©Albert Jan Rasker
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It’s actually a real shame that I dropped my science courses so fast in high school, because secretly, I’m a huge numbers freak. While I had planned to write this newsletter quickly so that I could still get something out of my Saturday morning, I ended up spending at least 15 minutes reading a 100-page report on the CO₂ emissions caused by watching Netflix.

The reason for my research was our columnist Auke Hoekstra’s sharp criticism of the Netflix blockbuster ‘Don’t Look Up‘, which had already been viewed for a total of 150 million hours by early January. Personally, I could laugh at the film starring (among others) Leonardo di Caprio, Meryl Streep and Cate Blanchett, but Auke was not amused.

Starting on Tuesday, we will be doing a deep dive (if I’m honest, a bit because of my fetish for numbers) into the stories behind the figures for the Corona Recovery Fund. We want to know exactly what innovative and CO₂-reducing goals the more than €800 billion from this fund is being spent on. To reassure you, I may be asking the questions, but more mathematically-minded types on the editorial staff are checking the calculations.

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