Guillermo Idanez 🇪🇺

Chart: Wind and solar overtook coal on the US grid in 2024 The renewable energy sources together generated more electricity than coal-fired power plants from January to November of this year.

🌬️ + ☀️ = more ⚡ than coal in 2024 in the US

www.canarymedia.com/articles/cle...

86 Stories of Progress from 2024 Not everything that happened this year was terrible.

86 reasons for optimism.

fixthenews.com/86-stories-p...

the most unrealistic thing about Star Wars movies imo is that at no point did they ever leave the house for an adventure only to realize that one of the droids is at like 13% battery level

Europe’s economic apocalypse Stagnation, flagging competitiveness, Donald Trump — the continent is facing “an existential challenge.”

“Recessions and trade wars may come and go, but what makes this juncture so perilous for the continent’s prosperity has to do with the biggest inconvenient truth of all: the EU has become an innovation desert.”

www.politico.eu/article/euro...

If you read just one thing today -be this article by @mikegrunwald.bsky.social and the corresponding 🧵.

An excellent piece that throws a crucial perspective on industrial agriculture. Eye-opening.

Pont Saint-Louis, Paris, yesterday.

The 50 greatest innovations of 2024 The 37th annual Best of What's New awards.

Every year, Popular Science’s 50 What’s New makes the best Christmas gift list.

www.popsci.com/technology/b...

Opinion | My Last Column: Finding Hope in an Age of Resentment Where have all the good vibes gone?

@pkrugman.bsky.social last piece for the NYT - “if we stand up to the kakistocracy — rule by the worst — that’s emerging as we speak, we may eventually find our way back to a better world.

www.nytimes.com/2024/12/09/o...

"Electric vehicles have reached price parity in China. Average transaction prices for battery electric vehicles are now lower than average combustion vehicles and adoption is taking off as a result

"Technology developments tend to not respect borders over time"

www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

#2 Disrupter: Teresa Ribera

As the EU competition chief, Ribera has a mandate to shake up the bloc.

Those efforts are bound to infuriate leaders in Brussels and beyond, but she’s up for the task.

Read her full #POLITICO28 profile: www.politico.eu/list/politic...

"fixing Europe’s rail network is exactly the sort of thing that Brussels should be doing – whether by using competition policy to break up national monopolies, or by applying Single Market principles to require operators to maintain their networks and open them to trains from other countries"

Why the Guardian is no longer posting on X We will stop posting from our official editorial accounts on the platform, but X users can still share our articles

www.theguardian.com/media/2024/n...

Coldplay - ALL MY LOVE (Official Video) (Directors' Cut) YouTube video by Coldplay

This is so, so beautiful!

youtu.be/o4OlL0OpbW8

The Apocryphal Twain: “When the rich rob the poor, it’s called business.” There is perhaps no greater testament to Twain’s lasting reputation than the habitual misattribution of miscellaneous wit and wisdom to his name. The circulation of such apocryphal aphorisms was co…

“When the rich rob the poor, it’s called business. When the poor fight back, it’s called violence.” – The Apocryphal Twain

marktwainstudies.com/the-apocryph...

Wicked review – Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande make the magic happen The stars enchant as young rival witches in Jon M Chu’s impossibly slick first instalment of his two-part adaptation of musical juggernaut Wicked

Just watched Wicked. I’m as impressed as Wendy Ide: “With its all too timely themes of bullying, corrupt leaders and the demonisation of difference, this is a movie that promises […] escapism but delivers considerably more in the way of depth and darkness.

www.theguardian.com/film/2024/no...

India now outpaces China in green investments as renewables surge The momentum is being driven by India’s push to build out local clean energy capacity to limit reliance on China, and the goal of exporting.

“Deals worth about $2.4 billion were completed in the third quarter [of 2024], more than four times the value of those in China and the second-highest total globally behind the US, data compiled by BloombergNEF show.”

theprogressplaybook.com/2024/12/06/i...

The lack of efficiency in public administration has become a mantra.

What about friction and waste in firms? White-collar workers burn 50%+ of their time in useless meetings, dead projects, and just noise.

That’s a huge opportunity for welfare redistribution, full employment and societal growth.

Banned by Germany The Ban’s Deeper Significance

open.substack.com/pub/savagemi...

Your personality changes when you speak another language, but that’s not always a bad thing Emotions are more vivid in your mother tongue, but you’re more objective when speaking a second language.

Bi(polar)linguism.

theconversation.com/your-persona...

(C) David Sipress - www.davidsipress.com/cartoons

Manufacturing is a war now And the democracies are losing.

“By creating overcapacity, China is forcibly deindustrializing every single one of its geopolitical rivals.

Yes, this reduces profit for Chinese companies, but profit is not the goal of war.”

open.substack.com/pub/noahpini...

The Algorithm Has Been Hiding Something From You | NYT Opinion YouTube video by The New York Times

Take a deep dive into the rich fediverse!

youtu.be/aToMV4wL2wc

One of the biggest mistakes left-leaning people make: when they think about "messaging" or "branding," they think about clever words & phrases. But the key to successful messaging is *power*, ie, the capacity to thrust your message into eyes/ears. Repetition, not cleverness, is the key to success.

‘Future is Europe’ mural is a thing of the past It may or may not be resurrected.

One of the most photographed murals in Brussels was torn down today to make way for a European Commission conference center.

This illustration gives examples of mechanisms by which automobility harms people and the environment.

Car harm: A global review of automobility's harm to people and the environment doi.org/10.1016/j.jt...

"The case exemplifies the urgency and importance of colonial reckoning. EU countries, including Belgium, should recognize the atrocities committed during colonization and their ongoing impacts on the lives of survivors and descendants today."

www.hrw.org/news/2024/12...

Ayuso está privatizando la Educación.

Ilustración de El Roto.

Little Rules About Big Things A few things I’ve come to terms with…

“It’s easier to lie with numbers than words, because people understand stories but their eyes glaze over with numbers.

As the saying goes, more fiction has been written in Excel than Word.” - @morganhousel.bsky.social

collabfund.com/blog/little-...

Opinion | The Surprising Allure of Ignorance We want to know, but we also want not to know, sometimes fiercely so.

Mark Lilly of Columbia Univ has written an excellent op ed on critical thinking for the NYT:

www.nytimes.com/2024/12/02/o...

European Federation of Journalists to stop posting content on X The EFJ represents over 295,000 journalists in 44 countries.

"We cannot continue to participate in the social network feed of a man who proclaims the death of the media and therefore of journalists... X is a platform that no longer serves the public interest at all, but the special ideological and financial interests of its owner and his political allies"