Surrounded by windfarms but out of work: the reality of the green jobs boom on England’s east coast The government hails the ‘green revolution’ as a solution to economic decline, but some young jobseekers say the rhetoric does not match their experience

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

"‘Green jobs’ is a somewhat nebulous term, and it would appear that there is little concrete evidence of what these jobs actually are."

The coming global food crisis Hunger and even famine are foreseeable consequences of the war on Iran. Now the world must act to shield the poorest from effects that will continue long after the fighting stops

giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

If you think we can somehow extricate ourselves from synthetic nitrogen dependence, this amazing book will disabuse you of that notion.

He does lose me here. This is the typical left line anti-industrial ag. But the methods he promotes here would require far more labor & land in a context where ag land use is a major cause of both the biodiversity & climate crisis. Also we can make nitrogen w/out fossil fuels.

Adam Hanieh FT Weekend Essay!

“The Gulf’s ammonia exports are especially important for markets outside N. America & western Europe. In 2024, for instance, Saudi Arabia, Oman & Qatar together supplied more than three-quarters of India’s ammonia imports and 30 % of Morocco’s.”

The "lawyerly society" strikes again.

heatmap.news/politics/inf...

China shock 2.0: the flood of high-tech goods that will change the world Impelled by furious competition, hefty subsidies and sheer scale, the country’s companies are cutting a swath through the world’s most advanced industries

Anyone interested in the nature of capitalism in China has to read this.

www.ft.com/content/7d51...

I've often argued that capitalism doesn't really need 'growth' as much as profit/accumulation for capitalists, but it appears in China that's not true: it really is all about growth!

I’d also say Carbon Democracy curiously avoids the specter of Marx, despite the fact his story is very much rooted in labor and class struggle!

Curious if the rest of Timothy Mitchell’s new book engages w/ debates in Marxist economics at all? This excerpt doesn’t mention them despite the fact his theory seems very relevant to concepts of fictitious capital among others. jacobin.com/2026/04/capi...

Opinion | We Are Witnessing the Rise of a New Aristocracy

www.nytimes.com/2026/04/08/o...

“Over the past two years, 19 households have added $1.8 trillion to their coffers, the economist Gabriel Zucman told me — roughly the size of the economy of Australia.

Into this fragile state enters artificial intelligence. It threatens to make a bad situation much worse.”

What Is the Blood of a Poor Person Worth? (Published 2019)

“Blood products made up 1.9 percent of all American exports in 2016, more than soybeans, more than computers.” www.nytimes.com/2019/02/01/s...

The Middle-Class Suburbanites Who Sell Their Blood Plasma to Get By

I mean…

“The US provides around 70 percent of the world’s blood plasma. Because it is one of around a dozen countries that allow payment for plasma — a practice discouraged by the World Health Organization — the industry has established itself here.”
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/20/b...

These stories are 7 years apart. It not only illustrates Marx’s theory of capital as a “vampire” (literally), but also how it progressively erodes working-class life:

“Accumulation of wealth at one pole is…at the same time accumulation of misery…at the opposite pole.”

How the Gulf’s war is becoming Asia’s crisis too The war in the Persian Gulf disrupts energy supplies to Asia, where 80% of oil and 90% of gas from the Strait of Hormuz flows, causing fuel shortages and price rises.

“After analysing social unrest across 101 developing countries between 2000 and 2020, researchers at the IMF found a clear association between fuel-price increases and protests...What has begun as an energy shock could become a political one.” www.economist.com/asia/2026/04...

The global economy turns out to be more resilient than we had feared Trump’s tariffs have not led to the kind of retaliatory action many expected

www.ft.com/content/8727...

What Wolf can’t fathom is that it is US hegemony itself that laid the conditions for Trump (twice): by overseeing a global neoliberal order that enriches capital and degrades the conditions of working class life everywhere, it creates angry (& rightful!) backlash.

There’s a New Place to Store Greenhouse Gases: In Your Beer

www.nytimes.com/2026/03/23/c...

“Carbon capture doesn’t work!”

“Hold my beer…”

Electrostates vs. Petrostates China is building a new green bloc, while the United States is doubling down on oil.

I think this petro-state vs. electro-state frame has gone too far when somehow the US and Russia are in the same bloc. It’s a new kind of energy reductionism. foreignpolicy.com/2026/03/23/c...

It's not like net ~20% approval is resounding hegemony, but this shift in just the last year is incredibly stark. www.ft.com/content/47ed...

Why College Graduates Feel Betrayed

“Matt Hoffman, one of the doctors who recently unionized in Minnesota…told me that he took his children to a UAW picket line in 2023. ‘In our society, the sides are workers versus management,’ he said. ‘I wanted them to understand that.’” www.nytimes.com/2026/03/27/b...

I think it's still pretty impressive compared with other high population countries like India.

I tracked down the source for this very famous quote from Albert A. Bartlett in 1978 (seems apropos!) Interesting he himself puts it in quotes and calls it "a definition" (did he get it from someone else?)

My take is Marx's vision of communism entailed that alienation would be overcome through more collective forms of labor deciding and planning social production as a whole. I don't think it's useful to think about it in terms of a single worker's connection to a single product.

Is cheap energy the key to China gaining AI supremacy? China's abundant cheap electricity could give it an advantage in artificial intelligence development, despite American chip restrictions limiting its current computing capacity.

www.economist.com/china/2026/0...

Meant to share this insane chart.

Companies Warn Investors of Energy Price Jitters Fueled by Iran War Fuel disruptions could increase costs and rattle consumer behavior beyond the short term, businesses say in shareholder reports.

Companies recognize that the disruption from interrupting the oil economy will be lasting, says Professor @matthuber.bsky.social. “It is going to be a pretty long-term problem, even if they reopen the Strait of Hormuz today,” Huber says.