest ocean heat content ⬆️ Tied as second warmest surface temps ⬆️ Second warmest troposphere ⬆️ Record high sea level and GHGs ⬇️ Record low winter Arctic ice New State of the Climate over at Carbon Brief: www.carbonbrief.org/...

In crisisgebieden zijn zonnepanelen onmisbaar. In Oekraïne, Gaza, Myanmar en Jamaica gaat het de mensen niet om groen, maar om overleven. Ook Nederland wordt weerbaarder met meer hernieuwbare energie. Mijn artikel voor @decorrespondent.nl

NEW – Analysis: Coal power drops in China and India for first time in 52 years after clean-energy records | @laurimyllyvirta.bsky.social Read here: buff.ly/WqnAVhP

Video message from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell: www.youtube.com/watch?v=KckG... www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/s...

The dust hasn’t settled on Trump’s attack on Venezuela. Now he is contemplating new strikes on Iran. The New Yorker is asking the right question: “Is Donald Trump creating the conditions for another world war?” podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/t...

In case you are unaware that digital images are also being manipulated to depict women and children as victims of physical violence. It's not just about bikinis.

If you’ve ever used Twitter, it takes about 10 seconds to leave a one-star review in the App Store. Oddly satisfying.

In Iran, “it has become essentially impossible for the majority of the population to make ends meet,” Fatemeh Shams, an associate professor of Persian literature at the University of Pennsylvania, tells Isaac Chotiner. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/KbpEdX

gonna have to break out the old 'Hungarian policeman' jokes for these fuckers.

so much for Donroe

The 2017 煤改气 story returns with a new wrinkle... As Beijing skies continue to get bluer, costs are felt outside the capital, resurfacing environmental justice and policy questions www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Sorry, but triumphant claims about autonomous vehicle safety are wildly exaggerated. It's an open question whether today’s self-driving cars are any safer than those driven by humans. And if reducing crashes is the goal, that isn’t even the right question. My deep dive, in Bloomberg 🧵

American netizens are devising ingenious puns to avoid the country's pervasive online censorship.

NEW RECORD: Africa imports 2GW of solar panels for the first time in a month. And this is happening EVERYWHERE in Africa...

WH sources say Venezuela's opposition leader committed the "ultimate sin": She accepted the Nobel Peace prize. “If she had turned it down and said, ‘I can’t accept it because it’s Donald Trump’s,’ she’d be the president of Venezuela today,” one said. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

I share the frustration but it the EU was simply not built for geopolitics of that kind. Also, we are SO dependent on US military protection and tech that, at least for now, our options are really very very limited. We should decry that dependency rather than the pathetic behavior it engenders.

This person went on a buying spree over the past 24 hours. Fresh wallet. Only existed since Dec 27th and has only bet on Venezuela-related markets. polymarket.com/@0x31a56e9E6...

fwiw it’s been about six weeks since Trump pardoned the former president of Honduras who had been convicted of trafficking drugs into the US

I am horrified that the United States continues to set precedent for China to take unilateral action against Taiwan. It isn’t 疑美論, it is 怕美論.

White supremacy has always been self-destructive. This is America's suicide. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/28/b...

Mamdani: For too long, those fluent in the good grammar of civility have deployed decorum to mask agendas of cruelty

All of these links went to promotion of this story earlier today. All these links are dead now — that's how thoroughly they've scrubbed this.

Merriam-Webster’s human editors have chosen ‘slop’ as the 2025 Word of the Year.

I read this story while preparing a recent talk examining what robotaxis mean for biking. Really puts the "AVs are bicyclists' best friends" claims in perspective. www.jalopnik.com/1895643/cycl...

Beautiful drone photos

Dutch public broadcaster NOS quits X over disinformation reut.rs/3KpybRU

I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture. They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1