How bureaucracy killed charging

💡💡 Did you know?

The Dutch East India Company and Modern Equity

The Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC), established in 1602, is widely credited with issuing the first official tradable stock, pioneering the concept of limited liability. This innovation allowed investors to share risk and collectively fund massive, long-duration global trade ventures, fundamentally creating the model for the modern joint-stock company and capital markets as we know them.

Our Money, Our Risk, Real Investment, No Advice

We love ambitious goals — both personally and professionally.

We all set them with the same optimism when we pack our running shoes we never use.

OKRs, North Stars, quarterly targets… organisations pour enormous energy into defining where they want to go.

And then, ironically, they spend their time on short-term activities hoping these scattered efforts will somehow magically add up.

But when they fall short, the explanation almost always sounds something like:

Nine out of ten times, the finger points outward. And you know the saying:

But rarely do we look inward — at the systems that make our goals either achievable… or impossible.

They’re defined by the system that runs quietly in the background.

Goals tell us what we want. Systems determine what we actually achieve.

Most organisations — and most people — underestimate the power of their systems and how small, consistent improvements can shift the entire trajectory.

Goals set direction. Systems create outcomes. And small changes create momentum.

Learn more and find out How Incremental Improvements Shape Long-Term Success

The German Parliament finally pulled the trigger and killed the main thing stopping electric vehicles (EVs) from being actual power sources. They passed a law that eliminates the “double grid fee” EV owners previously had to pay. Up until now, if you helped stabilize the grid by feeding power back from your car, you got charged a second time when you recharged that same energy. You can’t make this up. Starting in 2026, Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) is officially economical because the power is treated like it came from a regular stationary battery storage unit, not a car. This regulatory breakthrough makes V2G possible at scale.

My Take: Here’s the fun part: Germany had this massive, decentralized power plant millions of EV batteries just sitting there, ready to help, and their own rules were actively blocking it. We're talking about unlocking gigawatts of flexible power. It’s peak bureaucracy that we had to wait this long just to fix a double-charging penalty. While the government gets a deserved pat on the back for finally realizing how math works, let's not pretend we're done. There's still the ridiculously slow smart-meter rollout they need to fix. It’s like buying a Ferrari and then forgetting to pave the road.

Why It Matters: It turns your EV from a passive consumer into an active grid stabilizer and potentially a small revenue stream. It makes green energy integration easier because cars can soak up solar/wind surplus and release it later when needed.

Who should care? Everyone who owns an EV or pays an electricity bill. This is the blueprint for how countries can use millions of cars to avoid building expensive new power plants. Expect other markets to copy this fast.

Japanese biologists decided to send a specific moss, Physcomitrium patens, on a nine-month, all-expenses-paid trip to the exterior of the International Space Station. They weren't exactly expecting a postcard. After 283 days floating out in the vacuum, extreme temps, and radiation, over 80% of the moss spores came back totally fine. Better than fine, actually. They were still perfectly capable of germinating and reproducing. It turns out this humble little plant is basically rocking indestructible space armor.

My Take: Scientists expected near-zero survival, and this prehistoric dirt-carpet just laughed in their faces. We spend billions trying to engineer high-tech ways to keep a human alive in space for a few weeks, and this piece of greenery is just doing it naturally. It’s hard not to be skeptical about our own complicated solutions when an organism that grows on your driveway is running a masterclass in interplanetary survival.

Why It Matters: This matters because Mars is officially back on the menu. The team modeled that these spores could potentially survive for up to 15 years under space conditions. Forget shipping complicated hydroponics systems. If we can get a super-hardy plant like this to grow on extraterrestrial soil, we suddenly have a legitimate starting point for building real, self-sustaining ecosystems on the Moon or Mars. This isn't just botany; it's a simple, powerful blueprint for the future of space colonization.

On this day, 103 years ago, in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, the archaeologist Howard Carter and his patron, Lord Carnarvon, carefully unsealed the second door of a sensational discovery: the virtually intact, four-room tomb of the young pharaoh Tutankhamun. This moment was a revelation that instantly transmitted the unparalleled artistic and technological brilliance of the Eighteenth Dynasty, a golden age of ancient Egyptian civilization, directly to the 20th century world.

A gold pocket watch recovered from the body of Titanic first-class passenger Isidor Straus, the co-owner of Macy’s, just sold for a staggering $2.3 million at auction. The sale immediately set a new world record for Titanic memorabilia. The 18-karat Jules Jurgensen timepiece was recovered two weeks after the sinking and had literally stopped ticking at 2:20 a.m., the moment the ship disappeared beneath the waves. The watch remained in the Straus family for over a century before finally going under the hammer.

My Take: Here’s the fun part. This is the watch that belonged to the guy who famously refused a lifeboat because there were still "women and children" waiting, prompting his wife, Ida, to refuse to leave him. We don't just buy artifacts; we buy narrative. And apparently, people will pay millions for a physical object connected to the ultimate act of devotion on a sinking ship.

This gets deeper: Wendy Rush, the great-great-granddaughter of Isidor and Ida Straus, was married to Stockton Rush, the co-founder and CEO of OceanGate. Stockton died in 2023, when his experimental research vehicle the OceanGate Titan imploded during an attempt to visit the Titanic wreckage site.

🎙️Brutal Truth of Success

Ron Shaich is an entrepreneur and investor. He was the founder and former CEO of Panera Bread and Au Bon Pain, generating 25% annualized returns and helping define the fast casual restaurant segment. Now he's the chairman of CAVA (NYSE: CAVA). He is the author of Know What Matters.

In this episode of The Knowledge Project he explains

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Waymo received authorization to operate fully driverless vehicles across California, covering most of the Bay Area, Sacramento, and nearly all of SoCal.

OpenAI has recently introduced a new feature that allows users to create group chats with ChatGPT. This exciting development enables friends, colleagues, and various groups of people to come together in a shared digital space where they can engage

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