The wild ride of UK policies continues. Always appreciate James’ commentary.

Silicon Empires is out today in the US! For anyone interested, I'm resharing this thread outlining some of the key arguments of the book.

the right to expropriate and the fight over compensation are key terrains of geopolitical conflict and will be even more so in future struggles over land and climate

This is just a continuation of the way the US has always operated. Trumpism is just mask-off imperialism in the long shadow of neoliberalism.

"I’m going to pause here just to review: an institution that purports to be a university has told a philosophy professor he is forbidden from teaching Plato." surreal times dailynous.com/2026/01/06/t...

Gotta love the @financialtimes.com www.ft.com/content/ad94...

We need more than just a tax on high wages. We need a maximum wage to compliment a minimum wage. A maximum wage imposes a necessity of reinvestment and “pre”distribution to workers. Making it statutory levels the playing field for firms. The idea is as old as Aristotle!

A reminder - before Trump, MAGA, Musk and Fox rewrote history - that this is what the entire country agreed had happened five years ago today:

Our third issue of the new and improved Historical Materialism newsletter, keeping you updated with a suite of publications, calls for papers, videos, upcoming events, and and and. If you haven't already signed up, be sure to do so at the bottom of our website here: www.historicalmaterialism.org.

If this year was about getting off US tech, 2026 is the year to reassess the digital revolution — what works, what doesn’t; what to keep, and what to reject. I’ve only just started to consider what needs to change about how I use digital technology, but I’m excited to learn more next year.

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Primitive accumulation, plunder, slavery, colonial extraction and exploitation are all part of the same capitalist mechanisms that built Britain. The state-backed companies that led this are the same that continue to steal workers’ share of the products of their labour today.

The Shadow Home Secretary is Chris Philp is on BBC radio 4 calling for people to have citizenship revoked and be deported (even without committing a crime) if they express anti-white views. And he’s barely challenged on this extremist view.

Anyone know how I get in touch with Crass for permission to use one of their lines for an epigraph?

did a podcast back in october on marxism and AI marxisthumanistinitiative.org/episode-145-...

Check out the latest news in #CollectiveBargaining 🤝 🔺 Greece: Tripartite agreement to restore collective bargaining rights 🔺 Spain: Historic agreement for civil servants 🔺 Italy: New agreement for metal industry Find out more & subscribe to our newsletter 🔗 etui.org/4kR

‘“I can’t pay my rent with prestige,” one sign said. Another was a mock-up of the cover of Great Expectations, with “Great” crossed out and replaced by “Reasonable”.’ Anna Aslanyan on the strike at the British Library, new on the blog: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/de...

How is it that we’re already just about halfway through the decade of 2020s? Fucking hell…

Welcome to Britain, a country so short of dentists that an MP's 87-year-old mum pulled her teeth out with pliers. Also a country with thousands of foreign-qualified dentists who can’t work until they pass an exam so oversubscribed it’s like trying to book Glasto tickets. www.ft.com/content/f4e5...

Pretty rough to find out that Sussex will go bankrupt over the next 3-4 years without saving 28 million, meaning mass redundancies. 450 full time staff cuts needed, or roughly 16% of people. @ucu.org.uk @sussexucu.bsky.social

Complete agreement with Jo here.

Newly published evidence, alongside archived testimonies, documents a pattern of systemic abuse inflicted on Iraqi civilians by British soldiers from the Queen's Lancashire Regiment in 2003. Available in EN, ES, PT-BR, DE, FR, IT and AR.

1.This is not the only known example we know of ChatGPT cheering on a vulnerable young person to die by suicide, this time it is a recent Texas A&M grad 2. Every single university that has invited OpenAI into our midst should be asked to account for their choices. www.cnn.com/2025/11/06/u...

Great culture can save lives. Literally. Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard

I'm constantly shocked (but not surprised) by how little we discuss the additional financial burden placed on young people by the Clegg-Cameron student loan regime. @rmcunliffe.bsky.social is one of the few journalists who brings it up continuously - once again in the wake of the budget 👇

Also the government's line that graduates have benefitted financially from their education, and therefore should pay more in tax, is nuts. It didn't suddenly get three times more financially beneficial to study at a uni in 2012 versus 2011 – in fact the opposite has happened

My essay “Oil Futures” is out now in @newleftreview.bsky.social's Sidecar! Following Norway's September elections, ongoing struggles against fossil fuels in Europe’s only petrostate challenge incumbent fossil hegemony and its complicity in the Israeli occupation: newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

For the Guardian, @bjoernbremer.bsky.social, @siljahausermann.bsky.social and I write about how building new homes is not enough to tackle the housing crisis. Housing is a redistributive issue and progressive policy solutions need to acknowledge that. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Inheriting a million pounds? No tax for you Capital gains? You need that don’t you. Work for a living and are middle class? Suck it up, you have to pay more. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Apply now — Antipode’s 10th Institute for the Geographies of Justice, “Organizing and Solidarity in a Polycrisis”, deadline 20 December 2025 antipodeonline.org/2025/11/13/a...

Tucker Carlson is such a moron.

Every job I’ve had has been in an industry that’s either low paid and precarious or dying and volatile. Even getting a full-time, ostensibly permanent academic job feels like it could implode at any moment with all the demands of publishing and the constant financial crises and redundancies. FFS

BREAKING: Judiciary refuses to explain last minute removal of judge in Palestine Action legal challenge, leading to accusations of a “stitch-up” Removal of judge in Palestine Action ban legal challenge ‘deeply concerning’ www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Imagine coming up with a proposal so stupid, so unworkable, so thoughtless, that it makes Robert Jenrick look sane by comparison. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Sometimes I wish someone else could just deal with the R&Rs. It’s such a pain in the ass. I much prefer to just develop new ideas, rather than pander to a handful of anonymous people each with their own particular axe to grind or cottage industry to defend.

I like how this government really thinks outside the box.

4pm today UK time

🚨Workshop Announcement🚨 THE GROUNDS OF PLANNING: RATIONALITY, PSEUDORATIONALITY, AND CRITIQUE Keynotes by John O'Neill and Aaron Benanav December 4-5, 2025 Grimm-Zentrum Auditorium, Berlin organised by the Centre for Social Critique, HU Berlin criticaltheoryinberlin.de/event/the-gr...

The tag line reads like AI, the click-bait title is annoying, and the left is more than Gary Stevenson and @zackpolanski.bsky.social, but a wealth tax on its own won’t fix Britain. We need to be far more ambitious, particularly around “predistribution” through rebuilding worker bargaining power.

well this is fucked isn’t it

Couldn’t have said it better myself. This is a key argument of my book coming out May 2026 with @versobooks.bsky.social

'Contrainte Muette' is out now from @editionssanssoleil.bsky.social. Thanks to @prada-meinhof.bsky.social and Camilla Brenni for the excellent translation, and to Léa Gallon for the beautiful design 💙

Some great charts on #AI from the Wall Street Journal. t.ly/xvvbw "AI products would have to create an additional $650 billion a year, indefinitely, to give investors a reasonable 10% annual return. That’s more than 150% of Apple’s yearly revenue"

Just heard a landlord on BBC radio four saying the renters reform bill is like targeting a whole race of people [landlords] who will suffer. I can’t imagine a more landlord thing to say than that. Astounding.

Anyone who cares at all about ensuring future generations know how to think on their own, how to reason and develop their cognitive abilities, should be absolutely opposed to allowing generative AI for any kind of writing. It should be banned in all schools. www.media.mit.edu/publications...

Typos are a sign of authenticity in writing against Gen-AI

Petition for everyone to stop using Gen-AI to write. Anyone who has played around with it can tell its style, particularly the overuse of these “ —“ and it’s just offensive and embarrassing to see people sharing text like this now.

I’m in this week’s @newstatesman1913.bsky.social with a review of Holly Smith’s brilliant history of house rise council housing in Britain, Up in the Air www.newstatesman.com/culture/book...

Time to make the billionaires scream

This is especially rich given that Wiley's "AI Guidelines for Researchers" makes a point of urging authors to "protect your content while using AI". What they mean is: "make sure no other AI company gets hold of your IP, because then we can't use it ourselves." www.wiley.com/en-us/publis...