Japanese Pop’s Secret Utopians
Bright, ironic, and tuneful, Yellow Magic Orchestra provided the soundtrack to Japan’s bubble economy in the 1980s. But the band’s work also contained hidden depths and the memories of East Asia’s political struggles.
20191 Article(s) by: Yi San
Yi San is a freelance writer based in New York.
Where Will Canada’s Workers Go After the Election?
Nationalist backlash against Donald Trump helped stall right-wing populism. But Canadian workers are still drifting rightward, and the social democratic NDP is in shambles.
Rwanda’s Raiders
The linchpin of Rwanda’s booming mineral sector is the violent paramilitaries it finances in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The Return of Decadent Conservatism
One of the most energetic factions of today’s Right flirts with monarchy, myth, and high-tech transcendence. Drawing on the anti-modern sensibility of the fin de siècle Decadents, they reject democracy and seek to use imagined pasts to shape the future.
The House Always Wins
The gaming industry is turning every smartphone into a casino — and it’s destroying more lives than ever.
The Crypto State
The Trump White House has helped install the ticking time bomb that is cryptocurrency directly into our economy. When it blows up, the damage will be catastrophic.
We Have Always Lived in the Casino
John Maynard Keynes warned that when real investment becomes the by-product of speculation, the result is often disaster. But it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.
The Rise and Fall of the Bob Ross NFT King
How one artist rode the NFT wave to fame — and then crashed with it.
Director Alex Gibney on Dark Money
The documentarian speaks to Jacobin about The Dark Money Game, his new HBO series on the corrosive effects of Citizens United.
Issue 58: Dossier
We have all the vocabulary you need to score big on your Robinhood app.
Blue Devils
More than half of the top 15 crypto-PAC-backed candidates during the 2024 campaign season were Democrats.
Wannabe Gordon Gekkos
Are you missing the point by idolizing them?
Minecraft Scorsese
A Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg satire of mainstream film’s IP problem — in which everything is an adaptation of something else — fails to excuse or address their own extensive IP crimes.
In Carbon We Trust
In Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future, a global currency backed by carbon removal turns speculation into salvation.
Five Books on Speculation
As history and literature are quick to remind us, many a get-rich-quick scheme has ended in sorrow.
Fruit of the Union
Union assets have skyrocketed while membership remains largely stagnant.
DJ D-Sol’s Double Life
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon knows how to drop a beat. But could he handle a drop in the markets?
Heavy Metals Music
Zamrock emerged from the optimism of postindependence Zambia, fusing psychedelic rock with nationalist ambition. Its rise and fall mirror the promise — and the exhaustion — of a country built on copper.
Money for Nothing
Why the modern financial sector is better at extracting rents than funding the future.