Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Nick Taylor

CLaSP @clasp-qmul.bsky.social · 5h

Interested about financialisation and why states foster policies that lead to the dominance of financial capital? Come to CLaSP's seminar:
Event: Financial Capital, the State, and Politics
When: 30th October, 2025; 4-530 PM
Where: Graduate Centre, QMUL Mile End Campus
Speaker: Dr. Nicholas Bernards

3 3

Nick Taylor @ntaylor.bsky.social · 5h

Stranded assets.

Duncan Lamont @duncanlamont2.bsky.social · 6h

🫣 Profits are for wimps. Revenues are for losers. Ideas sell, not fundamentals

Over half the Nasdaq market is loss making. About 1-in-8 companies have no revenues

There are a lot more in these camps than in the past

3

Reposted by Nick Taylor

Lea Ypi @leaypi.bsky.social · 7h

no words

Young lives cut short on an unimaginable scale: the 18,457 children on Gaza’s list of war dead

Every name on a list compiled by health authorities in Gaza of the child victims of Israel’s offensive

www.theguardian.com

120 190

Nick Taylor @ntaylor.bsky.social · 20h

"According to the report, between 2017 & 2019, insurers claimed a net loss of $432 million while somehow paying out $680 million in dividends to their stockholders. During the same period, their affiliates pocketed roughly $14 billion in profits." Creative accounting by Florida insurance companies!

Nick Taylor @ntaylor.bsky.social · 20h

A great article that also highlights how profitable insurance remains for investors, and makes a nice contrast to insurance as solidarity/interdependence. The moral economy of climate change, risk and responsibility, as Rebecca Elliott et al. have written about so well.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse @whitehouse.senate.gov · 1d

The New Republic chimes in on climate danger to insurance markets, mortgage availability, and property values.

How McKinsey and Climate Change Wrecked Insurance

A secret report shows that Florida underwriters were banking massive profits while stiffing customers. Welcome to insurance in the era of climate collapse.

newrepublic.com

1 1 3

Reposted by Nick Taylor

Jessica Green @greenprofgreen.bsky.social · 1d

Today is the day!!! Existential Politics is out in the world!

Read about why we’re doing climate policy wrong (too focused on measuring emissions) & what we should do instead (focus on $$ to constrain fossil asset owners & expand green asset owners). Just in time for #COP30.

Existential Politics

A new way to tackle the real politics of climate change through asset revaluation

press.princeton.edu

4 17 49

Reposted by Nick Taylor

Elise Wang @elisewang.bsky.social · 1d

One of the more incredible stories out of LA this year has been how a taco review blog became the best on-the-ground coverage of ICE raids in the city.

They do a dispatch every day, follow-up on the kidnapped people (which almost no media outlet has done), and fact-check government claims.

Mother Jones @motherjones.com · 1d

@lataco.bsky.social first began as a blog documenting local Mexican cuisine. Now, it’s an essential reporting powerhouse to the city as Trump’s mass deportation plot unfolds.

Check out the latest from our friends at Reveal: tinyurl.com/4cm2bsdr

20 1.9K 4.7K

Nick Taylor @ntaylor.bsky.social · 1d

Lauren Martin at Durham (also coauthor of the above) has done loads of work on circuits of value in refugee carcerality. What's more, she's looked at the US context & immigration detention as 'carceral real estate'

doi.org/10.1111/anti...

Conceptualising US Immigration Detention as Carceral Real Estate

The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement operates the largest detention system in the world, holding over 35,000 people in October 2023. The vast majority of this capacity is outsourced to correcti...

doi.org

Nick Taylor @ntaylor.bsky.social · 1d

If you're wondering whether academics have written on 'asylum hotels', I can point you in the direction of Martina Tazzioli's work on refugee carcerality & value extraction in the UK, Greece & Italy. See esp. section on financialised asylum accommodation in the UK.

dx.doi.org/10.1177/0263...

1 3 7

Reposted by Nick Taylor

Economic thought @economicthought.bsky.social · 5d

Interview: The economic style of reasoning is not value-neutral! An interview with Elizabeth Popp Berman, by Ditte Andersen
doi.org/10.1177/0001...

1 7 9

Reposted by Nick Taylor

Agenda Publishing @agendapub.bsky.social · 12d

Just arrived:

The Social Foundations of Global Finance
edited by @chris-clarke.bsky.social & @benclift.bsky.social

Chapters by @johannespetry.bsky.social, @hozic.bsky.social, Randall Germain, Magnus Ryner, Matthew Watson & others...

#OpenAccess eBook available 👇
www.agendapub.com/page/detail/...

7 10

Reposted by Nick Taylor

CLaSP @clasp-qmul.bsky.social · 2d

On October 16th, CLaSP are hosting a preview screening of Om's Behind the Furrow, followed by discussion with the director. Register for a free ticket:

www.claspblog.org/events/behin...

BEHIND THE FURROW: Film Screening and discussion with Jonathan Om — CLaSP Blog

CLaSP invites you for a preview screening and discussion of a documentary film by Jonathan Om.

www.claspblog.org

1

Reposted by Nick Taylor

CLaSP @clasp-qmul.bsky.social · 2d

New on the CLaSP blog: artist & filmmaker Jonathan Om interviews CLaSP's Matan Kaminer about Thai migrant workers in Israel's agricultural frontier settlements.

www.claspblog.org/blogposts/sx...

Farming on the Frontlines: A conversation between Jonathan Om and Matan Kaminer — CLaSP Blog

Artist and filmmaker Jonathan Om interviews CLaSP member Matan Kaminer about his ethnographic work on Thai migrant workers in Israeli agriculture. They discuss the history behind how these workers cam...

www.claspblog.org

1 1 1

Reposted by Nick Taylor

Daniel Mertens @danmertens.bsky.social · 6d

Hi bsky people - if you care about how the EU seeks to fund all things "social-ecological transformation", which institutional architecture has emerged out of it, and why it is both contested and an unrealized promise: please have a look at our special issue on the politics of sustainable finance 👇

JEPP Journal @jeppjournal.bsky.social · 21d

🌱🪙 In their introduction to the Special Issue "Puzzling, powering, profiting: The politics of sustainable finance in Europe", editors
@danmertens.bsky.social and @nataschavanderzwan.bsky.social define EU sustainable finance & outline how best to analyse it 💡

🔗 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

11 22

Reposted by Nick Taylor

Mat Paterson @matpaterson.bsky.social · 7d

The UK's last coal-fired power station shut a year ago yesterday. Always worth remembering this was anything but a just transition ... theecologist.org/2024/feb/12/...

2 3

Reposted by Nick Taylor

Gernot Wagner @gwagner.com · 8d

Not April 1st, not @theonion.com. Just another Monday in Trump land

www.politico.com/news/2025/09...

Energy Dept. adds ‘climate change’ and ‘emissions’ to banned words list
It is the latest in a series of Trump administration efforts to dispute, silence or downplay climate change.

24 64

Reposted by Nick Taylor

CUSP //: Post Growth Research Centre @cusp.ac.uk · 8d

New book 📚 // In #TheMeaningOfGrowth, CUSP researcher @maitrereynard.bsky.social investigates the roots of political resistance to environmental science and policy in Western societies, and suggests a new approach to overcoming it.
With a foreword by @timjackson.org.uk →
cusp.ac.uk/themes/m/rd-...

The Meaning of Growth—Anti-Environmentalist Rhetoric and the Defence of Modernity | Book by Richard Douglas

In this book, Richard Douglas uncovers the cultural roots of resistance to environmental action. Through a close reading of anti-environmentalist rhetoric, ...

cusp.ac.uk

7 8

Reposted by Nick Taylor

Klaudia Prodani @kprodani.bsky.social · 14d

🚨New article🚨 Why has the promise of universal ownership been broken, as @benbraun.bsky.social has suggested?

Our argument: because the Big Three are hardly universal. They mainly invest in those that can insulate themselves from environmental harm - big tech & financials in the Global North.
🧵

2 18 39

Reposted by Nick Taylor

Robbie Gillett @robbiegillett.bsky.social · 15d

Curious to see that UK-headquartered fossil fuel giants Shell and BP have the highest number of marketing contracts globally - according to new research from @cleancreatives.bsky.social Major polluters require advertising and PR firms to maintain their social licence to operate.

Clean Creatives @cleancreatives.bsky.social · 15d

The receipts are unrolling, and this industry's ties to fossil fuels are unraveling.

3 3

Reposted by Nick Taylor

Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 15d

I reckon a fossil fuel being heavily promoted at climate week is a bad thing

Natural gas is making a quiet but highly placed comeback at Climate Week. At a number of events on Tuesday, senior officials made a case for gas as essential for energy security and a buttress to renewables. Anna Bjerde, managing director of operations at the World Bank, told a small group of reporters that the lender is agnostic about which technologies it helps finance to improve access to electricity around Africa. The main focus of that work has been on solar, she said, but “gas has to be discussed and pursued” for providing baseload power. “We should be leaning in to help countries develop gas.”

That view should get a warm reception from the Trump administration, which has reportedly been pressuring the World Bank to unwind its restrictions on financing oil and gas production. And it was a view echoed in a separate briefing at the Rockefeller Foundation offices by Daniel Chapo, president of Mozambique, who said he is working to expand the country’s large hydroelectric dam while also pursuing gas production deals with Western drilling companies, and hopes to use more of that gas for domestic power plants.

In the evening, between glasses of prosecco and mini lobster rolls at a reception in a high-end Times Square hotel, Ditte Juul Jørgensen, director-general for energy at the European Commission, took the podium alongside Toby Rice, CEO of major US gas producer EQT, and lauded the security benefits of LNG. “The energy war in Ukraine has come to redefine our strategy of independence,” she said. “The energy transition will continue to be our path, but we will need gas for many years to come.”

4 35 120

Reposted by Nick Taylor

The Syllabus @the-syllabus.bsky.social · 18d

The attempt to financialize psychedelics has collided with the unruliness of these substances both as therapeutic assets and as vectors of cultural resistance. Our article of the week traces the rise and fall of commercial psychedelics.

By Sandy B. Hager in @finandsoc.bsky.social

buff.ly/7QsCdDI

6 9

Reposted by Nick Taylor

CLaSP @clasp-qmul.bsky.social · 16d

Latest on the CLaSP blog: Why has China’s digital economy developed along such a distinctly consumer-facing path? @js-tan.bsky.social explains 'The Labour Foundations of China’s Consumer-First Internet'

www.claspblog.org/blogposts/7l...

The Labour Foundations of China’s Consumer-First Internet — CLaSP Blog

JS Tan explains how cheap labour and flexible employment practices encourage internet firms to build consumer platforms.

www.claspblog.org

2 3

Reposted by Nick Taylor

Inga Rademacher @ingarade.bsky.social · 16d

We are organising a small lecture series at CITYPERC this semester on "Financial Futures: Tech, Green Transitions, China and the Global South" with four brilliant speakers: @nataschavanderzwan.bsky.social, @johannespetry.bsky.social, David Kampmann and @bbonizzi.bsky.social

1 3 5

Reposted by Nick Taylor

Brett Christophers @brettchristophers.bsky.social · 20d

A new piece on extractive capitalism for @thetls.bsky.social, reviewing 4 new books, including @triofrancos.bsky.social's much-anticipated EXTRACTION and Partha Dasgupta's widely-
praised ON NATURAL CAPITAL

Paying Nature’s price

“What does it mean”, asks Thea Riofrancos in Extraction, “to defend people and the planet from extraction – when others frame this same extraction as

www.the-tls.com

28 63

Reposted by Nick Taylor

John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 23d

Issue 2 of The BREAK–DOWN lands with us on Wednesday.

Subscribe now for £22, and get the best climate writing delivered to straight to you
www.break-down.org
@the-breakdown.bsky.social

3 5