to summarize, this week jd vance laysplained st augustine of hippo to the augustinian pope, while the pope visited hippo

Even Artemis II Astronauts Have Microsoft Outlook Problems The mission commander’s email inbox failed during the journey to the moon. Have they tried turning the computer off and back on again?

Never felt more like an astronaut www.wired.com/story/artemi...

love this

The Strait of Hormuz is open for transit

Pretty crazy how important the blockade of a trade route is right now

Nintendo Suing U.S. Government Over Tariffs Nintendo filed a lawsuit in the United States Court of International Trade

Super Mario taking on the US government on trade policy is the kind of story i'm here for.

aftermath.site/nintendo-tar...

Particularly baffling that the first result here is not a link to Amazon's own prime video service where you would assume they make the most money. Selling AI slop must be hella lucrative.

I thought Amazon's search was already broken but it has gotten so much worse. Search for "One battle after another" turns up pages and pages of AI slop "movie reviews" and in some cases completely different movies. The thing it will not give you? The actual movie as a blu-ray or VoD.

I realise I'm just a freak, but living in a multicultural city is the best thing of all time, it's just the best possible human experience and i can not understand why anyone on earth would be like "weve got to destroy this"

Ungleiche Chancen: Gymnasien gibt's nur für Reiche Je mehr der Staat organisiert, umso besser für die Armen: So heißt es oft. Doch Bildung und Gesundheit zeigen: Staatliche Angebote sind oft dort, wo es den Leuten sowieso gut geht.

Öffentliche Güter wie Schulen und Krankenhäuser könnten helfen, die soziale Ungleichheit zu bekämpfen – wenn sie denn dort wären, wo arme Menschen leben. Unsere Datenanalyse zeigt: In Deutschland ist das Gegenteil der Fall.

Who’s who at X, the deepfake porn site formerly known as Twitter A look inside Elon Musk’s big tent

There we go. That there’s a headline.

IfW-Ökonom Schularick über die Krise der deutschen Wirtschaft Der Ökonom Moritz Schularick sagt, warum Deutschland zu sehr auf die Autoindustrie hofft, was bei den Verteidigungsausgaben schiefläuft und wie aus der Krise eine Chance werden kann.

Ein paar Denkanregungen fürs neue Jahr: IfW-Präsident Moritz @schularick.bsky.social blickt im FAS-Interview auf 2026. So viele neue Schulden und trotzdem so wenig Wirtschaftswachstum? "Irgendwann stoßen Sie an die Grenzen der Mathematik." Zum Schluss gibt's trotzdem einen Hauch von Optimismus.

Medical breakthroughs in 2025 ... and a happy new year.

New post!

There was a lot of innovation in medicine and biomedical research this year, and I've tried to summarize the biggest ones in this blogpost.

Medical breakthroughs in 2025. Plus a serious note at the end.
www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/medical-br...

the world is getting better

Again,

Wie aus Israel berichten? Zur Kritik an Sophie von der Tann Die ARD-Korrespondentin Sophie von der Tann wird wegen ihrer Beiträge zu Israel und Gaza kritisiert. In überschießender Weise. Die Kampagne gegen sie ist Teil von Bestrebungen, kritische Berichterstat...

Christian Meier, Nahost-Korrespondent der @faznet.bsky.social. Bitte lesen.

www.faz.net/aktuell/feui...

MIT-Ökonom David Autor über Deindustrialisierung und Künstliche Intelligenz In Deutschland herrscht Angst vor Deindustrialisierung und Jobverlusten durch die KI. Der amerikanische Ökonom David Autor liefert Argumente für mehr Optimismus.

"Kein Land freut sich mehr über Trump als China", sagte der MIT-Ökonom David Autor mir im Interview. Es gab aber durchaus auch Gründe für Optimismus in diesem Gespräch, zum Beispiel in Bezug auf die Jobverluste durch KI. Vielleicht kommt doch alles nicht so schlimm?

basically believe that this mostly depends on when you got Properly Online - before a certain cut-off your normal internet experience was high agency/high effort, but it eventually became low agency/low effort, and it's impossible to create a social media experience that caters to both groups

China’s CO2 emissions have been flat or falling for past 18 months, analysis finds World’s biggest polluter on track to hit peak emissions target early but miss goal for cutting carbon intensity

This a big deal: "China’s carbon dioxide emissions have been flat or falling for 18 months"

China's economy has grown by ~5% in the last year, so this comprehensively debunks the idea (again) that emissions are tied to growth. So yes, faster progress needed, but this is how you turn the corner.

Handelsexpertin Goldberg über Trump: „Es gibt keinen Weg zurück aus dem Wirtschaftskrieg“ Amerikas wichtigste Handelsexpertin glaubt: Donald Trump hat einen Teufelskreis in Gang gesetzt, der alles immer teurer macht – sogar wenn er gar nicht mehr im Amt ist.

Handelsökonomin Pinelopi Goldberg glaubt nicht, dass es für die Globalisierung noch einen Weg zurück gibt. Donald Trump hat einen Teufelskreis ausgelöst, an dessen Ende das Streben nach Autarkie steht.

The decline in the physical stature of the U.S. population parallels the diminution in the rate of increase in life expectancy The U.S. healthcare and food-provisioning systems have failed to create an environment in which the human biological organism can flourish. Consequent…

Pretty wild: Americans are getting shorter. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Die Chance des Westens: Warum Chinas Monopol auf Seltene Erden bröckelt Im Konflikt um Seltene Erden hat der Westen Zeit gewonnen. Chinas Monopol beginnt schon jetzt zu bröckeln.

China zeigt in diesen Tagen dem Westen wie nie zuvor seine Abhängigkeit bei kritischen Rohstoffen. Das ist die eine Lesart der aktuellen geopolitischen Lage.

Es gibt aber noch eine andere: Vielleicht waren die vergangenen Wochen gerade der Anfang vom Ende des chinesischen Monopols.

I’m really starting to suspect that most of the tech bros haven’t actually read Tolkien, as they certainly don’t understand it.

The gentle hobbits save the “hard men” of Gondor, largely through compassion and selflessness. Not the other way around. The Christian parable is barely hidden!

The End of the End of History The second Oakeshott Lecture of 2025 - with perennially viral tech philosopher Curtis Yarvin and eminent historian David Starkey From San Francisco via Dimes Square, the Oakeshott Lectures bring Curti...

"a critic of contemporary democracy" would be someone who thinks it might be nice to have a few more referenda or who has weirdly strong opinions on FPTP vs. proportionate voting. Curtis Yarvin is a far-right nationalist who thinks some races are more suitable to slavery than others. wtf @ox.ac.uk

China and the West: Many Great Divergences Part of Panel 4: Technology, Institutions and Divergence: Arguments and Counterarguments About Rise and Fall, Success and Failure Chair: Christopher McKenna (Oxford)

i was trying to remember the time i went to see Joel Mokyr speak in 2019 and found that they actually recorded the talk. i think it gives a good impression of what an inspiring speaker he is. The book he was referring to is coming out soon! podcasts.ox.ac.uk/china-and-we...

"There is some literature today that says (...) growth is bad. (...) You want one number to show you how much better life is today, look at infant mortality statistics."

"There's a reason we speak of technological progress but institutional change. There is no way that we can show [institutions] get better over time. (...) They will come down again and it seems there's some evidence to show that is what is happening today."

LIVE: Nobel Prize in economics winner Joel Mokyr speaks YouTube video by Reuters

"Bob Fogel said to me once: For economics to work without economic history is like an evolutionary biologist without paleontology. You just miss 99.5% of all the species that ever walked on this earth." Joel Mokyr www.youtube.com/live/__0sGvj...

Mokyr's work could not have been done today in most economics departments, but the irony is that his work would not fit in history departments today, either. Methodologically he seems more 'history' than 'economics' to economists, but the content and reasoning are too 'economics' for most historians