I love the US, and also love Europe, despite both being very different animals. | Media is politics by another name | https://teapaw.org/t.co/U7DnfQjMVX
Amsterdam
Joined November 2008
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Kallas says “Russians don’t want me” as EU peace envoy.
Fair: Moscow put her on a wanted list in 2023.
But she has also been criticised as undiplomatic beyond Russia—clashing with von der Leyen, alienating some EU capitals, and facing a rocky relationship with US diplomats.
And in 2023, her husband’s firm’s indirect Russia trade triggered resignation calls.
euronews.com/2026/11/13/kall…
22
Wish apple communicated this way.
We have dumped JAX/SGLang and rewritten the entire RL and inference stack from scratch in C/C++, which took some extra time.
Training (aka pre-training) is done. Lot of cleanup was needed on the SFT data to get that mostly right. Now, 4.8 is in RL and the evals are starting to climb. We will do a soft rollout to Bot users later this week and see how it goes.
Grok 4.8 will bear no resemblance to 4.7 (thankfully). It is not yet incredible, but, this time, the foundations are built right, so I expect it to evolve to be something special.
7
frankleeman retweeted
Here's some fuel for all the Europoor haters:
Germany just told us we'd have to fire one of our 3 founders to qualify for funding.
I was in talks with a German state-backed fund of fund managing billions, with one single mandate: invest in German funds to drive innovation and economic growth in the country.
They literally told me they like us a lot and are also impressed by our track record and performance so far, and even though not everyone in their team is a fan of our thesis, they believe in it.
But they passed for a whole different reason:
Because our all-male team of 3 people isn't "diverse enough" lol.
they literally told me: hire two more female partners (impossible on the economics of a fund our size), or let one of the three of us go to make room for a quota hire. do that, and they'd strongly consider investing.
I won't even get into how discriminatory this is toward men in the first place. nobody takes that seriously anyway, and honestly I don't care.
but what actually gets me is something bigger: as a German, I have to face the fact that the whole world continuing to laugh at Germany and overall Europe is completely justified.
a system that quietly kills the smallest, hungriest teams, the exact ones this money was created to support. and then everyone acts surprised that talent and capital keep leaving the country.
How did Ursula von der Leyen become Commission President in 2019 without being on any ballot?
In the European elections that May, the big parties ran "lead candidates": Manfred Weber (EPP), Frans Timmermans (S&D) and Margrethe Vestager (liberals). The idea was that voters would indirectly choose the Commission's head.
It didn't work out that way. At a summit from 30 June to 2 July, including an all-night session, EU leaders couldn't agree. Macron opposed Weber. Timmermans was blocked by the Visegrád countries and Italy. On 2 July the leaders proposed someone who hadn't campaigned at all: German defence minister Ursula von der Leyen. Merkel even had to abstain on her own compatriot because her coalition partner objected.
That deal was made behind closed doors. The next step was public: on 16 July 2019 the European Parliament voted. She needed 374 votes and got 383, a margin of just 9. The ballot was secret, but that is the standard procedure for this vote, not a special arrangement.
The twist: in 2024 she was the EPP's official lead candidate and was re-elected with 401 votes. Same secret-ballot procedure, very different route to the job.
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The Dutch work about 340 fewer hours a year than Americans: 1,456 vs 1,796 (OECD, 2024). That's more than 8 full work weeks.
Yet output per hour is almost the same: $81.9 in the Netherlands vs $83.6 in the US (OECD, PPP).
Shorter years, near-US productivity.
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18
Tariffs buy time, not innovation;
VW: −€5.8bn loss in Q3, China deliveries −38.5%.
VW's China market share: 19.5% (2019) → 10.9% (2025).
R&D/GDP: US 3.44%, China 2.69%, EU 2.24%.
After the EU's 2024 EV tariffs, Chinese brands still hit a record 12.8% of Europe's EV market.
26
Europe's gas price, then vs now:
Aug 2022 record: ~€340/MWh
Feb 2026, before the Iran war: ~€32
Yesterday: €100/MWh
EU storage was 74.9% full on Oct 26, the lowest for that date since records began in 2011 (GIE).
20
Before Portugal joined the EU in 1986, their currency -the escudo- was in free fall.
In Jan 1973, one US dollar cost 27 escudos.
By Jan 1985 it cost 173, so the escudo lost about 84% of its value against the dollar. Inflation hit 31% in 1977 and 28% in 1984.
After joining the EU, inflation fell to 2.3% by 1999, the year Portugal adopted the euro at 200.482 escudos.
Sources: St. Louis Fed (FRED), World Bank, European Commission
26
Quiz: what's safer per km, a train or a plane?
Most people say the train. It's on the ground, it's everyday, it can just stop.
EU data: they're about equal. ~0.06 passenger deaths per billion km for rail, roughly the same for air (ERA, 2026).
(The real outlier? Cars, at ~40x the risk.)
19
A VVD MP wants Anthropic to list in Amsterdam. Context: its last round valued it at $965B. All 25 AEX companies: ~$1.66T, ASML alone ~$620B. At the $2T top of its IPO talk it would outweigh our whole index. It filed for Nasdaq (ANT) this week.
De pitch van de @VVD (@QueenyRaj) om miljardenbedrijven naar Nederland te halen:
“Kom hiernaartoe, dan kunnen we jullie belasten en precies vertellen wat jullie wel en niet met AI mogen doen!”
Totaal absurd. Geen deepfake. We worden geregeerd door clowns.
85
How come US airports have a jet bridge for every flight. And EU airports make you haul your luggage down a flight of stairs, cram you in a bus, to make you wait without hvac and then you have to haul your luggage up a flight of stairs in pouring rain to get to your flight?
16
frankleeman retweeted
AUDI CEO:
„Wir planen, unsere größten und hochwertigsten SUVs auf den Markt zu bringen und sie hier in Macon, Georgia, zu produzieren.“
Mein herzlichsten Glückwunsch an #vonderLeyen und #Merz
🚨 WOW! The CEO of AUDI just came on stage with President Trump to confirm a multi-BILLION dollar auto manufacturing investment in Georgia
"We are planning to bring are biggest and most premium SUVs, and produce them here in MACON, GEORGIA."
CROWD: "TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP!"
This is monumental! 🇺🇸
That thing the Democrats and "experts" said was impossible, HAPPENED AGAIN
Trump says construction begins next month. TARIFFS WORK
Europa doet hetzelfde als Trump. Import remmen en de interne regels versoepelen.
De feiten: uitzicht op soepelere regels voor Europese auto-industrie, onder meer voor Renault en Volkswagen
ewmagazine.nl/economie/news/…
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22
frankleeman retweeted
Zie artikel @nardlodewijk op @ewmagazinenl:
‘Afgelopen tijd heeft @SterkNikki berichten van JfP (van directeur Jelle Postma) voorbij zien komen waarin de methodologische verantwoording ontbreekt en waarbij nogal geheimzinnig wordt gedaan.
“Soms is het voor mij echt een mysterie waarop bepaalde conclusies zijn gebaseerd”.’
ALT ‘Ongefundeerde bangmakerij’ over het verval van de democratie Een ondoorzichtig netwerk van stichtingen zegt op te komen voor de democratie en drukt steeds nadrukkelijker een stempel op het publieke debat. Met alarmistische rapporten vinden Democratie Monitor en Justice for Prosperity hun weg naar media en politiek. Maar deskundigen kraken de onderzoeksmethoden en de bewijsvoering. ‘Soms is het voor mij echt een mysterie waarop bepaalde conclusies zijn gebaseerd.’ https://www.ewmagazine.nl/politiek/achtergrond/2026/09/democratie-monitor-justice-for-prosperity-stichtingen-1587162/
ALT ‘Ongefundeerde bangmakerij’ over het verval van de democratie Een ondoorzichtig netwerk van stichtingen zegt op te komen voor de democratie en drukt steeds nadrukkelijker een stempel op het publieke debat. Met alarmistische rapporten vinden Democratie Monitor en Justice for Prosperity hun weg naar media en politiek. Maar deskundigen kraken de onderzoeksmethoden en de bewijsvoering. ‘Soms is het voor mij echt een mysterie waarop bepaalde conclusies zijn gebaseerd.’ https://www.ewmagazine.nl/politiek/achtergrond/2026/09/democratie-monitor-justice-for-prosperity-stichtingen-1587162/
frankleeman retweeted
EU is an example of a failed democracy. There are no elected members, it is trying to grow its way out of failure. There are no new industries you closed your industry with the green agenda. You can’t just re industrialise on a whim you have no fundamentals underlying.
frankleeman retweeted
Staatsecretaris Aerdts (D66) is niet op de hoogte van eigen social media-plan. Ze wil naast een minimumleeftijd “Europees inzetten op het ontwikkelen van veilige alternatieve digitale diensten voor kinderen”, al lijkt dat laatste toch niet écht prioriteit te hebben.
