Ruben D.

Graphic showing two hands holding a globe with the text '92% of EU citizens are taking individual climate action.' Source: Eurobarometer, June 2025. European Commission logo in the corner.

Graphic of a hand holding a red thermometer with the text '85% believe climate change is a serious problem.' Source: Eurobarometer, June 2025. European Commission logo in the corner.

Graphic of a hand holding a triangular flood warning sign with a house and water waves, accompanied by the text '2 in 5 feel personally at risk from environmental and climate threats.' Source: Eurobarometer, June 2025. European Commission logo in the corner.

Infographic showing two hands reaching upward toward a large pink heart with a medical cross inside it. The text above reads: "85% see climate action as a priority to improve health and quality of life." At the bottom left, it says "Source: Eurobarometer, June 2025." The European Commission logo appears in the bottom right.

As shown in the latest Eurobarometer results, European citizens want the EU to continue leading with ambition to mitigate climate change.

We are rising to the challenge, working with EU countries to build a greener, more resilient Europe for all.

184 Millionen Logins von Google, Facebook & Co. offen im Netz Wer Facebook, Google oder ein E-Mail-Programm nutzt, sollte über einen Passwort-Wechsel nachdenken. Denn Abermillionen Zugangsdaten lagen bis vor Kurzem ungesichert im Netz. Gefunden hat sie nun ein S...

184 Millionen Logins von Google, Facebook & Co. offen im Netz

"Wer Facebook, Google oder ein E-Mail-Programm nutzt, sollte über einen Passwort-Wechsel nachdenken. Denn Abermillionen Zugangsdaten lagen bis vor Kurzem ungesichert im Netz. Gefunden hat sie..."
www.br.de/nachrichten/...

Holocaust-Überlebende Margot Friedländer ist tot Margot Friedländer ist tot. Wie ihre Stiftung mitteilte, starb die Holocaust-Überlebende am Freitag im Alter von 103 Jahren in ihrer Heimatstadt Berlin.

Mit großer Trauer nehme ich Abschied von Margot Friedländer. Mit Wärme, Empathie und großer Kraft erinnerte sie unermüdlich an die dunkelste Zeit unserer Geschichte. Ihr Vermächtnis bleibt: „Seid und bleibt Menschen.“ Diese Botschaft weiterzutragen, ist unsere Aufgabe. www.spiegel.de/panorama/mar...

Text from article: It’ll be years before we can fully account for what all of this is doing to students’ brains. Some early research shows that when students off-load cognitive duties onto chatbots, their capacity for memory, problem-solving, and creativity could suffer. Multiple studies published within the past year have linked AI usage with a deterioration in critical-thinking skills; one found the effect to be more pronounced in younger participants. In February, Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University published a study that found a person’s confidence in generative AI correlates with reduced critical-thinking effort. The net effect seems, if not quite Wall-E, at least a dramatic reorganization of a person’s efforts and abilities, away from high-effort inquiry and fact-gathering and toward integration and verification. This is all especially unnerving if you add in the reality that AI is imperfect — it might rely on something that is factually inaccurate or just make something up entirely — with the ruinous effect social media has had on Gen Z’s ability to tell fact from fiction. The problem may be much larger than generative AI. The so-called Flynn effect refers to the consistent rise in IQ scores from generation to generation going back to at least the 1930s. That rise started to slow, and in some cases reverse, around 2006. “The greatest worry in these times of generative AI is not that it may compromise human creativity or intelligence,” Robert Sternberg, a psychology professor at Cornell University, told The Guardian, “but that it already has.” (Katie's added note: the sentences about reorganization of abilities and telling fact from fiction have been highlighted.)

Bleak.

nymag.com/intelligence...

Of course, I would argue there’d be less of this if we hadn’t had a decades long cultural drive to think of education primarily as a commodity for future life advancement, rather than viewing learning as a goal in itself.

And that is why I have never had a TikTok account.

Commission finds Apple and Meta in breach of the Digital Markets Act Today, the European Commission found that Apple breached its anti-steering obligation under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), and that Meta breached the DMA obligation to give consumers the choice of a s...

EU Big Tech law

EU Commission fines Apple €500 million and Meta €200 million for breach of Digital Markets Act
ec.europa.eu/commission/p...

Peter Stern was born in Nuremberg in 1936, a German Jew. His father died in the Holocaust; he and his brother somehow survived Bergen-Belsen. Today he's protesting what's happening in America. "I came to say that something as nasty as that can happen again, and it can, without me saying something."

What Does OpenAI Want With a Social Network? OpenAI is working on its own social network. Why?

Maybe OpenAI wants to create its own social network as a source of fresh and free data. @jwherrman.bsky.social diagnoses it as a case of Silicon Valley “everythingism”: if you can make one successful or popular tech product, why not just do it all? nymag.com/intelligence...

US climate philanthropies fear Trump blow from loss of tax-free status Chilling effect on charitable organisations comes as need for funding rises amid Trump cuts

Climate philanthropy taking a nosedive.
www.ft.com/content/498c...

Elon Musk's Artificial God In the vision of Musk and other lords of Silicon Valley, the purpose of AI technology is to insulate them, and only them, from any hint that they might live in a society.

“For these men, they are trying to erase uncertainty for themselves and promise the perfection of solipsism to their followers: a world where no one will tell them no, make them feel bad, or make jokes about them” www.liberalcurrents.com/elon-musks-a...

Bridge demolition on Berlin’s A100 highway tests Germany’s engineering skill An online livestream of the demolition site continues to attract nearly 2,000 viewers.

Bridge demolition on Berlin’s A100 highway tests Germany’s engineering skill

Old mobile phones and keyboards. Overlaid text reads: FT Exclusive: EU issues US-bound staff with burner phones to avoid espionage

Breaking news: The European Commission is issuing burner phones and basic laptops to some US-bound staff to avoid the risk of espionage — a measure traditionally reserved for trips to China www.ft.com/content/20d0...

Trump Tariffs Live: Trump declares partial 90-day pause on some tariffs, except China Wall Street's main indexes turned sharply higher on Wednesday after Trump said he had authorized a 90-day pause on "reciprocal" and 10% tariffs, effective immediately.

BREAKING: Trump said he will put a 90-day pause on all tariffs and lower reciprocal tariffs to 10% after several days of market selling that threatened to send the US into a recession. The stock market has sharply rebounded on the news, with major averages up more than 6% reut.rs/3Ehv63p

The news has been more than a bit grim of late, so hooray for @carbonbrief.org providing some genuine and really meaningful **good** news: the UK's carbon emissions in 2024 were the lowest since 1872, because demand for fossil fuels just keeps decreasing.

www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-uk-...

Using ChatGPT to complete assignments is like bringing a forklift into the weight room; you will never improve your cognitive fitness that way. Ted Chiang, Why AI isn't going to make art. (2024)

Shout-out Ted Chiang.

thebullshitmachines.com/lesson-11-tr...

Frühling 2025 in Deutschland extrem trocken: Welche Folgen das hat Bauern blicken besorgt auf ihre Felder und hoffen auf Regen. Der Wetterdienst warnt vor der Waldbrandgefahr. Wer sich über den trockenen Frühling freut? Der Feldhase!

Bauern blicken besorgt auf ihre Felder und hoffen auf Regen. Der Wetterdienst warnt vor der Waldbrandgefahr. Wer sich über den trockenen Frühling freut? Der Feldhase!

Beides Käse.

Commission opens public consultation on ‘#EuropeanDemocracyShield’ "Now is the moment  to step up our actions to better protect and promote democracy in the EU and to reinforce public trust," Commissioner #MichealMcGrath said of the #EuropeanDemocracyShield proposal.

Commission opens public consultation on ‘#EuropeanDemocracyShield’

France: Le Pen found guilty in embezzlement trial – DW – 03/31/2025 French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has been convicted of National misappropriating European Parliament funds through her National Rally party. The impact on her presidential run remains unclear.

France: Le Pen found guilty in embezzlement trial

Nicht dass ich das was die CDU da tut gut finde, aber: Ich weiß nicht, ob wirklich ausschließlich Wohlhabende im Restaurant sitzen - bei den Leuten die jeden Tag essen, ja. Aber die normale Mittelschicht geht doch auch mal ins Restaurant.

Das Interesse an der Idee der Menschenwürde scheint im freien Fall begriffen.

Das Institut für die Geschichte und Zukunft der Arbeit Die Erforschung der Geschichte und die Gestaltung der Zukunft der Arbeit sind das Anliegen unseres Instituts. Es will in diesem Transformationsprozess Impulse für die Gestaltung guter Arbeit in der...

Es gehört wohl zum heutigen akademischen Kapitalismus, dass der Abschluss eines wertvollen Riesenprojekts wie dieses weitgehend unbeachtet bleibt. Sieben Bände Sozialgeschichte der Arbeit von den Anfängen des Homo Sapiens bis in die Gegenwart. https://igza.org/mm2023/

(S+) Deutschland und Donald Trump: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft wirbt um US-Spitzenforscher Ist Deutschland am Ende Nutznießer von Trumps Feldzug gegen die Wissenschaft? Die Max-Planck-Gesellschaft meldet viel mehr Bewerbungen aus den USA als früher. Präsident Patrick Cramer will dort geziel...

Laut MPG sind fast 60% der für sie arbeitenden Forscher_innen aus dem Ausland. @maxplanck.de Präsident Cramer brüstet sich im Interview mit @spiegel.de mit Internationalität der MPG & will Forschende aus USA anwerben. Die sollten dringend vorher diese Doku schauen! (2/2) #IchBinHanna #IchBinReyhan

What is your criticism of the protests?

A chart comparing the S&P 500 with the Cac 40 and Dax. Headline text reads: 'Trump rally fades, leaving Wall Street stocks trailing global peers'.

Fund managers have said that Trump’s Make America Great Again agenda has instead unleashed a Make Europe Great Again trade that is reordering global financial markets. www.ft.com/content/2e81...

I fail to see any arguments that would support this. Is this a ketamine version of Hobbes?

“Today, the internet does that job.” - argument so bad I’m certain he wrote it himself.

The researchers collected their first data in October 2023 and March 2024. Initially, they were struck by how inconsistently Google showed its warnings. A deep learning model they built to analyze the queries suggested that the warnings should have appeared between 29 and 58 times as often as they did in practice. For motivated conspiracy peddlers, they were easy to evade: just adding quotation marks or a single letter to a query was typically enough to make the banner disappear. The researchers were beginning to collect additional data last September when they discovered something unexpected: Google had stopped showing low-quality banners entirely, weeks before early voting began, without disclosing it.

NEW: Google used to warn you when you were seeing low-quality search results. Then, in the weeks leading up to the 2024 election, the company quietly turned that warning off www.platformer.news/google-data-...

I agree, where I live only a small minority voted for them. Still, substantial shift in tone due to their influence.