I've been following this BlueSky debate on inequality with interest.

A lot of people do seem to be relishing the opportunity to scold the left on their political rhetoric. This measured response by Chris Dillow seems to me to be appropriate.

UK universities ‘foolish’ to bank on overseas student growth Foreign students no longer a magic bullet for cash-strapped universities as visa changes and pricing wars force leaders to reconsider growth strategies

www.timeshighereducation.com/news/uk-univ... yes, but ... if we were market stall holders.. you said we could only sell apples for 50p. and it didn't matter how much inflation was, 50p was the price. but you also said we could sell peaches for as much as we like, because the price of apples was.. 1.

EXCERPTS FROM KAFKA'S DIARIES 281 JANUARY 20. The end of writing. When will it take me up again? JANUARY 29. Again tried to write, virtually useless. JANUARY 30. The old incapacity. Interrupted my writing for barely ten days and already cast out. Once again prodigious efforts stand before me. You have to dive down, as it were, and sink more rapidly than that which sinks in advance of you. FEBRUARY 7. Complete standstill. Unending torments. MARCH 11. How time flies; another ten days and I have chieved nothing. It doesn't come off. A page now anc hen is successful, but I can't keep it up, the next day m powerless. MARCH 13. [.] Lack of appetite, fear of getting ba te in the evening; but above all the thought that I wr

The writing life, courtesy of Franz Kafka.

Great to see this!

Presumably Frank Furedi and Matthew Goodwin will now discover the visionary genius of Aleksandar Vucic

With conjunctural approaches to urban research fast proliferating, along with the compounding crises they seek to study, now's the time to ask: what's the point of conjunctural analysis? Its purpose, I argue, is to offer a method for identifying points of condensation of crisis and contradiction within the social totality of planetary colonial capitalism, with a view to providing practical pointers on how to begin to exploit those moments for strategic intervention. This makes conjunctural analysis a distinctive, praxis-oriented mode of historical materialism – understood as an open, relational and holistic critical theory encompassing feminist, postcolonial and ecological perspectives, and alert to multiple social relations of domination, of exploitation and appropriation, notably gender, race and ecology as well as class. What conjunctural analysis adds to the two main methods of historical materialism – one apprehending capital's necessary form; the other capitalism's historical formation – is a more strategic and speculative orientation to social change as this emerges through contestation at pressure points in contradictory social formations, to assist in praxis, in the rearticulation of these formations for emancipatory ends. To that end, I attempt to provide conjunctural analysis with an epistemological grounding in dialectical relations between subjectivity and objectivity, totality and particularity, thought and history, past and future – a means to understand where, how and why to look for the conjuncture. The article concludes with suggestions on what such a vision for conjunctural analysis might mean for urban research through considering urban applications of conjunctural thinking.

If this is a conjuncture marked by escalating crises, provoking growing interest in conjunctural thinking across the critical social sciences and humanities, now's the time to ask...

What's the point of conjunctural analysis?

New article out in Dialogues in Urban Research:
doi.org/10.1177/2754...

La convergencia ideológica de la nueva ola reaccionaria Se repite hasta la saciedad: la extrema derecha avanza porque el “hombre blanco” está enfadado. Enfadado por las migraciones, por el feminismo, por la visibilidad LGTBI, por el cambio cultural, por un...

Me publican este artículo en Sin Permiso sobre "La convergencia ideológica de la nueva ola reaccionaria" 👇

sinpermiso.info/textos/la-co...

Dissecting the Polycrisis, Charting the Conceptual Terrain of Enquiry - Progress in Political Economy (PPE) How can we dissect the conjunctural appearances of crisis from the deep structural conditions of crisis shaping global capitalism today?

New article from @abieler.bsky.social on the empiricism of polycrisis debate and how to parse structural and conjunctural analysis @adamtooze.bsky.social

Logo of JREP featuring the acronym in white on a red circle background, surrounded by smaller circles in shades of red and grey. Hashtag OpenAccess is visible at the bottom.

#OpenAccess from the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics -

“It’s like a prison”: EU externalization, racial capitalism, and anti-Black racism in EU–Tunisia cooperation on migration - https://cup.org/46lw0as

- @rosamaryon.bsky.social

#FirstView

Security assistance, authoritarian neoliberalism and racial capitalism: entangled mechanisms of coercion and control in post-2011 Tunisia Security Assistance (SA) – training and equipping another state’s security forces has become the dominant form of external intervention in the Mediterranean. Scholars have reflected upon trends suc...

Great new article by @rosamaryon.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Very good article!

An Undying Love For A Burning World, by Neurosis 8 track album

I can't believe it - new Neurosis! neurosis.bandcamp.com/album/an-und...

Revealing who owns England just became government policy This post is by Guy Shrubsole. Yesterday, in their ambitious new Land Use Framework for England, the Government announced that they would be opening up the Land Registry. I’ve been campaigning for …

Revealing who owns England just became Government policy.

Here's my blog post analysing this historic moment, as well as assessing some of the other ambitious policies unveiled in the Government's new Land Use Framework:

whoownsengland.org/2026/03/19/r...

Indonesian nickel sovereignty and global raced finance: the value of Element 28 in an age of ‘transition’ In the context of a global rush to electrify vehicle markets, for which nickel is recast as a ‘critical mineral’, Indonesia has sought to build sovereignty over its mineral resources and reinvigora...

New OA article on nickel extraction & processing in Indonesia - I hope this is useful to someone 🙏

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Land Use Framework How we can use our land more effectively to increase the resilience of our homes, communities, infrastructure, and food systems, while speeding up development and restoring nature.

The first-ever Land Use Framework for England has been published.

I think it is the most far-sighted plan for England's land since the Second World War.

Here's my thoughts on what it does (& doesn't) do: 1/

www.gov.uk/government/p...

New paper out now witten with my brilliant collaborators @jamcjo.bsky.social and @drowendthomas.bsky.social. Hard to write given the topic and ongoing injustice but hope it proves useful to others.

Looking forward to it!

Locating race in capitalism’s laws of motion: the case of subprime Through a critical engagement with the racial capitalism literature, this article problematizes interpretations of the subprime crisis that foreground expropriation and the historical continuity of...

Me and Mary Robertson in @ripejournal.bsky.social articulating a Marxist perspective on race, racialisation and subprime in a special issue on Raced Finance expertly co-edited by @iliasalami.bsky.social @alibhagat.bsky.social @vincentguermond.bsky.social

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Critical Political Economy of the European Polycrisis - Progress in Political Economy (PPE) How is the European polycrisis inflected through the classed, raced, gendered and environmental conditions of global capitalism today?

Tackiing the polycrisis afresh with @abieler.bsky.social and Vincenzo Maccarrone in a new critical political economy book on the EU www.ppesydney.net/critical-pol... @yanisvaroufakis.bsky.social @adamtooze.bsky.social @alexcallinicos.bsky.social

Hard agree with this analysis. I think a main contradiction of the Silicon Valley/tech right is a vision of decentralization and extra-territoriality that is in fact backed up by US might and force. The Network State is actually the US 'empire'.

Looks very interesting. Reminds me of Japhy Wilson's work on apocalypticism

My favourite Fugazi album is Red Medicine, so I approve of this mix of In On The Kill Taker!

The Indo-Pacific as Japan’s emotional space: emotions, the duality of space, and Watsuji tetsurō’s aidgara Space as a concept remains subdued in the discussions of emotions in International Relations (IR). The geographical space within which Japan is located plays a crucial role in the emergence and ela...

My contribution to the literature on emotions in IR--using Watsuji's philosophy to think about emotions as a function of space.

Part of a special issue on Emotions in Japan's Foreign Policy.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Got to love/pity those who still think that artist and audience are separated by a giant chasm, allowing them to exist in two hermetically sealed spaces

So for Starmer, the party which gives a shit about literal shit in our rivers and seas are the extremists. Run that argument by me again...

Exactly the same for my aunt, who's been Labour since forever until now

Essential reading

“A simulacrum of charismatic authority tending towards shabbiness, decay and deformation.” Russia four years after the disaster a wall displays a directions towards a padlocked bomb shelter thousands of kilometres from Ukraine, February 2026. In a wide-ranging interview for Die Zeit a few weeks ago I said: ‘for most, a nati…

A new post summing up what I got wrong and right, four years into the Russian war on Ukraine. Some musings on the problem of prediction, on main problems of not taking economic forces seriously enough, and lots more. postsocialism.org/2026/02/25/a...

Electro-Capitalism Ours is the age of transition: from fossil capital to electricity capital. The future that emerges will be determined by the fierce struggles of the present.

✍️New essay for @the-breakdown.bsky.social which attempts an analysis of the energy transition as one between two competing fractions of capital - fossil and electric - and the conflicts and struggles which will lead towards an 'electro-capitalism' (or not!)

www.break-down.org/electro-capi...

The historical, political and cultural significance of Peter Mandelson Jem and Alan get deep into the historical significance of Peter Mandelson, his career and his recent fall. What has the Epstein case revealed about the ideology of our ruling elites? Why did Mandel…

The Meaning of Peter Mandelson. Me & @profafinlayson.bsky.social on the fall of Mandelson and why he ever mattered. Is the Long '90s finally totally over? Would we rather be ruled by the actual Sith than guys who hang around with Steven Pinker? It's all here:
culturepowerpolitics.org/2026/02/17/t...