“A bombastic celebration of military strength can only take you so far when there is no obvious strategy for bringing the war to a satisfactory conclusion.” @ldfreedman.bsky.social
samf.substack.com/p/making-it-...
Few think that the world’s next trillion-dollar tech company will be European. But, perhaps for the first time, that does not seem a silly idea econ.st/3PlThCL
Illustration: Tyler Comrie
The air routes between Europe and Asia are starting to look very fragile.
My photo shows a famous wall painting from Pompeii known as the Sappho fresco. It shows the head and upper body of a young woman framed inside a painted circular border. She faces forward. Her eyes are large and dark, gazing to one side with a calm and thoughtful expression, as if pausing mid-thought. Her skin is pale, and her hair is dark brown and tightly curled, forming small ringlets around her face. A thin golden hairnet holds her curls in place. She wears small gold hoop earrings, and a brown cloak over a green garment. In her right hand she holds a thin dark metal stylus (writing tool) up against her lips, as if thinking about what to write. In her left hand she holds a small rectangular wooden wax writing tablet. The fresco is now on display at the Muso Archeologico Nazionale in Naples
The ‘Sappho’ fresco from Pompeii.
A beautiful Roman portrait of a young woman for #InternationalWomensDay
She holds a writing tablet, and raises a writing stylus to her lips in thoughtful contemplation. 55-70 AD.
Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples 📷 by me
#Archaeology
What if AI just makes us work harder?
Employees have reported increased momentum, but also a feeling of having more to do: ft.trib.al/D8Oyp7h
There are now more tech workers going from the US to Europe than the other way around
Denmark, Epinion poll:
A-S&D: 21% (+1)
F-G/EFA: 12%
I-EPP: 11% (-1)
V-RE: 10%
O-PfE: 9% (+1)
Æ-ECR: 8% (-1)
C-EPP: 7% (-1)
Ø-LEFT: 7% (+1)
M-RE: 5%
B-RE: 5% (+1)
H-*: 3%
Å→G/EFA: 3%
+/- vs. 02-04 March 2026
Fieldwork: 03-05 March 2026
Sample size: 1,807
➤ europeelects.eu/denmark
The Hague - highly recommended for a weekend family trip
Heel mooi verhaal - maar waarom moest dit perse weer centraal overgenomen worden?
Ingrid (54) gaf via Facebook tientallen kinderen in nood een veilige thuis, maar nu neemt app over
vrtnws.be/p.aDRQDj99d
"Very important decisions...postponed again.".
While of great comedic value, a continued delaying of any hard choices & actions on FCAS by Berlin is also an act of political cowardice. It underscores how Germany cannot "lead" on European NatSec strategy.
www.n-tv.de/politik/Berl...
My Charlemagne on luxury goods, Europe's global tax on vanity.
How did Europe, an egalitarian continent with a slumping share of global GDP, come to host an industry that thrives on bombastic money-making?
Features a $15,000 Louis Vuitton bone-shaped leather trunk
www.economist.com/europe/2026/...
We’ve got a great executive course offering this summer! Join us to interact with and learn from leading experts and policymakers on defence, trade, tech and more!
EU-Mercosur is a political lightning rod. But the economics of the deal favour the EU: it has run a persistent, rising trade surplus with #Mercosur for years.
New @centreeuropeanref.bsky.social insight by @antonspisak.bsky.social
Read here: buff.ly/IESx33T
”In an age of blood-soaked realpolitik, Europe stands out. Yes, it is meek, a vegetarian in a world of omnivorous geopolitical rivals. [But i]f it is a sin to think that rules matter, the world could do with a few more sinners… the relative sanity found in Europe is a kind of defiance.”
Government-aligned pollsters show Fidesz with a 6pt lead while opposition-aligned and neutral pollsters show Tisza with a 13pt lead. It's the first time since Orban came to power that there's been such a clear split between pollsters
Google faces lawsuit after Gemini chatbot instructed man to kill himself
To be clear - Japan (or uk) does not have local content rules. Your statement is incorrect.
Tesla, Hyundais, etc can access Japanese BeV subsidies
1/ Russian commentators are sounding the alarm over America's use of a new kamikaze drone against Iran, the Low-cost Unmanned Combat Attack System (LUCAS). They note that it appears to have an integrated Starlink terminal and warn that it's a serious threat to Russia. ⬇️
💥INVESTIGATION: In Viktor Orbán's Hungary, children in care homes are targeted by criminal networks, with pimps effectively embedding themselves within the child-protection system. Those working in the sector say they are powerless to stop the abuse.
🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷 A bombshell? Not quite but President Macron went further than expected this afternoon in announcing progress towards a strengthened “European dimension” for France’s nuclear deterrent. 1/
Inside the plan to kill Ali Khamenei - remarkable reporting here by Mehul Srivastava and James Shotter. ie "Nearly all the traffic cameras in Tehran had been hacked for years, their images encrypted and transmitted to servers in Tel Aviv and southern Israel." www.ft.com/content/bf99...
1/ Videos of Iranian Shahed drone strikes in the Gulf have been eye-catching, but lack an important nuance: they are less technologically advanced and used differently than Russia's similar Geran-2 drones, as Russian warbloggers point out. ⬇️
bsky.app/profile/tend...
Isn’t Steam there nearly as well?
“US game platform Roblox may soon be designated as a Very Large Online Platform, or VLOP, under the Digital Services Act, marking the first time a gaming platform would face additional systemic risk obligations” www.mlex.com/mlex/article...
it's like there's a metaphor for this kind of thing
hope for the fund's sake that he's not in risk management
www.ft.com/content/7ece...
A brief reprieve from the US-Israel-Iran war news to share some photos from Lviv, because the western Ukrainian city was absolutely glorious today, on this first day of spring. Signs point to the long, horrible winter and freezing cold being over. The Russian attacks, however, are likely to continue
Oil spills from tankers have fallen by more than 90% since the 1970s. Stacked bar chart showing annual counts of tanker oil spills from 1970 to 2024, with the vertical axis labeled 0 to 120 spills and the horizontal axis by year. Bars are stacked to show two categories: medium oil spills (7 to 700 tonnes) and large oil spills (greater than 700 tonnes). Only medium and large spills are included; smaller spills are excluded. Key annotations: a callout at 1974 notes 117 oil spills occurred that year, 27 of them large; a callout at 2024 notes 10 oil spills occurred that year, 5 of them large. Overall the chart shows a sharp peak in the early to mid-1970s, followed by a long-term decline in annual spill counts, with much lower and relatively stable numbers from the 2000s onward and a slight uptick toward 2024. Data source in the footer: ITOPF (2025); website OurWorldInData.org/oil-spills. License: CC BY.
Oil spills from tankers have fallen by more than 90% since the 1970s—
In the 1970s, oil spills from tankers — container ships transporting oil — were common. Between 70 and 100 spills occurred per year. That’s one or two spills every week.
