Newsletter

Week 17/2025

But in the Glory of this Spring

Nikolaus Forgó

18 Apr 2025 — 3 min read

View from Valencia Institute of Modern Art

Valencia is a beautiful city. I spent lots of time in Ruzafa, in particular around the brutalist market, ate too many Tapas, learned about Aigua de València and Orxata de Xufa, met Julio González, was at the beach, read a lot and could still not run - but am recovering. Spring is in full bloom.

NSFW

This week’s song is about an animal I saw a lot in Valencia’s Oceanogràfic : the tortuga.

The (almost 20 years old) song is from the debut album of Hazmat Modine: Bahamut. I like, in particular, the tuba.

I saw lots of tortugas in the Oceanogràfic, and beautiful aqua tanks with beautiful fish as well, reminding me of early times of Microsoft Windows.

Here’s a 10 hours no loop video of the Windows95/98 (30 years old) original.

Retrospect

Women in Roman Legal History

Birgit was so kind to redo her presentation on women in legal history (see Weekly 16/2025) in the laundry.

She speaks much more silently than me, but the Neumann TLM 103 is a just wonderful microphone and managed to record her voice very well. It’s a beatutiful presentation.

I found another woman in front of a mirror in Valencia, this one is from Julio González and is located in IVAM:

BBMRI-ERIC Podcast

Ilaria Colussi, the legal officer of BBMRI-ERIC interviewed Marco Montali from University of Bozen and me on legal consequences of AI on biobanking. The talk was recorded and will (hopefully) be put online soon.

Online Surveillance

Eva Konzett wrote a long and well founded article (Paywall) on the never ending story of attempts to allow messanger surveillance in Austria. I’m one of the interviewed and cited experts she refers to.

Prospect

#arsboni

On Wednesday, April 23rd, at 19.00, a cooperation with the Vienna Legal Literacy Project will start: I will host a podcast organised by them and will support them with my experience and infrastructure. Let’s see what this will bring.

And on Friday, April 25th, I will welcome Dr. Peter Köppl from Mastermind in the #laundry. He will try to explain to me/us the communication policies chosen by the Trump-administration.

Punkt eins

I am invited by David-Xaver Forthuber to speak (for a full hour) on (messanger) surveillance and AI in “Punkt eins” on April 29th - at 1 pm. The draft-law discussed is online, deadline for delivery of an official opinion on the matter is June 3rd, everybody can raise their voice. I will, almost certainly, explain my opinion also via this official channel and am currently collecting (further) arguments.

You might also see me on Friday, April 18th, in Wien heute - with an interview on dat aprotection and direct mailing to voters in Vienna. I needed to squeeze this in quite spontaneously and had to improvise with the “studio” - finally a nice 5-stars hotel at the beach that I had entered for that purpose.