Nicholas Gruen

Shucks Rory singing my praises See you at Kilkenomics in a few weeks @RorySutherland

If they gave Ig Nobel Prizes to companies, Rakuten’s Viber would be a contender for their international calling service that requires you to receive international calls before you can use it. To activate Viber, you must receive a call and enter the last four digits of the calling number as your verification code. Seems a little contrary compared with a text, but there you go. The thing is, I can receive texts without buying an international roaming pack, but I can’t receive phone calls. I reinstalled Viber solely to use Viber Out to call ordinary phone numbers when I’m overseas. In other words, to avoid international roaming. Sigh.

"You don’t normally see the phrase “catastrophic or existential risks to humanity” in an IPO document." LOL link.thetimes.com/view/61a92…

RoboDebt for Britain "Some carers’ allowance claimants were wrongfully overpaid by the Department of Work and Pensions, which then asked them to pay the money, back. Unknowingly, some had accrued debts of up to £20,000. By the nature of what they do, unpaid carers often can only work part-time jobs with irregular hours. But the DWP, unlawfully, told them they were not allowed to average their incomes over a year, unfairly penalising them for breaching earning limits." independentlabour.org.uk/202…

If you're travelling overseas and you need an eSIM, don't touch Ubigi. I've had trouble with them which has taken hours out of my life on the last three times I've used them. I started using Saily which is more expensive but with much, much better service in the event of a glitch

Good slogan! Grow the Pie, Skip the Sermon truthonthemarket.com/2026/05…

Comedy scriptwriter got this speech when trying to quit “Let me just take you through what will happen when you leave,” Segelstein began. “When you leave, the show will get worse. But not all of a sudden—gradually. And it will take the audience a while to figure that out. Maybe two, maybe three years. And when it gets to be, you know, awful, and the audience has abandoned it, then we will cancel it. And the show will be gone, but we will still be here, because we’re the network and we are eternal. If you read your contract closely, it says that the show is to be ninety minutes in length. It is to cost X. That’s the budget. Nowhere in that do we ever say that it has to be good. And if you are so robotic and driven that you feel the pressure to push yourself in that way to make it good, don’t come to us and say you’ve been treated unfairly, because you’re trying hard to make it good and we’re getting in your way. Because at no point did we ask for it to be good. That you’re neurotic is a bonus to us. Our job is to lie, cheat, and steal—and your job is to do the show.” “Our job is to lie, cheat, and steal—and your job is to do the show” bigifftrue.substack.com/p/ou…

Mark Rothko's 'other operation' (vertical blocks) With apologies to the Piranha Brothers

Big if true! lnkd.in/p/eKTGnt3e

I’ve always disliked how totally corporate imperatives drive The Conversation. Yes, they have some significance, but it’s this very obsession with metrics and commercial imperatives that is playing such a role in the intellectual collapse of academia more widely. And so it is with The Conversation.

Interesting and impressive clip. Complete with an endless stream of community notes purportedly clarifying

"Mazzucato is better at critiquing current economies than describing a plausible path to better ones" pearlsandirritations.com/pos…

Yes, one of the finest flowers of western civilization is continuing it's gradual collapse. Why do you ask? And why be sentimental about this one in particular? statmodeling.stat.columbia.e…

How might Europe benefit more from AI than the US. Your one chance to find out this weekend! nicholasgruen.substack.com/p…

Why will Europe win the AI war. You can't possibly know if you don’t read this week's newsletter. nicholasgruen.substack.com/p…

"Democratic politicians rarely feel they can afford the luxury of telling the whole truth to the people. And since not telling it, though prudent, is uncomfortable, they find it easier if they themselves do not have to hear too often too much of the sour truth. The men under them who report and collect the news come to realize in their turn that it is safer to be wrong before it has become fashionable to be right." Walter Lippmann clubtroppo.com.au/2023/04/27…

Welcome to Britain

"It ought to shift away from taxing incomes and profits to taxing assets, particularly land and property," he argued. We've got to shift taxation away from the producers — the workers and businessmen — and put it on those whose assets have increased dramatically in value." Charles Goodhart abc.net.au/news/2026-09-16/n…