NSFW (Nikolaus' Song For the Week)

This week's song is one of my personal all time classics, possibly one of the songs I would like to be played at my funeral.

The equally iconic video is from the famous rooftop concert from January 1969 (see also Weekly 19/2025 for further references to this).

However, the reason why I am sharing this today is not the song's beauty and seriousness and age, but this really very funny (and new) Instagram Reel about it:

I really appreciate what this man is doing, also (and in particular) on Instagram.

By the way: the Enzo Ferrari museum in Modena can be very nice also for people like me being completely ignorant about cars; I found it quite funny there (and also somehow bizarre, though).

Retrospect

#arsboni

I managed to upload a very interesting discussion on the (non-)documentation of diagnoses in outpatient cases

and a very relevant debate on surveillance

The Vienna Legal Literacy Project did an episode on tenancy law with Isabella Sansenböker:

And I did a very timely interview on AI usage in the evaluation of research proposals.

Science Communication

I spent half a day at the internal kick of of a newly established Research Platform on Trustworthy Science Communication at UNIVIE. Together with Sophie Lecheler, Sarah Davies, Torsten Moeller, Laura M. König, Jacob-Moritz Eberl, Barbara Schober and others I have the privilege to work - together with 5 research associates who will be hired soon - on science communication from an interdisciplinary perspective. My personal focus will primarily lie on communication platforms and their trustworthiness from a regulatory perspective.

We don't have a website yet, but Sophie wrote a (short) LinkedIn post on us.

Prospect

#arsboni

I will - finally - make available the video on age verification on the internet the moment you might be reading this (Friday, 6.00 am) so that you can be among the first to see it.

Alpine Privacy Days

I will be in Switzerland at the beginning of the week.

The programme looks very promising and the venue is interesting too (yet rather hard to reach, 9 hours train ride on Sunday ahead of me).

Hannover

In the second half of the week I will see old friends in Hannover again. One of the things that I will do there is an "ars boni on tour" session on the premises (Hannover Docks) of lexICT - a company I had the privilege to cofound many years ago with the nicest people to work with in the most beautiful working environment.

My conversation partner will be Barbara Thiel, the former data protection officer of Lower Saxony, working now as an of counsel at lexICT.

She is in Vienna quite regularily as well, here's a video of a privacy ring event with her in UNIVIE's aula from 2022:

DEMGES

I will join (remotely) an open debate organised in the context of DEMGES (Demokratie in digitalen Gesellschaften) at the Austrian Academy of Sciences on Thursday evening.

Free entry, registration required, online stream available.

Look and Feel

Radio

I want to recommend two radio shows accompanying recent book publications:

Armin Wolf has a very interesting interview of Carolin Amlinger and Oliver Nachtwey on their recent book (that I am currently reading and very warmly recommending):

Wolf has the full transcript on his blog (and writes a little more about the talk).

Several friends around me whose judgement I trust have been recommending or at least discussing Dimtré Dinev's opus magnum.

I haven't started to read this yet (and am not yet decided whether I will, despite the warm recommendation from Buchhandlung Riedl, as it's very long and a I also heard rather negative feedback), but I enjoyed a lot - following a recommendation of a dear friend who had read the book despite all odds - the conversation and Dinev-portrait on OE1:

Dinev has the same birth year I have (1968) and many of his childhood and youth stories from communist Bulgaria (and the songs he chose) trigger memories I have about visiting my grandparents in Hungary in the same time period.

Parfumo

As winter has been very long this year, I treated myself with a new Eau de Cologne that smells a lot like spring to me. Before buying it I spent, again, too many hours on Parfumo and was, once again, quite impressed by the artistic ambition leading to the lengthy descriptions coming with almost every perfume. Sometimes, the texts are helpful, sometimes they are just funny. Over all, the perfume-subculture is very similar to the high end microphone or the mechanic keyboard subculture (in particular in their arrogance against non-experts).

I also learned that if one doesn't buy the perfume online at one of the recommended brands, but goes into one of the very same provider's physical shops in central Vienna, the price requested there ist 20 % higher than the online price. If one wants to pay the online price there as well, one needs to specifically ask for it at the cashier - and is then gratified with the typical Viennes mixture of arrogance, ignorance and grumpiness. This won't help much to guarantee survival of traditional shopping against online competition, I fear.

Have a wonderful week and take care of yourself!

Kind regards

Nikolaus (Forgó)