Feeling blue in the post-digital world The Criterion Channel, a streaming service of art movies, is doing a retrospective of Isabelle Huppert. So last night I watched again “Amateur” (1994), which is the movie that made me fall in love with the charming French actress who since yesterday has become, hélas, a 70 year-old. Happy…
Year: 2023
For the love of books
The curse of being a bibliophile I grew up surrounded by the books of my father’s library. It wasn’t as big as Umberto Eco’s library, but it was enough for me. I never managed to have a very large one myself. Not for lack of books or interest, mind you. I simply moved too much…
The real problem of AI writing
It will exponentially increase spam I’ve recently wrote about AI, but perhaps a few more observations are in order. Recently a popular science fiction magazine had to stop accepting submissions due to the huge number of stories written via ChatGPT and similar AI services. I can only imagine what school teachers have to deal with…
Staggering recent numbers about immigration
23% of people in Germany and 21% in Sweden are of “migrant background” According to a recent publication by Germany’s Federal Statistics Office (Statistisches Bundesamt) picked up by the Associated Press, 23% of the people in Germany are immigrants or children of immigrants. 17.3% or 14.1 million are themselves immigrants who have been coming since…
Why I'm not worried about AI
Artificial Intelligence is just an “intelligence simulator” ChatGPT from Microsoft and now a similar chat bot from Google are all over the news. We also saw recent hype about “AI Art” and “AI writing”. Some people worry that soon robots and computers will take over most jobs, even creative ones. They panic that machines will…
Cocktail party old geezers
And loneliness in the “connected” modern world Years ago, when I lived in a remote town in the south of South America, there used to be an old man who, for years, maybe decades, appeared in all vernissages, openings, receptions, cocktail parties — and basically any artistic or social event in town that offered free…
Who is Klaus Schwab? (Part II)
Continuing the genealogical investigation As promised, we continue now investigating the family origins of Mr. Klaus Schwab, the famous founder of the World Economic Forum. The genealogy site Geni confirms that Emma Gisella Schwab (née Kilian), the first wife of Eugen Schwab, is the actual mother of Klaus Schwab, solving our doubts about that issue….
"Be fruitful and multiply" – or else?
Why are birth rates plummeting all over the world? Something very unusual is happening that is not being discussed very much. Global birth rates are plummeting. I even did a documentary about it, focusing on Germany and Italy, with interviews from a few years ago, pre-Covid. The problem became much worse since then, of course….
Brief reflections on Saint Agnes' day
By coincidence — but some say there are no coincidences — I’ve just found out that today is the feast of Saint Agnes. I wasn’t familiar with her story, but when I was in France, last December, I saw a medieval painting in a museum in Montpellier that called my attention. It was an anonymous…
How to get rid of a dead body?
And how to marry a witch — two classic American films by European directors I have trouble being consistent with my themes, but, in general, this blog is about the things I like — film, literature, travel and conspiracy theories. So this is a post about film, for a change. I have been trying to…