Eric Napoli

Attorney, American immigrant in Spain, husband, parent, trying to get by. Should've said less.

[Eric Napoli @ericnapoli]

1994 I was fresh out of college in DC watching every single World Cup match, then staying out all night partying with whatever fans were in the city. It was a memorable summer. In contrast, I’ll maybe watch a half dozen matches this time around.

[Eric Napoli @ericnapoli]

@CSBlenner No, purely because where the Cup was hosted. If it were hosted anywhere else, his place of birth would have been irrelevant.

[Rafael Domenech | @BBVAResearch & @UV_EG @rdomenechv]

España | Empleo, inmigración y productividad

En este artículo, junto con @juanramongl, analizo la situación del mercado laboral español del último trimestre. Su dinamismo sigue impulsado por la población extranjera, que compensa el envejecimiento demográfico. La inmigración es clave para sostener la ocupación, aunque su integración enfrenta retos en materia de temporalidad y productividad.

Puntos clave:
➡️La población activa superó los 25,1 millones en el primer trimestre de 2026. Desde finales de 2019, la ocupación extranjera ha aumentado un 53%, lo que explica casi dos tercios de la creación neta de empleo desde la pandemia.
➡️Las horas trabajadas retrocedieron un 0,3% a principios de año, tras una reducción de la jornada media del 2,6% desde 2019. Sin embargo, el PIB por persona ocupada repuntó un 0,3% gracias al avance del 1% de la productividad por hora.
➡️El PIB por hora trabajada de la población extranjera es un 19% inferior al de la española, aunque ha experimentado un crecimiento del 7,2% desde 2019, superando el avance del 3,3% registrado por los trabajadores nacionales.
➡️Los trabajadores nacidos en el extranjero siguen sobrerrepresentados en los contratos temporales y fijos discontinuos, trabajando con mayor frecuencia en horarios atípicos, especialmente durante los fines de semana.

https://t.co/3aeHZQm5Oq a través de @BBVAResearch

[Adam Grant @AdamMGrant]

AI writing produces an illusion of creativity.

Data on >370k college essays: After chatGPT, personal statements seemed more creative because they used more varied words—but actually featured less original ideas.

Machines favor homogeneity. Humans excel at diversity of thought.

[Eric Napoli @ericnapoli]

@andyroddick said yesterday on @Served_Podcast that sports is the greatest reality TV, watching all these 4-5 setters at Roland Garros, tennis definitely takes the prize

[Eric Napoli @ericnapoli]

@CSBlenner @CaminoMortera In Catalunya you have something comparable-ish to the N-word to label Andalusian immigrants.

[Olena Rohoza @OlenaRohoza]

“AND YOU STILL DARE TO OPEN YOUR MOUTH…”

Sasha Legerman: This is too accurate not to share.

This Australian’s response to Trump’s rant that “NATO does nothing for America” is absolutely devastating:

“Mate. You run a country where 600,000 homeless people will sleep on the streets tonight.

A country where 40% of adults can’t cover a $400 emergency without borrowing money.

A country where insulin costs more than a car payment, and people ration it just to stay alive.

A country where medical debt is the number one cause of bankruptcy.

A country where women die in hospital parking lots because doctors are too afraid of abortion laws to treat miscarriages.

You imprison more of your own citizens than any country on Earth.
More than China. More than Russia. More than North Korea.

In the land of the free, 2 million people sit in cages, and a quarter of them haven’t even been convicted of anything.
They’re simply too poor to afford bail.

Your life expectancy is declining. You’re the only developed nation where that’s happening.

Your infant mortality rate is worse than Cuba’s.

Your children practice active shooter drills between math and English classes while you sell defense stocks to your friends.

Your minimum wage hasn’t changed in 15 years.

Your teachers work two jobs, your veterans sleep under bridges, and you just spent a trillion dollars flattening a country that never attacked you.

And now a convicted criminal — found liable for sexual abuse, defending a pedophile, sleeping with a porn star, and running the biggest dumpster-fire campaign since the Taliban — is thanking you for yet another disaster.

And you call Greenland badly governed?

Greenland has universal healthcare. Free education. One of the lowest incarceration rates in the world.
Nobody there goes bankrupt because they got sick. Nobody dies in a waiting room because insurance refused treatment.

‘NATO wasn’t there when we needed them.’

When exactly was that, champ?
September 11?

Because NATO invoked Article 5 for the first and only time in history FOR YOU.

Soldiers from dozens of countries deployed, fought, bled, and died in Afghanistan FOR YOU.

Australia wasn’t even in NATO, and we still showed up. For twenty years.

And then you left at 2 a.m. without telling anyone and left everybody else to clean up the mess.

You don’t care that a great nation is being terrorized by your friend, and you haven’t shown it a single ounce of sympathy.

So maybe before calling other countries badly governed, take a look at your own backyard, you aluminum siding salesman with a spray tan.

The only thing badly managed in this picture is your damn mouth.

And you still dare to lecture the rest of the world?”

[Marcos Agustín @marcosagusstinn]

The U.S. is losing soft power in Latin America.

In Mexico, favourable views of the United States collapsed from 61% in 2024 to 29% in 2025 — a 32-point fall in one year, according to Pew.

Globally, Gallup shows U.S. leadership approval fell from 39% to 31%, while China rose to 36%, overtaking the U.S.

Europe must take advantage of this moment.

As a democratic system, and as a global actor built around diplomacy, international law and institutional cooperation, Europe has a clear advantage over China.

Latin America does not need a new dependency.

It needs partners that respect sovereignty, rule of law, trade, investment and long-term development. Europe can be that partner.

[Joe Haslam ☘ 🇪🇺 @joehas]

The single strongest predictor of who would be happy, healthy, and mentally sharp at 80 was the quality of their close relationships at 50

[Eric Napoli @ericnapoli]

El que quiere a Mou en el Madrid no tiene memoria. Hace un par de meses echó la culpa a Vinicius por los cánticos racistas y no se presentó en el Bernabeu. En su última etapa en el Madrid agredió a Vilanova y lleva una década de fracaso en fracaso. Es un impresentable

[Marcos Agustín @marcosagusstinn]

Spain is set to overtake Italy and become the EU’s 3rd-largest economy within the next 15 years.

From 2023 to 2025, Spain’s GDP expanded by 9%, while Italy grew only 2.3% — meaning Spain grew almost 4x faster.

And the European Commission expects the gap to continue in 2026, with Spain growing 2.4% versus only 0.5% for Italy — almost 5x faster.

The demographic gap is just as important:

Spain’s population and labour force are still growing, while Italy’s are declining.

Latin Americans account for almost 48% of Spain’s immigrant population, Europeans for around 27%, and together they represent roughly three-quarters of all immigrants in Spain — while Italy faces one of Europe’s deepest demographic declines.

If Spain maintains a nominal growth advantage of 2–3 percentage points per year, it could overtake Italy around 2036–2040.

Even under a more conservative scenario, with a smaller but sustained growth advantage, Spain could still overtake Italy around 2041–2045.

[Bill Madden @maddenifico]

The most accurate portrayal of the pro-Jim Crow, white nationalist Roberts Supreme Court I've seen yet.

[Gita Gopinath @GitaGopinath]

A painting of the end of meritocracy: A meeting of the two largest economies and not one woman at the table.

[Eric Napoli @ericnapoli]

Que los madridistas no olviden lo horrible que fue Mourinho: dedo en el ojo de Vilanova, cargarse a Casillas, victimizar al Madrid. Y que ha fracasado y le han echado de todos los equipos donde ha estado en la última década.

[ana⁴⁴ @anapau_villa]

Adidas lanzó un corto de 5 minutos protagonizado por Timothée Chalamet donde recluta a Bellingham, Yamal y Trinity Rodman para vencer a un equipo de fútbol callejero y efectivamente es cine.

Messi, Zidane, Beckham, Del Piero, Bad Bunny… denle el Oscar.

[Intern Pierre @internpierre]

The WSJ wants to know "what happens when Europeans find out how poor they are."

I'm a European running a family office / living in Monaco. Let me run the numbers for Joseph Sternberg.

Spoiler: per-capita GDP is the most misleading stat in this entire debate.🧵

[Joe Haslam ☘ 🇪🇺 @joehas]

To grow, You do industrial policy or you do immigration. Spain has grown through immigration but is now working on industrial policy (cheap energy, China etc).

For good commentary on Spain, see Ignacio
https://t.co/it0UEpbX8G

It’s in Spanish but Google translate exists for a reason.

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

The MAGA crowd in Washington has decided that since Europeans don’t sufficiently appreciate Trump, the American bases on the continent must go. This is the strategic reasoning of a man who burns down his own kitchen.

American bases in Europe were never a favour. They are the logistical spine of every war the United States fights east of Gibraltar. Ramstein moves the cargo, Aviano launches the jets, Rota services the ships. Without them the Pentagon does not project power into the Middle East. It projects PowerPoint.

The fantasy assumes the alternative is aircraft carriers gliding majestically into the Persian Gulf. That era is ending. A modern carrier is a thirteen-billion-dollar trophy that can be reduced to scrap by a couple of hundred cheap missiles fired from the Iranian coast. China noticed.

The other fantasy is that America simply fights from home. Picture the alternative: twenty thousand transatlantic sorties shuttling spare parts, munitions, fuel bladders, mechanics and replacement pilots from Norfolk and Dover to wherever the war happens to be. A C-17 burns through roughly 35,000 dollars of fuel every hour it flies, and the round trip from the American east coast to the Gulf is the better part of a day. Multiply that by every bolt, every missile, every spare engine. The war becomes a sustained airborne traffic jam with the bill arriving by the second.

So you need land, specifically land near the war. Modern combat aircraft are not Spitfires you fuel up and send off with a wave. An F-35 demands an entire Walmart of spare parts, a small city of technicians, climate-controlled hangars and a supply chain stretching halfway round the planet. Drones need operators, networks, satellites and a steady diet of components no carrier can store. Modern war arrives by container ship and lives in a warehouse.

Close the bases, and Washington loses the warehouses. Lose the warehouses, and the next confrontation with Iran is either fought by phone or fought from Kansas with a flight schedule that bankrupts the Treasury before the first missile lands.

MAGA thinks shutting Ramstein punishes Europe. It punishes America. Europe will be inconvenienced. America will be unarmed.

And so, after a thousand insults, a thousand sneers, a thousand late-night posts about freeloading allies, Europe is quietly drafting the politest letter in diplomatic history. It thanks America for its service. It wishes the troops a safe journey home. It suggests, with great warmth, that Washington might now turn its attention to its neighbours in Latin America, where a fading superpower can busy itself with whatever a fading superpower busies itself with.

Spain had its century. Britain had its empire. The Soviets had their parades. Each ended the same way: as a shadow of itself, with the historians left to argue, volume after volume, about precisely when the rot set in and why nobody noticed in time. America is welcome to join them on the shelf.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

If you like what you read, please follow Gandalv on Substack:
https://t.co/2TO5x2O8nI

[Alex Northstar @NorthstarBrain]

this guy is getting clowned a lot today.

I’m European, Italy, and just spent 1 month in USA:

- a lot of US work is performative. I’ve been to 5 different coworks. There are barely people there on weekends.

- SF is full of homeless.

- they grind harder but the lifestyle in US forces you to do it. You make 10k but spend 8k to breathe in New York.

- Euromaxxing is the end game of human existence. You work to enjoy yapping with friends and eating with family. If you exist just to work, congrats, we have AI for that.

- you go to Greece, Spain, Italy and people enjoy life, food, women, beach, sunsets.

- something is very wrong with US food.

- US has massive capital and opportunities to become a millionaire and billionaire.

- “touching grass” is a natural European mindset.

Let me know your thoughts.

[Zeteo @zeteo_news]

“Most people don't know that Jesus is a beloved figure in Islam. He's mentioned by name more times than Muhammad is mentioned in the Quran.”

Filmmaker Alex Kronemer speaks with @mehdirhasan about his docudrama project, portraying Jesus as he is understood in Islamic tradition.