Nicholas Liu is a journalist and writer based in the New York–Connecticut corridor. His work has been featured in Salon, Smithsonian Magazine, Vulture, and other publications. He writes a Substack called Angry Peasants.
Egypt in the Middle Ages was steeply class stratified. When the rains failed, the rich dined on hoarded grain while the starving poor ate grass. Periodically, the masses would erupt in revolt — sometimes with petitions, other times with stones.
At American universities, nap pods and meditation apps paper over backbreaking workloads. As higher education increasingly conforms to corporate logic, its most durable product becomes a student with a proven capacity for overwork.
In the 1950s, Iran’s secular government nationalized its oil reserves as part of its anti-imperialist agenda. Its overthrow by the US and UK, enabled by Iranian business and religious elites, paved the way for the reactionary revolution that later replaced it.
A bill from Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposes a moratorium on new AI data centers until oversight mechanisms and legal safeguards are in place. Only federal legislation stands a chance at leashing a monster of this size.
Every year, an algorithm assigns thousands of medical students to residencies they can’t leave, can’t negotiate with, and can’t refuse. The Match system creates a captive workforce that stiffs residents and generates billions for the health care industry.
A new crop of young Democratic Party challengers is running on generational politics alone, hoping to capitalize on voters’ hunger for change without running afoul of the centrist establishment.
Because capitalism orients people toward profit rather than allowing us to pursue our interests freely, it inevitably separates humans from the creative act. AI art is just the slop frothing up from that gap.
Politicians have long used red-baiting to win Asian American votes, assuming an aversion to anything labeled socialist. But Zohran Mamdani’s primary triumph in Asian immigrant neighborhoods suggests that economic populism can overcome ideological baggage.
A new crop of young Democratic Party challengers is running on generational politics alone, hoping to capitalize on voters’ hunger for change without running afoul of the centrist establishment’s political preferences.
Business schools claim they’re training noble civic leaders, not money-grubbing managers. But beneath the ethics classes and talk of social responsibility, they’re still just finishing schools for capitalism’s managerial aristocracy.