how The Economist reported the invention of the electric lightbulb economist.com/interactive/da…

gorpcore sighthound

Wonderfully obscure image at the top of the Wikipedia article on kibitzers

There I was looking at France and thinking that “Reconquest” was a bonkers name for a political party, only to learn that there’s been a nationalist outfit in Bulgaria since 2005 that is literally called “Attack” dw.com/en/bulgarians-…

Wrote about salmon farming, and some of the problems the industry faces in Scotland economist.com/britain/2024/0…

Sovereign debt nerds will be familiar with the story of Poyais… the fake country invented by a British aide to Simon Bolivar who spent 20 years hustling his phony in Paris and London in the early 18th century… well after 10 years of searching I finally own one of the bonds!!!

Obviously the Lithuanian/Scots Gaelic neologisms here are v cool but the Cornish (Pow Grouzi) is weird and striking, too

huge “I’m a fighter not a quitter” energy

The New Yorker cannot keep getting away with this

Sunak posted a Little Dark Age edit of himself, it's never been more over for the tories lmao

I found the James Carville rugby shirt

British version of this dropped The more people drive to work, the more that constituency votes Farage

“At a farm in Colonsay over 200,000 fish died in a week.” Today on “The Intelligence” Fraser McIlwraith explains why Scottish salmon, Britain’s biggest food export, are in trouble econ.st/3WgkbwQ 🎧

Why is Azerbaijan president and all-round wrong’un Ilham Aliyev appearing in spammy adverts for travel insurance?

wrote about Russia’s weird wartime housing bubble (and the crazy policy that caused it) economist.com/finance-and-ec…

brat summer issue

New in the London Review of Books, about Black coal miners in eastern Kentucky, and other things lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/…

a short history of presidential feuds with the Fed economist.com/the-economist-…

spotted in Taipei

In January 97% of Austria’s gas imports came from Russia—an even bigger share than before the war in Ukraine. My piece on why some European countries are still buying so much Russian gas (and why some of their supplies could soon stop): economist.com/europe/2024/09…