It has been impossible for anyone to ignore the results of the recent election in the US. The orange candidate won in his words with ‘a landslide victory’, but in our fact-checked reality only with an ever so slight margin. Obviously, this depends on what numbers you are looking at: the number of electors or the number of actual votes.
The results:
As my co-columnist Eef has been rather enthusiastic about his knowledgeable pal Arty, I decided to also check out Arty again. I’ve done so earlier but was probably less impressed as Eef. However, Eef’s articles shine a light on another Arty than I remember from my early and brief encounter. So, why not give Arty a fresh chance?
For the new visitors of this website, Arty is the nickname for ChatGPT. And ChatGPT is an AI or an Artificial Intelligence question and answer dialogue website or mobile app. Note the term Artificial, hence Arty. Continue reading →
Over a year ago, I wrote a short post on Tweetr and left the platform. Read more about the article here. With no real alternative, I refrained from this part of Social Media and concentrated on others. Now I’m back, but not on Tweetr!
After a year without me tweeting, a viable alternative did finally surface in the form of the BlueSky mobile app. BlueSky looks like Tweeter used to look and offers similar functionality. But here without the downsides Tweetr developed. For one, BlueSky offers proper moderation and a timeline that makes sense. It is add-free (for now) and free of use. Continue reading →
The ongoing Gaza war between Israel and Gaza (Hamas and by extension also Hezbollah) has been impossible to miss or ignore in the daily news since its start in October last year. Equally hard to ignore are the devastating and cruel initiatives taken by all parties whenever negotiations for a cease-fire are approaching. Sticking out like a very sore thumb, however, are the excesses in cruelty that both parties seem to find perfectly acceptable in this war. With the escalations in bad behavior as bad as they are now: where will this go, and when or where will it end? Continue reading →
When Eef wrote his piece on foreign languages, more specific on the French language for non-native speakers, he presented the article to me by email. In this email Eef he asked me on my view on the situations sketched in his article. This is a very fair question indeed as my wife and I left our home country The Netherlands (aka Holland) in 1997 when we emigrated to Sweden. You could say Eef’s and my family share the experience of moving abroad to a country we did not speak the language of. The prevailing language in Sweden being Swedish as it is French in France. In Eef’s defence, they were pensioners, while we were in our thirties. Continue reading →
Tidigare i år skickade jag in ett förslag till Stockholm stad att göra en namns ändring på ‘Gjörwellsgatan’ till ‘Aleksej Navalnyj vägen’. Läs mer om det här. Idéen med att ändra just denna gata till minnet av Navalnyj var följande:
Efter ha skickat in mitt förslag till Kungsholmens stadsdel i Februari 2024, fick jag ha tålamod i några månader. Svaret kom först nu, i Juli 2024. Continue reading →
Det är inte ett bra tecken om jag ser anledning att publicera än en artikel om det svenska valsystemet, denna gången med löpnummer 3. Se tidigare artiklar kring samma ämne här och här, och mer nyligen här.
Några veckor efter det senaste EU val, bestämde SVT sig för att kolla hur bra det fungerade på en skala från 0 till 1, läs SVT’s inslag här. SVT tittade inte på hur själva valet genomförs, vilket jag själv har synpunkter på, men de kollade om det fanns avvikelser i själva rösträkningen – ett ännu viktigare del av valet. I all enkelhet påstår jag att om det finns avvikelser i rösträkningen så är dessa resultatet av hur valet och rösträkningen genomförs. I ett demokratiskt val påstår jag att avvikelser inte får förekomma.
När jag nyligen besiktigade min Toyota Urban Cruiser, Urban för vänner, blev det ett glad besked – som vanligt.
Nu tänkte du kanske, Visst gick det bra, det är ju en Toyota! Och det har du rätt i.
Men, till skillnad från tidigare besiktningar blev det denna gången en anmärkning. Anmärkningar är inget som man behöver ordna med detsamma, men man bör nog åtgärda det till nästa besiktning om ett år. Mina anmärkningar blev:
Självklart ska vi inte åka ett år till med dessa fel, de ska åtgärdas med detsamma! Continue reading →
Just letting you know that I’ve got a couple of new books in the making. Continue reading →
Till minnet efter den nyligen mördade ryska aktivisten Aleksej Navalnyj, låter det som att han bör ha en gata nämnd efter sig. Den självklara platsen för en sådan gata är förståss Gjörwellsgatan i Stockholm.
I google maps ser platsen ut så här:
Just anslutningen till ‘Fria Ukrainas plats’ gör Gjörwellsgatan extra lämplig för en sådan namns ändring. Continue reading →
The word ˈɪnflu.ənsə(ɹ) phonetically spells the word ‘Influencer’, but what does it really mean? Here are the official meanings according to Wictionary:
In my experience, a third category ought to be added. But, for the time being, let’s stick to these two categories as these seem quite straightforward. We’ll tackle my proposal for a third category later. Continue reading →
In the past few years, I’ve managed to write and publish four books. Three of them are in English while only one is in Dutch. But, writing a book is just one of the many steps between the idea and the book being bought and read by someone.
As I live in Sweden, and none of my books are in Swedish, I presume my readers are most likely be found abroad in Europe and the US. Reaching out to established publishing companies abroad to persuade them to publish my books seemed like a stretch for a newbie writer, so I did not pursue this avenue. Of course, it would be easy to have my books printed locally and then sell each copy myself, but that would require a considerable investment in printing. And I’d have to go door to door to sell them, which is not my thing. Thus the idea of self-publishing them came up. Continue reading →
‘What, AI in books!’ you may say. Indeed, with generative AI you can ask your AI application to write a text, given a set of parameters such as number of words, subject, genre, and much more.
When I recently was editing the blurbs of my books on KDP, the publishing platform for the Amazon book store, I was asked this question:
Of course, my answer was a solid No as I do not engage any AI form in writing my books for me. Or do I? Continue reading →
A well-known Swedish childrens hero called Bamse, has the following motto:
…which translates loosely into:
Yes, you read it correctly, commenting on this site. It is now possible. See the bottom of each page on this site, click this link:
…then, fill out this page: Continue reading →