Anyone know what triggered the astronomical tourist visa fees for Ghana and Nigeria? I get high fees like Bhutan and Galapagos which are linked to service and number restrictions. But USD 260 in Ghana just to visit Accra?

Euronews Deutsch@euronewsde.bsky.social · 3w ago

Von Ghana bis Japan: Wer mit einem EU-Pass reist, muss in einigen Ländern tief in die Tasche greifen. Unser Vergleich zeigt, wo Visa und Einreisegenehmigungen weltweit am teuersten sind.

High pawn!

We don't appreciate enough how amazing it is to live in a time where fire brigades show up so fast in force to stop house fires from spreading! Thank you to all those making it possible! #dublin #firefighters

Ice hockey world cup final without a goal in 60 minutes, into sudden death overtime. My frog brain can't deal with it ...

Kermit The Frog Anxious

ALT: Kermit The Frog Anxious

static.klipy.com

Love the idea of watching some ice hockey. But where in Ireland do those future players train? I haven't come across any permanent rinks near Dublin ... Plans unveiled for south Dublin winter sports arena to host State’s first ice hockey franchise www.irishtimes.com/business/202...

Plans unveiled for south Dublin winter sports arena to host State’s first ice hockey franchise

Proposed €190m venue planned for Cherrywood, Dublin, will enable team compete in UK Elite Ice Hockey League

irishtimes.com

Anyone want to take part in this #journorequest👇 about experience with service providers in Ireland? DM if any thoughts. Shares appreciated.

Arlene Harris@arleneharris.bsky.social · last yr.

#journorequest looking to talk to people in Ireland who have had a negative and insensitive response from a service provider (phone, energy, bin collection etc) or bank when trying to close the account of a loved one who has died. DM if any thoughts. Shares appreciated.

€23b for the Dublin Metrolink? Double the estimate from 2021? More than 3 tunnels through the Alps by the Swiss (NEAT, including the longest in the world)? And all the Irish Times asks for is more transparency? Maybe this friendliness is why it's at €23b ... www.irishtimes.com/opinion/edit...

The Irish Times view on the rising cost of Metrolink: the unacceptable price of delay

We have been looking at the illustrations of what a metro for Dublin might look like for many years, but have still to see a shovel in the ground

irishtimes.com

This could be one of those little changes to an existing technology that will massively accelerate the deployment. Very exciting!

David Roberts@volts.wtf · last yr.

Interesting: small home batteries that you can plug into any wall outlet & tuck away just about anywhere. If you plug in multiples, they automatically form a mesh network. This is the battery equivalent of "balcony solar."

Interesting: small home batteries that you can plug into any wall outlet & tuck away just about anywhere. If you plug in multiples, they automatically form a mesh network. This is the battery equivalent of "balcony solar."

You Don't Need an Electrician to Install This Smart Home Battery

The former Tesla engineers who founded Pila Energy say their battery can make it easier and more affordable for consumers to weather power outages.

cnet.com

@edwardluce.bsky.social just landed the best opener in a while! And the fine writing continues throughout - master piece!

This is so much overdue that the only surprising thing is that it hasn't been done yet! Why would you hurt your own asset management industry? And push savers to an allocation of real estate or cash, instead of decent diversification? www.independent.ie/business/iri...

Move under way to cut punishing 41pc exit tax on exchange-traded funds

Work is under way to ease the punitive tax treatment of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and life-wrapped funds, an investment product sold by life assurance companies, in time for the Government’s first ...

independent.ie

putin is a war criminal. i have no problem with the us president (or macron or scholz) talking with him. but under no circumstances should his crimes be normalized or white washed. what’s happening right now is a stain on the united states and its role in the world.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" (Arthur C. Clarke) My first @waymo.bsky.social ride was exactly this: magic!

Listen to super Mario! It's time for Europe to emancipate itself and focus on what it controls: the internal market! Forget the US — Europe has successfully put tariffs on itself - on.ft.com/4jVU4Fx via @FT

Forget the US — Europe has successfully put tariffs on itself

High internal barriers and regulatory hurdles are far more damaging for growth than anything America might impose

on.ft.com

Guess what will threaten your wages? If a trading and innovation nation struggles to sell abroad easily and hire good people ... The cashier only earns 4k because of the wages in the high productivity sector - none of which are domestic. www.swissinfo.ch/eng/foreign-...

Swiss Trade Union warns EU deal could threaten wages

The Swiss Trade Union Federation warns that the new bilateral agreement between Switzerland and the EU could threaten wage protection and public services.

swissinfo.ch

On the difference between vanity metrics (followers) and value creation (engagement)

Dan McCrum@mccrum.bsky.social · 2y ago

On the value of Twitter, btw - We had similar traffic from Bluesky, where the FT has 300 thousand followers, to what came from Twitter, where we supposedly have 6 million.

My annual decarbonization presentation is here. 200 slides, covering everything from water levels in Lake Gatún to sulfur dioxide emissions to ESG fund flows to Chinese auto exports to artificial intelligence. www.nathanielbullard.com/presentations

Twitter, I need your help. What is the next BIG idea in energy? It will take decades for solar, wind, batteries, EVs and smart grids to transform everything but it's already entirely predictable. So what is the NEXT really big thing? Help? (Also asking this on twitter.)

The World Economic Forum is out with their annual assessment of the greatest risks facing the planet. In the next two years? Mis- and disinformation and extreme weather events. In the next 10 years? Massive disruptions of the environment in four different areas.

My TED talk on how cheap solar is changing the world, or at least Pakistan, South Africa and California. And how difficult it is to get good solar data. www.ted.com/talks/jenny_...

Solar energy is even cheaper than you think

How prevalent is solar power, really? According to researcher Jenny Chase, it's already displacing fossil fuels in key energy markets around the world. She explains the rise of affordable solar power ...

ted.com

Excellent pice by @davidallengreen.bsky.social with bonus points for quoting Madness. www.ft.com/content/917c...

The coming battle between social media and the state

Behind the alignment of X and Meta with Trump is a cold business logic — and a position of weakness rather than strength

ft.com

Very good piece. Twitter and Facebook’s behaviour reflects weakness, which is driving them to Trump as defence against regulation elsewhere

Rick@flipchartrick.bsky.social · 2y ago

Excellent pice by @davidallengreen.bsky.social with bonus points for quoting Madness. www.ft.com/content/917c...

Wikipedia is the last major, visible platform for facts that they can’t buy. The attacks are going to be merciless.

Arno Rosenfeld@arnorosenfeld.bsky.social · 2y ago

Scoop: I obtained a confidential presentation outlining how a major conservative think tanks plans to go after volunteer editors on Wikipedia who it says are "abusing their position" and promoting antisemitism forward.com/news/686797/...

Breaking: Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Google and a convicted Corgi murderer, says that fact-checking is biased.

I knew about Kopi Luwak from Indonesia, but it seems in Vietnam they use a weasel instead of a cat to make the coffee better :-o @jameshoffmann.bsky.social might add it one day to one of his excellent reviews! (Or explain how to make Vietnamese coffee usable for espressos)

In this new substack post I sketch how humanity slowly came to the realization that our future energy system will mainly run on solar and wind, and why this energy system will be using local semi-autonomous units we call holons. Pls let me know what you think here! open.substack.com/pub/aukehoek...

How our thinking about an energy system running on solar and wind is evolving

First we discovered solar and wind could become abundant and cheap; now we are discovering we can store electricity, in the future we will discover how to create our energy system bottom-up

open.substack.com

Bomb disposal units got called to Frederick Street in Dublin. Reporting here as no news outlet seems to be interested in it (yet).

At home with Maurice Saatchi. (This was fun to write.) on.ft.com/4ffx40K

Maurice Saatchi: ‘Look how perfect it all is. Even the log pile’

[FREE TO READ] The advertising maverick’s crenellated Sussex mansion strives for immortality — but are a new book ‘Orgasm’ and a bid for The Daily Telegraph really part of the plan?

on.ft.com

An Energy Transition case study: reducing the cost of electricity by renewable means in the Caribbean. What's missing? Money ... We have the affordable technology but it requires investment which competes with basics like health and education ... www.economist.com/the-americas...