Hello, internet friends!

I hope you’re all doing well. It’s Monday for me today, which is pretty convenient since it is Friday tomorrow – it’s great how that works when you take three days off in a week.
Well, it still makes today a Monday.

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For no apparent reason[1] I travelled in First Class[2] yesterday.
At the time of booking it was not such a big difference but it was amazing what a hugely different experience I bought for less than what I sometimes spend on coffee. I got on the train in Köln and it was packed. Seats were all taken, people were sitting on the ground, crying babies – train travel business as usual, I figure. Not so much in the part of the train where I had my seat – basically nobody was in there, there were actually employees of the train company around and they were friendly and kept giving me[3] candy.
It wasn’t quite Snowpiercer, but it was a pretty strange experience.

Of course I used my leisurerly time in the couch-like leather seat mostly to complain on Twitter about how the high-speed wifi on the bullet train that took me halfway through Germany in under four hours wasn’t working flawlessly all the time.

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I don’t know what to say about Social Media raffles that are based on using company’s hashtags. I guess some person can then tell their #boss that the #brand #engagement went #through the #roof? Yeah, that will sell a couple of €100k cars. #hashtags.

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Yeah, a big bouquet of flowers is going to fix that problem, buddy.
(Seriously: WTF?)

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Be safe out there.

Dominik

Hello, dear internet friends!

I hope all is well with you.

Instant gratification is the best kind of gratification – says the internet. So here is Push for Pizza and here is an article on re/code on instant gratification.
It makes me slightly grumpy. Not because I am in the “In the olden days, we had to walk thirty kilometers through the snow to get a pizza! Uphill both ways!” camp that thinks hat instant gratification destroys all that is good and well but mostly because these things are probably not available where I am.
Here it’s Amazon Prime, two small food delivery services and a lot of “People, who don’t hunt and grow their own food, are lazy and being lazy is morally wrong.”

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Tina Fey is the best, we can all agree on that, right? Good. So here’s an old-ish article by her from the New Yorker: Lessons from Late Night
I like “Never tell a crazy person he’s crazy.” – I know. Just tell them, they’re your internet friend and they’ll be happy.

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Remember when OKCupid experimented on people? Well, the good thing is that it triggered Tim Carmody to write this article on why exactly this is wrong and why it’s a problem with the whole social web these days: The problem with OKCupid is the problem with the social web
Related, if you want to hear the other side speak, here is the OKCupid dude on a (short, so just go ahead and listen, won’t you?) podcast: TLDR 32: An imperfect match. Lovely fella.

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Public service announcement: Everyone on the Internet does Venn diagrams wrong

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Have a good day, folks.

Dominik

Hello internet friends!

Have you seen ‘Lucy’ yet?
I haven’t but when I will, at some point, I won’t be able to not see it through this lens.

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Those who hit the paths for 150 minutes or more a week, or who were particularly speedy, clipping off six-minute miles or better, lived longer than those who didn’t run. But they didn’t live significantly longer those who ran the least, including people running as little as five or 10 minutes a day at a leisurely pace of 10 minutes a mile or slower.

I’m not even all that sure if “living longer” should really be the goal, to be honest.

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I am quite tempted to get one of those quadcopters with a camera. Posts like this are not helping.

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The Case Against Cards Against Humanity:

I want to believe everyone’s motives are pure, even though I honestly don’t even know that about my own motives.
I want to believe that I can have absolute confidence that neither I nor any other people around me are horrible. Cards Against Humanity is built on that wishful thinking.

I have honestly given up on that, which is freeing in its own way.

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Have a good day, folks.

Dominik

Hello, internet friends! Remember me?
Now how about this – you can turn your selfies into stickers for text messages with this app.[1]
A couple of weeks ago the internet was furious – furious! – that Facebook played around with their feed algorithm to see what kind of effect it has on people. Now OKCupid admits to doing the same, sort of, and more of it. Who cares, though? And why not?
Talking about data gathering on how people behave – Disney is tracking guests in their theme parks with RFID bracelets. On the one hand – ugh! – on the other hand: this looks like a pretty interesting data set. It would be pretty cool[2] to be able to get access to the data of one’s bracelet. Maybe offer an API. Auto checkin people to rides on Swarm.[3]
Now this is pretty funny – a bunch of drunk students put in a little fake fact into Wikipedia a couple of years ago. Not only did it stay there, it also spread far. Here’s what one of them – now a journalist – wrote after she discovered that her little joke is still alive and well these day. It also got her banned from Wikipedia.
Have a good one, folks.
I’ll be back.

Hello, internet friends!

As someone who has the tendency to acquire a dangerous amount of superficial knowledge about topics that interest me – often sprinkled with useless, but fun facts – I tend to be baffled by the amount of people who use stuff and have not a single interest in how they work.
Which is something that is fine when it comes to things like, uh, a toaster oven or a dish washing machine, but even though I should know better, I am constantly surprised how little people know about the networked tools that they use for both job and leisure every day. And I am not talking about some kind of smart home automation things, it’s rather basic things like email. Or which password to use where.

Maybe things are too complicated? Maybe it is not immediately obvious, that your router and your email provider and Facebook are different entities. Maybe IMAP is really too hard to understand and the fact, that an email is gone on “the computer” after it has been deleted on the phone is really weird and troubling. I don’t know.

So maybe we shouldn’t urge people to learn how to code. It might be a better idea to make people understand how their soft- and hardware works. Things that they use everyday and that they will have to use rather more than less in the future.

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Well, next email will be more links.

Have a good one!

Dominik

Hello, internet friends!

As basically every person, who I didn’t manage to avoid this morning, told me: we are the world champions. Sitting here, overly sleepy and with an aching back, I surely do not feel like a champion, but hey – whatever gets you through the day.

Lately I noticed that I have more and more a problem interacting with people with whom I don’t share at least some “ambient intimacy”[1] – which for me mostly means people I can follow on Twitter or Tumblr. Or read their blog. Honestly, even Instagram would suffice.
The careful dance around small talk topics to find a way to tune each others’ frequency for managing a less forced conversation and some actual bonding – that is a skill that I used to have, a bit, and that seems to be completely gone. Once I am through with the weather, I am a bit lost at what else might be a common ground for conversation. I am not interested in sports or what’s on TV and therefore can’t talk about it. I refuse to discuss politics and religion and then which topic is left if you don’t know a person, yet? Apparently existential dread and the fear of the future – while something we all seem to have in common – are not topics for light conversation.
My current approach – to just be open about my limitation in that field and make it a meta-conversation topic – has the inverse effect: suddenly people who had no problem holding a conversation start to think about it, don’t really know what to say, it’s getting awkward and then that is usually it. They find someone else to talk to, I go home and watch Snowpiercer or something.
Well, uh, but hey: World champion, am I right? Yeah.

Well, I’m sorry. I guess I’m just slightly grumpy because my new bike is already losing air and now I have to take care of that and ugh, so much bother, why can’t things just be low maintenance.

This episode of “First World Problems” has been presented by: lack of coffee. At least that is something I can fix right away. Have a good monday!

Dominik

Hello, internet friends!

Turn Down For What?
Energy!
Twitter?
Taylor Swift!
Every. Fucking. Time.

Just a quick look into how my internet usually looks like.
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This morning I had to switch on the light in the bathroom. So autumn is upon us and winter is coming.
For real, not as computer generated visual effect.

~
Have a nice day.
Dominik