Hello and welcome back to Five Things!
On Saturday Germany celebrated re-unification again, and maybe even some unity. Our President gave a fiery speech about our country and our democracy - he’s normally know for solid speeches and now he got standing ovations. But what I found even more remarkable is this video here that got posted on Insta. It’s the Mayor of Bremen (Bremen is a small city state, so he’s like a Prime Minister) on the guitar, next to him the Prime Minister of Schleswig-Holstein and they sing together. A social democrat and a conservative. Most of the other people in the video are other leaders of states or parliaments. Never mind the bad singing - I love it that they get together and share some joyful moments together with drinks and songs. They will have fierce debates again next week, but they can also get together, bridge their political issues and see the human in the other politician.
Have a great Sunday!
Barn Burners
While it seemed clear that progressives have a golden opportunity to reconnect with the heartland this year, everyone I spoke with was trying to determine what a populist revival might look like. Would it be rooted in the unglamorous party building that Kansas Democrats have been engaging in since their shocking victory in 2022, when a referendum limiting abortion rights failed to pass? Or would it be harnessed by a superstar candidate who arrived without warning, like a High Plains thunderclap? Perhaps winning in a state like Kansas or Nebraska meant abandoning two-party politics entirely?
I hope that the pendulum swings back, strongly. The midterms are soon, but I still fear that something happens before the elections. I am curious how the midterms will pan out and how this will change the heartland and Washington, D.C. as well. I am particularly interested in the race for Governor in Iowa and hope that Rob Sand will win the state for the Democrats.
Fixer, financier, spymaster: how the UAE’s Sheikh Tahnoon is setting his sights on AI dominance
Tahnoon’s appeal to Silicon Valley is obvious. After all, if you’re going to go into business with a cash-laden Gulf autocrat, then picking one who presides over a heavily digitised state-security empire – and who boasts a proven track record of hoovering up humongous amounts of personal data, the raw ingredient upon which your technology depends – feels like a logical choice. Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman and Elon Musk may all be hugely influential AI leaders, but none of them simultaneously runs the CIA.
Another powerful figure to have clutched Tahnoon and G42 close to his bosom is Donald Trump, who has hosted lavish state banquets for the sheikh at the White House and posed for photos with him in the Oval Office. The American security services have long harboured fears about Emirati influence on US politics: in 2022 the National Intelligence Council produced a confidential report for Washington policymakers warning of Abu Dhabi’s “illegal and legal attempts to steer US foreign policy”. Joe Biden’s administration restricted the export of AI chips to the UAE because of concerns over the country’s close ties to China. But last year Trump reversed that decision, authorising the transfer of hundreds of thousands of Silicon Valley’s most advanced chips to the Al Nahyan regime. Many of them will go straight to G42.
And I always thought the UAE were interested in AI and datacenters to foster economic growth. I didn’t know how the UAE were connected to Trump and Silicon Valley.
The Israel Exception
The details differ from country to country, but the direction is the same almost everywhere. French fertility has fallen from nearly three children per woman to fewer than two; Italy’s from about 2.4 to close to one. The most extreme case is South Korea, where fertility has collapsed from six to well below one child per woman. At the same time, people are living much longer—roughly 13 additional years in high-income countries. We are producing fewer children while extending the span of life, a combination bound to make our society older than any in history.
A few years ago I was in a taxi to pick up a rental mini-van for our summer vacation. The driver came to Germany from Africa a few decades prior and wanted to know why I needed a mini-van. When I told him that we always spontaneously decide to go on vacation and need a larger car as we have four kids, he turned around to me, put up a huge smile and said: “are you African?” - he later told me that he was more German than I was as he only had two kids and booked his vacation at least half a year in advance. Anyhow, I am happy we have four kids, but I do understand that we are the outliers here… Speaking of which, I guess Israel has a special social fabric that leads to families having more kids.
The Work
Professional wrestling began as a carnival sideshow, and its particular terminology is thought to stem from carniespeak—a way to protect the boundaries of its illusion linguistically. Even the notion of maintaining an illusion is encoded in its language. It’s called kayfabe. In wrestling parlance, a fictional element of a performance that is staged as though it’s real is called a “work,” while a “worker” is someone who can create a convincing and compelling narrative in the ring. Not unlike writers of autofiction, wrestlers may use their real lives to inform their in-ring personas and storylines, and one of the intellectual pleasures of watching wrestling is attempting to parse what is legit, and what is a work, and what straddles both categories. Ultimately, the art of wrestling is about expressing a story to the audience that builds toward conclusions that feel at once surprising and inevitable, using the tools available to a wrestler: their life, their body. Each piece of gymnastics says something.
I easily confess that I never got the allure of wrestling. But at least this article makes me understand the scene a bit better.
The Robots Are Winning Us Over by Falling on Their Faces
People love to watch robots fail. It taps into humanity’s most ancient, addictive comedic truth, which is that some dude getting hit in the balls is hilarious. There’s also a vindictive pleasure in seeing that our supposed future overlords are dum-dums who can’t climb stairs. Plus, it’s inherently funny when a body engineered to function with extreme precision behaves ineptly. A humanoid’s frantic attempts to stay upright—arms flailing, legs skittering—bears an uncanny resemblance to the choreographed collapses of Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton.
But there’s something deeper at work in our brains when we watch a robot trip over its own feet. We’re awash in apocalyptic anxieties about rogue technology. Fully autonomous drones are waging war in Ukraine; A.I. executives keep warning us that their next software update might accidentally delete humanity. Against that dystopian backdrop, goofball mechanical athletes may be doing something far more valuable for their creators than outpacing our greatest sporting achievements: They’re making machines relatable.
So while we are still amused, the robots are taking over the world one stumble at a time?
Brave new world.
That’s it. Have a great Sunday! If you missed last Sunday’s edition of Five Things, have a look here:
— Nico