founder YouTube channel Hoog & ruis former cofounder of YouTube channel fern
Joined May 2026
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The Dutch standard beer size, the vaasje, is superior to every other beer standard. It’s not even a competition. With a pint, two thirds in it’s flat and lukewarm. A vaasje is small enough to finish while it's still fresh, it isn't gluttonous or brash (a Calvinist win imho), and its form factor is ideal for carrying around outside on a summer day.
Hoog retweeted
A lot of Euros dunking on this, but I have absolutely been in discussions where we decided not to make an otherwise qualified EU team hire because the labor rules so onerous that the risks outweighed the rewards. Making it impossible to fire people absolutely deters hiring.
European hiring rules are genuinely insane.
For example - if you own a company in the Netherlands and one of your employees gets sick, you are required to pay at least 70% of their wages for up to 2 years.
If they can't go back to work after 2 years and you haven't done enough for their reintegration, you pay their wages for 1 more year. And you can't fire them until after that extra year!
Hoog retweeted
AI is coming for econ. Artificial intelligence will force a major push against the endemic (often ideologically or financially motivated) fraud in the social sciences and life sciences
Errors in the research of Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman marginalrevolution.com/margi…
This is a problem, but you also pay NL laborers significantly less. Someone in US might have higher salary, but significantly easier to drop.
European hiring rules are genuinely insane.
For example - if you own a company in the Netherlands and one of your employees gets sick, you are required to pay at least 70% of their wages for up to 2 years.
If they can't go back to work after 2 years and you haven't done enough for their reintegration, you pay their wages for 1 more year. And you can't fire them until after that extra year!
Storonsky is one of the better examples of European alpha. Americans are spoiled by easy liquidity and cheap debt. European immigrants who win run on resentment of grandiosity. If only tall poppy syndrome pushed Europeans to take down incumbents rather than never start anything at all.
Revolut CEO Nik Storonsky says easy money makes soft founders:
“A lot of founders think money is free, which it almost is in California because you can raise so much money at ridiculous valuations and then just spend.”
“There is a different culture of trying to solve problems with money rather than with your brains.”
Hoog retweeted
We’re all in this together. Don’t build AIs smarter than you are if you want to stick around.
Great to talk to Niek and the rest of the Hoog team for this one.
I sent my friend, who knows nothing about AI, to interview the people who think AI will kill us. He didn't know who they were or what to ask.
Featuring @So8res, @JeffLadish, @AISpecies, Kristian Rönn, and Felix Choussat.
Full video below:
I sent my friend, who knows nothing about AI, to interview the people who think AI will kill us. He didn't know who they were or what to ask.
Featuring @So8res, @JeffLadish, @AISpecies, Kristian Rönn, and Felix Choussat.
Full video below:
The eyes, Chico. They never lie
Hoog retweeted
I think we should stop AI progress now, first unilaterally by key AI companies and then scaling up to more US companies and then China via international agreements. The reason for now is not that current AI models are the ones that could kill everyone, but because the coordinate steps take time. Immediate action means we have more time for the second steps.
When I tell this story to AI company folk, the typical response is "Yes pausing is good, but we should wait until the last minute when the very next model will be dangerous, and stop then."
What I realized recently is that this is being implicitly way more optimistic about government speed than I am (and I joined the UK government and was happy there for 2.5 years). They are imagining a world where, the moment the danger is imminent, a bunch of international coordination can happen on a dime.
Which is entirely inconsistent with their actual views about government! I'm the one that is more optimistic about government; why am I the one advocating for more time cushion to let the government story play out?
Hoog retweeted
I’m speaking at the launch of Wij Willen Groei, the Dutch pro-growth movement, next week Thursday. If you’re in Amsterdam, you should join us.
We beginnen op donderdag 29 oktober, precies een jaar na de verkiezingen, vanaf 19.00 uur in Amsterdam. Zorg dat je erbij bent en praat mee met o.a. @jortkelder, @LawrenceNewport en @PieterGaricano. Bouw mee, pionier mee: wijwillengroei.nl
Hoog retweeted
Some big personal news: I'm moving to join Works in Progress as executive editor, starting next month. I have been hoping for an opportunity to work with @bswud and @s8mb for more than a decade, and I'm incredibly excited to finally have one.
WIP is expanding on every front right now. We'll soon begin coverage of business and finance, as well as putting out more reported features. To that end, we'll be hiring more writers and reporters in the year to come. I'm planning to remain based in the US to help build out our presence here.
The print edition of WIP has existed for less than 12 months, but sometime in the next week or so we will reach our 10,000th paying print subscriber. It's a group that now includes people who've been at the highest echelons of government and who run the world's biggest public companies. We’re already on track to 3x that number next year. We'll be in store at Barnes & Noble, Hudson News and independent newsagents next week too.
I think WIP is providing something that people are craving from physical media right now: fewer, extremely well-crafted pieces in a beautifully designed form. Issues now feature an amazing group of columnists, including Tyler Cowen, Dan Wang and Stephen Kotkin. Each edition is better than the last.
You'll see us in more and more places next year too. In January, our new weekly documentary films will launch on YouTube. We're expanding into the events space, with a new series in North America. The sky is the limit from here on out.
Hoog retweeted
There are some tech people who think that most humans are basically trash. But I don't expect this attitude to last far beyond 2026, as godlike AI forces them to realize that the difference between themselves and a 70-IQ poor person is actually pretty minuscule.
Hoog retweeted
actually nyc should annex Long Island, bulldoze it to the ground, and build high rises as far as the eye can see. there must be 50 million new Yorkers. few are brave enough to say this
Hoog retweeted
This Blakeman attitude is exactly why so many young people have turned against "capitalism" (i.e., the status quo economic system)
slowboring.com/p/to-save-cap…
Hoog retweeted
This is one of the reasons CA and NY struggle in housing. It's not just that many Dems have NIMBY tendencies. It's that the Republicans there are actively worse!
Hochul deserves praise for her push on this, even though, as she says, much more is needed.