Five Things: VAT scam, QAnon Shaman, Second Hand, Hot Sea, Digital Twins
Grab a coffee and read these five articles.
Hello and welcome back to Five Things! If you’re from Finland, you must be one really happy person, not just because winter will be over soon, but also Finland finished first again in the World Happiness Index. Number 2 is Denmark, which I can totally understand, as they have amazing Hot Dogs there. Interestingly enough, German surveys usually indicate that my home state Schleswig-Holstein has also very happy people and I attribute that to bordering with Denmark. And access to the Hot Dogs. Interestingly, Israel is ranked on No. 5 and the USA and Germany are ranked 23 and 24. Honestly, I don’t understand that. The mood in Germany is so much worse than the actual reality. Everybody is always complaining and wants the government to fix everything while at the same time complaining that the government is involved in everything. So while we are complaining and waiting for things to change, other countries like Israel face really dire challenges and then bond together and try to solve them. Here in Germany people are still complaining about the high energy costs that were caused by our dependence on cheap Russian natural gas. We didn’t have a good energy mix and when the Russians invaded Ukraine and subsequently cut us off, the energy prices rose, but within a year the German government found new sources for natural gas and also ramped up alternative sources of energy like solar and wind. Now the prices are lower than before the Russians invaded Ukraine, but people are still complaining. Also, the German national soccer teams will play in a pink away jersey this year, which to many conservatives and rightwing nutjobs is unmanly and un-German and another sign for the downfall of the country. And while they are still complaining and Adidas ran a masterful campaign about the pink jersey and what being German means nowadays, the German Soccer Federation felt that the mood was getting to good and announced that in three years Nike will take over as the official supplier of the national soccer teams, replacing Adidas after more than 70 years, which is obviously just another sign for everything going downhill in Germany. While we are the third biggest economy in the world, the Germans think and behave as if we’re some small lost helpless country somewhere behind the mountains.
On Thursday I was at a meeting in Berlin with Avi Hasson, the CEO of Startup Nation Israel, and he shared some numbers about the tech industry in Israel. While about 15% of the workforce was called in as reservists to fight against Hamas and Hezbollah, the tech industry remained strong and showed amazing M&A activity. So now Avi and his team are trying more than ever to attract investors and corporates to invest in Israeli startups or use their products and services. The sheer numbers of the Israeli startup ecosystem are just impressive and tech has become an essential pillar of the Israeli economy. I’m sure there will be a huge rebound in the Israeli startup ecosystem this year.
Meanwhile in Germany, the automotive sector is complaining about EV, basically wanting everybody else to slow down their developments so that nobody notices how far behind the Germans are. Of course, this is where the government is supposed to come in.
And while I’m writing this, Germany beat France in a friendly 2:0 and hopefully we’re all collective getting into a better mood now.
Anyhow, I feel happy that you guys are my readers. :) And I’d be even happier if you decide to go paid!
Watch It Burn
I think they could make this story into a movie. I honestly have never heard of VAT scams around carbon certificates. Nevertheless, this is a heck of a story!
Jacob’s Dream
This is a fascinating story about the QAnon Shaman who was part of the January 6 insurrection and put in prison accordingly. Conspiracy theories, New Age and even völkisch Nazi-ideololgy come together to form the worldview of Jacob Angeli-Chansley.
The trendy second-hand clothing market is huge and still growing – yet nobody is turning a profit
So I thought that the core idea of using clothes longer makes sense for buyers and sellers, but it seems to be a lot more complicated. I just drop off old clothes at a container and thought that the system behind it generates money while simultaneously saves people money by buying used clothes.
Why Is the Sea So Hot?
The short answer is climate change and global warming, but scientists are unsure exactly why. 2023 was too hot and it doesn’t look good for 2024, either. “If the climate projections are accurate, then the year was a preview of things to come, which is scary enough. But, if the projections are missing something, that’s potentially even more terrifying, though scientists tend to use more measured terms.”
A Digital Twin Might Just Save Your Life
“A skeptic might catch the faint rumble of a hype train and wince as a new multibillion-dollar industry intent on making spectral replicas of things that already exist comes to life. One has to wonder: How accurate can these things truly be? Whom do they serve? What damage to the environment will the necessarily massive amounts of computation do? Are we really interested in having yet more of our lives and shared public goods uploaded into digital realms and controlled by a tiny group of techno-capitalists?” - the concept of digital twins is really easy and hard to understand at the same time. Massive amounts of data can be used to create digital twins of cities to simulate all sorts of things.
That’s it. Have a great Sunday! If you missed last Sunday’s edition of Five Things, have a look here:
Five Things: Rewiring Childhood, SUV, Hyperlinks, Flannel, Princess Catherine
— Nico
Miese These. Es liegt daran, weil Schleswig-Holstein Pinneberg hat.