Series
TE Weekly
A bilingual weekly companion to The Economist. An agent prepares issue summaries and collects the English worth keeping; I occasionally add a close reading.
Project repositoryIssues
15Reading
Progress Needs People Who Can Still Say No
From AI-made science and Canada's search for autonomy to battery recycling, climate preparedness and millennials' recovery, this issue asks who retains the ability to test claims and change course. It ends with 10 useful English expressions.
14Reading
Every Promise Needs Someone to Pay
From sovereign debt and LNG shortages to Europe's China strategy, AI oversight and scientific evidence, this issue tests whether promises come with the resources and accountability needed to honour them. It ends with 10 useful English expressions.
13Reading
Greater Capacity Needs Better Rules
From effective altruism and AI taxation to China's infrastructure, energy bottlenecks and mirror life, this issue asks who governs expanding productive power and shares its gains. It ends with 10 useful English expressions.
12Reading
Shortcuts Move Costs Rather Than Remove Them
From AI-written prose and ineffective surgery to housing, American retrenchment and data-centre insurance, this issue shows how apparent shortcuts shift costs rather than eliminate them. It ends with 10 useful English expressions.
11Reading
Power Is What Can Be Verified and Delivered
From an unverifiable AI truce and Russia's drone campaign to sovereign debt, South African crime and the uneven AI boom, this issue argues that power lies in enforceable capacity rather than declared intent. It ends with 10 useful English expressions.
10Reading
The Difference Between a Claim and a Capacity
From Europe's argument over Islam and Germany's AfD to falling test scores, AI employment and free buses, this issue asks whether public claims survive contact with evidence and institutions. It ends with 10 useful English expressions.
09Reading
The Bottleneck Is Usually Next Door
From Nvidia's circular financing and America's data-centre backlash to India's UPI, women's work and Chinese food safety, this issue shows that progress is often constrained by the institution beside the breakthrough. It concludes with 10 useful English expressions.
08Reading
Power Can Compel Without Controlling
From American deportations, tariffs and Iran sanctions to China’s extraterritorial laws, public-sector AI and humanoid robots, this issue shows why coercion becomes self-defeating when power outruns institutional capacity. It concludes with 10 useful English expressions.
07Reading
When Signals Become Targets, Systems Lose the Plot
From AI consciousness and data-centre forecasts to China’s unemployment rate, stock indices, trade routes and the Strait of Hormuz, this issue shows how proxies become misleading when institutions start managing them as goals. It concludes with 10 useful English expressions.
06Reading
Control Is Not the Same as Capacity
From Afghanistan, Venezuela and presidential tariff powers to Chinese oil reserves, Taiwanese gridlock, AI agents and embryo screening, this issue distinguishes visible control from the institutional capacity to produce durable outcomes. It concludes with 10 useful English expressions.
05Reading
When Action Gets Cheap, Institutions Pay the Bill
From Chinese jobs, British litigation and autonomous AI attacks to Korean chip wealth, public debt, Hormuz and Sudan, this issue shows that cheaper action does not automatically produce productivity; it first creates problems of congestion, liability and distribution. It concludes with 10 useful English expressions.
04Reading
The Future Is a Maintenance Problem
From post-quantum encryption, wildfires and Asian deterrence to AI editing, American entrepreneurship and financial fraud, this issue argues that societies are better at announcing breakthroughs than maintaining the systems that make progress safe and durable. It concludes with 10 useful English expressions from the issue.
03Reading
The Rule-Makers Are Escaping the Rules
From Elon Musk, runaway AI models and prediction markets to Chinese technology standards, British nostalgia and Nicaraguan autocracy, this issue asks what happens when the people who make, interpret or evade the rules become more powerful than the institutions meant to hold them accountable. It concludes with 10 useful English expressions from the issue.
02Reading
The More You Control, the Less You Can Choose
From a dimming Earth, the Strait of Hormuz and America’s Department of Justice to sovereign AI, China’s marriage crisis and urban nightlife, this issue reveals a recurring mechanism: attempts to eliminate risk and dependence often create new vulnerabilities and narrow the choices available later. It concludes with 10 useful English expressions.
01Reading
Ambition Is Cheap, Capacity Is Scarce
This issue moves from Russia, European defence and housing to semiconductors, AI bonds and dementia, repeatedly asking the same question: as political and commercial ambitions expand, can institutional, fiscal and technological capacity keep up? It concludes with 16 useful English expressions from the issue.
About this series
- Regular
- An agent prepares an issue summary and a set of useful words and expressions, staying close to the source.
- Occasionally
- I add a close reading of one article.