In our house, yes for the first born, not so much for the younger one, but he came back to it 10 years later and it was a good thing.

That's wonderful. Hope it went well.

Only fair to share that the Q4 2025 retail survey data came in surprisingly strong. Electronics and vehicle spending up quite a bit - potentially the households benefiting from lower mortgage payments being able to catch up on major purchases before Xmas? Some interesting stuff in the data. [🧵 1/n]

If Govt are making more money on an investment than they are paying on the debt they created to pay for it, who is paying the bill? Yep. The private sector. It's complicated, ay? [2/2]

Govt can ofc conjure up $200m out of thin air and use it to buy equity in a company. The Govt balance sheet expands by $200m on the liabilities side, and $200m on the asset side. As long as the return on the assets exceeds the cost of the debt, they are quids in. The ghouls hate it. BUT... [1/2]

The point here about our most prominent talking heads eagerly repeating a baseless claim from a website run by notorious loons is well made. Of course, they won't apologise.

👏👏👏

Solid burn. 🔥

February 22, 2026 On February 6, four direct descendants of President Theodore Roosevelt wrote to United States senators to ask them to vote against a measure that opens up the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BW...

February 22, 2026

Govt threatens to imprison homeless for 90 days at a cost of $49,680 per person Govt to empower Police to 'move on' homeless with threat of three months prison, costing taxpayer $552 per person per night; Govt adds 2,000 prison beds since election & delivers 420 new homes

FYI I’ve opened this one up for full public reading, listening & sharing after requests from paying subscribers. Their support allows me to do this public interest journalism on Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate & poverty in public. #nzpol open.substack.com/pub/thekaka/...

True that NZ not a major economy, but our house prices are still 17.8% below the late 2021 peak.

Graphics card. Reads at the top: "Thinking Live, February 23rd, 12:00pm." There are headshots of Timothy Snyder and David Pepper, each labeled with their name. Snyder.substack.com

Join me live in conversation with @davidpepperoh.bsky.social, who is running for Lieutenant Governor of Ohio. Monday, February 23rd, at 12:00pm on Thinking Live. snyder.substack.com

This will be very good!

On this twelfth anniversary of the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity, I'm thinking of Vasyl Cherpanyn's observation that the revolution on the Maidan “was so fundamentally European that it turned out to be too European for today’s EU.”

Graphics card. Text at the top: Thinking Live, February 23rd, 1:00pm. Below are headshots of Timothy Snyder and Paul Krugman with their names. Snyder.substack.com

Join me for a live conversation with Paul Krugman. Monday, February 23rd, 1:00pm ET, on Thinking Live.

Graphics card. Text at the top says Substack, February 23rd, 4:00pm. Below are headshots of Tim Snyder and Jim Acosta with their names. JimAcosta.Substack.Com

I will be joining @jimacosta.bsky.social for a conversation on Monday, February 23rd, at 4:00pm ET.

Guess it's time for a Splore 2026 thread. Firstly, a somewhat biblical scene at the end of a very emotional powhiri. (That's the smoke machine at the Te Kanikani stage in the background, btw.)

Four Years of War, No End in Sight. The Big Five 22 February edition. My regular update on war and great power competition. This week, diplomacy splutters, energy war, Russian mobilisation, StarLink and the Ukraine ground war, as well as my Big Five recommended reads.

"This is a war where a free people determined that they would not permit the forces of dark authoritarianism to overwhelm their history, their culture, their freedoms and their future prosperity." mickryan.substack.com/p/four-years...

Looks gorgeous, anyway.

Magical!

Brooklyn 8:37 PM

Huzzah indeed! It was a very good moment.

👍

Matt Goodwin is running: the search for Reform’s elusive byelection candidate Nigel Farage’s man in Gorton and Denton has a huge public platform, and a taste for culture war. What happens when he concerns himself with bin collections?

Slightly buried in this excellent piece is the fact that Goodwin shares Stephen Miller’s love of the US 1924 Immigration Act - the one admired by Hitler and the reason why so many Jewish refugees (including Anne Frank’s family) were turned away

www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...

No disrespect to good blokes - it's just that I prefer to be able to fix my own stuff where I can.

Trump gonna follow Prez's lead. Invade somewhere right after the Olympics end.

Literally wrote about this in Ch 1 of my book on Christian Nationalism published in 2019.

Everything is Connected 12 Five important stories you might have missed this week

Weekend catchup.

That's exactly how it's designed to work.