I run through the kind of financial tools and public frame shifts we can deploy to start pushing this investment program—but I also want to take seriously how horrible the politics are.

I split the general idea of climate adaptation into three categories of investments, and proceed through each with some notes on what makes them uniquely challenging to finance.

The latest @maxread.info is quite good

Cyclo Spora concludes this issue with some well-founded concerns that it will be quite hard to rebuild a national health infrastructure worth its salt.

thethirdcat looks at the polling and the PACs to underscore that MAHA remains a paper tiger of a movement.

Really great piece from M.Bonpland about the fundamental contradiction at the heart of RFK's MAHA movement.

I am cited in a West Virginia PSC filing, except I have no idea what I'm cited for lol

Losa Ruxemburg critiques assumptions of a successful transition to nonalignment and multipolarity, arguing that the comprador bourgeoisie of other countries will continue to hedge toward the benefits that access to American capital has long provided them.

Zanjebar makes the case that other governments should try to stabilize and influence how the American public views the world. Even if the United States' global posture currently swings wildly between political parties, there is still opportunity to build coherence in the longer-term.

Gadfly returns to the magazine to emphasize that "coalitions of the willing" to constrain and move beyond U.S. global governance already exist along multiple dimensions: trade, defense, energy, and finance.

I have learned a lot about how to think about the financial system from @nathantankus.bsky.social--the 2020 piece he wrote on the CMBS crisis that never happened is great, too. This is great:

umberto eco once wrote that MacOS was "catholic" and windows was "protestant." maybe a similar analogy applies here lol www.simongrant.org/web/eco.html

Congrats to Lily on a great paper: She hones in on how transmission and permitting put a ceiling on what the IRA could achieve. She's right to argue we need more direct public support for transmission, clean firm, and the grid.

NYISO energy prices spiking high during today's heatwave, seemingly thanks to a transmission line outage and emergency repairs on a gas compressor station when gas flows are already constrained (thanks @gridstatus.io for the real-time visibility)

Gadfly closes out Issue 8 with a review of Ian Shapiro’s “After the Fall,” which castigates Western governments for refusing to take seriously the building of a stable global order. caravanseraiforum.substack.com/i/202459555/...

marshmallow fluff reviews Dan Wang’s Breakneck a year after it was published, riffing off a talk Wang recently gave at Princeton. caravanseraiforum.substack.com/i/202459555/...

This week’s Caravanserai kicks off with Neil Chiang’s scene report on Mumbai Climate Week, earlier this year, and its depressing lack of representation. caravanseraiforum.substack.com/i/202459555/...

Hometown ominous megastructure

Out today: The Pension Real Estate Association interviewed me on "Bubble or Nothing" and the current state of the AI investment boom. We talk about my report, what it missed, and what's changed since. Really happy with how this turned out: www.preaquarterly-digital.com/preaquarterl...

In the washington post this morning—this statement in the lede is not backed up even once in the body of the piece www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

from dan davies just today! backofmind.substack.com/p/industrial...

peak startup brain is trying to keep selling everyone on the idea that geothermal is the same as oil and gas but better (this is from the recap of last week's energy imperatives summit)

Hard not to read Bouie's piece in dialogue with @beaubaumann.bsky.social lpeproject.org/blog/what-wo...

such a great @jamellebouie.net piece that captures what frustrates me so much about the Democratic policymaking scene these days: "in pursuit of the familiar, the Democratic Party all but passed the baton back to reactionaries working toward something revolutionary" www.nytimes.com/2026/06/03/o...

the candle of arras returns to the magazine to suggest that we should not transfer our hatred for politics into our daily social interactions. "The libidinal satisfaction of dunking on one’s foes can take the place of actually working towards progressive futures." But it shouldn't!

Susa offers up detailed suggestions for how state governments can craft online safety and user rights regulations to defend citizens against the cyberbullies in the White House. When so much of politics is coterminous with the internet, we have to take online governance seriously:

Djeszon kid returns to the magazine to argue that Democrats have no time to waste holding Republicans accountable for their abuses of power. They should finish the impeachment and prosecution process they chickened out of in 2021:

stilldebating closes out this issue with a piece on how messy Chinese industrial policy really is: Most Chinese industrial success has come in spite of central government policy, not necessarily through it!

Neil Chiang highlights how Indian policymakers underestimated Chinese industrial complexity. As Indian policymakers try to open the door (once again) to Chinese investment, they may be too late.

bokchoyluvr99 kicks us off with an analysis of the present limits to China's ability to export its nuclear technology suite. "China has the industrial muscle to build reactors at scale. It hasn’t cracked a strategy to export them."