Field Note — Pavia

A lecture hall at the University of Pavia. First-year political science students.
Italy. Eastern Europe. Africa. The Middle East. When I started speaking about the United Nations, the room became very quiet.
So quiet you could hear a pin drop.I did not celebrate the UN.
I reflected on it.Not as a perfect institution.
But as a political arena — […]

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Field Note — Armona

Yesterday I returned to “my” island, Armona. It welcomed me with its light.
Clear. Wide. Quiet. So different from the cities I moved through over the past seventeen days. Milan — a small independent publishing house.
Pavia — political science students, thoughtful, restless, searching for orientation.
Berlin — conversations about the soul of cities, about meaning beyond data.
A […]

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Sorry, Excel: Diese Stadt fühlt sich falsch an!

Zusammenfassung eines Impulsvortrages, den ich am 2.3 in Berlin auf einem Basecamp zum Thema Stadtwerte halte – lange Version siehe unten: In meinem Talk geht es um eine einfache, aber unbequeme Frage: Reichen gute Kennzahlen, um eine gute Stadt zu machen? Wir messen heute alles. Dichte. Sicherheit. Mobilität. CO₂. Produktivität. Und das ist auch sinnvoll. […]

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Why the United Nations Matters — and Why It Struggles

Next week I will give a talk tailored for students, 1st year bachelor, political science; at the Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche e Sociali, University of Pavia February 26, 2026 In this talk, I providesa critical analysis of the United Nations, framing it not as a failing technical machine but as a political arena reflecting the […]

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Field Note: The One File

There are moments when I catch myself wondering: What if it isn’t ideology that unites people — but disgust? Not left.Not right.Not North.Not South. But a shared realization that those who call themselves “powerful” have been protecting something far smaller than power. The Jeffrey Epstein files sit like a stone in the collective stomach. They […]

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Field note: On permission to move

To apply for a Schengen visa with an ECR stamp in your passport — a mark used for Indian citizens whose international travel is officially classified as requiring protection and supervision — is not a single act. It is an accumulation.The fact that such a classification is physically stamped into a passport, visible at every […]

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04.02.2026 – Olhão, Portugal

I had just landed from Germany.Unusually heavy rains and storms for this region — the kind they say hasn’t happened like this for decades. From Olhão to Armona, the ferry crosses the Ria Formosa Natural Park.There are usually four ferries a day.That day, only one was running — and I arrived just in time for […]

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Into the Canyon, Out of My Comfort Zone

The Nomad is a growing collection of stories, fascinations, encounters, observations, lived moments — and the quiet (and not-so-quiet) joy hidden inside them.They’re all rooted in my life, wandering freely between places, people, questions, and unexpected turns. Many of these stories eventually find their way into the book — others insist on staying a little […]

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“The Danger Is Not AI — It’s Humans Acting Like Machines.” (says AI :-) )

Today I had an intutive chat with CHATgpt – I was watching an interview with Federico Faggin, an Italian-American physicist, engineer, inventor and entrepreneur. He is best known for designing the first commercial microprocessor, the Intel 4004. I was interested in his understanding of consciousness. So watching the interview below I thought: “Wow, it must […]

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My Early Childhood

The Nomad is a growing collection of stories, fascinations, encounters, observations, lived moments — and the quiet (and not-so-quiet) joy hidden inside them.They’re all rooted in my life, wandering freely between places, people, questions, and unexpected turns. Many of these stories eventually find their way into the book — others insist on staying a little […]

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