Shipping

November 30, 2015

Hello internet friends,

the end is nigh!
At least the end of this year, if you happen to follow the Gregorian calendar.

I didn’t see one of these “hoverboards” in real life, yet – but it is still hugely interesting to see how these things are built and sold.

The crapfest that was Age of Ultron soured me on the MCU – and yet, mostly because Krysten Ritter has been great in everything I have seen her so far, I watched Jessica Jones last week.
And what can I say – I really liked it a lot. Mostly because it moved all the silly superhero antics way to the background in favour of a really dark detective story. If you happen to have Netflix around, give it a go. Maybe watch something fun in between the episodes, though.

Back in the day I used to play a fair share of StarCraft II. Some people (hi!) really want me to get the new and last version of it, too. Probably mostly so that they can kick my ass in it.
If you are so inclined, it might be interesting to read about the last big tournament finale of the version before the update.

Boarding airplanes is only fun if you have a very interesting definition of “fun” – usually it involves a lot of standing around and being shuffled from one queue to the next one.
Given that airlines have decided that humans are just cargo anyway, how about we build containers for them and plug them into planes as needed? It’s an interesting concept – a modular airplane, what could possibly go wrong?

Have a good first week of December, everybody.

Wayward

November 23, 2015

Hello internet friends,

when was the last time you thought about Enya? Precisely.
Now she has a new album and because it’s 2015 the long portrait doesn’t appear in Vanity Fair but over on Buzzfeed.

If you are more into engines than Enya[1] you might want to watch the top three of the current supercars driven around a race track in Portugal.

If you’re not interested in either of those, maybe you like (long think pieces about) selfies? Bring some time for that one, the reading time algorithm clocks this one at a whopping 57 minute read.
Just imagine how many selfies you could have taken during that time.

Apparently there are Millennial life coaches and I honestly don’t know how to process that information.

I celebrate everything! Even if you got on the call and said, ‘I didn’t do shit,’ I’d be like, ‘Wooo!’

Wooo. Well, I’m in.
(This is also a great article for the people with the snake people browser plugin. Chrome/Firefox)

If we still didn’t know that podcasting is getting big – just like in 2004 blogging got big – here is the Vogue podcast.

Have a good week, people.

  1. Those of you who know me in person can probably picture my smug smile over this lovely pun-ny segue.  ↩

Quality Content

November 16, 2015

Hello internet friends,

somehow my paragraph on the current event in Paris and everybody’s reaction to it got a bit longer. Since I understand that many people want or need to avoid articles about the more traumatic news, I put it out as an addendum. You can find it here: Capital-O Opinion.

For everybody else, let’s try to keep this one a bit lighter for now, okay?

Apparently English is a pretty weird language. But obviously not as much as the author claims, notes the always helpful geek choir called MetaFilter.

The Internet Will Always Suck – and because we’re trying it with a lighter mood, this one is about the technical infrastructure and not the people.
In case technical infrastructure made you roll your eyes and think: “ugh, nerd!” – enjoy this helpful guide on how to handle electricity.

Apparently a bunch of hotels are worth 12.2 Instagrams. That’s pretty amazing.

I’ve been playing the new Tomb Raider game all weekend (in case you wonder if I have a life…) and it is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.

15 Things That May Or May Not Be Amaze – BuzzFeed delivers quality content once again.

Take care, everybody. Breathe. Hug a tree or a fellow person, if you’re so inclined.

Capital-O Opinion

Usually I read through my instapaper on Sunday evening to prepare this email, copy a couple of links and thoughts about them into my text editor and try to turn it into something entertaining and/or interesting for you on Monday mornings.
This time it is a little bit more difficult because my main coping mechanism for news like what happened in Paris on Friday is to instapaper – yes, that’s a verb now – every news article and think piece I come across. And because everybody has capital-O Opinions these days and because every news organisation is pretty eager to capture more of the heightened attention that tragedies like this bring to the news, there are a lot of these articles. I am sure you have seen your fair share, even if you tried to avoid them.
Of course I don’t read all of these articles. They are often repetitive or even stale information by the time I start to look through my Instapaper. But putting them in there works as a displacement activity for me.

And that’s the thing: even for us, who don’t have any direct connection to what happened, news like this are a something big and unusual and not ordinary at all and everybody has different ways of handling that.
For many people it seems to be changing their Facebook profile image. It’s not for me, personally – I find it to be a bit silly – but it seems to help people and I rather have people doing silly Facebook things than people who turn to “It’s us vs them!” rhetoric.
Or people who decide that it’s the immigrants’ or all Muslims’ fault or those who pretend it is, even though they know better, because it is politically advantageous for them. Fuck those people.

Given that we’re at a point where I put my capital-O Opinions, here we go…
Of course it is slightly fucked up that these Facebook functions to broadcast one’s well-being have been opened up after the Paris attacks and not the Beirut ones. And that there is no button to temporarily change one’s profile picture to the Lebanese flag.
I understand people who point that out and I think it’s good that this happens. It will reach someone at Facebook and some time, sooner or later, something will change – even just because someone cynical decided that he middle eastern market is too valuable for Facebook to ignore, now that they’re done growing in their home market.

Fetch

November 9, 2015

Hello internet friends,

here we go again. (♬ Here we go go go to the temple of consumption. ♫)

So far coffee is my only drug but this sounds pretty good, too.

What is actually pretty good is the new Netflix series Master of None by and with Aziz Ansari. I watched it all in one go, which might have been excessive – but also doable, as the first season is just ten short episodes.
Highly recommended – not only by me, the whole internet seems to agree. (Almost. There are always grumps.)

I’m not what one might call a ~millennial~ – but I’d honestly would consider living in something like those new living situations here. Just add a balcony and I’m there.
As long as Elwood doesn’t forget to bring me my cheese whiz.

Apparently the whole Apple car thing is happening – or not. Maybe there really is a company called Faraday Future that suddenly has a lot of money from nowhere and very soon we have forgotten about it while Apple is still trying to make the Apple TV happen.

Last week I got the feedback that this newsletter is not very democratic and/or a discussion mailing list. That’s right and by design.
If you do have something to share – comments, thoughts, links, etc. – I am happy to get replies to these emails and share interesting feedback, too. If email is not your medium – hah – you could blog your thoughts and link to the newsletter on the archive page. If you don’t have your own blog, it might be easiest to sign up for Medium dot com and reply directly to the newsletter on my archive over there. If you’re more of a tumblr person, there is this.
There are all the options – I do try to accommodate your ways of saying hi.

Now, be safe. And don’t forget about those shark selfies – I’m still waiting for a real shark.

Faster Pussycar! Kill! Kill!

November 2, 2015

Hello internet friends old and new,
how nice to see you all.

The IMDb is 25 years old. That’s a lot of internet years.
One of the items on that bucket list that I still need to write is getting an IMDb entry – who can arrange that for me?

I was on a flight yesterday – which was delayed and there was huge chaos at the airport and with the boarding process. And while the sky was clear on my route, heavy fog over the UK messed up the whole heavily interconnected European route network.
In case you wonder: Why is my flight delayed in foggy weather?

Talking about both bucket lists and traveling – that whole container ship traveling thing looks pretty amazing.

Pretty soon the ocean might be the only place where humans are half-way safe: Why Self-Driving Cars Must Be Programmed to Kill.

Somehow the future was better in the past. If there is one person who is responsible for that, it is Syd Mead. Here he is, giving a pretty interesting interview, interlaced with some of his drawings.

Take care, folks.