Hello internet friends,

did you ever sit and wonder: Why are there so many knobs in GarageBand? Well, that article doesn’t help much, but it has many amazingly ugly screenshots.
(The answer might be: because there are so many knobs in bands.)

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Nerd Alert

Two weeks ago we talked about flightradar24 here. If you liked this, you might want to know How Flightradar24 conquered the skies – and why the Pope’s travel plans cause a surge in traffic

Nerd Alert (2)
(Side note: maybe I should have just called the whole newsletter nerd alert, because… well. You know.)

Also not the first time we talk about fictional maps – pretty much one year ago I linked to my still favorite twitter bot @unchartedatlas and in February we talked about how much we like books with maps. Now here is a really deep dive into fantasy maps and what they mean: Here at the End of All Things

Nerd Alert (3)

Planespotting, fantasy maps, how do we get this email to be even more nerdy? Well, let’s add maths and history! Did the Babylonians Beat the Greeks to Trigonometry By 1000 Years?
The answer – as usual – is “it might be” but the probability is pretty high. And hey, cuneiform.

Mushrooms!

Not a super nerdy topic, I guess, but hey: How Mushrooms Became Magic This is pretty fascinating.

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That’s all I have for you today, toodles!

Hello internet friends,

remember two years ago, when we learned that we’re post-#eatclean and that the avocado is overcado?

Well, turns out – and once again, we learn it from the Guardian – the whole clean eating thing is still around, even though it is thoroughly debunked. So let’s learn why we fell for clean eating.
(I don’t know. I was too lazy to prepare any food yesterday so I just ate a whole bunch of radishes with some bread. I guess that’s just terrible and not hashtaggable?)

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Spy plane news

You are probably familiar with flightradar24, the rather fun website/app that lets you check out planes while they fly over your head. Maybe you’re nerdy enough to know how these people get the data for that site: planes are equipped with a transmitter that sends their plane number, location and speed every couple of seconds just out into the world, mostly to help the air traffic controllers do their job. And even nerdier people (like, uhm, me) put little antennas in their windows to collect these transmissions and send it to all these different services.
Now turns out that spy planes – instead of just not sending out anything at all – send out innocent looking data, looking like any old random plane, just minding their own business. But if you look closely enough, you can spot them. Or you can let a computer do that work for you: BuzzFeed News Trained A Computer To Search For Hidden Spy Planes. This Is What We Found.

Phone news

Every time I (have to) give someone my phone number, I get a nervous twitch that takes a while to subside. Not only because I really don’t want anyone to call me but also because these days it is more than just a way to interrupt somebody: How Your Phone Number Became the Only Username That Matters

Underground Maps

It is probably the same in most other cities, too: Nobody Knows What Lies Beneath New York City
And while that was kind of understandable in the age of paper maps, it should not be the case in the age of digital mapping.

Woo-hoo

I know it is part of a PR push to drum up buzz for the new version of Duck Tales with their weird square-headed ducks but still, this is fun: The Story of the DuckTales Theme, History’s Catchiest Single Minute of Music

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Toodles!

Hello internet friends,

good news! We finally have eco-friendly glitter!
…
Oh well.

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Aziz Ansari

Aziz Ansari on Quitting the Internet, Loneliness, and Season 3 of Master of None is really worth reading. And the whole unplugging from the internet of content is a smart idea. Well… you know. Except what would happen to these emails here if I did that?
It’s not like anyone would want to read my ponderings on books I read.

Trent Reznor

Another interview with a creative person: In Conversation: Trent Reznor. He’s a bit the grumpy old man here but again, worth reading.

Bikes

This is pretty great: Inside the fearless bike movement tearing up London. Both the movement and the article.

McLaren

On the other spectrum of transportation is one of the greatest cars in the world. And now you know as well What Made the McLaren F1 the World’s Greatest Car.

Love Motel

I honestly don’t know what to make of these photos, but they sure are interesting: Under the Covers at Taiwan’s Tacky ‘Love Motels’. And now I know there is a big enough market for people with a Miata fetish to make one of those rooms work.

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Drink enough water, moisturize, take computer breaks.
Toodles!

Hello internet friends!

Good news, everybody: Sperm count drop ‘could make humans extinct’
(And also, come on. We’re this close to getting science to a point where we don’t need sperm anymore anyway. (Or are we at this point already? I’m not really up-to-date on reproductive science.))

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Nude

Just in case you wonder how that is like: Spending a Week in the Nude
This is good reporting right there.

Squash

Talking about good reporting: I watched in bewilderment while a man tried to return butternut squash because he thought it was cheese

Atemlos

A: Yes.
Q: Is Schlager Music The Most Embarrassing Thing Germany Has Ever Produced?

Scam

Even if you’re not into podcasts, you might want to make an exception for that one: Long Distance by Reply All.
These people went ahead and decided to research who is behind a tech support scam call.

Ship

This is weirder than what most writers of thrillers come up with: The Hijacking of the Brillante Virtuoso
What a name for a tanker, too.

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Toodles!
And oh. Don’t watch the Emoji movie.

Hello internet friends,

yes, obviously it is problematic but The Fifth Element is easily one of my favourite movies. (Just so you know, your fave is problematic.) And it’s not just the visuals, it is actually the story, too.

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bus-y

Citymapper announces ‘hyper-local multi-passenger pooled vehicle’ – which is, as you might have guessed, a bus. With all the hullabaloo around self-driving cars and on-demand mobility in the end a proper, well-working and affordable public transport is probably still the best solution for most cities. And it is actually a smart move by Citymapper to use their data to identify demand for this line and use the desire path.

duck-y

By now we know that dinosaurs had feathers and made duck-like sounds. (If not, news flash: they had feathers and made duck-like sounds.) And the most fearsome of them, the gigantic feather, quacking Tyrannosaurs Rex wasn’t even that fast, either: Tyrannosaurus Rex Would Break Its Own Legs if It Chased Jeff Goldblum IRL.
Good news for Jeff Goldblum, I guess.

henge-y

We may have cracked the mystery of Stonehenge. “May” being the word here. And while that “may” is still a “may” let’s look at videos instead. For example: Decoding the ancient astronomy of Stonehenge Or you know… that one.

binks-y

This guy, more than anyone in the world, should be thankful that CGI was around when they made the Star Wars prequels: How the Guy Who Played Jar Jar Binks Survived the Fandom Menace

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🎶 What’s the meaning of stone-heeeenge… 🎵

Toodles!

Hello internet friends,

after years of being pretty loyal to iPhones, I might have finally found a good reason to switch to Android: Apple rival Huawei debuts KFC-branded Android phone in China

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Emoji

If you’ve been diligent about clicking on every emoji link I posted in these emails, especially the more technical ones, you know that certain emoji are a ligature of two other symbols. Now this dude decided that things are not far enough down that road, so here are some ligatures he invented and some interpretations he got from Twitter: The emoji ligature Rorschach test

Umbrella

Ah, it has been everywhere but when I first saw the article I just knew I had to include it here: Umbrella-sharing startup loses nearly all of its 300,000 umbrellas in a matter of weeks
We all laughed but by now we should know what happens when the umbrella corporations have to look for other fields of business, right?

Arabidopsis

Now you might have just read that last paragraph and had a little nerd chuckle. But more likely you were wondering what I was going on about. And apparently I just made the mistake that is The Single Reason Why People Can’t Write, According to a Harvard Psychologist.
(You don’t have to click. The single reason is that writers assume that every reader knows as much as they do and hence use jargon and in-jokes.)
((In-jokes aside – do you dare doing an image search for the header of this section?))

Props

I’m not sure if they are the greatest per se but it is an interesting, fun article – even though it is a listicle: The 100 Greatest Props in Movie History, and the Stories Behind Them

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Toodles!

Hello internet friends,

let’s start with something really important: Fact-checking Owl City’s description of being hugged by 10,000 fireflies
Okay, maybe not that important, but now that I have that song stuck in my ears I wanted to share that joy with you. Sharing is caring.

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Mistress

Apparently this is a real job: China’s Mistress-Dispellers and that is pretty fascinating. Would I watch a Netflix series about these people? I probably would.

Leaks

There is a whole sector of the publishing industry devoted to rumors and leaks around technology products, mostly those from Apple. And now there is this: Leaked recording: Inside Apple’s global war on leakers
Good god.

Skating

I really enjoyed this article on how Learning to Skateboard When You’re an Adult Is Extremely Embarrassing.
(Side note: is is a coincidence that the Broadly text logo is so similar to the German Brigitte?)

Bees!

I can’t wait for a future where Amazon plants big beehives for their delivery drones into cities – maybe built by nanobots and with structures completely planned by deep learning AIs: Amazon’s vision for the future: delivery drone beehives in every city
The MetaFilter thread for this article is gold, especially but not only for this comment:

2037: CAPTCHA’s grow more strict every year. Slip up, and you’re locked out of your Amazon account, your apartment, your job, your life. Renegades hide out in abandoned big-box stores and survive on what they can shoot down. Arecibo Noether, daughter of elite Prime Members, never thought she would end up as one of them but

Once again: I would totally read/watch this.

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Toodles!