Week 23/2026

But the story's still the same

Kunsthistorisches Museum, late at night, thanks to a dinner in the museum. Spectacular.

NSFW

Today's song is an all time classic, kindly recommended to me by a dear reader.

It fits well as a contrast into the brightest (and hottest) yearly season that is approaching. The song was released 10 years ago, in October 2016, very short before Cohen's death. The word "Hineni" used in the lyrics is Hebrew for “here I am,” and is the response Abraham gives when God calls on him to sacrifice his son Isaac. That fits also well into the season as Muslims celebrate Eid al-Adha (Feast of the Sacrifice) from May 27 to May 30 this year. I know this because I stumbled across a post of Vienna's mayor Michael Ludwig on Facebook on this occasion

The post received approximately 1000 comments (and counting) many of which you should better not read when you are in a good mood, but are 'interesting' when reflecting rules on platform moderation.

Spotify has the full album and an interesting Paul Kalkbrenner remix of Cohen's song.

Kalkbrenner will appear at Frequency 2026 in S. Pölten.

Retrospect

#unisretten

There has been a very important and very fundamental debate, including a major demonstration on May 27th, about potential cuts of university budgets in this country.

I would recommend to watch (listen) some videos on this.

First, with the head of Universities Austria, Brigitte Hütter, on the one hand.

This is, for whatever reason, a 7'29'' version. There's also one with only 2'38''. I finally found the full length interview as audio only and would appreciate guidance of any organisational or legal reason for these crops.

There's no "Sendeschluss" on the internet.

You could then also watch - fortunately as a full length video in this case - the talk with responsible minister Eva-Maria Holzleitner.

ORF.at Video/Audio

Armin Wolf is excellent in both communications - and both could be used for media training on how to rhetorically (not?) survive such an interview.

Hungarian Media (Law)

Prof. Dr. Gábor Polyák shares his experiences with and his assessment of Hungarian media (law) before and after the election in an #arsboni interview.

Some of the aspects covers have significant parallels to Austria where implications of the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) for the appointment procedure of ORF-leadership start raising attention. Hans-Peter Lehofer wrote an excellent blog post on the matter.

Data Act/Data Governance Act

I contributed (with a very tiny contribution on art. 14 DA) to an article by article commentary on the Data Act and the Data Governance Act that was finally published this week.

Ziga did, by far, most of the work here. Lukas was involved too.

I received my physical copy on Thursday right after the editor, Prof. Dr. Behrang Raji, had announced the publication with its impressive list of authors on LinkedIn .

Prospect

Job Opportunity

Prof. Dr. Florian Möslein has a brilliant job opportunity.

"My" organisational assistant Martina is - by far - the team's most important person when it comes to developing, monitoring and influencing my group and everybody's work. We would be very far from where we are today without her. It's an outstandingly strategic role with real impact.

#arsboni

Sandra Konstatzky from the Office of the Commissioner for Equal Treatment (Gleichbehandlungsanwaltschaft) will be interviewed in #arsboni on Wednesday at 17.00.

I will talk with here not only about her personal career and role but also about the gender related consequences of AI in the legal profession. Even (and in particular) Anthropic mentionss some aspects in one of their recent studies.

Two hours later, at 19.00 the Vienna Legal Literacy Project will deal with the opening of one's first account.

Look and Feel

Concordiaball

Again, I had the privilege to join Concordia Ball and again it was a spectacular and gorgeous evening. It's probably the best ball event one can attend in Vienna, with so many nice and friendly (young) people, in a wonderful spring night, in Vienna City Hall with its beautiful arcades. Dr. Daniela Kraus was the best host one can imagine.