Maurice Weller

There are 92 million Iranians

130 | Max Horkheimer: What Makes Critical Theory Critical? | What's Left of Philosophy Get more from What's Left of Philosophy on Patreon

new episode out today! we discuss Horkheimer's essay "Traditional and Critical Theory", asking what actually makes critical theory critical, and whether there's any genuinely critical theory going on right now. the social totality causing all kinds of problems rn fr www.patreon.com/posts/130-ma...

"you best start believing in catastrophic energy shocks - you're in one"

fresh audio product:

* Behrooz Ghamari, author of The Long War on Iran, on the politics and culture of the country
• Anatol Lieven on the effects of the war on Iran on the region and world

www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html#S...

“Among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered
the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods
which interest dictates and credulity encourages.”

—Samuel Johnson (1758)

Quite an opening paragraph.

For all the talk of an Asian century, China and other Asian powers never prepared for scenarios where the US would flip from the primary security guarantor in the Middle East they relied on to the primary source of instability that would undermine their energy supply chains

hier hätte der verfassungsschutz imo mal ein auge drauf werfen sollen

Wie wurde aus Elon Musk eine Schlüsselfigur der globalen Rechten? Quinn Slobodian und Ben Tarnoff gehen dieser Frage auf den Grund. In ihrem aktuellen Buch analysieren sie den sogenannten «Muskismus». Die WOZ holt die Autoren am 11. März 2026 nach Zürich: www.woz.ch/muskismus

Fossil fuel stocks are exploding in response to the war on Iran.

Who stands to benefit? The richest of the rich.

Who stands to lose? All of us who have to pay higher prices for energy and a new round of sellers' inflation.

We've renamed the DOD the Department of War. Our troops are Warfighters. No of course we're not "at war" you dumb lib

White House talking points for congressional Republicans say we're not at war, we're just in "major combat operations against Iran" lol

Wem nützt die Schuldenbremse? Der Sparmechanismus funktioniert – doch er verhindert Investitionen in die Zukunft.

Sparsamer Staat: Die Schulden­bremse schränkt die Spendier­laune der Schweiz ein. Aber ist sie noch zeitgemäss? @yvesgwegelin.bsky.social zeigt auf, dass die verschiedenen Faktoren, die der eid­genössischen Knausrigkeit zugrunde liegen, durchaus eine gewisse Gross­zügigkeit zulassen würden.

Top 6 most emotional Star Trek episodes:

The Visitor (DS9)
The Inner Light (TNG)
Real Life (VOY)
The Conscience of the King (TOS)
Duet (DS9)
Darmok (TNG)

These are also all absolute banger episodes fwiw. Couldn't pick just 5 cos I was medically incapable of cutting any of these from my list.

Die schlimmsten Schreibtischtäter und militaristischen Aufpuscher unserer Gegenwart sitzen im NZZ-Deutschlandbüro

Jesus this book is tedious. The authors like to explain everything through little made up fables and fictional dialog between anthropomorphized characters. Just skipping page after page of nonsense writing.

The path to a post-American world is punctuated by cycles where US air and naval power secure overwhelming short term tactical victories that the US no longer has the wider capacity to turn into anything other than long term strategic chaos.

But the longue duree won't help the IRGC much now

So if much of the more liberal core of Toryism has found its home in the LibDems, liberal progressive and left-leaning voters are drifting to the Greens, and socially conservative and far right voters are defecting to Reform..

...where does that still leave a niche for Labour and the Conservatives?

As well as @coreypein.bsky.social @bildoperationen.bsky.social @fmaschewski.bsky.social @unddieregel.bsky.social @shannonvallor.bsky.social @jacobsilverman.com @gregegansf.bsky.social @evgenymorozov.bsky.social @parismarx.com

Might be of interest to @xriskology.bsky.social @timnitgebru.bsky.social @adambecker.bsky.social @annakornbluh.bsky.social @annanosthoff.bsky.social @adriandaub.bsky.social @bvlsingler.bsky.social @quinnslobodian.com @rainermuehlhoff.bsky.social @onachtwey.bsky.social @camlinger.bsky.social

Is VR a tool of liberation? addressing the ethics of VR through sociohistorical contextualization - Ethics and Information Technology Ethics and Information Technology - This paper addresses the ethics of VR through sociohistorical contextualization. It integrates social science literature about the context of VR’s original...

My Paper on the Ethics of Virtual Reality has been published in "Ethics and Information Technology: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

crazy to me that no one at youtube or google is ever even, like, asked about this stuff anymore, let alone pushed to take responsibility. regardless of whether a PRMC/moral majority-type campaign would be a good idea, is the respectable center really so anemic/captured that it won't even try?

The Score with C. Thi Nguyen — Embrace The Void My returning guest this week is C. Thi Nguyen, a professor of philosophy at the University of Utah, and author of the new book The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game .  We discuss t...

New ETV is out for everyone! I'm joined by @add-hawk.bsky.social to discuss his new book The Score. Really fun chat on the nature of games, the challenges of society at scale, and whether the problem is bigger than just capitalism. Enjoy!

the internal politics of the Three Body Problem are so fascinating

madeinchinajournal.com/2023/12/11/t...

The boys’ club: How Epstein’s influence shaped the exclusion of women in STEM In one email, an AI researcher suggested it’s “hard to be brilliant if you are worrying if you look fat or why another woman hates you.”

Ein umfangreicher Artikel über STEM Wissenschaften als massiv Epstein-affin aka dominiert von sexistischen Arschlöchern all around. Zum Schluss wird sogar die Frage gestellt, inwiefern div. STEM Felder überhaupt etwas anderes als misogyne Unterdrückungsideologien sind.
19thnews.org/2026/02/epst...

Staatlich auferlegtes Dialektikverbot

Zukunft der Geisteswissenschaften: Das kalte Denken der Dritten Kultur John Brockman hat die Verachtung der Geisteswissenschaften vorausgedacht. Dahinter steht der Versuch einer ideologischen Neuordnung.

There was a great article about him in the FAZ: www.faz.net/aktuell/wiss...

Jeffrey Epstein’s Intellectual Enabler How did Epstein meet so many luminaries in the worlds of science and technology? It all might trace back to literary agent John Brockman.

I posted this elsewhere but a good early piece on the Brockman network by Morozov here. Still more to say about the reactionary politics of the pop science boom of the 90s/00s beyond The Bell Curve wars I cover in my book too.

newrepublic.com/article/1548...

The billionaires' eugenics project: how Epstein infiltrated Harvard, muzzled the humanities and preached master-race science Edge - Jeffrey Epstein's favourite intellectual salon - was sold to me as a gathering of the world's finest minds, writes Virginia Heffernan. The files reveal it was something far darker: a decades-lo...

NEW: Read this terrific piece @virginiaheffernan.bsky.social for @thenerve.news in which she unpicks Edge.org, the hugely influential 'salon' funded by Epstein & threaded through with race science & eugenics.
1/

www.thenerve.news/p/epstein-bi...