Hello and welcome back to Five Things!

While I am acutely aware that climate change is really bad for our planet, I really did enjoy this last summer week with temperatures above 30 degrees here in Hamburg. Of course, the temperatures dropped again by 10 degrees as soon as the weekend approached, but it was nice and hot while it lasted. And while I enjoy these warmer temperatures, people in Iran have to endure days with 50 degrees along with water shortages and power outages. The planet is getting hotter and hotter and the poorer people will suffer the most. At the same time Germany is spending 80 mio € on enforcing border controls within the EU to push back a couple hundred people who tried to built up their lives here. The migration will just increase when more and more parts of the world are becoming too hot and this will put immense pressure on societies. We are seeing a drift to the far-right already in too many western democracies and we have to make sure that our liberal societies will prevail. This won’t be easy, but I think that policymakers have focused too much on national or European policies and didn’t take into account that people are much more focused on the local or regional affairs. They notice when the local swimming-pool is getting too expensive or the schools are falling apart and of course they ask why there’s not enough money to create great infrastructure that make villages and cities a great place to live. All politics is local.

Have a great Sunday and read these Five Things now!

"Competitive authoritarianism" and America's slide toward it

Experts have argued that the United States is moving towards what they call “competitive authoritarianism.” Scholars Steve Levitsky and Lucan Way describe such systems as one that are not democratic but “feature arenas of contestation in which opposition forces can challenge, and even oust, authoritarian incumbents.”

Competitive authoritarianism is usually thought of as a new global development. However, you can also see competitive authoritarianism as a prevalent form of government throughout American history — one which we have only tentatively started to move away from in recent decades. Trump in that context is not an innovator, but an avatar of backlash.

No thanks, I prefer a liberal Western democracy.

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Welcome to the Era of Big Stupid in America

When you make smart and ambitious young people feel unwelcome in America and give them no indication that they’ll have a job in this country at all—much less one that can’t be eliminated with a keystroke, much less one that would be free from the input of Eric Trump—they may eventually decide not to come here. The innovation and brainpower have to go somewhere, and the rest of the world is making our brain drain their gain.

The USA is usually five years ahead of Germany and I can totally see more and more stupidity in German politics and business, where religious wars are being fought over the combustion engine, nuclear power, climate change and what not, even though 99.9% of all scientists agree on something…

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What's it like to have Frank Lloyd Wright design your house? This 101-year-old knows

The house where Reisley has lived for 73 years is nestled in the woods of Westchester County, New York, just 30 miles north of Manhattan. It's one of 47 that make up the idyllic mid-century modern village of Usonia. Wright believed that the buildings we live in shape the people we become. He conceived of Usonia to make beautiful, affordable homes — including built-in furnishings — connected to nature for middle class Americans.

This is pretty amazing. Just imagine living in a house not only designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, but actually designed for you.

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He Announced His Intention to Die. The Dinner Invitations Rolled In.

Within a few days, thousands of people reached out. To date, Mr. Awuah-Darko has attended 152 Last Suppers. He has boarded trains to visit homes in Berlin, Paris, Antwerp and Milan. He has traveled to cities all over the Netherlands and to dozens of Amsterdam neighborhoods. Those who don’t cook have treated him to high-end bistros, where a meal costs $100 per person, and to Burger King.

Humans can be just wonderful.

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Inside San Francisco's Robot Fight Club

We’ve obviously had robot competitions for years. BattleBots started back in the 1990s, giving hardware nerds a chance to show off their cool contraptions. Those bots, though, were mostly ground dwellers and gimmicky. Now, however, we’re amid the rise of humanoid robots being built by lots of start-ups in the U.S. and, more notably, China. The humanoids bring with them the chance to create a combat sport that looks more familiar to mainstream viewers and the opportunity for better storytelling as we anthropomorphize the bots and develop tales for their pilots.

Brave new world.

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That’s it. Have a great Sunday! If you missed last Sunday’s edition of Five Things, have a look here:

Five Things: Israel, AI Salaries, Iran, Dupes, Hotel Swimming Pool Nico Lumma · Aug 10 Read full story

— Nico