World
i believe the children are our future
Is the world getting dumber, or just distracted?
The OECD's biggest report card came back, and nobody's proud of it. Pretty much every rich country on Earth just posted its worst results in the history of the test. That's according to PISA 2025, the OECD's flagship exam — the main thermometer used to measure the quality of education worldwide, given to 15-year-olds in reading, math and science every three years across nearly every country on the planet.
Across the 23 countries that have taken the test since 2000, average reading scores dropped 29 points, math dropped 32 points, and science dropped 17 points over two decades. Every 20 points roughly equals a year of lost learning — which means an entire generation of rich-world teenagers is, on paper, learning meaningfully less than their parents did at the same age.
At the top of the ranking, China leads comfortably, followed by Singapore, Macau, Taiwan and Japan. England is the only major Western education system that landed in the top 10 across all three subjects. I did not see that coming.
Why this matters: PISA isn't just an academic vanity metric — it's one of the closest things economists have to a leading indicator for a country's future workforce, innovation capacity and competitiveness. A generation reading and calculating worse than the one before it is a problem that shows up decades later, quietly, in GDP.
Personal Opinion: There's something almost comforting about a crisis this universal — it means the usual suspects (a bad minister, a broken curriculum, a pandemic hangover) aren't the whole story. Something bigger is eating everyone's attention span at once, and I don't think it takes a genius to guess what's living in every teenager's pocket.
What else is on
Canada: EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed a brand-new “associate member” status for Canada — the first of its kind — giving it deeper access to EU trade, defense, and critical minerals policy without full membership or a seat in Parliament. It’s Canada’s clearest hedge yet against its souring relationship with the US. (Read)
Japan: The country just crossed 100,000 centenarians for the first time ever, the most of any nation in the world (88% of them women). (Read)
China: Beijing tightened exit controls on its tech talent, giving authorities new power to block citizens tied to “strategic” sectors like AI from leaving the country. (Read)
Brazil: Flávio Bolsonaro (PL) edged out President Lula in the first round of the presidential election on October 4th, 47% to 45% — about 3 million votes apart. The runoff is set for October 25th, and if Lula pulls it off, it’ll be the first comeback win since Brazil’s return to democracy. (Read)
Economy & Business
the world is ending but my skin is flawless
The most talked-about merger of the year became real
After more than a year of a rocky courtship complete with lawsuits, rival suitors, and financing drama, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery officially tied the knot today, closing their roughly $110 billion merger and creating a new media mega-giant named Skydance.
The combination puts a head-spinning who's who of Hollywood under one roof, bringing together streaming services and TV networks like HBO, CBS, CNN, Paramount+, and HBO Max.
But married life is no picnic: Skydance now has to prove that the empire it just built is financially sustainable, starting with a balance sheet carrying roughly $80 billion of debt.
To ease some of that pressure, Skydance is targeting $6 billion in annual cost savings, bringing in former Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz as co-CEO to focus on combining overlapping operations and streaming businesses, and aiming to bring leverage below four times annual EBITDA by 2028.
Skip the honeymoon fund
That calls into question the investment case for the newly combined company, and Wall Street is far from convinced. For now, only 3 of the 25 analysts tracked by Bloomberg rate the stock Buy or equivalent, while 10 recommend selling it.
What else is on:
Hair loss: After the Ozempic boom, Wall Street’s eyeing its next pharma gold rush — baldness treatments. Shares of companies developing them have jumped as much as 500% this year, with Absci Corp. more than doubling in value, as investors bet on a category that hasn’t seen a new approved drug since the late ’90s. (Read)
Thrifting, but make it luxury: H&M, Banana Republic, and Reformation (which now resells Prada) are all leaning into secondhand clothing. The resale market is projected to hit $78 billion and grow 9% a year through 2030 — twice as fast as new clothing — as France and California roll out rules pushing brands to deal with textile waste. (Read)
Technology & Science
who wants a cookie?
A PET Project
Houston, we have a cookie. A NASA-funded food research group just found a new item for the menu: cookies that come out of a printer, made from recycled plastic.
The idea is a little nuts, but promising. Here's the recipe:
First, PET — the plastic used in water and soda bottles — comes into contact with genetically engineered yeast that transforms the material into edible proteins, fats, and flavor compounds.
Then it goes through fermentation, and the resulting dough gets run through a 3D printer, turning into small cookies called µBites (microbites).
🍪 Despite tests indicating the product is safe, the team is still waiting on approval to actually taste the cookies. So far, only the aroma has been evaluated — and it passed with high marks.
Production currently runs around $60 per kg, but costs are expected to drop as the technology matures. For the creators, µBites could be a useful answer to both plastic waste and food insecurity — an estimated 30% of the world's population is projected to be at risk of hunger by 2050.
Everyone here knows I love a cookie. But the interesting thing is that the unconventional snack wouldn't be the first NASA-born technology to end up in everyday life. Past inventions to come out of the agency's research include the portable vacuum cleaner, wireless earbuds, the computer mouse, and even laptops.
What else is on:
Self Exercising Muscle: Chinese researchers grew a self-contracting muscle implant that works 24/7 without any movement from the host — tested under mice's skin as a potential alternative to exercise for bedridden patients, frail elderly people, and those with Alzheimer's. The tissue pumps more beneficial compounds into the bloodstream than an hour of real exercise, since it never stops contracting. Human trials are still needed, but ICU patients are reportedly first in line. (Read)
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Movies
we love a contentious environment
The Invite by Olivia Wilde: The Invite is a remake of Cesc Gay's 2020 Spanish film The People Upstairs — itself adapted multiple times, which tells you something about how universal the material feels. The setup is deceptively simple: two couples, one dinner, one night.
The film only has four principal characters, but they're perfectly cast and everyone has an amazing chemistry with one another. Each actor feels born for their role — Seth Rogen, Edward Norton, Penélope Cruz, and Wilde herself, who also directs. There's a particular joy in watching four people at the top of their game play off each other in real time, where every exchange crackles and every silence lands.
The near-wordless melancholy of the ending elevates The Invite beyond a clever comedy of manners. You leave having laughed a lot — and feeling rather more than you expected. So: consider this your invite. (Rating 9/10)
Micael
Ok: So how this is going to work?
Hi love,
Before anything else — and I promise this is the last time I’ll bring up the last edition, even though it’s tempting — thank you. That was one of the longest things I’ve ever written for this newsletter, and I genuinely worried whether anyone would read all the way through (I know, I know, stop underestimating your readers man). What I got back wasn’t just kind, it was honest. People told me about their own long-term goals, their own version of feeling like they’re failing at something they care about. That exchange is a big part of why this whole thing is worth doing.
So, onto the next part.
If phase one of Tanamesa was: test the product, get feedback, build the habit, figure out my voice and what kind of newsletter this actually wants to be — that phase wrapped up last week. I’ll obviously keep improving things as I go. But between where I am now and the version of this where I’m actually out there growing the thing on purpose, there’s a gap. And that gap is phase two.
Phase two is basically one question: how far can this grow organically, just by giving the people who already read and like it the right tools to pass it along? The website. The WhatsApp share buttons. The referral program. I want to know if doubling the reader count is actually possible just by making sharing easier — and I won’t know until I test it.
Which brings me to the part I’ve been avoiding writing.
I’m asking. Openly, for the first time: if you know someone who’d like this — the news, the recommendations, the occasional overshare like last week’s — send it to them. That’s it. That’s the ask. And if you do, I’d love to hear how it goes: was it an easy sell, did someone bounce off it, did you hit a wall explaining what this even is. That feedback is as useful to me as the share itself.
This is the unglamorous part. Building the plumbing and structures before turning on the growth engine. But it has to happen now, so that when I do start pushing this harder (hopefully not in three years), the tools — and the people — are already in place.
One more thing: I’ve also been working on a few partnerships with other newsletters and products, which you’ll start seeing from time to time — the kind of recommendation that shows up when someone subscribes, because they’re recommending me right back, or even the occasional product placement here and there, just to see how I feel about them and whether they’re a good fit. That’s it. Consider this the official beginning of phase II.
With love,
Micael.
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