The H1-B visa thing is, like everything else in the Trump administration, set up to carve up exceptions for friends and punish enemies. It’s the authoritarian thru-line that stitches everything together.

Trump Spends Entire U.K. Trip Trying To Figure Out Where He Knows Prince Andrew From

If I'm understanding Zuckerberg properly: you can either *look* dumb by wearing his chunky glasses or *be* dumb by not wearing them. What a future awaits us.

The idea that American companies are obsessively focused on the short-term is weird. Apple spent $10bn on a secret car project. Google bought essentially an AI academic centre - not exactly a "next quarter" move. Amazon prided itself on not making profits for what, two decades? on.ft.com/4mksGB3

My Charlemagne this week is on Europe's alarming urgency deficit. Even as Russian lobs drones into Poland and its economy is in the doldrums, where is the urgency mindset? (Reader warning: column comes with bonus cheese puns) www.economist.com/europe/2025/...

I've found a benefit of Brexit!! The passport queue at Brussels airport for EU passport holder leaving Schengen is several hundred deep and involves fiddly machines. Been stuck 30 mins. Non-EU citizens, now including Brits: go straight to a human. No queue.

In Belgium every home needs to publicly display who lives there (and the police come to check!) Slight flaw in the system: I strolled past an old flat in Brussels I vacated in 2012 only to find my name is still on the door.

Ah spending my evening dealing with woeful British Airways technology. It's enough to make you miss covid days.

The EU has many priorities at the moment. But it is weird, as this piece describes super clearly, that nobody has a clue what the new antitrust regime looks like. The competition commissioner has huge powers but seems reluctant to show how they might be used. Where is the vision? on.ft.com/4gwXZqX

Community note on X

My Charlemagne this week is on Europe's alarming urgency deficit. Even as Russian lobs drones into Poland and its economy is in the doldrums, where is the urgency mindset? (Reader warning: column comes with bonus cheese puns) www.economist.com/europe/2025/...

Ukraine answered our call for help after the 9/11 attacks and deployed 5,000 soldiers despite not being in NATO. 18 Ukrainian soldiers perished. Russia paid bounties to the Taliban for every US soldier they killed. Let's not ever mistake who our friends and enemies are.

Last 10 books + 5 upcoming reads. Best of the lot of the last 10 are the Nadine Gordimer and Adele Yon (currently reading). But all of them are very good! Of the next 5, most excited about DeWitt/Gridneff, out in October.

When the Dutch left New Guinea in 1963, they estimated that its population of 700,000 spoke "well over 200 mutually unintelligble languages" (Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities)

Germany has an odd lack of famous cheeses, doesn't it? It isn't just a northern Europe thing (think of Edam or Cheddar). Very odd oversight.

Watch the EU's flagship speech on one of four US tech platforms, three of which are actively trying torch the EU's digital regulations. Oh and EBS.

Watch the EU's flagship speech on one of four US tech platforms, three of which are actively trying torch the EU's digital regulations. Oh and EBS.

Putin's Russia: "According to Novaya Gazeta there have been 56 deaths of successful businesspeople and officials under strange circumstances since February 2022. Many of them have fallen out of windows." www.foreignaffairs.com/russia/russi...

Robotaxis have become mainstream in many American and Chinese cities. In Europe driverless cars are still science-fiction. My Charlemagne this week on why this could be Europe's "Sputnik Moment", when the public realises how far the continent is lagging on tech. www.economist.com/europe/2025/...

share of americans who say they have a good chance of improving their standard of living: 25% record survey low, going back to 1987 -wsj/norc

It's true that X/Twitter users have more diversity of opinion compared to the Bluesky echo chamber. Some of them think the Holocaust didn't happen, while others think it did happen but didn't go far enough.

EU was scheduled to release a fine against Google. It was pulled at the last minute due to EU-US trade tensions. Great scoop from MLex.

Staggering statistic here: there has been a 19% decline in the number of primary-school age kids in Greece in just seven years. www.ft.com/content/e5e9...

Another historical norm torched by the Trump administration for short-term politicking. As host of the UN, America can't decide which leaders are and are not welcome at UN headquarters. US bars Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas from UN meeting to recognise state - on.ft.com/4lX8SDF

On two occasions over the years, I have spotted - and pointed out directly to editors - two errors of fact in the New Yorker. They failed to acknowledge, much less correct them. So excuse me if I pass on all this stuff about "ooooooh our fact-checking process". www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

they’ll just move him to a different parish and he’ll do it again

Someone needs to explain to me how Kazakhstan ended up in UEFA.

Peak "ra-ra Europe" – the symptom of mainly men thinking "you know, I'd have done a *far better job* facing up to Trump on trade! You just had to say no!". Armchair trade-negotiating is a pretty easy game to play.

This must be unbearable for Big Tech lobbyists, especially in Europe. On one hand they personally can't stomach Trump. On the other, Trump is the wrecking ball they need to get rid of pesky EU regulation.

Very succinct WSJ summary of the staggering migration shock that successive Tory governments inflicted on Britain as they tried to mitigate and hide the economic consequences of the Brexit disaster

Still a mystery to me how the country getting most punished by Trump for Russia's behaviour is... not Russia?

I would read an entire book on how Donald Trump came to be convinced Ukraine started the war with Russia. Such a fascinating, unlikely and consequential misunderstanding.

This is the Platonic Ideal of a Bluesky thread

This is just very, very dumb. A government doesn't need to release data "on the blockchain". Doing it in this very complicated way solves zero real-world problems. I don't even see that it sends a signal to the crypto crowd ("oooh look the federal government doesn't understand our technology!")

You can explain the last decade of American politics with two memes.

The US is considering sanctions on... the EU? This could get pretty wild

The president has at times seemed bored by the war in Ukraine. If the shimmering mirage of the Nobel can repurpose his messianic vanity towards greater engagement, so much the better

very odd vibes at this White House meeting. Everyone seems to be having a good time but everyone also knows the mad uncle might say something really inappropriate during the groom's speech.

Trump is being amazingly nice to all the European leaders, which will cost them each several points in the polls.

The commentators denouncing European leaders for joining Zelensky for his White House meeting are 100% the same people who'd have lambasted European leaders for not joining Zelensky for his White House meeting had they not done so. Beware the perma-criticisers.

Must Europe choose between “strategic autonomy” and August off? My Charlemagne this week on the question Europeans chilling at the beach should perhaps be asking themselves? Bonnes vacances! www.economist.com/europe/2025/...

Ah the old "I want small government, but please make it regulate businesses that aren't nice to me" arguments. Elon Musk seems to be arguing big digital businesses should have a "fairness" obligation -- this is the very core of EU laws he blasts so frequently on.ft.com/4lozXiH

It is very easy to write something interesting (but wrong). It is very easy to write something true (but dull). The hard part of writing a column is writing something interesting *and* true. Great nugget in this valedictorian column by @crampell.bsky.social www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Fans of EU industrial strategy please take note: even if you are in the "right" sector, things can still go wrong. STMicroelectronics, a microchip "European champion" part-owned by France & Italy, has seen sales slump and prospects dim even as Nvidia etc roar ahead www.lemonde.fr/economie/art...

Two FT stories on how science is messing with jewellery: - Lab-grown diamonds are now sold for 7% of "natural" ones, a single firm can make 100,000 carats a month - Particle accelerators will soon transform mercury into gold in serious quantities www.ft.com/content/2a8d... www.ft.com/content/06f9...

My somewhat adopted homeland

Politico writing that France is "veering towards bankruptcy" says a lot more about Politico than it does France. Completely stupid take. www.politico.eu/article/fran...

Europeans decry Trumpian tariffs as a "tax on Americans" (quite correct there - it is importers who pay the tariffs). Yet somehow absolutely nobody in Europe seems to think that counter-tariffs imposed by the EU would amount to a "tax on Europeans".

My favourite genre of journalism is the "No no no, THIS TIME the Russian economy is well and truly screwed, a crash is imminent!". The key thing is to make no effort at all to explain why the 14 identical pieces since February 2022 turned out to be wide of the mark.

Following his inspection of the tractor collective, Comrade Trump then issued new on-the-spot guidance on how to improve the taste of Coca-Cola, a drink much favoured by locals. His stable genius will propel production to fresh heights! www.ft.com/content/f3c7...