📚 Essays worth your time

Is AI already killing people by accident?

The writer Tyler Austin Harper (of The Atlantic, etc.) sent me a thread this morning, asking whether a mistargeting yesterday that killed nearly 150 school children in Iran could have been the result

Noted geopolitical nonentity Ursula von der Leyen announces her determination to begin intensively monitoring the Iran situation as soon as the weekend is over

Also Iran thread.

AI Just Entered Its Manhattan Project Era

Thoughts on Anthropic vs the Pentagon

Sunday Thread + Mailbag

Ask your questions below.

Sunday links: CEO as CRO

The ideological implications of China’s economic success

Branko Milanovic over at his Substack: This essay is a (modest) attempt to look at the worldwide meaning of China’s experience as the country is being poised to become this year or the next, according

Takaichi Whirlwind

Elena Korshenko in Sidecar: When Sanae Takaichi took over as leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) last October, the party, which has dominated Japan’s postwar politics, was mired in one

Sanchismo’s Last Stand

Ekaitz Cancela in The Ideas Letter: European social democracy is undergoing its deepest existential crisis in decades. The French Socialist Party is moribund. Keir Starmer’s Labour, despite its landsl

Cees Nooteboom (1933 – 2026) Novelist and Poet

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Killing Khamenei: Regime-Change Roulette in a Powder-Keg World

But Trump insisted he already destroyed the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear-weapons program! A sudden U.S.–Israeli decapitation campaign against Iran and the killing of Supreme Leader Khamenei...

10 Rules For Dealing With Uncertainty

How to think deal with AI and geopolitics. The post 10 Rules For Dealing With Uncertainty appeared first on A Wealth of Common Sense. ...

Éliane Radigue (1932 – 2026) Composer

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The Most Misunderstood Personality Trait

Pluralism and the Modern Poet

Seamus Perry in London Review of Books: In November 1907​ William James, professor of philosophy at Harvard, received an invitation from Oxford. It came from Manchester College – now Harris Manchester

Balcony solar is taking state legislatures by storm

In more than half of U.S. states, Republican and Democratic lawmakers have introduced legislation that would boost adoption of DIY solar systems.

Chartbook 435: All perversions have their acting out. Reading Baudrillard on the weekend of the attack on Iran.

And then, this morning, for seminar on Monday I find myself reading Jean Baudrillard’s extraordinary Consumer Society, published in 1970 amidst the Vietnam war.

Sparks of Genius to Flashes of Idiocy

Vinay Chaudhri in Singularity Hub: Modern AI chatbots can do amazing things, from writing research papers to composing Shakespearian sonnets about your cat. But amid the sparks of genius, there are fl

Sunday poem

Morning Why do we bother with the rest of the day, the swale of the afternoon, the sudden dip into evening, the night with his notorious perfumes, his many-pointed stars? This is the best— throwing of

The most aggressively anti-AI film of the ChatGPT era

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die takes a big swing at AI. Does it connect?

Top clicks this week on Abnormal Returns

Thanks for checking in with us this weekend. Here are the most clicked on items on Abnormal Returns for the week ended...

Neil Sedaka (1939 – 2026) Singer/Songwriter

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Trump’s Iran Gamble

How the latest strikes risk opening a Pandora’s box in the Gulf.

The Dutch Revolt Was Europe’s First Bourgeois Revolution

In the late sixteenth century, the Netherlands revolted against Spanish rule in a decades-long struggle that gave birth to the Dutch Republic. Although the initial spark for the revolt was religious,

Top Links 1028 The anti-Trump trade. Critical-mineral competition. Enoch's Hammer & solving the economic problem.

Great links, images, and reading from Chartbook Newsletter by Adam Tooze

Links 3/1/2026

<a href="https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/03/Links-3-1-2026.html"><img src="https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/ROSEATE_SPOONBILL.jpg" "width="300" height="300" class=alignc

Iran War: Quick Early Updates

Some of the latest Iran war sightings even as the fog of war and attempted narrative control is mighty thick.

The Economics of Technological Change

What history and models can (and can’t) tell us about AI

The Sunday Morning Movie Presents: Yeelen (Brightness) Run Time 1H 38M

Yeleen is a movie about magic and myth.

A country of geniuses ⊗ Collapse: A framework

No.392 — We can move beyond the capitalist model and save the climate ⊗ Our emerging planetary nervous system ⊗ A handbook for strategic foresight ⊗ A Cookie for Dario? ⊗ This city turned its rooftops

C. Thi Nguyen’s The Score (And My Quest For The Perfect “Baguette”)

by Mark R. DeLong C. Thi Nguyen’s The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game (Penguin, 2026; bookshop.org) arrived in my mailbox just in time. I was feeling that finally, after months of prac

Deportation Was Always Political

From its beginnings, deportation has been a tool used to threaten, suppress, and break dissent. ICE’s targeting of political enemies like Mahmoud Khalil is no exception. Mahmoud Khalil serves as a tra

On Usable Rage

by Marie Snyder How can we possibly approach the world today without being in a constant stage of rage? Philosopher and psychoanalyst Josh Cohen’s All the Rage suggests how to make this feeling more u

Massive US War Spending Hike Raises Debt, Taxes, Doubts

As US President Donald Trump pushes the world to war, arms spending has been rising worldwide. Wars secure more budgetary allocations, mainly benefiting the US-dominated military-industrial complex.

The Left Could Learn Something From Trump’s Tariff Gambit

Donald Trump enacted his trade policy at the stroke of a pen for a whole year by acting quickly and assertively while the courts debated his tariffs’ constitutionality. It’s an approach the Left can u

The shape of the multipolar world is a little clearer

A few thoughts on the new Iran war.

The Enigmas of Gerhard Richter

A Conversation between Justin Smith-Ruiu and Lawrence Weschler

Weekend Update #174: Ukraine Retaking Territory And Starlink

After Battle Assessment Of The Flamingo Strike; The European Reaction to Trump Bombing Iran--Any Meaning For Ukraine?

Lessons From Singapore: National Service

by Eric Feigenbaum On Christmas Eve 1965 – roughly five-and-a-half months after the nascent Singapore’s independence – “The Mexicans” arrived. Their job: to help build and train a Singaporean military

I Saw the Roots of Mandelson’s Rise and Fall

“The people whose company I enjoy most are those from a strictly bourgeois background,” Peter Mandelson wrote to his childhood friend Steve Howell in 1973. It was, Howell observes, deeply ironic that

What's Next in Iran? w/Graeme Wood of The Atlantic

Graeme Wood (X account), a staff writer for The Atlantic who has reported extensively on the Middle East, joins me on the livestream to discuss the bombing of Iran and what comes next.