Europe is one of the best places in the world to live, but one of the hardest places to build and scale a company. After 5+ years in France, following 16+ in the US, I have a conflicted admiration for Europe. On the one hand, Europe has great potential. When I lived in the US, I was skeptical of the European quality-of-life argument. But after getting used to Sunday morning markets, walkable cities, and 4.5 meter ceilings, I get it. There are things that you simply cannot import or experience as a tourist. These things can make Europe very attractive for creative and intellectual work. I honestly believe some parts of Europe are the “best neighborhood” in the planet. But that’s not the full story. I am not only a husband and a dad. I am also an entrepreneur. I founded a company in the US 12+ years ago that has offices in the US and Chile and clients throughout the world. I live in France, yet I have not opened a subsidiary here. That is telling. We once hired someone in France through one of those remote employment platforms. The person received about 5,000 euros net per month, which is considered a very good salary here. But the total cost to the company was closer to 13,000 per month. That makes hiring feel less like a relationship between a company and a worker, and more like renting someone from the state. At the same time, you take an enormous amount of legal and administrative responsibility. The presumption is that all companies should operate like a 1960s car manufacturer. The response is simple. Don’t set up operations in Europe. But this is not a remote-work story. I know many small entrepreneurs in France who do not want to cross the threshold from being a one-person activity to becoming an employer. They sometimes refuse a new customer to stay small and avoid the obligations that come with hiring one person. That should worry us. Many social protections here are described as being provided by the state, but in practice, a lot of the cost and complexity of the implementation falls on the administrative shoulders of entrepreneurs. That is reasonable for a large energy company or bank. But for a small business, it is the difference between an entrepreneur waking up on a Monday to think about product or paperwork. Growth is not the enemy of the European social model. It is what enabled it. Much of the quality of life we enjoy here today dates back to growth incubated in the past. Growth that is increasingly hard to find. France once led frontier industries, like bicycles in the 1860s, cinema in the 1890s, and aviation and automobiles soon after. Since then, Europe built a more humane social model. But that model was built on the assumption that Europe and the US were the only two rich and industrialized places in the world. That is no longer true. Global competition in the 21st century is not what it used to be 50 years ago, and the padding built to protect us, may have grown into the handbrake that constrains the growth of the small and flexible firms we need to compete in new frontier sectors. We should be able to be critical about Europe in our own terms, without comparing ourselves to the US or China. Innovative parts of Europe, like Sweden or Switzerland, operate differently and provide clues. Sweden has embraced a dynamic of capitalization in its pension system for a long time in a continent where fewer people buy stocks. Switzerland, a place that shares an enormous amount of geography and culture with its neighbors, is built in part on strong internal competition among its cantons. But neither can light a candle to a French open-air market on a Sunday morning. A market where cash is king, and for a reason. Europe may be the best place in the world to live. But it is also one of the most challenging places to build and scale an innovative activity. The goal is not to weaken the European model. But to get to a place where we can lead again by example. The world will follow us, but only if we are ahead.

⚡ Top 10 Countries by Electricity Demand (2025) Here’s who’s using the most power, both total and per person: 1. China 🇨🇳 10,573 TWh total 7.5 MWh per capita 2. United States 🇺🇸 4,536 TWh | 13.1 MWh per capita 3. India 🇮🇳 2,083 TWh | 1.4 MWh per capita 4. Russia 🇷🇺 1,176 TWh | 8.2 MWh per capita 5. Japan 🇯🇵 1,030 TWh | 8.4 MWh per capita 6. Brazil 🇧🇷 762 TWh | 3.6 MWh per capita 7. Canada 🇨🇦 646 TWh | 16.1 MWh per capita (highest per person) 8. South Korea 🇰🇷 625 TWh | 12.1 MWh per capita 9. Germany 🇩🇪 520 TWh | 6.2 MWh per capita 10. France 🇫🇷 477 TWh | 7.2 MWh per capita Data: Ember (as of April 2026)

Micron has started shipping its new 245TB SSD which is now the world’s largest solid state drive you can buy. This fast drive is designed for big data centers AI systems cloud storage and enterprise use and it packs huge storage into a small space in E3.L and U.2 sizes. Compared to old hard drives this SSD needs up to 82% less rack space and uses about half the power with a maximum of just 30 watts while reading data at up to 13.7 GB per second so it works great for heavy jobs like AI data storage. Official pricing has not been announced yet as it is an enterprise product.

New this week at Backpack 🎒 Product & UX — ▸ BP Staking page now includes a tokenomics card and equity calculator to preview your share of the pool. ▸ TP/SL ROI presets on web: one-tap +10%, +25%, +50%, +100% for TP, with inverse presets for SL, available in both order and position management. ▸ Unclaimed rewards now grouped by asset, instead of separate line items. ▸ Quests now the default tab on Rewards. ▸ Countdown timer added to Quests, making campaign deadlines clearer. ▸ Russian language added to the web UI language picker. ▸ Borrow close now includes recallable lent USDC in available balance when closing a borrow (staked balance excluded). ▸ Sub-orders from scaled limit orders now show a “Scaled” badge in Open Orders and Order History, similar to TWAP. ▸ More web pages now mobile-friendly, including Leaderboard, Referrals, Volume, and Achievements. Ongoing Quests — ▸ BTC Yield Boost: trade to unlock the eligible BTC amount that can earn up to 50% APY. Your BTC remains fully usable as collateral. Until May 13. ▸ MEGA-PERP: 0-fee trading with all eligible fees fully rebated. Until May 7.

🏆 Persephone Trading Cup Is Officially Live! 13 thrilling competition rounds await, with a massive total prize pool of 520,000 $INI 🚀 Trade more, earn greater rewards! ✅ Trade INI/USDT on to join the battle ✅ Top 50 traders share rewards proportionally based on trading volume ✅ All participants can also claim shares from the 20% Bonus Pool ⏰ Event Duration: 7 May — 5 August 2026 Join the competition now 👇 #InitVerse# #INI# #INIChain# #CryptoTrading# #Airdrop#

"13 months after first breaking ground, we celebrate the final beam being laid atop our Novant Health Performance Center with today’s topping off ceremony." 📝 read more: | @NovantHealth