Category: Europe

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Jobs First

The Berlin demonstration of the 1st of May has chosen to put „Jobs First“. Jobs before profits is a widely accepted claim by trade unions to highlight the importance of work in our societies. Particularly in times of robots and AI taking jobs away, this motto is well chosen as a principal risk in 2026. The current technological innovations seem to aim primarily at the maximization of profits for companies rather than the benefits for society as a whole.  The Berlin parade on the 1st of May managed to achieve a great mobilization, which is a great success for the labor movement and a demonstration of power and solidarity when in many countries basic employment rights and even the 1st of May as a social tradition is attacked.

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Evaluate Web analytics

An own webpage “schoemann.org” allows to gain interesting insights into the skills needed for the internet era and the security as well as cost structures for running such a business endeavour. Taking stock of basic web analytics, therefore, should be on the agenda from time to time. Towards the end of April 2026, it is about time to look into some simple statistics again. The host of this webpage offers access to some anonymous statistics (see below). The number of daily or weekly visits of the webpage are suitable to get a basic idea about frequencies of visits. Average daily visits are still below 1000 daily visits, but there are peaks of 3000+ and even 5000+.
Whereas the distribution across weekdays (no peaks on weekends, correlation with bad weather not tested yet ;-)) is rather random compared over months. However, the topics which received most attention are do not seem to be random. In 2026-4 the most attention has been raised with “Abduction of Europa”, followed by a brief entry on “Confessions” a philosophical topic in a broad sense (Stats below 2026-4-27. Next in popularity are 2 entries of my scientific “fail collection” which reflect on take-home-messages from the “Flop exhibition”, quite topical in combination with the 40th commemoration of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor explosion and pervasive contamination across Eastern Europe.
(Image: Page visits between 2026-3-29 to 2026-4-27 compared to month before same year)

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Writing to yourself

Over more than 2000 years, humans have written in various forms about and to themselves. The “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius are one of the earliest and finest example of this tradition. Originally, the intention was to write something we call “journaling” today. Out of a motivation to understand yourself, others, your relationship with others and society’s evolution, Marc Aurel drafted in Ancient Greek (a kind of elite or secret code for his Latin-speaking contemporaries) originally with no intention to address larger audiences. The French translations and publications in 2026 still use as title for the Meditations “Pensées pour moi-même” (Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν). The kind of “inner dialogue”, or dialogue with yourself as a literary form, has become a philosophical tradition.
Roger-Pol Droit (2008) ascribes a similar literary style in his introduction to the “Confessions” by Saint Augustine in a recent French edition. In moving from a culture of oral traditions to a reading and writing tradition in Europe, the style of reflections about oneself and others shifts more and more to the printed formats. Originally reserved to some happy few, modern techniques of contemporaneous recording of sound and video enlarge the possibilities of input through transcriptions, editing, storage as well as analysis of own input.
The possibilities for a democratization of reflections of our own experiences have increased, and yet, AI might jump in very quickly to some already pre-established truths about ourselves in analyzing this data, which might be hard to fend off.

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Gardening Evolution

Researchers continue to study the impact of gardening on biodiversity and survival of insects. The study published by Tscharntke, Batáry and Vidal (2026) points our attention to the importance of areas in our gardens that are allowed to grow without mowing for several years. In many traditional gardening projects even in the 21st century, we observe a cut of grass-shoots in fairly regular time intervals, once a months for example. An English style lawn will be cut very short even more often than this. If we want to allow for an evolution of gardening and regaining biodiversity, we shall have to reserve substantial areas of a garden to allow grass-shoots to grow over several years (!). Such an evolution might be perceived in 2026 a bit like a revolution in gardening. Untidy spots are a response to “the need for unmown long-term refuges, protecting intact grass shoots for persistent insect populations” (Tscharntke et al. , 2026). The tree “Cercis siliquastrum” (Judas-tree) in the “Jardin des Plantes” in Paris dates back to 1785 and shows the impressive strength of nature to outlast changing gardening fashions even in a hotspot of gardening culture, history and evolution. Grass-shoots below might be allowed to last a couple of years as well.

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Urban rural voters

On Sunday 2026-3-22 local elections of the 2nd round took place in France and some parts and cities in Bavaria. The voters have in both instances confirmed the hypothesis that voters have very different preferences for political parties along the cleavage of urban versus rural voters. The sociological issue consists in the different socioeconomic as well as educational backgrounds of the populations. Across the 2 countries inner cities have environmental issues, safe transport and rents as major concerns. In rural areas a feeling of being disconnected and left behind is frequently the predominant concern, often in terms of lacking transportation infrastructure. Voters on the local level have a more direct connection to their elected politicians and scrutinize implementation as well as promises more closely. This is a much more complex issue for voters on the national level as more topics enter the equation. The political agenda, therefore, differs substantially for urban and rural voters. This is a tough challenge for the nationwide campaign teams to test the validity of their agenda locally as well. 

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Myths debunked

There has been careful research on the use, or not, of color in classical Greek sculpture. More than 40 years of research have documented that what was long believed as monochrome sculptures, have in fact been very colorful specimen. The collection and researchers linked to the “Liebieghaus Sculpture Collection” can be inspected with experimental versions of the colors of the classical Greek time. “Gods in Color”, an exhibition by the Liebieghaus, provides a view of the rich colors of classic statues like the “archer” using the chemicals of the time to produce more or less durable or resistant colors. See also the archaic Greek Sphinks at The Met Museum.
Brinkmann and Koch-Brinkmann have spent close to 50 years on this research and attempts to convince the public of the “monochrome myth” of Greek sculptures. Research alone did not convince people, they seemed to need to see the colorful versions eye to eye to believe. The broader social science interest is to realise how much time it can take to re-establish scientific facts once they have been “eradicated” previously. (Image: Statuettes of classic Greek actors, lower row, BNF Paris)  

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Defense strategies

Technological developments of drones, aircrafts, rockets and satellites take a lot of time. In order to produce not only prototypes, but ready-to-use weapons, it needs advanced engineering competencies and capacities as well. The arrival of hypersonic rockets, that fly at the speed of 5 Mach necessitate a rethinking of defense strategies to be able to react in ever shorter time spells to external threats. The European Defence Fund intends to spend almost 3 billion € over 7 years to prepare our defense strategies in the EU for the next generation of lethal weapons.
On 2026-3-4 the Iran-regime made use of such a fast rocket, but it was possible to intercept its flight just in time by NATO-allies. Yes, unfortunately “rocket science” is back on the research agenda. In fact, this research has been ongoing across the world, just a bit more below the public radar.
Missions to the moon or mars have been intensified in recent years. This is not surprising or spectacular fact. For some it is surprising, that the number of countries (for example India) which are active in rocket science is increasing and spreading further across the globe. The multipolarity of the international political arena seems more evident in 2026-3.

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National interest

Especially in times of international conflicts, it is customary that politicians refer to “the national interest” as a justification for their actions beyond the state borders, commonly named foreign policy. There is a huge literature on the subject, in which the concept of the national interest is useful, (1) because it suggests some higher ranking political goal, (2) because it clarifies and prioritizes a country’s goals, particularly at times of military interventions and (3) because it “arouses the support necessary to move towards a realization of the goals” (Rosenau 1968, Int. Encycl. p.34).
A critical assessment of this concept in international relations should start with the democratic perspective that a country’s government is subject to regular elections, whereby the goals a previous majority had put forward, might substantially change as a new majority takes the lead. Continuation of the same foreign policies is not excluded, but at least subject to revision. In authoritarian regimes the definition of the national interest is probably more stable, because authoritarian leadership does not hesitate to define the national interest in “splendid isolation” from its people.
Overall, the concept appears to serve mainly communication purposes, both internally as well as towards the outside as in communicable foreign policy goals. Conflicts between countries can thus be named and become subject to diplomacy and international treaties. But we have to fill this with substance over and over again as new topics arise like climate change and global warming.

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Silence revisited

In most cultures, particularly western ones, we are less and less used to silence. Keeping silent for 1 hour is almost framed as an exercise of meditation. In the presence of other persons silence is often misinterpreted as not being interested or even intelligent enough to contribute to the conversation or discussion. Therefore, the title of the exhibition “Seeing silence”, which rediscovers and honors the paintings of Helen Schjerfbeck. Her Finish, Swedish speaking roots, with a broad European training in the arts, made her an accomplished painter in the impressionist’s tradition with a focus on painting portraits. The catalog from the exhibition (THE MET 2025) gives a great overview of her paintings when silence of her models tell stories. Portraits of women are particularly powerful examples of tranquility, and reading, but also uneasy silence in rocking chairs. The biographical sketch of Helen Schjerfbeck by Dita Amory sums up the vocation as “All I desire to do is paint” (p. 15). Towards the end of the 19th century and the 1st half of the 20th century this meant work in silence and she chose to work on silence as well.  (Image: catalog in library Brussels 2026-2) 

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Chess without Queen

It is perfectly possible to play chess without a player having a queen on the chessboard. This certainly gives an advantage to the opponent, but in case of a lack of an adequate strategy or being overly confident to win, the advantage can be compensated by the party who does not have a queen in the arsenal of weapons. The paper by Lissner & Warden (2026, p.109) on the new way of war following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022-2-24 states that “nuclear weapons have not given Moscow the coercive leverage many assumed they would.” Nuclear weapons hit the civilian population without differentiation the hardest, just as much as taking nuclear power plants as strategic war targets would do. What we have seen so far in Russia’s strategy is to use civil infrastructures of water and heating as targets within Ukraine as part of a kind of psychological warfare against the Ukrainian civil population. The more committed Ukrainian soldiers, even with the lack of a nuclear weapon, seem to hold the line against the Russian aggressor that so far has restrained from the nuclear option, if the Tschernobyl disaster has not been a precursor of a weaponisation of nuclear infrastructure.