Politics

On Donald Trump’s speeches

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Yesterday a friend showed me the transcript of a Trump’s speech. Sheer horror.

Donald Trump’s speeches are an odd beast: lively, unscripted, and built on his presence. When he’s up there, it’s not about eloquence; it’s the way he delivers it; the punch of his voice, the rhythm of a “tremendous” or “believe me” tossed out with confidence. He’s got a knack for keeping a crowd hooked, drifting from trade talk to some guy he met in Ohio without missing a beat. It’s not a lecture; it’s a show, and he’s the star.

Put it in writing, though, and the spark fades. Without his tone, those big promises: “We’re gonna win big, folks, so big”, lose their bite. They sound empty, just words waiting for something solid to back them up. His asides, like a jab at “Sleepy Joe,” land with a chuckle in person, but on paper, they feel out of place, almost forced. The energy that carries a rally doesn’t survive the jump to text.

His style doesn’t help. Trump talks in bursts, short, snappy lines like “Great people. The best.” Spoken, it’s got a beat that pulls you along. Written, it’s choppy, like a thought left unfinished. Most speakers build a structure, a flow you can follow. Trump’s more off-the-cuff, leaning on his charm to smooth the edges. On a page, those edges just look rough.

It’s about his audience, too. He’s talking to people who want a vibe, not a plan, folks who cheer “Build the wall” without needing details. In the moment, he can ride that wave, keep it loose. Writing asks for more; it’s static, open to questions. Readers spot the gaps he skips over with a grin.

Trump’s speeches don’t hold up in written form because they’re made for the stage, not the page. They rely on him to sell it. Without that, the words feel thin, like a script missing its actor.

Energy

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In this early days of 2025, let me speak plainly about the great challenge before us: energy.

Energy is not merely the fuel for our machines; it is the engine of human progress, the foundation upon which every leap forward has been built. And yet, we are told, with troubling regularity, that we must shrink our ambitions, ration our dreams, and settle for less. Sobriety, they say, is the order of the day.

Humanity did not ascend from the caves by dimming the fire. We built brighter flames. We did not forge steel, light cities, and traverse oceans by apologizing for our needs; we met those needs with ingenuity, effort, and ambition. Energy abundance has always been the key to our success as a species. It has lifted billions out of poverty, extended life expectancies, and created the technologies that allow us to connect, cure, and create.

To those who demand austerity in energy, I ask: what future do you envision? A future of limitations? A future where we deny our children the lights of a brighter tomorrow because we were too timid to build it? No, we must reject this narrative of scarcity and embrace one of abundance.

The way forward is clear. We must produce more energy—cleaner, yes, but above all, more. Let us unleash the full potential of nuclear power, harness the vastness of wind and solar, and continue innovating to make fossil fuels cleaner where they are still needed. Let us build the infrastructure, invest in research, and incentivize the ingenuity that will make energy as abundant and accessible as air itself.

Because when energy is abundant, everything else becomes possible. Industries thrive. Innovation soars. Societies grow wealthier and healthier. Abundance does not breed complacency. It breeds opportunity. It is the soil in which the seeds of progress grow.

So, let us reject the mantra of “less.” Let us choose instead to do more. More energy, more ambition, more progress. Let us light up this century and beyond with the brilliance of human ingenuity, refusing to settle for anything less than a future where abundance is not a luxury but a birthright.

The choice is ours. Let’s make it boldly.

On AI and regulating it.

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Artificial Intelligence illustration

There’s a big push push today for regulating AI. I hardly see the relevance of that push. For me regulating AI as such is redundant as existing legislation already covers most (if not all) all use cases.

Wat is commonly designed as AI covers two use cases: 1. data gathering and processing and 2. automated decision making.

1. Data processing is already regulated by existing copyright law and privacy regulations such as GDPR. Other than case law, I hardly see any need for further legislation.
2. Automated decision making is also covered but the all encompassing GDPR. AI, is nothing more than a more elaborate (if not accurate) automated decision making machinery.

What the push for AI regulation does achieve however, is shifting the discussion away from proper enforcement of already existent legislation.

On current events in Catalonia

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The EU is an institution praised for uniting Europe by pulling its people together. There is a lot of talk currently going on regarding the independentist movement in Catalonia. Ironically those two phenomenons are causally linked together. Fernando Betancor, an American economist living in Madrid puts it better than me:

The current crisis afflicting Spain and its wealthiest region, Catalonia, is indicative of both of Europe’s initial success and ultimate failure. The EU – and NATO – were successful in creating a large, borderless, free market and a security zone that seemed to make another European war inconceivable. That reduced the advantage of belonging to a large state, one with a large internal market and a sufficiently large military to ensure domestic security. Inside the European Union, a nation like Luxembourg could compete on equal terms with Germany in the common market of 500m and had no more to worry about invasion than France or Italy. With a population 13 times as large as Luxembourg and an economy four times greater than the diminutive Grand Duchy, the Catalans felt that they could make a going concern of their country.

As published in: https://www.socialeurope.eu/betacanor

It’s all political

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As soon as the second World War ended, the allies forced displaced persons and refuges from all nationalities across liberated Europe to return “home.”  This was, more often than not, against their will. “Home,” at that time, meant the USSR for more than 2,200,000 people. Of which, it is estimated, one on five ended up either shot or sent to a Gulag. Nobody cared.

These forced repatriations didn’t cease till 1947 as the Cold War became a thing.

It is said that the 50,000 Czech nationals still in Austria and Germany by 1948 during Communist coup in Prague were immediately accorded the status of political refugee at once as of February that year.