Roman Opałka started painting numbers in 1965. Starting from 1 he counted upwards. Three years later he started recording himself saying the numbers he painted out loud. The numbers had the same size, which all canvases had as well. He finished 2011 with 5607249.
One idea. Sticking to it. For your entire life.
It is interesting to think about him in the context of Instagram.
It is interesting to think about him in the context of Bitcoin.
Manchmal ist es schon absurd wie die Nachrichten sich scheinbar in eine Narration einzufügen scheinen. Dem ist natürlich nicht so. Aber kein Drehbuchautor würde mit dem folgenden durchkommen: Produktionsengpässe bei den beiden mRNA basierten Moderna und Pfizer Impfstoffe. In Deutschland läuft die Impfung der über 80 jährigen ungemein schleppend an. Mit viel Gezicke besorgt man AstraZeneca Impfstoff. Einigen deutschen genemigern ist das n der Studien bei den über 80 jährigen zu niedrig. Also deklarieren sie ihn als zu unsicher in der Altersgruppe. Weiter der Filmscript Logik folgend will man ihn dann an die Krankenpflege Kräfte verimpfen. Die heulen auf weil es nun eine 2 Klassen Impfung gäbe. Vor haben auch welche die Impfung ganz abgelehnt. Zu allem Überfluss gibt es angeblich Nachrichten über Probleme von AstraZeneva mit der Südafrika Variante. Ich hoffe dass dem nicht so ist. Darüberhinaus wurden in einem Altenheim 14 (Pfizer/Moderna) geimpfte Mensch positiv auf die britische Variation getestet worden. Es wird von milden Verläufen gesprochen, und niemand weiss ob diese Menschen andere anstecken könnten. Ein positiver PCR Test heisst ja in diesem Bezug erstmal noch nichts. Aber für Menschen die allgemein eher auf der Nachrichtenoberfläche herum schwimmen ist das schon alles eher aufregend. Und wenn man aufregen kann dann druckt die Bild es bestimmt auch bald. Sind ja nicht blöd – die Bild Schreiber jedenfalls.
I like feedbin. Pay for it. I read that Thunderbird is a RSS feeder as well. Easy and free download. Not setting it up for email – of course. But the RSS part is intuitive enough. I can export my feedbin feed collection as a file called:
subscriptions.xml
Before I spent money the service I made sure that I would be able to export what I had put into it. Services exist, and then they don’t. Good not to rely on it. Out of the box Thunderbird did not want to import the xml file. Simply changing the extension to .opml did fix this hick up. Now I see 272 of my 600+ streams. I have no information why that difference exists. I don’t really care either. Having an XML file gives me the opportunity to drill into things if I would want to. Right now I don’t. I will poke at this for a little bit, but overall do not see a reason why I should switch away from feedbin. Also since it allows me to subscribe to newsletters and show them in the same screen. A smart move by feedbin: I get something easily. Worth the annual payments not having to manage this part myself. Not sure if those subsrciptions get exported as well. One has to learn with to live with loss eventually.
Michael Beckwith writes about why he uses RSS. I am with him. For me another use is helpful though: I use RSS to manage my news intake. I can curate perfectly what I want to know about. Often in the raw form. Without a commentary track or context of the news outlet. RSS feeds don’t cary branding naturally. Which I appreciate. I can read the words for what they are: Words. This allows me to subscribe to sources that I tend to whole heartily disagree with. I also have the added benefit that they can not monetize my eyeballs. Actually they can not even measure my engagement. No Ad peddling AI has any insight in what kind of interest I am following. In 2021 this is in stark contrast to the simple act of googling a topic and reading up about it in Wikipedia.
RSS is obscure, but costs almost nothing to implement and run. Many sites don’t even know they have it. Nobody seems to use it. Which is fine for me: As long as it works I am fine. And working it does. Since it is a simple and clearly defined concept. And it is obscurity it creates great value: It maintains the serendipity concept that was one of the major attractions of the early Internet.
It exists outside the realms of the attention economy. Where your mind is being prodded and sold like a bovine about to be getting converted into calories.
Superbowl. A game of American Football. So called to differentiate it from soccer, which the rest of the worlds plays. Actually mostly watches. Comparing the numbers of people that play a sport and those who watch it shows that most people watch.
Play is for the young anyway. Animals that survive by means of their physical skills (think lions) have a play phase in their development. It is just better to create these much needed skills in the practice of game play rather than to put this information into genes.
Football has its roots in such play. It features specifically human additions: Rules and a roundish object. Humans act as groups. Thats when we are strongest. Coordination of a band of people is something all cultures train. Regardless if it is dance or hunt. People need to learn how to coordinate.
A round object like a ball seems to be an ideal proxy to coalesce the objectives towards a common goal of action. Usually to drive the roundish object to a specific target on the edge of a defined field.
A field that is equally divided among two defined teams. In meat space there are not really any games with 3 teams or multiple balls. Virtually all team sports adhere to this simple pattern. Chess or Golf are different. So are athletic competitions. In the later ones one measures how well a human completes a specific task. Which can be as ‘natural’ as running or as arbitrary as triple jump or falling from a tall tower into water while moving the body controlled in mid air.
Measuring these tasks is either scientifically precise, or utterly subjective. Which does not get questioned: Enough people adjust their entire life around the world of, lets say, figure skating. Among them you’ll find no longer any children who call the emperor naked. They are still there, but nobody listens to them. What is your future if you are a figure skater? Become a judge at figure skating competitions of course. So why would you question the system that will keep you somewhat involved and relevant in the future? And for us who look at it from the outside it seems logical and relevant enough. We don’t understand all the nuances, so we assume that there are valid rules and logic at force.
If you’d filter belly smacks and other apparent failures then 99% of the audiences watching olympic diving competitions would not be able to discern the performances that got their athletes the first or last place in the performance. Fit bodies they all have. Fast they all move. Gravity pulls them in the same direction.
That is easier with team sports. Over a given time both teams try to bring the round object into a specific place. If they did they get what is called a point. Basically those events get counted, and compared in the end. The side who has more wins.
Sports are also defined by their rules. Rules in sport are a proxy to laws in life. While there are judges applying the rules there are referees in team sports. Judges have, luckily, a higher standing in real live. Referees often are identified by the fans of a loosing team as the real culprit and the actual cause for how things unfolded earlier. They are often the most hated person in a given town. For a day, since such fan wrath towards these individuals luckily lasts not for long. In contrast to Fan Feuds than can sometimes span over generations in European soccer.
Teams sports are a proxy for war. War was the business of men, young strong man were most helpful when war still meant direct physical contact. Tools were always part of the story. Even Chimpanzees already hurl stuff. Monkey warfare is too gruesome to write about. Certainly no rules or honor there. War and rules are a strange story anyway: On one side both parties are out for maximum harm, on the other they try to do so within some constraints. WW2 did not see any gas use on the battle field like WW1 did. All sides had the capability. Germany used it in factories built to kill millions of civilians people of all ages, men and women alike. Yet, even as the cause of the Reichswehr became desperate they did not make any attempts to use gas as a defense against the winning US and soviet armies. The US killed more people in Hiroshima with one device than perished over 4 gruesome years of fighting from gas during WW1. There are no rules for nuclear war. Because you can’t do that one right.
Team sports has its roots in war. Yet it is very far away from it. Yes, fans sport colors. There are martial male rituals around the whole affair. But in comparison it is tame. One could consider the roman Circus as a stepping stone: A mix of reality TV, celebrity cult and snuff film. Some say we simply replaced Panem et Circenses with stimulus checks and Netflix.
3rd party software is great. Extensions are helpful for all sorts of things. Sadly they have dark side too. A loophole seems to be the act of selling them: They can turn from free & awesome into dark and sinister without the user noticing.
Its like picking up this wonderful cute puppy, just to realize that it started to do whatever bad an animal in your house can do. Without you noticing the change that is.
Da haben sie also nen Monster Sturm angesagt. Für weniger als 200 Euro bietet Herr Bezos an einen Generator zu liefern. Der kommt auch wirklich noch vor dem Schnee an. Soweit so gut. Mann muss dann noch zur Tanke und Öl und Benzin kaufen. Macht auch Sinn.
Doch funktionieren tut der Mist nicht. Springt nicht an. Vorher reißt das Zugseil:
Ich kann mir nicht vorstellen was sie sich genau bei der Suzhou Powermax Power Co., Ltd gedacht haben. Es ist auf jeden Fall totaler Schrott. Und schon erstaunlich das man 2021 noch solchen Müll geliefert bekommen kann.
TL;DR in case you are not a friend of Google Translate: Suzhou Powermax Power Co., Ltd produces absolute junk. A generator failed dismally in the attempt to put it to work. 0 out of 5 stars. “Zipper” branded stuff? Stay a 100 miles away from it.
The lovechild of Egglestone and Parr. His book is impressive. Very. Makes me happy that I no longer attempt to take pictures: I would feel rather incapable in comparison.
Heise reports about last years activity of german Authorities. They describe three different ways that authorities can access cellphone related information. Outrage is what often follows this topic. People write about it in a way that seems to be assuming their audience will have visceral reactions. Heise is not the worst here.
It is possible to send a text message / SMS to a cellphone number that will not be displayed on the device. Probably a feature of the SMS protocol that never was intended for use by users in the first place. This allows to gather the location of a phone via cell tower triangulation. In Germany that happens around 100,000 times a year. Likely much less people are affected: It might make sense to track somebody repeatedly.
Authorities also can request all cellphones present in a certain area. If a murder happens it might be interesting to know which cellphones were turned on in proximity. It is not clear if this information also contains triangulation position. In theory it could. This happens less than 100 times a year.
Finally there is the possibility to set up an IMSI device. Also known as a Stingray these hardware device will become a cell tower for phones in their vicinity. All traffic will flow over them. How useful the information is that one can capture is a different question. It does depend on the level of encryption.
I always thought a stingray would make for an interesting Black Mirror episode: An overland bus, housing to a person who the bad people (in fiction there can be these bad people that are just that ‘bad’) want to dispose off. Those bad people have that level of infinite tech prowess that is also only existing in fiction / our imagination. Those bad people ride close to said bus and intercept all traffic from the glowing rectangle in front of the bus passengers. The perps could invent a social media reality that would make their victim the most evil person imaginable. They could, of course, listen in to what is being said on the bus. The very normal bus people would start feeling outrage towards the victim. Who would attempt to defend him (her) self in the ways that we would do it ourselves. But to no avail: The bad people would carefully craft the emotion on the bus. We as the audience would understand why the people so upset. We have been there to an extend ourselves: Looking at a glowing rectangle has made us feel in this way or another before. Feelings lead to action. An angry mob is the most evil thing there is.
