Ewoud Storm

Thinker. Interested in: (geo)politics and history.

[sam @Discoplomacy]

Richard Rhodes, who wrote the 1986 book “The Making of the Atomic Bomb,” popular in Anthropic’s reading list and one of Dario’s favourites.

Rhodes was invited to talk to Anthropic staff: “The first thing that struck me most of all was what always strikes me with new technologies: the moral panic side. The general sense that this is going to destroy the world. It’s come up every time.”

https://t.co/RAQujF20Qc

[Saagar Enjeti @esaagar]

It pains me to say it but this gives me no choice but to pull for France to win the whole thing

Thank you Mbappé!

[Ewoud Storm @ewoud_storm]

@OjuarezO @_Zeets Google Tim Krul

[Jake 🇬🇧 @jakonian]

Is it possible to make a PM resign before they've actually taken office

[signüll @signulll]

say what you want about the policy, which is extremely bad, but his presentation & communication skills are genuinely next level.

the ad is ironically warm (esp with the filter) while communicating a “freeze”, it’s also dead simple, emotionally precise, & incredibly effective.

terrible economics, excellent execution. credit where credit is due. but this is also pretty dangerous.

[Ewoud Storm @ewoud_storm]

Je werkgever staat niet aan je sterfbed

[Politics UK @PolitlcsUK]

🚨 NEW: A Labour source says Keir Starmer feels "betrayed"

"He gave everything to Labour, including sacrificing much of his children's teenage years to help make the party electable. He feels deeply betrayed, especially by those he believed were loyal to him"

[Ewoud Storm @ewoud_storm]

Granted anonymity for.. PR?

https://t.co/esWzM0dyG8

[Adam Wren @adamwren]

Scoop: Newsom and Rubio are set to share box seats at the USMNT World Cup match tomorrow.

“The Governor is there to support Team USA. Any frame-mogging that occurs will be purely incidental,” said an official familiar with the governor’s plans who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on his behalf on the matter.

W/ @SophiaCai99

https://t.co/SNaNAKEABD

[Ewoud Storm @ewoud_storm]

Sources being granted anonymity is simultaneously a growing problem and a major release valve.

If newspapers would actually stop granting everyone and their mother anonymity, governments/politicians/bureaucrats would run into problems wrt messaging real quick

[Michael Tracey @mtracey]

WTF does this even mean. It's just some vague subjective emotional characterization of a relationship dynamic from 10+ years ago. And why is this woman being given anonymity to pontificate in the NYT about her past romantic dealings. She's not even alleging any abuse!

[Ewoud Storm @ewoud_storm]

Not a good decision necessarily. 110k per year as PM is a very, very low salary compared to the seniority of the position. People will respond to such incentives by not going into politics and instead going into high-paying fields

[The Telegraph @Telegraph]

Hungary’s new prime minister has halved his own salary and cut the wages of his ministers to regain public trust and “set an example”, after years of alleged government corruption.

Péter Magyar announced that he would reduce his annual pay to 45.6m forints (£110,000), less than half the 93.6m (£226,000) paid to his immediate predecessor, Viktor Orbán 👇
https://t.co/QNTmTkO7yE

[Ewoud Storm @ewoud_storm]

@IdiditagainR4D @LordMudkip73 @ThatGarthGuy @llwtydeer Nah, make the seats proportional to population so it has to rise and fall automatically and raise the threshold to something like 5 procent. You can't poldermodel when nobody can agree on anything and majorities are impossible

[Ewoud Storm @ewoud_storm]

@LordMudkip73 @ThatGarthGuy @llwtydeer Take a look at the state of the Dutch parliament to see the lack of electoral thresholds in action

[Ewoud Storm @ewoud_storm]

@agraybee That's when many of the problems we see today were building up steam and were, due to many factors, ignored or unsuccessfully tackled by those glorified bureaucrats. Turns out you do need a bit of a vision to properly govern a country

[Ewoud Storm @ewoud_storm]

Not entirely true. There are an uncomfortable amount of wicked problems coming due in the Netherlands at the moment. Nitrogen, housing, the electric grid, et cetera. But America is just a lot bigger, more diverse, and way more powerful

[Everything Price Sufferer (but especially eggs) @agraybee]

I knew a Dutch guy obsessed with American politics. When I asked him why he said his country's politics were just glorified bureaucrats accusing each other of wasting taxpayer money. American politics are about the soul of civilization.

[Ewoud Storm @ewoud_storm]

That didn't stop them because these places were built *before* the car was a thing!
The Netherlands, for example, has amazing medieval cities, and it also has Flevoland. Flevoland is the most American region in the Netherlands because it was built *after* the car was a thing

[ApoStructura @ApoStructura]

America doesn’t have a car dependency problem, it has a placemaking problem.

Tuscany is super car dependent, so is the French Riviera. But that doesn’t stop them from building incredible pedestrian destinations.

You drive there and park OUTSIDE of the pedestrian destination.

[Ewoud Storm @ewoud_storm]

@JoshSchoen @Urban_Connector Well outside of the city center things cool down a lot (depending on the neighbourhood), though I get the want for more calm. Seems to me that Utrecht is fast becoming a metropolis like Amsterdam or The Hague but is having trouble with the medieval nature of its infrastructure

[Ewoud Storm @ewoud_storm]

@JoshSchoen @Urban_Connector Utrecht has some problems as well. Around the Neude and Central Station there's just way too little traffic capacity. Busses, cars, endless streams of cyclists. Don't know how you'd fix it, but it's clear to me that there needs to be a major overhaul

[Ewoud Storm @ewoud_storm]

Historians will note that the most destabilizing force of the early 21st century was the group chat

[Joey Politano 🏳️‍🌈 @JosephPolitano]

the strait of hormuz is in a quantum superposition of open and closed that only collapses when you try to take a tanker through yourself and see if you get shot at

[Ewoud Storm @ewoud_storm]

@agraybee You ever listened to the testimonies of the pilots or high-ranking intel officers?

[Madi Hilly @MadiHilly]

This is a choice Merz is making. It absolutely does not have to be this way.

He correctly campaigned on restarting nuclear plants. Now he claims nothing can be done.

There are no significant technical obstacles. The economics are favorable. The public supports it.

This is a weak excuse from a weak leader.