Hello internet friends,

who’d have thought that going to a week-long company offsite would be detrimental to my internet reading time? Well, it was and yet, here we go.

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50 years ago something pretty astonishing happened: the first 747 was unveiled to the world. And even though I’ve never lived in a world without one I can easily understand how Traveling the World Was Never the Same Once the Boeing 747 Debuted.

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I honestly never thought much about the history of sleepwear but here we go, it is more fascinating that I thought: The Death of Male Pajamas

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Sorry, I couldn’t really find more good links today – I fell into a rabbit hole of videos that show what happens when Hip-hop heads are introduced to Bohemian Rhapsody for the first time

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Toodles!

Hello internet friends,

now here’s the thing: I quite enjoy driving. I don’t really do it all that often anymore but if I do it – like this morning, when I had a couple of hours of uninterrupted audiobook time while semi-leisurely cruising the Autobahn. But on the other hand, I also quite enjoy pedestrian areas of cities. I like it when a city has working public transport and I also don’t mind taking the train most of the time when traveling longer distances. I’m not too sure where I’m going with this, it is basically a preface for me saying: I think I like this idea but still, I like driving, too: ‘For me, this is paradise’: life in the Spanish city that banned cars

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Talking about traveling longer distances: Flying! People these days mostly seem to complain about it, but let’s face it – it is pretty awesome to sit in a tube made out of thin (you don’t want to think about how thin) metal, look out of the window and emerge in a completely different part of the world just a short while later. Well – now you don’t even have to leave the house to experience this anymore: Realistic ‘Flight Simulator’ Puts Players in Economy Class and It Kind of Rules

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I’m absolutely amused by everything about this: Inside the Kanye-Helmed PornHub Awards

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For a long while these ugly-ass sandals were for nurses, doctors and those weird, slightly smelly alternative hippie kids in school. But then suddenly they are everywhere and someone had to do this: The Dwarf, the Prince, and the Diamond in the Mountain – An unlikely fable, in which Birkenstocks become cool and double sales overnight.

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Toodles!

Hello internet friends,

I know, it is not Monday, but eh.
I’m not feeling super motivated to write these things at the moment – mostly because I don’t read the internet all that much lately so when I look into my Pocket (yes, I switched from Instapaper, in case you wanted to know that) list before opening the editor I mostly see stuff from last week.

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So, eh, what do I do when I don’t read the internet? I quite often watch clips from British panel shows on Youtube. It’s empty calories but I do tend to be amused. And well, I’ve watched Carrot In A Box at least ten times by now and it still makes me laugh.

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I know there is one question in all of our minds and it is: What Causes Beef Rainbows? (I’ll be honest with you: I just put the link in because the combination of the words beef and rainbow is just great.)
Apparently it is light refracting on the meat. Who’d have thought.

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Sometimes I enjoy a nice little hate-read and this week it was this one: Crypto Nomads Seek “Proof of Nipple” in Thailand
It’s not really stomach-churning bad – I’m too weak for content that goes that far – it’s just one of those articles that I can’t stop reading while thinking: wow, everything about this is so bloody stupid.

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Toodles.
Take care. Turn off your cellphone for a while.

Hello internet friends,

I hope this letter finds you well. It’s September already which is pretty wild. Summer seems to be over – when I put out the laundry it isn’t dry almost immediatly, which is a bit of a bummer. I’ve just gotten used to that.

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Way back just when it came out I used to play this weird nerdy card game called Magic: The Gathering. The name? The worst. Me? Not a good player. I think except for some random moments of luck I lost all my games. And yet it was quite a fun – I liked the back story or at least the glimpses of the back story that I made up in my mind based on the cards I owned.
Turns out that game is still around and it still seems to be fun: The Twenty-Five-Year Journey of Magic: The Gathering Maybe I need to dig out my old cards and get some nerdy friends to do the same.

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On the completely opposite side of the cool spectrum are these guys: Extreme Vespas in Indonesia
(Yes, yes. I know you’ve probably seen this before, they have been everywhere last week but still. Look at them again. So cool.)

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Now I haven’t seen Crazy Rich Asians, yet – I don’t even think they show it here, yet, and while I was perfectly fine watching Solo on my own, (lol) I’m sure as hell not going to go to a cinema to watch a rom-com in a non-date environment. And given that I don’t care about spoilers I read and enjoyed this article discussing a small but significant detail in the movie: What was really happening in Crazy Rich Asians’ pivotal mahjong scene

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I’m not too sure what to think about this idea: To Get Ready for Robot Driving, Some Want to Reprogram Pedestrians
But mostly I think: fuck this. What we need aren’t driverless cars but a much nicer and reliable public transit system.
Or these funny little pods that drive on their own little elevated roads. I’d take those, too. They’re kinda funny.

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That’s it! Toodles!

Hello internet friends,

when I saw this headline I was this close to just shutting down my computer and go for a walk: Kalashnikov takes on Tesla with retro-look electric ‘supercar’
I’m a bit lost for words. On the one hand: lol. On the other hand: I kinda want one of those. (More than a Tesla, that’s for sure.)

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Huh, who would have thought? STEVE the aurora isn’t an aurora, after all
With a name like this one would have thought STEVE the aurora is an aurora.

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We have to pay the bills here at the Irregularity Media Empire, so here it goes:

Ad for MasterClass: Depression

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I wasn’t a gaming console person back when this game came out but even then I’ve seen this game and played it quite a lot. (Disclaimer: I sucked at it. I’m still pretty bad at video games.)
An Oral History of ‘GoldenEye 007’ on the N64 is still a very fascinating look behind the scenes of this still iconing game.

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That’s all for now. Take care, have some tea.
Toodles!

Hello internet friends,

today I have just two links to articles for you – but don’t despair! (At least not because of the lack of articles.) I also have two links to two other newsletters that I quite enjoy.

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I’m honestly not sure I could take this, but hey, more power to you, dude from The Guardian: I watched Nicolas Cage movies for 14 hours straight, and I’m sold
14 hours is long. I mean, when I can avoid it I’m not even awake this long.

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I’m pretty sure I don’t agree on everything he’s saying, but it is worth reading anyway: In Conversation: Penn Jillette
And then maybe look up a few of the Penn & Teller acts on YouTube, it is quite fun to watch. (So are some of the Fool Us candidates. Some are just weird and there are only so many card tricks one can watch.)

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Now I might have linked to this one before, but it is again and again a great ressource: the newsletter (and website) The History of the Web. If you’ve been a web nerd through most of what he talks about or if you’re new to this stupid medium you’ll learn something for sure.

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If one would be nasty, one would call The InnBox a travel blog/newsletter. But mostly it is well-written reviews of pretty accommodations with nice photos and all in all it is just a delight.

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That’s it for this week, go back to your television or whatever it is that I’ve just interrupted.
Toodles!

Hello internet friends,

my computer told me that it has been too long since I’ve send you an email and because machines rule everything, here I am again. It’s also not 30°C+ in the evening anymore, so I guess summer is over. (Hint: it’s not.)
(You want to know how I knew it was time to write again? Chrome auto-complete listed app.asana.com before app.tinyletter.com and that made me kinda sad.)

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One of the questions that I really thought needed solving: “Where is Waldo?” I mean, who really knows where that bugger is at any time? Now we can use the same technology that will soon track us to send personalised ads into our eyeballs and find us at any time in any crowd on a fun children’s book! Isn’t that sweet? There’s Waldo – a robot that finds Waldo.

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You might have read that paragraph just now and wondered – what do you mean, personalised ads into our eyeballs? Well… how long until stuff like Magic Leap will be small enough to fit into normal glasses and not make us look like dorks? (Google Glasses, I’m looking at you.)
Well, and until then, here’s an actually fun review of the Magic Leap glasses: Magic Leap Headset Test Drive: Off Your Phone and Into Your World (It’s at The Wall Street Journal, so you know you won’t be able to read it unless you’re a subscriber. But fear not: neither did I and the fun video is still outside of the paywall.)

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Think about bicycles. Could you draw one?
This dude here asked random people on the street to do exactly that. And then he rendered the best answers as if they were real: Velocipedia.

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Once a year McDonald’s has this weird Monopoly game where you might win a free cheeseburger if that’s your thing and maybe, just maybe, you might win a big cash prize.
For a while these big cash prizes went to the friends of one dude and this is a pretty amazing story which would have made a great season of Fargo or a great Elmore Leonard novel: How an Ex-Cop Rigged McDonald’s Monopoly Game and Stole Millions

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Did you actually think things would get better after the summer break? lol. Here, have some chicken diapers.
Toodles!

Hello internet friends,

good news! Laziness Does Not Exist!

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The only reason I’m still on social media is to get free stuff. Apparently I’m not the only one: Instagram’s Wannabe-Stars Are Driving Luxury Hotels Crazy

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People all around the globe believe Earth is flat. But why? Looking for Life on a Flat Earth

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Beep Beep Beep My Tamagotchi is everything that went wrong with our future
Including, but not mentioned: the nostalgia for a childhood toy.

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Okay, sorry, this is a short one, but I need to go to bed soon. Why? Eight hours a night isn’t enough, according to a leading sleep scientist
Now that is science I can get behind.

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Good night, my friends.

Hello internet friends,

I just deleted about two paragraphs about how nothing really matters anymore on this planet and how I’m about to walk around town with only a loincloth and a “The End is Nigh” sign, but I decided that you probably don’t need that image in your head right now, so let’s get to our regular (hah!) newslettering business, okay?

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Here, now this is a nice safe topic, right? Emoji! Perfecting the language of emojis

The Greek salad emoji includes a hard boiled egg. I’d like to suggest that this should be replaced with a cucumber slice, or other items.

Oh. Okay.

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I do sometimes link to Vice and its sub-sites, being especially fond of Motherboard. (In fact, there’s going to be a link to an article on Vice in the next section.) And yet, this is pretty amazing: A Company Built on a Bluff – which is not a nice way to talk about a “360°, Multi-Platform, Vertically Integrated, Global Media Brand”

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So here we go. An article that is very good and very sad in a not really sad if compared to what else goes on in the world but you know, sad-kind of way: I Went to the Happiness Museum and Now I’m Sad

“Would you like to jump into a giant pile of happiness?” an employee asked me. “Oh, Christ, I don’t think I’m emotionally capable of that,” I replied.

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And now let’s learn something! Did you know that All Spicy Food Is From Latin America? (And bell peppers are called bell peppers because people are dumb. “This new thing is spicy. Like pepper, which we already know. But it looks like a bell. So let’s call it bell pepper.”) The more you know!

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You know what’s still kinda nice? Podcasts! And you know what I really hope stays kinda nice? Podcasts! (I mean, there are people trying to futz with it and I sure hope they get itchy spots in hard to reach places.) And well, I’m not the only one who sees it that way: (which is always a nice feeling, isn’t it?) The podcast business is still teeny tiny. Which is great news for podcasts.

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Oh well. That’s it for today. I’m off to do blow[1] on naked models[2] and I’m so tired of it. (360°, Multi-Platform, Vertically Integrated, Global)

Toodles!

Oh, by the way, this feels a bit icky, but: maybe you know someone whose weird taste might enjoy an email like this? Why not let them know? I admit, it is really only for my ego. Ugh. Sorry.

Hello internet friends,

it is Monday evening again and even though I had what by all means might have been a lovely day I’m in a mood. But hey, let’s have some fun!

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There are many things that could be described by the original meaning of the word awesome. Huge mountain ranges. Deserts. The ocean. Seeing the stars without light pollution. Dinosaurs. Add two of them together and you’re getting close to something that is more modern-day-awesome: A Brief History of Dinosaurs in Space

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Ah, this happened last week just after my last email but it is a story too strange not to link to – and maybe one or two of you didn’t read it yet. If you’re one of them, take some time, do it: How Anna Delvey Tricked New York’s Party People (And for a while Twitter was fun when people were trying to figure out who the futurist boyfriend was.)
If you can’t get enough of the story, here’s the side of her friend-for-pay: “As an Added Bonus, She Paid for Everything”: My Bright-Lights Misadventure with a Magician of Manhattan

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This is pretty neat and very nerdy: UTC is enough for everyone …right?

Programming time, dates, timezones, recurring events, leap seconds… everything is pretty terrible.

At this point I’ll just let the libraries do their thing – this is what they’re good for, after all – and hope that whatever thing to develop comes my way is not overly concerned with time issues.

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These are actually 100 fun songs: The 100 Best One-Hit Wonder Songs (And I’m sorry if you click this and the first song you see is FInal Countdown and you can’t get the song fanfare out of your head.)

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Thanks, America: Mediterranean children stopped eating the Mediterranean diet, and they now have the highest obesity rates in Europe

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Shrug.
Be kind, won’t ya? Toodles!