One Affordability Battle After Another: What To Do About the AI-Fossil Fuel Industrial Complex
Voters rebel against AI data centers’ electricity costs and fossil fuel pollution, water use, and job loss damage.
Read more...Author Archives: Yves Smith
Iran Regime Change Tout Spews NSFW, Misogynistic Abuse When Asked Merely to Stop Spamming
A backer of Iran regime change efforts asked to have his ugly, misogynistic exchange with me published, and I am complying with his wishes.
Read more...Why Does Economics Refuse to Acknowledge John Ruskin’s Illith, as in Harmful Activity?
Why the economics discipline has ignored John Ruskin’s seminal concept of illith, as in destructive activity.
Read more...Urban Slums: Stepping-Stone for Some and Traps (or Shields) for Others
A study in Brazil found that urban slums can offer upward mobility due to access to public education. But how true is that around the world?
Read more...War With Iran to Accelerate Trump’s Golden March to Ruin
The decision to go to war with Iran appears to have been made, and how that will sink Trump’s already failing rule and risk nuclear war.
Read more...Ralph Linton (1936), Identity Politics, and the Concept of Ascribed Status
Ralph Linton, arguably the father of what we now call identity politics, had some impressive insights as well as blind spots.
Read more...Links 2/14/2026
Trump’s Concentration Camp Build-Out Includes Nearly $40 Billion for Warehouse Conversions
Disclosure to a GOP governor confirms that Trump plans to devote nearly $40 billion to one element of his concentration camp plan.
Read more...Germany’s “Two-Speed Europe” Proposal Is the EU’s Adaptation to Great Power Geopolitics
Germany, following the European Commission’s lead, is moving forward a plan for the biggest members to impose decisions on the others.
Read more...When War Weakens Democracy
Wars often undermine democracy, but it appears that that result is not baked in but operates in particular circumstances.
Read more...More Handwringing About Collapsing Birth Rates: How Focus on Gender Roles Misses the Mark
Sentimentality about child-rearing is leading experts not to look clinically enough at why birth rates around the world are plunging.
Read more...Iran Has More Options Up Its Sleeve Than Trump and Netanyahu Assume
As Israel attempts to push the US into war with Iran, more hard looks at how Tehran could retaliate
Read more...Has the Rate of Global Warming More Than Doubled?
Troubling global warming updates from the authoritative James Hansen.
Read more...Bloomberg’s $108 Oil as Worst Case Iran War Scenario: Too Optimistic?
A detailed Bloomberg report lays out different scenarios for oil prices if Iran attacks. Is its forecast of a worst case of $108 a barrel too cheery?
Read more...Suffocating an Island: What the U.S. Blockade Is Doing to Cuba
Medea Benjamin provides a gripping on-the-ground report of how conditions in Cuba are deteriorating due to the US oil blockage.
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