You know what you could do on this amazing day? Read Five Things and then become a paid subscriber! Awesome idea, right? ✌🏻 Oh, by the way, if you do not want to subscribe to Five Things, Five Things Tech and Five Things Running, you can select which one of the newsletters you want to read in your account settings. Five Things: Immigration, War, Peace, Greentech, BicycleJust another Sunday morning? Not quite. Make sure to read this!
Hello and welcome back to Five Things! It’s really frightening how fast we currently normalize ideas and behaviors that we would have labeled as fringe and lunatic just a few years ago. How we deal with immigration is certainly one area where the needle has moved far to the right. It feels at if it is now commonplace to pin problems like crime or unemployment on immigrants. Another area where the needle has been moved in the wrong direction is antisemitism. It used to be just people on the fringe who’d repeat antisemitic tropes and now people chant things like “from the river to the sea!” and effectively call for an end of the state of Israel and for yet another mass killing of jews. Somehow, this doesn’t disturb too many people. And when Israel gets attacked from Iran-backed terrorist proxies, people want to deny Israel the right to defend itself. They are fighting against terrorists who want to kill as many Israelis as possible and the reaction of way too many people in the Western world is: “Israel is allowed to defend itself, but they shouldn’t do this by killing people, you know terrorists also have families!” After the killing of the Hezbollah terrorist boss, many commentaries on TV where focused on how the terrorists could cope with this, instead of being glad that this evil person has finally been eliminated. Unfortunately we cannot fight terrorism with position papers. But we have to fight double-standards and call out antisemitism whenever we encounter it. Other than that, fall has kicked in and I have put all my shorts away for the next six months. I miss wearing shorts and Birkenstocks every day. How Immigration Became a Lightning Rod in American Politics
Immigration is not just a hot and contested topic in the US, it’s also dividing European societies. Xenophobia is being used to formulate an us vs. them rhetoric, that attaches current problems to immigrants, which are mostly non-white. In a world that will get more migration due to global warming, we need to push back on the far-right immigration policy. The War That Would Not End
This is a fascinating and thorough account of the diplomacy that happened after October 7. Netanyahu advanced his own agenda regardless of the advice Israel’s partners offered. And now we’re entering the next stage of the war against the terrorists, which has many repercussions for the Western world. The Fight for a New Israel
“At times during the nine months of protests that lasted from January 2023 to the October 7 attack, Israelis were asking themselves bigger questions about the foundations of their country than at any time in recent memory—and they felt an urgency to find answers. The consequences of not doing so could be dire. If Israel chooses to remain on its current path of conquest and annexation and commits itself to opposing Palestinian statehood—as Netanyahu repeatedly has done—it will consummate the destruction of Israel as a democratic state.” - Israel needs a plan, not just for Gaza and the West Bank, but also for its democratic institutions. Silicon Valley Renegades Pollute the Sky to Save the Planet
Climate Change is the biggest threat to humanity right now and this unleashes lots of creativity. Some of the stuff sounds like it was made up by lunatics, but who knows, it might work? I’m betting that there will be more amazing developments in Greentech in the next few years and hopefully it will not be too late to cool this planet. The Art of Taking It Slow
“Petersen believes that the bike industry’s focus on racing—along with “competition and a pervasive addiction to technology”—has had a poisonous influence on cycling culture. He dislikes the widespread marketing to recreational riders of spandex kits, squirty energy gels, and workout apps such as Strava. He thinks that low, curved handlebars contort riders into an unnatural position; that bicycles made of carbon fibre and aluminum have safety issues; and that stretchy synthetics have nothing on seersucker and wool.” - this sounds like back in the good old days in the 70s, when so called Holland Bikes where all the rage in Germany. These bikes where all in the same green and had a three-speed, nothing more. Really nice and simple. That’s it. Have a great Sunday! If you missed last Sunday’s edition of Five Things, have a look here: — Nico You're currently a free subscriber to Five Things. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
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