Simon van Teutem

PhD candidate @NuffieldCollege | columnist @decorrespondent | ex @OurWorldInData | views my own

[cinesthetic. @TheCinesthetic]

Tom Holland (the actor) meets Tom Holland (the historian) to talk about THE ODYSSEY in a new episode of The Rest Is History podcast.

[Benjamin Todd @ben_j_todd]

Most career advice is inward facing: focused on identifying your interests, dreams and passions. It can often sound like psychotherapy.

Better, I think, to turn your focus outwards: what do other people need, how can you help them, and how can you test different careers empirically?

Three reasons:
1) It works better: armchair reflection and intuition aren’t a good way to work out what you’ll enjoy or be good at. Learning about different jobs, trying the work and getting real world feedback work much better.

2) You’ll learn skills that are actually valued by other people, giving you the bargaining power to get whatever else you want from your career (rather than hoping your random passions will be rewarded).

3) It’ll make you happier. As every major spiritual tradition, and positive psychologist, says, self-absorption isn’t the route to fulfilment. Turning outwards and trying to help other people is what’s meaningful.

[Simon van Teutem @S_VanTeutem]

@bswud me & the lads on our walk from Texel to Hull

[Simon van Teutem @S_VanTeutem]

Fascinating piece by @MTabarrok and @zC0nrad on land reclamation in @WorksInProgMag. The Markerwaard polder was drawn up but never realised. Had we built it, hundreds of thousands more people would live within cycling distance of Amsterdam, earning more, and paying more into the public finances. It's not too late.

[Simon van Teutem @S_VanTeutem]

Trying to work out if I'm reading this right.

Piketty's new report argues for a mandatory three-day work week and a cap on GDP per capita of €60k in every country.

The case leans on some alarming charts, where the baseline scenario lands at 4.8°C of warming. That number is what makes his proposals look necessary.

('The only way to keep warming below 2°C while achieving our objectives of equality and shared prosperity is to combine sufficiency and a fast energy transition')

But 4.8°C is more or less where RCP8.5 lands — the high-emissions scenario the IPCC and most climate scientists have stepped away from as unrealistic.

Piketty's defence is that he didn't use RCP8.5. He used his own modelling framework, which (by his own description) assumes fast growth and basically no successful energy transition. That's what produces the 4.8°C.

But how is that any better? The most alarming branch of his analysis rests on assumptions that are quite close to a scenario the field has largely moved on from, and it's the exact assumption set that makes his preferred conclusion follow.

Is there a more charitable reading I'm missing?

[Thomas Piketty @PikettyWIL]

2) "The report relies on an unrealistically pessimistic 4.5°C warming scenario."

The report does not use the RCP8.5 scenario. The temperature projections in our “growth-focused macroeconomic scenarios” are based on our own modelling framework and are not supposed to be "business-as-usual" or "current policy" pathways.

Rather, they are designed to illustrate the consequences of a future narrative that prioritizes rapid aggregate growth while failing to accelerate the energy transition or adopt other emissions-reducing policies. Specifically, these scenarios assume continued large-scale economic growth (economy size in 2100 is 8 times today's world economy), an unchanged global sectoral consumption, and energy developments broadly consistent with current-policy trajectories from the International Energy Agency (extended to 2100). This results in very large emission numbers and temperature rise projections. We don’t advocate for these scenarios but simply use them to decompose the emission reduction drivers: sufficiency (reduced labour hours, sectoral change, reforestation) is as important as the energy transition (end to fossil fuels, electrification, improvements in energy efficiency) to stay within 2 degrees.

[Simon van Teutem @S_VanTeutem]

A week with air conditioning, then a day without, and I cannot see why these things aren't everywhere. The obvious answer seems that you need it a handful of days a year, so it's tempting not to buy. But what's the strongest case against a big public push for it?

[Simon van Teutem @S_VanTeutem]

Starmer treedt binnen twee jaar af. In Duitsland wordt na vijftien maanden al gesproken over een 'Ersatzkanzler' die Merz moet vervangen. Slechts 18 procent van de Franse bevolking waardeert Emmanuel Macron als president. Ligt het aan de politici, of aan de kiezers?

[Simon van Teutem @S_VanTeutem]

@AsherVDSchelde Heel vet dit, ook leuk om van je eigen gemeente de historie te zien. Had geen idee dat Bunnik tot 2010 altijd KVP/CDA was (m.u.v. 1998)

[Pieter Garicano @pietergaricano]

To reduce European dependence on American technology firms, the European Parliament has replaced Google with a French search engine, Qwant.

Qwant generates its search results by querying the Microsoft Bing API.

[Luke Tryl @LukeTryl]

Think this is unarguably Reform’s worst night since General Election.
1) Barely any increase in their vote share in Makerfield. 20pt Labour win in a seat that was one of their best second places in 2024.
2) Tories show proof of life and even momentum in battle for the right with Aberdeen South win
3) Restore Britain take 7%, replicated elsewhere in fragmented politics Reform’s path to govt becomes very very hard.

[Stefan Schubert @StefanFSchubert]

Terrible

[Simon van Teutem @S_VanTeutem]

@ryancbriggs I agree, podcasts on Spotify are probably the closest I've experienced, and that's still far off

[Simon van Teutem @S_VanTeutem]

@salonium can't wait for someone to write the Cycling in the Netherlands piece!

[Simon van Teutem @S_VanTeutem]

@StefanFSchubert @kaptenblu It’s dissatisfaction with specific coalitions trickling through (3x elections since 2021 after two coalitions failed to achieve much, current govt also fairly unpopular).

[Lewis Bollard @Lewis_Bollard]

Few trends have caused more suffering in the world, and been so thoroughly ignored by the media and politicians, as the rise of chicken factory farming.

[Tim Urban @waitbutwhy]

2,400 chickens every second

[Simon van Teutem @S_VanTeutem]

@VJBBos @mboudry Husserl

[Aaron M. Renn 🇺🇸 @aaron_renn]

Financial Times: The market failure beneath the manosphere - Confronting the misogyny and get-rich-quick schemes of influencers means talking openly to young men about success - One of the better essays to appear the major media on this topic https://t.co/TXtCm2L6af