You rely on unambigous, "physical" properties of the videos.

There is a physical property of all the videos: the time of publication.

There is a physical property of all the channels: did you subscribe to it, or not ?

So, you show, in (reverse) chronological order of publication, the list of videos published by the channels you subscribed to.

Now, of course, a brand new user would have no subscription - you show them a search box.

But then, now, your search algorithm has to weight the various channels that match - but your algo can be relatively transparent, relatively auditable, and the same for all users (unless given explicit preferences, and of course national laws, etc, etc...)

I'm sorry, but, I have a "subscriptions" page in youtube or substack, and they're chronological, and they show me what I want to watch. You keep that.

There is a "home" page in both service that is algoritmically built, and they show me crap that the algo want me to watch. You get rid of that.

Do this, and I can consider you a "neutral" actor, and accept that you shift the blame to content producer.

Or, keep the algo feed, but don't take money from advertiser when I watch yet another flat earther video because YOU decided it was trending.

If you want to decide what I watch, and make money from that decision - congrats, you are an editor. You get the earnings, and the responsibility.

Please don't tell me, with a straight face, that the people who build the algo don't "decide" what I watch. If they want to tweak the algo to downgrade the flamewars and outrage and conspiracy theories and violence and abuse, they can. They do not want to, for business reasons. [1]

That's fair, up to a point - we need publications with editors that agree on having "edgy" content. I'm not advocating for blanket censorship.

I did not like social network preventing me from _sharing_ articles about Biden's son laptop (this was actually beyond the law, but somehow they managed to find the resources and programmers to implement _that_, because, at the time, the execs where cozying with a different administration.)

I'm advocating for "accepting your responsibility as an editor".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Haugen#October_5,_2021...

That being said, I suspect many people had never heard about Lehman Brothers before 2008...

Kinda confirms my point, no ? Sure, not a "majority" of Gen Z went for Trump. But such a shift has to mean _something_ was done wrong.

That being said, I once again got my timing wrong - most of the restrictions of covid happened before Biden was elected, so it would not really make sense for them to blame it on Biden.

I suppose inflation was enough for them...

Also, gen z favored Haris by ONLY 10 points ? As in 55/45 ? Isn't the stat usually more on the order of 60/40 (if not 65/35) for this age group ?

Now, people will hate you for doing a "good" thing for money (exhibit A : name any pharma company selling the drugs that keep people alive ; that company is going to get called a "cynical shill" given enough profit.)

It just happens that the bad things are often highly profitable, so the investors will pour the pensioners money in (because the pension money must flow.)

That being said, the best way to get funded is not for your app to be good or bad, but to be massively fun. Sell tulips, video games and Céline Dion tickets. Find a way to divert 10% of the benefits to a charity.

Which is actually part of the enigma : if China decided to use a window of opportunity to invade a neighbor (and they have claims on Taiwan, they keep telling the world they have claims on Taiwan, and they keep preparing their navy to invade Taiwan, so it's not entirely unreasonable to expect that country would be Taiwan), would they have an inexperienced army making rookie mistakes and miscalculations, or would they catch everyone of guard with a a crazily autonomous army of robots that don't care about the weather or war crimes ?

I would not ask the same question about any other country in the world, but, if Russia and the US surprised us by failing at what they were supposed to be great at, and Ukraine surprised us by being good at one no one expected, I expect a surprise from china, but I don't know which one !!!

That being said, "the Russian army will be driven to a virtual stalemate by a former comedian leading a decentralized group of startups remote-controlling handmade Wall-E clones equiped with machine guns, while the former real tv anchor leading the US army helps the Russian side to distract people from the pedophile ring he did _not_ take part in" would have sound very tongue on cheek, too.

Though, given what we've used bombs and drones to do to unarmed civilians in the last century, that might done make military planner budge...

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj94y87k2ljo

Given how the "peaceful" way failed in the last few decades, it's not insane to assume they might try a good old fashion invasion at some point.

From what I understand (as in "from what William Spaniel says"), given the weather constraints, it's something to look at closely every April and October. Seems like we're good for this April (which was not a given - attacking while the US is wasting ammunition in the Middle-East must surely have been tempting..)

Young people should react by voting in people who will defend them. Instead, they joined the elderly un voting for Trump. Go figure.

Even the "superstars" (Krugman, etc..) are posting this is that could have been posted on twitter, with the same level of outrage and polarization, but at least the content is well structure, and they are allowed to use sentences in paragraph, with quotes, and figures, and links, etc...

Yes, I know, it's called blogging. I'm saying that the new hot thing, in 2026, is blogging.

Ask Ukrainians, Lebanese, Gazaoui, Somalilanders, or even Iranians for that matters - that may not make a big difference to today...

What I would love to see is a local government suing an arms producer for the efficacy of their weapons. (Or even funnier, the owner of a home destroyed by a drone, suiving the GPS company.)

We all know that the only things people in suits are really afraid of, more than hell, is a bad Q4 report and an expensive lawsuit.

My big question is:

- will they keep the human bodies warm to care for the elderly, and send robots to war ?

- will they keep the robots to take care of the elderly, and send the young's to war ?

- will they dispose f the elderly to keep their edge ?

- will they play long and wait things out ?

Case in point : we're all expecting China needs to invade Taiwan soon, or they will run out of soldiers because of the one child policies of the 70s/80s.

Meanwhile, Ukraine is holding up against a "modern" army with quickly assembled drones.

So it all seems a bit like "they'll never put tanks through the Ardennes", sort of ?

Where and when will the first invasion of a country by a purely remote controlled, AI assisted army take place ?

Will robot battalions embed civilians to act as human shields ? Will the AI learn to mistreat the locals to maintain fear, or will they see it as a needless distraction and rush to the center of powers ?

If war is mostly played out from a disrance, will years of playing RTS give South Korea an edge ?

If sodium-ion, or some kind of thermal, or some kind of gravitationnal (except pumped hydro), or whatever techno comes up that makes it possible to handle this dunkleflaute thing (i learned that word today, love it already :) [1]), then Germany will already have the panels and windmills.

If for some reason, there is a great chemistry already advanced in the labs, is it possible that Germany buys a GWh battery before the first few EPR-2s come out of the ground ?

That's one hell of a bet to make. By refusing to reconsider nuclear, Germany is basically betting on some sort of breakthrough (or continued gas supply, which, well, is betting on geopolitics...)

So maybe "carving up mountains" isn't such a crazy plan, after all...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkelflaute

But of course, good for them that they used their mountains / rivers ! All all power to them to electrify their economies if they have surplus ! And even better if they can use some reservoirs and pump to store, because it means they can diversify their productions by adding wind / solar and store a lot, until batteries of seasonal scale become more widespread.

Let's head to electricitymaps.com !

Albania (https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/AL/live/fifteen_min...)

- On 2026-04-12 16:45 GMT+2, 22,67% of electricity consumed by Albania is imported from Greece, which generates 22% of its electricity from gas. Interestingly, Albania exports about as much to Montenegro as it imports from Greece.

Bhutan:

- 100% hydro, makes perfect sense

Nepal:

- 98% hydro, a bit of solar for good measure

Iceland:

- 70% hydro, 30% geo

Paraguay:

- 99,9% hydro

Ethiopia:

- 96,4% hydro

DRC

- 99.6% hydro

So, the lessons for all other countries in the world is pretty clear: grow yourselves some mountains, dig yourselves a big river, and dam, baby, dam !!

(I'm kidding, but I'm sure someone has a pie-in-the-sky geoengineering startup about to disrupt topography using either AI, blockchain, or both.)

Will pipelines with creative routing make a comeback ?

Or will people, you know, try to reduce their dependency on oil and gas by using less prehistoric technology ? Naaaah that would require R&D. Leave that to the Chinese. We have pensioners to support.

People still enjoy quality, even for entertainment.

Sure, teenagers will rot their brain, but the most watched shows in the US are The Bridgerton, The Night Agent, and The Pitt - not exactly jackass.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/h/charts/