Reading

Created
Tue, 13/05/2025 - 01:04
A few weeks ago the historian Perry Anderson published an essay “Regime Change in the West?” in the London Review of Books. Like many of Anderson’s essays this is a wide-ranging splurge full of bon mots and *apercus” delivered from some quasi-Olympian height. My attention was caught, though, by the following couple of sentences which […]
Created
Tue, 13/05/2025 - 00:34

Well, maybe. Who the hell knows what he’ll do. Anyway, tariffs are back to 10% on either side and negotiations will continue.

Note that China got what they wanted, minus 10%—no negotiations until the tariffs are removed.

There will still be a two month trade burp. Ships weren’t leaving China for the US at all, literally zero. Lot of freight companies are about to make a mint, though. So expect some shortages, but nothing worse than Covid, and hopefully lasting less time.

The fundamental problem remains, however, which is that there’s no certainty around any of this, so business people can’t make long term plans, including plans to build or relocate manufacturing. Trump and the US can’t be trusted to stay steady on policy, so avoiding making big plans involving the US makes sense.

Created
Mon, 12/05/2025 - 22:00

There’s no question that artificial intelligence has come a long way in the last few years. And it’s true that many jobs are likely to be replaced by these tools. But I know for a fact that the job I do as CEO can never be done by AI, regardless of how advanced it becomes. The things I do, the heart and soul I pour into my work each and every day—even on weekends—a computer would never match.

Could a machine decide to lay off an entire department based on a vague intuition it forms about the market while it half-listens to an Economist podcast during its morning Peloton ride? I don’t think so. Through years of stress and anxiety, I have built up my sensitivity to the market. This isn’t something that can be captured and replicated by a machine.

Created
Mon, 12/05/2025 - 17:17
Over the last years, I have edited a volume of papers on the question how to make analytical political philosophy more inclusive, with a particular focus on the debates on economic and ecological inequalities. The starting point was the observation that analytical political philosophy has for a long time been criticised for marginalizing (to a […]
Created
Mon, 12/05/2025 - 17:17
Dartmoor National Park is not dying; it is being killed, and these are the killers. By George Monbiot, adapted from a Bluesky thread, 11th May 2025. This is Piles Copse, the largest remaining fragment of high-ground temperate rainforest on Dartmoor. It’s a tiny speck of green in a dismal, human-made desert. Prepare yourselves for a […]
Created
Mon, 12/05/2025 - 17:00
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May 12th, 2025
Created
Mon, 12/05/2025 - 13:52
The cottagecore, romantic path to starvation and environmental breakdown. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 7th May 2025 The fire that has just destroyed 500 hectares (1,230 acres) of Dartmoor should have been impossible. It should not be a fire-prone landscape. But sheep, cattle and ponies have made it so. They browse out tree […]