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What I learned from talking to yet another AI genius every week for six years
I’ve had front-row seats watching AI shake up the life sciences and manufacturing across Europe and the US. While talking with visionary tech heads, they clarified that to understand the chaos, I also needed to speak with academics, entrepreneurs, regulators, funders and – most importantly – the end users. Yes, innovation is all about people – a wildly diverse group of individuals and organisations who must unite to make extraordinary things happen.
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How I roll as a writer in the AI tsunami
I don’t believe that AI is making me irrelevant as a writer. In some ways, it’s helping me become a better one. As a long-lapsed carpenter, I still appreciate what a quality power tool can bring to the worksite. But with GenAI, it’s been more love-hate – like a chainsaw: handy until it turns on you. While I’ll take all the help I can get, I want to keep loving my job.
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Dutch Biking – Survival Guide For Beginners
I was editor and co-writer of a bike book published by the esteemed SNOR and designed by Studio Boot. Specially formulated as a crash course in surviving Dutch bike traffic, it features ‘Top 10 Rules!’, DOs & DON’Ts!’, ‘How to swear back at locals!’ and all the cultural weirdness around these most democratic of iron beasts. Become a neder-cyclist today!
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AI’s Nobel Prize victory lap: Is Time Magazine next?
AI casually swept two Nobel Prizes this year – not bad for a bunch of zeros… and ones. But is it enough to make Time’s ‘Person of the Year’? Or will the on-the-ball Yuval Noah Harari intervene? Read all about it in this edition of ‘Manufacturing – The News.’
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25 times Medical Data + Pizza: how carbs are transforming healthcare
“Covering 5 years, the Medical Data + Pizza event series has followed a compelling timeline, encompassing the period when AI came of age, and became sexy. We spoke with AI professor and co-founder Mark Hoogendoorn about the challenging task of bringing AI to the bedside – in Amsterdam and across Europe – and about the power of pizza to get things moving.”
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Seeking truth amid a disinfodemic (and why scientists need better storytelling skills)
Welcome to 2020, where we’re fighting both a viral pandemic and a “disinfodemic”. And yes, social media companies say they “deplatform” obviously false theories. But there’s a loophole: if you wrap your bleach-gargling cure in a larger QAnon narrative about Satan-worshipping pedophiles, you might still get listed.
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Should AI be more like oil or O2?
Who should own the data used for healthcare applications? Is data really ‘the new oil,’ a resource controlled by the few? Or should data be considered a universal human right, like oxygen? After all, we own our kidneys until death, so why not our data? Is there a donor model we can adopt?
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ABC Holland
My first ABC book! It covers 26-plus things that visitors find delightfully eccentric about the Netherlands – such as bitter balls, wooden shoes, drugs, herring and Hazes.
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Grease architecture
Another dream fulfilled: writing about my favorite kitchen tool for legendary Dutch architecture magazine Forum.
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Book of Denim, Volume Two
After googling ‘sex’ everyday for four years, it was time to cleanse the palate. So I immersed myself in a whole new and alien supply chain: textiles.
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Dogmatic about being non-dogmatic
These are the best goddam bitterballen in the world. Yes, it’s good to be passionate – to really believe in something. But you’re setting yourself up for a fall.
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What I learned from googling ‘sex’ everyday for four years
I learned very many things thanks to my weekly column ‘Sex in the Press’. And as the column inches towards its 200th edition, I still feel that I have very much more to learn.
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Dark, stormy and drunk
My contribution to the ‘picture and caption’ issue of Dark&Stormy, the inspired ‘zine from graphic designers/writers Bart de Baets and Rustan Söderling.
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Dutch design: Mucus in the air
I wrote a piece for the ‘City Hotels’ exhibition at Amsterdam’s architecture centre Arcam. It was about Andaz Amsterdam from Dutch design icon Marcel Wanders. I also managed to slip in references to being a doorman, eel-pulling, lion shit and being snotty about fringes…
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Joep van Lieshout: one man and his baggage
The Dutch artist and designer Joep van Lieshout – founder of Atelier van Lieshout – brought the world fully-realized ‘Free States’, slave camps and rectum bars. Now he’s just come out with a line of unisex handbags…
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How to be a dictator and sell cola at the same time
Do you want to lord over your friends, parents and – why not? – the whole freaking world? Learn now how you can become a dictator and sell cola at the same time! In seven easy lessons!
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CODE’s ‘edit and reconstruct’ issue
I was managing editor for the spring/summer issue of CODE magazine. I also wrote a travel feature about grey – but mighty and magical – Kaliningrad. I also had the honour of interviewing Magnum Force of Street Style (and cover boy) Nick Wooster and the Dutch artist/designer Joep van Lieshout.
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For what it’s worth
I got to preach about the meaning of value to the future business elite of the Netherlands. Nice work when you can get it. Read it in the fall/winter issue of Nyenrode Now. Or here…
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CODE’s ‘Survival Kit’
CODE magazine’s ‘Survival Kit’ issue has features on the survival tactics of sideshow circus freaks, new agers, off-grid pioneers, emerging tech gurus, urban warfare clothing designers and the brave and delightfully eccentric characters who fish off the decaying piers of Brooklyn.
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The fine art of Yuri Gagarin
The booklet ‘Yuri Gagarin, 50 years of Human Space Flight’, part of our on-going Road to Gagarin project, won the first prize in the BLURB Photography Now Competition, in the category Fine Art.
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De Jeugd van Tegenwoordig on their favorite Amsterdam songs
I interviewed the Dutch-language gibberish-hop collective for The Guardian on their favorite Amsterdam music. André! Johnny! Manke! Van Halen! Themselves! … And all compiled on Mixcloud!
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Mladic found
While Yuri Gagarin was my heroic rocket into Russia, General Ratko Mladic was my runaway genocidal horse cart into Serbia. I would never compare the two men. I’m just saying it’s sometimes handy to have a focus when entering new territory.
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Talkin’ Craft
A Q&A with Crafting Temptress and Country Cleave Queen Katie Holder about her Cosy Craft Corner. The evening is a fun and honest way of exchanging needles – and talkin’ crap!
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The words and insights of the redeemer Johan Cruiff
Johan Cruijff was not only the Netherlands’ most acclaimed footballer but also a philosopher king with a gift for freestyle language – his initials are JC for a reason. As he said, ‘If I wanted you to understand it, I would have explained it better.’
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Cabbages, magic windmills and plastic surgery
How well does the medieval painting ‘The Baker of Eeklo’ stand the test of time? We witness bakers slicing the heads off clients, adding special flours and oils, and re-baking their faces to specification… Sound familiar?
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Baantjer: Amsterdam as chill murder capital
BEST. COPSHOW. EVER. Baantjer is set in a gloriously scenic Amsterdam where it rarely rains and its inhabitants – a rich interactive tapestry of cops, penose, squatpunks, Suri-Vlaamse hipsters, Yugo mafia types, e-clubbers, admen, real estate speculators, prostitutes and fishmongers – all run the risk of being murdered at any moment.
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Wanted… new narratives for Europe.
I wrote a report on Europe’s search for a shared identity. It’s trickier than just ‘blaming the other’. ‘Never again’ was a very good reason for coming together after WWII and the holocaust. But unfortunately, it just doesn’t resonate as it used to. And what do Sweden and Spain really have in common?…
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Conducting an Interview
For me, the image of a conductor was formed by my 200-kilogram school band teacher who would throw chunks of rum cake at the head of whoever hit a bad note. She was very scary. Otto Tausk was different.
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A ‘real’ Van Gogh highlights a fake Vermeer
The story of art forger Hans van Meergeren has flummoxed Hollywood for decades. How do you make the ultimate biopic? Yes, he scammed the Nazis. Unfortunately, he was still a dick.
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Creative anatomy with Dr Frederik Ruysch
Dr Frederik Ruysch (1638-1731) is regarded as one of the greatest anatomists and preservers of body parts of all time. However, his artistic compulsion also led him to construct moralistic panoramas of bone and tissue.
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On Wall and Currywurst
My Globe & Mail feature on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall is also a tribute to the 60th anniversary of the mighty currywurst. And yes, these stories are related.
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Magritte & Tintin in Brussels
My piece about the new museums in Belgium dedicated to surrealist Rene Magritte and Tintin-creator Herge has been published in today’s Globe&Mail. Read it here before rushing out to buy a bowler hat of your own.
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25 years after the death of Jacques Brel
“While the French relate to my father intellectually… the Belgians feel him. Brel is somebody who ate mussels and fries and drank beer. He belongs to them, he’s one of them.”
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Ai ai ai Amsterdam
I Amsterdam is the established city slogan and logo. But are there better ones? Sure, the 1960s ‘Get in touch with the Dutch’ campaign was misguided. But surely…
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Howie Krishna says Amsterdam still rules!
The Supperclub’s host-with-the-most goes by many names, such as Howie Krishna, and The Safe Sex Pope. He also offers the best seasonal message possible: stop whining and ‘go to the light and be happy!’
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Belgrade, a Lonely Planet
What are the chances of getting Belgrade on the EasyJet circuit any time soon? Serbian rock star and media pundit Vladimir Jeric of Darkwood Dub gives us a tour of the White City and all its shades of grey.
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Are Archives Sexy and Dynamic?
Amsterdam’s new city archive on Vijzelstraat is one of the largest in the world and is now open for business. Can you feel the excitement? Well, some folks can—especially when all the numbers and details transform into hardcore stories.
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A Jungle of Monkeys
Kunststad, the country’s largest broedplaats for the arts, is officially opened at NDSM-werf. It’s also meant to be a place where art and commerce can meet and cuddle. But will it ever evolve into something more than a torrid affair?
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Sawnic Revolution
An emerging musical saw scene is setting the city’s teeth on edge. We chat with two of them. ‘I do imagine Scandinavia when I play it—that it was invented by some lumberjacks who just got bored, drunk and stumbled across the sound.’
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Strangerrrrr than Fiction
The documentary Cat Dancers is a deeply odd trip into the world of Ron Holiday, complete with wild cats, love triangles, spandex and—ultimately—tragedy. And most strange of all perhaps, it’s not exploitative.
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Sitting Down with Cinema Savant Hans Beerekamp
The Netherlands’ best-known film critic weighs in on the responsibilities of the trade, the Dutch film mafia and the local film climate. ‘If you go to the Dutch film festival, you can really observe the behaviour of rats in a small, overcrowded cage with too little food…’
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Cocaine is Watching You
The documentary Dutch Cocaine Factory is a secret history in lines and layers captured on tape. ‘I call it pro-paranoia,’ says film-maker Jeanette Groenendaal over a cup of tea in her first-floor apartment, which offers an excellent view of the long history of cocaine in Amsterdam.
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Fifteen Years of Jokes and Beers
A couple of weeks ago we reached out to the Hells Angels for some advice about trademarks and brand-building. This week we’re reaching out to another club. An improv comedy club that’s celebrating its 15th anniversary…
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Live to be 100
‘Just feel good,’ says octogenarian poet, writer and inspired wild child Simon Vinkenoog when asked what the key is to living a long and healthy life. ‘Oh, and try breathing.’ We both inhale, then exhale. I feel better already.
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Rutu Modan and Ben Katchor, comic book artists
Interviews with two prominent graphic novelists: ‘Genius Grant ‘ winner Ben Katchor on being a New Yorker in New York, and pioneer Rutu Modan on the burgeoning art of Israeli comics.
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Return to Sarajevo
Four years after my first visit to Sarajevo, a Dutch-funded project to connect survivors of the Balkans wars by video launches in the former war-torn capital. Some things have changed, some not so much…
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A Fellow Citizen in Space
Andre Kuipers is the first Amsterdammer in space. Will it pump some life back into the city’s sagging reputation as ‘magical centre of the universe’?
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Under the Influence of Cassavetes
What would life be like living in a John Cassavetes film? Well there’s one advantage: you’d almost always have a strong drink in your hand. But alas, there’s a catch: you will eventually get drunk. Stupid drunk.
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AmsterSlang: What can we learn?
A book about the history of Amsterdam street talk can teach you plenty. For one, the locals are snobbish pragmatists with a big heart and a surreal soul.
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We can all agree on Bruce Lee
In 2005, a life-size bronze statue of Chinese-American martial arts star Bruce Lee was unveiled in the Bosnian city of Mostar. It was meant to unify a city fractured by the wars in former Yugoslavia. One of the organisers stated: ‘We will always be Muslims, Serbs or Croats. But one thing we all have in common is Bruce Lee.’ So true…
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East Side Story: the socialist musical
‘Jean-Luc Godard once said the history of film was the history of boys photographing girls. But Stalin had another fantasy—boys photographing tractors.’ Welcome to the dream factorski!
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Hotel Lloyd: a beautiful chaos
A building that was once a claustrophobic hell-hole has been reinvented as a hotel and ‘cultural embassy’ brimming over with Dutch design.
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Amateurism, the fresh maker
Professional architects, landscape architects and urban designers go ‘amateur’. Can it save our city from being scrubbed to death? Two new experts take us to the streets to look for inspirational amateurism in our own backyard.
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Death of a FEBO Man
A FEBO visit puts an eerie edge on any late Friday night. Just witness the religious quieting of a loud, beer-fuelled crowd as they stand in line, ready to slot some change into a futuristic glowing wall and magically receive the crunchy sacrament of grease… And now, the man who made ‘pulling a diagonal’ an institution is dead.
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Talking Belly to Belly with Glutton and Van Dam.
In one corner: Johannes van Dam, Het Parool’s food critic, who puts fear into the hearts of the city’s restaurateurs. In the other corner: Amsterdam Weekly’s Undercover Glutton. We have brought them together to discuss their mutual passion for food. And indeed, it turned out that they have much in common besides diabetes.
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The Road to Gagarin
Here is a digital version of an exhibition photographer Rene Nuijens and I made for the European Space Agency, which then went on to be exhibited in Yuri’s hometown of Gagarin, Russia, and have a version of it published in McSweeney’s Quarterly, Volume 12.
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Dré Is Dead
An obituary for volkszanger André Hazes, who died at age 53. The city shut down. And the ArenA stadium filled with 50,000 Amsterdammers…