Hello internet friends,

all things considered I’m quite happy that you’re such a self-selected exklusive group of people. At least this way I don’t get into a position where someone wants me to sell his yacht to you. After all: that’s not fun. The Lonely Life of a Yacht Influencer
(I’m even more glad I don’t get asked to sell pharma stuff to you. That would feel really icky: Health Care Sponcon: Where Big Pharma Meets Instagram Influencer I mean – I’d still do it for the right price, but I wouldn’t feel good about it. At least until the money is in my account.)

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These Are the 24 Sounds Humans Use to Communicate Without Words
The next time you’re on a phone call, why not play with the interactive portion of this article in the background?

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It’s a bit annoying and rather embarrassing that I actually really liked the last season of Survivor US. And since I always like a look behind the scenes, this way too long article about the first episode was quite in my wheelhouse: All hands on deck: Behind the scenes of a Survivor marooning
Good god, it’s such a dumb, dumb show.

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Internet of Things news!
Nike’s self-lacing sneakers turn into bricks after faulty firmware update – I nominate “My left shoe won’t even reboot.” for the sentence of the year. It won’t win, but it can still be proud.
A software glitch is throwing riders off of Lime scooters – ouch.
Now let me get one thing straight: I’m not Mr-IoT-is-stupid. Or wait, let me rephrase this: Yes, most IoT-stuff is pretty stupid, but that’s what is so fun about it. I’m not a big fan of things being tied to some company’s server (and their subscription service) but when things can connect to the internet, that’s fun, right?

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Dinosaur news!
(Oh boy, this week I have a lot of links. Don’t get used to it.)
Look at this magnificent killer chicken: Meet Tiny Rex, the diminutive T. rex paleontologists just found in Utah. And when you’re done with this, let’s turn the Dino-awesome-meter to eleven and look at this: Badass Dinosaur With a ‘Mohawk’ of Spikes Uncovered in Patagonia.

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And as a last thing: look at this huge map of 11-century trade routes. I could spend hours with the zoomable version.

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Toodles!

Hello internet friends!

When I just opened my bookmarks folder to look for stuff I found for you this week I learned one amazing fact: It turns out when you don’t put stuff in a folder it doesn’t magically apprear.

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The author explains what the hell is going on in the fourth paragraph, but until then the title confused me so much I just had to read the whole article and it is pretty entertaining: Reading in The Horse Latitudes

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We all should ask ourselves: How long could my murderer pretend to be me online?
Or maybe not. Because the longer I think about it, the scarier it gets.

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Phew, now that is a problem I avoided by never being in that club from the very beginning:
What Happens When You Age Out of the Cool Kids’ Club at Work
Sounds horrible. Poor formerly-cool olds.

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I hope at least one of the links was of interest to you. If not, you might like a video of Chris Harris being very excited about very exciting cars, a blogpost about the fun and weird internet from back then (it turns into a sales pitch for a react-based website builder, if you’re smart you know to stop when that starts) or rejoice in the fact that The Specials are having a reunion and a new album.

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Toodles!

Hello internet friends,

this might sound cheesy but I sincerely hope you’re all doing well. It’s cold outside, so wear your warm boots. (I know it’s not cold for at least one of you, but I think everybody else is in the northern part of the northern hemisphere. If now – why don’t you let me know? Always glad to hear from you.)

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I’ve been online for a long time – not one of the first wave of internet people, but I can firmly say there’s at least two decades of internetting being me – and there was always one platform that I tried and never managed to get quite into. And now it seems that finally everybody left: “The Linux of social media”—How LiveJournal pioneered (then lost) blogging
If you’re into this kind of stories, why not have a look at the excellent newsletter-website-book The History of the Web? I’m sure I mentioned it before but it really an evergreen recommendation.

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Once in a while people just do crazy things. Like this Russian dude who took a coal train across the Sahara desert. (YouTube link. In Russian with English subtitles.)

While we’re talking YouTube videos, here is probably the video that managed to be both the most fascinating and the most boring I have seen in a long while: Earth-Moon-Mars distances to scale, at LIGHT SPEED!
Good god, Mars is far away.

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If you ever learned any second language, you’ve probably noticed one thing: there are basically only two words for tea. It’s either tea or cha: Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea
Cheerio.

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Have you seen the two Fyre Festival documentaries? If not, what are you still doing here? Get watching!
When you’re done, let’s have a little look at how those documentaries happened and how they are obviously problematic, too: Fyre Fight: The Inside Story of How We Got Two Warring Fyre Festival Documentaries in the Same Week and Comparing Fyre Fest Docs: Netflix’s ‘FYRE’ Vs. Hulu’s ‘Fyre Fraud’
For what it’s worth: I enjoyed (using the word “enjoy” very liberal here) the Netflix one more. Or maybe the one by the Internet Historian.

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Sorry.

Toodles!

Hello internet friends,

Hashtag relatable: I Rented Friends to Be More Popular on Instagram
We’ve all been there, right?

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Talking about Instagram: last week the whole Ten Years meme came and went. Obviously I did it, too, and maybe I shouldn’t have because what if it all has been a big conspiracy? Facebook’s ‘10 Year Challenge’ Is Just a Harmless Meme—Right? Good god. Also rather interesting: Why you’re seeing the 10-Year Challenge everywhere
Thanks, Vox.

(There’s a special place in hell for the people who posted the “The only ten year challenge you should be concerned about” image meme. Yes, we know the planet is fucked. Yes, we’re all concerned. Congratulations, you’re a lot better than we all are by reminding us that having some fun online isn’t really something we’re allowed to do anymore.)

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The one thing I asked myself when reading this article: With ingestible pill, you can track fart development in real time on your phone – how’s the IFTTT integration?

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I have no idea how valid this article is: dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets – but the whole thing just sounds very fascinating. Dead drops with bluetooth beacons! How cyberpunk.
The whole bluetooth thing is going to be very interesting anyway – and it will get even more exciting: This tiny Bluetooth chip doesn’t need a battery because it harvests energy from the air

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Toodles!

Hello internet friends,

week two of this year is behind us, what do we think of it so far? I can’t even really say, I haven’t paid much attention, to be quite honest.

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Britney Spears’s …Baby One More Time Is Weirder Than You Remember – unlike so many things that make me think: “Wow, has it been really that long?” the twenty years of Britney Spears’s career surprised me in another way. Even though I never followed her closely it seems that so many things happened with her name attached since then. So… twenty years, uh.
Leave Britney alone!

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Sometimes I wonder if people don’t realise that their ideas are not particularly bright. I ordered a box of crickets from the Internet, and it went about as well as you’d expect sounds like one of those ideas.
But hey, crickets!

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I find technology that helps us humans understand the physical world really fascinating. I’m a big fan of geo gazetteers and maps and databases and latitudes and longitudes. So I pretty much knew what this article was about before I started reading it and yet, I did and it doesn’t make anyone looking particularly good: How Cartographers for the U.S. Military Inadvertently Created a House of Horrors in South Africa

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“He does his own stunts.” – just a small part of The Painful Price of Becoming Jackie Chan
I have to admit – I can’t watch his blooper reels at the end of his movies.

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Keep hydrated!
Toodles!

Hello internet friends,

yes, being the cliché that I am I did decide to be a software developer guy mostly in the hope of not having so much contact with people. This mostly worked out fine for me so far – I hardly have any contact with real customers and that suits me just fine. And every time I read an article about a job that is almost only customer contact I feel reassured in my life choices. I mean… read this: I Was A Cable Guy. I Saw The Worst Of America. and tell me I’m not right.

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When was the last time you hired a hitman on the darknet? No, I don’t really want to know. It is also very likely you were scammed. I mean – what did you expect? Try old fashioned voodoo or something, that should work better.
And while you wait until it does, why not read The unbelievable tale of a fake hitman, a kill list, a darknet vigilante… and a murder?

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Red Dead Redemption 2 seems to be by all accounts a good game. Turns out it is also very invested in being as realistic as possible. And that even includes the fauna of the time: Birding Like It’s 1899: Inside a Blockbuster American West Video Game

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Quick, tell me one sport that you only watch during the Olympic games and that you completely forget about once it is over?
Chances are, you thought of Curling. Now what happens if you happened to be a former professional athlete who still has the competitive itch? Well, duh, you do something like that: Jared Allen’s Curling Team Of Ex-NFLers Is Starting From The Bottom And Aiming For The Olympics

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Stay warm and safe!
Toodles

Hello internet friends!

Did you miss me?
Yeah, well, I wouldn’t either. But here we are, new year and everything. And after I sort of ghosted you back in September, here I am. With the newsletter, resolution edition.

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What happened on the internet since we last caught up? Turns out a lot and nothing in particular. And I think the best way to see the current state of the world is this very insightful article on medium dot com: some images i saved to my laptop in 2018
I guess now we know where people go after we all decided Tumblr isn’t for us anymore.

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Everything is fake these days (Not really. Honestly. Don’t freak out.) so why not try to be a fake rock star? This dude tried it and it went about as well as one would expect: Jered Threatin
What a story, though.

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One of the best things I’ve read since we heard from each other the last time is this wonderful story how a magazine sent a writer to a cruise with a whole bunch of cryptocurrency people: Four Days Trapped at Sea With Crypto’s Nouveau Riche
So if you have seen the link previously somewhere else and didn’t read it – why not today?

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Some other internet detritus that I picked out of my feedreader for you:

• ‘Hi-tech robot’ at Russia forum turns out to be man in suit – many people shared this with “lol, russia” captions, but in the end we all know deep inside that this is the future we’re heading towards.
• The Best Thing on TV This Year Was: ‘Survivor: David vs. Goliath’ – I’ve heard a lot about this season of Survivor, so I found some way to watch it and actually did enjoy it a lot. Not too sure it was the best thing on TV this year. After all, Terrace House is still on.
• Talking about TV: Netflix Will Keep ‘Friends’ Through Next Year in a $100 Million Agreement – wow. That is a lot of money.
• We Should Replace Facebook With Personal Websites – yes, we should. Do you have a personal website? Maybe even one with an RSS feed for updates? Let me know.

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Oh well. Happy new year. Maybe this one works out?

Toodles!