150. Modern Times
Hello everyone —
This is the 150th edition of my weekly blog, in which I write about technology and culture (sometimes both at the same time). You can read the first one here, which is about how blogger Jason Kottke inspired me. Almost three years later, I still enjoy writing my blogs. I believe the need for authenticity on the internet is growing, and the good old blog is an ideal way to create such a space for yourself, free from algorithms and AI drudgery. So if you’re reading this and wondering whether to start one yourself: go for it!
I.
The documentary series Wakker in Paraguay follows a group who have lost faith in the Dutch government. They have become entangled in bureaucracy, believe that 5G radiation is making them ill, feel they are being followed by cameras on the street, or see the threat of chemtrails in the sky. That is why they are heading far away from here, to Paraguay, to build a new life and be truly free.
They are people like Jeroen Pols, one of the figures behind Viruswaarheid. And Jan Engel, Willem’s brother, who ran a campsite where crime took over. They see Paraguay as the promised land, where they are less bound by rules. Through online channels, they try to bring their ideas to the attention of as many other Dutch people as possible. Perhaps they’ll even persuade them to come to Paraguay, to rent a house there from a Dutchman who’s asking just a bit too much for it.
And indeed, they succeed. Thus, a new Dutch village springs up in Paraguay, populated by people who reinforce each other’s madness. You think: enjoy your freedom. But ultimately, most people have moved to a distant land only to continue complaining about the Netherlands from there.
The series is narrated in five parts by a voice-over as if it were a fairy tale. The first episode begins with an unadulterated “Once upon a time…” The further you get, the more it becomes clear that the Dutch fortune-seeker is indeed chasing a fairy tale. In Paraguay, it turns out that aeroplanes also leave contrails in the sky. There are cameras there too. And during the pandemic, the country went into lockdown there as well.
The makers are confident that viewers will see the irony of this venture for themselves. And I think they succeed in that. The programme leaves no room for a rebuttal of the protagonists’ conspiracy theories. This becomes painfully clear with the naive Mart. His lovely family doesn’t want to lose him, despite their differing worldviews. That’s why they no longer talk about politics. Now all they can do is support him in his increasingly crazy plans, with which he is ruining his own life.
- - -II.
Conversations about Bob Dylan almost never mention Modern Times, the album celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year. I consider it one of his finest records. That’s partly because I became a fan around the time Modern Times was released. What was new back then has since turned into nostalgia, which suits the mood of the music perfectly and has allowed the album to mature beautifully. It’s the sort of record you can really lose yourself in.
Take the track When The Deal Goes Down. You hear mellow folk-jazz and the singer cherishes the fleeting moments of a transient life. In the music video, the melancholy is further emphasised by Scarlett Johansson on 8mm film.
Love and tragedy can never be entirely separate in Bob Dylan’s work. In Nettie Moore — one of his finest songs of recent decades — he sings of a man and his lost love. The melody is absolutely beautiful, and when I hear this, I really cannot understand why people keep insisting that Dylan cannot sing.
The album features tight rock ’n’ roll, meandering folk and rolling blues rhythms. Dylan and his band clearly put a lot of effort into the production and composition of the songs on this album. Just listen to Thunder on the Mountain and Workingman’s Blues #2.
Spirit on the Water ripples gently along like a love song, until you suddenly hear him sing: “I can’t go to paradise no more / I killed a man back there”. You sometimes forget just how witty Dylan actually is.
- - -III.
Tech critic Cory Doctorow writes for The Guardian that he cannot predict when the AI bubble will burst. “No one can predict the future, which is a good thing, since if the future were predictable, that would mean we couldn’t change it.”
Doctorow writes, among other things, about artificial intelligence potentially taking over workers’ jobs. According to him, a company only benefits from this in terms of efficiency if experts in their field are replaced. But then, those are precisely the employees a company should retain, because they are the only ones who can spot when AI makes mistakes.
Ultimately, artists (and bloggers, I might add) needn’t really worry either. An artist can convey a feeling through an artistic medium, such as a song, a poem or a drawing. When someone else experiences that work, Doctorow writes, a derivative of that feeling comes to life.
That is purely human. “AI art is eerie because it seems like there is an intender and an intention behind every word and every pixel, because we have a lifetime of experience that tells us that paintings have painters, and writing has writers. But it is missing something. It has nothing to say, or whatever it has to say is so diluted that it is undetectable.”
PS.
James Blake is releasing his new album Trying Times on 13 March. On his first single, he samples Leonard Cohen’s You Want It Darker with a Welsh choir beneath a suspended ceiling. Excellent.
- - -Maxim February advises Europe in NRC to be critical of how we handle our data and where we leave it lying around. “Data is not the new gold and not the new oil, as investors have long claimed; combined with AI, it is the new regime. Is that sinking in? Nah. Dutch government departments and organisations are still dependent on American digital infrastructure. That means, first and foremost, that, for example, payment systems, transport or port operations could be paralysed from the US.”
A design student from Atlanta began printing her work and sending it by post. “I would share my work on platforms like Instagram and feel as though it disappeared into a void”, she tells Dazed. “That experience became even more demoralising when AI-generated work began receiving more visibility than human-made art.” It started with a small group of 25 people; now it’s a community of 1,600 who also send each other letters, stickers and cards. I’m quite taken with the idea of sending people a handwritten letter every now and then. Could we still do that? And what would you put in it that you haven’t already messaged each other?
An atmospheric BBC video about Karl Ove Knausgård. Surrounded by friends who write, he sees in them a literary power that he lacks. “It has to do with self-confidence and belief,” he says. “I don’t have that. I have eight hundred pages lying around with the beginnings of stories. It’s like going to work every day and failing.” Until he starts writing about the struggle itself.
- - -You’ve just read blog post №150, written during the week of 19–25 January 2026. Subscribe to my newsletter and you’ll receive it in your inbox every Sunday, free of charge.