iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Which includes this completely bonkers graph, tracking support for net zero policies from the major parties. Look at those Tories!!

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

🇨🇳 The BREAK–DOWN Issue 4 is here: CHINA 🇨🇳 Essays and dispatches from Jeremy Wallace, Yan Lianke, Judith Shapiro, Kaiser Kuo & David Fishman, and more, exploring why there's no path through the climate crisis that doesn't run through China.

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

And this, which is perhaps one of my favourite pieces we've published –– Kamil Ahsan, on the geopolitical squabbling over artificial islands in the South China Sea

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

a brilliant dispatch from Hungary on the battle over Chinese EV and battery manufacturers, which many believe helped swing the recent elections away from Victor Orban

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

The great Michelle Chen on the fate of China's ecological organisations, and whether climate justice can survive without pressure from below

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

An epic on what David Fishman and @kaiserkuo.bsky.social call "The Machine", which sketches just how the political economy of China's energy system works, and how China has managed to become a green tech behemoth. This essay, imo, will become a classic

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Includes @jeremywallace.bsky.social's incredible dispatch from the Inner Mongolian city of Ordos, once one of China's "ghost cities", now a physical embodiment of China's messy transition

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

China now leads the way with green technology, but how did they manage it? According to @izading.bsky.social and @debseligsohn.bsky.social, China's path to climate leadership was far more mundane than the both China's boosters and its detractors will admit.

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

China is streaking ahead in the global green energy transition, which raises the troubling question: can the liberal democratic state even compete, or are they destined to lose the battle for green technology? Here's the introduction to the CHINA issue of @the-breakdown.bsky.social

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Having a two year old is really destroying my whole “cool intellectual in the library” vibe

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

lots more thinking from the left to be done about the idea of adaptation imo –– not least because if we don't then it'll be used by deniers like Tice to foreclose action on the climate

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Some of the worst minds of my generation destroyed by social media

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

As @carbonbrief.org note, those figures are for all of Europe inc Russian Asia (74% of the landmass of "Europe" in this). Russia is having a relatively quiet season for fires. The rest of Europe is very much not –– it's second only to 2022 for severity so far

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Ah and then here comes the execrable Matt Ridley with the worst possible take in the Speccie

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

as my colleague @adriennebuller.bsky.social recently catalogued for the New Statesman www.newstatesman.com/environment/...

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

a sharp piece by Jonathan Liew on Ceuta — particularly this. it’s clear why the grim racist novel The Camp of the Saints, with its depiction of an ”invasion” by an undifferentiated mass of Indians, is now so often referenced by the British right

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

I love to discover an essay where you're not sure which is worse: the appalling prose or the moronic thesis

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

This is excellent, from Nesrine Malick. And what she says about the Speccie here can be said for the rest of the right-wing press — reduced to cheap, nasty and poorly written slop. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

A truly deranged article by the cretinous Lisa McKenzie in Spike about the forthcoming Tribune launch –– attacking what she calls the "bourgeois left" by invoking George Orwell (Eton) and EP Thompson (Dragon School, Kingswood; Cambridge). You couldn't make it up!

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

As i've been predicting for the past few years –– social housing will be the next right wing moral panic. It's incredible the speed in which this stuff (directly lifted from far right blogs) has ended up in centre-right publications

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

and now he's cosying up with Pauline Hanson

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

1m views in less than a day? we're fucked

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

What I find ominous about Vauban Books is not simply its decision to republish France’s most notorious authors, but the strategic care with which they have reframed them as neglected classics of political thought unjustly excluded from translation by a timid or ideological publishing establishment.

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Excellent from @will-davies.bsky.social on what feels like Britain's inevitable slide into reaction www.nytimes.com/2026/06/18/o...

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Brilliant from @nesrinemalik.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

At once a wonderful piece of nature writing, a beautifully drawn picture of a small religious community, a history of nuclear power in Britain, and a brilliantly reported essay about the contradictions between conservation and modernisation

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

As Wallace says, "the American and Chinese varieties of capitalism are both awash in successes and failures. Leveraging the best elements of both systems is critical if we are to meet the challenges ahead of us."

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

Incredibly sharp and generative new essay out today on @the-breakdown.bsky.social by @jeremywallace.bsky.social, a brilliant piece of comparative political economy, between American and Chinese capitalisms, that asks what we can learn from each for the climate transition

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

We've had a huge number of excellent pitches –– but if you have ideas for pieces that look in particular at: - the history of Chinese environmentalism - environmental history - specific sectors or locations in China in relation to the climate crisis -China in Africa/Asia/LatAm then send them to us

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

ISSUES HAVE ARRIVED! www.break-down.org/tag/issue-03/

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Come join us to celebrate the launch of the new issue of the @the-breakdown.bsky.social! luma.com/3r5t0jyf

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

Deadline for pitches is 27 April. Before you send us your idea, please take a look at the kind of work we have published before to see if your piece would fit.

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

We're now open for pitches for issue #4 of the @the-breakdown.bsky.social: the China issue! If you have ideas for essays or pieces on any aspect of China's relationship with the climate crisis, at home or globally, then let us know. Full details here: break-down.org/pitching/

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

A brilliant essay by Rebekah Diski and George Edwards on Reform's fossil nationalism and how its power is fed by the very real contradictions of Britain's green energy transition. www.break-down.org/return-to-tr...

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

Can't believe we're being lectured to about Englishness by doughy-faced simpletons with broccoli hair

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

Londoners: next Wednesday we'll be discussing how the right won the internet with @profafinlayson.bsky.social. Open to all, but limited capacity, so RSVP essential. To: londontalkingshop@gmail.com

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

A brilliant rejoinder by @philtinline.bsky.social to the increasingly consensus right-wing view of the modern British state. The state has been hollowed out and is failing many people––but the solution is not more privatisation or markets, but more democracy! www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

The excellent Jack Common on the middle class Marxists of the interwar years

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 26/12/2025

much better than the “knock it all down and replace with a car park” school of regeneration

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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 26/12/2025

Some excellent examples of the International Urban Regeneration Aesthetic in Crewe town centre

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