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halhod.bsky.social
hal👾
@halhod.bsky.social
Americas editor at The Economist
Pinned
the Carney bump lands in!!! www.economist.com/interactive/...
"EXCLUSIVE" @theglobeandmail.com

except for when The Economist wrote about it two weeks ago
January 20, 2026 at 11:48 AM
Reposted by hal👾
EXCLUSIVE: A quiet revolution happened at Great Ormond Street Hospital last week. A girl with a rare fatal condition received a custom drug under a new MHRA protcol that is 1st step towards process approval, a shift that could one day save millions of lives. www.economist.com/science-and-...
Treatment of a teenager with an ultra-rare condition is a medical milestone
It will change regulators’ rule books
www.economist.com
January 20, 2026 at 8:42 AM
Reposted by hal👾
it's worth noting that the shift from Wikipedia to AI for factual summaries also removes our ability to audit the information trail and reveal systematic manipulation like this. AI can offer sources, but nothing like the timestamped/IP address-linked edit history of wikis
bsky.app/profile/timb...
January 15, 2026 at 10:30 AM
Reposted by hal👾
Punting Greenland's security to a working group and sending a symbolic troop deployment is probably the best Europe can do, for now.

But in time a more considered strategy may be needed to counter Trump's covetousness.

My take on Europe's Greenland options www.economist.com/europe/2026/...
Europe has three options for defending Greenland
Fending off Donald Trump may yet prove agonisingly difficult
www.economist.com
January 15, 2026 at 8:53 AM
wild that Trump calls Delcy a "terrific person" when she's been running cover for a brutal regime for years

here she is with Al Jazeera in Sept 2017, right after the most vicious crackdowns in chavismo history

none of this was true. and she wasn't even asked about the torture
January 15, 2026 at 8:00 AM
After kidnapping Maduro, Trump is as about as popular in Venezuela as the opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado. This according to our new polling

www.economist.com/graphic-deta...
January 13, 2026 at 6:18 PM
Reposted by hal👾
Photovoltaics fed about 16.9% of German-generated electricity into the grid in 2025, according to the Bundesnetzagentur (this excludes selfconsumption). Renewables at 58.8% overall.

www.bundesnetzagentur.de/SharedDocs/P...
Bundesnetzagentur - Presse - Bundesnetzagentur veröffentlicht Daten zum Strommarkt 2025
www.bundesnetzagentur.de
January 12, 2026 at 1:44 PM
January 8, 2026 at 2:22 PM
Reposted by hal👾
In Donald Trump’s world, the strong take what they can. That will be bad for America—and everyone else: econ.st/4qcajRx
January 8, 2026 at 12:05 PM
The worst-case scenarios that Canada's military planners must account for now include incursions on Canadian territory by the Donald Trump's America

www.economist.com/the-americas...
Canada’s armed forces are now planning for threats from America
They started rebuilding in 2025, before Donald Trump’s most recent bid for hemispheric dominance
www.economist.com
January 7, 2026 at 7:22 PM
love this story by Tom Graham on Die Mennonitische Post, the newspaper printed in Canada and distributed to conservative Mennonites across Latin America www.economist.com/the-americas...
A German newspaper for Bolivian blondes
For Mennonites from Bolivia to Belize, Die Mennonitische Post is often the only connection to the outside world
www.economist.com
October 1, 2025 at 12:56 PM
Reposted by hal👾
My take on England’s daftest sport: Should cheese rolling be protected as British heritage?
economist.com/britain/2025...
Should cheese rolling be protected as British heritage?
The government mulls making England’s daftest sport official
economist.com
May 29, 2025 at 7:55 AM
Reposted by hal👾
Middle class consciousness is on the rise: Doctors, teachers and junior bankers of the world, unite! 
economist.com/britain/2025...
Doctors, teachers and junior bankers of the world, unite!
The rise of middle-class consciousness
economist.com
May 29, 2025 at 6:03 AM
Trump is wrong about almost everything

But he's right to pursue deep-sea mining, even though he *probably* isn't motivated by the real reasons it's a good idea (a supply of essential metals with lower emissions and ecological harms than the largest sources today)
Donald Trump is right to go after metals in the deep sea
Environmentalists should push the UN body that governs deep-sea mining to pass regulations to allow it
www.economist.com
May 2, 2025 at 11:42 AM
Reposted by hal👾
Heroically spent this week at The Crucible. Please reward my shoeleather reporting with a click. The strange success of snooker: immigration, agglomeration and amorality keep the sport going
economist.com/britain/2025...
The strange success of snooker
Immigration, agglomeration and amorality keep the sport going
economist.com
May 1, 2025 at 7:24 AM
Reposted by hal👾
Angus Reid shows the Liberals with a 5pt lead.

LPC 42 (+26 vs December)
CPC 37 (-8)
NDP 9 (-12)
BQ 8 (-3)
GPC 1 (-2)

Gives them a 2pt lead in our tracker: www.economist.com/interactive/... 🇨🇦
March 17, 2025 at 7:39 PM
Reposted by hal👾
First (highly respected) Abacus poll post-Carney shows the Conservatives down 3, Liberals up 5
March 14, 2025 at 12:21 PM
this is a really good point. one way of thinking about Apple's failure to ship genAI products is that the features inherent to genAI tech don't fit well with Apple's brand
also, it's interesting thinking about apple x AI crossover, because the failure modes of genAI are those that apple, i think, *particularly* tries to avoid (e.g. failing in a way that is inscrutable/invisible for average users; generating nsfw/toxic outputs; etc)
March 13, 2025 at 8:24 AM
Reposted by hal👾
A lot can happen in five months. 🇺🇸
March 11, 2025 at 6:49 PM
March 11, 2025 at 9:54 AM
Trump fentanyl riffs are just not credible

the CBP seized 13 grams (grams!!!) of fentanyl at the Canadian border in January. That is down by a factor of 180x since Trump was elected

The CBP seized 16x more fentanyl at interior ports in 2024 than it did at the Canadian border
March 5, 2025 at 8:59 PM
Reposted by hal👾
This is beautiful (love the arcing)
cc @halhod.bsky.social
⚡️ The historic moment of Estonia leaving the Russian-fed power grid.

On February 8, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia left Russia and Belarus energy system. By the end of the day today, they will have joined the European grid.
February 9, 2025 at 10:46 AM
Reposted by hal👾
For the past year, I've been investigating the global rise of online scams - a predatory, multi-billion dollar industry that rivals the size of the illicit drug trade. Scam Inc, a new 8-part podcast from The Economist and hosted by me, is out in February: econ.st/3CoAdxJ
Scam Inc from The Economist: Trailer: Scam Inc
A sophisticated, predatory, multi-billion dollar industry is emerging from the shadows. It is already more lucrative than the illicit drug trade. And it’s about to get bigger and much more powerf...
econ.st
January 31, 2025 at 3:57 AM