If you, like me, are tired of shallow and short-term reporting on China, and need to zoom out, I'd like to tell you a story. It's about an ancient, hidden force influencing its policies today, from Xinjiang to the Pacific, from Tibet to Beijing.

France is weird: Why is it the biggest sea country worldwide? Why was it the most powerful? Why not anymore, even in Europe? Why the only EU country that belongs to both north & south? Why did it form so early, >1000 years ago? It all starts here:

The same lie that drives “the economy” thinking is what’s also driving our Covid disaster. Old-style butcher shops are one way to expose the lie. Fundamental to the idea of society being an economy, is the idea that people act as individuals, and interact inside ‘markets’. /1

Populism learned its craft in popular music. The Top 40 was one of the earliest populist inventions, where music was ranked entirely on popularity. To this day you can’t have a sensible discussion about the quality of music, without hearing ‘it’s all subjective’. /1

The true function of schooling is rarely if ever mentioned. It’s to decouple peoples’ beliefs from their close social groupings. To separate what you know from who you know, and what they believe. To interrupt social hierarchies. /1

If you’re old enough, think back to life before social media. If somebody didn’t know something, what did they do? Often it never came up, they didn’t know what they didn’t know. If it did they could use a library, or Google search etc. Both had levels of skilled mediation. /1

Software estimates are one of the oldest lies we tell ourselves. We all know they don't work, but pretend they mean something and later feel enraged when shit hits the fan. I focused a big part of my undergrad on software estimation. After graduating, I wrote plenty about the

Tracking time is for bureaucrats. If they make you do it, find another job. The worst part of my job was always filling out a timesheet. Nothing made me more miserable than an end-of-day email because I forgot to send my timesheet. Unfortunately, this is common across the

Credit card defaults are rising FASTER than the 2008 Financial Crisis The situation is worse than you think… A thread 🧵

Pandemics are the on/off button for societies. All major catastrophes are. We talk of the health impacts, but there’s a much deeper social, cultural and psychological impact that I think goes unnoticed. The breaking apart of illusions of group life. /1