@trpplffct

It is not a

big surprise that,

just like Sterrin,
our favourite
animal
_is the one we see right now

We regularly are driving for a few hours, back to The Netherlands. With the kids. They are used to the distance now, especially because we often listen to podcasts together. Our current favourite is Sterrin's Dierenencyclopedie, or Sterrin's Animal Encyclopedia. Biologist Sterrin Smalbrugge discusses one animal each episode, which is randomly selected from a "tree of life" by co-presenter Mark Haayema. He describes the animal from a picture and Sterrin has to guess which animal it is. Almost every time, whether the animal is a snake, an insect, a deep see fish or a rare mammal, Sterrin cries out that this animal is her favourite. We joke about that.

The other day, I was in the zoo with my daughter. We saw penguins, giraffes, a lion, a rhinoceros, monkeys, piranhas, turtles, snakes ("so cute", said my daughter) and much more. Even ostriches in the act of making baby ostriches. And we liked them all. Because we are very much like Sterrin in that respect. Might also be why we like her podcast so much.

Do you have a favourite animal? Or are you, too, like Sterrin?

Poésie de la vie

Watch Sterrin talk about her love for reptiles and why we should save them:

World Cup fever

has got me in
its claws; despite
the horrible
politics
it's still The Beautiful Game.

With more red cards than goals, Mexico and South-Africa kicked off the 2026 FIFA World Cup. And I watched that match. With a bit of chagrin. In the run-up to this World Cup, the politics, especially the horrible politics of one of the host-nations, and corruption of FIFA seemed to have taken complete control of it all. From extremely high ticket prices, to the refusal to let supporters of some countries actually watch the matches in the stadiums, and then the referee who was refused entry into the United States. Players of Uzbekistan searched with dogs before a friendly match against my favourite team, The Netherlands, whilst the Oranje players were not. It all is sickening. And it should not have a place in football, that, as the FIFA keeps reminding us: football isn't politics.

And then there is the beautiful game. The goals, the skill moves, the supporters creating colourful seas on the stands, and wearing the most beautiful and ridiculous outfits. The excitement of the upset, the star players delivering, the hand of god. That is why I love The Beautiful Game. That is why I'm watching. They will not take our Joga Bonito, our Beautiful Game from us. May the winner take the glory, and I just hope that Curaçao will go very far this tournament. The smallest nation to ever take part. Wouldn't that be something?

PS: the header image is not taken during a world cup match.

Poésie de la vie

Here's a reel with some lovely World Cup goals for you to enjoy.

Ukraine, Iran,

Congo, Sudan,
bombed Lebanon,
the list goes on -
please stop wars
the destruction hurts us all.

This week, some of my internet friends managed to come back to our cozy corner of the web after their internet access had been blocked for months in the country where they live. It made me happy to see them have access again, and to see that they had managed to survive. So far.

Another internet friend is celebrating her birthday in a few days. On her wish list? Donations to her charity, with which she brings medical supplies and other non-weaponry equipment to the medics at the frontline of the Russian war on Ukraine. She has already brought so many tourniquets, bandages, medications, medical backpacks, generators and star links to the front, but it still is not enough. Fortunately, there still is time to help her make this birthday special by donating to Crystal Hearts via Endaoment (in crypto or fiat money).

Armed conflicts are raging all over the world. Wasting resources, obliterating generations, making people leave their homes. I wish we knew how to stop this. That might start with welcoming back our friends, supporting them with their birthday wish, and just realising that The Others are humans who just want to make the most of their lives, just like us.

Poésie de la vie

When I was writing this, two songs came to mind. Here they are:

through a dirty_

window, I see
a very Dutch_
landscape glide by
its changes
almost imperceptible

The other day I took a train in The Netherlands. I love train rides, and how the landscape glides by the window. Constantly changing, and, in some cases, very much the same as years ago. In a world where everything is always in flux, things that stay the same stand out. So I noticed a typically Dutch landscape, with low skies, patches of trees, and stretched agricultural fields cut-through with little canals. In the distance, and sometimes quite close by, a little village with a church spire sticking out.

If you are like me, inertia feels uncomfortable. But it also can make things feel familiar. And in control. That is what I liked about looking out of the window on this particular train ride: I found that in our world, change may be the only constant, it sometimes is just imperceptible.

How has your landscape changed?

Poésie de la vie

This YouTube account has several videos of train rides (in Europe). Not narrated, not edited to be glitzy. Just footage shot in and out of the train. Fun to see different trains, awesome to see several stations, and mesmerising to see all these beautiful landscapes.

a hidden hunter_

awaits the moment eggs hatch -
picnic in the park

A little while back I created a mini app (for Farcaster use) that offers a daily creative prompt. The idea is that with a little creative practice every day, you build your creative confidence. And with that, you will be better at doing what you do in your daily job. It will become easier for you to find solutions that work better. Or find new ways of doing your job that are more fun and more efficient. Creative confidence is important, and you can train it like you can train the muscles in your body. Or some dogs.

The haiku above was written as a response to one of the daily prompts of my mini app.

What are you doing to train your creative muscles?

Poésie de la vie

In this short video below, David Kelley explains how important creative confidence is.

Is that Lausanne?_

And Lac Léman?
Can my friend see
me flying here?
I wave, and
hope they're waving back at me.

Seeing the world from above always inspires me. There's so much going through my mind when I look down, in awe, at our beautiful planet. One fun thing to do is trying to recognise what is below. When I flew back from Farcon Rome, it was actually quite easy to recognise some parts. Lac Léman, AKA Lake Geneva, is quite recognisable and seeing it reminded me of the friends I have who live near there. Internet friends and family friends. It was nice to think of them, so I waved. Not that they would have noticed, but still: what if?

What do you look for when you are flying?

Poésie de la vie

Dutch broadcaster VPRO made a wonderful series called Nederland van boven, or The Netherlands from above. It shows the country, as the title suggests, from above. Here's a short video they released from the province I was born in.

Second World War_

victory day
and still "never_
again" is a
promise we_
haven't been able to keep._

Today, May 8, is in some places WWII Victory Day. It's something I had to get used to, because in The Netherlands we are celebrating Liberation Day on 5 May, whilst our Remembrance Day is on May the 4th.

As we are celebrating the end of WWII this week, there is one thing that keeps bothering me. Eighty-one years ago, we told ourselves, as humanity: "Never Again". But look at where we are now. The wars raging and war crimes committed have maybe never been as multitudinous as they are in 2026.

So this week, think about that. And how you can help to let us finally deliver on that promise of "Never Again".

Poésie de la vie

Visiting the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp thirteen years ago made a great impact. One of the things was standing in front of a building where people from my hometown were kept. People of all ages. People, had I lived then, who could have been my classmates, teachers, friends. I made a short video about that, then.

even with just_

that little bit
that you can miss -
buy this coin and
you can be
our exit liquidity

Earlier this week I launched a new coin. Yes, I know, "do we really need another meme coin?" Unlikely, but still I want to give this a go. I've experimented with coins a bit, and have not really found a way to make them work from an artist perspective. Content coins, writer coins, it has come to very little.

This one, though, is a little different. One of the challenges artists that use blockchain technology have - and to be honest: most artists have - is that people do not really see art as a valuable thing to exchange for money. In crypto circles, people do like art, but they rather spend their money on trading. I once learned of a nice way to describe crypto circles: they are like resorts. You enter through the casino, where a lot of people stay, but there is also the spa, wellness and other areas that are worth your time, where less people hang out, but which still have valuable things, such as wonderful conversations, charity and, yes, art. These areas are not very profitable, despite their value. The casino is where the resort makes its money.

The resorts in this analogy are places like Crypto Twitter (CT) and Farcaster. I prefer the Farcaster resort over CT, personally, as I believe the conversations are better there than on CT. More balanced, more honest, more respectful, more open-minded and less shilling. So, that is where I focus my attention and where I launched my coin.

The idea of the coin is to let the people in the casino play with it. When you launch a coin, that already starts with bots called snipers doing the first trading and earning the coin creator rewards. Consequently, there are basically two mechanisms that can deliver value to the creator: trading fees and exchange rate.

For every trade made with the coin, the creator gets a fee. More volume in trades means more fees. So, the more people in the casino play with the coin, the more fees the creator receives. For my new coin, I've directed 90% of these fees to my trpplffct poetry fund. Every trade helps me to support onchain poets that way.

The other mechanism is much more volatile. When people buy the coin, the exchange rate goes up, making holdings more valuable. That helps poets, because from my initial trading fees, I airdropped 1 million of my coin to 37 poets I know who have been active on Farcaster. If the number of the coin goes up, the value of that airdrop goes up. That is a bit of a gamble, but that is precisely what the people in the casino like so much.

Will this work? I don't know. But if all of you spend as little as 1 Euro on buying some $SPCYPTRY, you will be supporting onchain poets, and you might, like the 37 poets on Farcaster, get rich quick. And of course: nfa, dyor. Or: this is not financial advice and you should do your own research.

Enjoy your stay at the resort. Send us a postcard.

Poésie de la vie

Imagine receiving a postcard 121 years late...

A border crossed_

a coloured bridge
and then we pass
that man-made mount.
Along this
autoroute, familiar sights.

A road well-traveled, but still so many things to see. And they shape how the road is experienced as well - from interesting sights they become distance measures: if we're here, we're almost there.

What are the landmarks you encounter regularly?

Poésie de la vie

When you get off the main roads, there is really so much to see. Here are some great road trips to inspire you to go and see the world:

Here we go:_

another visit to
another doctor. I am so bored,
but need to keep it up
to get fixed.

I need eye surgery. I neglected my problem a little bit, so in the past few months, I was rewarded for that neglect by having to go through multiple examinations. Sometimes the same ones again to verify for another specialist, sometimes completely new ones. I did not know there were so many ways eyes can be examined. From x-rays with contrast fluids, to echographies, to I don't know what that whirring and circling machine was doing. The most annoying one, was the one where the machine spit air in my eye to measure eyeball tension. Avoid that one, if you can.

Anyway, all those tests also meant waiting in waiting rooms. The beauty is that in Paris, there is this specialised hospital, that has a whole universe of related clinics around it. So, I've been to several of those, and to the main hospital. I was in the hands of experts, and they all wanted to test just that one thing more, or again.

Okay, admittedly, this was not the best experience in my life, but it had to be done. And fortunately, I found some poetry in the waiting room boredom.

Poésie de la vie

It felt a bit like I was living through groundhog day, having to go to all these waiting rooms. So, I was looking for something fun to share and found this weird thing. There must be some poetry in this, right?

muted tones_

and intricate textures,
calming sound of moon moving water,
a soft wind clears my mind:
happy place

The water was still cold, but I stepped into the surf. As the water flowed over my feet, I felt a heaviness flowing out of my body I was not aware I was carrying. This is so very much my happy place: the beach, no matter the weather.
Especially in these times, we need our happy places more than in previous years. Places where we feel safe, where we feel without sorrow, where we feel light and loved.

What does your happy place look like?

Poésie de la vie

Learn how to be happy from what seems to be the happiest place in the world: Finland. Loving this report in which some happiness hackers are interviewed.

The cold quay_

welcomed a stowaway
into his new reality. Life
shifted halfway across
the planet.

The Lloydkade is a quay in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. There still are mooring bollards lining the street, but they are no longer in intensive use. Seventy-five years ago, my dad set foot on European soil right here. He had been a stowaway on the Goya, a ship sailing from the East Indies colony of The Netherlands that was soon to become Indonesia. He had left his tropical home to make a new life in the colder parts of Europe. He would never return.

My father came to The Netherlands in a time filled with uncertainties amidst a changing world that had just started healing from World War II. That healing took a long time, and had its ups and downs. It even looked for a little bit after the 1980s that we had actually managed to put dark periods like that in our past. A relic of history. Unfortunately, now again, we seem to be pulled back by people who see The Other as a threat. People who want more money, more resources, more of everything for themselves only. The Others are not the threat. The ones telling you that, are the real threat.

Poésie de la vie

My father was born in the Moluccas, an archipelago also known as the Spice Islands, because of the unique spices that natively grew there. Like nutmeg:

I don't think I've_

ever taken
this line before;
the only time
I was close
to here, I rode a velib'.

Paris, like all big cities, has many faces. And many places that are worth spending time at. This week, I was in a part of the city I had not been before, and got there by riding a metro I had never taken before. New experiences, especially those that are all about discovering more about the place where you live, are very enriching: I saw a new face of Paris, and I found the poem above.

Oh, and no, it was not the line that passes the station of which you can see a fragment in the header image. But do you recognise at which station that photo is taken?

What's a cool place in your area that tourists hardly ever visit, but is very much worth going to?

Poésie de la vie

carefully she_

selects the next
blossom to pick
pollen from - a
joyful dance;
worker becomes MVP

Spring is exploding early this year, but, as always, with verve. Croci, daffodils, blossom trees, everything is coming out of hibernation. Even though it triggers my allergies, I love it. It's beautiful. Exciting, Fresh. Days are noticeably longer. The sun is warmer. People seem to be friendlier.

If you look closer at the flowers and blossoms, you see little workers being busy. They hop from flower to flower, collecting raw materials for honey. And as they do that, they pollinate. They ensure that the blossoms grow out into fruit. Into food.

As I watch this in a tree with vibrant pink blossoms, I am amazed. How can these little creatures play such an important role?

We all have our role to play, and maybe the role of us humans is to make sure our pollinator populations do not get decimated any further.

Poésie de la vie

This video is a short reminder of the importance of pollinators.

Like leaves on the_

forest floor, some
are just there, some
are exquisite -
all of them
make our common soil richer.

When I was walking in a big park the other day, one that resembles a small forest, I was looking at textures. From tree trunks, from moss, and from the leaves on the ground. The last one intrigued me. It's just a pile of fallen leaves discarded by the trees and nobody cares enough about them to pick them up. But when you zoom in, you can see that each leaf is unique. With its own intricate patterns and shapes and colours. Zoom out again a little and you can see them lying there, layered on top of each other, year after year. And these layers slowly morph into a fertile top layer of the soil. One that feeds the forest.

It reminded me of my poems. Sometimes, when I send them out in the world, it feels like I send them out like a tree letting go of its leaves. And when you see them lying on the floor, you will find they all look very similar. A bit mundane even. But if you zoom in, you'll see that each is different. Some are indeed mundane, and maybe a bit bland, but some are very intricate, and powerful, and inspiring.

All of them together, though - I hope they form a very fertile topsoil for you to grow your own unique worldview from.

Poésie de la vie

Watch this bite-sized documentary about the forest floor

In a world filled with_

bland, dull tones, I prefer to
use a bright palette.

Recently I got a brand new fountain pen (the Kaweco Al Sport Piston Filler if you want to be precise), and I filled it with the blue ink that came with it. And it's a bit... mweh. So, now I'm writing a lot so that I can fill it with a brighter, more vibrant colour. One thing I wrote, is the poem above.

How are you bringing more colour into the world?

Poésie de la vie

If you want to know a bit more about vibe coding and have a little peak into the future, watch this video with Sayangel, who inspired me to build my mini app on Farcaster:

As I weave through_

the crowds, I know
I will feature
in a thousand
tourist snaps;
now I'm part of their story.

Imagine you want to visit a museum in the city you live in. To get there, you walk past a beautiful spot that has one of the best views of one of the most iconic monuments in the world. Do you see the crowds standing there? Snapping photos, selling trinkets, being tourists? Well, if you get out at the Trocadero metro stop, and walk through the Esplanade du Trocadéro to cross the Pont d'Iena, you will know what I mean. If you don't want to be in other people's pictures, don't do this. It's unavoidable. And to be fair, from that Esplanade, you have an amazing view of the Eiffel Tower. Arguably the best view.

With virtually everybody living with a camera glued to their hand these days (and then I'm not even speaking of those Ray Ban Facebook glasses), you will become part of other people's stories. There is no escaping. I don't really mind for myself. But I do not like it if my children are in it. I used to mind that less, but now that images shared on socials will inevitably become part of AI training data sets, I have more concerns. I rather not have my children's faces be inspiration for AI hallucinations. Still looking to find ways to avoid that, without moving to an isolated home high up in the mountains.

Although, that doesn't even sound that bad.

Poésie de la vie

Maybe the best time to wander the streets of Paris, is right when it wakes up at 5 am.

When prosthetics_

is transcribed as
prostitutes, you
know we are still
early and
have a long journey ahead.

Earlier this week, I was in a call with a charity that refurbishes used prosthetic legs and send them to a country in Africa to help people there who have lost limbs unlock mobility. They do impressive work, and we decided to direct part of our fundraising to their organisation. You can see a video of what they do in the Poésie de la vie section below.

What was a bit of distraction during the call, was the transcription provided by the video call tool. This tool uses AI to convert what is being said into text. A very useful tool, if it works well. This one clearly has a way to go to become reliably useful, as some of the conversions were still very, well, wrong. Some were comical, and others were troubling. When prosthetics is consistently transcribed as prostitutes, we can conclude that this tool is proving it can be useful, but needs to improve its accuracy.

AI has proved how useful it can be, but we still need to adapt. Whether it is misinterpretations in transcriptions, hallucinations, or overvaluations of misinformation, AI still needs us very much to verify whether what has been produced is actually usable. This, I believe, underscores the need for learning methodology of not only how AI works and is trained, but also of how to do what you want the AI to do. And a thorough subject matter knowledge to spot the hallucinations.

We are on our way, but not there yet.

What's the funniest hallucination AI has presented you?

Poésie de la vie

Watch the story of Lamin, a welder who could continue his work thanks to a donated prosthetic leg.

Only the weak_

wage wars - it takes
real strength to build
bridges and make
peace happen.
Be strong: embrace The Other.

Today, I attended a Creative Mornings meeting in Paris. Creative Mornings is a global movement of creative people gathering on the last Friday of the month to talk around a certain theme. The theme today was chosen by the Teheran chapter: koor-soo, which means so much as "a glimmer of hope".

We were treated to an inspiring talk by Warrior of Peace Hanna Assouline. At one point, one audience member started antagonising her, by aggressively questioning her about a point he declared she had made, but of which it remained unclear when she had made that. I, personally, did not think she did, but that's beside the point. The point is, that this kind of antagonistic behaviour does not contribute to a solution, it only perpetuates the problem. The whole point of Hanna's story was that her women's movement tried to bring people together. To bridge the gaps, to bring people from both sides, in the example at hand the Israelis and the Palestinians, together to find a way towards peace.

And that's what this poem is about. Finding the strength to embrace The Other. To work towards peace. That's real strength. Only the weak wield weapons.

PS: In the header image you can see a section of the Jordan river, which partially forms the border between Israel and the Palestinian territory.

Poésie de la vie

Above, I called Hanna Assouline a Warrior of Peace. Here's a short clip that shows what her organisation, les guerrières de la paix, does.