Pentecost

May 25, 2015

Hello internet friends!

My Apple Watch (No, I am not going to be all fancy and look up the UTF–8 for the Apple icon. Honestly.) arrived last week pretty much right after I sent the last email. And as I posted to Twitter on Tuesday:

I already developed capital-O opinions.

But I realised pretty soon: this does not matter the least. Because as soon as people notice the watch on my arm, they have all the opinions.
It’s a waste of money, obviously. And a first generation product, ugh! And “Oh, it can tell the time? How innovative.”

It is actually fascinating. I am pretty sure that a Pebble or one of the Android watches would not even remotely create these sometimes pretty passionate reactions.
Oh well. I quite like the watch – it tells the time and it vibrates in a weird way when someone sends me an iMessage.

Remember when the internet went crazy because it was raining spiders somewhere in Australia? Turns out that is actually pretty common and could happen in your area, too!

Sweet dreams.

Humming Bird

May 18, 2015

Hello internet friends,

I’m usually a pretty calm person but when the first thing I see on a Monday morning is an email with the “important” flag, I do feel myself turning big and green.
What’s wrong with these people?

If you need around 12 minutes of emotional hygiene, I have good news for you: out of nowhere a new episode of You Look Nice Today appeared. (This is a good thing.)

Wait, what?
If this is true, it’s pretty bad for everybody involved.

Remember 30 Rock? Of course you do. Now someone got hold of the complaints about it and I am not too sure if these aren’t satire, too.

Given that we take more photos nowadays than ever before, interesting new applications emerge: Using millions of online photos cobbled together, we can now watch history unfold.
This is actually pretty amazing – and a good reason to make sure we have good and robust archival systems and proper licences for these photos.

Eat some fruit and take care.

Upward Mobility

May 11, 2015

Hello internet friends!

I’m back from a week in Berlin and at re:publica ’15 and now have to face reality again. What a bummer.

I did get some valuable in-person feedback to especially this email thing here, so here we go:

  • Yes, I do like it when people reply to these emails. I don’t expect it, but I appreciate it. (It does happen quite regularly, too – thanks a lot for that!)
  • I do have another newsletter, which is more or less automated – it is the links that I posted to my link blog in the last 24 hours in a nicely (I hope) formatted daily email, so you can enjoy the fact that I read a lot of stuff on the internet and maybe find something worth reading. I was told to cross-promote it here, so here you go: if you want, you can subscribe to that email here.
  • Nobody noticed that I actually spend money on a photo of Ariane, The Overexposed Model a few weeks back. You know, the one who is everywhere. I even found her in the U-Bahn in Berlin. She’s been around as well and Mike Aquino at Esquire talked to her a couple of years ago.

Light housekeeping out of the way, here is the story about how Osama bin Laden really died. Maybe. It’s now what I learned from that Homeland episode with another actress.
My gut says that this article is closer to the truth than “the official version” but that sounds pretty ton-foil-hatty and is mostly because the media (hah.) has instilled in me the knowledge, that a story is never quite as neat and clean as it seems and often a lot murkier.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Related, if you understand German, this re:publica talk by Friedemann Karig on the fluidity of truth.

As much as I enjoyed many of the stupid superhero movies lately, I do agree with Sady Doyle here: Age of Robots: How Marvel Is Killing the Popcorn Movie
Maybe scaling things down a bit would help the whole thing. In fact I do enjoy their TV outings – Agents of SHIELD and Agent Carter – quite a bit more than I liked Age of Ultron. (Maybe because I was able to watch those while lounging around in my underwear.)

Now try to get that image out of your head, take care.

Tilt Your Head and See The Duck

May 4, 2015

Hello internet friends!

Dick is abundant and low value.

Glad we cleared that up.
Did this email even reach you or was this enough “strong language” to walk right into the spam filters?

Instant Rap Airhorn is something that exists and I am sure you can find useful ways to incorporate it into your life.

Maybe to lighten up the mood while your place drops out of the sky because the software just shuts down? Your fellow flyers will surely appreciate that lovely gesture.

I am weirdly proud of being a nag-hipster – I told Dominik about the weirdness of the Mercator projection on his wall way before everybody on the internet did.
The reason is obviously the same: it’s an awesome idea, a great execution and we’re all silently angry at ourselves that we don’t have the passion and patience to put that much energy and time into something that cool. The projection complaint is just a smoke bomb. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Now is ze time on Sprockets vhen ve dance!

Have some fruit, take a nap. And why not let me know how you’re doing – any news on your side?