@rlspang
Professor of History, sometimes administrator at big public university in Midwest. Writes about money, French Revolution, restaurants. Friend to vert paleo. ex UCL History; Yale SOM Visiting Fellow; Guggenheim and New America Fellow. once/future Mainer
But the tattoos alone are enough. Like Elon Musk, Platner lies when cornered; he can’t admit fault or take responsibility. He gave his staff a script about his Nazi symbol to recite: “He did not know the meaning at the time and covered it once he learned..” That’s a lie. 9/
Wow. The corruption and self-dealing is boundless — in the billions.
The new jobs report shows an economy in crisis. Job-killing policies, illegal tariff tax hikes, and fiscal malpractice continue to wreak havoc, while golf, luxury planes, gold laden ballrooms, and jet setting to the Olympics becomes business as usual in this White House.
A whole lot of money seems to be betting that this somehow wraps up very quickly and into a nice little bow and is about to get a very hard lesson in how geopolitics actually works when the institutions/rules-based order breaks down.
HUGE payrolls miss, wow
Feb Payrolls -92k vs +55k est/+130k prev
2m net revision -69k
Unemplomyent 4.4% vs 4.3% est/4.3% prev
Avg hourly earn YoY +3.8% vs +3.7% est+/3.7% prev
Jan Retail sales MoM -0.2% vs -0.3% est/0.0% prev
Control group est MoM +0.3% vs+0.3% est/-0.1% prev
For some reason, I woke up this morning with my Duolingo lessons at the front of my brain. So verily I say to you:
Vi har en ny flodhäst. Jag behöver mer pengar!
The Berggruen Klee Collection, 1984
Falling Bird https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/483046
(FT) - Qatar’s energy minister has warned that war in the Middle East could “bring down the economies of the world”, predicting that all Gulf energy exporters would shut down production within weeks and drive oil to $150 a barrel.
@financialtimes.com
www.ft.com/content/be12...
Radioactive Wasps.
I’m no medical doctor* but does this look like a man with a healthy gut? I don’t think so….
* I do however have a PhD and “restorative” diets were certainly part of my research on the first restaurants
If you took $1 billion and gave it to the endowment of a different small college each day, they could each provide a free college education to several hundred students per year in perpetuity. Instead we are using that money to bomb schools and kill students in Iran, for no clearly stated purpose.
I think they get the sense now of the Revolution as something that was MULTI episode. Not an event, but a series. Possibly even a series that runs over multiple years. So my lecture maybe should be a TikTok, but the Revolution can't be.
Going to have to update my bio on here so it clearly says ATHEIST
I'm really enjoying my French Revolution class this semester--maybe BECAUSE the students are, or maybe my own delight at teaching it again is contagious. In either case, I was narrating some events of 1791-92 today and a student exclaimed:
It's like a TV show! You can't make this stuff up.
Turns out lawlessness is not a winning strategy. See you at Nuremberg 2.0
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, Kristi Noem.
My Trade Secrets today. Latest superpower energy offers to emerging markets:
China - cheap green tech to wean you off hydrocarbons.
US - coercion into trade deal to buy US fossil fuels, then huge chaotic war creating global oil shock.
WHICH MESSAGE WILL RESONATE? 1/2
as.ft.com/r/8b8df69a-5...
stores have no idea how much shoplifting takes place, they only know when stock doesn't match records. how much is due to human error, incorrect shipments, breakage, and theft is a guess. literally cannot know if shoplifting is on the rise.
this was a radicalizing discovery for me.
I won a ping-pong tournament
It’s SO splooshy out there right now! Good thing I’m a bit over 5’2” or one of the puddles might have been too much
I feel like this new research showing that Covid *literally* infects the heart and gives "healthy" people new serious cardiac problems should somehow be bigger news.
James II fled London for France not because of the lack of political and military support but to avoid an interview with Chotiner.
An ICE detainee in Arizona has died of a TOOTH INFECTION after it went untreated for weeks, a local official says. He was a Haitian asylum seeker imprisoned in Florence, Arizona. @emilybregel.bsky.social reports.
tucson.com/news/local/b...
It is insane🤬 that we are at the "put a family in your attic" stage of US history. First: the Haitians....
But bravo to these citizens in Ohio who are *doing it* & hiding people. To be Jewish is to always wonder if our neighbors would do this for us.... #GiftArticle
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/u...
"Hegseth wants the military to be more lethal," @julieingersoll.bsky.social told me, "“that kind of belligerent, combative character that you see them exhibiting is directly related to how they understand God.”
redcircle.com/shows/fbed71...
Text excerpt from NYT article linked in second skeet saying: “Most of the profits are flowing to the very affluent Americans, who are not subject to this cost-of-living crisis anyway because they’re so rich. They’re getting richer, and everyone else is dealing with inflation,” said Gregor Semieniuk, associate professor of University of Massachusetts Amherst who led the study. The United Kingdom responded to fossil fuel companies’ bumper year by adding a windfall tax designed to capture some of the excess profits and use the money to ease the burden on households facing higher bills. Semieniuk’s team calculated what would have happened if the U.S. government redistributed the portion of the fossil fuel industry’s 2022 profits that exceeded its 2021 returns. They found that the move would send $1,715 to every American household, which, they argued, could have helped ease the burden of inflation on lower-income households.
![Text excerpt from the FT article in the second skeet saying:
Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://help.ft.com/faq/gifting-and-sharing-an-article/what-is-a-gift-article/.
https://www.ft.com/content/43fe2f44-d3ea-45c9-a641-e6f0e68949af?accessToken=zwAAAZy4l4RPkc9D_i9E0-pFydOmQebw5olJrw.MEUCIH4nsXTramXEOh6tWM6n9rrMqI0FnMfHQsz7tU0HufXAAiEAx8x5MmOYujURIqdhdxGDYHysYSEB2eVuSpM9n1iDuhA&segmentId=e95a9ae7-622c-6235-5f87-51e412b47e97&shareType=enterprise&shareId=a96149bb-d68a-4bc5-b023-2174a60fd9c5
Research on the oil and gas crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 showed that the gains of the boon on energy producers were not equally shared.
The wealthiest 1 per cent of the US population eventually received more than 50 per cent of energy companies’ windfall from that particular surge in prices, according to a paper published in September 2025.
“If anything [the US has] become a more powerful exporter and producer of fossil fuels since 2022. And of course, their oil majors are active globally. So I think [US shareholders] are poised to take advantage even more [now],” said Gregor Semieniuk, a professor at the University of Massachusetts who was one of the authors of the research. “Wealth distributions don’t change overnight.”](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:zzkt72yllokx7rstuph6rlrw/bafkreigrlauo2i24owltmckxgpdt4gyzzwwu6hvotpslz57hqdbodogxba@jpeg)
Text excerpt from the FT article in the second skeet saying: Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://help.ft.com/faq/gifting-and-sharing-an-article/what-is-a-gift-article/. https://www.ft.com/content/43fe2f44-d3ea-45c9-a641-e6f0e68949af?accessToken=zwAAAZy4l4RPkc9D_i9E0-pFydOmQebw5olJrw.MEUCIH4nsXTramXEOh6tWM6n9rrMqI0FnMfHQsz7tU0HufXAAiEAx8x5MmOYujURIqdhdxGDYHysYSEB2eVuSpM9n1iDuhA&segmentId=e95a9ae7-622c-6235-5f87-51e412b47e97&shareType=enterprise&shareId=a96149bb-d68a-4bc5-b023-2174a60fd9c5 Research on the oil and gas crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 showed that the gains of the boon on energy producers were not equally shared. The wealthiest 1 per cent of the US population eventually received more than 50 per cent of energy companies’ windfall from that particular surge in prices, according to a paper published in September 2025. “If anything [the US has] become a more powerful exporter and producer of fossil fuels since 2022. And of course, their oil majors are active globally. So I think [US shareholders] are poised to take advantage even more [now],” said Gregor Semieniuk, a professor at the University of Massachusetts who was one of the authors of the research. “Wealth distributions don’t change overnight.”
Who stands to profit as energy prices are rising due to the escalating war in the Middle East? NYT and FT quoting our research on the 2022 energy crisis! Spoiler: in the West it's mainly affluent shareholders.
High time to dust off the discussions on excess profit taxes & strategic price controls.
