Hello internet friends,

didn’t you always want to just drive a nice little train through a nice little scenery? Well, here you go: Short Trip.

Terrible

I’m not going to say anything about the results of our election yesterday but I do hope that a lot of journalists saw this article for their future work: Writing Well about Terrible People

Click

While everybody is still waiting for the iPhone X to drop it is pretty obvious that the 8 is a rather nice pocket computer with a rather nice camera, too: iPhone 8 Plus Camera Review: India

Brownies

Be very wary when making brownies, an Italian woman could steal your husband: The Story Behind the Greatest Internet Recipe Comment of All Time

History

By now we’re very used to having web apps. It’s actually pretty hard to find a website that isn’t in some way or another an web app. But how did all this start? Well: The First Web Apps: 5 Apps That Shaped the Internet as We Know It

Toodles!

Hello internet friends,

things that I have seen last weekend: people’s confused faces when the announcements in a Swiss train were made by a guy from Cologne with a very Cologne-y humor. A nun with AirPods. An Aston Martin DB5.
Thanks, dear readers, for acting as my diary. I really appreciate it.

Monkey Business

No, this is not about the whole macaque selfie thing. It is about something a lot more enjoyable: the time before proper maps existed and explorers ran around the globe, trying to, well, explore the world. Weird stuff happened back then: for over a hundred years Europeans were just so convinced that a golden mountain range was sitting right in the middle of Africa. And while we know by now that this isn’t quite the case, it is still a neat concept for an art project: The Fake Mountain Range That Appeared on Maps for a Century

Badger Badger

I honestly don’t know how to get from a story about colorful fantastical pictures to a story about an acid trip, but that might be because I never tried having one. So instead I just give you the title: Back in 1982 I was dealing acid at Jim Morrison’s grave and that’s when I first met Vladimir Putin.

Self-help

I’m pretty sure Quartz knows what a bunch of sad lonely people are their main target group. Why else would they run articles like There’s an easy way to be funnier and more genuine without turning into a jerk and How do you make new friends as an adult? Be like the golden retriever?
I’ll leave it as an exercise to you why I’m linking to them here. (I love you all, don’t worry. (Well, actually I don’t. I don’t even know most of you.))

Live From New York

I love everything about this story: Hold the Egg Sandwich:
Egyptian TV Is Calling I think more TV stations around the world should use intelligent bodega owners as their foreign correspondents.
(Unless some startup-bros replace them all with bloody vending machines, but I guess that’s not going to happen.)

Toodles!

(Oh, wait, by the way – did you ever wonder Why Your Favorite TV Character’s Dress Looks So Different on You? Me neither, but it is fascinating. And I’ve learned a great new word for the type of untucked shirt that the Apple executives seem to like: butt mullet.)

Hello internet friends,

had a rough Monday? Well, probably not as rough as the poor, poor clowns that are now getting bullied all over the world because somehow they’re considered to be creepy these days: Clowns Gearing Up To Protest ‘It’ Over Negative Clown Stereotypes

Faster, Pussybot, Kill! Kill!

I try to stay away from sex bot content these days, because I got some sternly worded feedback a couple of months back – but maybe some of you need this warning? Hackers could program sex robots to kill.

Romanes Eunt Domus

Unearthed near Hadrian’s Wall: lost secrets of first Roman soldiers to fight the barbarians. Not bad. I figure that far away in the future when civilization is rebuilt from whatever apocalypse we’re heading into, they’ll mostly find plastic bags and smartphones and will not have a very favourable opinion on us.
Meanwhile they’ll probably face the same problem when trying to figure out how our food tasted: most things will be exctinct. Just like this magical spice: The mystery of the lost Roman herb

Spiders!

I’m not quite so sure how much I am in favour of scientists using science to make artificially enhanced spiders. Especially when they are enhanced in a way that their webs are now strong enough to catch humans. But I guess we’ll find out how good of an idea that will be: Spider Drinks Graphene, Spins A Web That Can Carry A Human

Brands

But maybe humanity is now just ripe to be overrun and eaten by spiders. Finger-Lickin’ Lulz might be one of the many signs that our time should be over.

On that happy note: toodles!

Hello internet friends,

want to feel old? Avril Lavigne’s Sk8er Boi came out 15 years ago today, and it’s just as brilliant now as it was then.

Octopodes

You know you’re in for a ride when a properly long article about octopodes (octopuses?) starts with a detailed discussion about the world’s first tentacle porn. The Sucker, the Sucker! is that article and it is great.

Memes

Probably one of the most reassuring sentences I have read in a while: We Are Not Worried About the Meme Situation

Doping

We often hear about professional sports people (¯\_(ツ)_/¯) and their doping habits. I’m not much of a sports person, so I’ve never considered following their lead, but others are a bit more adventurous: I Doped Like Maria Sharapova And It Was Actually Pretty Great

Clowning

I remember how one of the biggest scandals back in high school was when one parent learned that their son had borrowed Stephen King’s It from a classmate. The whole discussion about that was very exhausting for everybody – even without reading the book. Turns out that this is not a much better experience either: Reading Stephen King’s It is an exhausting way to spend a summer

Toodles!