Daily log archive for Oct 2025. Go to the current daily log, or browse the archive index.
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2025-10-31
YouTube a bigger podcast platform than Spotify
A Billion People Are Watching Podcasts on YouTube Every Month - Bloomberg #podcasts
More than 1 billion people a month are viewing podcast content on YouTube, the result of an investment push that has made the Alphabet Inc. platform the most popular service for podcasts in the US.
Those endeavors vaulted YouTube past Spotify Technology SA, which helped define the podcasting boom when it invested more than $1 billion on acquisitions and licensing deals for popular shows. But in 2022 after investors grew weary of Spotify’s profligate spending, the music streaming company shuttered its in-house podcasting studio, reduced headcount and significantly paired back its podcasting efforts. Around the same time, YouTube began offering as much as $300,000 to podcasters to entice them to create video versions of their shows.
Last year, viewers watched more than 400 million hours of podcasts monthly on living room devices, according to YouTube. In October, Edison Research pronounced YouTube the most popular podcast platform in the US, superseding Spotify and Apple Inc.’s Podcasts app.
Spotify is also doubling down on video podcasts. It rolled out a new partner program in January that pays video creators based on consumption rather than ad revenue and has courted popular podcasters in an effort to convince them to put their shows on the service.
Kopi Luwak
The chemistry behind that pricey cup of civet coffee - Ars Technica
Technically, kopi luwak is a method of processing, not a specific coffee bean variety. Asian palm civets hang around coffee plantations because they love to feast on ripened coffee berries; the berries constitute most of their diet, along with various seeds. The consumed berries undergo fermentation as they pass through the animal’s intestines, and the civets digest the pulp and excrete the beans. Coffee farmers then collect the scat to recover the excreted beans and process and roast them to produce kopi luwak.
There have been numerous scientific studies over the last 15–20 years aimed at identifying any key differences between civet coffee and regular varieties, with mixed results. Some have noted differences in volatile compounds, protein, sugar, mineral concentrations, and caffeine levels, as well as lower acidity and bitterness, and higher levels of acetic acid and lipids.
An interesting bit about India trying to replicate this in Kodagu, a coffee growing region.
Kopi luwak is quite popular, with well-established markets in several South and East Asian countries. Its popularity has risen in Europe and the US as well, and India has recently become an emerging new market. Since there haven’t been similar studies of the chemical properties of kopi luwak from the Indian subcontinent, the authors of this latest study decided to fill that scientific gap. They focused on civet coffee produced in Kodagu, which produces nearly 36 percent of India’s total coffee production.
The authors collected 68 fresh civet scat samples from five different sites in Kodagu during peak fruit harvesting in January of this year. Collectors wore gloves to avoid contamination of the samples. For comparative analysis, they also harvested several bunches of ripened Robusta coffee berries. They washed the scat samples to remove the feces and also removed any palm seeds or other elements to ensure only Robusta beans remained.
2025-10-30
Never Ending Catchups
Are we caught in a culture of never-ending catch-ups? | Dazed #friendship #life
So relatable
‘Catch-up culture’ encapsulates the modern hamster wheel of recapping your life to friends, instead of living and growing alongside them
Michelle Elman, author of Bad Friend, uses the term catch-up culture to describe the hamster wheel of recapping your life to loved ones. “You go on these dinner dates, where you catch up with friends, but you are not experiencing life together,” she says. This may leave our friendships feeling stuck in time. “You only really pick up the meal where you left off last time, which could be months, and it almost feels stunted,” says Elman. “Your life is only ever since your last catch-up, and you aren’t talking about the bigger things in life, like your future, or the menial day-to-day.”
The shift from hangouts to scheduled check-ins is something that has always been part of transitioning into adulthood. Still, Elman believes the dissolving of group hangs, the loss of neighbourhoods and the rise of social media have all contributed to the culture of never-ending catch-ups today. “I think technology gives us the illusion that we are caught up on each other’s lives,” says Elman. And it’s true: it’s easy to use Instagram stories as conversation starters. Instead of the simple “How are you?” we’ve begun to engage in conversations with a level of presumed familiarity. By assuming that people will post updates or share them at the next catch-up session, we can lose small details that actually make many feel cared for, like how a meeting went and who you saw on a walk (or if you saw a bird).
There’s an element of catch-up culture that feeds into heteronormative ideas around the nuclear family: the idea that we should be living lives with partners, and then reporting back to our friends about it. We’re encouraged to express when we feel lonely and disconnected in a romantic setting, but platonic relationships don’t always have the same in-built expectations. Meanwhile, many of the traditional measures of being “successful” – like living alone or with a partner – tear you further and further away from living in community with friends. There’s also a pressure that comes with living within a culture of “life updates”, especially for those who are in different stages and circumstances than their peers. “My friendships were slowly turning into transactional instances of scheduling morning coffees, similar to the corporate world,” says Nicole So, a content creator in London. “It feels like I’m not growing alongside them as a person, and every time we catch up, I’m supposed to bring something new to the table.” Instead, So says she has started asking friends for a high, a low and something interesting they’ve done or learned recently. “I feel like it’s made my friendships more real and deeper,” she says.
Fighting against catch-up culture isn’t easy because it involves challenging every element of what’s considered “productive” adulthood, where work, personal development and romantic relationships often take priority, while “unproductive” hours lounging around with friends fall by the wayside. It also may involve confronting our addiction to instant, Instagrammable gratification: a quick photo of dinner and the most outrageous story we can leave with. “If you have only a shorter period of time, you find quicker information more interesting,” says Mae. “In our day-to-day lives, it’s how fast-paced culture sneaks up on us.” It’s only after the big catch-up, once the major updates have settled, that we get into the minutia of actually intimate conversations.
Technology just makes our life faster, not easier or happier
An open letter to all those building AI in 2025 #ai #technology #happiness #benefits
Furthermore, our technology doesn’t fundamentally make our lives easier from an economic standpoint. Rather, it mostly just makes our lives faster. Technology is an accelerant, not a relaxant. That’s because, whenever a new affordance is unlocked, we are pushed into weaponising it within the competitive landscape of capitalism. The new tool doesn’t bring new leisure. Rather, it simply becomes a new thing that each of us must now have to continue surviving in a - now intensified - market struggle against others.
Long gone are the days when the Internet was a fun novelty that we could choose to use or not. We don’t experience childlike joy each morning when we see it up and running, but we certainly panic if it’s down. That’s because the Internet has sunk into the foundations of our life as infrastructure, without which we are now disabled. It doesn’t guarantee security, or - in itself - make any of us joyful or empowered. Having the Internet, or electricity, or a smartphone, simply means each of us gets to fight another day, and to not be left behind by all the others trying to claw their way to illusory security in an ever-changing market.
All our technology doesn’t make us collectively thrive, relax, or live in abundance. If that were the case, we’d be the most peaceful and chilled out generation in history, without poverty or stress. But we all know that’s not the case.
You have to do the living yourself
The Imperfectionist: You have to do the living yourself
From Oliver Burkeman's latest:
building a meaningful life is much less about discovering the right set of practices or habits than it is about cultivating the willingness to step up moment after moment and just do more of the things that matter, for the projects and people and causes you care about most.
And yet… No matter how many guardrails for good behaviour you erect, however much you stack things in your favour, in each moment, it’s still you showing up for your life. And there seems to be something crucial about owning that fact – about actively committing and recommitting, again and again, to going in the direction you want to travel, instead of acting as a spectator to your life, watching to see whether the systems you’ve put in place perform as you’d hoped they would or not.
Hope is a discipline
“Hope doesn’t preclude feeling sadness or frustration or anger or any other emotion that makes total sense. Hope isn’t an emotion, you know? Hope is not optimism. Hope is a discipline… we have to practice it every single day.” — Mariame Kaba
2025-10-28
AI in perf reviews
From Matt Levine's latest newsletter.
On the other hand:
JPMorgan Chase has given employees the option to use its in-house artificial intelligence system to help write year-end performance reviews, underscoring how AI-generated text is proliferating in corporate America.
The tool allows employees to use the US bank’s large language model to generate a review based on prompts they give it, according to people familiar with the matter.
It is a shortcut to the often painstaking process of writing multiple reviews that are typically required by large companies.
Ahahaha. Obviously, yes, writing year-end performance reviews is perhaps the best-known example of intellectual drudgery in white-collar employment. Letting an AI do it is a strict improvement for the people writing the reviews. Then one assumes that the reviews are also read by AIs, and increasingly people’s salaries and job security will be set by AIs talking to AIs rather than by human beings. Still that’s a tradeoff a lot of people would take if it means not writing performance reviews.
Forerunner to modern manga
Ehon Mizu Ya Sora: A Forerunner of Modern Manga, 1780 - Flashbak #manga #japanese #illustrations
These illustrations appear in Ehon mizu ya sora (“Picture Book of Water and Sky”). Published in 1780 and illustrated by the Osaka artist known as Nichōsai (c. 1751-1803), the Japanese book caricatures famous kabuki actors (yakusha-e) from Osaka, Kyoto and Edo (Tokyo). The images are in a minimalist and humorous manner exemplary of the ‘toba-e’ style, a forerunner of modern manga.
Porcelain Handbags
Freshly Unlocked: Porcelain Handbags? A Tale of Two Cultures and One Bold Career Leap
Unemployment gave Loquineau the push she needed to retrain. She enrolled at a lycée professionnel (vocational high school) for two years of ceramics studies.
“People in France often look down on practical [crafts] courses,” she says, “but it’s the best teaching I’ve ever experienced.”
Loquineau nailed her vision with her first design project: a porcelain handbag. Bringing it to life took much longer, with many china bags shattered to smithereens along the way. The next iteration involved stitching the seams in leather to make the bags sturdier. Then, during a creative residency this past spring in Jingdezhen, China—the world’s porcelain capital—she began to make bags from 100-percent porcelain.
Although many of the imperial factories in Jingdezhen closed in the 1900s, particularly under Mao (1949–54), craftspeople still have workshops all over town. For Loquineau, the Chinese designs of her bags are a way of fusing her two heritages, and finding a sense of belonging. And at last, her parents are proud, too, she says.
Inspiration for the day
quit brainrot. unfollow trolls. read essays. go down rabbit holes. have a calendar. maintain a todo list. read old books. watch old movies. turn on dnd. walk with intent. eat without youtube. chew more. train without music. plan for 15 mins. execute. organise your desk. take something seriously. read ancient scripts. act fast. find bread. eat clean. journal. save a life. learn to code. read poetry. create art. stay composed. refine your speech. optimise for efficiency. act sincere. help people. be kind. stop doing things that waste your time. follow your intuition. craft reputation. learn persuasion. systemise your day (or don’t). write. write. write. write more. iterate violently. leave your phone at home. walk to the grocery store. talk to strangers. feed the dogs. visit bookstores. look for 1800s novels. experience art. then love. sit with a monk and offer them lunch. don't talk shit about people. embody virtue. sit alone. do something with your life. what do you want to create? turn off your mind. play. play a sport. combat sports. notice fonts in trees. fall in love. notice patterns on a table. visualise it. talk to people with respect. don't hate. be loving. be real. become yourself. cherrypick your qualities. discard the useless. rejections aren't permanent. invite what aligns. accept what does not. read great people. be different. choose different. do great work. let it consume you. lose your mind. value your time. experience life.
From:
Why does hand-holding now feel more intimate than sex?
Why does hand-holding now feel more intimate than sex? | Dazed #relationships zz
This chimes with Dr Natasha McKeever, a lecturer in applied ethics at the University of Leeds and co-director of the university’s Centre for Love, Sex, and Relationships. She explains that “holding hands [now] seems to express or symbolise a higher degree of intimacy than sex does [...] I would guess that some people in monogamous relationships would find it more hurtful if they saw their partner holding hands with someone else than if they saw them having sex with someone else.” She ascribes this attitude to the rise in ‘situationship culture’: “Young people are now more reluctant to commit to another person, and holding hands tends to symbolise commitment.”
It’s unsurprising that young people are increasingly afraid of commitment, given that the explosion of social media has robbed us of the ability to keep things private, leaving many of us with the nagging sense that we’re being constantly “perceived” – and consequently unwilling to take potentially humiliating risks. “Expressing genuine interest or desire for connection is frequently seen as risky or embarrassing, while appearing detached or indifferent is a way to maintain control,” Dr Jenny van Hooff, a sociologist at Manchester Metropolitan University, told Dazed earlier this year. “Emotions become bargaining chips: whoever shows less feeling holds more power.”
Pure and Impure Programming
Pure and impure software engineering #programming #craft
There are two very different kinds of programming work. The first kind - pure engineering - is interested in solving a technical problem as perfectly as possible. Open-source work is often like this: some engineer wants to write the best HTTP requests library, or their ideal game engine. The second kind - impure engineering - is interested in solving a real-world problem as efficiently as possible. Paid tech company work is often like this: engineers are asked to deliver some project or feature as well as they can do it by the deadline.
In pure software engineering, what you’re doing is close to art or research. It’s close to art because the engineer is driven by an aesthetic sense (e.g. of what makes a good library or game engine). It’s close to research because it’s open-ended: once the engineer arrives at a solution, they can continue testing and tinkering forever, trying (and usually discarding) new approaches.
Impure software engineering is more like plumbing or construction. The engineer’s aesthetic sense is subordinated to someone else’s (usually their employer’s) needs. They’re building a solution to someone else’s problem. And since it’s someone else’s problem, it has to actually be finished to schedule, which means compromising.
A report on Gen Alphas
Tweenfluence: Meet Gen Alpha - After School by Casey Lewis
It’s Gen Alpha week here at After School.
Through Friday, I’m bringing you a deep dive into the minds (and piggy banks) of the youngest consumers after months of conversations with a group of charming, thoughtful kids who — from all of my additional research — reflect the generation at large.
Books on longevity research
The quest to live longer and defeat death
The FT has a good review of a bunch of books on longevity.
Super Agers: An Evidence-Based Approach to Longevity by Eric Topol Simon & Schuster £22/$32.50, 464 pages
Seven Decades: How We Evolved to Live Longer by Michael D Gurven Princeton University Press £30/$35, 536 pages
The Immortalists: The Death of Death and the Race for Eternal Life by Aleks Krotoski Bodley Head £22, 320 pages
2025-10-21
AI Coding Claims
Where's the Shovelware? Why AI Coding Claims Don't Add Up
The section on counterarguments to rebuttals that are commonly brought up by the AI-pilled folks is nice.
2025-10-20
Old and Young
Everyone under 30 is prematurely old (worried about savings, career, FIRE).
Everyone over 50 is desperately young (Burning Man, psychedelics).
My theory: Information abundance aged the young by showing them all future problems all at once.
Information abundance also made the old young by showing them all missed experiences all at once.
So now Gen Z talks like retirement planners and boomers act like teenagers.
It's so over.
From:
AI has a cargo culting problem
AI has a cargo cult problem #ai #bubble
The same analogy now applies to AI. Almost every business executive today is eager to tell investors about their AI strategy (even though 95 per cent of companies have not (yet) seen revenue gains) and every VC group is keen to show AI plays.
Similarly every Big Tech executive is investing in massive data centres, even though Bain reckons some $2tn of revenue will be needed to fund this by 2030. And charismatic figures like Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, keep promising fresh magic. Or as Stephan Eberle, a software engineer, laments: “Watching the industry’s behaviour around AI, I can’t shake this feeling that we’re all building bamboo aeroplanes [like cargo cults] and expecting them to fly.”
Read Your Way Through Hà Nội
Read Your Way Through Hà Nội #vietnam #travel
Nice collection of books about Vietnam.
Types of Fun
Good reminder of this timeless trope.
From: Radical fun - by Ava - bookbear express
2025-10-19
The purpose of a system is what it does
The purpose of a system is what it does | Des Traynor #system #complexity
When you’re building, running, or ultimately accountable for any mature system anywhere, the first thing you should understand that is that the purpose of the system is what it does.
The nature of working in a startup is that most business functions are either non-existent or broken and your job (regardless of when you join, honestly) is to help get them working well. Even the founders of the best companies I know, as in the $10B+ ones, will admit that whole chunks of the company are works in progress held together with duct tape at best, and blu tack at worst.
The job as an early hire in any function is to make it work well, and the evaluation of whether you did that will be simply: did that happen? Your intentions don’t matter. Your excuses don’t matter. Not to be all James Heftfield, but nothing else matters. The purpose of a system is what it does.
2025-10-17
What do bubbles leave behind
Pluralistic: The AI that we’ll have after AI (16 Oct 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow #ai #bubble
Cory Doctorow at his humourous best
Some bubbles leave nothing or next-to-nothing behind. Enron left nothing behind but the cooling corpse of a CEO who popped his clogs before he could be sentenced to life in prison. Worldcom left behind a CEO who survived long enough to die behind bars…and a ton of fiber in the ground that people are still getting use out of (I'm sending these keystrokes to the internet on old Worldcom fiber that AT&T bought and lit up).
Crypto's not going to leave much behind: a few Rust programmers who've really taken security by design to heart, sure, but mostly it'll be shitty Austrian economics and even shittier JPEGs.
So what kind of bubble is AI? That's the $2 trillion question
2025-10-16
Coolest Neighborhoods in the World
39 Coolest Neighbourhoods in the World in 2025 #world #travel #neighborhoods
Good list!
2025-10-15
Janteloven
What is Janteloven? The Law of Jante in Scandinavian Society #scandinavia #danish #culture
TIL.
Janteloven’s social code dictates emphasis on collective accomplishments and well-being, and disdains focus on individual achievements. It is an underlying Scandinavian philosophy principle that applies across Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. Understanding Janteloven is paramount to understanding both the history and modern-day cultures of these countries.
- Rule 1: Do not think you are anything special.
- Rule 2: Do not think you are as good as we are.
- Rule 3: Do not think you are smarter than we are.
- Rule 4: Do not imagine yourself better than we are.
- Rule 5: Do not think you know more than we do.
- Rule 6: Do not think you are more important than we are.
- Rule 7: Do not think you are good at anything.
- Rule 8: Do not laugh at us.
- Rule 9: Do not think anyone cares about you.
- Rule 10: Do not think you can teach us anything.
But, in a capitalist society, those with the means of production also get the credit for success. Though all Scandinavian countries have a socialist welfare model, their economic model is capitalism and increased global trade only underscores the fact. The result is that the Scandinavian countries encourage a system in which individuals strive to be financially and socially successful, while also eschewing the self-promotion that often accompanies this kind of success.
Found this (strangely) via: On DHH’s “As I Remember London”
2025-10-13
The Bay Area is cursed
The Bay Area is cursed - by Sasha Chapin #sf #tech #valley
The Bay Area has a curse. It is the curse of Aboutness. Social life here is not regarded as something people do naturally, an organic element of being. It has to be About something. In New York, it’s an important component of the human repertoire to dress up nicely, gather, drink and eat, be part of the throng. In the Bay, most gatherings have the sweaty air of Purpose. Discussions are held to uncover new information, not because it is good to be around each other. Conversations feel like podcasts and the hosts are not funny. Someone recently said to me: “I’m tired of drinking in living rooms with overly smart people.”
People are dreaming up the future here, who have never fully experienced their own bodies or emotions. They talk philosophically about how to reshape society, but don’t know what society feels like. They’ve never been able to rely on peers, or receive care informally. San Francisco is an avoidant city, and Berkeley is an anxious colony. The most awkward people I’ve ever met write widely read posts about the secrets of charisma and attraction. Psychology is one topic haunting the city here, because so many have a rough go of it. But the main topic is, of course, AI. A friend’s group house had “days since AI mentioned” as a counter written on the whiteboard, I never saw the number rise above 2.
Why are young people getting married again?
Why are young people getting married again? | Dazed #marriage #genz
To clarify, Shannon is not saying that marriage is inherently right-wing, but that it is perceived as conservative and traditional because of its long patriarchal history. In her book, Marriage, A History, Stephanie Coontz quotes historian Margaret Hunt, who states that marriage was “the main means of transferring property, occupational status, personal contacts, money, tools, livestock and women across generations, and kin groups.” To this day, it is men who benefit from marriage, as Clementine Ford highlights in her article: “Marriage is an inherently misogynistic institution – so why do women agree to it?”, as reports show that married men live longer than married women, are generally happier and healthier and see their economic prospects improve.
Our parents’ behaviour often makes us roll our eyes in annoyance, but their hold over our lives is far-reaching. It can feel wrong to defy their expectations, not just because they are our parents but because, as Michel Foucault argues, the family is now a site of key sovereign power (as we no longer rely on the monarchy or religion as heavily as we used to). As a result, the family serves as a disciplinary apparatus that actively (and effectively) enforces social norms and self-discipline.
26-year-old Gillian feels coerced into marriage, not through pressures from her family but because of Labour’s new dehumanising and classist immigration policies. “I never really thought about marriage until the White Paper this past May upped the salary minimum for a work visa from £29K to £41K. I came here on a student visa, met my lovely boyfriend, got a full-time job, and was on a steady work visa. Suddenly, I was ineligible to renew, and one of the only routes to staying is a spouse visa.” She continues: “It puts an insane amount of pressure on our lives… Neither of us really believes in marriage, but the legal privilege of being married has become something of a defining factor in preserving my life.”
2025-10-12
Helga Paris on Feminism and Equality
Helga Paris: Women at Work - The 'Unforeseen Beauty' of East German Factory Workers In 1984 - Flashbak #photography #feminism
“From the very beginning, a different self image prevailed in the field of photography. In the west, the new artistic fields such as photography and video were often utilised by women from a feminist perspective. This was different in the GDR. Here, equality prevailed. Women in the garment business worked just as hard as their male colleagues. Feminism sees men as enemies – it’s an ideology. We women in the GDR had nothing against men; on the contrary, we had equal rights. We demanded equal rights when necessary, and we got them. Did that happen in the west? Probably not. That’s embarrassing”
– Helga Paris
Daniel Kahneman chooses assisted suicide
"It's time to go": Nobel Prize winner opted for suicide in Switzerland | blue News #death
I wish more people in the future have the same options as Kahneman had.
Although Daniel Kahneman neither suffered from dementia nor required dialysis, he said he noticed an "increase in mental lapses and a decline in his kidney function".
His decision seems to have been based less on his famous scientific thinking and more on a very personal feeling. He wanted to retain his autonomy until the end and to shape his own end.
Kahneman knew that many would see his decision as premature. But that was exactly what he intended, he wrote: If you wait until a life is "obviously no longer worth living", it is already too late.
Therefore, his move was inevitably premature. He had spoken about it with some people close to him, and even though they initially resisted, they had finally accepted his decision.
Lessons from Japan's Hikikomori
What do Japan’s hikikomori reveal about our lonely world? | Psyche Ideas #isolation #loneliness
In this new period of virtualisation, precarious labour and vanishing communities, hikikomori reveal the underlying logic of our changing societies: participation counts only when it is tied to productivity. They are not simply outliers who have cut themselves off from the world, revealing the extremes of isolation. Instead, they show us the values that many of us share in our age of overwork and loneliness. That’s how Japan’s hikikomori, once dismissed as anomalies, now appear as mirrors reflecting the estrangements felt by countless others – regardless of whether they have a job.
Coffee Prices
Hell Hath No Fury Like a Coffee Drinker in 2025
I recently felt the sticker shock of a 250g bag of coffee beans here in Berlin. At one hip coffee shop, they were selling between 15€ to 20€.
I also realised one of the reasons I was paying far less for coffee in India was because I was paying for locally grown beans. I am yet to encounter any coffee shop in Berlin selling beans from India.
Roasted coffee prices at the grocery store are up 22% in the past year, more than any other item tracked by the government. Prices at some coffee shops are going up too. $10 latte, anyone?
Lots of things are more expensive, but coffee isn’t like cereal or chicken. The daily fix is all that’s keeping millions from a throbbing headache and foul mood. So while people may wince at the price, they’re buying it anyway–and reserving the right to rant.
The price increases are due to bad weather in the world’s coffee-growing regions and the Trump Administration’s tariffs.
Lawmakers in September introduced bipartisan legislation that would exempt coffee products from tariffs, invoking historical outrage over the price of another beverage staple. “Americans started a revolution over a tax on tea,” said Ro Khanna (D., Calif.). “If you drink coffee every morning, how can you not be mad about that?”
Coffee drinkers exemplify a paradox at the heart of the U.S. economy. Consumers feel pessimistic, worried about the job market and inflation. Though they may trade down in some ways—including by making coffee at home—they continue to spend more overall, keeping the economy chugging.
Americans spent $12.7 billion on packaged coffee in the past year, up from $12 billion a year earlier, according to NielsenIQ.
2025-10-07
Anthropic Popup in NYC
Yup
From: How to make $183 billion disappear
Indefinite Backpack Travel
Indefinite Backpack Travel – Jeremy Maluf #travel #onebag
I love the term. Some good recommendations for one bag travel.
Deutschland vs Berlin
From: #430: Oct. 7 events, drones, döner saved, pudding with fork
Also true since at least the 1970s: The rest of Germany hating on Berlin. In a new survey conducted by Tagesspiegel and the Free University, Berlin ranked lowest in terms of likeability of any of the 16 Bundesländer or federal states (along with Bremen and Hamburg, we’re a city and a state). Hamburg came on top. What do Germans hate about Berlin? “Too multicultural, too dirty, too criminal, too full,” according to some comments by the 1,600 people surveyed. Other (stereotypical) criticisms the yokels out there brought up about us Berliners: “Loudmouths, hipsters, especially woke, direct, loud, argumentative.” Can’t really argue there.
The Job Market is Hell
The Job Market Is Hell - The Atlantic #jobs #ai #recruitment
“Young people are using ChatGPT to write their applications; HR is using AI to read them; no one is getting hired”.
2025-10-06
The death of the corporate job
The death of the corporate job. - by Alex McCann
She's not alone. I keep meeting people who describe their jobs using words they'd never use in normal conversation. They attend meetings about meetings. They create PowerPoints that no one reads, which get shared in emails no one opens, which generate tasks that don't need doing.
But what’s weird is that everyone knows it. When you get people alone, after work, maybe after they've had time to decompress, they'll admit it. Their job is basically elaborate performance art. They're professional email forwards. They're human middleware between systems that could probably talk directly to each other.
What's emerging is something very interesting. People are building parallel systems of actual value while maintaining their corporate personas.
I know developers who do their "official" job in the morning and build their own products in the afternoon. Marketers who run their agencies from their corporate desks. Consultants who've automated their actual deliverables and spend most of their time on side projects.
They're using the corporate infrastructure, the steady salary, the laptop, the stability, as a platform for building something real. The corporate role hasn't died; it's become a funding mechanism for actual work.
The most honest person I've met recently was a VP at a tech company who told me: "I manage a team of twelve people who create documents for other teams who create documents for senior leadership who don't read documents. I make £150k a year. It's completely absurd, and I'm riding it as long as I can while building something real on the side."
From Part 3: The Death of the Corporate Worker: Part 3 - The Rise of Blue Collar Work.
Our generation of knowledge workers is navigating unprecedented career volatility. We're experiencing automation and AI disrupting roles faster than previous generations. Trained for linear progression in an era demanding constant pivots. Promised that good degrees guaranteed good careers, only to graduate into the gig economy and endless restructures.
I see it everywhere. Friends in finance watching algorithms do analysis they spent years learning. Consultants seeing AI produce better decks in minutes. Developers realising that coding might not be the safe bet they thought.
Work is splitting into two surviving categories: practical and personal. If your job involves fixing physical things or genuine human connection, you're probably safe. Everything else, the vast middle of knowledge work, is vulnerable.
Some of my friends are diving deeper into specialisation, betting they can stay ahead of the machines. Others pivot to coaching, therapy, anything requiring emotional intelligence. A few even consider trades, though starting plumbing at 30 with student loans isn't realistic.
Most are just stuck. Watching. Waiting. Adding vague buzzwords to their LinkedIn profiles. Every gathering eventually turns to the same topic, who's been laid off, who's pivoting, who's still pretending everything's fine.
2025-10-05
The Buchstaben Museum
The Buchstabenmuseum Berlin is closing | Hacker News #typography #museum
I had a chance to visit this museum just days before it closed down. Here is the instagram post with some pics: Buchstaben Museum Pics | Instagram
Hamlet is a GenZ story
Hamlet Is the Gen Z Story We Need Right Now - by Ted Gioia #genz #shakespeare
It’s a familiar story these days. You might even be living inside it. Or, if not, you know somebody who is.
A young man returns from college, but he doesn’t have a job. So he moves back home. But here his life is aimless, and he falls into a deep depression.
Even though he is back home, it doesn’t feel that way. He’s disconnected from friends, and his loneliness grows more intense. His relationship with his girlfriend falls apart. He knows he needs to get his act together—but how?
It’s not all his fault. His family is a mess, and he lives in a broken household. His mother is a head case. His absent father is too demanding.
And the whole social and political situation is fractured. Our sad young man feels like one more victim of the pervasive dysfunction.
It’s the classic Gen Z dilemma. Almost half of them move back home after college nowadays. The odds are stacked against them at every turn.
But the story I’ve just told isn’t about Gen Z. It’s Shakespeare’s Hamlet—and it was written more than 400 years ago.
If you were an existentialist or absurdist or beatnik, you recognized Hamlet as one of your own. He was lost in a meaningless world—but so were the other survivors of World War and economic collapse and the Holocaust. So were all the other sad young men, caught in a losing war against conformists.
And now today we recognize a completely different Hamlet:
- He’s the college graduate who can’t pay off all those student loans.
- He’s the over-educated and under-employed worker who can’t get a job because of AI.
- He’s the incel who can’t forge a relationship.
- He’s the unhappy child of a broken home, struggling with depression.
- He’s the scroll-and-swipe phone addict who retreats from the world, but at a devastating psychological cost.
- He’s the person posting cries for help on social media—but nobody listens.
Go read Hamlet’s soliloquy again—that anguished “To be or not be….” filled with what we call (nowadays) suicidal ideation—and it fits all these gloomily familiar personality types.
Maybe that’s why pop culture is rediscovering Hamlet right now. Taylor Swift’s new album even leads off with a Hamlet track—“The Fate of Ophelia.” She must have encountered these same personality profiles, and fears the consequences.
Robohiking
I am Robohiker! — testing the exoskeleton that promises to take hikers further, faster #augmented #hiking
I’m in north Wales to test the Hypershell — billed as the world’s first outdoor exoskeleton and promising to take hikers further, faster and with less effort. It has been developed by a Shanghai start-up that launched in 2021, aiming to propel technologies used in manufacturing and medical rehabilitation into the leisure market. Sales of the first model began in January this year, but I’m using an updated version, the flagship X Ultra, unveiled in early September.
In a hotel in Caernarfon where coach-tour pensioners bimble about the foyer, a Hypershell staffer clips me into what appears to be a climbing harness from a Mission Impossible movie. There’s a padded titanium alloy waistband with a slimline lithium battery, electric motors at each hip, and carbon-fibre calipers which curve to straps buckled just above the knees. It’s discreet(ish), sleek in matt black, and, at 1.8kg, relatively light.
The idea is similar to what e-bikes do for cyclists — offering assistance rather than taking over completely. The Hypershell senses which leg you’re beginning to move and engages the corresponding motor. And like e-biking it has different power settings — Eco and Hyper — plus a Fitness mode that actually increases resistance, making it harder to walk, for those in training. Control is via buttons on the motors (a confusing series of short and long presses) or, more intuitively, via an app or an Apple Watch.
The ai Boom
The ai Boom - Marginal REVOLUTION #ai #domains
The tiny country of Anguilla (pop 15,000) has an official country top-level domain code for the internet of .ai. Domain name registrations have surged from 48,000 in 2018 to 870,000 in the year to date and that source of revenue alone now accounts for nearly 50% of state revenues.
David Foster Wallace quote
From: Where to Start in Reading David Foster Wallace
Welcome to the world of reality — there is no audience. No one to applaud, to admire. No one to see you. Do you understand? Here is the truth — actual heroism receives no ovation, entertains no one. No one queues up to see it. No one is interested…. True heroism is minutes, hours, weeks, year upon year of the quiet, precise, judicious exercise of probity and care — with no one there to see or cheer. This is the world.
2025-10-04
A Primer of Raw Denim
All About Raw Denim - Heddels Blowout Podcast #jeans
Nowadays, the only piece of bottomwear I have are raw denims. I rotate between two of them from time to time.
This is a great short podcast that gives an overview of the entire process of making raw denim. Although I have read about raw denim before, it was nice to have an overview in one place that I could point to.
They also have an extremely detailed 7-episode breakdown of denim earlier in their podcast epis