Making NonSense of it

As the title says, one 2024 Emmy awards ceremony, 2 shows I watched, one drama series winning the Comedy award to avoid clashing with the pre-ordained winner of the drama category. And no, it was not the Simpsons'

Inaugurating 2024 series with an additional range of running commentaries, starting with a look back at 2023 take-aways on climate change, media, AI and content creation.

We seem to be living the "Apocalypse, S1Ep5, the End is nigh-er", the 5th seal opening, a time of despondency. We should not accept it.

Banning plastic straws turned out to be at best a short-sighted solution. We replaced plastics with "forever chemicals". PR plans yet again hijacked solutions. To both retain normal human activity as a base and the long view as a solution, we need transparent global political processes. Not apparatchiks, vested interests, posers and zealots surfing viral memes.

The movie Barbie shows to all the IPs out there how it is done: respect for the material and the fans, a story and a message tightly woven, and a healthy dose of self-awareness. All in service of entertainment, not self-delusion.

Shivering and drenched, we valiantly endure the "warmest summer on record". Whenever we read about this, history, movies or politics, our experience feels more and more like cognitive dissonance.

Disclaimer: this podcast was neither suggested, recorded, edited nor voiced by any AI. Actually it desperately tried to prevent me from recording it, either because it is that uninteresting, or because it is disturbing its world domination masterplan (/cue evil cackle). Freewill in action.

The latest Big Franchise releases are not creating new memories, or even refreshing old ones, they are just wrecking cherished ones. Reading through the professional analysts, it could have to do with an obsession with big data demographic profiles instead of audience entertainment.

Colonel Kurtz, played by Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now, is introduced, shown and depicted, even by the authors, as a man driven to madness by his experiences. He is probably the most rational character in the movie, a compelling case for the impact of logical choices, not crazy ones. Like a snail sliding and surviving sliding the razor blade of life.

As for Harry Windsor, we sometimes rue, regret or try to fight back against the lack of control we have over our own life's narrative. However counter-intuitive this may be, we have to accept it.

We build our life up into something. Until we reach a point where it seems either meaningless, or overflows with needs. Life always seems to clank one way then the other, until the only way-out seems to withdraw. Too much and not enough.

The Tech industry today needs bold roadmaps, not flash in the pan self-serving hypes. Not just incremental improvements and caretaker visions. Some solutions pitched will be illusionary, wrong, fail. But some will succeed. How to recapture the momentum?

Standing stones, menhirs, universally signal  living human  history, their timelessness their biggest significance beyond actual origin or function.

The Past used to be carefully curated, enshrined, slightly dusty gallery of exhibits. While we tend to mesh timelines, it is more and more an open-air mine of ideas, choices, opportunities. Wrongly done, it could become a sterile endless loop of recycled ideas, done right, we can create new elements by recombining the essence of the best of it. The Past could be the new future.    

What will the people think? What will they remember of me? I am irrelevant, yet what I am to others is relevant.

How about having some fun?

There are many universal threats out there, but where is the universal vision? No wonder the facts and statistics show we stop voting and actively avoid the news.

Responsibility should come with a deep-seated sense of personal accountability

How I spend my summer time

Are we living in a modern version of the early 1900s?

The theoretical approach behind my previous podcast “The Price We Pay”.

“You will pay for your choices!” We tend to look at our decisions and the price we pay for it in the rear-view mirror. What-ifs and regrets so often become part of our lives. What is the alternative?

I never really got Magritte’s most famous painting. Then, a picture of my cat went stratospheric on Reddit. It brought to me a realisation: I have been blind all along to the significance of Magritte’s work for today’s world. The cat is today's pipe!

Live streaming from Kiev and frontline combat videos uploaded in real time. It is not mainstream media delivering our information today

War brings out the most basic of human reflexes. Ever wondered whether you would fight, or flee to a safer place? In this podcast, I explore if and how our moral compass has changed over time, and hence, are we still willing to “Die for Danzig”?