Week 18/2025

Time’s gone inside out

Apr 25, 2025

Back in Austria and - somehow - back on running.

NSFW (Nikolaus’ Song For the Week)

This week’s song has a longer story.

I read a text from Christian Lehner (whom I hadn’t known) about Tunde Adebimpe - whom I hadn’t known either. But I liked one of the songs presented in the text.

From there it took me just a few more YouTube clicks to arrive at KCRW (that I hadn’t known either) and that is a national public radio station from California. They also run a YouTube channel with lots of interesting stuff and - Boom - I ended up with Spoon - that I hadn’t known either - and their very remarkable life performace of “Inside Out” that I have been constantly hearing since then.

So this week’s song for the week is “Inside Our” - in its live version.

I would recommend to watch the video too and not just to listen - not only because one can then riddle why someone had the Shure-7M 7 B installed upside down, but also because the lead singer John Britt Daniel does so many funny skipping actions during his performace breaks - and the drummer Jim Eno looks a little like a mixture between Bastian Pastewka and Florian Klenk.

Here’s the official video

and here’s a Spotify Playlist.

Retrospect

Vienna LLP

The Vienna Legal Literacy Project launched ther podcast tha is produced in cooperation with us.

We did a 5 minutes teaser, the next two sessions will be longer (and will bring, among others, Mag.a Sabine Matejka, the former president of Austria’s Judges Association.

HELT 2025 - One Health

The HELT 2025 Symposium in Brussels dealt with One Health this year. It was - again (see Weekly 19/2024 for last year) - perfectly organised by Prof. Dr. Paul Quinn and Ashwinee Kumar in a very nice venue.

We had a full session inspired by three of our projects: BBMRI, COMMUTE and SYNTHIA. Topics covered therefore, in particular, were secondary use of health data, AI and synthetic data. We got lots of positive feedback - and this is us - (from left to right)

Klaudia, Rodessa, Syed, Alexandra, Boris and me right after our session.

Digital Markets Act

The European Commission issued their first fines under the DMA: 500 Mio € against Apple, 200 Mio against Meta. Die Zeit has an interesting general analysis on the matter.

I was kindly invited by ORF for an interview on the case, a short excerpt was broadcasted in ZIB1

What I find very relevant (and irritating) - and made it into an OE1 Morgenjournal interview with - was the decisions’ non-existing (or rather reverse) effect on share price and market capitalisation of both companies. Both shares raised significantly on Wednesday when the decisions were made public.

I wouldn’t read this as a clear sign for market expectations that the decision would negatively impact these companies’ business model.

Prospect

Women in Law

The Women in Law Conference organises a symposium on Women´s Health: From the Gender Data Gap to Data Mining at our premises.

DATE: Friday, May 09, 2025

TIME: 09:30 – 13:30 hours

LOCATION: University of Vienna, Seminar Room, Department of Innovation and Digitalisation in Law, Schenkenstraße 4, 2nd floor, 1010 Vienna, Austria.

The speakers’ lineup is impressive - and we are proud that Klaudia from the department is one of the distinguished speakers:

ao. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Beate Wimmer-Puchinger (President of the Austrian Psychological Association and Gender Expert in Public Health at the University of Vienna) – The Invisible Woman: The Data on Women’s Health

MMag. Astrid B. Knitel (Austrian Association of Insurance Companies VVO) – The European Health Data Space: A space full of promise and potential for women’s health?

Mag. Judith Loacker-Barth LL.M. (Data Protection Manager, Boehringer Ingelheim)- The importance of gender diversity in clinical trials: Overcoming the gender data gap?

Klaudia Kwiatkowska, LL.B., LL.M. (Institute for Innovation and Digitalisation in Law) – A Bloody Trade-Off: Does Bridging the Gender Data Gap Mean Sacrificing Privacy? (Presentation in English)

Sylvia Gaiswinkler, MA (Gesundheit Österreich GmbH) Senior Health Expert, Women’s and Gender Health Coordination Office Health, Society and Equal Opportunities Division

Free entry, registration required, no stream.

#arsboni

I will have the second special edition of this term in #arsboni on legal careers on Tusday, April 29th, at 18.00 CET. This time, ORF-journalist and lawyer Mag. Birgit Schwarz will be my guest and answer questions on her studies and her career.

Birgit and me studied together in the late 80ies. I vividly remember her, as she was the spokesperson of the students’ association at Juridicum then (“Fakultätsvertretung”).

She’s also a host of a very interesting Podcast I would like to recommend: Inside Berlin.

I will also do two #arsboni interviews in the #laundry: One with Dr. Peter Köppl on political communication in the US under the Trump administration and one with member of parliament Dr. Nikolaus Scherak on the draft law on online surveillance.

A podcast helping to better understannd both topics and their interplay is this one with Steven Levitsky (author of: How Democracies Die):

Levitsky argues in the interview profoundly that the USA are no longer to be seen as a liberal democracy. One of the many interesting details is that he consistently refers to Hungary as a model for where the US are at the moment. What’s happening in Harvard (unbelievable!) is also discussed in some detail. The interview is - stupidly - “not available in my region” via Spotify, but the website manages to deliver the content anyhow and its worth being heard.

TeamID Breakfast Lecture

Lisa Soder will speak on "Governing Frontier AI: Status Check, Technical Hurdles & Next Frontiers" in a TeamID Breakfast Lecture on Tuesday morning.

Free entry, registration requested, no stream. Free croissants!

Look and Feel

Falter

I have been a Falter subscriber since - you probably weren’t born yet then. I read most of the content digitally now and no longer the whole journal, but sometimes I still do so and am impressed by its quality. It’s a very well made weekly, internationally competitve journal - different from most (all?) its local competitors.

It’s unfortunately still - very - painful to find the proper links on their website and most journal-texts are behind a paywall for non-subscribers, but let me however highlight that many of them are stimulating and worth being read.

Such as Armin Thurnher’s editorial “Bruder Donald, Thomas Mann und ich“ that reminds me of my own Thomas Mann reading experience and introduces me to a text I hadn’t known yet: “Bruder Hitler”. Funnily, Mann’s text is online on a school website with questions such as: “Was wäre Trump gegenüber die Haltung, die Thomas Mann Hitler gegenüber einnimmt? “ I liked Mann when I was young, today I find him - exhausting - and Thurnher’s text very elegant.

Thurnher runs a very stimulating (and free) newsletter “Seuchenkolumne” with sometimes very personal texts such as this one about his mother (part of a trilogy, part 1, part 2).

Barbara Toth puts some aspects of Christian Pilnacek’s death into context, Isolde Charim writes about external effects of Trumps DEI-policy, there’s an interesting article about “Wiener Wohnbau” and Wolfgang Förster (whom I hadn’t known yet) - and so on.

And, of course, there’s Doris Knecht whose life runs somehow parallel to mine (see also Weekly 26/2024) and who likes the Brunnenmarkt just like me.

Peter Hochegger

I heard two different, yet both interesting, interviews with Peter Hochegger.

and

Both are worth being heard, for several reasons, most importantly because he (still) is a very skilled communicator, making his perspective convincing and understandable and “transparent”; one gets, somehow, the illusion, how corruption arises.

Der Standard has a rather long interview with him too, die Presse a TV-review - as well as Der Standard - on a TV-conversation with him and Martin Kreutner and Irmgard Griss (both also engaged in bessereverwaltung.at, see Weekly 05/2025, Weekly 13/2025 and others) in ORF.