Indian Supreme Court demands government answers on voter purge
As one advocate warned India’s Supreme Court on Monday that “this country will burn” unless action is taken to stop what thousands of protesters have denounced as an illegal purge of voters by the head of the Election Commission of India, the court demanded accountability from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.
Chief Justice Surya Kant said in a hearing that the court had not approved changes to a new form used by the Election Commission of India for registering new voters, contradicting a statement from the ECI last month which said the document had been upheld by the court.“Modified Form 6 has not been approved by us, let us be very clear,” said Kant.
The court called on Modi’s government, the ECI, and the head of the commission, Gyanesh Kumar, to answer “in a clear, transparent manner” for the massive upheaval of the national voter rolls, from which more than 130 million names have been removed in recent months.
The changes to the voter list have sparked calls for Kumar’s resignation, particularly at protests that have erupted across the country, led by student groups and the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a political movement led by young people whom Kant compared to cockroaches earlier this year.
The group’s website declares, “Gyanesh, it’s done, bro,” and thousands of people have joined protests like those that forced the resignation of India’s education minister over the summer.
Last week, hundreds of protesters were detained, with journalists reportedly among those who were arrested—prompting outcry from Amnesty International over the government’s “blatant attack on the rights to liberty and freedom of peaceful assembly.”
In New Delhi in particular, police have been denounced for their aggressive response to the uprising, forcing hundreds of people into police vehicles. Authorities said they were investigating reports that officers had sexually assaulted three journalists at the protests over the weekend.
The Supreme Court took up two petitions Monday, questioning the credibility of the ECI’s efforts to “purify” the voter rolls, as the commission has termed its actions, and calling for an independent inquiry into Kumar’s management of the “special intensive revision” (SIR) process.
Another hearing will be held later this week.
Kant said the court wanted a response from Kumar and the commission about allegations that decisions about the SIR were made unilaterally by Kumar. Media reports last month said the two other ECI commissioners had objected to the revision of voter rolls, which the government has claimed is aimed at eliminating duplicates and the names of dead and ineligible voters, as well as “illegal infiltrators.”
People across Delhi and states including Bihar and West Bengal have said they were wrongly removed from voter rolls, and protesters have said the revision appeared to target Muslim voters, who have opposed Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.
Protesters on Monday symbolically posed as dead people to show that voters have been wrongly eliminated from voter rolls, despite still being alive and eligible to participate in elections.
“Deletions of voters have been made in the largest democracy,” Menaka Guruswamy, a lawyer for one of the petitioners who brought the cases to the Supreme Court, told The Guardian. “We have grown up with free and fair elections, that is not the case now.”
AFP Photographer Beaten by Israeli Settlers During West Bank Olive Harvest
Israeli settlers beat veteran Agence France-Presse photographer Jaafar Ashtiyeh, and a Palestinian was shot Tuesday near Aqraba, south of Nablus, according to AFP and Palestinian medical officials, as journalists covered attacks on Palestinians harvesting olives in the northern West Bank. Ashtiyeh, 58, suffered injuries to his head and torso and was hospitalized in Nablus.
According to AFP’s firsthand account, Ashtiyeh and photographer John Wessels were near Palestinian olive pickers when a man approached on a quad bike and opened fire. A Palestinian was seen wounded in the foot. Several armed men then approached the journalists, and two struck Ashtiyeh with their guns as he tried to get into a vehicle. AFP said his camera equipment was taken.
The Palestinian Authority said one Palestinian was shot in the leg and two others were severely beaten in Aqraba.
AFP Global News Director Phil Chetwynd called for an investigation. “We strongly condemn yet another serious attack on journalists trying to report on events in the West Bank and demand a full investigation,” he said. AFP said Israeli soldiers were positioned nearby during the assault.
The Israel Defense Forces and Israel Police did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the Aqraba incident. Separately Tuesday, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, Police Commissioner Daniel Levy, and Shin Bet chief David Zini held a joint security assessment that included efforts to “address nationalist crime.” The statement did not refer specifically to Aqraba or the attack on Ashtiyeh.
The incident came during the annual olive harvest, when Palestinian farmers frequently report attacks, vandalism, and difficulty reaching agricultural land near Israeli settlements and outposts.
Settler violence has increased across the West Bank in recent years. Palestinian homes, vehicles, farmland, and olive groves have repeatedly been targeted, while arrests and prosecutions remain uncommon.
More than 500,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank alongside about 3 million Palestinians. Most of the international community considers the settlements illegal under international law, a position Israel disputes.
How geopolitical tensions tainted the 2026 Asian Games
The 2026 Asian Games in Japan drew to a close on October 4 following two weeks of competition between 45 countries and territories across 43 sports. Despite the official slogan “imagine one Asia”, fragmented regional politics came to the fore as the event unfolded.
Just days before the games officially began, tensions between Japan and South Korea flared after an actor portraying a medieval Japanese warlord featured at a welcoming ceremony for the athletes in the host city of Nagoya. The warlord, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, is a local hero in Nagoya but also led the 16th-century Japanese invasion of Korea.
At the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics, the South Korean delegation was asked to remove a banner at the athletes’ village containing words attributed to a Korean admiral, Yi Sun-sin, who defeated the Japanese Navy in the same medieval war. With this in mind, the Nagoya ceremony particularly upset South Korea, which filed a complaint with the event organiser.
Historical issues are an area of particular sensitivity between South Korea and Japan. The 16th-century invasion was followed by a Japanese occupation of the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945.
A statue of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who led the Japanese invasion of Korea in 1592, at the Hokoku shrine in the Japanese city of Osaka.cowardlion / Shutterstock
The 2026 Asian Games also marked the first time in more than four decades that North Korea sent its athletes to a sporting competition in Japan. Their participation is noteworthy in itself. Japan and North Korea have never established formal diplomatic ties, and sanctions imposed by Japan on the communist state ordinarily prevent North Koreans from travelling there.
However, Japan is home to a large North Korean diaspora made up of people related to those who moved there during the colonial period. Members of this group supported the rare North Korean visitors, hanging placards in the stadiums bearing patriotic slogans such as “Let’s show the majesty of the Republic”.
In a post-match press conference after defeating Bangladesh 10-0, the North Korean women’s football team coach, Pak Song-jin expressed his gratitude for this support. He said their cheers at the match “gave great strength and encouragement to our players and myself”. The team celebrated with these fans in the stadium after the game.
The North Korean delegation interacted mostly with this diaspora group during the games because Pyongyang tightly controls how its athletes engage with foreign nationals at international competitions. North Korea’s leadership are particularly concerned about their athletes defecting to other countries while competing abroad.
But despite these restrictions, which include 24-hour monitoring by intelligence personnel, South Korean media has reported that the authorities could not prevent two members of the North Korean team from seeking asylum in Japan.
North Korean authorities closely monitor their nation’s athletes at international competitions.
One of the more predictable frictions on display at the Asian Games was between South and North Korea. In the opening days of the games, North Korea’s national anthem was mistakenly played for the South Korean men’s hockey team.
While this was probably an administrative error, it drew sharp criticism from South Korean officials. In a statement, the South Korean Sport and Olympic Committee said such an incident “should never happen” at an international sporting competition.
The two countries then met in a group-stage game in the women’s football, which ended in a 1-1 draw. Their coaches did not shake hands afterwards. This uneasiness continued at the post-match press conference, with Park Sung-jin not responding to questions from South Korean media.
On another occasion, a member of the North Korean shooting team called Kim Hyon-Suk did not show up to a scheduled media conference where many South Korean journalists were present. And North Korean weightlifting gold medallist Ri Seong-Geum refused to answer questions from a reporter from Seoul who was not using the term “DPR Korea”.
North Korean athletes, coaches and sports officials have long insisted on the use of this title at international competitions. The name stands for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and respects the sovereignty of the communist country, which South Korea does not formally recognise.
Taiwan’s diplomatic isolation
Taiwan’s delegation also encountered political problems in Japan. Before the games began, a banner was vandalised at the Taiwanese team’s training camp. The banner read: “national sport training centre”.
Taiwan takes part in international sporting events under the name of Chinese Taipei because its sovereignty is disputed internationally. China considers Taiwan one of its provinces. The banner represented Taiwan as an independent country, and this expression may have antagonised some groups at the competition.
The Taiwanese sport minister, Lee Yang, was then barred from attending the athletes’ village welcoming ceremony. Event organisers were concerned that his presence might trigger political controversy. The Taiwanese athletes left the venue in protest and, eventually, Lee was allowed to enter the village and the ceremony resumed.
Event marshals also banned Taiwanese fans from wearing clothing bearing the word “Taiwan”, as this was deemed a political message. And officials put up signs in the stands stating that waving Taiwan’s flag was prohibited in the stadiums. Taiwanese fans chanted “Team Taiwan” during the games in defiance of the regulations.
The fractured regional relations on show at the 2026 Asian Games should not be viewed in isolation. As world politics has become more divisive, international sporting contests are often turning into a stage for political contention.
Paramount completes $111B Warner merger, creating “Skydance” behemoth
Paramount Skydance completed its $111 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery today, after a last-ditch effort to block the deal was rejected by Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan.
The post-merger company is called Skydance, taking the name of a firm that Paramount bought in a separate deal last year. The new Skydance combines two of the largest movie studios, streaming services Paramount+ and HBO Max, CBS, CNN, “and a portfolio of live sports including CBS Sports and TNT Sports, as well as a deep programming library and expansive collection of brands and franchises,” Skydance said today in a press release announcing completion of the deal.
The merger was delayed a bit by a lawsuit filed by California and 11 other states. In July, US District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín in the Northern District of California ruled that the combination would likely reduce competition substantially and violate antitrust laws.
California settled the lawsuit last month, and the other states involved went along with the compromise. A coalition of free speech and media advocacy groups urged the judge to reject the settlement, saying it will give residents of the states that sued Paramount “virtually nothing.”
Martínez-Olguín approved the settlement on September 30, saying the deal “represents a reasonable factual and legal resolution of the dispute.” She wrote that a typical settlement “does not fully remediate an alleged violation or even necessarily resolve the ultimate factual and legal issues of a case.” It “reflects a compromise of the claims short of full adjudication—compromise that may leave some dissatisfaction for both sides and the public but a compromise that saves the risk, time, and expense of litigating through trial.”
The settlement addresses the lawsuit’s complaints about film distribution “by requiring certain minimum thresholds of investment and release of domestic films,” and addresses complaints about licensing of basic cable channels with “requirements for continued, separate negotiations of distribution for the two entities’ basic cable holdings,” the judge wrote. Objections based on “hopes and desires for the proposed consent decree to reach farther—to achieve more—do not rise to the level of legal violations upon which the Court can reject the parties’ negotiated resolution,” she wrote.
Merger opponents strike out at Supreme Court
A separate lawsuit in the same district court, filed by five consumers who purchase streaming service subscriptions or other video products, also failed. The five consumers sought review in the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which rejected the plaintiffs’ request. The plaintiffs then filed an emergency application to block the deal with Kagan, who handles emergency requests for the Ninth Circuit. Kagan denied the application yesterday without comment.
The settlement with California requires Skydance to set up an “Editorial Independence Board” for CBS News and CNN. The board’s members would be chosen by Skydance and report to the company’s board of directors. The settlement term was adopted amid concerns about CBS and CNN’s ability to report news independently. CNN CEO Mark Thompson and CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss will retain their roles in the merged firm.
Paramount CEO David Ellison reportedly told Trump administration officials that he would make big changes at CNN, a frequent target of Trump’s wrath. Last year, Paramount won US approval to buy Skydance after reaching a $16 million settlement with Trump and agreeing to install what Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr described as a “bias monitor” at CBS.
The US Department of Justice approved the Paramount/Warner merger in June, a decision that reportedly surprised DOJ staff lawyers who were leaning toward recommending that the agency file an antitrust lawsuit to block it. In September, the FCC allowed Paramount to finance the merger by selling large equity stakes to the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.
Reuters reports that Skydance is “expected to carry about $80 billion in debt, putting pressure on Ellison to grow streaming, preserve cash flow from cable networks and improve theatrical film performance.” The sovereign wealth funds have non-voting shares in Skydance, while the Ellison family and RedBird Capital Partners own 100 percent of the voting shares.
The Key Witness Against Richard Glossip Just Returned to Court. It Didn’t Go Well.
When the elevator doors opened, the reporters waiting in the hallway immediately crowded around the gaunt, orange-clad man who emerged, escorted by his public defender and a sheriff’s deputy. The three men made their way toward the seventh-floor courtroom of Oklahoma County District Court Judge Natalie Mai, as reporters shouted questions.
“Why did you kill Barry Van Treese?” one asked.
Justin Sneed, 49, didn’t answer, his handcuffs and waist chain clanging as he walked. With a short, graying goatee and long brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, Sneed maintained a hollow stare. Inside the courtroom, his lawyer directed him to a chair just in front of the jury box. Sneed sat, his hands clasped in front of him, and kept his gaze toward the floor. Directly across the room was Richard Glossip, the man nearly executed for killing their boss — a grisly murder that Sneed actually committed.
Sneed was 19 years old when he beat Van Treese to death at the Best Budget Inn, a rundown motel Van Treese owned on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. Sneed admitted to the January 1997 murder but swore Glossip put him up to it. Glossip insisted he was innocent and, apart from Sneed’s account, there was scant evidence connecting him to the crime. Still, in exchange for a life sentence, Sneed became the state’s star witness against Glossip, clinching his conviction and sending him to death row.
It would not take long for Sneed’s story to start falling apart. Glossip’s original conviction was overturned after a state court found that Glossip’s trial lawyers failed to present critical exculpatory evidence — a video of Sneed’s police interrogation that showed Oklahoma City detectives pressuring him into implicating Glossip. Nevertheless, in 2004, a second jury reconvicted Glossip and again sentenced him to death.
In 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated Glossip’s conviction, concluding that it was rooted in false testimony and prosecutorial misconduct. The justices found that Sneed lied on the stand, dismantling the basis for the state’s case. “Besides Sneed, no other witness and no physical evidence established that Glossip orchestrated Van Treese’s murder,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the majority. “Thus, the jury could convict Glossip only if it believed Sneed.”
Many expected Glossip’s saga to end there. Instead, Oklahoma announced it would retry Glossip for first-degree murder, once again relying on Sneed. “The evidence presented will be essentially the same as was presented in the first two trials,” prosecutor Jimmy Harmon told Mai earlier this year.
Glossip’s attorneys have strenuously objected to the state’s plan to use the same discredited evidence for a third time. They are also adamant that they should have a chance to put Sneed on the witness stand, so that Mai can assess his credibility before trial. It is this insistence that led Glossip and Sneed to sit face to face in court for the first time in decades.
Glossip, now 63, was released on bond in May. He sat at the defense table in a navy suit and crisp white shirt while the daylong hearing got underway. Mai had convened the September 30 proceeding to consider a flurry of defense motions, many of which centered on Sneed’s role in the case. Sneed had been subpoenaed in advance of the hearing, which attracted a gaggle of reporters to Mai’s courtroom. But it was unclear whether he would take the stand.
Much of the time was spent listening to lawyers on both sides argue over ongoing conflicts in the case. Glossip’s legal team has repeatedly clashed with prosecutors over the state’s obligation to disclose evidence before trial. The constant disagreements have threatened to derail Mai’s tight trial schedule; after initially setting Glossip’s trial for September, she has since pushed the trial date to December 7.
But that too seems vanishingly unlikely. As the hearing dragged on, the bigger question was whether a trial will happen at all.
It was exactly 11 years earlier, on September 30, 2015, that Glossip came perilously close to being put to death at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, only for officials to realize at the eleventh hour that they had procured the wrong combination of drugs to carry out his lethal injection. In the decade that followed, Glossip’s defense attorney, Don Knight, reinvestigated the case and uncovered a trove of evidence previously withheld by the state. He also secured a host of new witnesses who came forward to say that, despite the state’s portrayal of Sneed as a hapless dolt who was entirely under Glossip’s control, Sneed was actually cunning, volatile, and entirely capable of murder on his own.
The revelations eventually prompted a bipartisan group of Oklahoma lawmakers to question Glossip’s conviction and seek an independent investigation into the case. In June 2022, the law firm Reed Smith LLP published the first in a series of exhaustive reports, unearthing even more evidence undermining prosecutors’ theory of the crime and revealing that the state had willfully destroyed key pieces of evidence before Glossip’s 2004 retrial. The following year, newly elected state Attorney General Gentner Drummond announced his own probe into the case. That investigation found myriad problems with Glossip’s prosecution, persuading Drummond that Glossip’s conviction and death sentence should not stand.
Drummond asked the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to vacate Glossip’s conviction but it refused, once again setting Glossip up for execution. The attorney general took unprecedented steps to spare Glossip’s life, ultimately joining Glossip’s efforts to get the case before the Supreme Court — and taking a victory lap after the justices finally ruled in Glossip’s favor in February 2025.
But just a few months after the high court ruling, Drummond did an abrupt about-face, announcing that he would retry Glossip for first-degree murder. The reversal coincided with Drummond’s campaign for governor, which ended in a primary defeat this past August. In the meantime, defense attorneys repeatedly reiterated Drummond’s own critiques of the case, emphasizing that, until recently, he vehemently criticized the same evidence his prosecutors plan to reuse.
Among these criticisms were key concessions Drummond made regarding misconduct by Connie Smothermon, the lead prosecutor at Glossip’s 2004 retrial. At the heart of the Supreme Court ruling was that Smothermon not only failed to disclose key notes about Sneed’s psychiatric history, but also failed to correct portions of Sneed’s testimony that she knew were false.
Drummond also conceded that Smothermon improperly sought to alter Sneed’s testimony before he took the stand at the retrial to make it fit the forensic evidence. At Glossip’s first trial, Sneed denied attacking Van Treese with a knife even though a knife was found at the scene — and despite the medical examiner’s findings that there were puncture wounds on Van Treese’s chest. Midway through Glossip’s second trial, Smothermon wrote a note to Sneed’s defense attorney, indicating that there were inconsistencies Sneed needed to clear up.
“Our biggest problem,” Smothermon wrote, “is still the knife.” When Sneed later took the stand, he testified that he did, in fact, stab Van Treese.
Glossip’s attorneys did not discover this note until 2022. In its ruling, the Supreme Court agreed with Drummond that Smothermon violated Glossip’s rights by trying to modify Sneed’s testimony mid-trial. Yet Drummond’s own prosecutors now argue that there’s no evidence that Smothermon’s mid-trial intervention “improperly influenced” Sneed’s testimony.
In early September, Glossip’s attorneys filed a motion urging Mai to put Sneed on the stand to clear this up. “No court has yet held an evidentiary hearing to determine the full scope of the … violation,” they wrote, “its effect on Sneed’s testimony, and what procedures may be necessary to prevent the jury from being deceived about what Sneed remembers versus what he was coached to say.”
In a surprisingly candid reply, Joshua Lockett, deputy chief of the Oklahoma attorney general’s criminal appeals unit, wrote that it is unreasonable to expect Sneed to be able to answer questions about the knife and his shifting trial testimony after all these years. “Any evidentiary hearing would be unable to disentangle the source of Sneed’s knowledge” — whether it came from Sneed’s memory about the night of the crime, or from what he “absorbed” from Smothermon’s mid-trial note, he wrote. “That sorting would have been difficult in 2004,” he wrote. “It is impossible in 2026.”
In other words, the state appeared to be conceding that its star witness cannot now reliably recount what happened the night he murdered Barry Van Treese.
Hanging over Wednesday’s proceeding was an uncomfortable reality that has dogged the state’s case for years: evidence that Sneed has repeatedly tried to take back his claim that Glossip coerced him into murdering Van Treese.
In October 2014, nearly a year before Glossip’s near-execution, Sneed’s adult daughter O’Ryan Justine Sneed sent a letter to the Oklahoma Board of Pardon and Parole, urging them to grant clemency to Glossip. “For a couple of years now, my father has been talking to me about recanting his original testimony,” she wrote. “I feel his conscious [sic] is getting to him.”
“Do I have the choice of re-canting my testimony at any time during my life, or anything like that.”
Among the most compelling pieces of evidence to emerge since then are two handwritten notes, penned years apart, in which Sneed indicated he wanted to retract his testimony. In 2003, a year before Glossip’s second trial, Sneed wrote to his public defender, Gina Walker, asking, “Do I have the choice of re-canting my testimony at any time during my life, or anything like that.” In 2007, he sent Walker another letter: “There are a lot of things right now that are eating at me,” he wrote. Things he needed “to clean up.” Walker, who has since died, discouraged him from coming forward.
Both of these notes came from Sneed’s public defender file. Ordinarily such communications would be shielded from release by attorney-client privilege, but in this case the public defender’s office provided the documents to investigators with Reed Smith. Glossip’s attorneys argued that there is reason to believe that there may be additional material in Sneed’s file that could cast further doubt on his story.
But whether the lawyers might be entitled to any of these records depends on a key question: Did Sneed consent to the disclosure of the records in the first place?
Over the state’s objections, Mai said she would allow Sneed to take the stand for the “limited purpose — and I do mean limited purpose” of asking Sneed whether he ever consented to his records being released. “I will allow for very limited questioning of Mr. Sneed as to that topic,” she said.
Sneed shuffled to a wooden chair next to the judge’s bench and sat awkwardly, his legs spread wide and his gaze still fixed on the ground.
In response to questions from one of Glossip’s defense attorneys, Sneed said he never consented to the release of materials from his public defender file. But he also said that he met with investigators with Reed Smith while accompanied by the head of the public defender office. Perhaps more perplexing, Sneed said he knew by then that his files had been released to investigators because he’d seen it broadcast “on the media, when it was on the television with the news reporters.” When the investigators tried to interview him, “I just didn’t answer their questions, didn’t try to go into details about anything,” Sneed said, “because I was actively upset about the fact that [the files] were released anyway without my consent.”
The testimony was confusing and brief, an unsatisfying turn on the stand that did nothing to answer any of the long-standing questions about the state’s star witness or how he would testify about the murder this time around.
As they have for months, lawyers with the attorney general’s office spent much of the day pushing back hard on the notion that Sneed should take the stand before trial to discuss the knife, his public defender file, or anything else. In court, Knight pointed out that prosecutors have met with Sneed repeatedly over the last year and a half, and yet have only turned over to the defense brief summaries of those conversations. Taken together, the state’s maneuvering suggests prosecutors are far less confident in their case against Glossip than they have previously claimed.
“For 29 years, this case had been marked by prosecutorial errors and misconduct.”
In a statement to The Intercept, Knight said he was struck by prosecutors’ efforts to keep Sneed from testifying. “For 29 years, this case had been marked by prosecutorial errors and misconduct,” he said. “And now they can’t even trust the testimony of the only witness that says Rich was involved in this murder. But they can’t hide him forever. We look forward to spending a couple of days with Mr. Sneed on the stand at trial.”
As Sneed was led out of the courtroom, reporters surrounded him again as he made his way to the elevators. “All these years later do you have any regrets?” one asked just before the doors closed. Sneed did not answer.
In an X post, Marko Jukic, senior analyst at Bismarck Analysis, lamented:
“Enshittification” is sort of a “safe horny” term for what is really just outright impoverishment and declining living standards due to economic insolvency from deindustrialization, demographic decline, hyperinflation, etc.
When you work harder to earn more money that buys less goods and services of lower quality – you are becoming poorer. That’s the word for it.
Enshittification was a term coined by journalist Cory Doctorow to describe the intentional, step-by-step degradation of a digital platform or service as it trades user experience for shareholder profits.
Facebook, which delighted Generation X in our 20s, has, in our 50s, become cringey with clickbait videos, dodgy supplement ads and insufferable political posturing. Advertising on YouTube has become so disruptive that the free version is just barely usable. The strategy appears to be to frustrate users into paying for Premium. Monopoly has its perks.
Jukic is using an expanded definition of enshittification to include all goods and services offered to America’s benighted consumers. At the risk of putting words in his mouth, Jukic’s definition probably includes lousy US$20 salad bowls, financially ruinous medical emergencies and $56,480 Honda Pilots.
Jukic is not the only person who has noticed. On recent visits to the US, yours truly was shocked at the catastrophic collapse of America’s Chinese buffets. Never a luxury dining option, but $18 for tasteless reheated shrimp, limp broccoli and rock-hard egg rolls is unacceptable even to yours truly, the lowestbrowed of diners.
The magic Chinese buffets of yesteryear, with their weekend seafood spreads and Mongolian barbecue stations, have been forced out of the market by food and labor inflation.
David Goldman, a former columnist at Asia Times and now senior advisor at the U.S. State Department, has noticed as well, tweeting in January 2025:
Is China cooking its GDP numbers? I don’t know. But the US surely is. China’s electricity consumption is now 8MWh/capita, vs. 3MWh/capita in 2010. That’s proportional to the increase in China’s reported real GDP. The US is at 13MWH/capita, unchanged from 2010. We have a lot more GDP in the US, but less industrial production than in 2008. “Real” personal consumption expenditures for health care are at $2.8 trillion 2017 dollars, almost double the 2010 level. That’s 18% of our GDP! But are we really consuming twice as much in health care services?
If enshittification is a thing, what then is its opposite? Han Feizi will hazard controversy and declare that the opposite of enshittification is Chinese involution (内卷). I call it Chinese involution because the term does not apply to any other economy.
Chinese involution is the greatest economic force the world is currently experiencing but utterly failing to comprehend. It is, in fact, the greatest source of value creation the global economy has seen in decades.
Attention in the US has been captured by AI, which may deliver spectacular growth at some point in the future but, right now, has only pumped up inflation, raised interest rates and reduced living standards. Europe and Japan, sadly, remain mired in their geriatric, vassal-state lack of agency.
The Chinese, however, invoke involution as negatively as Doctorow and Jukic invoke enshittification. Involution is an academic term coined by American anthropologist Clifford Geertz in 1963 to describe plots of rice farms in Indonesia where intense labor did increase production, but not enough to justify the additional man hours put in.
The Chinese, caveat emptor, are also world champion whingers. Given the chance, they will talk your ear off about how difficult business is, how nobody is making money, how demanding their children’s teachers are and how everything now is excessively competitive and juan (卷, involuted).
Westerners often make the mistake of taking this at face value, not understanding that whinging is the national pastime. Complaining about business, excessive competition and involution is just the folksy modesty of everyday Chinese conversation. For the superstitious, to speak positively of one’s circumstances is to tempt the jealous ire of the heavens.
“Involution” is sort of a “safe humblebrag” term for what is really outright and spectacular improvements in quality, features, choice, service and rapidly rising living standards that China has been experiencing for decades, but especially after the Covid pandemic.
For decades, the West has fundamentally misunderstood China’s economy and it is fundamentally misunderstanding it again. The Chinese economy is not stagnating, consumption is not low and China is not flooding the world with exports because it has to – China is flooding the world with exports because its products are thoroughly outclassing the competition.
China has, in fact, hit a patch of turbocharged productivity growth planned decades ago with investments in higher education, infrastructure, the Made in China 2025 program and the recent rapid diffusion of AI throughout the economy.
When an economy hits a patch of turbocharged productivity growth, one expects to encounter deflation, low interest rates and unemployment. The market will be flooded with whizzbang products sold at absurdly low prices.
This is exactly the promise and peril that the AI revolution has yet to deliver to Americans. Post COVID China is on the foothills of the era of abundance promised by technology but obstructed by supply constraints in Western economies.
The idea that China is not growing consumption is preposterous. Since Covid, China’s per capita household consumption has grown multiple times faster than major economies and the world overall. This growth is surely a massive undercount given the revolution in quality, features, choice and service that has swept China’s consumer markets.
China’s National Bureau of Statistics, unlike the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) in the US, does not do systematic hedonic regressions to adjust GDP upwards. China uses a matched-model method which inherently undercounts hedonic improvements.
If a new EV sells at the same price but with better range, power and software, the NBS mostly treats it as a same-priced good. Contrary to popular Western contention, China has always erred on the side of conservatism, underreporting growth and GDP (see here, here, here).
In a previous piece (see here), I calculated that Chinese EVs, post-Covid, have been hedonically improving at ~20% per annum rates. An EV sold in 2026 would command more than twice the price in 2022 (and more than twice the price overseas). This phenomenon exists across China’s consumer products space from home appliances to pots and pans.
Industrial goods exhibit the same phenomenon: Chinese construction equipment makers XCMG, SANY, Zoomlion, etc., have more than doubled their global market share in a decade. It also exists in services as China adopts Japan’s spirit of omotenashi (anticipatory, wholehearted hospitality), if not to such extremes.
China is also rapidly cleaning up its environment after decades of neglect from breakneck growth. Complaints about air pollution have basically ceased (don’t worry, on net, Chinese complaints have remained largely constant).
After a total commercial fishing ban, industrial relocation, improved waste treatment and a ban on new developments along the Yangtze River, fish biomass doubled from 2020 to 2025.
Similar results have been achieved in many of China’s waterways. Since Covid, the number of urban parks has increased 50%, especially noticeable to senior citizens who disproportionately congregate in public greenery.
Screenshot
China’s productivity is driven by rapidly upgrading human capital, automation and artificial intelligence. The country graduates approximately 1.8 million engineers and computer scientists every year (~7x as many as the US).
In 2025, China installed 354,000 industrial robots (~9x as many as the US), accounting for 59% of global installations for the year. China’s installed base of industrial robots is approximately 2.2 million, approximately 45% of the world’s total.
China’s EV companies have a development cycle of 18 to 24 months compared to 40 to 60 months for German, US and Japanese competitors. Chinese engineers readily adopt new technologies like AI-automated factories and digital twins to replace physical prototyping. Given the millions of engineers joining China’s workforce every year, there are just more minds to throw at productivity-enhancing solutions.
These minds have, perhaps, found too many productivity-enhancing solutions. China has lost approximately 10 million manufacturing jobs since 2020, even as output increased 36% (not counting hedonic improvements).
12.7 million Chinese students graduated from college this past June. Many entered college with dreams of corner offices only to discover that only tea shops and Meituan delivery were hiring at graduation. Youth unemployment now sits at 18.9%, a figure of continual lament in the Western press.
Youth unemployment in China is highly misunderstood. China is the canary in the coal mine. It is exhibiting the unemployment every nation will experience if artificial intelligence turbocharges productivity growth, putting an economy either on an abundance or collapse trajectory depending on how things are managed.
Youth unemployment in China is definitely high. Youth in China also have more opportunity than has existed at any time in China’s history. Both statements are objectively true. To be young and unemployed in China can be sublime. Unburdened by student loans, free to live in the family home, youth in China can chill out for years.
Most do not. Many young people are semi-employed, working gig jobs in stints while they “find themselves.” Young graduates are notorious for job-hopping, never making it past the new-hire probation period. The streets of Chinese cities are crawling with artsy young people with questionable tattoos and life plans.
All of this is rational. The whippersnappers are playing the field, not ready to settle down. The dream job at Xiaomi’s Beijing engineering center did not pan out, and one would rather die than interview for the process engineering job at Donghua Jinlong glycine plant in Shijiazhuang. Besides, there’s the video game idea that one has always wanted to pursue – if only one didn’t waste so much time gaming.
Eventually, these perfectly rational youth, after years of gig work/unemployed loserdom, either become video game moguls like Feng Ji of BlackMyth Wukong fame, celebrated animators like Yang Yu director of Nezha 2 or process engineers at Donghua Jinlong glycine plant in Shijiazhuang. Youth lasts only so long, and China’s unemployment rate for the 25 to 30 year-old-age bracket is 7.5%.
“[Every] time Beijing recognizes its economy has a demand problem, its solution is a supply plan”, a Western commentator on China’s economy lamented recently. The commentator may or may not know that this has been going on for decades and that he is only half correct.
In M. Night Shyamalan’s 1999 horror/mystery film The Sixth Sense, a troubled young boy is haunted by his supernatural ability to see dead people. These specters torment the boy with their frightening apparitions and creepy utterances.
“They only see what they want to see. They don’t know they’re dead,” the boy explains to a guardian angel of sorts who helps him realize that these ghosts only wanted his help.
Let’s try to help dead people. Beijing has never recognized that it has a demand problem without explicitly matching it to a supply plan. Western analysts who harp on Beijing’s demand problem are like the dead people in the Sixth Sense. They only see what they want to see. They don’t know they’re dead.
Beijing may know that China has a demand problem. But Beijing is also surely aware that their five-year plans (which have largely been supply-focused) have increased household consumption more than any other economy in the past five decades.
All 218 of them (World Bank classification). And not by a little – by a country mile! From economic takeoff, China has grown household consumption twice as fast as the second-place Asian Tigers in their miracle years.
Since the financial crisis, China has grown household consumption 226%, multiple times more than the US, EU, Japan and the global average.
If, indeed, over all these years, Beijing diagnosed a demand problem and decided the solution lay in supply, the spectacular increase in China’s household consumption should be vindication.
At a recent event, economist Yu Yonding stated, “In fact, throughout the history of economic thought – from Marxist political economy to orthodox Western neoclassical economics – there is no theory that supports the idea of a consumption-driven model of economic growth.”
Should it be all that surprising? Chinese policymakers are growing the economy according to Say’s Law, a fundamental precept of classical economics. In his 1803 A Treatise on Political Economy, Jean-Baptiste Say wrote, “A product is no sooner created, than it, from that instant, affords a market for other products to the full extent of its own value” or, as is often simplified, supply creates its own demand.
There is a certain morality to Say’s Law that appeals to China’s qinlao values (see here). Produce things, be thrifty and good things will come to you. If many Chinese are very good at this, very good things will come to you and you get to humblebrag about involution.
The West, in its inability and refusal to compete with China, seems to have adopted the opposite of Say’s Law – cargo cult economics. Don’t produce anything, don’t educate the population, talk loudly about re-industrialization (but only talk) and wonder why things are getting enshittified.
Israel sees nearly 30,000 wounded suffering psychological trauma since Gaza war
Israel’s Defense Ministry said Tuesday that nearly 30,000 soldiers and security personnel are facing psychological trauma since the Gaza war in October 2023, Anadolu reports.
The ministry said around 30,000 Israeli soldiers and security personnel wounded since the war have been admitted to its Rehabilitation Department.
It explained that about 63% of those wounded suffer psychological impact, including post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression and difficulties surrounding reintegration into civilian life.
According to the ministry, of those wounded since the war, 63 are classified as having over 100% disability, 249 have severe head injuries, 29 are suffering from blindness, and 106 are amputees.
READ: Israeli forces demolish East Jerusalem building as occupiers injure 2 Palestinians in West Bank
The ministry said its Rehabilitation Department now treats 91,200 people wounded across Israel’s wars and military operations, including 42,500 dealing with mental health conditions and post-traumatic stress.
It said the department’s budget has increased by 88% over the past three years to 10 billion shekels ($3.3 million), with more than 60% allocated to services and treatment related to mental health conditions and post-traumatic stress disorder.
The Israeli army has launched a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip since October 2023, killing more than 74,000 people, injuring over 175,000, and turning the enclave into ruins.
Israel has also fought wars with Lebanon and Iran, launched strikes on Yemen and Qatar, and carried out near-daily ground incursions into Syria.
READ: 3 years of Israel’s genocide in Gaza: Women face death, loss, miscarriages
Online gambling has surged in the U.S. since the Supreme Court allowed states to legalize sports betting in 2018, prompting public health concerns about gambling addiction and calls for stricter consumer protections. Online sportsbooks such as DraftKings and FanDuel have touted “responsible gaming” features as evidence that they are taking appropriate steps to protect consumers from spiraling out of control.
Reporter Jake Pearson put these safeguards to the test. Bankrolled by ProPublica, he mimicked the betting patterns of a problem gambler for 10 weeks, consulting a panel of addiction specialists, recovering gambling addicts and professional sports bettors for advice.
He found that the safety features were overpowered by the app’s product design and promotions that pushed him to continue gambling.
Pearson detailed his entire journey, which you can read here. Here are five takeaways from his investigation.
1. Sports betting is ubiquitous. The industry relies on very active losers.
Today, nearly a quarter of all Americans, and half of men ages 18 to 49, say they have an active sportsbook account, according to the Siena Research Institute. But that rapid growth has come with consequences: About a quarter of active sportsbook account holders surveyed by the organization this year said that they’d lost enough on a bet that they’d have trouble meeting their financial obligations.
Gamblers who lose frequently are the bettors sportsbooks are most interested in, Matthew Gaskell, a British psychologist and expert on gambling addiction, said. Gaskell noted that a relatively small number of active losers account for a substantial amount of sportsbooks’ revenue.
DraftKings says its responsible gaming system provides adequate safeguards to protect customers from spiraling out of control. “I think as a business, as an industry, we’re doing a good job of educating people, of raising awareness, of making tools and resources available, of monitoring accounts,” Lori Kalani, DraftKings’ chief responsible gaming officer, told Pearson.
But policymakers aren’t so sure. Lawmakers from Colorado to Massachusetts are now proposing stricter consumer protections.
2. DraftKings has adopted responsible gaming tools. They require users to opt in, limiting their effectiveness.
DraftKings’ responsible gambling safeguards include in-app notifications that encourage gamblers to take a break after they’ve lost money and “time reminders” that tell users how long they’ve been on the app. The app also features a responsible gaming center that allows users to set a budget, track their spending or opt into tools like those that allow them to limit the amount of time and money they spend in a 24-hour period or enact more severe restrictions such as a multiday “cool off.”
But this system largely relies on users to have the wherewithal to opt into the tools — something that experts say can be difficult for someone struggling with gambling addiction.
DraftKings told Pearson that if a customer’s behavior raises too many red flags, the company will proactively close an account. Yet it wouldn’t specify how often this actually happens.
Screenshot by Jake Pearson/ProPublica
Pearson’s experiment mimicked the behavior of a problem gambler to see when — and if — the company’s safeguards would stop him. The first in-app responsible gaming prompt Pearson received came more than a week after he began gambling on the NBA playoffs, when he’d already lost roughly what a minimum-wage worker in New York City earns in a month. It told him that he’d hit $2,500 or more in deposits and said to “visit our Responsible Gaming Center anytime to set limits for yourself and access tools for safer play.”
But the app’s warning wasn’t triggered by Pearson’s reckless betting. It was legally required. When New York legalized mobile sports betting in 2023, lawmakers required the apps to notify users when they hit $2,500 in total deposits. The pop-up gave Pearson two options: set limits or “I understand.” He clicked the latter and was back in action.
Even as Pearson exhibited red flag after red flag, according to our panel of experts, his subsequent warnings from the app followed the same pattern.
DraftKings says millions of customers have visited its responsible gaming center, but the little data available publicly suggests only a small percentage opt into these tools. Just over 8% of active DraftKings users in Massachusetts were using them as of April, a company official told state regulators this summer. The official added the number was trending up.
Kalani says her 51-person team manually reviews user accounts suspected of problem gambling. Yet even after Pearson deposited $21,600 into his account in less than eight weeks and exhibited just about every sign of compulsive gambling, he didn’t register for a manual review under the company’s criteria.
3. The design of online sports betting platforms can encourage users to gamble more.
Online gambling companies have created sophisticated technology products designed to squeeze maximum engagement out of users, just as social media companies like Meta did years earlier with users of Facebook and Instagram, according to Darragh McGee, a researcher at the University of Bath.
Indeed, Pearson found that the app’s design encouraged him to keep betting.
Pearson found the app’s quick-tap deposit buttons increased automatically.Screenshot by Jake Pearson/ProPublica. Debit card number redacted by ProPublica.
As he gambled more, he found that the app’s quick-tap deposit buttons increased automatically, making it even easier to mindlessly transfer large sums from his bank into his DraftKings account. And while DraftKings’ safety warnings were sporadic, he was getting up to six push notifications a day notifying him of rewards and betting opportunities.
DraftKings told Pearson it sent him 32 responsible gambling prompts over 10 weeks of gambling, including emails that every DraftKings customer gets. Pearson counted in-app notifications about his betting 14 out of the 71 days he gambled on the app.
4. Perks can also help encourage users to bet more.
DraftKings, like many other sportsbooks, also offers VIP programs that give users perks, including free bets and concert tickets. After Pearson lost $1,800 betting on basketball in one night, chasing his losses with increasingly long-shot bets, he was invited to audition to become a DraftKings VIP. After only three weeks and $5,800 in deposits on the app, Pearson was formally accepted into DraftKings’ VIP program, which assigned him a personal concierge.
That VIP host told Pearson that he would be “keeping an eye out for opportunities and perks tailored specifically” to his account, plus “reminders about Responsible Gaming.” Company representatives offer VIPs special incentives to continue gambling, such as “bonus bets” (free one-time bets using house money) and “deposit matches” (extra house money called DK Dollars that come along with new deposits).
Pearson found that the program rewarded riskier bets. The more money users spend on long-odds wagers, the quicker they accumulate credits needed to “advance” to higher tiers that offer better perks.
Less than a week after Pearson opted into a three-day “cool-off” period — after losing several thousand dollars betting on tennis — Pearson contacted his VIP representative, who helped facilitate his largest deposit match to date: juicing a $5,000 deposit with an extra $1,250 in free DK Dollars.
5. Online gamblers are left to regulate themselves. Experts say more limits are needed.
Lawmakers face a public policy dilemma: While online gambling generates billions of dollars in tax revenue, research shows that gambling disorder diagnoses are rising in states that have legalized.
In New York, sportsbooks like DraftKings have to submit a “problem-gaming plan” to the state regulator but the law leaves the specifics of it up to the companies. The plan must include, among other things, procedures “for identifying users with suspected or known problem-gaming behavior” and for “providing information to users concerning problem-gaming identification and resources.” The exact details are unclear because such plans are not publicly available. (A DraftKings spokesperson wouldn’t provide a copy, and Pearson’s request for it under the state’s open records law with the gaming commission is under review.)
Other countries have already taken aggressive steps to regulate online sportsbooks’ marketing practices and advertisements. But in the U.S., the industry has actively opposed proposed reforms on the federal and state levels — and even seeded a political action committee with $41 million to influence elections this year.
Rob Minnick, a recovering gambling addict and one of the experts we consulted, said that the framework for protecting consumers shouldn’t be entrusted to a publicly traded company that’s driven to grow revenue.
DraftKings told Pearson that all 5,000-plus of its employees are trained on responsible gaming every year and that it’s “not a side initiative. It is embedded across our business and essential to DraftKings’ long-term sustainability.”
“The system worked the way it was supposed to,” Kalani told Pearson.
Critics say that’s the problem.
If you’ve bet on sports with FanDuel or DraftKings, we want to hear from you. You can help us understand how these apps respond to their users’ betting behavior. Use our browser extension to download your betting history, then drop the files here.
All-electric camping gets a solar upgrade: The 2027 Pebble Flow
There is, I think, a pent-up demand for bringing electrification to camping. Anyone who’s had their sleep disturbed by the sound of someone else’s generator running at night would probably agree.
Certainly, any time we cover an electric van, comments are filled with people wondering if and when a camper conversion might appear. Kia showed off such a concept a couple of years ago, as did Winnebago, and Volkswagen is adding a camper trim to its electric ID. Buzz. And then there’s the world of trailers. Colorado Teardrop sadly didn’t make it, and some other electrified trailers remain in development. But for a couple of years, you’ve been able to buy the Pebble Flow. And for 2027, it’s getting an update.
Introduced in 2025, the streamlined Flow is built atop a 45 kWh LFP battery pack that, for 2027, can be recharged by up to 4 kW of solar panels, which Flow says should be sufficient to generate more electricity than you’ll use in an average day of camping. Earlier Flows could be specced with an optional 1.1 kWh panel on the roof; the new kit adds another 2 kWh via four portable panels.
The Flow has a gross vehicle weight of 6,800 lbs.
Pebble
The Flow has a gross vehicle weight of 6,800 lbs. Pebble
In-wheel motors and self-leveling struts.
Pebble
In-wheel motors and self-leveling struts. Pebble
The Flow has a gross vehicle weight of 6,800 lbs. Pebble
In-wheel motors and self-leveling struts. Pebble
Among the updates for 2027 are the option of twin beds (which convert to a king).
Pebble
Among the updates for 2027 are the option of twin beds (which convert to a king). Pebble
The living area.
Pebble
The living area. Pebble
Among the updates for 2027 are the option of twin beds (which convert to a king). Pebble
The living area. Pebble
Usefully, the LFP battery is bidirectional, with an output of up to 12 kW, which means you can even use it to charge your EV in a pinch.
If you don’t want to wait several days, the pack will AC charge at up to 6.6 kW and will even DC fast charge (0–80 percent in less than a hour, Pebble says). And it can also regeneratively brake, recapturing up to 42 kW thanks to the in-wheel electric motors that help push the trailer along as you tow. And for 2027, Pebble has added a boost setting to this assist, which provides 54 hp (40 kW) of assistance rather than just easing the slack.
This being the mid-2020s, of course there’s some degree of automation, controlled by an updated version of Pebble’s operating system. The onboard Nvidia Orin processor and four surround cameras, plus those powered wheels, mean that the Flow can see your hitch ball and couple itself, plus you can use an iPad app to maneuver it remotely to park it at your chosen site. You can even remotely activate the dumping process for the black water tank.
Of course, all that technology means this is not a budget-level travel trailer; it starts at $159,000 for the Magic Pack or $189,000 for the Founders Edition.
EU monitors ‘very closely’ suspected outbreak of pneumonic plague in Russia
The European Commission is monitoring the suspected outbreak of pneumonic plague in Siberia, Russia, “very closely” and stands ready to coordinate a response among member states if necessary.
The situation came to light following the death on 2 October of a lab worker of the Irkutsk Research Anti-Plague Institute who is said to have broken a test tube containing the plague pathogen. Her death was attributed to a “pneumonia of unknown aetiology”.
The incident prompted precautionary measures in the region. Roughly 200 people who had been in touch with the lab worker have been placed under strict medical observation.
Russian authorities have so far refrained from confirming the existence of a plague outbreak, but the reports have heightened alarm worldwide.
“We are aware of the reports concerning the laboratory incident in Russia, seemingly involving a pathogen causing plague,” a Commission spokesperson said on Monday.
“Public health is always a priority for us, so we are in touch with our experts from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control,” the spokesperson added.
“We monitor very closely what is going on.”
Pneumonic plague is a fast-moving lung infection caused by Yersinia pestis that spreads through infectious respiratory droplets during close contact. It has a high mortality rate but can be effectively treated with modern antibiotics.
“We are much better prepared for any pandemics” after COVID, the spokesperson said, noting that countries have antibiotic stocks at hand.
The Commission is using the World Health Organisation (WHO) to get updates from the Russian authorities, whose contacts with their European counterparts are severely restricted since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
For now, the executive does not intend to convene a dedicated meeting nor adopt emergency measures.
The response of Brussels mimics that of Washington.
The US State Department has said it is “closely” monitoring the situation and urged Moscow to provide “accurate” information “quickly and openly”. The Commission also stressed the need for “timely and transparent reporting”.
The plague has been absent in Europe for more than 50 years.
