Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Wessel van Rensburg

@wildebees.bsky.social

730 followers 410 following 2K posts

The digital policy strategist you didn’t know you needed—using terms like 'sovereign data assets' as casually as most would say 'hello'. Also geopolitics, innovation, industrial policy. Location: Den Haag 🇳🇱 From: 🇿🇦

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Wessel van Rensburg @wildebees.bsky.social · Aug 7

New essay ↓ with Andreas Dombret www.reaction.life/p/why-stable... #stablecoins
Stablecoins are Silicon Valley's Pandora's box. The Trump admin just signed the GENIUS Act, but the warnings should be louder.

Here's what everyone's missing about why stablecoins betray the essence of money itself 🧵

Why stablecoins are Silicon Valley's Pandora's box

Stablecoins betray the essence of money itself: credit.

www.reaction.life

2 1 1

Reposted by Wessel van Rensburg

Robin Brooks @robin-j-brooks.bsky.social · 9h

US tariffs are inflationary for the US and deflationary for China and everyone else. They cause China to divert all the goods it used to export to the US to the rest of the world, which is now getting a flood of deeply discounted stuff. China also imports less as it tries to sell stuff at home...

12 39

Reposted by Wessel van Rensburg

Ulrike Franke @rikefranke.bsky.social · 19h

“The new drones gave Colonel Glonek a view of the 60-square-mile battlefield that, until recently, he had never thought possible. He also knew the enemy could see him and his troops.”

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/09/u...

The Army’s Race to Catch Up in a World of Deadly Drones

www.nytimes.com

2 10 84

Wessel van Rensburg @wildebees.bsky.social · 9h

But its global exports have not.

Reposted by Wessel van Rensburg

Techmeme @techmeme.com · 11h

Analysis: in 2025, tech companies have raised about $157B in the US bond markets, up 70% from last year, as debt seeps into every corner of the AI economy (Edward Ludlow/Bloomberg)

Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

1 7

Reposted by Wessel van Rensburg

Chad P. Bown @chadpbown.com · 12h

US-China tariffs: where do they currently stand?

- US average tariff on imports from China: 57.6%
- China average tariff on imports from US: 32.6%

Note: We have been updating this chart since September 2019

US-China Trade War Tariffs: An Up-to-Date Chart

Average US tariffs on Chinese exports now stand at 57.6 percent and cover 100 percent of all goods. China's average tariffs on US exports are at 32.6 percent and cover 100 percent of all goods. US tar...

www.piie.com

1 10 11

Reposted by Wessel van Rensburg

Tech-Based Teaching @edutecheditor.bsky.social · 13h

“Since 1991, the video game Civilization, now in its seventh installment, has become one of the most successful game franchises ever. That means millions of kids have grown up with Civ as one of their formative ways of thinking about history.” (via @jstor.bsky.social) #AcademicSky

History and Civilization - JSTOR Daily

The Civilization video games may not convey actual history very well, but they’ve encouraged generations of young people to learn more about the past.

buff.ly

2 8 14

Reposted by Wessel van Rensburg

Daniel Solove @daniel-solove.bsky.social · 11h

Scraping, which is essential for AI, is inconsistent with nearly all core privacy principles in privacy laws.

4 7

Reposted by Wessel van Rensburg

Bloomberg News @bloomberg.com · 11h

In the first seven months of 2025, Chinese grid-scale lithium-ion batteries accounted for about 65% of US imports, according to the most recent data available from BNEF.

China’s New Weapon in US Trade Talks: Batteries

The US is heavily reliant on Chinese batteries as it seeks to stabilize the grid and support explosive data center demand for power.

bloom.bg

5 32 71

Wessel van Rensburg @wildebees.bsky.social · 15h

Madrid is lovely, full of art and culture — and underrated.

Reposted by Wessel van Rensburg

Judah Grunstein @judah-grunstein.bsky.social · 1d

It's impossible to know what went into the committee's decision, but Machado is a symbolically savvy choice, given Trump has recently pretended to care about Venezuela, making it hard for him to dismiss her importance.

It will also cast any decision to invade the country in a harsher light.

5 10 48

Reposted by Wessel van Rensburg

Sander Tordoir @sandertordoir.bsky.social · 2d

"Industrial policy can never work" edition X.

2 7 38

Wessel van Rensburg @wildebees.bsky.social · 2d

"If one failed, it was because he deserved to fail. Faithful to its universalism, Western upper middle-class neoliberals did not treat co-citizens any differently from foreigners."

Branko Milanovic @brankomilan.bsky.social · 2d

My today's Substack:
Defeated by reality
Why did neoliberalism, in its domestic and international components, fail?
branko2f7.substack.com/p/defeated-b...

Defeated by the real world

Why did neoliberalism, in its domestic and international components, fail?

branko2f7.substack.com

2 8

Reposted by Wessel van Rensburg

Katie Martin @katie0martin.ft.com · 2d

'Hargreaves Lansdown has warned UK investors over exposure to cryptocurrencies, saying bitcoin “has no intrinsic value”...'
Wow what a refreshingly principled stance on consumer protection and oh wait nvm www.ft.com/content/f342...

5 8 45

Wessel van Rensburg @wildebees.bsky.social · 2d

Sharp by Branco Milanovic on neoliberalism:

"If one failed, it was because he deserved to fail. Faithful to its universalism, Western upper middle-class neoliberals did not treat co-citizens any differently from foreigners."

Defeated by the real world branko2f7.substack.com/p/defeated-b...

Defeated by the real world

Why did neoliberalism, in its domestic and international components, fail?

branko2f7.substack.com

Reposted by Wessel van Rensburg

Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 3d

Bray is a historian at Rutgers who received death threats after landing on Turning Points USA's Professor Watchlist. As a result, he announced he was moving to Europe. And then this happened.

This kind of harassment and abuse of scholars is Charlie Kirk's legacy and it's only getting worse.

Mark Bray @mark-bray.bsky.social · 3d

“Someone” cancelled my family’s flight out of the country at the last second.

We got our boarding passes. We checked our bags. Went through security. Then at our gate our reservation ‘disappeared.’

130 3.1K 8.1K

Reposted by Wessel van Rensburg

Techmeme @techmeme.com · 3d

California Governor Gavin Newsom signs a bill that will require web browsers to add settings that allow residents to opt out of third-party data collection (Suzanne Smalley/The Record)

Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

9 50

Reposted by Wessel van Rensburg

Techmeme @techmeme.com · 3d

Germany's Federal Cartel Office opens an investigation into whether Temu is influencing the pricing of third-party merchants, potentially stifling competition (Mark Hallam/DW News)

Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

3 4

Reposted by Wessel van Rensburg

Jana Puglierin @jpuglierin.bsky.social · 8d

We at @ecfr.eu are very lucky to host @abarbashin.bsky.social as visiting fellow in Berlin. He has listened to Putin at Valdai for us, so that you don’t have to. You can find his take here ➡️ Enemy number one: What Putin’s foreign policy speech says about Europe: ecfr.eu/article/enem...

Enemy number one: What Putin’s foreign policy speech says about Europe

At this year’s Valdai club, Vladimir Putin gave his most anti-EU speech yet, citing his determination to see new anti-establishment politicians to come to power and improve Europe’s relations with…

ecfr.eu

5 16 38

Reposted by Wessel van Rensburg

Benjamin Braun @benbraun.bsky.social · 3d

If profits shape the energy transition we need to understand the biggest profit event this century: the 2022 oil and gas price spike.

Very happy our paper is now out in Energy Research & Social Science. Thread by lead-author @gregorsemieniuk.bsky.social 👇

Gregor Semieniuk @gregorsemieniuk.bsky.social · 3d

🚨NEW PAPER🚨
We all know the 2022 energy price shock fueled the cost of living crisis. It also caused a profit bonanza for the very rich. We show the US reaped the largest profits ($377bn) of any country. 50% went to the richest 1%, only 1% to the bottom 50%. A🧵 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

River or sankey diagram showing the allocation of profits from global oil and gas companies to quantiles of the US wealth size distribution via financial system intermediaries, such as asset managers, and categories of ultimate beneficiaries, such as business owners, pension funds and shareholders in listed companies. The scale is hundreds of billions of US dollars, and ultimately 50.4% of profits reaching the US personal wealth distribution go to the richest 1% of households.

32 72

Wessel van Rensburg @wildebees.bsky.social · 3d

Beautiful

Wessel van Rensburg @wildebees.bsky.social · 3d

If I still lived in London, I'd have checked this out.

Marie Le Conte @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com · 4d

THE SECRET PROJECT I'VE BEEN WORKING ON FOR THE PAST FEW MONTHS IS FINALLY LIVE

CHECK IT OUT

outsidersartsclub.com

Wessel van Rensburg @wildebees.bsky.social · 3d

Looks great. Congratulations.

Reposted by Wessel van Rensburg

Mark Chadbourn @chadbourn.bsky.social · 3d

Gold has surged to a record high of $4000 an ounce over fears about Trump’s tariffs and the US government shutdown.

Gold surges past record $4,000 an ounce as uncertainty fuels rally

Analysts point to delays in the reporting of economic data due to the US government shutdown as one reason for the rise.

www.bbc.com

13 30 140

Wessel van Rensburg @wildebees.bsky.social · 3d

“Our evaluations demonstrate that fine-tuning on authentic learning data significantly improves conversational and pedagogical performance - doubling student talk time, improving questioning style, increasing dialogue turns by 50%, and greater personalization of instruction.”

AI Firehose @ai-firehose.column.social · 4d

A study shows TeachLM, an education-focused AI, enhances tutoring with 100,000 hours of real student-tutor dialogue, doubling engagement metrics. This positions AI nearer to human tutors, promising a transformative leap in personalized learning. https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.05087

TeachLM: Post-Training LLMs for Education Using Authentic Learning Data

ArXiv link for TeachLM: Post-Training LLMs for Education Using Authentic Learning Data

arxiv.org

Wessel van Rensburg @wildebees.bsky.social · 3d

“The goal of this course is to teach how fundamental programming language techniques, algorithms and systems work by writing their miniature versions.”

Tomas Petricek @tomasp.net · 4d

I'm teaching 𝗪𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝘁𝗶𝗻𝘆 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺(𝘀)! again. I'll be posting the videos & tasks on YouTube too.

In the first lecture, I explain what's a tiny system, why write one and show plenty of demos!

🎞️ Playlist: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...
👉 More info: d3s.mff.cuni.cz/teaching/npr...

Write your own tiny programming system(s)! - YouTube

The goal of this course is to teach how fundamental programming language techniques, algorithms and systems work by writing their miniature versions. The cou...