Hello internet friends,

the good thing about this newsletter is that I know for sure that all 69 of you are nice but not bought. Not something everyone can say about their readers: The Follower Factory

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OpSec 🤡

For some people it seems to be fun to run. Many of these people use an exercise tracking app called Strava – and some of these people are soldier. Who might be somewhere where they’re not too happy about their location being shared with the world. Weeeell:
Fitness tracking app Strava gives away location of secret US army bases

Camel News

I don’t even know what to add to this article:
12 camels disqualified from Saudi beauty contest in ‘Botox’ row

Skill Hubs

You’d think that the camel story is the height of absurdity for this week’s email? Well, it gets a lot worse: Facebook Wants to Open Special ‘Community Skills Hubs’ in Europe and Train a Million People

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I can’t even anymore. Community Skills Hubs.
Good god.

Toodles.

Hello internet friends,

have you seen the latest internet outrage? No? Well, this is usually how it goes: The 29 Stages Of A Twitterstorm In 2018

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🚨🚨Danger Danger🚨🚨

I’ve been saying this for years: Productivity is dangerous.

If you’re waking up at 4 a.m. to write 1,000 words about how you write 1,000 words every day, what are you actually getting done? Just stay in bed.

But you know – this will probably not be an issue anymore soon. So how will we handle it? Post-work: the radical idea of a world without jobs Probably we’ll all be writing 1,000 word Medium dot com essays about productivity.

Freedom and Fun

I sort of stopped reading The Awl after they jumped back and forth between Medium and their own WordPress installation, each time messing up their feed. And I might not have been the only one, because now Awl Ends.
The End of the Awl and the Vanishing of Freedom and Fun from the Internet – from what I can gather it is mostly the vanishing of getting paid for freedom and fun, right?

Sad Robot

This is kinda sad: Fabio the robot sacked from supermarket after alarming customers
I’d be delighted to have a little robot to show me where to find the toothpaste and stuff.

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Hug your robot!
Toodles!

Hello internet friends,

why not have a tea and read an interesting slice of internet?
For example – how the word tea and the word cha traveled the world.

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Instagram

No, we’re not bitching about their image sorting algorithm today. We’re talking brands. And especially Instagram brands: The Strange Brands in Your Instagram Feed. Lovely, isn’t it? And it seems to work rather well: Instagram Ads Are Basically Infomercials for Millennials

Viral

These days we’re very used to stuff turning into (usually very short-lived) memes and “go viral” – but back when we were all young and the internet was fun, this was a new thing: The Strange History of One of the Internet’s First Viral Videos

Space News

These stories don’t have anything in common except “space,” but here we go:

• 5,000-year old rock art found in India is likely the oldest depiction of a supernova – the article says that the supernova was just a bit less bright than the moon. I don’t know about you, but that’s plenty of bright for me. I think I’d rather enjoy seeing a phenomenon like this.
• Incredible ‘Hypatia’ Stone Contains Compounds Not Found in the Solar System – omg, space stones! If you really think about it, all stones are space stones. Wooooaaaaah.
• It’s Never Aliens—until It Is – I’m still undecided if I’d like it if we found aliens. I’m pretty sure I’d not like it how humanity would react to it, though.

Bird News

Is there anything more badass than hawks starting bush fires to feast on the small animals that run from the flames? Why These Birds Carry Flames In Their Beaks

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That’s all, enjoy your tea!
Toodles

Hello internet friends,

remember roughly a year ago we were all wondering about an alien megastructure? Turns out it might be just dust.

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Hack

I’m harvesting credit card numbers and passwords from your site. Here’s how. Between this rather realistic scenario and the whole chip architecture vulnerability it might be time to just end this whole digital experiment. (Before we do, send me your addresses, so I can send you these letters by post.)

Plastic Fantastic Redux

Remember last week we had eco-plastics? Now someone found caterpillars that eat plastic: Plastic-eating caterpillars could save the planet
I’m not too sure how well that would work – they’re probably not breaking down the plastic polymers small enough to make their feces not be plastic anymore?

Self-Improvement

This speaks to me on so many levels: ‘Most of us are too busy to be better’: the lazy person’s guide to self-improvement

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That’s all for this week.
Toodles!

Hello internet friends,

and a happy new year and such. Just remember that starting from today, there are people who are adults by law (Your mileage might vary, but at least in countries where 18 is that age) were born in the 2000s.
Good god.

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Airport

This link is in German, so… maybe skip clicking it if that’s a problem for you? You could also Google Translate it, which works pretty well these days.

This interview with one of the preeminent airport construction experts on his views on the still unopened new Berlin airport is very fascinating: BER: Dieter Faulenbach da Costa im Interview
Maybe it is time to teach the people the concept of the sunk cost fallacy and actually blow the whole thing up and start from scratch. Maybe have some people handle it who have done this kind of thing before.

Monorail

Don’t tell me that! We Are Never, Ever, Ever Getting a Monorail
From what I see in this article the problem isn’t with the concept of monorails but with poor city planning. Maybe if people built monorails where there is actual demand and sell tickets at a reasonable price, these things would actually be useful? But then I’m probably biased, because: Monorail! 🤩

Plastic Fantastic

Now this sounds pretty rad: The Creators Of This Algae Plastic Want To Start A Maker Revolution
I’m not super sure if the whole maker angle is really the thing to look at, but bioplastic from algae sounds awesome and like one of the few good cyberpunk-sounding things we should actually add to our lives.

Tiny Homes

No, not these ones. But the internet ones: The year we wanted the internet to be smaller – Why tiny, weird online communities made a comeback in 2017

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Here’s to a 2018 that’s better than last year.
Toodles!