Hello and welcome back to Five Things!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas time! I actually had a nice time, got some wonderful, surprising and of course undeserved presents, I cooked my traditional Christmas bird, which is basically an American Thanksgiving dinner served as a festive Christmas lunch, including brussels sprouts, but more on that later. And as much as I enjoy being with my family, I also enjoyed being able to stay aber a lot later than usual to have some quiet time for myself. Just like now, when I finally got the time to write this newsletter, after coming back from the alumni reunion at my high school. When I was still going to school more than 33 years ago, I always wondered who those old people were who’d come back to their old school every two years on December 27th. Now I know.

If you just read this far to find out about the quick announcement, you’re in luck! So basically I have decided to restructure my Five Things newsletters a bit, because I want to bring you more value. The Sunday edition and the Running edition on Monday will stay free, but the big change is that Five Things Tech on Saturday will also turn free, while I change Five Things AI on Friday into a slightly different format. As someone who has worked with lots of AI startups over the last 10 years and invested into some teams very early on, I have the feeling that I have a bit more to say about certain developments in the AI sector than many other people. So I will focus more on Five Things AI and provide deeper analysis and of course commentary. We’ll see how that turns out real soon now! Basically next year. I am reading a lot, so that you don’t have to, but stay informed and can filter out signal among all the noise.

Here are this Sunday’s Five Things, the last one of the year!

Good Morning, Sunshine

This year, renewables surpassed coal as a source of electricity worldwide, and solar and wind energy grew fast enough to cover the entire increase in global electricity use from January to June, according to energy think tank Ember. In September, Chinese President Xi Jinping declared at the United Nations that his country will cut its carbon emissions by as much as 10% in a decade, not by using less energy, but by doubling down on wind and solar. And solar panel imports in Africa and South Asia have soared, as people in those regions realized rooftop solar can cheaply power lights, cellphones, and fans. To many, the continued growth of renewables now seems unstoppable—a prospect that has led Science to name the renewable energy surge its 2025 Breakthrough of the Year.

Let’s not forget, even though many bad things happen and many people are really, really good at pointing out what doesn’t work: there is still plenty of real progress out there and the growth of renewable energy is certainly a really big thing and a wonderful sign of progress.

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On Walking

Walking barefoot as a monk was a constant reminder of how we humans are always connected to the earth, bound by gravity, ever aware of the heft we carry—some of us more than others. It made me feel the mechanics of movement: muscles and tendons stretching and contracting, propelling the leg forward. It made me aware of the ground we walked on, the dirt and tar and tufts of grass in cracks, the unevenness of the pavement, the changes in terrain. This was spiritual walking, a bringing of awareness to our breath and our steps.

It sucked.

According to my Oura ring, I walked more than 4000 km this year. I have a dog. I also listened to lots of audio books, tried to learn hebrew while walking, had conversations with family and friends, also started to talk to ChatGPT, which was quite entertaining, but mostly I spend my time walking alone by myself, you thinking or not thinking at all. Walking really is wonderful.

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The Last Good Thing

Still, the second I saw the binder—containing “practically every major kid’s cartoon movie from the last 20 years on DVD”—appear on my local Free Box Facebook group (where my neighbors give away everything from original artwork to half-empty bottles of shampoo), I wanted it deeply, covetously, like when you see someone wearing a wool sweater that is so entirely your style, you can’t believe it isn’t already yours. Ninety-two disks! Without a moment’s hesitation, I typed, “Interested!” and pressed return. And the next day, I stood awkwardly on my neighbor’s porch to collect my prize.

This is one of those ideas that I am really curious about finding out what other people did, but where I for myself can only declare: “over my dead cold body!” - I truly loathe DVD and always hated the fact that the DVD would get scratches, would not be put back into the right case, could not be found when the kids wanted to watch something, and so on. Streaming: so practical. And yes, I do not own the stream, I am aware of that. I couldn’t care less. It is so practical.

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How getting richer made teenagers less free

As the nation grew wealthier and more children began to survive to adulthood, we became vastly more protective of them — and permitted them far fewer risks. It’s hard to invest (either emotionally or literally) in children when poverty, disease, and starvation haunt your days. And now that we are less desperately poor, we can afford to ask less of our children — no family need choose between sending their 14-year-old to the factories or surrendering their baby to an orphanage.

While I think that we grant our kids much more freedom than their American counterparts get, as a parent I still do want to be able to call my kid at any time when they are going someplace. When I was a teenager, I told my parents roughly when I’d be back and then I was gone and they had no way to find out what I was doing where, unless of course, I got caught doing something stupid or injured myself, which luckily never happened…

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The real reason this polarizing food made its sweet San Francisco comeback

The sprouts redemption tale began overseas in the Netherlands, a couple of hours away from their namesake, Brussels, Belgium. In 1999, a Dutch scientist named Hans van Doorn working for a company called Novartis Seeds published a paper identifying the two compounds that made Brussels sprouts bitter — sinigrin and progoitrin. With this knowledge in hand, scientists took stock of milder varieties of the crop and began a breeding program to change the sprouts’ maligned flavor profile. “It’s around 12 to 14 years before you really have a new variety,” said Joske van den Burg, a breeder at Syngenta — a global agricultural science company that acquired Novartis — during a phone call with SFGATE.

I never disliked brussels sprouts, but I was also never really that interested in eating them, I have to admit. I do like them a lot in the pan sheet variety, when they are a bit crunchy and baked. For Christmas, I bought purple brussels sprouts, which are a bit sweeter and have a nuttier flavor profile. I was a bit disappointed when they lost most of their color after peeling and cooking, but purple brussels sprouts do look cool.

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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: National Security "Strategy", Liminal Spaces, Creator Commerce, Finding Ideas, MAGA State Nico Lumma · Dec 21 Read full story

— Nico