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Like to move it

Children have an innate motivation to move. In order to understand how human bodies move, generations of movement scientists have used the schematic representation of human articulations of legs, arms hips and shoulders to better understand our bodies. In teaching this has served as well as videos in slow motion or series of photos. If you like to move it, just draw a few images of a schematic human body and your imagination will soon get carried away by it. For ambitious children you might go as far as draw your hip- hop sequences or any other choreography this way. You would follow in the footsteps of great choreographers this way. Like to move it, move it. 

Schematic body for movement analysis
Schematic body for movement analysis
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Playing alone

We have been familiar with the term “bowling alone”. which describes the fact that more older persons play games on their own rather than with peers due to busy time schedules or little inclination to compromise during joint activities. Different schooling schedules and busy parents mean more children have to start their playing time on their own before others eventually join in. Advantage: you got the best games all for yourself. Disadvantage: peer learning is for later. Time together for children just as much as for older persons has been underrated far too long. 

Playing alone Berlin 2026
Playing alone Berlin 2026
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Language adoption

With the change from arbitrary signals emanating from language use to a more defined signal use, the social closure of a group is enhanced. Conventionalized signals are an advanced use of language. Animals, here chimpanzees, demonstrate vocal usage learning as a kind of social learning. These are 3 bullet points from the PNAS paper by Valet (2026). We humans are not alone when it comes to the fact that our languages depend a lot on socially shared conventions. Let us just take AI as an example of such a socially shared convention. To accept the abbreviation is a convention. The denomination of intelligence was previously rather reserved to human, or a bit broader, animal related mostly rational features. The AI-hype has enlarged the definition via machine learning and applications of algorithmic problem solving. Next question: Can chimpanzees or other species do vibe coding as well?

Thinking about language and communication in the animal world
Thinking about language and communication in the animal world
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Marriage and births

There has been a continuous and persistent rise in the share of births outside marriage over the last 50 years with few exceptions to the rule. The OECD statistics on this topic tell us about this longstanding trend. By 2023 the OECD30 average had risen to 40% of children who were born outside of marriage. Cultural changes in this respect are visible in many countries. Do no longer expect traditional rings as symbols of marriage to be the rule in many cultures. Some unmarried couples might eventually decide to marry later, but this does not alter the original statistics. 

Children and marriage

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Enjoy Chrononutrition

We all have very different routines of when, how and what to eat. Science deals with some interesting aspects of nutrition under the keyword chrononutrition. Following this line, it matters quite a bit at what time of the circadian rhythm you take in your meals. Some protein at breakfast lets you follow your daily routine feeling less hungry and therefore being at a lower risk to snack sugary foods. A good and healthy lunch should allow you to get use the energy intake during the following hours. Last element, try to eat 3 hours before going to sleep, so your body knows to calm down reactions to nutrition arriving randomly. All this sounds great, it is just tough to balance these recommendations of chrononutrition with working, family life, leisure activities and meeting friends. Enjoy your meal chronometrically as well. 

nutrition salmon proteins
nutrition salmon proteins
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Domain-specific activities

For the improvement of some health outcomes like the onset of dementia, domain-specific activities can make a significant difference. Domain-specific activities are activity levels achieved in a person’s occupational domain, household work, commute or leisure activities. Unfortunately the cumulative hypothesis that no matter in which domain activities take place, they all count towards better health, is not supported by scientific evidence. The meta study by Feter et al.(2026) shows the overriding importance of leisure-time physical activities in the prevention of dementia. The conclusions suggest that occupational, commute or household activities as other domains do not reach the prevention effects of leisure activities. Equal access to the latter could advance society-wide prevention levels a great deal. 

early morning commute in metropolitan area 2026
early morning commute in metropolitan area 2026
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AI-fluencer

The monitoring software for webpages called “Known Agents” allows to monitor the visits of AI chatbots and data crawlers of your webpage. This provides interesting information, since the ordinary rankings on Google are no longer the most informative data on the reach of webpages. AI is deviating webpage traffic via your AI choice rather than the advertisement-influenced Google or other internet search engines did previously. Advertisement changes dramatically. Ways to influence AI provided answers, to questions you did not even pose yourself, will be the new currency in ever more globalizing markets. Maybe the AI-fluencer of today and in future have still a few pre-selected humans in control. But even this process can be taken over by an advanced “Agentrification” of web entries created by AI itself. As a machine I would most likely prioritize Bots from my own peers rather than the potentially unpredictable human minds, often riddled with mental instability. The jury is still out on the question who will be the AI-fluencer of tomorrow and in a more distant future. Even if the days of Her Majesty’s secret agent 007 have passed some time ago, the AI-fluencers seem to work, somehow hidden from the public, somewhere in the background.  

Autum impression 2026-11 swans in background
Autum impression 2026-11 swans in background
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Wisdom of chance

The advantage to toss a coin is that a decision made by chance is usually perceived as acceptable to all parties involved. The wisdom of Greek philosophers also trusted in decisions by chance. In decision-making it is good scientific practice to mention error margins, a bit like in weather forecasts. In case error margins are very high it, therefore, can make sense to leave the ultimate decision to a toss of a coin as this might be just as valuable as making one or the other choice with high uncertainty. Of course we feel uneasy about such a procedure as we tend to be convinced that we have sufficient information to make a better decision than just a shortcut by chance decision. Hence, there may be many more cases than we would like to admit to which can be left to a by chance decision. 

Random choice decoration of kindergarden Berlin 2026
Random choice decoration of kindergarden Berlin 2026
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Polarized Elections

In an electoral system which has been built on single step majority voting, there is a tendency to end up with rather polarized elections. The USA has majority voting in both houses and a polarized, dyadic, either Democrat (blue) or Republican (red) candidate’s choice. As there are no other major political, there is definitely a majority and a minority, but other political ideas do not gain any visibility or significant influence in this electoral system. The amount of non-voters is a critical mass which can be difficult to interest in such simplified dual choices. Moving from a kind of black or white, blue or red voting system to a more colorful spectrum of votes and coalition building has the advantage to allow a broader choice candidates and less back and forth polarization. More polarized elections, where parties try to win more votes on the more extreme ends of the political spectrum bear the risk to split societies more and more. In the long run electoral systems should be build to bring societies together rather than to deepen splits. Moving beyond binary choices has certain advantages.

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Swing or Flip

With the voting in mid-term elections of the US Congress and Senate being counted, we notice a shift in the language of the commentators. Whereas in previous elections of the Houses it was common to use the term “swing states” for a federal state that changed its majority from Democrats (blue) to Republicans (red), the 2026-11-3 elections referred to “flipped states”. What’s the significance of this? The metaphor of a “swing” assumes a kind of alternation of back and forth movements, which can be associated with a state changing political colors from election to the other. The metaphor of the “flip” might be associated more with the “flip side” of a piece of paper or a record. You might prefer the titles on one side more than the others. In the 2026-11-3 elections Democrats managed to turn long-standing Republic states (Kansas, Ohio) to vote for Democrats. They managed to captured dissatisfied or betrayed former Republican voters and thereby flipped states that have long traditions to vote Republican. Actually, these flipped states were turned into swing states which they have not been for many decades as the swing had been blocked on the Republican’s side.

Republican-or-Democrat-suit-2026-11-3
Republican-or-Democrat-suit-2026-11-3