Mirrorworld 26000

February 18, 2019

Hello internet friends,

sometimes there are weird ideas in people’s head and I really can’t follow them. Who, for example, thought that Twitter is a good platform for an interview? How hard is it to have a conversation on Twitter? So hard even the CEO can’t do it.
Quelle surprise. It used to be a platform to talk about your breakfast and now it’s an app that makes you feel bad as a service.

Just like every year is the year of Linux on the desktop, every is the year that AR finally had a breakthrough. This time it’s going to have a creepy name, too! AR Will Spark the Next Big Tech Platform—Call It Mirrorworld
All snark aside – this actually sounds pretty old-school-Wired and if you scroll down all the way to the byline, you’ll understand why.

I can hardly plan for tomorrow, so I’m always amazed by people who plan a long time into the future. In this case, a couple of thousand years: The 26,000-Year Astronomical Monument Hidden in Plain Sight
I was a disappointed, though – I saw the headline and thought it was 26,000 years old and probably made by aliens, but instead it was just some dude in the 30s.

I guess if you read this, you already like email newsletters. So it might be a bit silly to link you to an article praising email newsletters, but alas, here we go: Oh God, It’s Raining Newsletters

That’s all, folks. Take care and sleep well!

No More People

February 11, 2019

Hello internet friends,

did you know that Currywurst is 70 years old this year? Well, me neither. Luckily there’s a coin to celebrate this anniversary and oh boy… just look at it.

Just like a plague of locusts, humans are everywhere and the worst. And it is common knowledge that this is just going to get worse and worse and worse until every cm on earth is covered in human.
Now some people say: not so fast, common knowledge. The World Might Actually Run Out of People.

“This might be something for your newsletter.” Indeed it is, thanks Ben.
A 25-Year-Old Dinosaur Jr. Song Is a Hit in Japan. Nobody Knows Why. – there are some hints in the article, but maybe it’s just a sudden attack of 90s nostalgia. Either this or the rent-an-uncles play the music of their youth to the children of today.

Hey, if you’re still using Twitter – why not clean out your follow list with this fun app? Tokimeki Unfollow
KonMari all the things, I guess.

Here is the Immigrant Song, performed by Transformers. Enjoy.

Toodles!

Ghost Town

February 4, 2019

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Toodles!

Journaling

January 28, 2019

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sorry.

Toodles!

Toot

January 21, 2019

Hello internet friends,

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

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.)

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?

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

Toodles!

Still chirpin’

January 14, 2019

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.

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!

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!

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

“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.

Keep hydrated!
Toodles!

It’s Cold Out There

January 7, 2019

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.

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?

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

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

Stay warm and safe!
Toodles

Fire Eagle Danger Day

January 1, 2019

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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

Toodles!