Post-Cool Normcore

December 28, 2015

Hello internet friends,

so, we got through another one of those again. I hope you had a nice one.
Onwards!

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I’m quite a big fan of Muji. Almost every time I was in town in Düsseldorf I made sure I at least looked at their window display, it is just always very pleasing. (These days the closest Muji is in Paris, which seems a bit excessive, trip-wise, just for some window shopping.)

Muji, with its lack of logos, represents post-cool, normcore Japan, which is, of course, a fetishized version of Japanese culture—serene and neat and proper.

Turns out Muji is growing pretty fast, trying to stay calm while taking over the world.

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I use Spotify’s “Discover Weekly” playlist on my Sonos as alarm clock and let me tell you: it’s not always “so damn good.”
But it is pretty good often enough, so I’ll probably keep doing that.

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Erm.
And by “erm” I probably mean “same.” How else am I supposed to use the watch when my right hand is busy fondling using the phone?

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If you just want to write something on the internet without much hassle you can probably do worse than medium dot com. I quite like it, too – it’s nice as a platform and there are a lot of things the people there do right. But when the founder says that “we” basically only need Facebook and Medium, he might not be all that right.
I’ll still re-publish all these emails over there – but, well, no. The web will still be happily being published on when Medium is long gone and forgotten.

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If you want to read a bit more, here we go:

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That was it for 2015, see you all next year.

Pew Pew Pew

December 21, 2015

Hello internet friends,
last weekend I went to watch a star war. Maybe even twice.
Apparently it is still not okay to talk about it publicly – but come on, that movie has been out for more than 48 hours.
That being said, here is my short review:
It’s a Star Wars movie. If you like Star Wars movies, you will like this Star Wars movie. It is not a toy commercial like the prequel trilogy was,[1] so that’s something. And I really enjoyed the two new lead actors, they seem to know what they’re doing.
If you’re kind of on the “meh” side when it comes to Star Wars, this might be the review for you.
And if you really don’t care, just shrug and move on. You’ll see the logo and the toys until your death, so that’s really all you can do.
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More media consumption think pieces! Streaming TV is different from regular TV!
This is something I’ll think about while watching Frasier on Netflix.
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The Washington Post used to ask “What was fake on the Internet this week?” since 2004. These days the answer seems to be “Basically everything, ugh.”

Frankly, this column wasn’t designed to address the current environment. This format doesn’t make sense. I’ve spoken to several researchers and academics about this lately, because it’s started to feel a little pointless. […] institutional distrust is so high right now, and cognitive bias so strong always, that the people who fall for hoax news stories are frequently only interested in consuming information that conforms with their views — even when it’s demonstrably fake.

Yay.
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Likely also fake: hipster chocolate.
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Apparently some people think it is a good idea to ban children from the internet. While I certainly agree when it comes to my parts of the internet – haha, the joke here is that children are irritating – I really think that is a rather stupid idea.
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Do you need some more articles to instapaper and never read? Okay, I’m here to deliver…
Are you into the whole idea of self-driving cars? Here, have the happy scrappy Ubuntu-powered one out of a hardware hacker’s garage.
Or maybe you’re more interested What the Führer means for Germans today.
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Ending on that high note, have a good holiday if one is happening in your area.

  1. I mean… it is. But it doesn’t feel like one.  ↩

#swag

December 14, 2015

Hey guys 👋 this is Dominik and today we’ll learn about YouTube Voice.
We’ll probably also learn about emoji in newsletters.
Talking about emoji – apparently they are not longer cool in Japan.
But who knows these days what actually cool is? Apparently the dude who decided to offer a #swag course at an university.
His “introduction to cool” begins with setting up Medium and Slack accounts, so that’s, well, “cool.” After all, I have both of these and I’m the definition of cool.
What I sometimes have, before I frustration-uninstall it again, is Snapchat. It is completely not made for my mental model of how ~the internet~ is supposed to work. But maybe this might help?
It still doesn’t, really.
Today in fun facts: It is quite likely that Stonehenge is a second hand henge. It’s quite nice that the Welsh didn’t just throw it away but sold it to a bunch of Brits.
Hey, everybody, let’s try this at the office today!

Look No Further

December 7, 2015

Hello internet friends,

a couple of weeks back we all had a light chuckle when we saw this pullquote regarding avocados.
Which we then forgot again, because internet lols are in endless supply. When I saw it again, I tried to find the whole article and I have to say, it really delivers:

I mean, no offence to Stephen Hawking, I’m sure black holes are also a big deal in their own way but, if you really want to get to grips with the meaning of modern life, look no further than the avocado.

Chapeau. And onwards.
If you work on the internet, it might be interesting to know What Web Can Do Today.

We are at a crossroads of purpose and pain. Our conversations with other travellers have led to an awakening of ultra-intergalatic consciousness. Humankind has nothing to lose.

I enjoy this New-Age Bullshit Generator just a tiny little bit too much. It’s from those people who decided that studying these “profound” statements was a good way to spend their time. And well, they were not wrong.
Sometimes I watch SNL stuff, when it appears somewhere online. This sketch is probably the funniest lately. They were really respectful about it.
Take care and maybe have a laugh or two.