2026-02-06 07:36:22
I’ve always said more popstars should duet with puppets, so Sabrina Carpenter and Kermit the Frog singing Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton’s ‘Island in a Stream’ as part of The Muppet Show’s latest special is perfect (to me).
2026-02-06 06:16:22
Economist Thomas Piketty, writing for Le Monde (archive) on the success of Europe’s social democratic model and countering “the narrative of a ‘declining’ continent”:
For these indicators, Piketty mentions some of the same factors that economist Gabriel Zucman detailed in his Le Monde piece I posted in December:If someone had told the European elites and liberal economists of 1914 that wealth redistribution would one day account for half of national income, they would have unanimously condemned the idea as collectivist madness and predicted the continent’s ruin. In reality, European countries have achieved unprecedented levels of prosperity and social well-being, largely due to collective investments in health, education and public infrastructure.
To win the cultural and intellectual battle, Europe must now assert its values and defend its model of development, fundamentally opposed to the nationalist-extractivist model championed by Donald Trump’s supporters in the United States and by Vladimir Putin’s allies in Russia. A crucial issue in this fight is the choice of indicators used to measure human progress.
More leisure time, better health outcomes, greater equality and lower carbon emissions, all with broadly comparable productivity: Europeans can be proud of their model, argues Gabriel Zucman, director of the EU Tax Observatory.
Tags: economics · Europe · Gabriel Zucman · politics · Thomas Piketty
2026-02-06 05:18:24
Professor Walt Hunter on the merits of challenging students: Stop Meeting Students Where They Are. “Whole novels aren’t possible to teach, we are told, because students won’t (or can’t) read them. So why assign them?”
2026-02-06 04:28:28
The Mountain That Weighed the Earth. How scientists in 1774 used a Scottish mountain to estimate the mass of the Earth to within 20% of the modern number by measuring the mountain’s gravitational effect on a precision plumb line.
2026-02-06 03:20:49
In addition to his great series Subway Takes, Kareem Rahma does another series called Keep the Meter Running where he hops into NYC cabs, interviews the drivers, and asks them to take him to their favorite places. In the run-up to the NYC mayoral election last year, Rahma jumped into a cab driven by Mouhamadou Aliy, who wanted to pick up his friend along the way to his favorite spot. That friend was now-mayor Zohran Mamdani, who tells the story of how the two of them protested & went on a hunger strike together. It’s a great conversation and video…I watched a snippet of it on Instagram (I missed it last year) and had to track down the whole thing: I’m sorry, how can you not vote for this guy? The real deal, indeed — and voters could tell. There are so many politicians, particularly on the left, who talk a good game, push all the right buttons, and then they sputter or freeze or about-face when the rubber meets the road. It feels hollow; no wonder voters and activists find it hard to get behind the calculation of politicians who they know, deep down, are just saying certain things to get a vote. At least with Republicans, they tell you they’re going to run the country into the ground and then they go out and try to do it.
Tags: food · interviews · Kareem Rahma · Mouhamadou Aliy · NYC · politics · taxis · video · Zohran Mamdani
2026-02-06 02:31:01
Some cool animations made from Japanese receipts by Michele Merlo.