Sam Wilkin
Freelance (managing) editor and media consultant. Amateur essayist. Former senior editor at Politico & MLex, reporter at Bloomberg & Reuters.
Essays: www.theleopard.eu
Hire me: bxlbureau.eu
- I never doubted you for a second @economist.com
- The global flood of misinformation could revive a dying breed: the foreign correspondent. Not long ago, the value of having a trusted reporter on the ground was in freefall as reliable information flowed on social media. Fake news is reversing that trend. open.substack.com/pub/theleopa...
- Too much stuff? Most cities in Europe provide you with a large storage space in front of your house for a token fee. You can put anything there so long as it's in a car.
- The most dangerous racists are the people who think they can't possibly be racist. This week's essay: open.substack.com/pub/theleopa...
- The markets right now
- I want my 55% tax back (Nala loves it but she doesn't pay tax)
- An essay on the joy and toil of writing essays, with a digression into the Substack economy. Tl/dr: Work is really busy so I can't publish every week for the next few months. Going to prioritise quality over quantity and slow down a bit. open.substack.com/pub/theleopa...
- The death of Twitter left a void that hasn't adequately been filled. I've previously written (/moaned) about BlueSky and now it's the turn of LinkedIn - a place where people are posting more and more about politics but haven't shed their corporate masks. open.substack.com/pub/theleopa...
- My pet hate is when websites lock their language options to the country you're in. Why?!
- Europeans are too often passive consumers of technology, media and culture made by and for Americans. This not only makes us dependent on the US, it impoverishes our culture and stops us reaching our full potential. This week's essay: www.theleopard.eu/p/the-inesca...
- Good example of the awful journalistic habit of writing 'Brussels' when you mean 'EU' (which is shorter!) I read the first half of this headline and thought the city was doing an amnesty to stop the gun crime epidemic. Why not just 'EU proposes collective weapon purchases for member states'?
- The importance of security to sustainable urbanism. Alternatives to car ownership are unviable in the absence of law and order. Stolen bicycles and violence on the metro drive people back into cars. Vandalism kills scooter and car rental companies. This is how Green politics lost Brussels.
- Welcome to Brussels, where the enforcement of the law is rare enough to be newsworthy. Next up, drunk driver fined €10 and told to be careful driving home!
- Trees vs cars - which would you rather in your city? One year since my last spring clean, these are my windows. On the left faces a courtyard with lots of trees. On the right faces a street with cars. We tolerate this so one-half of people can 'just get to work' in a massive metal box.
- Very good essay by @ldfreedman.bsky.social here. Perhaps we should start calling POTUS the 'follower of the free world', that might just trigger the Americans enough.
- We need better climate activists. www.theleopard.eu/p/the-strang...
- Dear hivemind, can anyone recommend books or podcasts on the rise of Mussolini and Italian fascism? Realised that I know the German history very well but almost nothing about Italy in the same period. Thanks in advance.
- Started active investing last year and honestly pretty happy that my first 2x trade is contributing to the defence of Europe. Ethical investing can be profitable too 🙂
