Can you imagine if this is just the first step towards the removal of charismatic authoritarians around the world, replacing them with leaders who believe in democratic process, the rule of law and the separation of powers?

One tip I can't believe I'll be offering in future negotiation classes is that interlocutors tend to react badly when you publicly announce the talks are just to buy time until you can steal their stuff. This applies doubly if you have no practical way whatsoever to actually do it.

#polisky the absolute decimation of the social sciences cc @professormusgrave.bsky.social @mcopelov.bsky.social

Home Solar xkcd.com/3226/

People need to understand that it is a good thing if Trump threatens to leave NATO and says the US will not fight for Europe. The truth was the alliance was dead the moment he became president again. The US under him would never fight to defend Europe from Russia. Pretending otherwise was dangerous.

As someone who studies politicization of democratic militaries this statement on X is a five- alarm fire. It creates an undeniable permission structure for overt partisan behavior by mil. It's part of a concerted effort by civilian leaders to turn the U.S. military into a partisan aligned force.

“A growing body of evidence, …suggests that the most consequential military operation of the twenty-first century may have been shaped less by strategic necessity than by … the tendency of large language models to tell their users exactly what they want to hear.” AI + fog of war = chaos & failure?

Anderswo:

How the US punishes Francesca Albanese for speaking out against genocide: "banks have frozen Albanese’s accounts. Transactions involving her are stopped .... Her health insurance has halted payments. Hotels have canceled bookings in her name." www.politico.com/news/magazin...

🇪🇺 Historically, the unanimity vote in EU was introduced because small EU MS feared that a FR/DE/IT steamroller could just walk them over on everything. Ironically, the concern that one EU MS could be compromised by a third party and maliciously block the bloc didn't really come up back then.

Worth noting that Donald Trump just announced the end of NATO and the Special Relationship in one tweet.

T-14 days until the Hungarian election. 🇭🇺🗳️ In this thread, I discuss Magyar's prospects of success in restoring (liberal) democracy (if he wins) and will tell you he's not the saviour you might think he is (but that he’s still good enough for now). 🧵 1/

Climate has almost disappeared from our conversation. But it remains the most pressing challenge of our times. Last week the WMO said the planet is “more out of balance than at any time in observed history.” Energy security and climate security are not competing priorities.

This photo.

8️⃣7️⃣ GWh❗️ Rekord! Noch nie wurde in Österreich so viel Strom aus #Windkraft 🌀 produziert wie am gestrigen 27. März. Die Hälfte der Stromerzeugung kam also von Windrädern. Der bisherige Rekord lag bei 81 Gigawattstunden pro Tag (Jänner 2025).

Explains so much about his high level appointments.

Great chart by @janrosenow shows how Pakistan increased the share of solar PV in its electricity mix from 4% in 2021 to 25% in 2025. Huge success. Energy independence is of course on the top of every national agenda!

#Trade & #GlobalEurope - Global Gateway: From narrative to non-delivery, by Philippe Van Damme | @ecdpm.org www.pubaffairsbruxelles.eu/opinion-anal...

We are 2/3 of the way to the US mid-terms. Trump promised voters 4 main things. End inflation. End forever wars. Drain the swamp. Reverse immigration. On 1, 2 & 3 he has delivered the precise opposite. On 4 the negative consequences of "success" are obvious to many. He is set to lose. What now?

Das man dort wählen darf, wo man lebt, scheint mir vernünftig. Es ist absurd, dass Österreicher, die seit 20 Jahren im Ausland leben, hier wählen dürfen, aber viele Menschen, die seit 20 Jahren hier leben, nicht.

Zipf’s law drives anyone who thinks too much about it into gibbering madness

📢 Call: Tenure Track Position The MPIfG Political Economy Research Area led by Lucio Baccaro is seeking a Senior Researcher. Open to candidates with at least two years’ postdoc experience. Please share widely! 🗓️ Apply by April 20, 2026 s.gwdg.de/WPMPp1

they're calling it one of the greatest own-goals of all time, absolutely the most astonishing

It's just unreal how little thought or planning went into starting a new massive war in the Middle East.

Christ on an electric bike. Trump Administration to Pay $1 Billion to Energy Giant to Cancel Wind Farms www.nytimes.com/2026/03/23/c...

Exactly 5 minutes BEFORE Trump announced a 5-day delay in bombing Iranian power plants, someone purchased $1.5 billion worth of S&P futures in a single trade. Someone also sold $192 million in oil futures. Trump and/or his cronies are engaging in market manipulation and insider trading.

Weil das Narrativ der "jungen rechten Männer" sich derart hartnäckig hält - einige Auswertungen aus den repräsentativen Wahlstatistiken der verschiedenen Bundesländer. Spoiler: *IN KEINEM BUNDESLAND DEUTSCHLANDS WÄHLEN 18-24-JÄHRIGE MÄNNER MEHR AfD ALS MÄNNER ZWISCHEN 35 UND 60.*

Good visual reminder that war not only has large human and economic costs, it can have environmental impacts as well.

The US-Israel war on Iran has emitted 5 million tonnes of CO₂ₑ in its first 14 days. The world currently has 0.6 million tonnes of novel and permanent CO₂ removal (CDR) capacity annually.

Brussels bubble: "the US is pulling ahead, the EU is lagging behind and must deregulate to remain competitive" Reality:

The reckless campaign against Iran will weaken America’s president. That will make him angry. Be warned: he makes a very bad loser econ.st/4bAtZby

Steile These... Da ist was dran!

Aid to Ukraine from 2022-2026 was a rounding error. We used more in the first two weeks of the Iran war than we provided in the 4 years of aid to Ukraine.

🚆ÖFSE goes Brüssel @schl.bsky.social präsentierte diese Woche die Studie „The foundations of EU development and cooperation policies“ und Bernhard Tröster die Studie „Industrial Overcapacities, with a Focus on China“. 👀 Mehr dazu und Videos der Präsentationen: www.oefse.at/ueber-uns/ne...

NEW: The first evidence of a solar take-off in Africa☀️✈️ x33 rise in Algeria solar panel imports in the 12 mths to June 2025, compared to previous 12 mths. x8 in Zambia x7 in Botswana x6 in Sudan x3 in each of Liberia, DRC, Benin, Angola, Ethiopia 🧵

Trump can't declare bankruptcy on the Iran war. He can't get his dad to bail him out. There's no one to sue. His usual lies and bluster aren't working. Iran isn't Venezuela. The global energy market isn't something he can bully. This has already spun out of control. I wrote about the war in @ms.now.

We're killing thousands of people and destabilizing half-a-dozen countries for another generation, and all we can do is hope that it makes gas prices go up a little, because we know nobody will give a shit otherwise. Pretty fucking bleak!

The US Administration's passion for "sovereignty" suddenly putrifies into "I can do anything I want" (verbatim quotation) when it feels like "taking" any other country, at will. Hypermilitarized chauvinism will poison America's future. It will come back to harm all Conservatives and all Liberals.

‘Trump is aiming for dictatorship’. That’s the verdict of the world’s most credible democracy watchdog | Martin Gelin

Der neue V-Dem #DemocracyReport ist da. Die Österreicher:innen werden sich freuen, wir sind wieder eine #LiberaleDemokratie. Anderswo - Die USA sind hingegen in die 1960er Jahre zurückgefallen und dabei recht steil. Allgemein schaut‘s eher schlecht aus. @vdeminstitute.bsky.social

This is an incredible documentation of the systematic, intentional collapse of American health science, by Elizabeth Ginexi. open.substack.com/pub/elizabet...

Wow - Denmark has almost completed the transition to a ~100% EV market in record time.

“War is hell.” And that is why the US Constitution and UN Charter sharply restrict going to war in the first place. But POTUS violated both and went to war on a whim for spectacle and amusement.

Moscow has so far earned an estimated $1.3bn-$1.9bn windfall from taxes on oil exports, making it the biggest winner from the conflict in the Middle East. What does this mean for energy markets and the Russian economy? ft.trib.al/E4zE2us

Eye catching chart from Anthropic. The blue area shows job tasks that LLMs could theoretically do, and the red bit shows what they are doing. White collar roles such as legal, finance, computing are most at risk of automation. Bartenders and cooks can’t be automated! cdn.sanity.io/files/4zrzov...

This might be the greatest split-screen ever broadcast. They’ll play this in museums in future. (🎥 LCI 🇫🇷)

"Achieving the UK’s net zero target by 2050 will cost less than a single oil shock and bring health and economic benefits while insulating the country against future costs, the government’s climate advisers have forecast." www.theguardian.com/environment/...

„According to the New York Times, quoting unnamed US officials and others familiar with the initial findings, the investigation has concluded that the strike on 28 February on the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school building was the result of a targeting mistake by the US military planners.“