A lot is being written these days about the pros and cons of electric cars and I am not at all against EVs in general and Teslas in particular, quite the opposite, not least since EVs are forecasted to outsell all other engine types by 2033, five years earlier than expected. But I question Elon […]
Open letter to Elon Musk
Dear Mr Musk, I thought I take this opportunity to thank you for keeping me puzzled as well as amused with you tweets and other statements, not least your announcement to your ‘friends’ at the SEC that you now are the Technoking of Tesla while your CFO is now known as Master of Coins. I […]
Vaccines for the privileged
Footballers really are a cut above the rest! Just look at the Conmebol, the association of Latin America’s football associations. In mid-April Sinovac, the Chinese vaccine manufacturer promised 50’000 doses to vaccinate all professional players ahead of the Cop América after Lionel Messi donated them three signed shirts (not all of the national associations involved […]
Good things out of the pandemic
Now that we seem to be coming slowly out of pandemic related lockdowns and other restrictions, I suppose it is fair to look back on what we have learned over the past 12 months and how or if we have improved our lives. I suppose all of us, being asked to stay at home, have […]
Abbreviated communications
I have got some colleagues at work who really have the nasty habit of sending me emails peppered with acronyms! not that I mind acronyms per se, I sometimes even use them myself, but when you need to read an email twice or even thrice in order to decipher all the abbreviations and to understand […]
Printers
I was actually toying with the idea of changing my already 9 year old inkjet printer recently, but as happens when you are looking for one thing on the Internet, references to something else caught my eye, in this instance 3D printers. Not that I need one, but I find the idea of printing three-dimensional […]
Going for more than a song
What have Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Blondie, Shakira and Barry Manilow in common (other than being musicians of course)? They all recently sold the rights to their back catalogue or at least part of it for a tidy sum. Neil Young, for example, has sold a stake of 50% of his 1180 tracks for an […]
Beware of doxers!
Doxing, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, is ‘the action of finding or publishing private information about someone on the internet without their permission’, information which all too often then ends up for sale on the darknet. Many areas of our daily lives have been digitalised in recent years, and with this comes an increasing awareness […]
David against Goliath
It has been an interesting couple of weeks on the New York Stock Exchange, where an epic battle of David (as in the small investors on Robinhood and Reddit) versus Goliath (hedge funds and their billionaire owners) is unfolding. On one hand it is refreshing to see that private investors can unite against Wall Street’s […]
Shackled democracy – social media
After the events of January 6 in Washington and President Trump‘s half-hearted disavowal of the violence it was only a question of time until Twitter, Facebook and all the other social media sites would take action. And rightly so, although I will miss Ex-President Trump‘s tweets, not for their insightful nature but for their entertainment […]
The grumpy older man 