France Invented Universal Preschool and Is Abandoning It
French students in fourth grade rank last in the European Union in the 2023 TIMSS evaluations, with 484 points in mathematics. Not second-to-last: last. In a country that invented universal preschool in the nineteenth century and still devotes 5.5% of its GDP to education, this result is not inevita
The Megamanager Era: Supervising More, Coaching Less
Approximately one-third (34%) of American managers today supervise more than ten people. The median manager leads 5 to 6 — but the average has now reached 12.1 in 2025, pulled upward by a minority of very large teams, according to data compiled by Fortune from Bureau of Labor Statistics and Gallup s
No European Giant Created in 50 Years. That's a Lack of Creative Destruction
Until 2024, no European company founded since 1975 exceeded 100 billion euros in market capitalization — a finding that was central to the Draghi report. This assertion has since been superseded: Spotify, founded in 2006 in Sweden and listed in New York, crossed this threshold in early 2025 to reach
American Data Centers Will Double Their Water Consumption by 2028
American data centers consumed 17.4 billion gallons of water in 2023. By 2028, this volume will reach between 38 and 73 billion gallons according to projections from the Shehabi et al. (2024) report from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy. A guar
Germany and Switzerland Prove That Integration Is a Choice
71% of immigrants in the OECD zone have employment. This result, documented by the OECD in its 2025 edition of the annual report on international migrations, fits within a broadly favorable historical perspective — even though the OECD specifies that in 2024 trends were more mixed and that this rate
Half of Europe's Critical Minerals Sleep in Electronic Waste
Europe imports 98% of its rare earths, 93% of its magnesium, and virtually all of its gallium. These figures are well known. What is less known is that a substantial portion of these materials already exists on European territory, buried in drawers, cellars, warehouses, and landfills in the form of
Live Sports, Hostage to Its Own Fragmentation
Live sports is one of the last undisputed assets of television. Rights prices are soaring, subscriptions are multiplying, investors are applauding. Except that viewers are missing the games. A Bango survey conducted in May 2026 and published on June 16, 2026, among 2,500 American consumers reveals t
The Machines Turn, the Quays Burn — The Social Lesson from Northern Ports
In March 2026, 60% of ships waiting outside Antwerp were unable to unload. The supply chain was operating at 70% of its capacity. Thousands of containers waited. A few months earlier, in Rotterdam, the largest lashing workers' strike in Dutch history had paralyzed Europe's leading port for several d
Book Review — *Not the End of the World* by Hannah Ritchie: Catastrophism Paralyzes Good Policy
The vast majority of people concerned about the planet believe that things are getting worse across all fronts. Hannah Ritchie thinks they are wrong — and that this error harms the cause they are defending. Not the End of the World, published in early 2024, is an uncomfortable book. Not because it
'The Seasons of Freedom' by Mathieu Laine — liberal democracy does not die from assault, it falls asleep
Freedom does not collapse. It dissolves. This shift in perspective, simple as it may seem, lies at the heart of Mathieu Laine's essay — and it is precisely what makes it a useful book for the present moment. - The central thesis: freedom traverses a cycle in four stages (liberating spring, summer of
Italian and Spanish Cooperatives Teach Us How to Share AI's Gains
In Italy, cooperatives employ approximately 1.1 to 1.3 million workers and have 12 million members (shareholders), with total revenue estimated between 127 and 140 billion euros. This sector is not that of a niche activist movement. It is that of an industrially mature sector, present in logistics,
Taiwan Cares for Its Seniors with Connected Sports and Relieves Hospital Overcrowding
Nine out of ten seniors improved their muscle mass and mental health after attending connected fitness clubs established by the Taiwan government. This figure, drawn from an analysis of 150,000 visits published in September 2024 in the European Journal of Public Health (Volume 34, Supplement 2), i
In Switzerland, Choosing a Trade at Sixteen Is Not a Failure
Seventy percent. That is the share of young Swiss people who pursue vocational training after compulsory schooling. In Austria, this figure reaches 68%. These two countries do not produce failures of general education — they have built systems where the vocational pathway is a choice, not a consolat
The First Rung of the Ladder Has Shifted
The Stanford HAI 2026 AI Index reports a decline close to 20% in employment of developers aged 22 to 25 since 2024 in companies heavily exposed to generative AI, while Brynjolfsson, Chandar & Chen measure a relative decline of 13% since late 2022 in the most exposed occupations. On the other side, t
In the United States, Productivity Rises and Wages Wait
American labor productivity (non-agricultural sector) rose from +1.6% in 2023 to +2.3% in 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This acceleration coincides with the massive diffusion of AI in companies, even though the causal link remains unproven at the aggregate level according to ava
Batteries Have Solved Intermittency. The Rest Is a Question of Industrial Policy.
One evening in March 2026, batteries stored on California's grid covered 40% of the state's electrical load. This is not an experiment. This is not an isolated record. Over the entire first quarter, batteries ensured a significant share of hourly ramp-up capacity in California — that is, the ability
The Wolf Returns to 34 European Countries. Environmental Success and Political Cacophony
In ten years, the range of the gray wolf has expanded by 25% across the European continent. The species is now monitored in 34 countries. This return is not an ecological curiosity: it is a full-scale test of Europe's capacity to manage a shared resource that no one asked to share. The result, for n
Like Turbulent Teenagers, AI Agents Break Things and Are Not Governed
In the past twelve months, 65% of organizations that have deployed AI agents have suffered at least one cybersecurity incident related to these systems. In 61% of cases, sensitive data was involved. These figures, published in April 2026 by the Cloud Security Alliance and Token Security, do not desc
Nuclear Fusion Enters American Factories
In January 2026, Commonwealth Fusion Systems installed the first of 18 superconducting magnets for SPARC, its experimental tokamak currently being assembled in Devens, Massachusetts. Six months later, the reactor was approximately 75% constructed. This is not a victory press release, it is an indust
An Indigenous Language Dies Every Two Weeks—and AI Is Beginning to Save Them
Sometime between now and a few weeks from now, a human language will die. Not a minor or marginal language—an entire language, with its grammar, its metaphors, its ways of dividing time and space, its ways of naming plants, winds, relationships between people. According to UNESCO, 40% of the 7,000 l
The Future of European Rugby in the Blood of Former Players
Fifty-six former rugby players. Blood tests. And significantly elevated tau protein levels in those who sustained more than five concussions during their careers. The UK Rugby Health study published in July 2024 is not the first to document the neurological sequelae of professional rugby, but it is
AI Accelerates Early Career Starts and Cuts the Trajectory That Follows
A junior consultant equipped with an AI assistant produces today work that only a senior would have delivered five years ago. It's documented, measured, and presented as a victory. What the same studies note in a footnote: that senior never existed. They didn't have time to develop. The debate on AI
Chile risks squandering its lithium rent
Lithium extracted from the Salar de Atacama represented $2.7 billion in Chilean exports in 2024. Without new productive capacity, Chile's share of global production could fall from 23 to 17% by 2030, according to projections from Cochilco, the public mining agency. The country that holds the world's
AI Consumes More Each Year Even When Each Request Costs Less
The share of energy devoted to inference in the lifecycle of large AI models has progressed significantly in recent years, to the point where it now exceeds that of training. In other words, running AI now costs more energy than building it. And this reversal occurs precisely at the moment when each