Beer Stars

February 27, 2017

Hello internet friends,

I woke up this morning and instead of “Wah, end of the world!” my whole twitter feed was “Wah, Oscars!” – so I checked what happened and eh, this happened.[1]
Honestly, why do I even mention it? It’s been on every single news channel today. Just like I don’t quite see how it helps when I mention the TRAPPIST–1 planets. You all know it. It’s pretty exciting, but… eh. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Maps! Apparently I was not the only child who was super happy when a book included a map and a whole bunch of additional material and addenda. My personal favorite has always been the pretty sparse map of Inner Mongolia from Fritz Mühlenweg’s Großer-Tiger und Christian.

FRUiTS is closing down and of course the reason is that Japanese street style is dead now. DEAD I tell you. Or maybe it just moved to some other place where it isn’t being turned into a commodity for a fashion magazine?

Fun fact! Self-driving cars are not humans. At least they don’t act human in any given traffic situation. While this is not entirely unexpected it is also something that will need to be addressed on mixed-used roads.

Toodles!

  1. If you’re the one person who did not read about that this morning and don’t want to click through: they actually read the wrong title for best movie, mostly because some accountant at PWC screwed up.  ↩

The Green Issue

February 20, 2017

Hello internet friends,

another Monday, this one with me cranky and slightly feverish in bed. So… let’s see how that will work for us.

Smart cities! They’ll probably work about as good as smart homes, which probably means – not all that good. Because what we should not forget – a city is not a computer. (Well, unless we get rid of all these pesky humans and just replace them with little robots.)

One thing that will always be a ~bug~ in a city will be the creative ways some of us humans are just a tiny little bit smarter than the systems around us. Take for example these models who use their ~being models~ skills to distribute weed in New York.

But sometimes we make little mistakes, no matter how smart we are. Just look at these friendly fellas, who accidentally bought a giant pig.

Now, shall we play “internet entrepreneurs being internet entrepreneurs” first or maybe a bit of science first?
Well, let’s do science! Turns out it is possible to measure the historical state of Earth’s magnetic field by looking at old clay jars. That’s pretty amazing.

So, internet entrepreneurs! Partying, throwing bread around – awesome! (I still like the clay pots more. Or maybe the models who sell pot? I can’t decide.)

Toodles!

Garnguur Shrugged

February 13, 2017

Hello internet friends,

I hope you’re all doing reasonably well in these troubled times. And if you don’t, maybe it cheers you up to watch Jason Statham punch people for over four minutes? Or seven minutes of him kicking things and people?
(Or maybe it’s your thing to watch him dance oiled-up in tiny leopard print underwear?)

Now that we’re firmly on the topic of dancing and maybe fired from the more conservative work places, let’s talk Batman and his dancing. Or lack of dancing. Erik Adams over at the AV Club is pondering the light side of the dark knight.

We did talk about the way I was taught history before – very centered on Europe (the only continent named after a case of bestiality) – so if someone had asked me where I thought the oldest stories about geographic events happened, I’d have probably pointed to Greece or Egypt and shrugged. Turns out the Australians have stories about things that happened 20,000 years ago.

Imagine being a little girl and some Hindu priest decides that you’re a living goddess. That might happen in Nepal, in fact it does pretty regularly. Now imagine being a young teenage girl and retiring from that job. As one might imagine it’s not that easy.

Toodles!

Ennui

February 6, 2017

Hello internet friends,

for years I thought the most dangerous thing that could drop on my head could be some bird poo. Or maybe a random asteroid that will end all but the most resilient life, but I don’t think we’ll be that lucky in our lifetime.
Turns out crocodiles climb trees, too. (See, the turns out is even in their headline!) I haven’t heard any actual facts in the way of crocodiles living here in the middle of Europe, but you never know.

The rise of ~YouTube stars~ was the first thing that ever made me feel old. But I think I’ve finally come around, because whatever it is this young woman is doing is very much my kind of humor.
Meanwhile in the department of “things are different in China” – live-streaming seems to be really big there. But eh, probably they’re not that different. There’s the whole Twitch thing and… eh… whatever else is doing the live-streaming these days. How would I know? In internet years I’m old. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Here, a public service from Irregularity HQ: I have learned that some of my readers don’t quite know what these things are, what the difference is and that they have it – so I managed to find an article that explains them pretty nicely: How to Tell Whether You’ve Got Angst, Ennui, or Weltschmerz

I forgot all three of those for a short time while reading this wonderful article on Soylent. The pull quotes alone are worth clicking that link, he says, staring off into the distance.
Meanwhile people who actually produce real food have a whole other problem: their equipment is increasingly locked behind DRM.

Toodles!