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!

Hello internet friends,

and a happy new year and such. Just remember that starting from today, there are people who are adults by law (Your mileage might vary, but at least in countries where 18 is that age) were born in the 2000s.
Good god.

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Airport

This link is in German, so… maybe skip clicking it if that’s a problem for you? You could also Google Translate it, which works pretty well these days.

This interview with one of the preeminent airport construction experts on his views on the still unopened new Berlin airport is very fascinating: BER: Dieter Faulenbach da Costa im Interview
Maybe it is time to teach the people the concept of the sunk cost fallacy and actually blow the whole thing up and start from scratch. Maybe have some people handle it who have done this kind of thing before.

Monorail

Don’t tell me that! We Are Never, Ever, Ever Getting a Monorail
From what I see in this article the problem isn’t with the concept of monorails but with poor city planning. Maybe if people built monorails where there is actual demand and sell tickets at a reasonable price, these things would actually be useful? But then I’m probably biased, because: Monorail! 🤩

Plastic Fantastic

Now this sounds pretty rad: The Creators Of This Algae Plastic Want To Start A Maker Revolution
I’m not super sure if the whole maker angle is really the thing to look at, but bioplastic from algae sounds awesome and like one of the few good cyberpunk-sounding things we should actually add to our lives.

Tiny Homes

No, not these ones. But the internet ones: The year we wanted the internet to be smaller – Why tiny, weird online communities made a comeback in 2017

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Here’s to a 2018 that’s better than last year.
Toodles!

Hello internet friends,

first email of the year! Yay.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯[1]

Now for some Star Wars. Because obviously.
Why Carrie Fisher Should Be Remembered As General Organa, Not Princess Leia – very much so. I mean – both, but still. She was the best part of The Force Awakens and given that I quite liked that movie, that’s something. (She also was by far the best part of “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” – but we better forget about that movie pretty quick.)

A wonderful piece of fan fiction is this obituary to General Organa. It’s so well written and so obviously by a nerdy fan without being too… well, nerdy-fan-y.

While much has been said about the Star Wars costume designer’s love for multiple pens one thing is pretty amazing: We don’t see many written words in these movies. Most Citizens of the Star Wars Galaxy are Probably Totally Illiterate. So maybe these are not pens but terrible USB sticks or something?

Robot news!
I’ve been sternly warned that enough is enough with the robot sex articles. So: none of those this week. (That is pretty easy, though. I didn’t even see one anywhere.)
What else do we have, then? There’s this overview of companies that work on robots that take us places. And there is this robot that takes care of your child.
Robots are going to take our jobs. But do they want to?[2]
Either way, robots and AIs are going to be in the future a lot. And here we have one company that is really happy about it.

Turns out bats are a lot like us. Just, you know, better.

Toodles!