Reading Material

June 1, 2015

Hello internet friends!

It’s not even 11am when I write this and I could already do with a weekend.
Good god.

Imagine yourself in the back of a car. Now imagine yourself reading or playing around on your phone. Does this make you feel slightly queasy? Maybe you’re one of those people who have certain stomach issues in these situations.
Now imagine driverless cars.

Did you hear? Eating chocolate is the way to weight loss.
At least according to my watch, this must be true.

Lego puts a lot of work into hiding dongs.

If you find the time to do it, take a nap. It’s really nice.

Pentecost

May 25, 2015

Hello internet friends!

My Apple Watch (No, I am not going to be all fancy and look up the UTF–8 for the Apple icon. Honestly.) arrived last week pretty much right after I sent the last email. And as I posted to Twitter on Tuesday:

I already developed capital-O opinions.

But I realised pretty soon: this does not matter the least. Because as soon as people notice the watch on my arm, they have all the opinions.
It’s a waste of money, obviously. And a first generation product, ugh! And “Oh, it can tell the time? How innovative.”

It is actually fascinating. I am pretty sure that a Pebble or one of the Android watches would not even remotely create these sometimes pretty passionate reactions.
Oh well. I quite like the watch – it tells the time and it vibrates in a weird way when someone sends me an iMessage.

Remember when the internet went crazy because it was raining spiders somewhere in Australia? Turns out that is actually pretty common and could happen in your area, too!

Sweet dreams.

Humming Bird

May 18, 2015

Hello internet friends,

I’m usually a pretty calm person but when the first thing I see on a Monday morning is an email with the “important” flag, I do feel myself turning big and green.
What’s wrong with these people?

If you need around 12 minutes of emotional hygiene, I have good news for you: out of nowhere a new episode of You Look Nice Today appeared. (This is a good thing.)

Wait, what?
If this is true, it’s pretty bad for everybody involved.

Remember 30 Rock? Of course you do. Now someone got hold of the complaints about it and I am not too sure if these aren’t satire, too.

Given that we take more photos nowadays than ever before, interesting new applications emerge: Using millions of online photos cobbled together, we can now watch history unfold.
This is actually pretty amazing – and a good reason to make sure we have good and robust archival systems and proper licences for these photos.

Eat some fruit and take care.

Upward Mobility

May 11, 2015

Hello internet friends!

I’m back from a week in Berlin and at re:publica ’15 and now have to face reality again. What a bummer.

I did get some valuable in-person feedback to especially this email thing here, so here we go:

  • Yes, I do like it when people reply to these emails. I don’t expect it, but I appreciate it. (It does happen quite regularly, too – thanks a lot for that!)
  • I do have another newsletter, which is more or less automated – it is the links that I posted to my link blog in the last 24 hours in a nicely (I hope) formatted daily email, so you can enjoy the fact that I read a lot of stuff on the internet and maybe find something worth reading. I was told to cross-promote it here, so here you go: if you want, you can subscribe to that email here.
  • Nobody noticed that I actually spend money on a photo of Ariane, The Overexposed Model a few weeks back. You know, the one who is everywhere. I even found her in the U-Bahn in Berlin. She’s been around as well and Mike Aquino at Esquire talked to her a couple of years ago.

Light housekeeping out of the way, here is the story about how Osama bin Laden really died. Maybe. It’s now what I learned from that Homeland episode with another actress.
My gut says that this article is closer to the truth than “the official version” but that sounds pretty ton-foil-hatty and is mostly because the media (hah.) has instilled in me the knowledge, that a story is never quite as neat and clean as it seems and often a lot murkier.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Related, if you understand German, this re:publica talk by Friedemann Karig on the fluidity of truth.

As much as I enjoyed many of the stupid superhero movies lately, I do agree with Sady Doyle here: Age of Robots: How Marvel Is Killing the Popcorn Movie
Maybe scaling things down a bit would help the whole thing. In fact I do enjoy their TV outings – Agents of SHIELD and Agent Carter – quite a bit more than I liked Age of Ultron. (Maybe because I was able to watch those while lounging around in my underwear.)

Now try to get that image out of your head, take care.

Tilt Your Head and See The Duck

May 4, 2015

Hello internet friends!

Dick is abundant and low value.

Glad we cleared that up.
Did this email even reach you or was this enough “strong language” to walk right into the spam filters?

Instant Rap Airhorn is something that exists and I am sure you can find useful ways to incorporate it into your life.

Maybe to lighten up the mood while your place drops out of the sky because the software just shuts down? Your fellow flyers will surely appreciate that lovely gesture.

I am weirdly proud of being a nag-hipster – I told Dominik about the weirdness of the Mercator projection on his wall way before everybody on the internet did.
The reason is obviously the same: it’s an awesome idea, a great execution and we’re all silently angry at ourselves that we don’t have the passion and patience to put that much energy and time into something that cool. The projection complaint is just a smoke bomb. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Now is ze time on Sprockets vhen ve dance!

Have some fruit, take a nap. And why not let me know how you’re doing – any news on your side?

Raised Fist Emoji

April 28, 2015

Hello, internet friends!

I know it is Tuesday, but here we go. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Someone famous wrote something about not being famous but having the number of Twitter follower someone famous might have.
Well, okay.

Even though the reviews for the Apple watch are not overly positive – here is the best one, as far as I can tell – gadget envy is slowly growing within me.
Damnit.

This scrappy little email to my internet friends made it to the The Ultimate (Unofficial) TinyLetter Directory – in the category “Assorted Amusing Things” which is perfectly fine for me. Knowing about this directory is a bit scary, though – so many interesting tinyletters to subscribe to…
(When does Google Inbox finally have a category for these kind of emails?)

I pretty much ignored what happened to the poor eggplant emoji but now even Instagram hides it in their search:

[… ]the eggplant emoji is indeed blocked from search because it consistently is used for content that violates their community guidelines.

Well okay.

Take a nap sometimes, you’ve earned it.

Bicycle Ride

April 20, 2015

Hello, internet friends!

Remember how the Swiss police arrested a robot in January for ordering illegal substances and fake passports? (Vol.1 Issue 83)
Well, turns out – the charges have been dropped.
(I mean of course, duh, Switzerland.)

The Internet of Things will soon be upon us! I am sure some of these are parody and/or performance art.

Fun fact: in an attempt to catch up with the unevenly distributed future, I finally managed to see a 3D printer last week. It was an Ultimaker which mostly produced weird strings of hot plastic and a lot of smell.
Maybe the future is still a bit more in the future?
In related news, the original Open Source 3d printing company MakerBot seems to be in trouble. Apparently because of the Osborne Effect.
Stupid comic book movies have infiltrated my brain enough to look at that article’s headline and wonder what the Green Goblin has to do with it. (Then I remembered his name doesn’t have that “e” at the end.)

Oh, and apparently there has been some new space movie trailer. You have probably seen it.

Happy learning,
The Irregularity Team.

Overexposed

April 13, 2015

Hello internet friends!

It’s finally spring, which is good, because: sun!
But it also means pollen and being tired all the time. (tbh I don’t need spring for that.)

The whole internet pre-ordered the Apple Watch last week. Nobody in my direct circle of friends did, though. I actually quite like how it looks like a tiny Airstream on a wrist, though.

Science news, now!
(The kind of “I heart science” kind of science, based on probably misunderstood reporting on actual science that real scientists have known for ages and/or are grumpy about the way it gets reported. You know, science.)

We’ll meet aliens in about twenty years!
Brontosaurs is back!
Droid fishes pass the turing test!
Tiny, tiny computers!

Take care and try to eat a little bit healthier than last week.

[Hand Wave Emoji]

April 6, 2015

Hello internet friends!

How to pretend to be happy on the Internet.
Oh well. Onwards!

If you’re into the whole Harry Potter stuff, maybe The Sorting Hat Bot is something for you?

This is less of a tinyletter and more of a bad OKCupid match
I also don’t understand it most of the time, but I do tend to be amused. Enough that I keep returning and refreshing even a couple of weeks after it made the rounds on everybody’s twitter feed.

Apparently something that real people are pondering: Should Grown Men Use Emoji?
For what it’s worth: as long as your CMS can handle them, go ahead.

Go out there and have the best week possible. And if that doesn’t work out, there is always next week.

Shame

March 29, 2015

Hello internet friends!

A day early and a very short one, I’m on the road tomorrow, but the email must go on!
Onwards.

TED is… well, what it is. But what it also is is the place where Monica Lewinsky held her talk on The price of shame:

“Public shaming as a blood sport has to stop,” says Monica Lewinsky. In 1998, she says, “I was Patient Zero of losing a personal reputation on a global scale almost instantaneously.” Today, the kind of online public shaming she went through has become constant — and can turn deadly. In a brave talk, she takes a hard look at our online culture of humiliation, and asks for a different way.

It is worth reading how the comments to her talk turned exactly into the point she was making – and how the community management at TED worked to turn the mood around.

What is wrong with people?

On the other hand, if you think that this is cyberbullying, you’re pretty silly.

Take care.