Slow Read No. 2
31/08/2026 · 15 pieces
Sent before the per-theme emails: one edition covering every theme.
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01 ★★★★★ Added 31/08/2026
The Oligarch Who Declared War on Oligarchs
Original title: L’oligarque qui a déclaré la guerre aux oligarques
Traces how Indonesian president Prabowo Subianto, an oligarch himself, has built a neo-royalist court rather than genuine reform: state vehicles such as Danantara, forced ‘Patriot Bond’ investments and selective corruption prosecutions extract tribute from rival oligarchs while rewarding loyalists. A detailed mechanism for how anti-corruption rhetoric can mask a straightforward redistribution of patronage.
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02 ★★★★★ Added 31/08/2026
The Ideological Foundation of General Vannacci (full text)
Original title: La Base idéologique du général Vannacci (texte intégral)
Demanding The full translated and annotated political platform of Futuro Nazionale, the far-right party founded by Italian general and MEP Roberto Vannacci, with editorial notes on its migration, economic and EU claims. A rare case of a primary doctrinal text published whole rather than summarised or quoted selectively.
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03 ★★★★☆ Added 31/08/2026
The United States wins more often when wars are short
Original title: Les États-Unis gagnent plus souvent lorsque les guerres sont courtes
Reclassifying outcomes across 41 US military interventions since 1945 using three combined conflict datasets, the piece finds an 89 per cent win rate for wars under six months against 50 per cent for longer ones. A short, data-led case that duration itself, not just strategy, predicts outcome.
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04 ★★★★☆ Added 31/08/2026
Exclusive Saxony-Anhalt simulations: AfD would govern in over 6 of 10 scenarios if BSW abstains
Original title: Simulations exclusives Saxe-Anhalt : l’AfD gouvernerait dans plus de 6 scénarios sur 10 en cas d’abstention du BSW
Original electoral simulations put the AfD’s odds of an outright majority in Saxony-Anhalt’s 30 September regional election at 54 per cent, rising past 60 per cent of scenarios if the BSW abstains in the ministerial vote. A case study in how a minor party’s procedural choice can hand power to the far right.
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05 ★★★★☆ Added 31/08/2026
American transit is bad because of scope creep
Argues that US transit agencies have accumulated so many secondary mandates, environmental, social equity, local job creation, community consultation, that funding and attention are diverted from the core job of moving people, and that the low-income riders who depend on transit lose out most. A clean mechanism for a familiar complaint, told through what agencies are actually required to optimise for.
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06 ★★★★☆ Added 31/08/2026
An update on AI’s most important number
Tracks frontier AI lab revenue run rates rather than model benchmarks: OpenAI’s run rate has tripled past USD 40 billion in a year and Anthropic has reached USD 65 billion, with the two labs combined growing from USD 30 billion to USD 105 billion in annualised revenue between January and August. Independent tracking of the number that actually determines whether the capital poured into frontier AI is paying for itself.
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07 ★★★★☆ Added 31/08/2026
Chartbook 471: Still Safe? Cognitive dissonance in the Treasury market
Argues that US bond investors have already repriced Treasurys as a risky asset while the Fed and Treasury still treat them as the safe benchmark, and that this gap lets policymakers dismiss yield spikes as plumbing problems rather than warnings. A mechanism for why the usual signal for unsustainable deficits may not arrive on time.
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08 ★★★★☆ Added 31/08/2026
Against the Lewis Model
Argues that Arthur Lewis’s classic prediction, that capital accumulation would eventually turn labour-abundant developing economies into labour-scarce ones with rising wages, has not held up, and that Marx’s account of capitalism continuously reproducing a surplus of labour through mechanisation fits the persistent wage stagnation seen in both rich and developing economies better. Worth having whether or not the reader is a Marxist, because the empirical claim, that labour scarcity keeps failing to arrive, is doing the real work.
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09 ★★★★☆ Added 31/08/2026
How the US and China Are Meme-ifying Modern War
Documents how both militaries now use gamified, meme-driven content, cute filters on missile footage, cartoon clips paired with strike videos, to build domestic support for military spending despite public opposition to intervention in both countries. Original analysis drawing on official government video output across platforms rather than a general argument about propaganda.
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10 ★★★★☆ Added 31/08/2026
Trump's new project? Privateers in cyberspace
Original title: Le nouveau projet de Trump ? Des corsaires dans le cyberespace
Explains a presidential memorandum authorising vetted American companies to conduct offensive cyber operations against transnational criminal groups under federal oversight, reversing a long-standing US norm that offensive cyber capability stays with the state. Reads this as a genuine doctrinal shift, cyberspace privateering, rather than a one-off announcement.
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11 ★★★★☆ Added 31/08/2026
Dronophobia: An Investigation into the Ailment of the 21st Century
Original title: Dronophobie : enquête sur le mal du XXIe siècle
An investigation into a distinct form of drone-related trauma emerging in Ukraine, hypervigilance and anticipatory anxiety without the clear before-and-after of conventional PTSD, because a drone attack has no defined beginning or end to the waiting. Field-grounded rather than clinical-abstract, and a useful corrective to treating drone warfare purely as a hardware story.
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12 ★★★★☆ Added 31/08/2026
OpenAI Jalapeño: Better Than Nvidia Blackwell
A technical comparison of OpenAI’s own inference chip against Nvidia’s Blackwell on tokens per megawatt, with the caveat that the fairer comparison is against Nvidia’s newer Vera Rubin platform. Dense, vendor-neutral chip economics of the kind that underlies most AI infrastructure commentary written without it.
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13 ★★★★☆ Added 31/08/2026
Why China Must Be Authoritarian
Original title: Pourquoi la Chine doit être autoritaire
Demanding Presents the reasoning of Wang Huning, the CCP’s chief ideologue across three presidencies, for why China’s limited resource base makes centralised, coercive governance structurally necessary during modernisation rather than a permanent rejection of democratic value. Long and demanding, but it is the argument from the actual architect of the doctrine rather than a Western gloss on it.
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14 ★★★☆☆ Added 31/08/2026
Russian economy: billionaire wealth jumped 20% last year
Original title: Économie russe : la fortune des milliardaires a bondi de 20 % l’an dernier
Russia’s 151 billionaires added USD 92 billion in 2025, taking billionaire wealth to 27 per cent of GDP, ahead of the US and India, driven by Kremlin asset redistribution, import substitution and high commodity prices. Short, but the ratio is the kind of original estimate that is hard to find assembled elsewhere.
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15 ★★★☆☆ Added 31/08/2026
What are the lessons of the war in Ukraine for the People's Liberation Army?
Original title: Quelles sont les leçons de la guerre en Ukraine pour l’Armée populaire de libération ?
Argues Chinese military planners treat Ukraine as a transitional case study before AI-dominated, drone-swarm warfare, with soldiers training in drone piloting and urban combat and analysts studying rapid-cycle equipment development. Brief, but a useful corrective for anyone still reading PLA modernisation purely through Taiwan scenarios.
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