Blair Fix
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blairfix.bsky.social
Blair Fix
@blairfix.bsky.social

Political economist. Blogger. Scientist. Editor of the Review of Capital as Power.

Support my research here: https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/membership/

Economics 55%
Sociology 11%
Pinned
In a 2024 paper criticizing the 'billion-dollar-disasters' database, Roger Pielke Jr. published analysis that is best described as a Russian-doll of errors.

Here's my in-depth take down of his appallingly bad work.

economicsfromthetopdown.com/2025/10/26/r...
Roger Pielke Jr.’s Appallingly Bad Analysis of Billion Dollar Disasters – Economics from the Top Down
In a recent paper called Scientific integrity and U.S. “Billion Dollar Disasters”, Roger Pielke Jr. published a chart that's so bad I've devoted a whole essay to debunking it.
economicsfromthetopdown.com

Reposted by Blair Fix

This is also the way to protect people from cars.
Minneapolis tells residents to stop building anti-ICE barricades, but they keep popping up
Minneapolis officials are urging residents not to block traffic as neighbors build makeshift checkpoints to slow and track federal immigration agents.
www.startribune.com

Reposted by Blair Fix

“The more provinces that join Alberta, the greater the likelihood that it will lead to the dismantling of the Canada Health Act...This could end could end Canadian medicare as we know it.” #cdnpoli @alonghurst.bsky.social @poliscirish.bsky.social @policyalternatives.ca
thetyee.ca/Opinion/2026...
How Alberta Plans to Kill Public Health Care Across Canada | The Tyee
A new law opens the door for two-tier care that would destroy medicare.
thetyee.ca
Floored by this story. A man wrote a pollite email to a federal prosecutor objecting to the deportation of an Afghan seeking asylum. DHS responded with an administrative warrant to get the man's info from Google, then visited his home to intimidate him.
DHS Hunts Down 67-Year-Old U.S. Citizen Who Criticized Them in Email
The Department of Homeland Security is using a little-known tool to go after its critics.
newrepublic.com
New from me: It is not just that the US is experiencing democratic backsliding. Authoritarianism has emerged more quickly than in other benchmark countries.

This graph from John Burn-Murdoch sums it up. 🧵
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/autocracy-...
Melania’s first screening in Times Square draws four people, at least three of them professional critics. www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie...
"They told us what they were going to do. They published it. They put it on a website. And when it happened, the press was surprised."

Hoo boy, everyone should bookmark this @parkermolloy.com piece & make sure everyone involved in media reads it.
This is Literally the Job
Political journalists need to stop pretending they don't know what Republicans are going to do.
www.readtpa.com

This is a landmark. The NY Times uses the phrase 'state terror' ... to refer to the federal government.

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/o...
Opinion | State Terror Has Arrived
www.nytimes.com

Given the ongoing US piracy of Venezuelan oil, it seems like a good time to think about the future of US oil production.

That future doesn't look good.

economicsfromthetopdown.com/2026/01/24/u...
US Oil-and-Gas Production: Signs of an Impending Bust – Economics from the Top Down
The US is in the midst of an oil boom. How long will it last?
economicsfromthetopdown.com
Holy crap.

This is the most damning video yet.

It shows Border Patrol agents clearly taking Alex's firearm, running it away, and THEN executed him in cold blood by emptying a clip into his face.

Murder.
They say “where’s the gun?” — After the shots

Because they don’t realize one of them had already taken it — before the shots
ANOTHER ANGLE: the original video was deleted but I screen capped it. Here it is.
This is courage. Looking a masked, government fascist dead in the eye, face to face, knowing full well that your life is on the line.

If elected officials had 1/10th of Alex Pretti's resolve, we would have far fewer troubles.
Alex from our time working together, while he was in nursing school. Later, he moved to ICU, working as a nurse to support critically ill Veterans. He had such a great attitude. We’d chat between patients about trying to get in a mountain bike ride together. Will never happen now
From a friend in Minneapolis, just now:
Seriously, @people.com has been meeting the moment better than 90% of publications with direct reporting and crystal clear headlines.

This is a good way for the low-information voters who are usually detached from the news cycle to get turned around.
What America will read this weekend while in line at the grocery checkout:

@peoplemag.bsky.social #ICE
people.com/ice-detains-...

Reposted by Blair Fix

ICE Deems Being In Privacy Of Own Home Obstruction Of Justice https://theonion.com/ice-deems-being-in-privacy-of-own-home-obstruction-of-justice/
National media should really be covering the fact thay every major school, museum, and arts institution in the Twin Cities, and hundreds of local businesses are closed tomorrow to protest federal occupation.

Nothing like this at this scale has happened anywhere in America anytime in living memory.
The disconnect between management and employee on AI usage is big. At the same time, CEOs are reporting they aren't seeing any revenue growth from AI.

🤷

www.wsj.com/lifestyle/wo...
CEOs Say AI Is Making Work More Efficient. Employees Tell a Different Story.
How much time workers say the technology saves them on the job is vastly different from what executives report.
www.wsj.com
This is the most astonishing graph of what the Trump regime has done to US science. They have destroyed the federal science workforce across the board. The negative impacts on Americans will be felt for generations, and the US might never be the same again.

www.nature.com/immersive/d4...
Nation Yearns For Relative Calm Of ‘President A Giant Pedophile’ News Cycle https://theonion.com/nation-yearns-for-relative-calm-of-president-a-giant-pedophile-news-cycle/
We are watching one of the wildest things a nation-state has ever done: A superpower is committing suicide because the GOP Congress is too cowardly to stand up to the Mad King.

This is one of the wildest moments in all of geopolitics ever.
Footage shows Danish troops arriving in Greenland as part of a new military deployment. Among the personnel who landed on the island is Major General Peter H. Boysen, Chief of the Danish Army Command. #Greenland

Reposted by Blair Fix

Reminds me of one of my favorite memes:
Photo by Pierre Lavie. Yes this is me. And I threw my Leica. It landed on the bass plate with hardly a scratch. Another Photographer grabbed it along with my phone and I was able to track him later. I was held face down tear gas deployed right in front of me and pepper sprayed directly into the eye.
I don’t think people quite understand that the occupation by ICE in the Twin Cities has more or less erased non-white people from public life. They cannot safely exist in any space accessible to the public and moving between private places leaves folks vulnerable to kidnapping by armed masked goons.

Reposted by Blair Fix

Public funds belong in public schools. Sign the Petition in Red Deer!

sign.abfundspublicschools.ca?og=USR4863_1...
Alberta Funds Public Schools
A Citizen Initiative petitioning the Government of Alberta to improve its Public Education funding model.
sign.abfundspublicschools.ca
21-year-old activist injured by ICE:

I will be blind for life. I have fractures in my skull that they can't fix. They pulled a piece of plastic the size of a nickel out of my eye. I had shards of metal, glass, and plastic behind my eye and in my skull. They said it was a miracle I survived.

When I get sick of politics (which is all the time these days), I read about cosmology. In my view, we're now experiencing a slow-burning revolution in our understanding of the cosmos. It's exhilarating to watch. My outsider take:

economicsfromthetopdown.com/2026/01/15/a...
An Unfolding Scientific Revolution in Cosmology – Economics from the Top Down
I take a break from political economy and discuss what I see as the unfolding revolution in our understanding of the universe.
economicsfromthetopdown.com
Trump says a lot of deranged shit, but, per this Reuters article — and the threats of invoking the Insurrection Act in Minnesota this morning — he is very clearly exploring how to cancel the midterms.
www.reuters.com/world/us/fiv...
ICE agents fled from the crowd and left behind their CONOPS battle plan for Minneapolis, including agent's names, hotel rooms, phone numbers, boxes of license plates, and tac radio frequencies.