A space for mostly short form stuff and responses to things I see elsewhere.
LECTURE NOTES: Lash, Cash, & Cotton in the Imperial-Commercial & Early SteamPower Age
”It is crucial to remember, though, that the principal beneficiaries of this system were not the plantation owners. The principal beneficiaries were the middle-class consumers at the heart of the industrial and commercial economies. Their cheap sugar, cotton, and tobacco were made possible by the brutal labor of enslaved people on distant plantations. This is the uncomfortable arithmetic of global capitalism: prosperity in one place, purchased at the cost of suffering in another.”
"I'm the Problem; It's Me": On the Confession the Mainstream Media Won't Make
Rebecca Solnit’s article is yet another reason to support independent journalism unfettered by craven “news” corporations.