deus62.com

| 2026 | one thought at a time |

“Tomorrow is now.”
(Eleanor Roosevelt)

01 | January

23 | Time to attack the last huge pile of papers that I haven't filed away (or thrown out) for four or five years. I hope to be finished with all the paperwork tonight.When done, I will have managed to condense my entire private and work life from more than 100 thick and completely filled folders down to a mere 17 slim ones that will probably be enough until I drop dead. I left enough space in each one for the next decade or so.

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22 | Listening to Supertramp's "Breakfast in America", which I did again today, always reminds me of a school ski trip to Austria we took many decades ago.One evening we were in some pub with a house band that performed excellent renditions of "The Logical Song" and "Take the Long Way Home", just after the album had been released. I immediately bought the album when we returned.Next to "Crime of the Century", which had already been in constant rotation at my place, those two albums became favourites and, with a pause of about 15 years because I had simply listened to the albums too often, they returned to the top of my various playlists again and have remained there until today.Whatever I listen to today still follows that old adage: "First contact informs taste".

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21 | I really, really like Ethan Hawke and have watched just about everything he's been in. A lot of it, in total, is only mediocre, but Ethan Hawke is always a great actor to watch.Case in point, I just watched "Adopt a Highway" (2019), a film that tries to do too many things at the same time and leaves the audience with a sketchy story that would have needed quite a bit more focus. It never really comes together and. altogether, is a mediocre movie.BUT, Ethan Hawke makes it all worth your while and a review available on rogerebert.com is spot on:"[...] Holding it all together is Hawke’s performance, weighted down with the heaviness of injustice, a shyness about authority figures in general, a passivity which makes people look twice at him and then back away. His hair is stringy, his salt-and-pepper beard thick, and pain and confusion practically shimmer around him like a migraine aura. There’s a really fun sequence in an internet cafe, where a helpful employee shows Russell what email is, and then asks to take a picture with him, this rare creature who has never been on the internet before. These sequences are sensitive and observant.[...] Hawke (who also co-produced) moves and speaks like he’s underwater; for this damaged brutalized man it’s a struggle even to make eye contact. Ethan Hawke works deep. You can see how deep he goes. His interactions with an employee from CPS [...], or with his parole officer or anyone “in charge” is—in its own understated way—an indictment of long incarceration for non-violent offenders. 'Adopt a Highway' isn’t about that (at least not in terms of it being a 'message' film), but the look of buried terror and resentment in Hawke’s eyes tells the deeper story. [...]"

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20 | Most of us think that we are the ones with problems in our lives but, in comparison, most of the problems we have are usually minor nuisances at best.Of course, it's always easy to find people who've got it worse, but still, the following article, "My Third Winter of War: A dispatch from Kyiv in a season of drones,"written by Kateryna Kibarova and published by "Persuasion", helped me to quickly put things into perspective again.---P.S. I'm always reminded of the following clip when people say " ... others got it worse than that ...!"

19 | My health hasn't been that great lately, forcing me to fight on three fronts. What I find out again and again is that I'm simply too impatient and want things to go away as quickly as possible. In a health system that has been steadily declining these past years (although it's still comparatively good, especially if you happen to be privately insured), with appointments often taking several weeks and follow-up ones equally long, it quickly becomes a serious drag to keep it all up.

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18 | Germany has always been proud of its beer. Ages ago, it fought the EU and other foreign influences which tried to allow for extra ingredients in beer ... and won.The German "Reinheitsgebot" ("purity law") prevents brewers from using cheaper fillers, additives, or potentially toxic ingredients like herbs and soot. This "purity law" for beer became national law in Germany and is now protected under EU law as well.Today though, German beer is experiencing perhaps the biggest setback in ages. It has been suffering from a serious image problem in recent years and consumption has decreased by nearly five million hectoliters, the most significant reduction in 75 years.We have breweries all over the place, often small family-owned businesses that serve the local population and, if lucky, a national one as well. Recently, many of these breweries have run into massive financial problems and some well-known ones have been gobbled up by larger conglomerates, also international investment firms.Beer is seen as old-fashioned and, just like with the many wines I have been enjoying these past two decades or so, in successful cases the younger generation has taken over to make their product more "hip" (and, in the course of things, often also better). The (many small) breweries that are still successful, albeit only regionally, are the breweries that offer alcohol-free beers, "craft beers" or have simply created a modern lifestyle image.Still, the decline seems to be ongoing on a national scale. I wonder if, in 10 years or so, we'll still be able to experience the - often exceptional - regional varieties many of us have gotten accustomed to.I seriously doubt it.

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17 | My entire life I have tried to avoid any proprietary solutions that might reach end of life status before the actual products fail. And, time and again, I have been proven correct when companies pulled the plug on perfectly functional devices and services just because they decided that supporting them had simply become too expensive, meaning they simply couldn't profit anymore.The latest example are Bose's SoundTech products:"From smart to dumb: Bose no longer supports the SoundTouch product family.. Bose will soon no longer offer important features of its SoundTouch speakers and soundbars. Cloud-based functions and the app will be discontinued."Just don't buy into this kind of crap. Consumers will lose out every single time. Combined with the globally popular system of "enshittification", you really need to be careful in regard to what you buy, especially because the many products I have seen 'fail' eventually weren't exactly cheap.

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16 | Here is a fascinating video depicting, in 3D, the evolution of Paris from 3000 BCE to 2025, based on the work of Michel Huard (via kottke.org).

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15 | Erfalasorput ("our flag"):

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14 | It's not my area of interest, but it's always good to hear that Condé Nast is losing out and independent journalism is getting a chance:"Gourmet Magazine to Be Reconstituted – but Not at Condé Nast – After Former Publisher Lets Trademark Expire""A handful of young journalists who discovered that its trademark quietly lapsed in 2021 have scooped it up for a digital-only, newsletter-format reboot, set for Tuesday. The new venture is independently owned, subscription-funded and deliberately lean, with no advertising and no backing from a major media company."

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13 | Probably, again, forgettable: "A Light in the Black: Edsel Kicks Off New Rainbow Reissue Campaign"."The Temple of the King 1975-1976, available March 6, takes listeners back to the earliest days of the hard-rockin’ group in studio and on stage, across nine newly-remastered CDs. The set includes the studio albums Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow (1975) and Rising (1976), three complete shows from the group’s first European trek, and a 16-track collection of rarities that’ll include rough mixes, single edits and the premiere release of four in-studio rehearsals for the band’s 1976 tour. It’s all mastered by Andy Pearce and Matt Wortham, and will be housed in a 7″ package alongside 28 pages of original album artwork, rare photos and memorabilia, and new liner notes by writer Rich Davenport."The minute I read Andy Pearce, I pretty much gave up on this new release project which will also see follow-up boxed sets. Matt Wortham did (some) better work (Lizzy), but both represent modern mastering styles I just don't like.I always give every project a chance, but I don't think this reissue series will produce anything better than we already have ... and that's not much at all (besides one single good-sounding Rainbow compilation, "Catch the Rainbow: The Anthology," mastered by Steve Fallone).

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12 | Scientists found a massive underwater wall off the coast of France:"[...] [It's] is not just massive; it’s ancient as well. By reconstructing ancient shorelines, researchers dated the wall to between 5,800 and 5,300 B.C. That’s centuries older than Stonehenge, and millennia older than the pyramids of Giza. [...][T]he scale of the project speaks volumes. Quarrying, transporting, and positioning multi-ton monoliths would have required careful planning, technical skill, social organization — and, no doubt, a few choice prehistoric expletives. These were hunter-gatherers, yes, but clearly not simple ones. [...]The dating places the site firmly in the late Mesolithic, a period when Europe was still dominated by nomadic hunter-gatherers. Yet the construction [...] hints at communities already transitioning toward permanent settlement, even before agriculture took hold. [...]"

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11 | Although, as I have found out these past few months, AI can be quite useful, in the grand scheme of things Cory Doctorow's assessment is probably far more accurate: "AI is the asbestos we’re shovelling into the walls of our high-tech society.”

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10 | [Part III:] Anecdote: The winter of 1978/79 in northern Europe was and is legendary (the Danes called it "Snow Catastrophe" or, even better, "Winter War"). At the time, I lived in Copenhagen, Denmark, and there it was one of the most extreme winters of the 20th century, with the military eventually deployed to clear roads and rescue stranded people in more severely-affected regions (towards the south and the border to Germany).Still today, I am surprised that on New Year's Eve - the storm itself only eased up around January 2nd - my parents, although they had qualms about letting me travel to a friend's place for a party, actually allowed me to leave. Later, my mom told me that my dad had said "Let him do it. He's responsible enough." As was typical at the time, trains were still running somewhat regularly in the late afternoon and I assured them that if all things failed, I would either find a place inside somewhere to stay warm or simply return home. We knew enough people around town so I would never have to walk far to find shelter (with people who all had guests that night anyway).I simply cannot recall every single detail, but the basics of that night remain burned into my memory. We were supposed to go to some New Year's Eve party out towards Dragør, to some lighthouse or nearby, which, in retrospect, was probably the worst place anyone would have wanted to travel to that particular night as it was along the coastline with even stronger winds and nastier drifts.So, I set off around five o'clock in the afternoon. Copenhagen was wonderfully silent, the streets still lit up for Christmas and New Year's, meter-high drifts of snow right and left on most roads, continued snowfall, high winds, temperatures well below freezing. Hollywood today would need a sh*tload of CGI to create this poster-like atmosphere. Right from the start, although it was feezing cold, I decided to walk a couple of miles before trying one of the train stations along the way to speed things up.I enjoyed every second of that walk, met some really nice single individuals on the way and finally ended up at Copenhagen Central Station. Of course, only a fraction of the people I had planned to meet up with actually arrived. Five to seven people, as far as I recall. I was actually surprised that any had made it there. Most had travelled there from further away.It quickly turned out (mind you, via pay phones!) that travelling to where we had been invited was totally out of the question. The people already there were completely snowed in and had cancelled the event for anyone else thinking of making it there. So, next to a "Gløk" (a special and very tasty type of mulled wine served around Christmas) station the authorities had set up for stranded passengers (not many around) at the main station, we debated how to continue the evening. Eventually, arrangements were made to go to someone's house north of Copenhagen, somewhere in the region between Holte and Nivå (for those who know the City and its surroundings) because trains were still heading out that way while other lines had started closing down. Parents were away on a trip and the house would be empty until the second week of January. It was a totally spontaneous decision. Someone volunteered and we all congregated there eventually, letting others know along the way where we were planning on ending up for the night.So, to cut things short, we ended up in an empty house that we both had to dig our way into and, the next morning, out of, we pooled our "resources" (snacks, booze, whatever) and had a great night (only after we had heated the place up via an open fireplace), all 20 of us or so. Great music, great fun, great conversations. Lots of laughs, lots of time spent outside as well.That evening was magical and it taught me two things: After we had moved to Copenhagen, my parents were allowing me increasingly more freedom as well as trust and, most importantly, I was quickly growing into a tightly-knit community of "seniors" at my relatively new school, people I was beginning to spend more and more time with.Because the house had been empty for a couple of days for the Christmas Holidays and nothing had been planned until the second week of January, there was absolutely no food there. The following morning, after an intensive night of partying, someone decided to "auction off" the only food still available, a single orange. I never laughed so hard, even more so when the one person who paid around $20 for said orange tied a napkin around his neck, got a silver spoon and knife from the kitchen cabinets and began to ceremoniously eat the orange - slowly and deliberately - in front of all the other starving people ... from an expensive silver plate taken from a vitrine in the living room. Only after the fact did this person find out that spots of orange juice are almost impossible to get off silver cutlery and plates. Served him right.An absolutely legendary New Year's Eve celebration..

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Notes: I found some images that show, approximately, what things looked like those two days (nothing out of the ordinary for people in North America, I guess).Because I don't have the rights to them, here are some links (in order of relevance): 01 | 02 | 03 | 04And here's a link to "Eumesat" describing the weather at the time: "Severe snowstorms across parts of Europe seen by Meteosat-1".

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09 | [Part II:] As reliable experts predicted, things weren't and aren't anywhere as bad as the click-hungry media had screamed into our faces incessantly.It's symptomatic of the state our country is currently in that panic (and rage) dominate(s) everything. People started hoarding, German trains stopped in advance of something that now only had a comparably minor impact, schools closed, etc.Yes, past experiences have shown that warning people about heavy rains, storms and other (possible) natural disasters is necessary to avoid lives lost, but doing it the way it (again) happened these past three or four days is NOT the way to go about it.The storm isn't over yet, but instead of half a meter of snow (and much more than that media warned us about), we got perhaps a third. The wind piles it up here and there and causes minor disruptions, but that's it. Kids have a day off, people work at home, life will continue unabated when things will be done tonight or tomorrow.What remains is the feeling that those in power know that our infrastructure sucks, that citizens seem to be more atuned to superstition than to scientific fact and that a broad range of media outlets couldn't care less about scaring people to death to generate profit.I cannot shake the feeling that deep-seated hysteria is going to be the main problem (and eventually also culprit) going forward as we face tough times in 2026.And that is NOT a good position to start from.P.S.: Part III (with an anecdote from the winter of 1978/1979 in Copenhagen, Denmark) tomorrow.

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08 | (Part I:) As is typical in our modern age in which everything has to garner as many clicks as humanly possible, the news have been going haywire because there is a winter storm passing through up north tonight and tomorrow.Journalists have been falling all over each other with screaming headlines that have actually lead to citizens emptying supermarkets at an alarming rate (those people were, by the way, the same "concerned citizens" that started hoarding toilet paper during the Covid-19- pandemic and started the "Great German Toilet Paper Crisis" of those two years).The thing is that if you are like me, you actually have a good weather service at hand that publishes reliable data. Yes, things looked bleak for a little while (according to only two out of 15 weather models!), but never as horrible as the media made it out to be (who took exactly those two pessimistic models as a basis for their hysterical reporting).The real problem is another one: Germany simply isn't used to any decent winters anymore and at the sight of more than two snowflakes, things start to fall apart. Winters and winter storms are nothing like those North America experiences regularly, so ...[more tomorrow]

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07 | There was a time in my life when I watched a lot of MTV. Here, in Europe, it was switched off at midnight on the 31st of December 2025.Of course, MTV was absolute crap those many last years, but I have fond memories of programs like "Headbanger's Ball" which, as far as I recall, started around 1987, the wonderful "MTV Unplugged" concert series* and some other regular programs from way back when. And, yes, I also watched "Beavis and Butt-Head" regularly and even a season or two of "The Real World". After the latter, I never returned to MTV. I had more than outgrown it ... besides the fact that soon after it disappeared behind some pay wall.

*Elton John's live performance of "Bennie and The Jets" (MTV Unplugged, 1990) is still my favorite version of this favorite track of mine.

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06 | On December 30th, the Danish postal service delivered it's last letter. Everyone knew it was coming, but it's still sad to see the original red mailboxes disappearing all across the country.

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05 | This must've been quite a lot of work. Over on GitHub, a fan has lovingly assembled 3-D panoramas of interiors of many Star Trek ships: link. [via kottke.org] P.S.: You have to click the little dots to see the interiors from different angles.

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04 | Fearing what Trump is going to do next - and watching the slow decline of Western democracies in general and my home country in particular - I'm currently reminded of the following I used to teach my students for years ... and which is beginning to seem obsolete:"You cannot shape the future with the tools of the past."

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03 | Of course, 2026 had to start on the shittiest note possible, also because Trump's takeover of Venezuela touches my personal history, contacts and, still, after decades, a love for Venezuela and its people.It's not only that "Pax Americana" is returning (let's see how Nicaragua and Cuba will fare in this turmoil), which I expected, but because the world order has been substantially destabilized.China can now grab Taiwan under some pretext, Putin can point fingers at the US when trying to expand Russia's sphere of influence (and interest) ... and Danes will probably have had a heart attack because the US grabbing Greenland is not so far-fetched anymore.We are perhaps experiencing an epoch-making global shift ... while we, at the same time, are all turning inward and trying to survive in times of inflation, necessary reforms, etc.Western democracies are certainly not what they used to be.What a wild ride 2026 might turn out to be (and I hate roller coasters today)!

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02 | The 2025 micro blog is now available in the archive. I still need to write a short text for the archive entry, but it's live ... for all of those who care.Note: Because I have started using sections for each month instead of one full page for each year, setting up 2026 (the one you are reading now) was much easier. I didn't need to delete every single item: deleting full months was enough.

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01 | Happy New Year everyone & All the best for 2026!There were more fireworks this year, but only on New Year's eve and not, like in past years,. lots of unruliness in the day before. A good thing that (for us boomers).

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