NSFW

Beth Gibbons

I remember that one of my new year's plans in 2025 was to hear more tiny desk concerts (see Weekly 52/2024).

I was so right with this.

When I had Portishead as NSFW a feew weeks ago (Weekly 47/2025), one of my readers kindly directed me to this gem, given by Portishead singer Beth Gibbons and her band.

Beautiful.

Retrospect

39C3

Again, I didn't make it to the Chaos Communication Congress that starts on December 27th every year. This year, the 39th edition took place in Hamburg and I was, again, really sorry for not being there. I compensated this by watching many of the streams and was, again, rather impressed not only by the way the organisors try to keep the somehow 1980ies hacker spirits but also by the quality of many of the presentations, some of them having a clearly legal focus relevant for Austria as well.

For example, Thomas Lohninger from epicenter.works joined Ralf Bendrath to criticise the Digiotal omnibus regulation package

There's also an interesting presentation on open access to court decisions (in Germany).

and one on AI in Wikipedia

LLP

It was an honor to do the technical support also for this year's last - the 20th - episode of "Recht neugierig" - the podcast of the Vienna legal Literacy Project - this time with Dr. Katharina Beclin on juvenile justice.

Prospect

#arsboni

Digital sovereignty is one of the buzzwords nowadays. Dr. Simon Gerdemann has set a counterterm - "Digital non-sovereignty" (Digitale Unsouveränität) and argues convincingly in a recent article how dependent European AI-regulation is due to the delegation of certification procedures to private certification bodies dominated by US companies and how absurd the situation has become with the Digital Omnibus package.

I am very pleased that he accepted to speak with me about this topic on Wednesday, January 7th, at 16.00 CET.

Two hours later I will have another conversation on legal methodology, legal tech and legal education, this time with two lawyers from Austria's financial markets authorit, FMA - Dr. Ralph Rirsch and Dr. Stefan Tomanek.

Look and Feel

I revisited KHM and MUMOK and Albertina Modern (for free, thanks to my Bundesmuseencard). The Michaelina Waultier exhibition in KHM is truly worth a visit (potentially a trip). Waultier put, as I learned, a self-portrait into the Triumph of Bacchus, here,

a gesture that rightly triggered feminist attention on Reddit already some years ago.

Bacchus' facial expression is discussed in the editorial of the recent edition of DATUM that has a a long read (paywall) on Austria's relation to alcohol.

I revisited the Bruegel room too, watching people watching (and photographing) the paintings.

In MUMOK, I spent some time with the running exhibition on Tobias Pils. ORF has a Kulturjournal on this, more info is also on YouTube

and, for example, on ORF.at, Der Standard and Falter (Paywall).

The funniest detail in the Marina Abramović exhibition in Albertina Modern was that staff there is really obsessed to enforce a strict ban of photographs. Not only is it not allowed to hold your mobile in your hands, I was even admonished for taking my glasses case out of my pocket. I wasn't too impressed by the exhibition that shows, in my view, different variants of self harm and esotericism (here is a text on this), though. Der Standard, Falter (Paywall), profil, monopol cover the exhibition.

Malta

I am currently on Malta for a few days of vacation. I will possibly write more on this next week. For the moment, let me say that St. Johns Co-Cathedral with a floor consisting of hundreds of tombstones and with two haunting, yet beautiful, Caravaggio-paintings, is remarkable. Death is omnipresent here,

and fits well with one of the texts I read here, a crashing analysis on what it means to die young from Leukemia.

But life is very present too.

Societies of Loneliness

I am reading a lot here. The Atlantic and Le Monde Diplomatique have very interesting long reads on how the internet and the smartphone have made everyone lonelier and how this could further increase with AI.

Daisy

has become a loyal customer in Buchhandlung Riedl. She is, in particular, interested in behavioral science and the cookbooks.

Have a wonderful week!

Kind regards

Nikolaus (Forgó)