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Marriage and births

There has been a continuous and persistent rise in the share of births outside marriage over the last 50 years with few exceptions to the rule. The OECD statistics on this topic tell us about this longstanding trend. By 2023 the OECD30 average had risen to 40% of children who were born outside of marriage. Cultural changes in this respect are visible in many countries. Do no longer expect traditional rings as symbols of marriage to be the rule in many cultures. Some unmarried couples might eventually decide to marry later, but this does not alter the original statistics. 

Children and marriage

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Enjoy Chrononutrition

We all have very different routines of when, how and what to eat. Science deals with some interesting aspects of nutrition under the keyword chrononutrition. Following this line, it matters quite a bit at what time of the circadian rhythm you take in your meals. Some protein at breakfast lets you follow your daily routine feeling less hungry and therefore being at a lower risk to snack sugary foods. A good and healthy lunch should allow you to get use the energy intake during the following hours. Last element, try to eat 3 hours before going to sleep, so your body knows to calm down reactions to nutrition arriving randomly. All this sounds great, it is just tough to balance these recommendations of chrononutrition with working, family life, leisure activities and meeting friends. Enjoy your meal chronometrically as well. 

nutrition salmon proteins
nutrition salmon proteins
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Domain-specific activities

For the improvement of some health outcomes like the onset of dementia, domain-specific activities can make a significant difference. Domain-specific activities are activity levels achieved in a person’s occupational domain, household work, commute or leisure activities. Unfortunately the cumulative hypothesis that no matter in which domain activities take place, they all count towards better health, is not supported by scientific evidence. The meta study by Feter et al.(2026) shows the overriding importance of leisure-time physical activities in the prevention of dementia. The conclusions suggest that occupational, commute or household activities as other domains do not reach the prevention effects of leisure activities. Equal access to the latter could advance society-wide prevention levels a great deal. 

early morning commute in metropolitan area 2026
early morning commute in metropolitan area 2026
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AI-fluencer

The monitoring software for webpages called “Known Agents” allows to monitor the visits of AI chatbots and data crawlers of your webpage. This provides interesting information, since the ordinary rankings on Google are no longer the most informative data on the reach of webpages. AI is deviating webpage traffic via your AI choice rather than the advertisement-influenced Google or other internet search engines did previously. Advertisement changes dramatically. Ways to influence AI provided answers, to questions you did not even pose yourself, will be the new currency in ever more globalizing markets. Maybe the AI-fluencer of today and in future have still a few pre-selected humans in control. But even this process can be taken over by an advanced “Agentrification” of web entries created by AI itself. As a machine I would most likely prioritize Bots from my own peers rather than the potentially unpredictable human minds, often riddled with mental instability. The jury is still out on the question who will be the AI-fluencer of tomorrow and in a more distant future. Even if the days of Her Majesty’s secret agent 007 have passed some time ago, the AI-fluencers seem to work, somehow hidden from the public, somewhere in the background.  

Autum impression 2026-11 swans in background
Autum impression 2026-11 swans in background
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Wisdom of chance

The advantage to toss a coin is that a decision made by chance is usually perceived as acceptable to all parties involved. The wisdom of Greek philosophers also trusted in decisions by chance. In decision-making it is good scientific practice to mention error margins, a bit like in weather forecasts. In case error margins are very high it, therefore, can make sense to leave the ultimate decision to a toss of a coin as this might be just as valuable as making one or the other choice with high uncertainty. Of course we feel uneasy about such a procedure as we tend to be convinced that we have sufficient information to make a better decision than just a shortcut by chance decision. Hence, there may be many more cases than we would like to admit to which can be left to a by chance decision. 

Random choice decoration of kindergarden Berlin 2026
Random choice decoration of kindergarden Berlin 2026
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Polarized Elections

In an electoral system which has been built on single step majority voting, there is a tendency to end up with rather polarized elections. The USA has majority voting in both houses and a polarized, dyadic, either Democrat (blue) or Republican (red) candidate’s choice. As there are no other major political, there is definitely a majority and a minority, but other political ideas do not gain any visibility or significant influence in this electoral system. The amount of non-voters is a critical mass which can be difficult to interest in such simplified dual choices. Moving from a kind of black or white, blue or red voting system to a more colorful spectrum of votes and coalition building has the advantage to allow a broader choice candidates and less back and forth polarization. More polarized elections, where parties try to win more votes on the more extreme ends of the political spectrum bear the risk to split societies more and more. In the long run electoral systems should be build to bring societies together rather than to deepen splits. Moving beyond binary choices has certain advantages.

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Swing or Flip

With the voting in mid-term elections of the US Congress and Senate being counted, we notice a shift in the language of the commentators. Whereas in previous elections of the Houses it was common to use the term “swing states” for a federal state that changed its majority from Democrats (blue) to Republicans (red), the 2026-11-3 elections referred to “flipped states”. What’s the significance of this? The metaphor of a “swing” assumes a kind of alternation of back and forth movements, which can be associated with a state changing political colors from election to the other. The metaphor of the “flip” might be associated more with the “flip side” of a piece of paper or a record. You might prefer the titles on one side more than the others. In the 2026-11-3 elections Democrats managed to turn long-standing Republic states (Kansas, Ohio) to vote for Democrats. They managed to captured dissatisfied or betrayed former Republican voters and thereby flipped states that have long traditions to vote Republican. Actually, these flipped states were turned into swing states which they have not been for many decades as the swing had been blocked on the Republican’s side.

Republican-or-Democrat-suit-2026-11-3
Republican-or-Democrat-suit-2026-11-3
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Weapons and trade

The 21st century demonstrates again the direct power of weapons and the indirect power of trade. In 2026-10 we experience the use of both as a force in international politics. Big as well as smaller powers push for the weaponization of trade as part of the overall arsenal of weapons. Rare earths, microchips, oil again, all serve to coerce nations into more lenient behavior. Welcome to the era of behavioral strategies in international politics. The revival of game theories and multiple applications in those markets or policy domains seems inevitable. Only the rational part of the behavioral strategies has changed to include higher stakes into the loss function of loosing a (repeated) game. States gamble not only in specific policy domains, but they raise the stakes even to their own survival. Populations of such states become hostage to the ruling elite and have hardly any exit possibilities from disaster. As nutrition and public infrastructures have become targets and weaponized as well. Modern warfare has entered an even more harmful phase on the global level. (blog entry inspired by Victor d. Cha, China’s weaponization of trade, 2026). 

power display of DragonBall characters 2026-11
power display of DragonBall characters 2026-11
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swop Credit default swops

Credit default swops (CDS) are popular again in the financial markets. Taking insurance against the risk of AI-giants, unused data centers or chipmakers defaulting on their massive debts has been on top of the agenda in the Financial Times on 2026-10-21. The last time a similar run on CDS happened was related to the bank, then much bigger financial crisis about 20 years ago. Remember those days “Too big to fail” and the huge bill put on governments and tax payers subsequently. The drop on Wall street on Thursday 29th and Friday 30-10-2026 send shivers through the financial markets. There seems to be the opinion that we have witnessed the peak of the AI-hype towards the end of October 2026. In the New York Times (2026-10) there was already an article which advocated that if the AI technology is not viable as a private enterprise, it should be nationalized to guard against abuses and make sure the military applications could continue to be exploited at full potential as other superpowers might equally do so.
We all heard or read the warnings about the riskiness of such investments even when hedged through CDSs, it is about time to return to investments that do not primarily build on other people’s intellectual property. 

credit-default-swops-swoped-2026-11

credit-default-swops-swoped-2026-11
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Frightened by youth

The month of October 2026 has been marked by youth taking to the streets across Europe. The beginning in Paris was first a peaceful showing of discontent with the resources allocated to education and schools in particular. Buildings have been badly prepared for the heat waves of the hottest summer on record and sanitary facilities are a continuous of dissatisfaction. Teachers and supporting staff are in short supply and a sick teacher has often not been replaced adequately. Pupils have been required to accept those deficiencies silently for too long. The competition for university admission is the next barrier, largely perceived to lack transparency and to reinforce inequalities. Labor market entry even after successful completion of a higher degree remains quite difficult for large numbers of youth, which adds to dissatisfaction. Whereas the engaged students demonstrated in a peaceful way, protests were hijacked by hooligans who smashed windows and looted, mainly shops of luxury brands. The damages could have been avoided if a serious dialogue had taken place rather than disrespect of youth. In democracies youth has a right to go to the streets and they use it. Authoritarian states have no inhibition to shoot their youth in rebellion. Talk to young people seriously, seriously. 

Brussels before youth demonstration 2026-10-31