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

Hello internet friends,

remember roughly a year ago we were all wondering about an alien megastructure? Turns out it might be just dust.

Hack

I’m harvesting credit card numbers and passwords from your site. Here’s how. Between this rather realistic scenario and the whole chip architecture vulnerability it might be time to just end this whole digital experiment. (Before we do, send me your addresses, so I can send you these letters by post.)

Plastic Fantastic Redux

Remember last week we had eco-plastics? Now someone found caterpillars that eat plastic: Plastic-eating caterpillars could save the planet
I’m not too sure how well that would work – they’re probably not breaking down the plastic polymers small enough to make their feces not be plastic anymore?

Self-Improvement

This speaks to me on so many levels: ‘Most of us are too busy to be better’: the lazy person’s guide to self-improvement

That’s all for this week.
Toodles!

Hello internet friends,

I hope you’re all doing well. Me personally? Eh, could be better. I could do with a hug and maybe one of those multi-week (months?) digital detox retreats in some weird hippie commune. (Aww, man, I did have such a fun article on one of those places and I can’t find it anymore. Technology! Ugh. I mean, honestly. Not even Creepy Chrome’s history search is helping me. Maybe read this essay on the 20 year anniversary of “The Beach” from last summer instead? Idk.)
Or maybe I’ll just become a priest?

One thing that I just know will probably always stay in the stage of being a concept and yet is very fascinating to me is Personal Rapid Transit – you know, the idea of small-ish self-driving pods on dedicated little tracks. Turns out the idea is not really all that new and just like so many things from that era will probably turn into a sad parody of itself.

Another fascinating thing: maps! Here is one of Chinese merchant shipping routes from the 17th century.

Now here we go, three articles from the New Yorker that are worth reading:

1. The Vertical Farm – the future!
2. The Voyeur’s Motel – wtf?
3. A Selection of the 30 Most Disappointing Under 30 – disappointingly enough I wasn’t even able to get on that list. Mostly due to my advanced age.

I’ve said it on Twitter before: my favourite new genre of literatur is “reviews of books by Marie Kondo” – here is one of her new book: Did Marie Kondo’s Spark bring me Joy?

Take care out there.
Toodles!