Category: Global

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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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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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Practice Web analytics

For all people, especially webmasters, it is useful to understand and deal with web analytic reports of webpages. From time to time I do my own little research to check what is going on and how changes I implemented can be evaluated. During the month of October 2026 I have changed from a 30 entry long scroll landing page on https://schoemann.org to only a 10 entries before a kind of stop or follow-up click is needed to pursue reading. How has this changed the visits on the webpage? Well, (1) the number of visitors in 2026-10 (56.000) and page views (84.000) remained remained relatively stable, but after an initial rise in time spent on the webpage (report on Frankfurt book fair 2026) a significant drop in average duration on the page has occurred. As the retention rate on the webpage remained stable, my conclusion based on this real-world experiment is that the scroll limit set on purpose to 10 images and blog entries before more active engagement is necessary has the expected effect. Scroll limits shorten time spent on the same page and, most likely would also work in the “not-so-social” social media realm.

www.schoemann.org
web analytics 2026-10 of www.schoemann.org
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Forecasting error

In the October 17th edition of The New Scientist we learn about the long time series of events related to of El Niño and El Niña. These series of linked events make forecasting of what is to be expected in 2026-2027 less error bound. Monthly or bimonthly forecasts across the globe can actually predict droughts and floods quite well except the precise geolocations in a country or region. As a consequence crops will suffer and countries with little provision of stocks or purchasing power shall suffer the most. We have about 6 months left to prepare for such events as a global community. Rather than continue to pile on additional risks for the planet we have to address the root problems of CO2 emissions urgently, all of us. 

Berlin Wannsee weather forecast 2026-8
Berlin Wannsee weather forecast 2026-8

 

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Imagery of animals

The imagery of animals by humans is most likely the oldest art tradition that have left traces to our time. The oldest images of animals can be admired in caves, on pottery or jewellery. Since the early days there have always been a blend of reality and mythology when representing animals and the animal world. Beyond hunting of animals, the biological interest in animals has fascinated many artists as well. Just as we are about to redefine the borders between human and artificial intelligence, the history of depiction of animals and humans is full of examples of blending characteristics of each or ascribing characteristics of one species onto another one. The “Galerie Mazarin” of the BNF in Paris (2026-27) shows a fine selection of art work across centuries which exemplifies this co-evolution of artistic representations and the creation of mythical narratives through the imagery of animals. (Image: Albrecht Dürer, BNF Rhinocerus 1515)

Albrecht Duerer 1515 Rhinocerus BNF 2026-10
Albrecht Dürer 1515 Rhinocerus BNF 2026-10
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Intergenerational peace

Law and courts serve the function of appeasement beyond the role of delivering judgements. Particularly in the realm of the International Court of Justice the dealing with crimes against humanity and their prosecution is hindered by lack of broad recognition and its force of implementation. Therefore, the international system of jurisdiction has to be explained over and over again to distance the practice of International criminal law and of justice implemented by who has won a war. Philippe Sands was awarded the peace prize of the German book trade association 2026-10. For some time already, he has become a major personality to explain and thereby defend the international criminal law by means of embedding international law into his fact-driven accounts of crimes against humanity. Since the Nuremberg trials to judge Nazi-terror, the task to continue to explain the horrors and atrocities in all emotions merits the broadest attention. The threats to humanity continue also in Europe and the voices of outspoken defenders of intergenerational peace on earth are dearly needed. (Image: extract of The last judgement by Jean Bellegambe 1520 Gemäldegalerie Berlin) 

extract of The last judgement by Jean Bellegambe 1520 Gemäldegalerie Berlin
extract of The last judgement by Jean Bellegambe 1520 Gemäldegalerie Berlin
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Booktok OMG OMG

The Frankfurt Book Fair #fbm26 has made considerable efforts to make it easy for the production of booktok content. The phenomenon of short recommendations of books by mostly young enthusiastic persons, some of them actually readers, has a proven record to influence decisions to buy books. In seemingly frank talks, booktokers admit that the first best solution is to go and get your copy or copies of different editions. Second best is actually reading them. Nothing wrong with that. After all, we all have many books on our shelves which we haven’t read or we haven’t finished reading yet – considering some books you want to refer back to several times or at a later stage in your life.
In 2026 the prestigious “Julius-Campe-Preis” for literary criticism and the promotion of reading (own translation) has been awarded to a critic commentator and booktoker, Thomas Sachsenmaier with an exceptionally broad reach in Germany. There are still too few literature critics who reach audiences across generations because of their presence in all media channels with high professional standards. Interesting “Booktok” is a skill, just like “youtuber” is a performance-based video production. “Oh-my-God (OMG), the times are a changing”.

Julius-Campe-Preis-an-Thomas-Sachsenmaier-2026
Julius-Campe-Preis-an-Thomas-Sachsenmaier-2026
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Death and rebirth of author

Over the long run there have always been times when the death of the author had been announced. With the arrival of the printing press and the ease to mass produce prints and books, previous authors’ books could flood the market. Obviously this could put new authors at the risk of finding no audience anymore as printers asked cash upfront before printing. The economic risks were solely on the author’s side. Ebooks became a risk to publishers as authors had an additional alternative way of publishing. Then the advent of the internet changed again the world of books and publishing. Global distribution became an option. Thousands of authors could have died because authors from around the globe became more accessible. None of these threats have materialized. Publishing on a global scale is fine, only European publishers are concerned about a shrinking market. AI facilitates entry in new markets and AI could kill already struggling authors. Instead, AI opens up lots of opportunities for authors as well. Editing and translation services become more accessible to low budget production. The next wave, some claim a tsunami, shall submerge the publishing industry. Quality, selection of innovative content and events associated with the content shall still make the difference. There is neither the death of the author nor of the publishing world due to AI. On a global scale many new voices can be discovered, probably assisted a great deal by AI who would never have dared to become an author and to enter into the world of publishing or self-publishing. (Image: Korea at Frankfurt book fair 2026-10)

Korea at Frankfurt book fair 2026-10