Hello internet friends,

this newsletter almost didn’t happen because I finally – and way too late – got sucked into the black hole that is Netflix’ Terrace House: the must-watch Japanese reality show in which nothing happens. And even after half a season I’m still not too sure How A Japanese Reality TV Show About Nothing Became A Global Hit.
Sorry.

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Uncle Licky

I’m not too sure I’ve mentioned the Licki Brush here before. Let it sink in for a while.
Now feel ashamed that you simple human are not able to properly lick another animal without an augmentation. Deers are so much better at it than we are: Why Is This Deer Licking This Fox?

Social Media

By now we’re all pretty much at a point where we know that all the Social Media is trash. (Yes, yes. Even what you and me are putting up there. Don’t deny it. We’re garbage people.) But now we even know it in numbers and it is pretty damning: What We Learned from Staring at Social Media Data for a Year

Woof

Talking about garbage people: (and no, don’t worry. I don’t actually think you’re a garbage person. You’re great!) Dogs can tell if you’re untrustworthy. Meanwhile they themselves are sneaky little buggers who have long since evolved their tricks to manipulate humans: Yes, your dog is making puppy eyes at you. At least not all of them are willing to work for the surveillance state or sell payroll solutions.

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That’s it for today. Unless you want to know how an Unknown local wins Venice marathon after favourites take wrong turn or Meet the Black Girls of Goth. Alternatively you might get a chuckle out of All the Awesome Pop Culture That’s Been Ruined by Horrible Fans, Ranked or the Garfield cartoon where Jon drinks dog semen. Or not. Maybe you’re interested to know why Russians are renting out grounded private jets by the hour or the meaning behind IKEA’s product names? It is pretty fascinating to learn Where Priests Get Their Clothes and how capitalism destroyed underground music for ever.
And once you’re done with all of this, you probably need this: Wirecutter Review: The Best Paper Towel for Mopping Up Tears

Toodles!

Hello internet friends,

did you go to the bathroom lately? Turns out this is a lot scarier in Japan.

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747

As the 747 Begins Its Final Approach, a Pilot Takes a Flight Down Memory Lane – this is a nice love letter to the most iconic airplane.

Cheerio

In 1973, I invented a ‘girly drink’ called Baileys – I’m not a big fan if his invention, but pour a bit over two scoops of really good vanilla gelato and we’re talking.

Housing

These are absolutely amazing: Singapore’s Metabolist Megastructures: the Asian City of Tomorrow?

Dioramas

I’ve never really wondered how criminologists learn their trade but now I am curious. Because at least in the 1940s some of them learned it this way: These Extraordinarily Detailed Dioramas Help Solve Murders

Nostalgia

Turns out we do quite like to read about these things that happened in the past for a reason: The science behind the internet’s unstoppable nostalgia addiction

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Toodles! (And let’s not think about Twitter too much. Even though this one is really, really good: One person’s history of Twitter, from beginning to end)

Hello internet friends,

good news: Santa is real! Bad news: he was real: Santa Claus’s tomb may have been uncovered beneath Turkish church (Obviously this is very clickbait-y again. You probably knew that Santa Claus is based on a real person from Turkey and now they found a place where they might have found his bones. Maybe.)

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Pets!

As I might have mentioned before: I mostly enjoy cats in their natural habitat: GIFs on the internet. A proper allergy makes it hard for me to enjoy them in real life. But finally – the most important task a cat can do has been outsourced to a robot and here it is: Bad news, cats. Your jobs have been automated
Maybe once they add purring, I’ll get one. It’s still better than one of these, right? Adults’ obsession with weird, squishy stuffed animals reveals a heartbreaking need in our psyche

Blade Runner

Obviously these things are just the first step toward the electric sheep of Blade Runner, which, by the way, is a properly good movie. I do admit that I was very worried when I heard that there is a sequel and even more so when I saw the first trailer, but alas: “Blade Runner 2049” is the rare sequel that justifies its right to exist (Obviously this article is packed with spoilers, so… go watch the movie first. Even if you’re American.)

Westworld

Obviously these days Blade Runner is not the only game in town when it comes to trying to figure out how humanity can handle the fact that we might have near-human robots soon. The other big one was Westworld and apparently they had a kind of alternate reality game, which was rather disturbing: Westworld: The Experience gave me an emotional epiphany — and a panic attack

History

I might have mentioned it before: my favourite time of the internet was back in the days, when Instant Messaging was still a thing. And even though I’ve never been on AIM – for some reason my people were on ICQ, MSN, Ya… well, basically every messenger except AIM – it does make me kind of sad to see this era of the internet end: AOL Instant Messenger is dead

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Well, that was that. Have a nice day!
Toodles!

Hello internet friends,

don’t you also hate that feeling when you accidentally find an old photo of an alien and somehow it turns into this whole big thing? So relatable.

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Museum

Quick, when was the last time you visited a museum? Do you have any plans to go soon? Hmmhmm. And now how about when I tell you about Selfie Factories: The Rise of the Made-for-Instagram Museum?
(This has been in a slightly mocking tone. I know that I have a rather museum-savvy readership.)

Unknown

It might be peculiar but just like so many people I often enjoy watching people play computer games more than actually playing myself. Usually I watch Starcraft 2 matches, because I can actually understand what is going on, but lately Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds has been high on the list, especially Polygon’s Awful Squad. I’m not particularly alone in that case, PUBG is a huge hit this year and its main developer is quite in demand these days: Brendan “Playerunknown” Greene’s whirlwind year
Besides being entertaining to watch the game has some other rather entertaining use cases: The art (and stupidity) of taking 360 panoramas in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.

Meditation

We’ve all seen these articles or have heard the advice that meditation is supposed to be the best thing ever. I’ve always been very sceptical because nothing sounds more scary to me than being alone with my thoughts for even the shortest amount of time. So obviously I’ll smugly share this link: There’s a dark side to meditation that no one talks about

Moon

Yeah! Russia Will Team Up with NASA to Build a Lunar Space Station
Maybe at least up there we humans can be chill and work together? Not bloody likely, but let’s hope so.

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That’s all for this week, toodles!

(Not all, all, obviously. There is also this very well made and written article about group chats. And yeah, I’m pretty glad I didn’t pivot to video.)

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.

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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

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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.

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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.)

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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Toodles!

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!