I love China and hip hop so I was an easy sell but I can't recommend this @equatormag.bsky.social piece enough. It is so hard to get good essays in English about life in China; this one is about so much more than music (though it's got that too)

After jailing Imran Khan two years ago, Pakistan’s military establishment has tried to erase him from public life. @osmansamiuddin.bsky.social travelled to Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore to report on this bizarre effort to disappear the country’s most famous man. www.equator.org/articles/the...

Amazing how they just say this stuff out loud now. I assume they understand people can see them saying it.

This week's big new Equator story The Hidden Imran by Osman Samiuddin The cricketing legend is Pakistan’s most famous man. Can the state make him vanish? www.equator.org/articles/the...

Find out more at equator.org

The true essence of Starmerism: smug grandstanding about how he's not grandstanding. (Recall his pre-prepared response to a protestor at his conference speech in 2021: "Shouting slogans or changing lives, conference?")

“People are emboldened in part by the weakness of the regime, but also because society has been brimming with energy from both previous national protests & daily claim-making by nurses, teachers, truck drivers, farmers, pensioners, oil workers & many others. These protests don’t exist in a vacuum.”

From this weekend's @equatormag.bsky.social newsletter, an interview with Arang Keshavarzian on the scale and significance of the protests in Iran: www.equator.org/articles/ira...

A question we can't stop asking is whether Trump is radically novel in American history or just a revival of the most reactionary past. This essay by Nikhil Pal Singh provides a new understanding the nature of Trump's hybrid regime: call it Homeland Empire www.equator.org/articles/hom...

New genre of Binmenism (cf @danhancox.bsky.social ) slop has dropped: nostalgia for watching tv in the nineties

BREAKING Chinese spies only people brave enough to move to world's most dangerous city

New Substack from me - on "the battle for the soul of this country", fascism and UK rap's Flag Play danhancox.substack.com/p/i-think-i-...

“Everyone wants Ukraine to be a nation of heroes – but no one wants to talk about the violence required to sustain armed resistance to Russia’s invasion.” A powerful new essay for EQUATOR by the Ukrainian writer and photographer Yevgenia Belorusets equator.org/articles/the...

New @equatormag.bsky.social: @naomiaklein.bsky.social on how the Surrealists transformed the wreckage of history into revolutionary art – and what their example can teach us about the fight against fascism today www.equator.org/articles/sur...

this piece, recommended to me years ago by @shainin.bsky.social , has always stayed with me www.ftrain.com/wwic

Important and remarkably timely piece by @trillingual.bsky.social in @equatormag.bsky.social www.equator.org/articles/ins...

For the @equatormag.bsky.social newsletter, I talked about how I reported my piece on the BBC and Gaza, and what's at stake in the current crisis. You can read/sign up below - Equator is a brilliant and necessary new magazine, so give it your support! www.equator.org/articles/ins...

We have just published Equator's editorial declaration — our commitment to build something new. Read more and be a part of what comes next: equator.org

The end of the West is not the end of the world. EQUATOR: a new magazine of politics, culture, art. ** If you haven't signed up to our mailing list, do so at equator.org **

trump’s numbers are tanking and there is a palpable desire in the electorate for a real alternative and yet the only money in democratic politics is for doing starmerism

Our new magazine, Equator, is officially out in the world — and here @equatormag.bsky.social Sign up for preview emails, donate, and get tickets to our launch event in London: equator.org

I think a key UK political science question is how the current government can shoot itself in more feet than it actually has. And for theorists the issue is how to characterise a form of rule in which the government shoots itself in the foot, then puts the foot in its mouth and shoots it again.

Indeed. Far too much worrying about Polanski, about Farage, about the Ipsos' issues index, about individual polling, and not enough on 'how can we deliver election-winning budgets and spending rounds in 2027-8 and 2028-9'.

In Britain it's always 1933 (if we need to sell arms to someone) or 1942 (if we want to increase the Barratt Homes profit margin)

How it started How it's going

It feels like it ought to be possible for the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to avoid giving a running commentary on a music festival.

Oh no not criticizing Israel’s demonstrated practice of apartheid, a practice identified by human-rights groups the New York Times frequently quotes with credibility, or describing Zionists as oppressors just because they oppress Palestinians!

The immediate success of congestion pricing, after the Dem establishment insisted it would discredit the entire party, was a great advertisement for Trying Shit.

"The problem with the polling and all the emphasis on data in contemporary politics is that it does not take into account that the electorate doesn’t really exist until election day, and the politician and his or her campaign are actively creating that electorate."

All a bit feral www.economist.com/britain/2025...

Very unusual to wake up to find good news overnight from the United States. More of this, please, Americans.

Great piece by @will-davies.bsky.social on TikTok, "clustered publics" and their role in far-right resentment. (I've found this shift profoundly challenging to respond to as a journalist. Ignore it and trust what I write reaches readers anyway? Dive in? Something else?) www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

There are New Yorkers who don’t want Zohran to be mayor but there are no New Yorkers who actually want Andrew Cuomo to be mayor, including Andrew Cuomo

I would like to say that I support all sports posters. Your occasional, rapid fire 1-5 word posts that make no sense unless you are watching a game are beautiful to me.

who would the New York Times and Wall Street want in charge of New York's fire department: an upstart young firefighter or a serial arsonist? The answer may surprise you

Interesting essay: fruit machine meets television the best description of TikTok

After months of reporting (and even my own attempt at a jiu jitsu class), my FT Magazine cover story on Mark Zuckerberg’s metamorphosis to red-blooded “Maga Mark” is out! Is this political expediency, a midlife crisis or who Zuck has been all along? on.ft.com/4nsoktx

Having read for research purposes no fewer than four articles by opinion columnists about how dreadful Bluesky is, I think my conclusion is "kind of interesting except I notice that Financial Times and Bloomberg journalists seem to get on fine and have lots of mates here"

Huge implications from this: Microsoft cut off the email of the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, because of his work on Israel www.nytimes.com/2025/06/20/t...

I rant about this a lot but I can’t for the life of me understand why BBC 6 Music News gives a daily update of how many people crossed the channel in small boats yesterday From a news values perspective alone, it makes no sense

Somehow seems that despite all the big success stories of politics over the last **three decades**, we're averse to concluding "people who appear to believe in something sincerely are popular, being the kind of person perceived as someone who would say anything to get elected is unpopular"

In two important ways Labour empowered Nigel Farage and Faragism this week. Both were strategic mistakes. We’ve seen this story before. New writing from me. open.substack.com/pub/goodalla...

We stay winning. We've successfully found the most strategically brain dead idea in UK politics, everyone else can give up and go home.

A brilliant and bizarre story here from @christopherkay.ft.com

Given its mythology in current Labour strategy, you wouldn't think that percentage of people voting BNP in Barking and Dagenham actually went up between 2006 and 2010.

luckily Starmer doesn't have a reputation for breaking promises, or a staff and media outriders who have got into the habit of explaining that the people who voted for him deserved to be lied to

Those group chats aren't going to ironically re-name themseves!

Great piece. The other dumb thing about Uxbridge is that ULEZ is a *fantastic* policy that stops people choking to an early grave. Opposing it for short term electoral reason is close to immoral