6.16.2026 – avondvierdaagse

avondvierdaagse
no English words to describe
it’s just gezellig

Adapted from The Guardian article, Dutch children are unusually happy and healthy. Is it because of this walking ritual? by Hannah Docter-Loeb, an Amsterdam-based science journalist who primarily covers science, human health, and sustainability where she writes:

It’s the second night of Avondvierdaagse (which literally means “four-day evening walk”) , organised by a group of neighbourhood volunteers. It’s not a race, but if children complete every night, they get medals, a bouquet of flowers and, if they’re lucky, a lot of sweets. It’s not just Amsterdam; across villages, towns and cities in the Netherlands, hundreds of thousands of Dutch people are doing the same: every year, kids spend four evenings in early summer exploring their neighbourhoods with their school friends and parents as part of the Week van de Avond4daagse. Some places had celebrated earlier; others were walking the following week. A variation of the tradition has even made its way to Suriname, one of the Dutch former colonies. There are also four-day cycling and swimming events. According to the Royal Dutch Walking Association (KWbN), which helps coordinate the events, half a million people take part every year, in 700 locations across the country, powered by tens of thousands of volunteers.

Avondvierdaagse is such a positive event, it’s hard to find any downsides to it. Some have questioned whether the walks are inclusive enough – for people with disabilities, for instance, or those from different cultural backgrounds. In Amsterdam, especially, the events’ participants may not necessarily reflect the diversity of the population, appealing more to higher-income parents in the neighbourhood.

Dutch kids are consistently judged to be some of the happiest in the world. This year, a Unicef report again ranked them number one out of 44 western countries for overall wellbeing, and for mental health. Rich social relations were cited as a key factor. Research has shown that Dutch children have strong connections with their peers. In addition, many Dutch parents work part-time, so have more time to spend with their children. Children also have increased independence: parents let their kids roam more freely, and many start young, cycling to and from school by themselves.

As I leave, Joost Klein’s 2024 Eurovision entry, Europapa (another local kids’ favourite), is playing for the third time in 20 minutes, and no one seems to care, nor do they mind that the weather seems to be turning overcast and rainy. They are more focused on the party. There are no English words to fully describe the feeling of pure joy that encapsulates the area. It’s just gezellig.

I grew up with a dutch heritage as 6 of my 8 great grand parents were born in the Netherlands.

As I grew up in West Michigan, this was only unusual for the fact that I had some great grand parents who weren’t dutch.

My Dad would tell us stories of when he was a child his family would go out to visit the family farm in Jamestown, Michigan and his relatives would try to teach him dutch words and laugh and laugh at his attempted pronunication.

One story that stands out in my mind was my Dad telling how they were all standing around in the kitchen when one of his cousins came in. “Where were you,” Dad said he asked. His cousin responded (this being in the early 1930’s). “I had to go vote. I cast my ballot for Hoover.” Only reason I mention this story was its appropriateness for today.

But I digress.

Getting back to dutch words, what can you do with Avondvierdaagse?

I asked The Google.

Avondvierdaagse is pronounced roughly as “AH-vont-VEER-dahg-seh” in Dutch.

Because it is a compound word meaning “evening four-day walk”, breaking it down into its core components makes it much easier to say:

Phonetic Breakdown –

Avond (Evening) → AH-vont

Ah like the “a” in “father”.

Vont rhymes with the English word “want” (the “d” sounds like a “t” at the end of Dutch words).

Vier (Four) → VEER Sounds exactly like the English word “veer” or “fear” but with a “v”.

Daagse (Days long) → DAHG-seh

Dahg uses the long “ah” sound. The “g” is the tricky guttural Dutch “g”—a soft, raspy throat-clearing sound similar to the “ch” in the Scottish word loch.

Seh uses a short, neutral schwa sound, like the “uh” at the end of “sofa”.

Simple right?

No wonder my relatives laughed at my Dad.

It’s just It’s just gezellig.

Gezellig?

Gezellig (pronounced heh-SELL-ick) is a famous Dutch word with no direct English translation. It roughly means cozy, inviting, or charming, but is most accurately used to describe the warm, pleasant social vibe that comes from being in good company.

The term is central to Dutch culture and lifestyle, capturing any moment of togetherness that feels comfortable and heartening.

It’s a word like this that makes you wonder about growing up in West Michigan with its strong Calvinist traditions.

Calvinism was once described to me as the fear that somewhere, someone was having a good time.

Trying to square this with gezellig is what makes me wonder.

Then I remember.

My ancestors were the ones that left the Netherlands and came to the United States and increased the level of gezellig in both places.

Children set off from Westerpark in Amsterdam for the evening walk. Photograph: Judith Jockel/The Guardian

6.15.2026 – not sustainable

not sustainable
revenue, any says is …
is a con artist

I came across the blog, Where’s Your Ed At by Ed Zitron.

Mr. Zitron is is an English author, podcaster, and public relations specialist. He is a critic of the technology industry, particularly of artificial intelligence companies and the generative artificial intelligence boom of the 2020s.

In his blog post of June 8, 2026, AI Is Slowing Down, Mr. Zitron writes:

When your entire worldview is dictated by what a series of venture capitalists and psuedo-journalists on Twitter want you to believe, it must be difficult to imagine someone having “morals” or “beliefs” or that one might hold a position that wasn’t entirely based on greed or tribalism.

It must be confusing — upsetting, even! — to hear that somebody is willing to accurately and vociferously tear into a tech industry largely controlled by people with no regard for their users or workers, who are willing to bathe their products in mediocrity all because it’s the thing that everybody else is doing.

This is a hysterical era perpetuated by liars, cowards, imbeciles, craven boosters and the easily-fooled. Those excited about generative AI are either the victim or the perpetrator of a con centered around a technology to ingratiate at the highest cost possible.

Twenty-six percent of companies say they have a comprehensive view of their AI costs, while 50% have some visibility and 22% report no visibility or visibility after billing, according to an as-yet-unreleased survey from KPMG.

“It’s a new resource that needs to be managed that didn’t exist quite that way, and we’re seeing exponential growth,” said Steve Chase, KPMG’s global head of AI.

How utterly ridiculous!

Only in the frothiest, most-disconnected economy in history could we have companies spending millions (or tens or hundreds of millions) of dollars on a service without having any visibility into costs until after billing.

This is not a sustainable revenue stream under any circumstances, and anybody who says that it is is either ignorant, a mark or a con artist.

This is revenue made entirely by convincing your customers that something is true (AI is the most revolutionary thing ever!) and keeping them in the dark as long as humanly possible as they run up ridiculous bills, all in the hopes that you’ve brainwashed the executives/paypigs well enough that they’ll never stop.

What he is saying is that companies are spending big bucks to dig deep into AI.

Spending the big bucks … but getting nothing in return.

The only companies making money on AI are companies that are selling AI.

The companies that buy AI to improve the company are seeing no return for their investment.

But they keep pouring the money into AI.

This is not a sustainable revenue stream under any circumstances, and anybody who says that it is is either ignorant, a mark or a con artist.

There is an old metaphor of rats deserting a sinking ship.

It is taken as a sign that it’s all over the for the sinking ship in that even the rats are leaving.

Four days after this blog was published both OpenAI and Anthropic filed the paperwork to go public, starting a race for exit liquidity for two companies that burn billions of dollars a year and have no path to profitability.

In other words, the people who built OpenAI and Anthropic now what to let other folks take over the financial responsibility for the companies.

They do that by going public and letting the public buy up they company.

Of course that lets the people who built OpenAI and Anthropic to pocket all the cash and walk away.

And let the public deal with the fact that the company they just bought is selling something that no one wants.

That leads to the a moment where all the hopes and dreams and plans and such all burst, like a bubble.

I have been reading Andrew Sorkin’s 1929.

It opens with a bunch of Wall Street big wigs lobbying Congress to get rid of that silly rule that forbids the use of stock for collateral for a loan.

How can the little man make a big hit off the stock market if the little man can’t leverage the money he might make on stocks that he hasn’t paid for yet?

Well, we saw how that worked out.

It is happening again and not just little guys.

Mr. Zitron points out that Larry Ellison has also got at least $21 billion in loans collateralized by his Oracle shares, and any doubts around Oracle’s ability to pay for its debts or OpenAI’s ability to pay Oracle for its compute will threaten massive margin calls.

Eyes wide shut folks.

It isn’t going to be pretty.

We might remember the days of $5 a gallon gas … fondly.

6.14.2026 – reminding the world

reminding the world
of its values … that seems like
a radical stance

Adapted from the article, A point of resistance’: the Normandy village that said ‘non’ to Pete Hegseth by Ashifa Kassam (The Guardian, 6/14/2026) where Ms. Kassam writes:

“I think our statement helped people to come out from the woodwork,” Richard said. “If it gave others the courage to speak up and say that they think the same, that they’re not OK with the ideology of the Trump government, that’s a good thing.”

The sentiment was echoed by [Julia , member of the Langrune en Commun, a residents’ association] Breen, who said she was proud to be part of an association that had emerged as a small “point of resistance” against those who had looked to protocol as a reason to remain silent in the face of someone who “promotes rhetoric that is bellicose, racist, supremacist and imperialist”.

She was swift to add, however, that what they had done in Langrune-sur-Mer was far from extreme. “It’s crazy that resistance today is just about reminding the world of its values,” she said. “And that doing so seems like a radical stance.”

As Edmund Burke really said, When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

Doesn’t this just sum it all up?

It’s crazy that resistance today is just about reminding the world of its values.

And that doing so seems like a radical stance.

6.13.2026 – tell me where all

then tell me where all
past years are and teach me to
hear mermaids singing

Go and catch a falling star;
Get with child a mandrake root;
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the Devil’s foot;
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy’s stinging;
And find
What wind
Serves t’advance an honest mind.

Song by John Donne as printed in The Oxford Book of English Verse 1250–1918 (1939 edition) but first published the first edition of Donne’s collected poems in 1633.

Back to 1633 when the poem Song was first printed.

Back to 1989 when I finally got to go to the beach by myself for the first time with the lady.

Tell me where all past years are.

6.12.2026 – come mollygrubs and

come mollygrubs and
collywobbles! come, gloom that
limps and misery

Come, megrims, mollygrubs and collywobbles!
Come, gloom that limps, and misery that hobbles!
Come also, most exquisite melancholiage
As dank and decadent as November foliage!
I crave to shudder in your moist embrace
To feel your oystery fingers on my face

This is my hour of sadness and of soulfulness
And cursed be he who dissipates my dolefulness
I do not desire to be cheered
I desire to retire, I am thinking of growing a beard
A sorrowful beard, with a mournful, a dolorous hue in it
With ashеs and glue in it

I want to be drunk with despair
I want to carеss my care
I do not wish to be blithe
I wish to recoil and writhe
I will revel in cosmic woe
And I want my woe to show
This is the morbid moment
This is the ebony hour

Aroint thee, sweetness and light!
I want to be dark and sour!
Away with the bird that twitters!
All that glitters is jitters!
Roses, roses are gray
Violets cry Boo! and frighten me
Sugar is stimulating
And people conspire to brighten me

Go hence, people, go hence!
Go sit on a picket fence!
Go gargle with mineral oil
Go out and develop a boil!

Melancholy is what I brag and boast of
Melancholy I mean to make the most of
You beaming optimists shall not destroy it
But while I am it, I intend to enjoy it

Go, people, stuff your mouths with soap
And remember, please, that when I mope, I mope!

So Penseroso by Ogden Nash as published in I’m a stranger here myself by Ogden Nash (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1937) and meant to be a response to Il Penseroso (“the thinker”) is a poem by John Milton that opens with a prelude to author’s invocation of Melancholy.

Don’t know about that but gosh and boy howdy, if I could sum it all up right now ….

Melancholy is what I brag and boast of

Melancholy I mean to make the most of

You beaming optimists shall not destroy it

But while I am it, I intend to enjoy it

Go, people, stuff your mouths with soap

And remember, please, that when I mope, I mope!

WHY do I feel this way?

It’s like that quote of Robert Kennedy SENIOR along the lines of ‘I dream big dreams and ask, why not?’

I mope and I welcome megrims, mollygrubs and collywobbles, gloom that limps, and misery that hobbles because, why not?

PS: According to wikipedia, At the time of his death in 1971, The New York Times said his “droll verse with its unconventional rhymes made him the country’s best-known producer of humorous poetry.

I was also interested to learn Mr. Nash had lived for a while in Savannah.

For the introduction to The Savannah Cook Book by Harriet Ross Colquitt (1933), Mr. Nash supplied this:

Pilgrim’s Progress is a good book, and so, I am told, is
Deuteronomy,
But neither is to be compared with this epic of gastronomy.
Some people have to die to get to heaven, and others hitch-
bike in fiery chariots,
But really intelligent people stay home alive and have heaven
served to them out of this volume of Miss Harriet’s,
For as everybody knows, life on Savannah victuals
Is just one long round of Madeira and skictuals.
Certainly every schoolboy knows that famous remark made
by the late Mark Hanna:
“I care not who makes our Presidents as long as I can eat in
Savannah.”
If you like dishes made out of a piece of lettuce and ground-
up peanuts and a maraschino cherry and marshmallow
whip and a banana
You will not get them in Savannah,
But if you seek something headier than nectar and tastier
than ambrosia and more palatable than manna,
Set your teeth, I beg you, in one of these specialties de Savannah.
Everybody has the right to think whose food is the most
gorgeous,
And I nominate Georgia’s.

Can’t say why I decided to include but that it made me smile a little bit on a dark morning.

And that piece, Four Seasons Opus 8 – Concerto No.1 (Spring) Antonio Vivaldi Live • Classic FM • Fri 12th is playing on the radio with Joshua Bell .. surely maybe this is my hour of sadness and of soulfulness, but there has to be more to today than this morbid moment.

Otherwise, And remember, please, that when I mope, I mope!