According to Wikipedia, one of the key elements of democracy is ‘…day-to-day decision making of democracies is the majority rule…’. Another article, this time from an Oxford dictionary, mentions a democracy to be ‘…a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives…’. Continue reading →
‘What is that?’ you might say. Fair question as I do not believe any courses under this title are given at any university. The reason for this is that I invented the term years ago to describe what seems to dictate our economy nowadays.
The phenomenon of the economy of cheap started long ago and seems to have developed in phases. First phase: the supermarket. Continue reading →
Inderdaad, sinds vandaag, de 6e mei 2023 is mijn short story ‘The Big Day’ nu ook in het Nederlands beschibaar onder det titel ‘De Grote Dag’. Eindelijk!
Occasionally, I do some maintenance or repairs on my fleet of odd road craft. Whenever I deem any of it worthy of sharing with you, I add a new page with a description of the work done.
My odd vehicle fleet consists of the following:
A short message this time. This is a follow-up to my previous post on creating an audiobook with an AI voice. You can read that post here.
While all the techy bits were sorted when I posted that article, there was still quite some administration and distribution going on after I posted. Today it was pointed out to me that my audiobook ‘The Big Day‘ is now available for listening on several websites specializing in Audiobooks. Here are a few of the webshops: Continue reading →
As the idea came up to translate one of my books from the English language it was written in, to what is supposed to be my native tongue: Dutch, I decided to have a go at this challenge. To be fair, it wasn’t really a formal challenge, more like a curiosity of mine if I could do it or not. After all, with all the AI presence online, why would one be as mad as to undertake such a laborious task manually Have I gone mad? Continue reading →
Well, that remains to be seen. The question is if I can publish an audiobook using AI?
Good question, I’ve written a few books, and published them both in paperback and ebook format, but never given the idea of publishing them as audiobooks much thought. While I’ve always been an avid reader of printed books and more recently also of ebooks, audiobooks never really became my thing. I tried one of them once a long time ago but never managed to finish it. Mind you, that was in the age when CD’s had just become fashionable. Continue reading →
It has been impossible to ignore the cases of severe police brutality from departments all over the USA. Any reasonable person would wonder, after reading about this for the second, third, or even fourth time in the same year, why US police departments do not learn from previous examples. After all, how hard can it be? Continue reading →
In de recente pers werd melding gemaakt van een gerechtelijke dwaling in de zaak Jaitsen Singh, de Nederlander die al tientallen jaren vastzit in de USA. En, zoals het er al lang naar uitziet, voor iets dat hij niet gedaan heeft. Een grove gerechtelijke dwaling derhalve!
Helaas is zijn geval niet uniek, hij is niet de enige nederlander die onschuldig vastzit of vast gezeten heeft. Bovendien geldt hetzelfde voor gevangenen in andere landen dan de USA, en met andere nationaliteiten dan de Nederlandse. Continue reading →
After a recent contribution by fellow columnist Eef, suddenly a lot of articles in the Dutch and Swedish press about this AI were published – did they read Eef’s column? As usual with the presentation of any new AI, the articles vary from handy tools for the curious, via a new don’t-have-to-do-any-more-homework trick for students, to the latest threat for AI to take over our jobs and ultimately the world.
Finally, I got curious and decided I had to try the thang for myself. Continue reading →
When I wrote about terrorists a few weeks ago, I only briefly mentioned the domestic variety of terrorists or terrorism. According to trusty old Wikipedia, domestic terrorism can be simplest described as:
Domestic terrorism or homegrown terrorism is a form of terrorism in which victims “within a country are targeted by a perpetrator with the same citizenship” as the victims.
At the same time, Wikipedia mentions that there is no universally accepted definition of this phenomenon, leaving it to each country to set its own definition. Continue reading →
Toen ik in 2020 begon te schrijven aan wat een jaar later als mijn eerste boek ‘Nuremberg’ gepubliceerd zou worden, leek de hoeveelheid informatie en publiciteit over SS’ers die hun straf ontliepen summier. Hoe verging het hen, waar ontspoorde de juridiek?
Groot was dan ook mijn verbazing toen ik een week geleden bij toeval tegen een krantenartikel over een recent verschenen podcast aanliep. Het artikel noemde de titel van de podcast, ‘De verdwenen SS’er’. De krant in kwestie was het Dagblad Kennemerland. Continue reading →
That spells terrorist, or tɛɹəɹɪst if you want to know its correct English pronunciation. The word is on the lips of everyone in presidential office, in each government, on police forces and in military all over the globe. It is used by democracies, dictatorships, military juntas, and autocracies the like. Anyone my age may remember that such was not the case for thirty or forty years ago. What happened? Continue reading →
My latest book, ‘The Deep‘, was already out in paperback format. Since today, it is also possible to read it as Ebook on your Kindle ebook device.
Nordstream:
As was reported yesterday on international news, and perhaps even more in detail out here in Scandinavia, there seems to be some serious trouble with both Nord Stream pipelines since yesterday. Both seem to be showing all the signs of massive leaking. While Nord Stream 2 was not yet deployed, even that has been blowing bubbles since yesterday. Continue reading →
