Pocket lint

It's time for me to get back on the newsletter rhythm, so rather than a main post, here are a few links I had saved a few months back when I last had time to write, and never got time to share. The links in the snippets section are fresh, though.

Travelling hasn’t given me much of a chance to watch or listen, but I enjoyed Martin Wolf on China and the US – particularly on the possibility that China’s growth may have transitioned into something slower, or even decline. In particularly the demographics of China are worse even than those of the EU – to the extent that there are possible population futures where Europe (EU+) and China have more or less the same population in 2100 – 587 million for China, 586,5m for Europe. 

How many immigrants can Belgium hold? Population predictions go from a peak in 2030 followed by decline, to an increase from 11 to 16 million by 2050. Flemish people are more positive about this change than you would think from political rhetoric – majorities think both that immigration is positive or neutral and that they would be happy to have a immigrant as a neighbour. Vandaag dives into the detail.

🎧 Josiah Ober, who’s been working on democracy so long I wrote my undergrad thesis on one of his books, has a new one out – and gives a long interview to the Democracy Paradox podcast about the “civic bargain”.

🚉 Tram lines

Are we witnessing the death of international law? No ... but it's in a downward phase.

Astonishing long read on Amsterdam's failed experiment on AI-assisted welfare decisions.

📻 Radio-Télévision Bruxelles

I enjoyed - if that’s the word - Elliot Higgins’s podcast appearance with Gavin Esler. Many of the themes I think about at work - democratic futures, civic activism and information quality - but also a clear picture of how social media and the internet more generally is damaging democratic discourse. 🎧

For those in Brussels, a strong recommend for High & Low by Kurosawa (which I hadn’t seen before) and is showing at Palace during the Sun Screens festival over the next couple of weeks. 1963 contemporary setting noir/policier. Amazing. 🎬

More soon...