ChatGPT has been legitimately unusable for me since watching this

RT @MacaesBruno: Important piece. Haaretz goes from bed to bed photographing dying, starving babies and children in Gaza, an endless landsc…

Wat een verschil in presentatie. Financial Times vs NOS. De EU biedt geen enkele weerstand tegen de pestkop op het schoolplein, maar kruipt er volledig in. Alleen willen we zelfs dat liever niet erkennen…

It's a mighty challenge for any materialist today: explaining how European elites perceive this slow harakiri as a historic power move

EU contemplating a highway for low-road strategies to competitiveness. Innovation, right? @meme_ec

Was machst Du ab Septebmer? Du interessierst Dich für Politik, Wirtschaft und Arbeit. Du bist politisch und Kommunikation macht Dir Spaß. Dann bewirb Dich diese Woche für ein anspruchsvolles Praktikum im politischen Zentrum Europas im Team @FES_FoW. Mehr Infos hier👇

extremely lucid essay by adam tooze on the futuristic component of trumpism

Neue Studie zu digitaler Steuerung und Kontrolle von Beschäftigten im Außendienst via Smartphone - von technischer Wartung bis mobile Pflege. Ich untersuche auf 91 Seiten Software von Microsoft, betriebliche Praktiken, Auswirkungen und Handlungsoptionen: crackedlabs.org/mobilearbeit

Remember folks. Who writes and updates the software matters… a lot…

L'Union européenne tournera bientôt sur Microsoft. On n'a pas trop l'impression que cet appel à faire marche arrière lancé par l’Association des Seniors de la Fonction Publique Européenne (SEPS/SFPE) a été entendu. sfpe-seps.be/wp-content/uplo…

People don't talk about this enough. Any theory of public sector waste should try to explain why many of the same pathologies are replicated in profit-seeking environments.

💥Une migration vers #Microsoft des systèmes d'information des institutions de l'Union européenne est en cours. via @quatremer

We are selling pad thai in installments to willing buyers at the current fair market price

Très bonne discussion de la part de l'interviewer. En particulier, son insistance sur le besoin d'adapter les pensions à la réalité du pays. On dit que la retraite par répartition n'est pas risquée, alors qu'elle crée un effet de levier financier sur les actifs en décorrélant les pensions de la croissance du pays. Lorsque la situation se dégrade, les actifs sont touchés plus que proportionnellement parce que les pensions sont sanctuarisées. Autrement dit, lorsque la stagnation des salaires complique le financement des pensions, plutôt que d'ajuster les revenus de tous proportionnellement, on double la peine pour les actifs. Soit explicitement en augmentant les cotisations retraites, comme on l'a fait pendant longtemps, soit en allouant une part croissante du budget de l'Etat aux retraites (le fameux "besoin élevé de financement qui implique une diversification des ressources" de la Cour des comptes qui refuse d'utiliser le mot déficit). Ce qui occasionne aussi une baisse des niveaux de vie via la dégradation des services publics. Et tout ceci crée un cercle vicieux car cet étranglement par le passif décourage la création de richesse, et donc ralentit l'économie. C'est ce qu'on appelle "debt overhang" en finance. Dans le monde des affaires, une telle situation aboutirait à une renégociation de la dette afin de pouvoir construire sur des bases saines.

Hear the sirens. If the warfare state replaces the welfare state, this will further fuel the extreme right. More countries falling in the hands of extreme right nationalists would weaken Europe in an existential way.

The Europeans will meet Trump's demands on trade by agreeing to buy more American weapons They'll pacify the European left by pretending this gives them independence/sovereignty But it will further weaken the European states economically and bind them ever tighter to USA

When NATO members increase defense spending, they are doing exactly what the president wants, regardless of what they say to their home audience to legitimate diverting resources from infrastructure and public services

The West’s decline isn’t sudden—it’s a long, slow unravelling. Economic decay & political neglect have fuelled #populism & given us #Trump. Yet policymakers continue playing the ostrich, ignoring the root causes of #discontent. doi.org/10.1093/cjres/rsab02… doi.org/10.1080/00130095.202…

I’ll write about this in greater detail tomorrow, but for now, let me say this: I’ve been a relentless critic of the US-NATO proxy war in Ukraine from the very beginning, and yet — or rather, precisely because of this — I was appalled by what I witnessed today. A change in administration does not absolve the United States from its pivotal role in both triggering and prolonging the war — especially considering that Trump himself played a key role in escalating the conflict, during his first term, by being the first administration to provide lethal weaponry to Ukraine, as he himself has boasted about in the past few days. This is not just a matter of historical hindsight; it’s an ongoing tragedy with consequences still being felt today. To make matters worse, what we saw today won’t help bring peace in Ukraine — it will further embolden the hawks in Europe (as we are already seeing) while sending the message to Russia that the US isn’t a country that can be trusted: what it signs up to today could easily be undone tomorrow by a future administration — or even by the current one, if the wind starts to blow in a different direction. Until the United States demonstrates a genuine commitment to peace, which requires not only a profound reassessment of its foreign policy approach but also a fundamental shift in how it engages with other nations, including its (former?) proxies, there is little hope for an end to this war. This means moving beyond the pursuit of short-term political gains, and instead prioritising long-term stability, diplomacy and cooperation. A true commitment to peace would involve confronting the US’s (and Trump’s) own role in escalating the conflict, fostering open dialogues with all parties involved, and working to create frameworks that encourage mutual understanding rather than exacerbating divisions. Until such a transformation occurs, it’s hard to imagine a long-term settlement capable of bringing an end to this bloody conflict.