Beach at Castel di Tusa, Sicily.

The whole trip’s best restaurant, Prandia, was just a few feet away. The second best, Trattoria Ai Cascinari, was in Palermo.

I spent some more days on Sicily. The leading impressions were lots of ancient culture, beautiful churches, the sea with long walks on lonely beaches, excellent food, some snow and relatively green landscapes, many deserted villages, lots of poverty, illegal littering, not existing traffic rules with drivers never showing any friendly gesture, Christmas decorations in full light until January 6th, potholes everywhere, loud Christmas music on public places almost around the clock, food markets with tons of citrus fruits, octopus, artichokes and fish, wonderful coffee for € 1.50 (or less) to be drunk either outside in the winter sun or inside in the typical blueish cold light (5000K?) of one of those hardly furnished tabaccherie. And so on. It was great.

Here are some pictures:

And some more

Despite all these impressions, the last days were, however, heavily influenced (disturbed) by rather useless attempts to follow and understand Austrian politics, I now miss the hours wasted with streamed press conferences and social media doomscrolling.

And at the end, there was no escape, finally I needed to follow the ‘invitation’ to return.

Eveything is (somehow) back to (Austrian) normal since Tuesday.

NSFW (Nikolaus’ Song For the Week)

This week’s song accompanied me during the flight back to Vienna.

It’s a side gig from Christoph Annen from AnnenMayKantereit and Francesco Wilking. It’s brandnew, the LP with this will be released in February 2025. Critics say that it sounds a bit like Element of Crime - also a permanent candidate for a NSFW.

Here’s a Zero-Budget YouTube-video with the song:

and there’s more from them on YouTube, Instagram and Linktree.

If you need some proof that it’s almost always a good idea to follow your passion: This is AnnenMayKantereit as street artists, just a few (12, actually) years ago …

and today they play in front of 40.000 people.

Retrospect

AI Act Commentary

Here’s a proof that THE BOOK is really existing - in reality and not just in my phantasy. I received the first ‘real’ copy this week. More than 1500 pages on the AI Act. About 10 of the approximately 90 authors are from the department, so that this was also a group effort.

For me, the best part of this was the just wonderful collaboration with my co-editors Peggy Vahlcke and Ceyhun Pehlivan.

© Adriana Winkelmeier (The matching color on the shoes is pure coincidence :-) ).

We will discuss and promote the book at several occasions - you may expect (or fear :-) ) some activity here in late winter and in spring!

Legal Literacy

If you ever wondered how legal knowledge can be transfered into society, the Legal Literacy Project might be of interest. I had a very nice conversation with two of its representatives. We spoke, in particular, on misconceptions of what legal expertise is and how legal work looks like.

Hate speech, counter speech and how we could make social media a better place

is the title of a wonderful #arsboni episode with Prof. Dr. Jana Lasser.

With more than 2 hours, this is (I believe) the longest #arsboni session ever, but it’s, in my view, worth every single minute. Lasser is an oustandingly impressive and innovative researcher in the domain of computational social sciences and, inter alia, ERC-grant winner. The topic she presents is on how hate speech, misinformation, disinformation and other unwanted content can be better dealt with by algorithms on (very large) online platforms and in how far the Digital Services Act can have a (positive) impact here.

Her ERC-project in her own words:

The issue is more relevant than ever these days due to statements such as this one from Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg

Lasser is just great in explaining what her research is about and what it is relevant for. Some of the lessons I learned: She is optmisitic that her research domain will profit from art. 40 DSA (Data access and scrutiny) and sees art. 35 AIA putting the obligation on VLOPs to mitigate systemic risks by (inter alia) ‘testing and adapting their algorithmic systems, including their recommender systems’ as an important positive instrument to foster algorithmic moderation.

Prospect

TKG-Commentary

The article by article commentary on the Austrian Law of telecommunications, edited by Dr. Klaus Steinmaurer, I had the privilege to be a co-author of, will be released on January 23. It can now be preordered in the publisher’s webshop already.

Data-Seizure

The law on the seizure of data and storage devices (“Handysicherstellung”) was published right after Christmas (BGBl. I Nr. 157/2024). Shirin Ghazanfari and me will discuss the outcome of this really long lasting and heavily contested story (once again).

AI Governance and Liability in Europe: A Primer

The second, equally important, joint book project of Ceyhun, Peggy and me is on its way. We expect the volume ‘AI Governance and Liability in Europe: A Primer’ to be published within days. This has an equally impressive list of authors (many of them very old friends and distinguished colleagues) and deals, inter alia, with the draft AI liability directive on an article by article basis.

Look and Feel

HaPe Kerkeling

I went for a run in Céfalu almost every morning.

© Birgit Forgó-Feldner. This is me leaving the appartment - yes, I know, I need more training.

I then had enough time, to hear a full episode of an nice Podcast-Format offered by Die Zeit: Alles gesagt? The idea is that a guest is interviewed with a truly open end. The episode only closes (immediatly) when the guest uses a codeword they agreed on at the beginning - sessions can therefore last several hours (7, or even 9 in some cases; the very nice episode with Armin Wolf lasts 7 hours, for example).

The last, 2 1/2 hours long episode I listened to is with Hape Kerkeling to celebrate his 60th birthday and to promote his last book ‘Gebt mir etwas Zeit’.

I was very impressed by Kerkeling’s professionalism. Although he is constantly speaking about very serious and very personal matters (his mother’s suicide, the HIV-infection of his partner, AIDS, his sexual orientation, his religiosity etc.) and is interviewed by not one but two well prepared hosts and is (needed to) put himself into the center of everything, he keeps the conversation very amusing and always under his full control. I don’t think that anything in this very long interview is sponatenous, but it sounds like a nice chat with a deer friend about their personal biography and its secrets. For, potentially, millions of people: “Ich bin dann mal weg”, a book in which one can also study this unique mix of intimacy and professionalism, is the best ever sold non-fiction book in Germany - with more than 5.000.000 copies.

I wanted to learn more about his writing style which is why I am currently reading “Der Junge muss an die frische Luft” - and again I appreciate this combination of “a random guy talking about his biography” and professional (and very amusing) storytelling.

Daisy

is always ready to fight for her right to have a ball.

© Birgit Forgó-Feldner

Have a wonderful week!

Kind regards

Nikolaus (Forgó)