Europe

I refuse to give in to the doomer spirit about Europe. With that being said, we have a lot of problems to fix.

A breakdown of why Brussels writes so many laws by Silicon Continent dives into why, despite notionally having fewer powers devolved to it, the EU passes laws at more than twice the rate of the federal US government.

The EU Commission fined Twitter in December. Afterwards, Elon called for the abolition of the EU, sparking a huge debate on the merits and drawbacks of the EU as a whole. A thoughtful breakdown by Armin Ronacher offers a calmer-headed analysis of what might actually be happening here.

250bpm’s Erasmus: social engineering at scale goes over the history, and sheer scale of the Erasmus foreign exchange program. The most striking fact was that Erasmus sends 1.3 million people abroad each year, more than 100x more than the Fulbright Scholarship in the US.

The most important debate on the European stage in December however has definitely been whether to give the frozen Russian assets to Ukraine, and whether to approve the Mercosur trade deal.

While the delay of the Mercosur deal vote to January is a pretty clear-cut failure, the result of the Ukraine loan was more nuanced. Instead of using the frozen assets, the European Council used joint European debt to borrow €90 billion to give to Ukraine. Except -- only 24 of the 27 member states actually took on the financial obligations to back the loan. Czechia, Slovakia, and Hungary got a carve-out.

This was achieved with an EU legal instrument called enhanced cooperation. This allows for a subset of member states, at least 9, to push for further integration in areas without full unanimity. Peder Schaefer in Going Transatlantic breaks down how this mechanism could be the future of European collaboration.

Noah Smith also joins the growing list of people on both sides of the Atlantic arguing for Europe to urgently reorganise itself, and coordinate more militarily and economically.

There are two articles arguing for creative hot takes that stood out, even though I disagree with their conclusions. One is from J’accuse, pitching the idea that Zack Polanski, the leader of the UK Green Party, should abolish constitutional democracy and forward a vision of leftist futurism (such as that of the cybernetic governance experiments of 1970s Chile) instead of incremental socialist-leaning policy tweaks. The second, ‘Europe needs a new union’ by Persuasion advocates for exploring the idea of a new, North-Eastern Federation of European countries in close proximity of Russia, predicated on the demise of the EU.

Kamel Galeev argues how the geography of Ukraine and Russia makes conflict there inevitable.

A New Yorker piece goes over the huge fight over the standardisation of the minority Romansh language in Switzerland, spoken by only 40,000 people.

Elsewhere in the world

On the crypto side of things, this article by Siddharth Biju covers how the gold smuggling business in India, and their demand for easy-to-use cash, creates a 6% price premium on buying USDT on unregulated crypto marketplaces with rupees.

The lack of central bank independence and obsession with short term credit booms caused the large devaluation and the high inflation of the Turkish Lira.

CrossCurrents says China’s financial structure is deteriorating in ways that make its current growth unsustainable, and this creates political pressure for Beijing to force a quick resolution of the Taiwan issue before 2030.

Foreign Affairs covers how Xi Jinping’s governance style is best explained by his father’s repeated purges, and how it contributes to his quest to break the cycles of dynastic collapse that have historically defined China and to balance growth with ideology.

Lily Ottinger writes a very entertaining retelling of the story of the rise and fall of Bo Xilai.

Wedged between the spheres of influence of the US and China, the UAE is pragmatically aligning itself with the US in the AI race. With projects like Stargate UAE, it’s bringing tangible results. One of the most striking figures from this was that approximately 15% of the UAE population (not workforce, but population) works in construction. Compare that to about 3-4% in the UK or US.

Mastering the electric tech stack, and more specifically the manufacturing of drones and the components that go into them, is a key to hard power in the early 21st century. Noah Smith also wrote an optimistic piece about India’s ability to become a prosperous country, despite widespread doubt, if it can continue reforming its policies.

Misc

Casey Handmer makes predictions in the energy field. I am amazed every time I see graphs of the costs and production volumes of solar power and batteries.

He also predicts democratised battery ownership, ultra-low-cost thermal energy storage as a way to combat the seasonal energy load decreases in winter months, the building of DC-only voltage systems (bypassing conversion to and from AC which would be required to hook up to the main grid) for solar-powered datacentres, the irrigation of coastal deserts with desalinated water as energy becomes even cheaper, and more.

A large part of the popularity and impact of Watson and Crick’s famous paper on the structure of the DNA can be explained by their clear writing style. Franklin and Wilkins also had their paper on the structure of the DNA published at the same time (and Watson and Crick actually based almost all their experimental findings on their work), but their excessive length, and complex, difficult-to-follow style that was full of arcane jargon meant they didn’t get the reach that Watson and Crick got. “Watson and Crick have something important to say, they say it clearly, and then shut up.”

A very in-depth overview on LessWrong of all of the major AI and AI safety developments in 2025.

One of the co-founders of Works in Progress gives a detailed guide to data visualisation with a lot of useful examples.

Technical and product-centric startup founders fear direct sales and should pay much more attention to it. Even bottoms-up products like Slack and Zoom get immense benefits from direct sales efforts.

Tips on fighting jet lag, both westwards and eastwards.

Some practical tips for cold-emailing people you respect.

On the very niche side, Prigozhin lives! goes over the symbolic afterlife of Prigozhin in Russian political imagination after his failed coup attempt. It also includes a review of Lemner, a recently released postmodern Russian novel that resurrects Prigozhin mythically to tell the stories of Russian elite power struggles.

Two videos stuck out to me this month, one is a very well-researched and edited Polandball-style history of Hungary, and another one is an explanation of the different camera angles in photography, what they signify and what message they give off about the subject

I’m excited about the launch of ‘the Update’ newsletter by Stefan Schubert.

Found some practical tips for reducing screen-time.

Some people use a never-ending .txt file as a productivity app.

Finally, an FT story of a young oil trader who made $250m by trading Russian oil after the war began, exploiting legal grey zones created by sanctions.

Blogs

I take a keen interest in any proposals for pro-growth reforms of the European Union. Luis Garicano’s Constitution of Innovation is finally one that feels both practical and transformational.

Simon Grimm argues that decades-long liberal control after their 1848 civil war is why Switzerland is so rich. He says that this practically uncontested control allowed them to push through many changes that took other European societies a lot longer to get right, including: abolishing internal tariffs, setting up a nationwide currency, enabling relatively free trade with its neighbours, and setting up important institutions (like ETH Zurich, Credit Suisse).

Watch men from Works in Progress went over the history of the Swiss watchmaking industry, especially the comeback story after the Japanese industry overtook the market in the late 70s by being early with quartz.

The Chinese Imperial exams were insane. By the 1800s, the pass rate was 1 out of 25,000, requiring memorisation of vast swathes of ancient books and poetry that usually had zero practical implications for what a candidate might be doing if they managed to become an official. Nothing about knowledge of foreign countries or cultures, engineering, military & warfare. Instead, imagine questions like: “How many times does the character 城 (cheng) appear in the writings of Mencius? How was it used?”. It also had some unintended consequences:

The exam’s passage rate was so low that thousands of brilliant and capable men were not able to enter into the government. One such man, Hong Xiuquan, came close to passing the 1st stage of the exam on his first attempt at age 19. He studied obsessively for the next three years and took the test again at age 22. After all that effort, his result was worse. Hong’s failure led to a mental breakdown, he saw visions and he ended up starting a revolutionary movement which swept over China - called the Taiping Rebellion. Over 20 million Chinese men, women, and children died in the fighting and several major cities were utterly destroyed (including Nanjing). All because the exam system had such a low passage rate that it excluded many highly talented men. Frustrated but talented men are extremely dangerous, as historians know (see Robespierre, Lenin, Adolph Hitler…).

I feel lucky to have found Tim Urban’s 2007 travel blog of his journeys in Central Asia. It’s the first time I had heard of Buzkashi:

The national sport in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan? Buzkashi. The word “Buzkashi” means, literally, “grabbing the dead goat.” I’ll let the book I read about the region sum it up:
“The day before kickoff the goat carcass has its head, lower legs and entrails removed and is soaked in cold water for 24 hours to toughen it up. The game begins with the carcass in the center of a circle at one end of the field; at the other end is a bunch of wild, adrenaline-crazed horsemen. At a signal it’s every man for himself as they charge for the carcass. The aim is to gain possession of the carcass and carry it up the field and around a post, with the winning rider being the one who finally drops the carcass back in the circle. All the while there’s a frenzied horsebacked tug-of-war going on as each competitor tries to gain possession; smashed noses, wrenched shoulders, and shattered thigh bones are all part of the fun.”

A lot has been said about UK gilt markets from the perspective of policymakers. More interesting was a look from the perspective of the traders themselves.

Instead of top-down centralised government megaprojects requiring widespread grids, African adoption of solar has been driven by modular, distributed, digitally-metered, remotely-monitored, PAYG-financed infrastructure deployed by private companies in competitive markets.

This thorough analysis of Bending Spoons, a really unique European company that is a mix of a startup, conglomerate, and PE firm.

A lot of foreign aid in Western countries (sometimes even the majority) never leaves the host country because it goes to refugees already living there.

I myself am writing a Substack post on the history of 19th century American money, which should be done soon!

Tweets

I’m cautiously optimistic about the EU Commission moving forward with the EU-Inc proposal as a regulation rather than as a directive.

Travis Kalanick bought a backgammon engine company and is looking for a CEO. Last time he did something like this, it became kind of a big deal.

Again from Travis, this tweet explained the actual economics of tipping as a tool for maximising the price paid by consumers.

I’ve been following the ludicrous adventure of an account called KabutoKing, who is trying to collect every 1st edition Kabuto (a Pokémon) card in the world. He’s doing pretty well!

I was very impressed by the huge popularity of Anthropic’s thinking cap handout in London despite it being announced at such short notice.

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