iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 8h

Pinned message on X: See also here: mu.social/profile/vand...

Andy Scollick on X: Due to anti-Ukrainian, therefore, pro-Russian shenanigans over on Bluesky, I'm back! 🤷

Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 29/09/2026

Grazie. Ho trovato utile questa riflessione di un giornalista olandese (Joris Luyendijk) nel giornale olandese NRC in merito ad una posizione analoga da attivisti olandesi che domenica hanno organizzato una manifestazione contro "la febbre di guerra" e "il riarmo".

una posizione analoga da parte degli attivisti olandesi (che domenica hanno organizzato una manifestazione pubblica)

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 18/09/2026

Oggi un articolo di una pagina su Corriere Torino sullo stesso argomento (autore: Giacomo Pagani). @arlovan.bsky.social

Sono tutti data center o è solo speculazione?

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 18/09/2026

Er is ook veel speculatie, zoals aangeklaagd in Corriere della Sera vandaag. Bedrijven (vaak buiten de EU), zoals bvb. Logistics Capital Partners, nemen een aankoopoptie op tal van terreinen en vragen dan vergunningen aan. De vergunde terreinen worden dan met grote marges verkocht aan een Big Tech.

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 18/09/2026

En deze titel in het artikel is ook fout.

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 04/08/2026

C'è un altro aspetto sottovalutato: l'individuazione dei futuri siti. Gli italiani potrebbero essere sempre più favorevoli all'energia nucleare, ma non vogliono che gli impianti sorgano nelle vicinanze delle zone in cui vivono, come ha affermato Stefano Buono sul Financial Times qualche giorno fa.

Polls suggest Italians are far more open to domestic nuclear
power production than in the past. A June YouTrend poll
found that 57 per cent of respondents were positive about
Meloni’s attempted nuclear revival, while 31 per cent viewed
it negatively.
For all the current enthusiasm, Newcleo’s Buono says public
support could waver when it comes to finding future sites for
a new generation of small reactors. Members of Meloni’s
coalition admit that another referendum cannot be ruled out
either.
“Italians don’t like any power installation — wind turbines,
solar power plants or nuclear reactors,” Buono said. When it
comes to it, “we will be having the same problems as
everyone else”.

Financial Times, 2 August 2006

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 29/06/2026

Devo esprimere i miei più sinceri complimenti a @greisonanatomy.bsky.social . È riuscita a spiegare argomenti complessi con metafore semplici oggi sul Corriere, che si possono raccontare in un bar o a cena, cosa che non è affatto scontata. Complimenti!

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 19/06/2026

Clearly from the top. It's the only way to align moving 10 of their top institutional accounts in such a short time frame. The EU encouraged its citizens to migrate to a provider with insecure identity verification. 😨 @liabelle.me @thisismissem.social @humanrightsindex.bsky.social @elenarossini.com

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 10/06/2026

The decision to not allow anonymous usage has its drawbacks, to say it mildly. www.foreignaffairs.com/europe/end-o... @wsocial.eu @leafplaza.eu

In February, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz advocated the end of online anonymity. “I want to see real names on the Internet. I want to know who is speaking,” he said at a Christian Democratic Union event in February. Merz’s proposal—deeply at odds with the Enlightenment tradition embodied by Spinoza, Voltaire, and Locke, all of whom relied on anonymous publication to defy censorship—would enable even greater speech restrictions than Germany already imposes.

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 20/03/2026

New @iea.org report identifies 10 energy demand measures that can be implemented quickly by governments, businesses and households. www.iea.org/news/new-iea...

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 05/03/2026

Attached one of the images being shared, followed by a zoom-ed in version and how the pilar looks in reality.

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 18/01/2026

Hier is een langer artikel over die Board op Haaretz vandaag. Goede analyse en in die context vraag ik me nog steeds af waarom Kaag die keuze heeft gemaakt.

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 06/01/2026

Giuliano Da Empoli: "Trump didn’t topple the Venezuelan regime, he reinforced it by striking a deal with it."

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 04/01/2026

Not to mention the EU's lame response. @brunomacaes.bsky.social suggest some future measures that could have been announced in case it comes to that, but haven't.

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 04/01/2026

While defencelessly facing a Greenland escalation.

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 31/12/2025

Il titolo su Instagram non corrisponde al contenuto dell'articolo.

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 28/12/2025

The analogy of the bottom-up news proliferation that happened after the invention of the printing press which ended up in highly concentrated media ownership comes to mind (see attached example from France). We just went through it much, much faster this time.

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 27/12/2025

Today @billemmott.bsky.social, former editor-in-chief of The Economist, shared in his La Stampa column that he is chair of the board of the Global Disinformation Index.

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 27/12/2025

Twee commentaren van Oekraïeners op r/Ukraine (Reddit):

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 24/12/2025

Arnauld Bertrand on X: If the EU doesn't do anything to respond forcefully it's an institutional message they send to all their rank and file: "don't do anything to anger the Americans because we won't have your back."

This is a huge escalation. For the first time ever the US started sanctioning former senior EU officials, namely former European Commissioner Thierry Breton.

If anyone doubted there was a Euro-US split going on, this is yet another hostile action by the US that makes it loud and clear.

The official reason is, as expected, completely Orwellian. They sanction Breton because of his involvement in the Digital Services Act (DSA), which they claim was "extraterritorial legislation" even though it was designed to regulate content on European soil, viewed by European users.

You can perfectly disagree with the DSA for plenty of reasons. But the fact is that it was policing content shown in Europe to Europeans (wherever the content may have come from).

What the Americans are doing here however - sanctioning former EU officials for drafting EU legislation in Europe aimed at Europeans - is textbook extraterritoriality. Hence the "Orwellian" nature of this move by the US: accusing others of precisely what you're doing yourself.

Americans say this is all about "free speech", a narrative which a frightening amount of people seem to believe. When the truth is the exact opposite: this move is about ensuring American tech platforms remain the unchallenged gatekeepers of Europe's information space, free from any oversight by Europeans themselves.

And, case in point, the very fact that so many people believe this "free speech" narrative is proof in and of itself of just how effective these platforms are at shaping narratives.

For the record I'm not arguing in the least that the DSA was a good piece of legislation or that Thierry Breton is some sort of tragic hero here. What I am arguing in favor of, as I consistently do, is sovereignty. I heavily dislike the EU in its present form precisely because they systematically kowtow to the US at the expense of European interests.

That's a logical error I see way too many people make: they hate the EU for the same reasons I do and the…

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 20/12/2025

Top Dutch Brussels correspondent on how the Americans have put incredible pressure on EU government leaders to ensure that they do not touch Russian assets at Euroclear. (English translation of key paragraph attached.)

Insiders say that in recent weeks the Americans have put incredible pressure on European government leaders to ensure that they do not touch Russian assets at Euroclear – not even as collateral for loans to Ukraine. Although the Europeans have started exploring the Euroclear route because Trump pulled the financial rug out from under Ukraine and they now have to take care of Ukraine's maintenance on their own, the Americans resorted to crude threats to dissuade them. Washington would push countries that have money at Euroclear (from Hungary to BRICS countries such as Saudi Arabia and Brazil) to withdraw it and even to stop using the euro as a reserve currency. The exodus from Euroclear is already underway. Washington also threatened to cut off European countries and companies from American clouds, satellite systems or access to Wall Street. Some EU countries, which saw no merit in the plan, were fine with the Americans taking such a hard line. But the fact remains: these are blatant extortion tactics by an ally that has ensured security in Europe for eighty years. Now it is throwing Europe under the bus. Compared to this, the Greek crisis was child's play.

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 13/12/2025

In general, about 15% of traffic to news sites comes from social media and that number is declining. Dutch newspaper @nrc.nl report today that it was less than 10% for the traffic to their site. www.echobox.com/resources/bl...

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 13/12/2025

Hoe NRC vergelijkt met andere NLse en Europese news sites

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 11/12/2025

European news sites on social media (8 countries, 56 selected media) - X dominates as microblogging platform, but a crisis is looming: some major news European outlets have archived their X accounts over the last year, for reasons of disinformation... [1/6]

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 08/12/2025

Same with the European media (attached are today's numbers for key media in 9 countries, numbers represent 1000 of followers).

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 08/12/2025

The social media accounts of European media (numbers of key media in 9 countries) are utterly dominated by X and Instagram. Mastodon and Bluesky barely count. (in 1000 of followers)

The social media accounts of European media (numbers of 9 countries) are utterly dominated by X and Instagram. Mastodon and Bluesky barely count.
(in 1000 of followers)

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 06/12/2025

The same happened to Francesca Albanese on 9 July 2025. Now Elon Musk is threatening "the individuals who took this action against [him]". What if Rubio follows up?

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 19/10/2025

It didn't go unnoticed on the other side of the pond

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 08/08/2025

"generate a map of Europe with each country named"

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 08/08/2025

E nemmeno molto bene. La gente si è chiesta quanti b ci sono in "blueberry" (3 secondo Chatgpt 5). Le ho fatto produrre una mappa dell'Europa con i nomi dei paesi e il risultato è stato illuminante.

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 19/07/2025

Cognitive miserliness, the tendency to seek the least effortful way to solve a problem, is rooted in the term "miser", a person who hoards wealth and spends as little money as possible. @economist.com www.economist.com/science-and-...

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 28/06/2025

The payoff of critical thinking in the new world of AI (in @fastcompany.com) www.fastcompany.com/91346227/why...

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 28/06/2025

Interview of @jessiesinger.bsky.social on her new book "There Are No Accidents" www.vox.com/23016529/the... www.simonandschuster.com/books/There-... (It brings to mind "Vision Zero", an initiative started in Sweden to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries).

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 26/06/2025

"How ordinary people use a product or service [like AI chatbots] in the real world may diverge wildly from the designers’ intentions in the lab". Article by @johnthornhill.bsky.social in the @financialtimes.com www.ft.com/content/aaa5...

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 25/06/2025

Accenture: By 2030 carbon emissions for AI may account for 3.4% of total global emissions—an 11-fold increase in one decade www.accenture.com/content/dam/...

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 08/06/2025

Really disturbed by @shayan86.bsky.social of BBC Verify who reposted on X - without any comment - an IDF (!) video that shows there are Hamas tunnels underneath the European hospital in Gaza, despite the video showing obvious cuts. I hope he can articulate (or that his account was hacked).

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Mark Vanderbeeken @vanderbeeken.app.leafplaza.eu · 05/06/2025

If you use LLMs to conduct polls or user research to understand what people say, think or do, and you are not sure that your data are 100% human-generated, results will be biased towards the mean, and this bias will grow over time.

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