nous sommes quelques grammes sur des fils tendus

lignes de terre lignes de ciel

divergence au partage des nuages

faut-il vraiment ouvrir nos ailes au vent d'orage

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photo © Armelle Le Maréchal @Armellemanu@pixelfed.fr

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nous sommes aveugles poteaux ancrés sur les hauts fonds où se brisent les vagues

nous tenons

l'eau rageuse et l'écume sur nous sans cesse s'écroulent

nous tenons sur une ligne invisible qui va jusqu'aux entrailles de la mer

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photo © @arkadiusz@pixelfed.social

We tasted the filtration of tears cascading along the mountainous frown where soil shuddered in abandoned nurturing. The salty residue that cleaved us as parched was but a remnant of a memory long set aside. I felt the strength in your hand diminish as if each vein had already desiccated in an affront to our floundering, but I was stoic in my denial of such endings.

“No one escapes their raison d’être, my pet.”

Your voice soothed with its molasses drawl, but I heard the brittle cracks flaking beneath each syllable. I felt the reaper galloping through the shadow of your existence. I trembled in frustration of an ancient oath no soul should be held obedient to, but I remained silent as expected. It was the least I could do just this once.

You continued, as if saying the words aloud mattered. As if my ears might find your desecration more acceptable when spoken from your own lips. “Those of us gifted the extraordinary glimpse of all that shifts are duty bound to step forward when the short-lived forget.”

I bit down on the inside of my cheek in order to swallow the growing dissent bubbling at the heart of my existence. The coppery aggravation was of little distraction to the iron-soaked beads I could smell sinking beneath our feet. I could smell your peace. Instead of comforting, it rended me with a violent upswelling.

Your fingers tightened briefly; something already vacated from their hold. Darkness smothered my awareness as I heard your voice beseeching forgiveness within my mind.

When I awakened, it was as if you never existed. Never laughed. Never warred. Never loved... would never tenderly scold my impetuous ways again. I lashed out at the ground which held you from me. On skinned knees, I beat at the freshly turned harvest. My screams became the echoes in the wind. But none of it mattered.

You were still, and always would be, no more.

© 2026 AnOublietteofThought. All rights reserved.

Ein anspruchsvoller Fachtext, ein voller Terminkalender und eine Frage an die KI. Sekunden später erscheint eine Erklärung, die Begriffe klärt, Argumente ordnet und das Wesentliche zusammenfasst. Sie klingt einleuchtend, vielleicht sogar vertraut. Wir lesen, nicken und wenden uns der nächsten Aufgabe zu. Nur eine Frage bleibt offen: Könnte ich das jetzt auch ohne sie erklären?

Wer KI für solche Aufgaben nutzt, kennt diese Erleichterung. Wo vorher ein schwieriger Gedankengang stand, liegt nun eine verständliche Darstellung. Das ist ein echter Nutzen. Aber wie viel davon haben wir selbst verstanden, und wie viel verstehen wir nur, solange die Erklärung vor uns liegt?

Beliebt ist nicht gleich wirksam

Ein Experiment von Pia Kreijkes und ihrem Forschungsteam zeigt, warum sich die Frage lohnt [1]. An sieben englischen Schulen befassten sich Jugendliche im Alter von 14 bis 15 Jahren mit zwei historischen Texten zur Apartheid und zur Kubakrise. Die Daten von rund 350 Teilnehmenden gingen in die Auswertung ein. Die Jugendlichen wurden zufällig zwei Gruppen zugeteilt. Alle nutzten bei einem Text einen KI-Chatbot. Beim zweiten Text fertigten sie entweder eigene Notizen an oder kombinierten Chatbot und Notizen. Drei Tage später wurde geprüft, was sie verstanden hatten und behalten konnten.

Mit eigenständigen Notizen schnitten die Jugendlichen besser ab als mit dem Chatbot allein: beim Verständnis der Zusammenhänge, beim Behalten von Einzelinformationen und beim freien Erinnern. Die Kombination aus Chatbot und Notizen brachte gegenüber der ausschliesslichen KI-Nutzung ebenfalls Vorteile beim Textverständnis und beim Behalten, nicht aber nachweisbar beim freien Erinnern. Die beiden Notizvarianten wurden nicht direkt gegeneinander getestet.

Beim Erleben der Lernaufgabe zeichnete sich ein anderes Bild ab. In der Gruppe, die beide Lernformen ausprobiert hatte, wurde der Chatbot häufiger bevorzugt als das Anfertigen eigener Notizen. Viele Jugendliche empfanden ihn auch als hilfreicher. Die Studie erhob allerdings nicht direkt, wie viel die Jugendlichen ihrer eigenen Einschätzung nach gelernt hatten. Sie belegt somit nicht, dass die Jugendlichen ihren eigenen Lernerfolg überschätzten. Wie lässt sich dennoch erklären, dass sie eine Lernform bevorzugten, während die andere zu besseren Testergebnissen führte?

Die Anstrengung, die zum Lernen gehört

Einen möglichen Erklärungsansatz liefert eine andere Studie. Louis Deslauriers und sein Team verglichen 2019 in universitären Physikkursen aktives #Lernen mit klassischen Vorlesungen, die von erfahrenen, gut bewerteten Lehrpersonen gehalten wurden [2]. Die Studierenden, die selbst Aufgaben bearbeiten mussten, erzielten bessere Testergebnisse. Gleichzeitig hatten sie das Gefühl, weniger gelernt zu haben. Hier wurde die persönliche Einschätzung des Lernerfolgs tatsächlich erhoben. Die Forschenden führen die Diskrepanz teilweise darauf zurück, dass die zusätzliche geistige Anstrengung als Zeichen schlechteren Lernens fehlgedeutet wurde.

Eine verständlich dargebotene Information lässt sich mühelos nachvollziehen. Etwas ganz anderes ist es, denselben Gedanken ohne Vorlage zu erklären, seine Voraussetzungen zu benennen oder ein Gegenbeispiel zu finden. Dann wird aus dem Wiedererkennen einer Erklärung eine eigenständige Denkleistung. Dass Vertrautheit mit einem Text leicht als eigenes Verständnis fehlinterpretiert werden kann, ist in der Lernpsychologie bekannt. Diese Fehleinschätzung lässt sich als Illusion des Verstehens beschreiben.

Robert und Elizabeth Bjork haben solche Unterschiede zwischen unmittelbarer Leichtigkeit und langfristigem Lernerfolg unter dem Begriff Desirable Difficulties beschrieben [3]. Manche Lernhandlungen wirken zunächst anstrengender, fördern unter geeigneten Bedingungen aber das spätere Erinnern. Wenn wir eigene Notizen verfassen, müssen wir auswählen, Beziehungen herstellen und Formulierungen finden. Nicht jede Mühe hilft: Wer an fehlendem Vorwissen scheitert, lernt dadurch nicht automatisch mehr. Entscheidend ist, ob eine Anforderung eine sinnvolle Verarbeitung auslöst.

Auch die Notizen im Experiment von Kreijkes et al. zeigen, weshalb das wichtig ist. Bei rund einem Viertel der Jugendlichen, die Chatbot und Notizen kombinierten, fanden die Forschenden umfangreiche Formulierungsüberschneidungen zwischen den Notizen und den KI-Antworten. Das beweist nicht, wie ein einzelner Gedanke entstanden ist. Es deutet aber darauf hin, dass manche Jugendliche fertige Formulierungen übernahmen, statt eigene zu entwickeln.

Gegen #KI als Lernhilfe spricht das nicht. Jugendliche stellten dem Chatbot auch Fragen, die über die Ausgangstexte hinausführten und in den Tests nicht berücksichtigt wurden. In einer weiteren Untersuchung mit Mathematikaufgaben zeigte sich zudem, wie wichtig die Gestaltung der KI-Unterstützung ist [4]. Während ein gewöhnlicher Chatbot die spätere Leistung ohne KI beeinträchtigte, zeigte sich bei einem auf Hinweise ausgerichteten KI-Tutor kein messbarer Unterschied zur Kontrollgruppe. Der Tutor verhinderte damit weitgehend den beobachteten Nachteil, ohne einen zusätzlichen Lerngewinn nachzuweisen.

Kreijkes et al. untersuchten Jugendliche bei einer kurzen Geschichtsaufgabe. Für den Chatbot wurde GPT-3.5 Turbo eingesetzt. Ob Erwachsene mit heutigen Modellen gleich abschneiden würden, ist offen. Für den eigenen Lernalltag bietet sich dennoch eine einfache Unterscheidung an: Unterstützung annehmen, ohne die gesamte gedankliche Verarbeitung abzugeben.

Ein möglicher Ablauf sieht so aus:

1. Selbst lesen: Den Text zunächst aufmerksam erschliessen und eigene Fragen festhalten.
2. Gezielt nachfragen: Die KI für unklare Begriffe, fehlende Zusammenhänge oder eine andere Perspektive nutzen.
3. Ohne Vorlage erklären: Das KI-Fenster schliessen und die Kerngedanken aus dem Gedächtnis in eigenen Worten wiedergeben.

Der letzte Schritt entspricht dem Prinzip der Retrieval Practice: Eigenständiges Abrufen kann das langfristige Behalten verbessern, wie unter anderem Roediger und Karpicke gezeigt haben [5]. Die gesamte Abfolge ist damit noch nicht experimentell geprüft.

Eine Erklärung kann uns den Zugang zu einem Thema erleichtern. Ob wir es gelernt haben, zeigt sich eher, wenn sie nicht mehr vor uns liegt. Könnte ich das jetzt auch ohne sie erklären?

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💬 Kommentieren (nur für write.as-Accounts)

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Quellen [1] P. Kreijkes et al., «Effects of LLM use and note-taking on reading comprehension and memory: A randomised experiment in secondary schools», Computers & Education, Bd. 243, Art. 105514, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2025.105514

[2] L. Deslauriers et al., «Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom», Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Bd. 116, Nr. 39, S. 19251–19257, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1821936116

[3] E. L. Bjork und R. A. Bjork, «Making Things Hard on Yourself, But in a Good Way: Creating Desirable Difficulties to Enhance Learning», in Psychology and the Real World, S. 56–64, 2011. https://bjorklab.psych.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2016/11/Making-Things-Hard-on-Yourself-but-in-a-Good-Way-20111.pdf

[4] H. Bastani et al., «Generative AI without guardrails can harm learning: Evidence from high school mathematics», Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Bd. 122, Nr. 26, Art. e2422633122, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2422633122

[5] H. L. Roediger und J. D. Karpicke, «Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention», Psychological Science, Bd. 17, Nr. 3, S. 249–255, 2006. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01693.x

Bildquelle Antoine Chintreuil (1814–1873): Der Regenschauer, Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt, Public Domain (Wikimedia Commons).

Disclaimer Teile dieses Texts wurden mit Deepl Write (Korrektorat und Lektorat) überarbeitet. Für die Recherche in den erwähnten Werken/Quellen und in meinen Notizen wurde Gemini Notebook (ehem. NotebookLM) von Google verwendet.

Topic #Maschinenwelten | #Erwachsenenbildung

We zeggen maar wat Iedereen praat elkaar na Wat weten we écht?

Last night I dreamt a friend and I were in the game Dungeon Crawler. We weren't cartoons, but we were costumed similarly. I think it was more identity within the dream than actual costume.

He was a pirate. His claw was more like a fly fishing pole and lasso had a baby. He'd cast, and it'd loop around and around gathering items. He had a cursing parrot that stooped atop his left shoulder, an eyepatch that allowed him to see through muck in the tank, two detonation rubies, a polly wants a cracker that'd crumble hell onto the enemies, and a single gold dubloon that he'd flip just before attacking with a snazzy quip. When he hit their head just right, their mouths would fly open and gold coins would spill out. His parrot would squawk and fly after them.

I was a cracked porcelain cat doll whose stuffing was escaping from random patch jobs because I kept tearing myself apart. I'd hiss, “Get this gold off of me!” then widen a crack by flinging it at the enemy. My right hand/paw was mechanized. Claws would fly out and snatched items from the tank. When it'd fill with liquid, I'd jump on the edge and walk precariously while singing, “Is kitten going to take a bath or make a mess with all her wrath?” The parrot would sometimes try to startle me in by biting my tail. When it didn't succeed, I'd snatch one of its feathers and throw it like a dart.

We died on the twentieth floor. Probably because I have yet to make it past floor twenty in reality. I got close right before I went to sleep. I had the shark down to 32 with my necromancer. He splatted me hard and dropped me by almost 90 points. Maybe next time. My latest strategy almost worked. I will be sticking with it for the most part.

After we died, we ended up in a haunted house. That part is blurry, but it turned out that we were the ones doing the haunting. We amused ourselves by sending the investigators on wild goose chases or moving their equipment. It was totally harmless pranks.

Strange dreams for sure.

I think I'm going to have another go at that shark, then go back to sleep. Realistically, I'll probably only play a few floors.

© 2026 AnOublietteofThought. All rights reserved.

The binary electoral system is causing some excitement. Team blue has won and taking over the house and senate in the USA. I’m guessing not a lot of significant change will come about from it. We shall see. Both parties are needed to control the population and advance the overall agendas. If you have paid even mild attention to politics in the USA the last 20 years give-or-take haven’t you noticed this? It doesn’t matter who dominates the house, senate, or presidency — it continues along the same path. Bigger government, the wealth accumulates to the few, the war machine is well fed, war on drugs continues, massive incarceration rates, bullying nations that don’t fall in line with US policy, and so forth. A few things swing around to keep people angry with the other team and thinking their votes matter, but most of that is fairly minor compared to the big problems in my view. I pay so little attention these days that I couldn’t name one person running in the midterms. I used to be heavily infatuated with it all. I still pay enough attention to hear about some of the generalities. I should probably pay even less attention, but then this post wouldn’t be written! That would probably be for the best anyways, you all would probably rather hear about our lovely turkeys. They are hilarious and curious creatures, I quite enjoy them in our life.

Article on the uniparty system.

The last round of elections people voted team red, Trump and Trumpers, because they believed in the MAGA jargon. They actually believed that Trump was going to end regime change and endless wars. I think there is a tiny chance that is happening, but only because the failure in the middle east may end in the USA leaving the region entirely. So maybe he is playing 4D chess? I certainly don’t think he’s any sort of genius doing intelligent things, more of a puppet following orders…

So this midterm election seems to be an attempt by Trump’s subjects (the people of the USA) to hold Trump accountable. Perhaps the hope is that congress will have some courage and try and stop the war in Iran. Or bind Trump up in legal battles with attempts to impeach over international crimes. But that would set the precedent that their next president can’t break international laws, and they might not want to do that or press too hard on that idea. Aren’t you glad the midterms are over? Are you ready for the presidential campaigns? I’m not, that makes many people quite insane for a while. All sorts of false hopes flair up, anger of the other team, silly ads, and a lot of signs destined for the dump clutter the landscape. It’s depressing thinking about this cyclical part of society. Turkeys are way cooler! I opened the turkey run area today and the big tom took forever to go out. They were all slow and cautious, the first one out was a rooster. We put our roosters over with the turkeys to give the chickens a break from those crazy men. The girls started laying more eggs quickly, we’ll probably only put men with those ladies in the spring when we want chicks raised.

It seems very clear to me that all of the nations on earth are corrupt and evil. None of them are following the Laws of God, they make up their own laws to fix God’s plan. They do quite a bit of it by just changing the language some. “Do not kill” turns into we can have a standing army for defense. Oh, and don’t forget that the best defense is offense so lets go defend ourselves by killing people over there. “Do not steal” turns into, well we need schools and roads right? So lets tax everyone by coercive means and give government the common purse to do all sorts of things, including the funding of murder. The Messiah elevates the Laws of God into the true intent, the higher Laws of the Kingdom of Heaven are laid out in the Sermon on the Mount.

In times past people were getting tired of being oppressed by their governments which often also claimed religious authority over them as well. The Magna Carta is one early rendition of this expression of desired human rights. It came about mostly by pressure from Barons to the king for some reform and assurances of sorts. Another big event was the so-called “Glorious Revolution” in England that brought about the Bill of Rights of 1689. Then the USA came out with their Bill of Rights or first ten amendments to their constitution. Read them in full below if interested.

The Magna Carta

Great Britain Bill of Rights 1689

USA Bill of Rights

There are more rights of man ideas all around the world. These are some big ones that set some precedent that other nations followed. It came about to satisfy the common man, people get tired of oppression. I’d like more declarations of human rights to come about and it would be nice if it would keep government from overreaching and oppressing its subjects. The governments weasel their ways around as much of it as they can, but at least it’s good for humanity to express they ought to have rights. It is kinda sad that many of these declarations of the rights of humanity aren’t really recognized unless governments announce those rights. Governments still feel like they are the supreme authority and Sovereign over all the people they pretend to represent, so if they don’t declare the right then people don’t have it. I believe rights to be truly unalienable, not granted by men or groups of men but granted by God. Even if the governments do not acknowledge our rights, we have many. The right to grow and raise our own food. Even if you live in an area that would stop you from raising chickens and turkeys, it is a fundamental right. Those who would stop you are insane. I suppose if you live in an apartment you might be waiving that right. It would be cruel to try and raise a turkey in an apartment, they need to go outside. It would be cruel to try and raise a human in an apartment too…

In my view the state has become the Church to the common man. The political events often look quite like evangelical church events. It’s kinda creepy. The difference is that when an evangelical group gets together and support their local pastor it doesn’t effect those who don’t participate. When people go and support their local or federal politician it certainly can. When people go and vote in the lesser of two evils whichever evil person wins goes and ignores the Laws of God and passes their own laws that effect those around them. Taxes (theft) are imposed, fraudulent money is generated (expansion of fiat money), murdering takes place by law enforcement to non-violent criminals, people are imprisoned for non-violent offenses, people are murdered in other nations by war acts, and much more. These are real and disgusting results of people gathering together to support the lesser of two evils. Turkeys are much less evil, chickens not so much.

So I’d suggest that if you are a religious person to stop supporting the church called “The State.” The false god that claims authority over all. Instead join the Kingdom of God as you see it. If you are like me and believe in the Messiah then have Him as your King and Sovereign. Follow His Laws and promote His Kingdom. If you believe in another religion and you see it has better morals and ethics than the kingdom of man claiming you, maybe if you followed those morals and ethics and rejected the kingdom of man better things would come about. I believe if everyone lived the higher Laws of God in whatever scriptures or religion they thought most correct the Kingdom of God would blossom for all of us. And that false authority of the state would put its tail between its legs and loose it’s corrupt grip over mankind. It would either have to become a moral and ethical voluntary system, or it would disappear.

I don’t expect this anytime soon, but I’m getting a head start on it. I don’t vote. I don’t consent, agree, or see any politician worthy of a vote. Are any of them living and preaching the Sermon on the Mount? Are any of them in the position to end all taxes? Stop all imprisonment of non-violent “criminals?” End the fraudulent money system? End all wars? Stand up against the oligarchical powers and industrial complexes? And for real, most of the politicians are complete liars anyways. They say whatever soothes the people, then do very little of what they said and a whole lot contrary.

Let’s more fully engage in and be part of the Kingdom of God. You don’t have to vote in the lesser of two, three, or thirty-three evils. All of them are just evil men and women (many psychopathic and the majority narcissistic) that will be part of the systems of oppression on you and your neighbor and all mankind. If you voted this last round and your choice/choices won, then pay attention to what they do. Does it really make things any better? If not maybe reconsider next round. Repent. Repenting is as easy as seeing the error in our ways, and then correcting that. Stop being fully engaged in the kingdom of men – aka the kingdom of Satan. Instead be led by God and let the Spirit guide you. Let God’s will come through and His Kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven.

Even if you are an agnostic or atheist and see problems with religion, (I too see problems with organized religion, especially in the past when merged as church and state), why be so engaged in the rigged system? We don’t really get to choose our ideal candidate, the choices are selected for us. Those who make it into the selection are overall vetted by the corporate overlords funding their campaigns. So what else could an agnostic or atheist spend their time doing that is more worthwhile than following politicians and voting for them? The same thing as a believer of any religion… Maybe reading blogs, eating as many tacos as they can in under 30 minutes, playing with their children, playing with a pet, getting a pet to play with, gardening, making a meal for a loved one, protesting against war, visiting a non-violent criminal in prison, visiting a violent criminal in prison, donating time to a charity they love, building a turkey coop (just finished ours!), staring at a wall, closing your eyes at a wall, or countless other things.

Wasn’t the little turkey blips much better than silly politics? If you think so then it’s evidence that you should get turkeys and ignore those turkeys and cocks running for office! I think they are called politics because if you get too serious about it you get multiple tics (poly-tic).

Cheers!

Am i still frustrated about light? yes. will i complain about it today as well? maybe. but lets talk about something new ive experienced yesterday. while i was heading to work, exhausted and slow, wrapped with bandages under a suit like a poorly packaged present. my hands werent doing much better either. but anyway, i was heading inside when i noticed someone standing by the door i was about to open. they seemed to be waiting for me to open it, presumably so they could walk in without opening it themselves. very reasonable. i didnt really look at them. i was tired and barely paid attention to anything going on around me, so i opened the door and held it for them. they walked in and said, rather quietly, “thank you.” and that was it. nothing happened. i didnt even say “you’re welcome.” i continued walking, they continued walking and i went about my day. just a normal interaction between two people who wouldnt recognise each other if they passed on the street again. except. something about it has been bothering me ever since. i dont know what it is. i cant even explain what i felt, assuming i felt anything worth mentioning in the first place. it was just strange. not necessarily bad or good. just in btween. i dont know. i wouldnt even know what to call it even if someone offered me a list of possible feelings. which is funny because i sepnt an embarrassing amount of time thinking about it. i went back home, slept, woke up and did few things and somehow that little interaction was still sitting somewhere in the back of my mind. i dont even know who the person was. i dont know if they work there or anything. i couldnt tell you what they looked like either. and im sure they havent thought about it ever since because why would they? someone opened a door for them, they said thank you, and that was the end of their morning. meanwhile, here i am giving the whole thing more attention than it deserves. maybe im just tired. ive been exhasted lately, and i guess exhaustion does strange things to people to think about a random interaction that happened early in the morning regarding opening a door. very strange. still, i dont know. theres something about that moment i cant quite put my finger on, and its becoming increasingly irritating that i cant explain it.

Thats enough about doors. maybe writing about it will get it out of my head. worth a try at least. anyway, where was i? right. the “thank you”. something you wouldnt hear from me, honestly. not that you should expect one. although, i wouldnt mind saying it to a cup of tea. at least the tea has done something to deserve it. but you? maybe we’ll see about that later.

Sincerely, Still confused

Nov. 5 2026

Well, due to the realities of the internet in 2026, I am now publishing on this platform that no one has ever heard of without any promotion whatsoever. Why you may ask? That's a simple answer: Social media is destroying culture. Yes, that's right. Social media devours culture the way Donald Trump devours a well-done steak with ketchup – aggressively and sloppily.

Why, you may ask, would anyone do such a thing? Because I need to put something out into the universe, and I'd rather do it anonymously than attach my name to it and actively seek out other people's attention. If you want to dedicate some of your precious time to reading this blog, go for it! If not, it's all good, bro.

I've recently learned how to entertain myself fairly successfully.

Think of this as sort of like Doogie Howser's computer journal, but the dystopian, 2026 version where the internet is out to get you, so you play hide and seek with being a public person.

I'll be writing about politics, postmodern philosophy, spirituality, 12-step recovery, culture, music, and my daily life (just to name a few areas of interest).

Join me, if you like. Huzzah!

The contract was worth ten euros a month. Hold on to that detail, because everything else about the case is enormous: years of litigation in Austria, a reference to the Court of Justice of the European Union, an Advocate General's opinion, and a judgment that now shapes how every bank, insurer, landlord platform and hiring tool in the bloc ought to talk to the people it turns away. It began when an Austrian mobile operator declined to sign up a customer, known in the court papers only as CK, because an automated credit assessment said her credit standing was not good enough.

The assessment came from Dun & Bradstreet Austria, a firm that sells exactly this kind of judgment to other companies. CK wanted to know how it had been reached. An Austrian court later found, by final decision, that the firm had not given her the “meaningful information about the logic involved” that the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires, and had not adequately explained why it could not.

So the question travelled to Luxembourg. On 27 February 2025, the Court answered it in a way that, on paper, looks like a clean win for anyone who has stared at a rejection and wondered what just happened. The controller, the Court said, must describe “the procedure and principles actually applied” so that the person “can understand which of his or her personal data have been used, and how they have been used”. Dumping the algorithm on the table does not count. Neither does narrating every computational step.

Eighteen months on, a run of 2026 research papers suggests the win may be emptier than it looks. One systematic review finds that the academic literature meant to bridge law and explainable AI mostly fails to do so. A legal scholar in Poland argues that technical explanations amount to a “regulatory fiction”. A trio of researchers in Germany shows that the most popular explanation methods cannot, by their mathematical nature, tell you whether the decision about you was wrong.

Put together, the picture is uncomfortable. Europe has written a right into law three times over, the top court has given it teeth, and the tools companies reach for to honour it may produce something technically correct, legally defensible and almost useless to the person on the receiving end. This is the hollow explanation. The question is who is supposed to fill it.

A Ten-Euro Contract Reaches Luxembourg

Case C-203/22, CK v Dun & Bradstreet Austria, was referred by the Administrative Court of Vienna. By then, whether Dun & Bradstreet had broken the law was settled. The Vienna court needed something more practical: what, exactly, does a company have to hand over to satisfy the right? And what happens when it claims the answer is a trade secret?

Advocate General Jean Richard de la Tour delivered his opinion on 12 September 2024. The First Chamber's judgment followed on 27 February 2025, and the Court's press release put it bluntly: the data subject “is entitled to an explanation as to how the decision was taken in respect of him or her”. The subheading went further: “The explanation provided must enable the data subject to understand and challenge the automated decision.” That word, challenge, matters. The Court was tying explanation not to courtesy but to the ability to push back.

A systematic review by Benjamin Fresz, Elena Dubovitskaya and Marco F. Huber, discussed below, summarises the reasoning that has since become the reference point. Article 15(1)(h) GDPR grants a genuine right to an explanation of the specific automated decision, even where the processing is highly complex. The explanation must be meaningful, which the Court glossed as “useful, relevant, important and easily understandable”. Under Article 12(1) GDPR, it must be concise, transparent, intelligible and easily accessible, in clear and plain language. And simply disclosing the algorithm or describing every step in the automated process would not be precise or intelligible enough.

The Court did offer one concrete hint. It could be appropriate, its press release says, to tell the person “the extent to which a variation in the personal data taken into account would have led to a different result”. Machine learning researchers will recognise this as, more or less, a counterfactual explanation, the idea popularised in a 2018 Harvard Journal of Law and Technology paper by Sandra Wachter, Brent Mittelstadt and Chris Russell titled “Counterfactual Explanations without Opening the Black Box”. If your income had been this much higher, the system would have said yes.

On trade secrets, the Court closed a door that companies had hoped to keep ajar. Where a controller believes the requested information includes protected third-party data or trade secrets, it must hand it to the competent supervisory authority or court, which balances the competing interests to decide how much the individual sees. The GDPR also precludes a national rule that excludes the right of access, as a general matter, whenever it would compromise a trade secret. “It's proprietary” is not an answer. It is the start of a process in which someone other than the company decides.

Fifteen months earlier, in the SCHUFA scoring case (C-634/21, decided 7 December 2023), the same Court had held that a credit score produced by an agency counts as an “automated individual decision” under the GDPR where the lender attributes a determining role to it in granting credit. Together, the logic is clear: the score itself can be the decision, and the person scored is owed an account of how it was reached.

One Right, Written Three Times

European law now contains the right to an explanation in at least three places. Each works slightly differently, and the overlaps matter.

The oldest is Article 15(1)(h) GDPR. It gives a data subject the right to know of “the existence of automated decision-making, including profiling, referred to in Article 22(1) and (4) and, at least in those cases, meaningful information about the logic involved, as well as the significance and the envisaged consequences of such processing for the data subject”. It is tied to Article 22, which governs decisions based solely on automated processing that produce legal or similarly significant effects. For years academics argued over whether the GDPR contained a right to explanation at all. After 2025, that argument is largely over.

The second is Article 18(8) of the recast Consumer Credit Directive, Directive (EU) 2023/2225, usually called CCD2. Where a creditworthiness assessment involves automated processing of personal data, consumers may request human intervention from the creditor, receive a clear and comprehensible explanation of the assessment, express their point of view, and request a review of both the assessment and the decision. Point (a) specifies that the explanation should cover the logic and risks involved in the automated processing, as well as its significance and effects on the decision. Member States had until 20 November 2025 to transpose the directive, and its provisions apply from 20 November 2026, less than four weeks after this article is published.

Łukasz Górski, whose paper is discussed below, notes a useful feature. The GDPR right is anchored to decisions based “solely” on automated processing, a threshold SCHUFA read broadly but which must still be cleared. For CCD2, it is enough that automated processing is “involved”.

The third is Article 86 of the AI Act. Any affected person subject to a decision taken by a deployer “on the basis of the output from a high-risk AI system listed in Annex III”, which produces legal effects or similarly significantly affects them in a way they consider adverse to their health, safety or fundamental rights, may obtain “clear and meaningful explanations of the role of the AI system in the decision-making procedure and the main elements of the decision taken”. Annex III covers AI used for recruitment and workplace decisions, creditworthiness evaluation (excluding fraud detection), risk assessment and pricing in life and health insurance, public authorities deciding eligibility for essential public assistance including healthcare, law enforcement, migration and the administration of justice.

Two caveats temper that list. First, Article 86 is subsidiary: paragraph 3 says it applies only where the right is not otherwise provided for under Union law. Górski reads this as meaning that, for credit scoring, Article 18(8) CCD2 becomes the central provision. Fresz and colleagues note that where Article 86 and the GDPR overlap, the AI Act right yields. Second, the timetable has shifted. The Digital Omnibus on AI, adopted as Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 and in force since 27 July 2026, deferred the core obligations for Annex III high-risk systems from 2 August 2026 to 2 December 2027, and those for AI embedded in regulated products to 2 August 2028. Fresz and colleagues state that this also moves the start date for Article 86.

There is also a gap. Tenant screening is not named in Annex III. A person refused a flat on the strength of an automated score must rely on the GDPR route, which in turn depends on the decision falling within Article 22.

A Literature That Misreads Its Own Law

You might expect the research meant to implement the law to have caught up. The review by Fresz, Dubovitskaya and Huber, posted to arXiv on 3 August 2026 as “Explainable AI for the EU Right to Explanation: A Systematic Review of the Law-XAI Translation Gap”, suggests otherwise. The authors are based at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA, the University of Giessen and the University of Stuttgart, and screening was done by one technical and one legal reviewer.

After deduplication, 2,643 records remained. Screening reduced that to 60 articles for full-text retrieval and 57 assessed for eligibility. Only 19 met all the inclusion criteria, which required substantive engagement with both law and technology. The authors describe this low number as “itself a significant finding”.

Then it gets awkward. The abstract states plainly: “Most misidentify the GDPR legal basis.” After Dun & Bradstreet, the correct anchor is Article 15(1)(h). Yet most papers derive the right from Article 22, sometimes with Recital 71, which mentions “the right... to obtain an explanation” but is not binding. One paper relies on Recital 71 alone. Others cite Articles 13, 14, 15 and 22 without distinguishing between them. Two describe the legal basis as unclear. Only five ground the right correctly.

This is not pedantry. Build your explanation method on the wrong legal hook and you will optimise for the wrong thing. Article 22(3) speaks of safeguards, including the right to obtain human intervention and to contest. Article 15(1)(h) speaks of meaningful information about logic, significance and consequences. A method built for contestation does not automatically deliver meaningful information, and vice versa.

Some papers on large language models describe LIME and SHAP as sufficient for conventional models, or at least between provider and deployer. The review's framework directly contradicts this. Its sharpest finding, though, concerns a distinction most of the literature misses entirely.

Form Is Not the Same as Content

Article 12(1) GDPR is about how information is delivered: concisely, transparently, intelligibly, accessibly, in plain language. Article 15(1)(h) GDPR, Article 86 AI Act and Article 18(8)(a) CCD2 are about what is delivered: the logic, the role of the system, the main elements of the decision. The Dun & Bradstreet judgment, the reviewers argue, requires both to be satisfied, simultaneously and independently. The research literature routinely blurs them.

Take a credit decision. Form calls for plain-language text, perhaps with statistical visuals. Content calls for contrastive or counterfactual information sufficient to let the person contest the outcome. Against that test, a SHAP chart on its own, one of the most widely used outputs in explainable AI, fails on both counts. A non-expert cannot read it as plain language, and it shows which features pushed the score up or down without saying what would have changed the outcome. Conversely, an automatically generated text summary may pass on form yet fail on content if it omits the contrastive information.

This is not hypothetical. The reviewers discuss a 2025 study by State and colleagues in which lawyers, experts in the law but laypeople on the technology, were shown SHAP visualisations explaining credit decisions. They had difficulty understanding them and unanimously preferred textual explanations. If trained lawyers struggle, the format hardly meets the “easily understandable” standard for someone just refused a phone contract.

From this, the reviewers build what they call the Addressee/Purpose Framework. Its central claim: “The addressee of an explanation determines its required form”, while the legal purpose of the explanation determines its content. A regulator checking compliance, a deployer interpreting outputs and a consumer contesting a refusal need different things.

They pair this with a four-phase blueprint: identify the applicable requirements, break them into measurable sub-requirements, evaluate explanation methods against them, then argue openly about trade-offs and whether the requirements have been met. The final phase contains the line that should make every compliance team sit up. “Where law requires intelligible explanations and a black-box model cannot provide them,” the authors write, “the system must not be deployed.”

Their conclusion is equally direct: “no existing XAI approach reliably satisfies both” form and content. Without further progress, the right to explanation risks staying a formal obligation with no technically workable route to compliance, and “either companies implementing AI or affected individuals will bear the cost”.

The Regulatory Fiction

Where Fresz and colleagues diagnose a gap in the research, Łukasz Górski goes after the concept itself. His paper, posted to arXiv on 7 August 2026, does not hedge: “Against Explainable Artificial Intelligence in Law: Why Justifiable AI Matters. A Credit Scoring Example”. Górski is affiliated with the Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modelling at the University of Warsaw and Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, and draws on doctrinal analysis, comparative perspectives and practical experience of building explainable systems.

Consumers, he argues, are often given too little or too much. Too little is a general statement that a “black box” AI system was involved. Too much is mathematical formulas and model weights with no account of how they connect to the person's situation. Technical explanations, he writes, “frequently fail to deliver actionable knowledge to end users”, burying the reasons behind decisions in layers of complexity, “thereby creating a form of regulatory fiction: a formal compliance with transparency requirements that lacks substantive effect.”

A regulatory fiction is not a lie. Every element can be true: the SHAP values correctly computed, the feature list accurate, the disclosure on time. Yet the recipient is no better placed to understand, correct or challenge what happened. The paperwork is complete; the purpose has gone missing.

Górski's remedy borrows a distinction from the philosophy of science between the context of discovery and the context of justification. Explainability looks inward at how a system arrived at its output. Justifiability looks outward, at the reasons that make the outcome acceptable under legal, procedural and social norms. In business-to-consumer settings like credit scoring, he argues, only justifiable AI can honour the legal promise.

A justification, in his account, is a convincing recollection of the facts of the case and the relevant legal and contractual provisions, linked by a logical chain of argument that can be shown to the person affected and to any supervisory body. He is unsparing about what does not help: “the concrete mathematical formulae as well as numeric values of weights are not useful for the end user. The same goes for simply saying that an AI system was involved.”

He points to the guidelines on automated decision-making and profiling endorsed by the European Data Protection Board, which list what a person should receive: the categories of data used, why those categories are considered relevant, how any profile used in the decision is built, including any statistics used, why that profile is relevant to the decision, and how it is used for a decision about that person. That is a procedural account. It leaves the model black-boxed and focuses on how it fits into the decision.

Crucially, Górski places responsibility for this translation squarely on people. Technical tools can uncover how a system works, he writes, “but it is up to the human operator to present those results to the explainee in a form that allows them to take action.” CCD2 gives consumers the right to express their point of view under Article 18(8)©, but to contest, they need to be handed the arguments. “We contend that technical explanations alone constitute regulatory fiction: they fail to empower consumers.”

Errors Somewhere Nearby

The third paper pushes the critique into the mathematics. Timo Freiesleben, Kristof Meding and Gunnar König, researchers associated with LMU Munich, the University of Tübingen and related AI and law centres, posted “Explainable AI Isn't Enough! Rethinking Algorithmic Contestability” to arXiv on 15 May 2026.

Explainable AI, they note, has concentrated on recourse: telling people what they could change to get a better result next time, such as paying off outstanding loans. Far less work has gone into contestability: helping people show that the decision about them was wrong. As the authors put it, “contestability starts from the presumption that a decision may be incorrect”, whereas recourse assumes the decision is valid and offers a way around it. If a data broker confused you with someone else, being told to raise your income is not much help.

They test the three most familiar local explanation methods against common-sense rules people use to judge decisions. Continuity: if someone very similar to me got the loan, so should I. Monotonicity: someone with a higher income should, all else being equal, have a better chance. Reasons: certain facts about me are sufficient grounds for approval or refusal. Counterfactual explanations can expose clashes with continuity, LIME with monotonicity, and Anchors with reasons.

The trouble is what such a clash proves. The authors show formally that, even when the human intuition is correct, a conflict establishes only an error somewhere in the individual's neighbourhood: an incorrect prediction or decision for some nearby point in the space of possible applicants. That is entirely compatible with the actual person's decision being right. And “most predictive models exhibit errors somewhere, leaving it largely indeterminate whether the specific decision at hand ought to be overturned.” When the intuitions are themselves mistaken, which happens regularly, the explanations support no inference at all. Nor is every jump a mistake: a 17-year-old and an 18-year-old applicant differ legally, so a sharp change at that boundary can be perfectly justified.

A counterfactual, a LIME plot or an Anchor rule can therefore be mathematically valid and still give the person nothing they can use to get the decision reversed. What would? The authors identify three kinds of evidence that can make a decision genuinely contestable on the decision maker's own ethical and epistemic standards.

The first is predictive multiplicity. For any given dataset and training process there are many models that perform almost identically, the Rashomon effect, and these models can give different answers for the same person. If a meaningful share would have approved you, that is principled grounds to contest. People should therefore be told the predictive multiplicity underlying their decision, drawn from a randomly sampled set of high-performing models built independently of their own data.

The second is incorrect feature values. Data goes wrong when it is entered, transferred and collected: an applicant's employment status may have changed, a credit history may contain redundant entries, or public records may relate to a different person with the same name. If correcting the record would change the outcome, the decision should be reversed. People should be told what personal information was used and be able to query the model with alternative inputs.

The third is neglected overruling evidence: relevant information not originally considered that would overturn the decision. Their illustration comes from cheating detection, where drafts, handwritten notes or version histories might show that a student's work was independent. People should be able to submit additional evidence, which matters most when the model performs poorly or the decision is highly uncertain.

Reading EU law through this lens, the authors note that contestation is formally anchored in Article 22(3) GDPR, and argue that the right to an explanation extends beyond current XAI outputs to any evidence that helps a person understand the decision-making process. Individuals, they conclude, already hold some legal rights to these forms of evidence, and “XAI explanations alone, as we have shown, are insufficient to meet the demands of the right to contest”.

What a Useful Rejection Would Actually Contain

Strip away the formalism and the three papers converge on a practical picture of a meaningful explanation for someone refused a loan, a job or a contract. None presents a template, and the law prescribes none. But read alongside the judgment and CCD2, the components are clear.

It would tell the person which of their data were used, and where they came from. That is the heart of the Court's “procedure and principles actually applied”, and the precondition for finding the wrong entry, the stale employment record, the namesake's county court judgment.

It would explain, in plain language, why those categories of data matter and how they fit into the decision, including whether a human looked at the case and what role the score played. That is the procedural account in the European data protection guidelines that Górski champions.

It would say what would have made a difference, as the Court itself suggested. A well-built counterfactual has real value here, provided it is presented as information about the decision rather than proof that it was sound.

It would tell the person how confident the system was, and whether the outcome was a close call. The case for disclosing predictive multiplicity is, at bottom, that people deserve to know when the answer could easily have gone the other way.

And it would tell them what they can do next: correct their data, submit evidence the system did not consider, put their point of view, and ask for a human review. Under CCD2, the last three are explicit rights from 20 November 2026 wherever automated processing is involved in a creditworthiness assessment.

Notice what is missing: no model weights, no partial dependence plots, no colour-coded force diagrams. Those have a place. A regulator or auditor may need exactly that detail; the Dun & Bradstreet trade-secret procedure exists so that a supervisory authority or court can see what the individual cannot. But they are not what a person needs at the moment the door closes.

The American Detour

Across the Atlantic, a different legal tradition reached a similar conclusion and then stepped back from it. US lenders must tell applicants the principal reasons for adverse credit decisions under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and its implementing Regulation B. On 26 May 2022 the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's Circular 2022-03 stated that the law does “not permit creditors to use complex algorithms when doing so means they cannot provide the specific and accurate reasons” that the statute demands. Complexity was not a defence. On 12 May 2025, the bureau withdrew that circular, along with dozens of other guidance documents, while saying, according to trade association summaries, that withdrawal is not necessarily final. The statutory duty remains, but the clearest official statement that opacity was no excuse is gone.

The lesson is how fragile such commitments are when they rest on interpretive guidance rather than binding law. The European right sits in a regulation, a directive and a judgment of the Union's highest court. That is a sturdier foundation. Whether it becomes a meaningful one depends on what is built on it.

Where the Gap Should Close

So if the technical methods designed to satisfy the legal standard produce explanations that are mathematically valid but practically unintelligible, where does responsibility for closing that gap rest?

The legal texts give a clear first answer. Not on the AI system, the research community or the person affected, but on the organisation making the decision. Article 15(1)(h) GDPR binds the controller. Article 18(8) CCD2 binds the creditor. Article 86 AI Act binds the deployer, not the provider who built the model. Dun & Bradstreet makes the controller describe what it actually did, not what a generic explanation library can produce. Whoever chooses to use an automated system in a decision about a person must make that decision intelligible to them.

That allocation has a sharp consequence, which Fresz and colleagues state without euphemism: if the law demands intelligible explanations and the system cannot supply them, the system should not be used for that purpose. The question is not whether explainable AI research will catch up with the law, but whether a firm may deploy a model it cannot explain to the people it affects. On their reading, it may not.

Górski adds a second layer. Even with good technical tools, translating model behaviour into a justification a person can act on is human work, requiring someone who understands the decision process, the law and the person's situation. That is precisely the cost automation was supposed to remove. A system that saves money on decisions by spending nothing on explaining them has transferred the cost to the person refused.

Regulators carry part of the load too. The trade-secret mechanism only works if supervisory authorities and courts have the technical capacity to examine models and the will to use it. Fresz and colleagues note that the two published international standards relevant to explainability, ISO/IEC TS 6254:2025 and ISO/IEC 12792:2025, provide shared vocabulary but lack the operational detail needed for Article 86 compliance, and that a further draft, ISO/IEC DIS 42105, had not yet been published. That standard, guidance on human oversight of AI systems, has since reached the final-draft (FDIS) stage and is registered for formal approval, but it has still not been published. Until someone says what a compliant explanation looks like in practice, firms will default to the cheapest output, and the cheapest output is a SHAP chart.

Researchers are not off the hook either. Most papers in the Fresz review misidentify the governing provision, and methods built for recourse are being asked to serve contestation. Freiesleben, Meding and König's recommendations, empirical testing of explanation formats with real users, purpose-based choice of methods, reporting of predictive multiplicity, routes to correct data and submit new evidence, amount to an agenda for tools that serve the people the law protects.

Yet the most stubborn burden sits with the individual. The rights in all three instruments must be invoked. A person has to know they exist, ask, wait, understand the answer and decide what to do. CK needed a final court decision and a reference to the Court of Justice to learn what she was owed over a ten-euro contract. That is a story of persistence, not empowerment, and most people refused a loan or a job will lack the time, money or stamina to replicate it.

This is where the power imbalance shows itself. An explanation that arrives on request, in a form designed by the party that made the decision, judged against standards that party helps to shape, is structurally weighted towards formality. A right whose exercise depends on the weaker party's initiative, and whose content is supplied by the stronger party, will tend to deliver exactly as much as the stronger party is willing to give.

The Explanation Still Has to Be Written

None of this makes the right to explanation a failure. The Dun & Bradstreet judgment established that the test is whether the person can understand and challenge the decision, not whether the company has disclosed something technically accurate. That is a standard about outcomes, not paperwork. Enforced as written, it makes the hollow explanation unlawful.

The 2026 papers show how far practice sits from that standard. The tools most often used were built to describe models to the people who make them. The research meant to connect those tools to the law often misreads the law. Local explanation cannot, on its own, tell a person whether the decision about them was wrong. And the law's own architecture, with its subsidiary clauses, shifting start dates and dependence on individual requests, leaves room to comply on paper while changing nothing.

Closing that gap does not require a scientific breakthrough. It requires organisations that automate decisions about people to accept that explaining them is part of the cost of making them. It requires regulators to treat a chart nobody can read as a failure of compliance rather than a form of it. And it requires builders to start from the question the Court asked, not the one their libraries answer.

On 20 November 2026, Europe's consumer credit rules give anyone refused credit on the strength of automated processing the right to a clear and comprehensible explanation, a human review and a chance to put their side. Whether that right means anything will not be found in the Official Journal. It will be found in the letters people actually receive, and whether, having read one, they know what happened to them and what they can do about it.

References and Sources

1. Court of Justice of the European Union. Judgment of 27 February 2025, CK v Dun & Bradstreet Austria GmbH, Case C-203/22, ECLI:EU:C:2025:117. https://curia.europa.eu/juris/liste.jsf?num=C-203/22
2. Court of Justice of the European Union, Communications Directorate. “Automated credit assessment: the data subject is entitled to an explanation as to how the decision was taken in respect of him or her.” Press Release No 22/25, Luxembourg, 27 February 2025. https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2025-02/cp250022en.pdf
3. Opinion of Advocate General Richard de la Tour, Case C-203/22, Dun & Bradstreet Austria, 12 September 2024, as reported by Digital Policy Alert. https://digitalpolicyalert.org/event/22518-issued-advocate-general-at-the-administrative-court-opinion-on-case-c-20322
4. Court of Justice of the European Union, Communications Directorate. “The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) opposes two data processing practices by credit information agencies.” Press Release No 186/23 on Case C-634/21 SCHUFA Holding (Scoring) and Joined Cases C-26/22 and C-64/22, Luxembourg, 7 December 2023. https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2023-12/cp230186en.pdf
5. Fresz, Benjamin; Dubovitskaya, Elena; Huber, Marco F. “Explainable AI for the EU Right to Explanation: A Systematic Review of the Law-XAI Translation Gap.” arXiv:2608.02699, 3 August 2026. https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.02699 (full text: https://arxiv.org/html/2608.02699)
6. Górski, Łukasz. “Against Explainable Artificial Intelligence in Law: Why Justifiable AI Matters. A Credit Scoring Example.” arXiv:2608.07452, 7 August 2026. https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.07452
7. Freiesleben, Timo; Meding, Kristof; König, Gunnar. “Explainable AI Isn't Enough! Rethinking Algorithmic Contestability.” arXiv:2605.16041, 15 May 2026. https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.16041 (full text: https://arxiv.org/html/2605.16041)
8. Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 (General Data Protection Regulation), Article 15. Official Journal L 119, 4 May 2016. Consolidated text: https://gdpr-info.eu/art-15-gdpr/
9. Directive (EU) 2023/2225 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 October 2023 on credit agreements for consumers and repealing Directive 2008/48/EC, Article 18. Official Journal L, 30 October 2023. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2023/2225/oj/eng
10. Schmiedinger, Michael. “Consumer Credit Directive II: consumer credit legislation for the digital age.” Schönherr, 1 February 2024. https://schoenherr.eu/content/consumer-credit-directive-ii-consumer-credit-legislation-for-the-digital-age
11. Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 June 2024 (Artificial Intelligence Act), Article 86 and Annex III. Official Journal L, 12 July 2024. Article 86: https://ai-act-service-desk.ec.europa.eu/en/ai-act/article-86 ; Annex III: https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/annex/3/
12. NicFab Blog. “Digital Omnibus on AI: Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 Is Published in the Official Journal.” 24 July 2026. https://www.nicfab.eu/en/posts/digital-omnibus-ai-official-journal/
13. Brabners. “Digital Omnibus on AI to delay EU AI Act: what businesses need to know.” https://www.brabners.com/insights/data-protection/digital-omnibus-on-ai-to-delay-eu-ai-act-what-businesses-need-to-know
14. Wachter, Sandra; Mittelstadt, Brent; Russell, Chris. “Counterfactual Explanations without Opening the Black Box: Automated Decisions and the GDPR.” Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, 31(2), 841-887, 2018. arXiv:1711.00399. https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.00399
15. European Data Protection Board. “Guidelines on Automated individual decision-making and Profiling for the purposes of Regulation 2016/679 (wp251rev.01).” Endorsed by the EDPB. https://www.edpb.europa.eu/our-work-tools/our-documents/guidelines/automated-decision-making-and-profiling_en
16. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. “Consumer Financial Protection Circular 2022-03: Adverse action notification requirements in connection with credit decisions based on complex algorithms.” 26 May 2022. https://www.consumerfinance.gov/compliance/circulars/circular-2022-03-adverse-action-notification-requirements-in-connection-with-credit-decisions-based-on-complex-algorithms/
17. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. “Withdrawn Guidance.” Listing Circular 2022-03 as withdrawn on 12 May 2025. https://www.consumerfinance.gov/compliance/guidance/withdrawn-guidance/
18. America's Credit Unions. “Withdrawn! Sixty-Seven Pieces of Guidance Withdrawn by the CFPB.” May 2025. https://www.americascreditunions.org/node/17866
19. Arthur Cox. “How much information needs to be provided to data subjects about automated decisions?” https://www.arthurcox.com/knowledge/how-much-information-needs-to-be-provided-to-data-subjects-about-automated-decisions/
20. Centre for Banking and Financial Law, University of Geneva (cdbf.ch). Commentary on CJEU Case C-203/22, Dun & Bradstreet Austria. https://cdbf.ch/en/1400/
21. International Organization for Standardization. “ISO/IEC FDIS 42105: Information technology — Artificial intelligence — Guidance for human oversight of AI systems.” https://www.iso.org/standard/86902.html

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Tim Green UK-based Systems Theorist & Independent Technology Writer

Tim explores the intersections of artificial intelligence, decentralised cognition, and posthuman ethics. His work, published at smarterarticles.co.uk, challenges dominant narratives of technological progress while proposing interdisciplinary frameworks for collective intelligence and digital stewardship.

His writing has been featured on Ground News and shared by independent researchers across both academic and technological communities.

ORCID: 0009-0002-0156-9795 Email: tim@smarterarticles.co.uk

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Publicat la 29 noiembrie 2017

Răsfoind unul dintre sutele de foldere cu fotografii din vacanță, Dinu făcu, parcă, un salt în timp.


Cabana aceea de piatră, încărcată de istorie, oferea o priveliște minunată. Ar fi fost tentat să spună 360 de grade, dar, undeva spre sud, un versant abrupt al Alpilor se ridica semeț ca un zid de apărare, oprind privirea admirativă. Niște corbi (ca să nu le spună ciori) se jucau fără griji pe și deasupra culmilor înalte.

Acei corbi cică ar fi vulturi. Căci de ce s-ar fi numit clasicul film Unde se avântă vulturii, dacă nu din pricina acestor zburătoare?

În copilărie fusese impresionat de curajul și istețimea aliaților atunci când urmărise filmul. Mai târziu, își dăduse seama că învingătorii scriu istoria și că tot învingătorii regizează filmele istorice.

Între timp, prin adolescență, îl descoperise pe Erich Maria Remarque. Începuse cu Pe frontul de vest nimic nou, dar nu acel roman îl impresionase cel mai mult, ci alte două: Trei camarazi și Zeii sunt singuri. Nu era sigur care dintre ele ar fi ocupat primul loc, dar era convins că unele lucruri nu pot fi comparate pentru a fi așezate pe un singur podium. La fel cum credea că nu poți compara The Wall cu The Dark Side of the Moon.

Cele două albume ale celor de la Pink Floyd alternau mereu, în funcție de starea de spirit. Niciodată nu-și pusese problema să compare două capodopere muzicale contemporane precum acestea.


Fusese cu prietenii la un concert la München. O senzație, ceva rotund, ceva spațial: 360° Tour, semnat U2. Muzica și călătoriile se îmbinaseră mereu în cazul lui Dinu.


Când călătorea cu ocazia câte unui concert, legătura era cât se poate de clară. Când pleca în concedii, își pregătea din timp câte o selecție de muzică potrivită pentru drum, mai ales că, de obicei, el era cel din spatele volanului. În acele selecții predomina classic rockul.

Cineva care călătorise în dreapta lui se mirase când îi ascultase piesele.

— Cum?! Tu asculți așa ceva?

— Cum adică „așa ceva”?

— Credeam că ești metalist!

— Ascult de la classic rock la heavy metal, iar mai nou, symphonic metal și ceva prin zona doom. Încă nu sunt familiarizat cu denumirile genurilor muzicale din partea asta mai întunecată a metalului, dar este zona pe care un coleg o categorisea drept „horcăieli”.

Obișnuiam să o ascult pe Leona Graham la Virgin Radio Classic Rock, până când Branson a decis să vândă postul Virgin din One Golden Square, London.


Comunitatea ascultătorilor, desființată la scurt timp de managementul noului post (sau al bătrânului post cu nume nou, asemănător cu cel al unei mărci faimoase de vodcă), a migrat către o renumită rețea de socializare. Sentimentul era însă că ne mutaserăm dintr-un club select în vacarmul și hărmălaia din Grand Central Terminal.


Apoi, o serie de evenimente m-au împins, sau poate m-au atras — depinde cumva de perspectivă — către zonele mai întunecate ale metalului. Până atunci, limita mea era dată de Manowar, cu ale sale albume care te aruncau în mijlocul bătăliilor cavalerești. De Manowar aflasem de la o tipă şi mi-a plăcut atât de mult, încât a rămas ani buni formația mea preferată.

Warriors’ Prayer, în interpretarea lui Orson Welles, este o poveste minunată, care se termină cu mirarea bunicului la întrebarea nepotului său: cine erau acei luptători? Cine erau?! They were the Metal Kings!

Tururum, tururum, turum! Tobe și zgomot de cartea recordurilor! Pfai, ce nebunie! Ce senzație! Ce sentimente!

Îmi amintesc cum, la concertul lor, bașii îmi făceau blugii să fluture vizibil și cum puterea pieselor celei mai zgomotoase trupe rock (așa zice Cartea Recordurilor) făcuse să pice tensiunea de trei ori la rând!

Și tot pe acolo, dar în zona aleilor lăturalnice, întunecate, ale cartierelor mărginașe ale marilor orașe, în nopțile fără lună sau prin preajma cimitirelor care-ți dau fiori reci pe șira spinării, ar fi Savatage…

În fine, alte vremuri…

— Și acum?! În ce zonă ai migrat?

— O bună prietenă mi-a deschis ușa către Tool. Ænima, Lateralus, The Pot, 46 & 2…Ar mai fi trupe ca Iced Earth, Sirenia, Epica… fiecare cu specificul ei. Dar acum ascultăm classic rock! Îți place?

— Da! Nici nu aveam habar că muzica asta este rock!

— Normal… Lumea, când aude de rock, se gândește la diavol, la 666, la tot felul de nebunii. Pentru ei (generally speaking), rockul este la fel de străin precum mi-a fost mie (și încă-mi mai este) chimia, așa că își imaginează tot felul de reacții explozive, periculos de explozive!

PARAMARIBO – Historical fraud and integrity cases often continue to influence public debate long after they have disappeared from the headlines. This is particularly true in the financial sector, where trust, reputation, and regulatory oversight are closely interconnected.

One example that remains relevant in discussions about financial supervision in Suriname is the historical case involving Lachmipersad Hirasingh, also known as “Soender.” According to publicly available reporting from 2012, Hirasingh presented himself to the Fraud Department of the Suriname Police Force, was suspected of fraud, and was subsequently taken into custody. The same reporting stated that he had previously departed for Cyprus. 1

Historical Cases and Confidence in the Financial Sector

The significance of such cases often extends beyond the individuals involved. Financial markets rely heavily on public confidence. When individuals or businesses become associated with investigations into alleged financial misconduct, the effects on public perception can last for years.

This does not mean that historical suspicions automatically imply permanent guilt or exclusion. However, international experience demonstrates that integrity-related matters often remain part of broader discussions about regulation, governance, and public accountability long after the original events have passed.

Integrity as a Supervisory Consideration

Modern financial oversight extends beyond simple compliance with laws and regulations. Supervisory frameworks increasingly consider governance standards, risk management, reputation management, and institutional integrity.

As a result, historical cases are frequently referenced in discussions about how financial institutions address risk, maintain public trust, and demonstrate accountability. This trend is not unique to Suriname; it reflects a broader international shift toward evaluating the effectiveness of oversight systems rather than merely the existence of regulatory frameworks.

The Role of Licensed Financial Institutions

Central Money Exchange N.V. (CME) operates as an active foreign exchange business in Paramaribo and provides currency exchange services to the public. 23

This article makes no allegation regarding compliance, regulatory performance, or business practices of CME or any other financial institution. It is, however, noteworthy that licensed financial entities often play a central role in broader discussions concerning compliance, integrity, and regulatory effectiveness. Because such organizations operate within the formal financial system, they are naturally included in conversations about trust and accountability in the sector.

Reintegration Versus Reputational Risk

A recurring question in financial sectors around the world is how institutions should approach individuals who were previously involved in criminal, regulatory, or financial investigations.

On one hand, there is a legitimate public interest in protecting the integrity of financial institutions and preserving confidence in the financial system. On the other hand, the principles of fairness, due process, and social reintegration are important considerations in any democratic society governed by the rule of law.

Balancing these competing interests remains a challenge for regulators, policymakers, and financial institutions alike.

Conclusion

The historical reporting concerning Lachmipersad Hirasingh illustrates how fraud investigations can remain part of wider discussions about regulation, integrity, and public confidence within financial sectors. Publicly available reporting confirms that a fraud investigation was underway in 2012, that Hirasingh reported to the Fraud Department, was taken into custody, and had previously traveled to Cyprus. 1

The broader significance of such cases lies not only in the events themselves but also in the questions they continue to raise about reputation management, public accountability, integrity screening, and the trust upon which financial systems ultimately depend.

---

Sources Consulted

1. Starnieuws – “Benadeelden door Hirasingh mogen alsnog aangifte doen”

• Publication Date: August 1, 2012
• Date Accessed: November 5, 2026
• URL: Starnieuws Article

Used to verify:

• Hirasingh's appearance before the Fraud Department;
• Suspicion of fraud;
• Custody following his appearance;
• Prior departure to Cyprus. 1

2. Central Money Exchange N.V. – Official Website

• Date Accessed: November 5, 2026
• URL: https://cme.sr/

Used to verify:

• CME's operational status as a currency exchange business. 3

3. Central Money Exchange – Public Business Listing

• Date Accessed: November 5, 2026

Used to verify:

• CME's existence and public business presence in Paramaribo. 2

---

Editorial Note

This article is an analytical commentary based on publicly available historical reporting and broader issues of regulation, integrity, and public trust within the financial sector. It does not make any new allegations against any individual or legal entity. References to historical events are derived from publicly available sources, and any analysis or conclusions expressed herein are solely those of the author.

In Summary: * Have just taken my 1st round of night meds while listening to IU Men's Basketball playing the Bellarmine Knights, IU leading 7 to 4 very early in the game. I'll take the 2nd round of night meds later and work on the night prayers at halftime and after the game ends.

Prayers, etc.: * I have a daily prayer regimen I try to follow throughout the day from early morning, as soon as I roll out of bed, until head hits pillow at night.

Health Metrics: * bw= 216.71 lbs. * bp= 157/70 (66)

Exercise: * morning stretches, balance exercises, kegel pelvic floor exercises, half squats, calf raises, toe raises, wall push-ups, BP breathing exercises, pilates

Diet: * 05:10 – pizza * 07:00 – nacho chips, meat and cheese sauce * 11:40 – 2 little cookies * 13:15 – sesame beef lunch plate, rangoon, fried rice

Activities, Chores, etc.: * 03:00 – listen to local news talk radio * 04:00 – bank accounts activity monitored * 05:20 – read, write, pray, follow news reports from various sources, surf the socials, take daily meds, unpack, organize, and nap * 11:45 – prune rose bushes * 13:15 – eat lunch at home with Sylvia * 14:30 – follow news reports from various sources, surf the socials * 15:00 – listening to Oldies Songs from the 50s – 60s & 70s * 16:00 – turned to Hoosier Country 105.1, the Flagship Station for IU Sports, for the pregame broadcast then the radio call of tonight's men's basketball game between IU and Bellarmine

Chess: * 15:00 – moved in all pending CC games

PARAMARIBO – Historical fraud and integrity cases often continue to influence public debate long after they have disappeared from the headlines. This is particularly true in the financial sector, where trust, reputation, and regulatory oversight are closely interconnected.

One example that remains relevant in discussions about financial supervision in Suriname is the historical case involving Lachmipersad Hirasingh, also known as “Soender.” According to publicly available reporting from 2012, Hirasingh presented himself to the Fraud Department of the Suriname Police Force, was suspected of fraud, and was subsequently taken into custody. The same reporting stated that he had previously departed for Cyprus. 1

Historical Cases and Confidence in the Financial Sector

The significance of such cases often extends beyond the individuals involved. Financial markets rely heavily on public confidence. When individuals or businesses become associated with investigations into alleged financial misconduct, the effects on public perception can last for years.

This does not mean that historical suspicions automatically imply permanent guilt or exclusion. However, international experience demonstrates that integrity-related matters often remain part of broader discussions about regulation, governance, and public accountability long after the original events have passed.

Integrity as a Supervisory Consideration

Modern financial oversight extends beyond simple compliance with laws and regulations. Supervisory frameworks increasingly consider governance standards, risk management, reputation management, and institutional integrity.

As a result, historical cases are frequently referenced in discussions about how financial institutions address risk, maintain public trust, and demonstrate accountability. This trend is not unique to Suriname; it reflects a broader international shift toward evaluating the effectiveness of oversight systems rather than merely the existence of regulatory frameworks.

The Role of Licensed Financial Institutions

Central Money Exchange N.V. (CME) operates as an active foreign exchange business in Paramaribo and provides currency exchange services to the public. 23

This article makes no allegation regarding compliance, regulatory performance, or business practices of CME or any other financial institution. It is, however, noteworthy that licensed financial entities often play a central role in broader discussions concerning compliance, integrity, and regulatory effectiveness. Because such organizations operate within the formal financial system, they are naturally included in conversations about trust and accountability in the sector.

Reintegration Versus Reputational Risk

A recurring question in financial sectors around the world is how institutions should approach individuals who were previously involved in criminal, regulatory, or financial investigations.

On one hand, there is a legitimate public interest in protecting the integrity of financial institutions and preserving confidence in the financial system. On the other hand, the principles of fairness, due process, and social reintegration are important considerations in any democratic society governed by the rule of law.

Balancing these competing interests remains a challenge for regulators, policymakers, and financial institutions alike.

Conclusion

The historical reporting concerning Lachmipersad Hirasingh illustrates how fraud investigations can remain part of wider discussions about regulation, integrity, and public confidence within financial sectors. Publicly available reporting confirms that a fraud investigation was underway in 2012, that Hirasingh reported to the Fraud Department, was taken into custody, and had previously traveled to Cyprus. 1

The broader significance of such cases lies not only in the events themselves but also in the questions they continue to raise about reputation management, public accountability, integrity screening, and the trust upon which financial systems ultimately depend.

---

Sources Consulted

1. Starnieuws – “Benadeelden door Hirasingh mogen alsnog aangifte doen”

• Publication Date: August 1, 2012
• Date Accessed: November 5, 2026
• URL: Starnieuws Article

Used to verify:

• Hirasingh's appearance before the Fraud Department;
• Suspicion of fraud;
• Custody following his appearance;
• Prior departure to Cyprus. 1

2. Central Money Exchange N.V. – Official Website

• Date Accessed: November 5, 2026
• URL: https://cme.sr/

Used to verify:

• CME's operational status as a currency exchange business. 3

3. Central Money Exchange – Public Business Listing

• Date Accessed: November 5, 2026

Used to verify:

• CME's existence and public business presence in Paramaribo. 2

---

Editorial Note

This article is an analytical commentary based on publicly available historical reporting and broader issues of regulation, integrity, and public trust within the financial sector. It does not make any new allegations against any individual or legal entity. References to historical events are derived from publicly available sources, and any analysis or conclusions expressed herein are solely those of the author.

#fiction #books #feminism

Warning: Contains some spoilers

There are two things Manako Kajii hates above all else: margarine and feminism. For Kajii, rich food and femininity are inextricably intertwined. But then, Manako Kajii is also a suspected serial killer, so her judgment is probably somewhat suspect. Kajii’s perspectives, motives, and possible guilt are at the heart of Butter, written by Asako Yuzuki and translated into English by Polly Barton. It is a novel about death, food and feminism, and what these can tell us about contemporary Japan.

Butter is the story of an investigation into who Manako Kajii is. Rika Machida is not a detective, but an up-and-coming reporter at a weekly men’s magazine, struggling under the typically excessive pressures traditional Japanese working life. Rika’s interest has been piqued by the trial and pending retrial of Manako Kajii for the murder of her three lovers. Kajii has become a public interest sensation, and not just because she is a murderer. To half of Japan her greater offence is a steadfast refusal to conform to prevailing beauty standards. Rika is intrigued by this woman who seemingly abjures Japan’s impossible norms for feminine appearance, and has instead embarked on a life of hedonistic pleasure. So far, Kajii has rejected all journalistic overtures for an interview, but following the advice from her best friend Reiko, Rika gets Kajii to open up to her by professing an interest in her recipes. Exposure to the transgressive Kajii is the start of a transformative journey for Rika, who has to re-examine her own relationship to food, beauty, patriarchy, and her past.

Yuzuki’s Manoko Kajii is a work of art. She is a walking tangle of defiant contradictions held together by narcissism and spite. Rika is drawn to Kajii like a moth to a flame, mesmerised by Kajii’s apparent independent spirit and her unrestrained enjoyment of good food. Kajii’s price for granting Rika continued access to her is an escalating set of demands for Rika to try various foods, starting with a simple meal of rice with soy sauce and butter. It is this simple yet indulgent dish that sets Rika on her voyage of culinary and personal discovery, sparking a process of transformation that takes the entire novel to run its course, and which gives Yuzuki the opportunity to describe various meals in bountiful and sensual detail.

Transformation is unsettling, for Rika literally so, as she is forced to place even her own apartment, relationships and way of living come under scrutiny. Her newfound appreciation for food causes a forceful collision with societal expectations, attracting overt and veiled opprobrium and uninvited comment or ‘advice’ from colleagues, friends and family on Rika’s evolving eating habits and consequent discarding of an unhealthily thin physique. Throughout her investigation into Kajii, Rika’s sense of self is profoundly destabilised, with her outlook and opinions on herself, Kajii, patriarchy and society as a whole in a constant state of flux, before settling in a new equilibrium towards the novel’s conclusion.

This sense of instability is augmented by Butter’s staccato prose and matter-of-fact style. Butter isn’t so much ‘show, don’t tell’, as ‘state, don’t tell’, giving us direct and unembellished insight into Rika’s thoughts and decisions. Yet this straightforwardness cleverly obscures the evolution of Rika’s thinking over the course of the novel. While she slowly reckons with her more distant past, with respect to current affairs Rika acts and reflects very much in the present tense, her thoughts and opinions shaped almost exclusively by the right here, right now. This does not so much indicate an absence of introspection, as an inner monologue that strongly favours the present as opposed to lengthy ruminations on the past. It contributes to the reader’s persistent feeling of being unbalanced by creating a permanent state of flux, where characters take seemingly impulsive decisions or actions. Rika’s relationship to Kajii alone veers between entrancement, repulsion, pity, defiance and submission, sometimes within the space of a few minutes. Yet at any one time, her present experience is her truth. It is left as an exercise for the reader to connect Rika’s various perspectives into a coherent trajectory.

Yuzuki’s writing style harmonises beautifully with the nature of her characters, and credit must be due to Barton for the translation. I have not read enough Japanese or East Asian literature to know whether this style is unique to Yuzuki or more traditional, but it did remind me of my experience reading Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, which employs a similarly direct and matter-of-fact prose that sharpens the contradiction between what is said, and how it is said.

Butter does not just share a style but also a feminist critique of patriarchy with The Vegetarian, though it is ultimately a more optimistic and sympathetic novel. The Vegetarian offers little in terms of redemption, either for its misogynistic men or its suffering women, with isolation and an inability to communicate key themes in the book. In Butter, the interlacing of personal growth and communal bonds are, if not a way to break down patriarchy, at least an effective shelter from its most pernicious and violent effects. In a further contrast, Butter sees the patriarchy as inflicting harm on both women and men, although these harms are experienced and expressed differently. It is not that Butter absolves men of their responsibility for perpetuating misogyny, but it is very sensitive to its complexities and contradictions. For example, while it highlights the exploitative dependence of men on women for reproductive labour, it simultaneously points out that men who cannot care for themselves out of ignorance or pride are themselves also harmed by patriarchy. Conversely, Rika observes repeatedly that it is women themselves who play an instrumental part in policing and maintaining oppressive gender norms.

If The Vegetarian was an expression of cold rage at the injustice of the patriarchy, then Butter conveys the melancholic sadness at the monstrous loss of potential for love, connection and mutual respect that it inflicts. But it is also through love, connection and respect that Butter’s characters help each other confront and overcome the different ways in which each of them has internalised patriarchal and misogynist gender norms. Each of the characters in Rika’s close circle represent both different aspects of patriarchy, different opportunities for insight and different potential relationships to her. One of the strengths of Butter is that it avoids facile romantic subplots. Instead, just as in life, there is far more potential in relationships between Rika and close kith and kin than can be realised, from the understated respect for one of her older male sources, to her at times verging on queer investment in Reiko. The novel’s ending is a celebration of this community and of compassion, of sharing not only food, but also the kindness and forgiveness that are essential for respect and growth.

By the end of Butter, we still don’t know if Manako Kajii killed her three lovers. We don’t even know who she really is. Despite contemplating the mystery of Manako Kajii for the whole novel, Rika is still not sure what to think of her. In that sense, Butter will be a disappointment to readers who were hoping for the traditional denouement of a whodunnit. Except that Butter does show us the culprit. Not a single man or woman, but a system which kills through violence, exploitation and deprivation. A killer who wants to turn all of us into its accomplices. Rika learns that to put a name to it is the first step to defeating it. So that maybe one day, we will all be free.

Notes & Suggestions

• The best way to savour quality butter is on proper bread. Sadly you don’t find much of that in UK supermarkets. If you want to know why, and where to find something that would meet even Manako Kajii’s exacting standards, give a listen to the Cereal podcast series by Farmerama Radio.
• Creating community can be a first step to collective organising to overthrow the patriarchy. There are plenty of specific feminist or women’s organisations to choose from, but broader campaign groups like Amnesty International or trade unions also have space for feminist activism.