Yesterday, in an after-class discussion with a student, I found myself questioning the value of the concept of emergence, and the way it is embraced not just by complexity theorists but by the sciences at large. Today I found some time to think through the argument a bit more and then boom, this blog post EMERGED.

In short, I feel that the idea of emergence, and much of complexity theory in general, is just a form of “science-plaining”, where science invents its own jargon to “explain” to the humanities (and people at large) what they have known for centuries, while maintaining the untenable position that it “objectively describes the world”.

If you, like me …

• … use the Nextcloud calendar app to syncronize your calendar across devices,
• … like to manage your calendar within Emacs,
• … spend considerable part of the year in different timezones …

… I have great news for you: after years of trial and error, I think I have finally found a workable set-up.

To begin with, this set-up builds upon org-caldav, and the org-agenda. As it turns out, this combo works great in combination with Nextcloud, but there are a couple of tricks that are not mentioned in the documentation.

A Dutch version of this post has been published on doorbraak.eu.

On 4 November 2025, Science Guide reported on the decision by the rector of University Utrecht, Wilco Hazeleger, to allow the founder of the FvD - Thierry Baudet - to speak at a debate night at the university.

This is simultaneously shocking, and completely unsurprising. It is shocking because the academic community has apparently still - after everything that is happening in the world - not built up the necessary immune response to keep these threats out. It is unsurprising because this moral failure of university management has been with us for many years.

Een Nederlanse vertaling van dit stuk verscheen op Doorbraak.

One of the worst things of teaching at the university is that students are constantly graduating. I wish I could prevent you all from graduating.

This is a sticker that I got from students who graduated last year. These were very impressive students. They played an important role in the city-wide protests against the silence and complicity of this society in the face of the ongoing genocide.

• N.B.1: 14 July 2025: I originally posted this on 12 August 2024. But the content is now new and improved.
• N.B.2: A small discussion can be found underneath this Lemmy post.
• N.B.3: To skip the explanation, and immediately create and download your own version of the new graph, click here: https://mishathings.org/co2-graph. It runs on a small server, so you might need to have a bit of patience. Also it works better on a desktop/laptop than on a phone 😬).

A powerful but problematic graph

For some years now, I have seen this graph go around on social media. I think it’s a powerful image, because it shows us so clearly that it is happening in our lifetime and under our watch.

A few days ago I shared this post, which basically adds to the many warnings (within and outside the Fediverse) that the U.S. is quickly descending into fascism. What is new?

One of the (private) responses came Nuwagaba Gift, a 21-year old teacher, community organizer and farmer from Uganda, and we ended up exploring some of the historical details of this Sturmabteilung (SA). Among other things, Nuwagaba pointed out the crazy story of the co-founder and leader of the SA, Ernest Röhm, who, before he was killed in night of the long knives, was recruited by the Bolivian military ataché of the Netherlands to serve in the Bolivian army…

This article tells a fascinating story about how the municipality of Amsterdam tried to build an AI model to help officials detect fraud in welfare support. In particular, the article describes how the municipality tried to do it the right, ethical and fair way by avoiding bias.

The article presents many interesting and critical angles, but I still felt like adding my own two cents.

Some direct thoughts:

Treating everyone equally

Next time you have to explain to someone why it’s better to not eat meat, you can tell them that it is to make sure that the next asteroid impact will not prevent electronic life from knowing the universe.

Let James Lovelock be a vehicle for the universe to say crazy things about itself.

Renegade scientist, deranged technocrat

I have always had a hard time making up my mind about James Lovelock. On the one hand, his Gaia hypothesis has really changed the way I (and many others) think about the remarkable equilibria we are born into. On the other hand, the way his ego and his (largely self-acclaimed?) engineering credentials have consistently manifested in confused appeals to technocracy - “it may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while” - has been misguided and dangerous.

A couple of weeks ago, a few kind students warned me about a post on Instagram: link.¹

I am always open to hear how my ideas and positions are hurtful in ways I do not realize yet. And I believe that when it comes to antisemitism, non-Jewish people like me have a special duty to be extra wary. As I have written here:

In the end, the conflict in Palestine knows many monsters, and they all feed on each other. But many of these monsters came from white, Dutch, German, French etc. non-Jewish people, manifested as the genocidal antisemitic and colonial violence committed abroad and at home. And since we cannot go back to fight these monsters in the past, the second best thing is to fight and resist their manifestations in the present, both at home and abroad.

Given the ongoing antidemocratic #coup in the United States and the ensuing increased security and privacy issues, the University of Amsterdam should move away from using Microsoft servers.

In short:

1. No amount of guarantees from Microsoft that our data remains in the EU can prevent US authorities from accessing our data on its servers.
2. The government of the United States is being taken over by fascist criminals.

Readings to support point 1

• “It is no longer safe to move our governments and societies to US clouds” (Bert Hubert, 23 Feb 2025 link).

The very short version: it is madness to continue transferring the running of European societies and governments to American clouds. Not only is it a terrible idea given the kind of things the “King of America” keeps saying, the legal sophistry used to justify such transfers, like the nonsense letter the Dutch cabinet sent last week, has now been invalidated by Trump himself. And why are we doing this? Convenience. But it is very scary to make yourself 100% dependent on the goodwill of the American government merely because it is convenient. So let’s not.