Stefan Imhoff

15 Years at XING: Reflections and a Farewell

Mon, 15 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I was laid off last week from XING (New Work SE) after 15 years working as a software engineer, as part of ongoing company‑wide restructuring since 2020.

This time felt different—not only because I was affected, but also because engineering in Germany saw substantial reductions. Teams responsible for core infrastructure and foundational platform work were among those affected.

The termination email arrived shortly after the meeting, and the paperwork was delivered to me the same day by courier. The final meeting was brief.

I have always loved XING as an employer; it was the best company I have worked for so far. It had a strong culture, great people, and high professionalism. Working at XING meant being close to the forefront of technology. We consistently used widely adopted industry standards. While I had been a top performer at my previous company, at XING I collaborated with many individuals whose skills I deeply admired.

I thought it would be a good time to reflect on and remember the past 15 years.

The Contrast: Hell on Earth vs. Human Culture

When a former frontend architect reached out to me in 2010, he was bored in the hospital and browsing interesting profiles on XING. At that time, I was in a difficult situation. My previous company felt like hell on earth. Working there was even worse than being at the company depicted in the TV show “Stromberg,” the German version of “The Office.” The workplace was hostile, with a depressing and toxic culture. I once saw my boss crying as she left her superior’s office. The company was located in a bleak industrial area in the west of Hamburg, next to an Autobahn.

My team was made up of unqualified individuals, and hostility and bullying were common. The offices were dreary, featuring smelly carpets, beige desks, and brown chairs. Few employees received salary increases, and most were significantly underpaid. I received only one salary increase of €200 during my time at the company, and I had to schedule an appointment with the deputy managing director to discuss it. When I entered his office, a dimly lit room with leather furnishings, a mahogany desk, and bookshelves that resembled a royal chamber, he asked me to sit. The chair was much lower than his imposing table, making it feel as though I was sitting before a throne. He continued working for ten minutes while ignoring me before finally removing his glasses and asking smugly, “So, you think you deserve more than what we pay? Why is that?” I then spent another ten minutes trying to convince him of my worthiness for a salary increase.

I was thrilled when a frontend architect organized a meeting. I hadn’t needed to send my CV in advance, so I brought a printed copy on Friday. I had a meeting with HR, followed by an in‑depth session with several frontend architects who asked me various questions about web development.

After the meeting, I received a call from the frontend team lead with an offer. When compensation came up, I initially assumed they would negotiate down—but instead they indicated my expectation was low and proposed a higher amount. That was my first impression of XING.

After my previous company received my resignation letter, the atmosphere changed dramatically. The first action taken was to block access to xing.com for all employees through the firewall. Additionally, I was denied the Christmas gift that every employee received each year—a frozen duck—out of spite, claiming it was only for those still employed the following year. I left the company before Christmas and began my first day at XING on January 3, 2011.

2011: Entering the “Star” Phase

On my first day, I received a warm welcome at the front desk at Gänsemarkt in Hamburg. XING occupied multiple floors and had a few hundred employees, creating a lively atmosphere. I began during what many described as a “star” phase of the product. The founder, Lars Hinrichs, had departed in 2007, and Stefan Groß‑Selbeck had taken over as CEO. I also met members of the previous leadership team, who were gradually transitioning out.

It took a bit of time to find a desk, so I initially sat in the corridor. The atmosphere was energetic, with walls covered in cards, product prints, and concepts. I joined during a major relaunch that included a comprehensive redesign and an activity stream with stories about jobs and people. My laptop wasn’t ready on day one, so I used an older iMac for the first week or two.

My first computer at XING

For the next three weeks, I worked in the frontend architects’ office—a small team of highly skilled JavaScript specialists—and tackled several challenging tasks under their guidance.

After onboarding, I joined my first team: the jobs team. We were a cross‑functional group with backend, frontend, QA, UX, product, and agile roles, and even had a small lounge to unwind. I hadn’t worked with Scrum or Kanban before and was new to Ruby on Rails and ERB; my JavaScript experience was mostly with jQuery. Product managers changed periodically as new teams formed. We worked hard on the relaunch and completed it in mid‑2011.

XING was known for memorable parties and offsite events over the years. In 2011, we hosted a summer party at Zum Alten Lotsenhaus at Elbstrand beach with a “maritime” costume theme—pirates, fish, sailors, and officers—along with great food and drinks. Several internal products even carried playful, beer‑themed names.

The Frontend Culture at XING

The same year, I attended my first conference abroad. A small group of frontend engineers from Hamburg flew to Amsterdam for the Fronteers conference, held at the Tuschinski Theatre. We stayed in a nearby hotel, observed a moment of silence when the news of Steve Jobs’ death was announced, and even met the founder of jQuery.

We explored the city, including the red‑light district and some coffee shops. One teammate kept getting unsolicited offers for drugs on the street, and he was pulled aside for a thorough security check at the airport when we flew home.

We held our Christmas party at FABRIK Hamburg with a Wild West costume theme. The year was very successful, and as a thank‑you for the relaunch, employees received a gift voucher.

2012: The “Cash Cow” Era Begins

In 2012, I participated in my first Prototyping Days—a three‑day event where the company formed teams to develop prototypes. At the end of the week, ideas were presented at Restaurant Leuchtturm near Harburger Stadtpark, winners were selected, and we wrapped up with a summer party.

Prototyping Days 2012

XING was successful, with the stock price rising from €55 in 2011 to €70 in 2012. Burda Digital increased its stake, triggering a mandatory takeover offer for the remaining shares. I recall seeing various Burda print magazines laid out in the office for free during this time. I only managed to get one issue of Playboy; it was gone within minutes each time.

Thomas Vollmöller became CEO in October 2012 and initiated the company’s “cash cow” phase.

2013-2014: Growing Pains and New Spaces

XING was growing rapidly, and as other tenants moved out, we took over additional floors. Within a short time, we occupied two adjacent buildings. At first there was ample space—even a yoga room—but it soon became crowded. A native mobile team was established, and spaces were repurposed. To accommodate specific business units, additional offices around the city were rented. The Jobs team temporarily relocated to offices next to a dental practice while construction created a passage between the two buildings.

A new building went up next to our office, bringing a year of construction noise and stress. We often joked, “Wouldn’t it be funny if we moved into that building?”—and in April 2013, we did. The new space was modern and open‑plan, with carpeting and room dividers to keep noise down, plus kitchens, themed rooms, a large event space, and a parking garage. As a welcome gift, employees received a lime‑green XING beach towel and some orange juice.

The new office, with a lime beach towel to reserve your place

The building was located next to the Hamburg Opera, where I could hear the singers training for years. I observed auditions behind a curtain as singers showcased their talent.

Around that time, the e‑recruiting business relocated to Barcelona. I could either move or switch teams, and I chose the latter—moving from the Jobs team to the Mobile Web team. We built the mobile version of XING as a fast, lightweight alternative for mobile devices and also started a hybrid iPad app exploring an opportunity stream with data and recommendations. The team was full of talented developers, and I adopted Vim as my editor since many teammates used it.

In September 2013, we held our second Prototyping Days, and this time I was on the winning team. We developed XING screencasts, a concept aimed at teaching people how to use the platform. The following summer party took place at Planten un Blomen, featuring an illuminated water and light show at night.

Prototyping Days 2013

In October, I flew to the Fronteers Conference in Amsterdam. We stayed at a beautiful hotel near a river, which served freshly baked bread every morning. We explored the city center, enjoyed a Wagyu burger at Burger Bar, and had dinner at an authentic Chinese restaurant. I still remember the disgusted look on my co-worker’s face when he realized that the duck he ordered was steamed and had slimy, soft skin.

The year was very successful for XING; it acquired Kununu, an employer review platform, for approximately €10 million, establishing an office in Vienna and adding Austria as a location.

I continued with the Mobile Web team until the end of 2013, when it was dissolved as native iOS and Android apps became the primary focus. In 2014, I supported several teams: six months with Communities building a backend interface for group products, then the XWS team working on public and internal APIs, and afterward the content team on newsletters for a month. I missed having a dedicated home team that year, and API work wasn’t my preferred focus.

We held Prototyping Days in the summer of 2014 and celebrated the summer party at Beach Hamburg, a fantastic venue with halls filled with sand and water.

In September, I took a train to Freiburg am Breisgau to attend the Smashing Conference. I met several of my web idols, whose books on CSS, HTML, and JavaScript I have at home.

2015-2016: The Growth Cluster & The SEO Years

On January 1st, I joined a newly established SEO team. It started with the SEO manager and me, and later grew to include backend engineers, a junior product manager, and a QA engineer. Our task was to make logged‑out pages more crawlable and machine‑readable. I learned a great deal about structured data, microformats, and schema markup. Some of the access‑control measures we implemented weren’t my favorite to work on, but they were part of the job.

The SEO team was part of the Growth cluster, alongside teams like login, onboarding, and newsletters, all focused on expanding XING. For many years, we consistently drove strong increases in traffic and membership.

Our team won the SEMY Award, the search marketing prize of 2015.

We had a cluster offsite in the summer, spending several days at Herrenhaus Gut Bliestorf. The experience included delicious food and team events such as archery and stock fighting sessions.

Offsite 2015 Herrenhaus Gut Bliestorf

In June, I joined a sketchnotes workshop that a co-worker organized at the company, and I still enjoy sketching to this day.

We had one of the biggest Prototyping Days I have ever attended at XING this summer. A stand-up comedian was hired to perform, and we enjoyed T-shirt painting and Taiko drum sessions. The entire company participated in a drum polonaise on the rooftop, making sure the whole city could hear our music and drums. I was on the winning team, and each member received a brand-new Apple Watch (Model 0) as the prize. We couldn’t believe we won such a valuable reward.

We held our Christmas party at Gruenspan in St. Pauli. Each year, finding a party location for our growing employee count became more challenging. This time, the costume theme was the 80s.

The year was a significant success. XING experienced steady growth in both membership and revenue, shifting its focus to improvements in the mobile app. The stock price rose to €160. XING launched its own journalistic team and publication, XING News/Klartext, led by Roland Tichy. I recall meeting him a few times in the coffee kitchen since our clusters shared the same space.

XING also acquired lebenslauf.com for a few million.

In April 2016, we celebrated reaching 10 million premium subscriptions with a giant cake. A new office for e‑recruiting opened in the Kaisergalerie; many of us admired its design and layout compared to the main office.

Revenues increased by a huge amount, making XING the leading network in German-speaking markets. The stock value closed at €180, reaching a high of €200 in 2016.

2017: The Peak – Mallorca & The Party Era

In 2017, Thomas Vollmöller fulfilled his promise. Two years earlier, he had pledged a large company offsite if we achieved specific goals, and we did. Thus began the biggest party and offsite I have ever attended. Newer employees still envy those of us who participated.

Nearly 1,000 company employees were flown from various locations to Palma de Mallorca, Spain, on private planes. Although it was January, which likely lowered costs, the operation was still a logistical masterpiece. From Hamburg alone, six rented planes departed with employees for the kickoff.

We booked two or three hotels near the event location, Palau de Congressos de Palma. After the initial kick-off, we rode by bus on the first day to Cova Galdent, a party venue inside natural stone caves. It was a magical place, but the food was insufficient. I remember my co-worker was starving, as all we received were appetizers. However, the lighting and atmosphere of the location were enchanting.

Cova Galdent

Every location was a secret, and they didn’t reveal it until we arrived. On the second day, the party location was even more exciting. We were driven for half an hour across the island to Son Termes Finca, a large, historic Spanish finca on a mountain. The setting was incredible, featuring old fireplaces, stone walls, colorful lighting, fire pots, Mariachi musicians, paella pans, homemade burgers, Iberian ham, and suckling pig. The variety of food at all the locations was astonishing.

Son Termes Finca

Nighttime outdoor at Son Termes Finca

Fireplace at Son Termes Finca

Paella at Son Termes Finca

The next morning, most people were severely hungover. Some were still drunk when we flew home, resulting in a miserable flight for some. I, on the other hand, do not drink alcohol, so I was up at 7 a.m. I hiked up the mountain to Castell de Bellver, an old castle overlooking Palma de Mallorca. It opened when I arrived, and I climbed the towers, visited the museum with Roman statues, and enjoyed a magnificent view of Palma de Mallorca and the sea.

We had another offsite with the Growth cluster in July 2017 at the same Herrenhaus Gut Bliestorf location. However, this time it rained so heavily that everyone got soaked to the bone. The event manager had planned many outdoor activities, including a scavenger hunt and raft building, all in the pouring rain.

We had several team events this year, as we have in previous years. As revenues increased, the budget for these events increased. Eventually, each team could participate in events every quarter, including a visit to an upscale restaurant afterward.

I believe I’ve experienced nearly every escape room in Hamburg, including the one on the ship Rickmer Rickmers. I’ve played neon golf twice, enjoyed billiards and archery, played Poker at the Casino Esplanade, participated in LaserTag at Tilta, and had burgers and schnitzel at least ten times in upscale restaurants.

XING acquired Prescreen International and InterNations. The stock value rose to €250, and we received one share per person as a gift. In 2017, XING opened a tech hub in Porto, and Roland Tichy resigned as the publisher of Klartext in January.

At the end of the year, I switched teams, leaving the SEO team to join the onboarding team.

2018-2019: A Challenging Project and a New Challenge

In 2018, I collaborated with a team of skilled developers to create a new onboarding process with multiple user‑specific paths. We used React for the first time; previously, most frontend work had been done with Ruby on Rails (ERB) and jQuery. We also adopted Redux, and the new patterns took some getting used to.

XING launched HalloFreelancer as an in-house project based on an idea that a small innovation team and I developed a few years ago during an innovation week: Freelancer Marketplace. The initial product failed because the newly formed team responsible for implementing our prototype was too small and lacked sufficient support.

XING experienced rapid growth during these years. I joined the recruiting process for a chance to be promoted to senior engineer. I conducted up to two hiring interviews each week, reviewed coding challenges, and we consistently hired new employees in all locations.

We celebrated our Christmas party at Prototyp—Das Automuseum. Each year, our summer, and Christmas parties grew larger. I missed some locations and didn’t attend every party. One year, we rented a large area by the Elbe River, and another time, we booked the entire Mojo Club on the Reeperbahn.

2019 was one of the most stressful years for me at XING. It began with a pleasant kickoff at the Grand Elise Rotherbaum. In August, we had a great offsite with the Growth cluster at the Ellernhof Hotel, a farm. We went bowling, had a barbecue, saw horses and chickens, used a climbing park in the trees, and enjoyed the sunny weather.

Offsite 2019 Ellernhof Hotel

The onboarding team needed to deliver an important product quickly. To do this, two teams were combined into one larger group.

The project succeeded, but the pace and pressure led to a difficult phase with strong disagreements and, ultimately, team restructuring. Many teammates left the company or moved on to other roles or teams afterward. A departing colleague suggested I check the internal job board, where I found a brand‑new design system team forming. I applied, got the job, and received my Senior title.

I attended a second offsite, this time for the XIF, the XING Interfaces & Foundations cluster. The event took place at a beautiful lake in the cozy hotel, Bokel-Mühle am See. It featured a fantastic breakfast, a room with a fireplace, a barbecue, and a buffet. We also enjoyed walking around the lake. Although I wasn’t officially part of the cluster yet, I was invited to join to meet the team.

Offsite 2019 Bokel-Mühle am See

After earlier challenges with a prior design system, the company invested in proper staffing to create the brand‑new XING Design System (XDS). Previously, the setup was lean, with much of the work shouldered by the Frontend Architecture team alongside a small core. As adoption grew, so did the number of component requests, which made consistency and documentation harder to maintain—one reason the new system focused on clear specs, governance, and consolidation.

This time, the team was substantially staffed: multiple designers (including principals), a product manager at director level, an engineering lead, QA, and dedicated developers for Web, Android, and iOS, with freelancers assisting until hiring was complete. From the start, we emphasized professional workflows and created spec sheets for each component. Early on, development was fast‑moving, with support from developers in other teams, and the process matured over time.

XING had a very successful year and was reaffirmed as New Work SE, consolidating all the brands under one parent organization. In April, Honeypot, a specialized IT job platform, was acquired for €57 million, and a new location was opened in Berlin. The stock price rose to €280 by the end of the year. Thomas Vollmöller stepped down as CEO.

We had another Christmas party, this time at the Fischauktionshalle on the Fischmarkt. It was the last big company party I attended at XING.

2020: The Pandemic & The Empty Harbor

XING decided to relocate and kept the new building a secret for a long time. In 2020, they announced that they had found a new location: the former Unilever building in HafenCity. Everyone was stunned. This building is one of the largest and most architecturally interesting in HafenCity. It has the capacity to accommodate around 4,000 people, while we already had 2,000 employees at that time.

Petra von Strombeck was appointed CEO in late May, unaware that she would soon enter the last product phase of the business cycle.

The beginning of the year was especially hard for me when I developed an eye condition that damaged my retina and caused fluid to accumulate in my eye. I suspect stress played a role. For a few months I was very sensitive to light and couldn’t tolerate bright office lighting. Although the condition improved, I was left with some lasting visual distortion.

COVID‑19 hit in March, and we were all sent home. The IT team worked intensely to support remote work—setting up VPNs, collaboration tools, and a remote meeting structure. It was an especially challenging moment, with a brand‑new building awaiting renovation and opening while offices were closed due to lockdowns.

Visiting the Unilever building

In July 2020, we visited the stripped‑down interior of the Unilever building. The new office—New Work Harbour—spans six floors (with the ground level open to the public) and features a nautical theme, with container‑style meeting rooms and wood‑accented meeting boxes. The sixth floor includes a roof terrace, and multiple teams contributed concepts for creative zones, labs, a library, a lounge, a speaker area, a welcome area, and chalk‑writable walls. I helped design an agile room with mobile furniture and writable walls; each area had movable stations with screens and cameras for remote meetings. We officially moved in September 2020, though it was never fully occupied during the pandemic, and many continued working from home.

New Work Wecome Area

Productivity increased, particularly among engineers. As it turns out silence and concentration might be necessary for programming.

The pandemic affected the company, causing its stock price to decline to €260, and the first layoff occurred in Q4 2020.

2021-2022: The Design System Maturity

2021 saw significant leadership changes. As part of a broader reorganization, several C‑level roles were consolidated under the CEO, and the CPO and CMO subsequently departed.

I focused on my team and the design system. After two years of development, it had matured with 50+ components. Designers maintained detailed spec sheets in Figma and a product guide, while we built a documentation site with code examples, API tables, and live demos. We migrated the web code to TypeScript and Styled Components and automated the export of design tokens (colors, spacing, motion) as well as icons and illustrations, enabling streamlined releases for Web, iOS, and Android. We developed a comprehensive palette with semantic colors, hundreds of icons, and many illustrations by a talented illustrator who later joined our team.

Pssst, no talking allowed; my favorite room, the library

Most work was done remotely, and COVID-19 continued to impact revenue. The stock closed at €240 at the end of the year.

In 2022, as the pandemic eased, the company encouraged a gradual return to the office with attendance guidelines. After two years of remote work, many preferred to continue working from home, and hybrid setups—with team members spread across locations—posed coordination challenges. The company also transitioned from Slack to Microsoft Teams, which required a period of adjustment.

Our team focused on training and promoting adoption of the design system while continuing to create new components. We also built internal tools to measure adoption. I created a web app that analyzed multiple repositories to track component usage and surfaced the results—together with iOS, Android, and Figma figures—in a React dashboard. This gave us detailed insight into how widely components were used across products.

The XING Canteen

I also created a Chrome extension that highlights XING Design System components with a green border and their names, making it easy to spot custom components.

Later, a web developer from the Design System team left and the role wasn’t backfilled, so I covered those responsibilities for more than two years.

Our cluster held an onsite event in Hamburg after travel restrictions were lifted. The event included a harbor tour and a party in a small cabin, Wartehäuschen Döns. The declining revenue was evident in smaller venues and finger food instead of large buffets.

2023: The Recession Hits

New Work SE had a total of 8 locations at that time: Hamburg, Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Zurich, Barcelona, Valencia, and Porto.

The company continued to lose money due to the post-COVID recession. Expanding the monetary supply by printing a trillion euros had led to massive inflation and the boom-bust cycle, as described by Ludwig von Mises in “The Theory of Money and Credit” (1912). Additionally, losing access to cheap gas from Russia and shutting down all nuclear power plants was likely not a good decision, resulting in a 20% decline in industrial production and a negative GDP growth for multiple years in a row. These factors, combined with the post-COVID recession, had negatively affected the job market and recruitment solutions. The stock price fell to €150, and layoffs occurred in Q1.

The Kietzkneipe

The Design System team worked on implementing dark mode for the platform. We created dark‑mode‑ready illustrations and used CSS custom properties to switch colors while keeping the same files. By the end of the year, we successfully launched dark mode. It required significant effort across teams because it depended on adopting the design system, and areas not yet migrated didn’t yet reflect dark mode.

2024: The Beginning of the End

2024 was another difficult year, with two rounds of layoffs in spring and winter. The company offered a voluntary leaver program that many employees chose; I wasn’t eligible. In August 2024, the company was delisted, and I sold my shares to Burda for €65, down from a prior peak near €375.

In 2020, the web platform team began creating a monorepo to consolidate frontend applications. In 2024, I started migrating the design system into that monorepo, improving documentation and code along the way.

Onlyfy underwent a restructuring with significant layoffs. Two colleagues joined our team afterward, along with two additional design systems for us to manage going forward.

2025: The Final Countdown

Henning Rönneberg was appointed CFO and COO in February. In May, Petra von Strombeck handed over the CEO role to Rönneberg. Despite prior cost measures, financial headwinds persisted, and many anticipated another round of layoffs.

The Band Room

Our team led the accessibility initiative to meet the mid‑year timeline for the European Accessibility Act. We introduced features such as high‑contrast mode, reduced/accessible motion, improved keyboard navigation, and enhanced ARIA roles and labels. It was a challenging project, but we delivered on time. Additionally, the web platform team built a dashboard to monitor stability, accessibility, and other key factors.

Throughout the year, the Design System team continued building components for priority projects, creating several new components and enhancing others.

The Record Room

In late October, XING announced another round of layoffs planned for year‑end, and we waited for several weeks for details. Activity slowed noticeably. I migrated a few apps to the cloud and completed that work shortly before the layoffs. Our backlog was quiet, with few new component requests or project starts.

Epilogue: Gratitude and Next Steps

To be honest, I didn’t expect to be fired. I was uncertain about the future of the design system but thought my own role was relatively safe. A longtime colleague even joked we would be too expensive to be severed and possibly the last to leave the company. In the end, engineering roles in Germany were largely reduced, including many who had worked on shared infrastructure and foundations. Starting in January, the remaining engineering teams—primarily in other locations—planned to expand the use of AI‑assisted coding tools to help with knowledge transfer.

XING Welcome Area

All that remains is looking back to remember the good times. I don’t look back in anger; XING was the best company I worked for, with some of the most skilled people I’ve met. I wouldn’t have stayed so long if it had been otherwise. I’m confident the XING Design System is among the strongest in Europe, perhaps beyond. Reviewing the documentation, spec sheets, and product guides reminded me how skilled and innovative our designers are. From the challenging Superellipse profile image—which can soon be built natively with CSS—to bold colors, animations, and distinctive illustrations, icons, and stickers, the work stands out. Building a custom design system rather than theming an existing component library made a real difference. To all the developers, designers, QAs, product managers, tech, and non-tech people I’ve worked with over the past 15 years: thank you for the learning and the projects we created together.

For a better working life

XING is in the process of moving out of New Work Harbour, and Kununu plans to operate as its own company. I’ve returned my notebook and iPhone, and when my remaining access ends, I’ll close this chapter of my life.

I will take a break for 1 or 2 months. My garden leave lasts until mid-2026, so I will look for a new challenge and opportunity in spring. If you know of an interesting company, product, or service that requires strong Web UI development skills, particularly in React and TypeScript, along with 25 years of professional CSS experience, experience in Design, and an eye for beautiful layouts, please let me know.

OK, Boomer: A Post-War Psychoanalysis

Fri, 28 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I hadn’t planned to write another essay this year, but one topic has been on my mind for the past few weeks. Due to the impending collapse of the German pension system and the Baby Boomers’ complete lack of understanding or willingness to address the issue, there has been significant back-and-forth between the Boomers and the younger generations. Some boomers believe they have “paid into” a pension system and now expect to receive payouts. This is a misconception. They contributed money to a pyramid scheme, which was immediately distributed to the retirees at that time. Nothing was invested or saved. The pyramid scheme relied on a redistribution model that had already failed when the boomers were children.

Much of this exchange has been filled with hate and spite. Their proposed solution is simply to raise taxes on everything—taxing private pensions, investments, and self-employed individuals more heavily to fund the pensions, while the generations following the Boomers will likely receive no pensions at all.

Since I have a premium subscription to my favorite podcast, Aethervox Ehrenfeld, I’ve noticed that many guests, including the host, are from my generation, Generation X. They often describe their parents and childhood experiences in ways that resonate with my own. I’ve been trying to understand why my generation and those that follow harbor such strong feelings against the Boomers. My parents are Boomers, so this analysis is general assession and not aimed at specific individuals. However, I find that I connect more with the Silent Generation (my grandparents) in terms of their worldview compared to the Boomers.

I believe the Boomers have a negative reputation (“Ok, Boomer”) not only in Germany but also in many Western countries, and this issue has multiple causes. Here, I will focus on the phenomenon in Germany, which appears to be particularly problematic.

Luckily, one of my favorite authors, Raymond Unger, has written several books that thoroughly explore his hypothesis about the trauma of the Boomer generation.[^unger2019aa] I just need to summarize his thesis before adding my thoughts.

The War That Never Ended

Ungers’ hypothesis suggests that the parents of the Baby Boomers, known as the Silent Generation, were children during the Second World War and experienced significant trauma. They faced bombing raids, such as Operation Gomorrah in Hamburg and Dresden, as well as displacement, rape, loss of relatives, hunger, battles, and the deaths of friends. Almost every person of the Silent Generation includes individuals who either died in the war or returned home injured.

My maternal grandfather’s older brother died in the war. My grandfather was severely wounded near Stalingrad in 1942 with 18 years by grenade shrapnel in his back, which ultimately saved his life. His unit that started with over 15,000 men was already decimated to 8,714 soldiers with just 14 remaining tanks when they reached Stalingrad. He was evacuated over the frozen Volga shortly before the Stalingrad pocket closed, leading to the destruction of his entire battalion, Panzer Pioneer Battalion 40 (24th Panzer Division). Most of his friends perished. Only 1,500 survived and got into war captivity, the rest died of wounds, starvation, sickness, or exhaustion.

He made sure I hated war by telling me horrific stories, like the one where he just survived because his friend was sick and he offered him his place in a station wagon. That wagon was hit by a grenade that night. He also told me how he had to hide in a hole silently for a day while a Russian tank was parked above his fighting position. And he told me how awful human flesh smelled after the soldiers of the flamethrower pioneer divisions had “cleaned” houses in the urban warfare in the south of Stalingrad.

One of his comrades, Günter K. Koschorrek, a machine gunner, and his unit could break out of the city and escaped before Christmas 1942. He later wrote the book “Vergiss die Zeit der Dornen nicht” (Don’t forget the time of thorns) about his experiences.

Throughout his life, my grandfather sought to understand the trauma inflicted on his generation by reading 4,000 books about the war. He often cycled through Russia, visiting the civilians he found so friendly during his time as a soldier. He never harbored resentment against Russians; instead, he loved the entire country.

My paternal grandfather was shot in the arm in Russia and lost it up to the shoulder due to gangrene while walking hundreds of kilometers through the snow, wounded. I never learned the details because he was so traumatized and never spoke about the war; I heard him speak only 3 or 4 times in my life.

My grandaunt was evacuated as a child from Hamburg to the countryside due to the extensive firebombing that devastated large parts of the city. However, even in Wolfsburg, there were raids on the tank farms of the Volkswagen factory. My grandmother recalls roof tiles flying off their house from a nearby explosion. After the war, she returned to her family’s partially destroyed flat in Hohenfelde, where a bomb had created a large hole in the ceiling, which is still visible. She lived with multiple families squeezed into one flat for a while and remained there until her death at the age of 92 in 2023.

I know very little about my grandmother’s life during the war, but it was difficult. She had to work in the fields alone, with some help from Russian prisoners of war. I know even less about my paternal grandmother, who was born in Bratislava. She had to leave her home, likely due to the approaching Russians or because she was expelled. I believe she first went to Berlin, where she worked in civil service, and later moved to Wolfsburg after the war.

After the war, my maternal grandfather worked tirelessly every day from 4 a.m. to 7 p.m., including weekends. He aimed to expand the small carpentry business his brother had founded before the war into a large drywall and construction company. My maternal grandmother assisted in the office daily.

My paternal grandfather, disabled from the war, could not work due to the loss of one arm; he spent the rest of his life sitting on a couch, staring into space. He needed my grandmother to help him with daily tasks and cut his food.

The Silent Poison: How Trauma Became Shame

Unger states that this traumatized generation suppressed their emotions to survive and rebuild the country. As a result, they became emotionally unavailable to their children. They provided materially for their kids but struggled to emotionally mirror or regulate their feelings. Any intense emotion in the child triggered their own repressed war trauma. Consequently, this led to a systematic emotional abandonment of the Boomer children.

Children interpret their parents’ emotional coldness egocentrically, thinking, “There is something fundamentally wrong with me,” rather than recognizing, “My parents are overwhelmed by their own past.” This perception fosters deep, existential toxic shame (“I am wrong”)—not guilt for a specific action that can be atoned for, but a pervasive shame about one’s very existence that cannot be repaired through action. The core wound stems from a lack of emotional mirroring in early childhood, resulting in a disturbed identity (“I don’t know who I am”) and chronic inner emptiness.

The result, according to Unger, is a narcissistic and needy personality that constantly seeks external validation and control to fill an inner void. This individual has a persistent need to compensate for and alleviate unbearable shame, using common defense mechanisms such as projection (“Others are bad/wrong”), shaming and morally condemning dissenters, perfectionism, arrogance, control, moralizing, judging, caretaking, and people-pleasing.

Hypermorality and political correctness serve as ideal tools for discharging one’s own shame while stabilizing the fragile self. The collective self-accusation of the West and Germany—“We alone are to blame for the misery of the world”—manifests as externalized toxic shame. This often results in an inability to set personal and national boundaries, leading to co-dependency and a helper syndrome. The open borders of 2015 exemplify the psychological inability to say “no.”

The dominance of feminine narratives—such as care, equal distribution, control, and interventionism—has led to the devaluation of masculine narratives, which include competition, self-assertion, personal responsibility, and acceptance of hierarchy. Many Boomer men remained emotionally attached to their mothers and lacked an initiating, boundary-setting father. Most children of my generation recall the constant struggle with our mothers, who disapproved of “boys’ things,” like knives, toy guns, wildness, and rough play. I believe my mother was relieved when I “found” joy in computers and spent most of my time indoors. This contrasts with my early childhood, when I was often outside, interested in being a Boy Scout, collecting knives, and playing in the forests.

Unger identifies one acceptable form of pride: “Schuldstolz” (pride in one’s own guilt). The only socially acceptable identity is to be the person who bears the greatest possible guilt—whether historical, colonial, climatic, or otherwise.

The climate movement is currently the most successful example of “outrage management.” Old issues such as migration, crime, and the euro crisis fade away, while a new apocalyptic guilt narrative takes shape. Dissenters are pathologized and demonized as “Klimaleugner” (climate change denier) and “klimaschädlich” (harmful to the climate).

This psychoanalysis of the Boomer generation clarifies many of their recent political stances. These include unregulated immigration, the dismantling of Germany’s energy security by eliminating nuclear energy, gender and LGBT ideology, an obsession with COVID-19 and zero-COVID, climate change, a psychosis against the AfD as looming fascism, and an irrational fear of a Russian invasion of Germany.

I have observed these issues with my parents across nearly all topics over the last few years. In 2011, I read the entire Koran and became critical of the politically intolerant aspects of the religion, especially after the significant wave of immigration, primarily of men from Islamic countries, that began in 2015. I still remember the discussions with my parents, who have never met any immigrants in their lives but have strong opinions about the goodness of all of them. Even the break-in into their home by a Bulgarian hit-and-run gang stealing electronics and money, or the beating my father received as a young man from a group of “Mediterranean-looking men,” didn’t changed their opinion.

As a child, I remember the large anti-nuclear movement in our region due to plans for a nuclear waste repository. After Chernobyl, my school and parents traumatized us with books about nuclear fallout. We couldn’t play outside for months, and my parents even bought new sand for the sandbox. They supported every climate change concern and fearmongering promoted by the media.

My parents fully supported all COVID-19 measures. They received their vaccines early and still continue to get every booster today. My father became obsessed with the R-value and tracked the current danger level every morning in an Excel table. They prioritized regulations over family harmony, which led to constant arguments. I remember needing to leave after Christmas because they wanted to celebrate New Year’s Eve with my grandmother, and regulations prohibited me, as an unvaccinated person, from joining. Instead of ignoring the regulation they basically told me to leave. They also ignored the RKI leaks, political corruption, vaccine damage, and various scandals that emerged after the pandemic. Everything I sent them was dismissed as a “conspiracy theory,” so I stopped discussing these issues with them.

When Trump was elected, they constantly repeated the “Orange Man Bad” and “Trump is Hitler” propaganda until I became tired of it. I enjoy Trump, including his humor and social media posts, although I am critical of his protectionist tariff policies. Early on, I could fact-check every speech and the lies spread about him, and I realized that nearly everything reported in the media was false.

My parents fully support the anti-AfD sentiment but are too lazy to engage politically as “Grannies against the Right.” I have had numerous discussions with them in which they claimed the party aims to deport all immigrants, abolish democracy, and establish a fascist dictatorship. My father even asserted that he read the party’s extensive program, becoming angry when I asked where any of his claims were mentioned in it. Recently, he was shocked to discover that his lifelong friends, with whom he drinks beer every week, have started voting for the AfD.

They also support the Russophobia promoted by public broadcasting. A few months ago, my mother sent me pictures of a home bunker. I’m not sure if she was joking, but they genuinely believe that the Russians will invade soon.

Three Fatal Blind Spots

The situation is already complicated by a narcissistic, hypermoral generation, and I have identified additional factors that further complicate the issue.

One factor is the Boomer generation’s struggle to engage critically with media. When my parents were children, television was first introduced in black and white, later transitioning to color in 1967. At the time of my mother’s birth, ARD was the only television channel, and “Tagesschau” was the flagship news program. In 1963, a second channel, ZDF, was added, followed by regional stations (HR, BR, NDR, SFB, RB, etc.) between 1964 and 1969. It wasn’t until 1984 that the first private channels, RTL plus and SAT.1, were launched. The childhood and early adult experiences of Boomers were shaped by one or two authoritative sources that presented information as fact, leaving no room for alternative viewpoints or verification. Their TV consumption during my childhood was typically German, featuring Lindenstraße every Sunday, Tatort, and the “Tagesschau” or “Heute” daily at 20:00, along with the occasional talk show and Wetten, dass every few months. And it still is like this today.

Occasionally, I remember my parents reading “Der Spiegel,” “Stern,” and other magazines. My father always praised these print publications. Additionally, they subscribed to a local newspaper that they read every morning without questioning its content.

The failure to recognize that every newspaper and media outlet has its agenda and political bias is one reason many Boomers have not noticed the changes in the media landscape since 2005. Many still avoid alternative media and trust official fact-checkers and government-sponsored narratives. While 77–98% of Boomers watch TV regularly, only 43% of Generation Z does. They struggle to understand that everything shifted with the advent of the internet and that most legacy media is in a desperate fight for survival. They either adopt subscription models that often prove unprofitable or enter into partnerships with the government and NGOs, becoming reliant on state funding or donations from billionaires like Bill Gates.

In contrast, my generation, Generation X, was born during a pivotal time for media. We grew up with newspapers, magazines, radio, television (especially MTV), videocassettes, DVDs, and later, the internet. We jokingly referred to Boomers as “Internetausdrucker” (internet printers) because they printed emails or websites to read them. From the beginning, we had access to a wider range of media sources and learned early on to discern which formats to trust or distrust. While the Boomer generation was largely idealistic—focused on civil rights, anti-war movements, and the optimistic post-WWII boom—Generation X is more cynical and pragmatic, shaped by political corruption scandals and existing between the analog and digital worlds.

One of the biggest factors for their blind obedience to authoritative sources is likely the late introduction of the internet into their lives. Boomers never learned to use it effectively, as they were already in their 40s when it became common in German homes. Initially, the internet resembled a walled garden with services like AOL (“You’ve got mail”), and most boomers found the browser intimidating, avoiding the vastness of the internet. For instance, my parents learned most of their computer skills from me. My mother still rarely uses the internet today, while my father is just beginning to explore AI.

In comparison, Generation X was born into the computer age. We learned to hack, program, tweak, surf, Google, download, share, rip, and burn. Most teenagers in my generation had game consoles, PCs, Walkmans, iPods, and other technology. We are internet natives; we know how to use search engines, conduct research, follow links, and explore forums like Reddit and Digg. Growing up with the movie “The Matrix” our generation regularly talks how we “are going down rabbit holes” to research topics deeply. 🐰🕳️ Many have already moved on from Facebook to newer platforms like 𝕏 or Instagram, leaving Boomers behind. This shift is why our generation mockingly refers to Facebook as “Boomerbook.”

The third factor I identified is likely one of the most important. The Boomer generation speaks little to no English. Although some received basic English education in school, they rarely used it, as most worked for a single German-speaking company throughout their careers. In contrast, many in Generation X and younger generations can at least read and listen to English, with many being fluent. As a result, Boomers struggle to read or watch political speeches and articles, relying blindly on our publicly funded broadcasting system and their claims.

The Reckoning

To summarize, Boomers often exhibit narcissistic and needy traits, requiring constant external validation and control. They tend to trust corrupt government propaganda, media, and fact-checkers, lacking the technical skills or language proficiency to verify primary sources and validate claims made by the world’s largest publicly funded broadcasting company. With 97% of editorial staff voting for leftist parties, there is a significant socialist bias. Many Boomers enjoy good pensions and a 57% homeownership rate in low-immigration areas of Germany while supporting socialist and eco-socialist policies. This situation explains a lot.

I don’t see a solution. The AfD is already the strongest party among all generations except the Boomers, who will live for another 5 to 20 years. Their voting power and large numbers block any change or reform. I never expected to receive a pension, so I invested for myself. I used already taxed money that I earned, and practiced abstinence from consumption for a better future. Now, the state takes 25% of my investment gains and plans to take 30% or more. Germany has already the lowest pensions in the EU and we won’t probably get pension at all (or with 80 years) and we are called upon to make private provisions. And when we do, they steal that money. The pressure will continue to build until it explodes, potentially leading to massive emigration, civil unrest, or worse. The generations following the Boomers will no longer accept a bleak future where they constantly have to pay for declining services. At some point, the anger will be unleashed.

One of the most important tasks, in my opinion, is to dismantle the stranglehold of public broadcasting. It must be dismantled, and privatized or destroyed. People shouldn’t be forced to pay for their own propaganda or to be insulted and mocked by an elite group of presstitutes.

I recommend converting as much worthless fiat money as possible into assets, preferably gold or Bitcoin in cold storage, where the government cannot access it. At some point, the entire system will fail, and the euro will either hyperinflate or be replaced by a CBDC, resulting in a digital financial prison. After the Third Reich and the GDR, Germany is attempting socialism once again. The government quota has already exceeded 50%, and the only sector still growing in employment is the government.

House-searches for "hate speech" have becoming common with a new public case nearly every week. The last especially scandalous case involving a libertarian user, who posted on 𝕏 that all people who live of other peoples money, were parasites. He received a police raid at 6 in the morning, confiscating his digital devices and dragging him to the police station for finger prints, photos, and even asked for DNA samples. The Stasi is active again and most Germans don’t even notice it, because the television is not reporting about it.

How does the old anti-socialist quote go? You can vote your way into socialism, but you’ll have to shoot your way out.

[^unger2019aa]: Unger, Raymond (2019): Generation "Babyboomer": Warum das transgenerationale Kriegstrauma die deutsche Gesellschaft spaltet

From Typewriter to Split Keyboard: How I Fell in Love with Typing

Mon, 04 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I have always been fascinated by keyboards. The first one I discovered was an old typewriter in the drawer of my mother’s desk. She had worked as an office clerk in my grandfather’s company before I was born and had learned to write quickly on a typewriter.

From Typewriters to Computers: Discovering the Magic of Typing

The oldest proven document of me using a typewriter was at the age of 15 when I wrote a request to my parents to move the Lego from a cold room in the first floor to my own room. The request had 3 paragraphs and 10 errors, where I had fixed letters by deleting them with typing over the letter (I had no Tipp-Ex). The request was denied.

I remember that I used the typewriter quite a lot already before that age; I may have started using it at 10 years old, but I never learned how to type and used maybe one or two fingers.

The next memory is of my grandfather, who insisted on buying my grandmother, who handled the accounting in my grandfather’s company, a brand-new digital typewriter. It had a small display where you could see what you typed, and when you pressed a button, it printed the row on the paper. She didn’t like the typewriter, and it was always standing in their house on the first floor, and when I visited, I used it.

Earning My First Computer

When I was 9 or 10 years old, my father bought an Amiga 500. I was fascinated by the device. It was placed in an unheated cold room on the first floor and was the first computer keyboard I ever typed on. The keyboard was built into the computer.

For years, I played games on the computer, and in some of those old games, you needed to type where the hero should go. But I still used at most 2 or 3 fingers. I remember sitting next to my father and typing the source code for a banana gorilla game from a computer magazine into the computer. It took us hours and many failed attempts, but finally, we had created a game where two gorillas stood on skyscrapers, and you had to use bananas to destroy the other gorilla.

When I was a teenager, I worked to get my computer. I sat in a dark room in my grandfather’s company for hours and created preconfigured sets of dowels, nails, and washers with a hand-operated machine. It was boring, and there was no music or cassette player around at that time. I also worked during my summer vacation on a construction site for my grandfather’s company, carrying plasterboards to the third level of a shell building. I was so happy when I got my first PC, an Intel 486SX with 8 KiB cache.

The Four-Finger Years

At some point, my mother gave me a course paper to learn typing with ten fingers, but I could never motivate myself enough to really learn it. In the following years, other computers followed, first a few PCs and later Apple Macs, but I never learned to type properly. I was able to type really fast (or so I thought) with four to five fingers.

At my first job, I sat next to a British freelancer who did all the cool things: he was important, probably paid very well, used a Mac, animated things in Cinema 4D, and was able to type with ten fingers really, really fast. I was so impressed that I started learning how to type with ten fingers on a German QWERTZ keyboard. In retrospect, the keyboard layout is a nightmare. Because the umlauts (ä, ö, ü, ß) have their own dedicated keys, many essential keys are in weird places.

At my second job, I started to learn for the first time how to use Vim. But when I joined a team of cool developers who all used Vim at my third company, I started using Vim as my regular editor. However, for years I used it with a German keyboard, which made some of Vim’s keys impossible to use without remapping them.

Over the years, while using different Mac computers, I never gave a thought to my keyboard. I remember using either cable-connected default Apple keyboards or later Bluetooth-connected Apple keyboards or the built-in keyboards of the notebooks.

Falling in Love with Mechanical Keyboards

In November 2022, I came across the minimal workspace of the product designer Carl Barenbrug on the Workspaces blog. I had followed this blog that features cool workspaces for a while. He used a mechanical keyboard with low keys. I had never seen a cool keyboard like his Keychron K3 mechanical keyboard. I fell in love with this keyboard, but it was not in stock.

At the same time, after reading Matthias Endler’s blog post Switching from a German to a US Keyboard Layout—Is It Worth It?, I decided to learn how to type on a US layout because, for a developer, this is the most efficient keyboard, with all the brackets and special programming characters easily reachable.

I ordered the Keychron K1 Wireless Mechanical Keyboard (Version 5) with a white backlight aluminum body and low-profile Gateron mechanical brown switches.

When my keyboard arrived, I signed up for Tipp 10, a free website to learn 10-finger typing and the US layout. I practiced every day for 5 minutes until May 2023, when I felt good enough to stop practicing.

In February 2023, I discovered Monkeytype, one of the coolest websites to practice typing on the internet. Monkeytype is not for learning typing but for practicing to get faster. You can type in so many modes: time, words, quotes, with or without punctuation or numbers, and in all kinds of lengths. I practiced at first every few days and later every day, usually quotes. Today, I practice every day 3 quotes of short, medium, and long lengths. The website gives you a fantastic insight into your performance over time in charts. I reach around 75 WPM on my Keychron keyboard. As an interesting side note, the Monkeytype practice is built into Raycast when you type Start Typing Practice.

Why Fast Typing Still Matters in a Digital World

But why should one learn to type faster at all? A co-worker told me with a bored undertone, Why bother learning with ten fingers? I barely write at all at work, but I’m sure this is just a cope to avoid dealing with learning to type faster. If you have any job in front of a computer, it is quite certain you write, and probably more than you think. You write emails, documentation, reports, presentations, and work tickets; communicate with co-workers in instant and team messaging tools; and if you’re a programmer, you write code; you might also jump around in spreadsheets. Especially with distributed teams and remote work, writing is as important as ever and will not be replaced by voice anytime soon, for the simple reason that you can’t just talk loudly in most places. Another co-worker said, Soon, we won’t need to write anymore; AI will write all text for us. I’m not so sure that this will happen anytime soon. Even if people integrate AI into their regular work, they’ll still have to write a lot, starting with the AI prompt and ending with working on the suggested text by AI to finalize it.

Being a professional means not only excelling at your core job but also being efficient and quick in all other tasks. There is nothing more embarrassing than watching a co-worker struggle to use their computer in a meeting, moving windows around and resizing them with a mouse, typing slowly and updating a ticket with numerous spelling mistakes. If you work with a computer, you should know how to use it effectively, including keyboard shortcuts, window management, and clear written communication.

The company 37signals, which produces the productivity software Basecamp, the email service HEY, and a number of one-time paid software products, has a philosophy regarding writing when they hire new people. If two people of the same qualification apply for a job, the one with the better writing skills will be hired.

The Split Keyboard Revelation

For two years, I continued using my mechanical keyboard, and I loved writing on it every day. I cannot think of going back to a keyboard that isn’t mechanical. I love the clicking sound of the keys, which has a relaxing and meditative effect.

Two months ago, my company brought together everyone from my work unit for a three-day onsite meeting. I reconnected with a co-worker I hadn’t seen in a while. While we were packing our things, I noticed his split keyboard. I had seen split keyboards before but never considered them seriously, as I had no health issues in my hands, arms, shoulders, or back from working at a desk. However, several co-workers do have health problems, and I had heard about the benefits of split keyboards. The usual split keyboards I had seen in images or videos appeared large and clunky, which is why I never thought much about them. But his keyboard looked well-designed and slim and had low-profile switches. He used the ZSA Voyager keyboard, but he told me that he had multiple, including the ZSA Moonlander, and had used only split keyboards for years.

At home, I researched split keyboards for a while by watching all kinds of videos on YouTube and by asking my co-worker many questions about his keyboards via chat. He told me the delivery might take a few weeks, as it is sent from Taiwan. The price of the ZSA Voyager is quite hefty.

My current desk setup with my ZSA Voyager keyboard

I decided to just go for it and ordered the ZSA Voyager in Cosmic Nomad black, with Kailh Choc Pro Red switches that have a linear, lighter touch of 35±5gf and printed US keycaps. The keyboard comes with RGB LED backlights, a carrying case, additional magnetic legs to tilt the keyboard, cables in all kinds of sizes, a key puller, and 2 extra thumb keys. It also includes 34 extra keycaps with tactile bumps for QWERTY, Colemak, and Dvorak layouts.

To my surprise, the keyboard was delivered in less than a week; also, to my surprise, the EU put another €70 of tax on top. 😡 I had at least checked up front that no customs are due on keyboards, just a customs handling fee of €7.

In the following month, I practiced every day for 10-15 minutes typing on the keyboard while continuing to use my Keychron K1.

After a short time, I noticed the advantages of a split keyboard. You can position the halves at a comfortable distance for your shoulders, eliminating the need to cramp your fingers on a small keyboard with stacked keys. Your shoulders remain straight because you don’t hunch to reach the keys. The ZSA Voyager provides ample space to access the large keys, which are aligned in columns. Whenever I return to a regular keyboard, it feels as if my fingers are confined in a straitjacket.

At the beginning, I was really awful with the new keyboard; my speed fell from 75 WPM to 20 WPM. To motivate myself to get faster again, I set a goal. When I reach 75 WPM again on the ZSA Voyager, I will treat myself to beautiful custom coiled cables like the ones I saw in the ZSA video section featuring ZSA keyboard users.

Every day, I used various websites to enhance my writing and speed. I completed three exercises in short, medium, and long formats on Monkeytype. I practiced prose from Alice in Wonderland and an excerpt from a book each day using the Live Training feature on the Oryx website, which is designed to configure ZSA keyboards. ZSA also offers another platform for improving typing, Typ.ing, where you can participate in daily challenges and practice in various modes. Additionally, I utilized the website Entertrained to type and read one of their many books: Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery. I was already familiar with the Netflix TV show and decided to type the entire book.

Cables, Colors, and Customization

After one and a half months, I achieved my speed goal and ordered a set of two beautiful custom-designed coiled cables from King Cables. I spent several hours researching options since I knew very little about cables. I chose the “Galaxy” theme for both cables from a wide range of color options. One coiled keyboard cable features a 16 cm coil, a detachable YC8 connector in black, black heat shrink, and is USB-C to USB-C with a total length of 1 m. The second cable is a custom TRRS cable that connects the two halves of the split keyboard. I ordered a 25 cm long coil with angled 90° connectors in gold and a black heat sink. I didn’t order a cute animal for the cable, but King Cables send me a cute Panda bear nevertheless.

ZSA Voyager keyboard with custom coiled cables and LED backlight

The new setup looks fantastic, and I sometimes feel sad when my workday ends because I have no excuse to stay at the computer. 😅 The galaxy-themed cables look much better than any photo can capture. They are greyish-black with sparkling dots of blue, green, orange, red, turquoise, and more, shimmering like stars and changing with the light or angle of view. And of course, the Diderot effect hit me, and I needed to buy a bigger and prettier leather mat for my desk.

I configured the LED lighting to match the galaxy theme on the first layer. I use red for the number keys, followed by orange, yellow, green, and blue for the thumb keys. Additionally, I set multiple keys on other layers to have mode-dependent lighting, making it easier to find the keys. I applied colors to all the brackets, the numpad numbers and calculation keys, the arrow keys, the page directional keys, and the next/previous tab and page keys.

Regarding the layout and keys, I started with the recommended preconfigured layout of the ZSA Voyager. I added two hyperkeys and an additional ESC key for Neovim, along with a backtick and tilde key and keys for navigating browser history. You can view my current layout for the ZSA Voyager here. At first, it feels strange to use layers to access keys that are typically available on a regular keyboard with a Shift or Alt key combination. However, after some time, you realize how efficient layers can be. I still use the default three layers, but some of my co-workers utilize five or more layers with their split keyboards. It’s even possible to automatically switch to a specific layer when a particular software is active. All the configuration is stored on the keyboard, so you can plug it into any computer, and it will work as expected immediately.

When my custom coiled cables arrived, I decided to switch permanently to the split keyboard. My typing speed has reached levels similar to those with the Keychron K1 mechanical keyboard. However, I underestimated how many of my daily keyboard shortcuts are stored in my muscle memory. The first two to three days after switching keyboards were very challenging, as I couldn’t remember any of my shortcuts and had to relearn them slowly. Even after two weeks, I sometimes need to try multiple key combinations before finding the right one. However, I’m confident that over time, I’ll retrain my brain so I won’t have to think about keyboard shortcuts anymore.

Beyond QWERTY: Exploring Alternative Layouts

When I watched the videos about the ZSA Voyager on YouTube, a common theme occurred: many people recommended stopping the use of QWERTY and using other layouts instead, especially Colemak-DH, which was recommended again and again. I had heard theories about the history of the QWERTY layout. Some suggest that the keys are arranged inefficiently to prevent a physical typewriter from jamming, while others claim they were organized to avoid mix-ups when writing Morse code. I had watched documentaries about how QWERTY keyboards suck, but I had never considered learning one of the exotic options. When I casually asked my co-worker what layout he used he told me he had used Colemak-DH for years and couldn’t go back to QWERTY. I was surprised to hear that and asked him some critical questions. For example, if you unlearned QWERTY if you use Colemak-DH, because occasionally you have to go back to a built-in Notebook keyboard or a virtual keyboard on a mobile device. He told me that he can write in both layouts.

But how do you start learning an entirely different keyboard layout? I read some articles recommending a cold turkey switch, but that wasn’t an option for me since I need to deliver work and can’t suddenly write at a beginner’s speed. Additionally, it was quite challenging to find a website to practice Colemak-DH because I didn’t want to physically reconfigure my keys and keycaps until I was proficient with it. I discovered the website Colemak Club and completed one exercise per day, but my progress was slow. Then I found the Keybr website, which is fantastic for learning any layout, even QWERTY, if you cannot type with all ten fingers. The site has an excellent approach to learning; it starts with six keys and only adds new ones once you reach a sufficient speed with all six. You can view various charts for each letter, track your typing speed, monitor errors, and much more. You can create an account to save your progress and have a public profile.

I started practicing for 10 minutes each day, and after just one week, I reached a top speed of 37 WPM and unlocked a seventh letter. Even in this short time, I can already say that with Colemak-DH, my fingers move less, and my hands feel more relaxed.

Update December 2025: After four months of 10-15 minutes of training, I unlocked all keys and now reached a top speed of 47 wpm and an average of 42 wpm.

Accuracy First: The Dao of Typing

The most important aspect of learning to type is accuracy first; speed will follow. I found that the best approach is to avoid looking at the keyboard—neither the physical keys nor the digital layout helper—and to not think at all. As Bruce Lee summarized Daoist philosophy in his Lost Interview:

Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend.
— Bruce Lee, Bruce Lee: The Lost Interview, Pierre Berton Show 1971

I’ll continue to learn Colemak-DH while trying to improve my speed with QWERTY on my ZSA Voyager split keyboard. Likewise, I will also learn all my keyboard shortcuts to navigate my computer and work with my tools. Do I know if I’ll ever switch to Colemak-DH? No, but it’s a fun challenge that demonstrates the brain’s neuroplasticity. I might get fast enough after practicing enough to switch. And if that day arrives, I now that ZSA has covered me with extra tactile bump keys for Colemak.

Conclusion

I highly recommend trying a split keyboard, not just for those experiencing shoulder or wrist pain. They also look fantastic. Exploring regular mechanical layouts is worthwhile as well. Keyboards come in various sizes, colors, and styles. You don’t need to be a nerd to enjoy them. However, if you are a nerd, the possibilities are endless. You can find everything from Lord of the Rings keycaps featuring a Balrog or Gandalf inside the ESC key and Elvish letters on the keycaps to Sushi keycaps, Copper keycaps, Metal keycaps, Astronaut keycaps, Doom keycaps, Attack on Titan keycaps, Tiny Aquarium keycaps, Inflated Air Type keycaps, Knitted keycaps, or even Duck keycaps that quack when you type. The choices are limitless.

The Modern Atlas Shrugged: The Strike

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT

In Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, “The Strike” is the moment when the world’s producers—those who drive innovation, industry, and progress—withdraw their talents from a society that exploits and stifles them. John Galt, the enigmatic leader, calls these creators to abandon a decaying system, retreating to a hidden refuge known as Galt’s Gulch.

“Mr. Rearden,” said Francisco, his voice solemnly calm, “if you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down on his shoulders—what would you tell him to do?” “I … don’t know. What … could he do? What would you tell him?” “To shrug.”
— Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

In Atlas Shrugged, the methods by which people go on strike vary significantly. Some, like Ken Danagger, resign quietly without explanation. Others take drastic measures, such as destroying their factories, mines, inventions, or other productive assets to prevent their use by the government or looters. For instance, Ellis Wyatt, the head of Wyatt Oil, sets fire to his oil fields, leaving a message: “I am leaving it as I found it. Take over. It’s yours.” Midas Mulligan and Hugh Akston resign from their high-profile positions and refuse to participate in government committees or public events. Some individuals stop producing or creating but remain physically present, while others reject lucrative contracts and offers from the government or withdraw their patents and inventions.

The core of the story is “Galt’s Gulch,” a secret valley in Colorado where the strikers retreat to escape the oppressive world outside. It serves as a haven for the productive, allowing them to live freely and pursue their passions without government interference or looters. The valley symbolizes individualism and self-sufficiency, enabling the strikers to thrive without the burdens of collectivism. Hidden from the outside world, it is protected by geographic isolation, camouflage, and an optical illusion. Entry to the valley is by invitation only, and its members are sworn to secrecy, ensuring that its existence and location remain undisclosed to outsiders.

A faction led by Ragnar Danneskjöld, a pirate, aims to liberate the country from looters by attacking government ships and seizing their cargo. He deliberately targets resources that are being forcibly redistributed. His goal is to return wealth to its rightful owners, much like Robin Hood. He believes that by destroying the looters’ wealth, he can compel them to confront their own moral bankruptcy, ultimately leading to their downfall.

Today, Europe, particularly Germany, is experiencing a real-world echo of this fictional exodus. Entrepreneurs, professionals, and capital are fleeing due to burdensome regulations, high taxes, soaring energy prices, and an increasingly hostile environment for innovation. A striking survey by “Die Familienunternehmer” (The Family Entrepreneurs) reveals that 46% of Germans aged 18–25 have considered emigrating, highlighting the depth of disillusionment among the nation’s youth. Who could blame them? They contribute to systems like the retirement Ponzi scheme and a failing healthcare system, yet they will receive less than they pay in over their lifetime. Politicians have further burdened their future with an additional debt of €1.5 trillion, and there is no end in sight for rising taxes. But not only the young think about leaving. A recent YouGov survey published this month reveals that 58% of Germans could see themselves emigrating if they were fully independent in their professional, personal, and financial lives. Among the respondents, 31% indicated they would emigrate “definitely,” while 27% said “probably.” Additionally, 22% stated they would “probably” not emigrate, and 15% responded “definitely not.”[^dpajm2025aa]

Germany has around 84 million inhabitants. Over 20 million are pensioners, making up a quarter of the population. Nearly 20 million public sector employees work in areas such as the police, fire service, and education. Fifteen million people receive social benefits, including working single mothers who do not earn enough. Approximately 13 to 14 million children and young people rely on state benefits, such as child benefits. In total, about 69 million people live partially or entirely at the expense of the remaining 15 million who are actively working and contributing to the financing of the system. The burden on these “Atlases” is becoming too heavy.

European citizens are trapped in a state of slavery due to inflation, taxes, and regulations. They constantly battle against politicians, mainstream media, churches, unions, and NGOs that attempt to justify the theft. This struggle is not just about escaping; it is about reclaiming agency and creating new worlds.

Modern Forms of the Strike: How People Are Already Shrugging

Emigration (“Voting with Your Feet”)

The flight of Germany’s entrepreneurial talent is a vivid manifestation of “Atlas Shrugged.” A panel discussion hosted by Mark Friedrich, featuring four prominent German entrepreneurs—Prof. Dr. Richard Werner, Dr. Markus Krall, Dr. Andreas Beck, and Friedrich himself—reveals a stark reality: three of the four have already relocated to Switzerland. Their reasons are telling: lower taxes, reduced regulatory burdens, and a stable environment that respects individual achievement. Switzerland, with its decentralized governance and economic freedom, has become a beacon for those escaping Germany’s stifling bureaucracy.

Or consider the podcast duo Hoss and Hopf as further evidence. Hoss has settled in Dubai, drawn by its business-friendly policies and minimal tax regime. He cites the emirate’s streamlined processes and lack of personal income tax as critical factors, allowing him to focus on growing his ventures rather than navigating red tape. Hopf, meanwhile, moved to Switzerland in 2024, seeking not just economic advantages but also safety and relief from what he perceives as oppressive ideological pressures, such as Germany’s growing emphasis on progressive social policies like LGBT ideology and unsafe streets for his children. These individual stories reflect a broader trend: Germany’s entrepreneurs are voting with their feet, abandoning a nation that once nurtured industrial giants for destinations that reward initiative.

Where are these modern Atlases retreating? Four destinations stand out as real-world equivalents of Galt’s Gulch: Switzerland, Dubai, Singapore, and Uruguay. However, many more exist. An entire industry of educators is producing content on emigration, providing insights into potential countries for relocation and patterns of tax evasion associated with statelessness.

Switzerland: Often dubbed “Europe’s Galt’s Gulch,” Switzerland boasts a GDP per person of €82,914 (PPP) compared to the EU’s €55,835, a government debt of 38.3% of GDP versus the EU’s 80.8%, and an unemployment rate of 2.5% against the EU’s 5.9%. Its innovation index (67.5 vs. the EU’s 59.6) and low youth unemployment (2.6% vs. 15.2%) underscore its appeal.

Dubai: The UAE, particularly Dubai, offers a tax haven with no personal income tax and business-friendly policies encapsulated in “The 8 Principles of Dubai”—a framework emphasizing efficiency, transparency, and economic freedom. Hoss’s relocation reflects Dubai’s rise as a hub for entrepreneurs, with 4,500 millionaires moving there between 2015 and 2019. Its modern infrastructure and minimal regulation make it a stark contrast to Europe’s bureaucratic morass.

Singapore: Renowned as Asia’s economic powerhouse, Singapore combines a GDP per person of around €80.000 (PPP) with a government debt of just 168% of GDP, remarkably low for a global city-state. The country’s unemployment rate hovers at a minimal 2.0%, and its Global Innovation Index score of 59.8 rivals that of top European economies. Singapore’s tax regime is highly competitive, featuring a maximum personal income tax rate of 22% and no capital gains tax, attracting entrepreneurs and professionals alike. Its strategic location, world-class infrastructure, and political stability—ranked among the safest and cleanest cities globally—make it a magnet for global talent. With English as an official language and a vibrant multicultural society, Singapore offers seamless integration for expats seeking opportunity and a quality of life in the heart of Southeast Asia.

Uruguay: Known as the “Switzerland of South America,” Uruguay provides 0% tax on foreign income for 11 years, permanent residency in two years, and a passport granting visa-free access to 153 countries. Its safety (the lowest crime rate in South America), digital infrastructure (5G and universal laptop programs), and emerging startup ecosystem (e.g., dLocal, its first unicorn) attract professionals and investors seeking stability and opportunity.

The exodus is not limited to entrepreneurs; skilled professionals are also leaving in large numbers. Between 2015 and 2019, millionaire migration patterns tracked by Henley & Partners reveal a global shift. Countries like the UAE (+4,500), Singapore (+3,200), Australia (+5,200), and Switzerland (+1,800) experienced significant inflows, while nations such as China (-13,500), India (-6,500), and the UK (-3,200) faced outflows. Europe, including Germany, is losing its high-net-worth individuals—those who often drive innovation and investment—to jurisdictions that offer greater economic freedom. In Germany, the 46% emigration consideration rate among young adults indicates a potential brain drain of future professionals, worsened by economic pressures like rising oil prices and projected administrative costs for 2025. According to a 2024 survey by Statista, 65% of Germans have considered leaving the country.

Figures on the emigration of Germans from Germany have been collected since the 1950s. In that decade, 450,000 Germans emigrated each year. This number steadily increased to over 1 million in the 1990s and has remained constant at around 1.4 million per decade since then. These individuals are typically highly skilled and cannot easily be replaced by low-skilled immigrants from Africa or Muslim countries.

The reasons people emigrate are often similar: they seek financial self-determination and safety. A society can function in two ways: as a strict law-based society, where all laws are clear, leave no room for interpretation, and are applied equally to everyone, like Singapore or Dubai, or as a high-trust society with a homogeneous population, such as Korea or Japan.

You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state. […] As long as you have a welfare state, I do not believe you can have a unilateral open immigration.
— Milton Friedman

Any other concept of a multi-ethnic nation with a welfare state, tried in many European countries, is doomed to fail. Countries like Korea and Japan have recently learned that their societies struggle with a significant number of foreign individuals who do not respect their culture and customs. Japanese people are becoming increasingly upset with tourists who do not behave. In South Korea, Johnny Somali, a controversial American live-streamer, has been charged with causing a “commotion” at a convenience store and is banned from leaving the country. Facing up to five years in prison, Somali is known for provocative stunts that include confrontational remarks, racially insensitive comments, and disruptive behaviors, such as interrupting performances and harassing pedestrians. He has been banned from multiple social media platforms and currently streams on Rumble. On March 12, 2025, Somali pleaded guilty in a Seoul court to multiple charges, drawing widespread condemnation for his offensive and disrespectful antics abroad.

While emigration offers a clear and decisive way to “shrug”—to withdraw one’s productive energies from a system perceived as hostile—this path is not available or desirable for everyone. The reality is that most people, for reasons both personal and practical, remain rooted in their home country. Family ties, financial constraints, cultural attachment, or a desire to improve conditions from within can keep individuals from joining the exodus. Yet, the impulse to reclaim autonomy and resist encroaching controls is not limited to those who leave. For the many who stay, a quieter, but equally significant, form of withdrawal is underway: the creation of parallel structures and self-reliant communities within the existing system.

Internal Exit: Parallel Societies and Self-Reliance

Those who wish to stay must navigate a world filled with corrupt government institutions, compromised gated organizations, a legacy media that acts as the state’s propaganda arm, and politicians who exploit the state for personal gain. Fortunately, a viable method already exists, one that was previously employed in the oppressive Soviet Union.

The Parallel Society vs Totalitarianism | How to Create a Free World

Ivan Jirous, a Czech poet and the artistic director of a rock band, urged the community of Czech artists in the 1970s, during the height of communist oppression, to establish independent music labels, publishing houses, concert halls, art exhibitions, and other infrastructure. He believed that if enough infrastructure were created, an “independent society” would spontaneously emerge, serving as a pocket of creative freedom in a highly repressive environment.

If it proves impossible legally to compel the ruling power to change the ways it governs us, and if for various reasons those who reject this power cannot or do not wish to overthrow it by force, then the creation of an independent or alternative or parallel [society] is the only dignified solution […]
— Ivan Jirous, Parallel Polis: An Inquiry

Vaclav Benda recognized the significance of this idea. He saw in it the seeds of a non-violent solution to the destructiveness of Communism. He aimed to extend this concept beyond music and the arts.

The term “Parallel Society” encompasses independent social, cultural, and economic structures outside state control. This concept advocates for alternative systems in education, science, scholarship, politics, information networks, and free markets—essentially creating a comprehensive parallel economy.

The ultimate phase of this process is the situation in which the official structures […] simply begin withering away and dying off, to be replaced by new structures that have evolved from ‘below’ and are put together in a fundamentally different way.
— Václav Havel, The Power of the Powerless

By the late 1980s, the parallel society in Eastern Europe had grown strong, decentralized, and disconnected from the state, causing the Communist authorities to lose their grip on power.

What can we learn from this? The parallel society is not just a theoretical concept; it is a practical strategy for resisting totalitarianism. It involves creating independent structures that operate outside the state’s control, allowing individuals to thrive without relying on the oppressive system.

This could mean starting to consume alternative media, listening to alternative podcasts, or joining local meetups. You might begin a local food cooperative, a homeschooling group, or a Bitcoin circle. It could involve using other mediums of exchange instead of government-backed fiat currencies, such as Bitcoin, and the Lightning Network. You could start using decentralized social media like Nostr that promotes freedom of expression, and use encrypted chat messengers like Session, which use onion routing and where you own the private keys. You could create self-sustainable communities, conduct scientific research or scholarship free of institutional pressure, and consume or create educational resources, music, or literature.

Civil Disobedience and Non-Compliance

Henry David Thoreau, a foundational thinker on this subject, observed that those who, by default or routine, “yield to [government] their allegiance and support are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform.”

The German language has a remarkable word that is difficult to translate fully: “Mitläufer.” The literal translation is “someone who runs with [the crowd].” Since the Third Reich, this term has described individuals who do not actively participate in the regime but support it through passive acceptance of its rules and regulations. This group comprises roughly two-thirds of people who conform to the masses, even when they know it is wrong and harmful to others. Two famous experiments from the 1950s and 1960s demonstrated that 65% of people are willing to harm or even kill someone if an authority figure instructs them to do so (Milgram experiment) and will go along with any lie when everyone else in the experiment does the same (Asch conformity experiments. This represents the majority of people in any society. They are the ones who will always follow the state, regardless of how oppressive it becomes. Don’t be one of these people; instead, become the sand in the machine.

The most effective way to undermine the state is to sabotage it whenever possible. Thoreau argued that actively refusing to support unjust government actions is key:

Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.
— Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

He stated that the minority remains powerless as long as it conforms to the majority. However, once it begins to disrupt the system, it transforms into a powerful force. Civil disobedience and non-compliance are not just options; they are a moral duty, as Martin Luther King Jr. noted:

Civil disobedience is the refusal to abide by an order of the government or of the state or even of the court that your conscience tells you is unjust. Civil disobedience is based on a commitment to conscience. In other words, one who practices civil disobedience is obedient to what he considers a higher law.
— Martin Luther King Jr., But If Not

The methods of sabotage are varied, and no limit is set to creative ideas on how to disrupt the system. Chinese democracy activists, for instance, have used a strategy of accelerating the CCP’s authoritarianism ad absurdum by flooding official lines with minor complaints, overwhelming the state’s capacity to enforce its own rules and thus exposing the absurdity and limits of authoritarian control.

In response to a significant doxing scandal involving Jan Böhmermann, a state-funded late-night show host, who disclosed the private information about an anonymous right-wing YouTube influencer and visited the influencer’s parents late at night, creative ideas to sabotage the system were shared on 𝕏. Individuals proposed various strategies to increase the cost and effort for the fee collection center that is collecting the extorted money for the state-funded broadcasting. Some people send their payments in small amounts, either overpaying or underpaying, and wait for multiple reminder letters before settling the bill. Some don’t pay at all and start legal battles that can take years. Others send their payments to an address in a different state, which requires the funds to be manually reassigned to the correct state, taking 15 minutes of manual work per payment.

Another idea is to overwhelm the telephone hotlines and email inboxes of newly established reporting centers for hate and incitement in some states with false reports.

For while the assassination of a tyrant is simply an isolated individual act within an existing political system, mass civil disobedience, being a direct act on the part of large masses of people, is far more revolutionary in launching a transformation of the system itself. […] For then, the remedy to power is simply to withdraw that consent.
— Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Democracy - The God That Failed

The simplest form of disobedience is frequently saying “No!” However, civil disobedience encompasses various methods, and each individual must determine their willingness to act. Some actions may constitute administrative offenses or even crimes, so it’s crucial to consider the consequences of your disobedience. Simple ideas include opting out of government programs, such as the digital patient record, or disregarding rules that seem unreasonable, like waiting at a red traffic light when no one is around. Germans are among the most obedient people in the world, and crossing a red light will likely result in someone reprimanding you.

My favorite German podcast, Aethervox Ehrenfeld, has the motto “Normie muss weinen” (Normie has to cry) as a philosophy. This means you do and enjoy anything that state-conforming, statist people dislike and find offensive. Eating meat is a sign of toxic masculinity? Have one for breakfast, lunch, and dinner! Drinking raw milk is far-right? Where is the nearest farm to get fresh milk? Celebrating Christmas and wishing “Merry Christmas” is insensitive to Muslims? Well, “Merry Christmas and a fucking New Year!” Driving a petrol car is bad for climate change? Buy a bigger car with more horsepower! The more those people get offended, the more fun you will have.

Ridicule is generally regarded as one of the most effective weapons against totalitarian thinking. Absurdity is intrinsic to tyranny, and “no acid is more corrosive to the absurdity of tyranny than laughter.”[^lindsay2021ss] Psychological studies and political philosophy agree: humor and ridicule can undermine fear, diminish the rulers’ aura of invincibility, and expose their hypocrisy. Totalitarian leaders and demagogues are notoriously humorless; ridicule destabilizes them, puts their pretensions into perspective, and encourages others to question their legitimacy.

We must learn to treat the demagogue and aspirant dictators in our midst (…) with the weapons of ridicule. The demagogue himself is almost incapable of humor of any sort, and if we treat him with humor, he will begin to collapse.
— Joost A. M. Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind

With the internet and social media, we live in the best time to follow this advice. While individuals like Joost A. M. Meerloo, an active member of the Dutch resistance during World War II, had to print and distribute pamphlets to mock their oppressors, we can achieve this with just a few clicks. The internet is a powerful tool for spreading ideas and memes that can challenge the authority of tyrants and demagogues. The power of ridicule is amplified by the speed and reach of social media, making it a potent weapon against authoritarianism.

Who radicalized you? You did.

You can learn about memes on Know Your Meme, learn about special words and phrases to mock the enemy on Urban Dictionary, and create your own memes on one of the many platforms, for example, the Imgflip Meme Generator. You can even use AI to generate fake images of politicians doing funny or ridiculous things. The possibilities are endless. If you would like to learn how an expert works with memes and viral clips, take a look at the channel of Snicklink on 𝕏. He is a master of meme creation and the use of AI for ridicule and satire, and his work has made it multiple times into television around the globe, including Fox News.

Teaching, Spreading Ideas, and Building Culture

One of the most important tasks for those within the system is to educate others about the concepts of freedom, self-reliance, and individualism. The Western world, particularly Germany, faces significant deficits in these areas, making this task seem daunting. German-speaking countries were the breeding ground for two immensely destructive ideologies: National Socialism and Marxism. These ideas spread rapidly and led to the bloodiest civil war in human history. Socialists states have murdered between 140 and 200 million people in democides in the 20th century. Germany experienced two socialist dictatorships in one century: the Third Reich and the GDR.

Additionally, Germany exhibits an unusually high level of obedience. This trait began in the Holy Roman Empire, where fragmented small states with local rulers ingrained loyalty to authority in the German psyche. Prussian militarism and bureaucracy in the 18th and 19th centuries emphasized discipline, order, and obedience to authority. Nationalism in the 19th century fostered a sense of national identity tied to the state. The failure and instability of the Weimar Republic led many to crave strong, stable authority, paving the way for the acceptance of authoritarian rule. The Nazi regime exploited and amplified obedience and authority, using propaganda and terror to ensure conformity. After the war, Germany was rebuilt on democratic principles while valuing order, rules, and the state. It transitioned to a mixed economy that is predominantly socialist and becoming increasingly so.

The task of educating people about libertarianism and economics is hard, but it is the last effort to save this country from decaying into a third socialist dictatorship. To achieve success, libertarians need to fight against the Marxist tactic applied for more than 60 years: the long march through the institutions. We need to focus especially on young people who are fed up with being robbed of their hard-earned labor and wealth. Socialists try to constantly blame the results of their socialist policies on the capitalist system.

The greatest challenge is addressing the reinterpretation of words by socialists. For example, when they mention “capitalism,” they actually refer to “crony capitalism” or “state capitalism,” not the free market. This concept aligns more closely with corporatism, the economic aspect of fascism as defined by Giovanni Gentile. In this system, the state and corporations work together, using lobbying and cronyism to obtain special privileges, protections, and subsidies. This sharply contrasts with free market capitalism, where the market functions without state intervention, and competition and innovation drive progress. True capitalism involves voluntary exchanges between individuals and businesses, with prices determined by supply and demand. It rewards hard work, creativity, and entrepreneurship, rather than depending on state intervention and favoritism. Only a society where everyone is free aligns with human nature.

Another example is the definition of “freedom.” Libertarians define freedom as the absence of force from the state, while socialists view it as freedom from external natural circumstances, such as limited resources and the necessity of working for a living. They categorize certain things as “rights” that are, in reality, “privileges.”

This fight needs to be fought not only with reason, but also with emotion because this is how humans work. Formats that use humor, mockery, and ridicule are often more effective than dry academic arguments.

The fight for libertarian values will always be challenging because socialism is rooted in greed, envy, laziness, and the desire for power. Our task is to convince young people that effort, hard work, low time preference, hardship, delayed gratification, and self-reliance are essential for a happy life. Socialism resembles snake oil; it promises an easy life for everyone in exchange for obedience and your soul. In reality, it becomes a prison of the mind and body.

Nothing of value is free. Even the breath of life is purchased at birth only through gasping effort and pain.
Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

Whoever is keen to join the ranks of educators is welcome. We need individuals who are willing and able to teach liberty and self-reliance. Education at all levels is essential. Many Libertarian resources, such as books, audiobooks, and podcasts, are available for free. The Mises Institute offers a vast array of free learning materials. However, we also need to create resources that are easier to digest. This includes developing memes, children’s cartoons like the Tuttle Twins, podcasts, books, and other media. We seek people who are eager to create and share educational materials that teach the principles of liberty, self-reliance, and individualism. We need a desocialization of the youth.

Digital and Financial Sovereignty

One of the most important tasks for each individual is to learn about digital and financial sovereignty. As discussed in the sections above, the state continually diminishes our wealth through taxes and monetary expansion. Since its introduction in 2002, the euro has lost more than 90% of its value when compared to gold. The US dollar has fared even worse, losing 98.8% of its value since 1971.

A century ago, in a stable gold-backed monetary system, you could buy a house with three to three and a half years’ income. Today, it takes 10 to 12 years’ income to purchase a home. Your grandparents and parents were able to buy houses not because they worked harder than you, but because their money retained more value. The state has robbed you of your wealth and your future. It has taken away your time and opportunities.

Four financial options are available for individuals to protect their wealth: gold, Bitcoin, securities (stocks, ETFs, bonds, etc.), and real estate. Depending on your risk tolerance, choose one or more of these options to safeguard your wealth. Each option has its advantages and disadvantages. The older generation of libertarians tends to favor gold, while the younger generation shows more interest in Bitcoin. Both options are valid, so select the one that best fits your needs. If you want to invest in stocks or ETFs, consider that it may not be advisable to do so in Europe. Additionally, the “emerging markets” have also significantly underperformed in the last years. Keep in mind that stocks and ETFs may be highly overvalued due to monetary expansion and the Cantillon effect.

Gold remains a valuable asset due to its limited supply and track record spanning thousands of years. It has proven to be a reliable investment during times of crisis. However, it can be easily confiscated by the state unless stored at home, and storing gold in a facility is often expensive. In Galt’s Gulch, gold serves as a means of exchange and a store of value. New ideas for utilizing gold are emerging, such as Markus Krall’s concept of a gold account linked to a credit card, allowing payments directly from that account. This enables you to keep your income in gold while paying with a credit card, presenting an innovative way to use gold. On the downside, every purchase of gold above €2,000 is reported to the tax office. If you don’t keep your gold outside of Germany, it could be confiscated at any time.

Bitcoin is the new digital form of gold. The younger generation of libertarians typically prefers Bitcoin to gold, with many investing their entire income exclusively in it. While Bitcoin was a much riskier investment ten years ago, it is now safe to say that it is here to stay. The most notable aspect of Bitcoin is its limited supply of 21 million coins, which cannot be inflated. Bitcoin is a decentralized currency that operates independently of any government or central authority.

Bitcoin was created in 2009 by an anonymous individual or group using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. One of the biggest mysteries surrounding Bitcoin is Satoshi’s disappearance. Satoshi gradually reduced their involvement and stopped communicating publicly by 2011. Many individuals have been suspected or have claimed to be Satoshi, but none have been conclusively proven. It is believed that Satoshi owns about 1 million bitcoins, most of which have never been moved. This mystery enhances Bitcoin’s decentralized ethos and intrigue, as there is no central authority or figure. Satoshi’s anonymity is viewed as a safeguard against influence, legal issues, or centralization.

Individuals around the world mine Bitcoin, and its value is determined by supply and demand in the market. Miners validate transactions and secure the Bitcoin network through proof-of-work, earning new bitcoins and transaction fees for their efforts. The most significant recurring event for Bitcoin is the halving, which reduces the reward miners receive for mining new blocks by 50%. This event occurs approximately every four years (every 210,000 blocks). By 2035, Bitcoin will have experienced its 7th and 8th halvings, with the 8th halving likely to occur in 2036, reducing the reward to ₿0.390625 per block. As of May 2025, about ₿19,690,000 have been mined. After several more halvings by 2035, over 99% of all Bitcoins will have been mined. The last bitcoin is expected to be mined around the year 2140.

Each Bitcoin can be divided into 100 million smaller units called “satoshi.” The smallest unit of Bitcoin is one satoshi, equivalent to ₿0.00000001. This means that even if you own a fraction of Bitcoin, you can still use it for transactions or investments. Most importantly, the state cannot confiscate it. You could cross the border with nothing but your 12- or 24-word secret phrase remembered, which serves as your private key, allowing you to access all your money at your new home.

Digital sovereignty is essential for individuals to protect their wealth and privacy. This includes using encrypted communication tools, secure passwords, and privacy-focused browsers like Brave Browser or Tor. The state is increasingly monitoring online activities, so individuals must take proactive steps to safeguard their digital lives. This can involve using virtual private networks (VPNs), encrypted messaging apps, and secure email services.

Thanks to Starlink, you can now access satellite internet nearly anywhere in the world, even in the most remote locations. This is especially beneficial for those who wish to live off the grid or in areas with limited internet access. Starlink offers high-speed internet without depending on traditional ISPs or government-controlled networks. In a recent article, Dr. Simon Goddek, a scientist and podcaster, demonstrated how he lives off the grid in the middle of the Brazilian jungle using Starlink.

It is always wise to stay informed about government plans that may infringe on your financial and digital sovereignty and to take action against them. Websites like Privacy Tools collect information on how to maintain privacy and anonymity online.

Personal Development and Resilience

Regardless of whether you stay or emigrate, the state dislikes self-reliance the most. It prefers individuals who depend on it for survival. The state favors people who do not think critically and possess minimal skills. Their ideal citizen is born, pays taxes, and dies. This is why they seek to regulate and forbid everything.

Nothing frightens the Leviathan more than self-reliant, resilient, and independent people. Klaus Schwab, the former chairman of the World Economic Forum, identified the enemy of his corporate-fascist agenda, the Libertarians, during a recent panel discussion.

Klaus Schwab is afraid of libertarianism. In his eyes, libertarianism is an anti-system.

You have this Anti-System Movement. What we are seeing is a revolution against the system. So fixing the present system is not enough. Now, there is, of course, an anti-system called libertarianism, which means tearing down everything that creates some kind of influence of government in private lives. It’s dismantling the system.
— Klaus Schwab, World Economic Forum

In one thing, he is right: we are going to destroy the influence of the state over our lives. We want to be free and self-sufficient. We want to be able to choose how we live our lives without interference from the state.

Fortunately, it is easier than ever to acquire skills of any kind today. Whether you would like to learn a language, gardening, playing instruments, repairs, hunting, cooking, healthy eating, living off-grid, or building your own house, you can find a course online. YouTube is filled with videos that teach you how to do anything. Additionally, you can find books and online courses on almost any topic. For example, you can learn languages for free on Duolingo or explore various subjects at no cost on Khan Academy. All you need is the desire to learn and the time to do it. The internet has made education more affordable and accessible than ever, yet hardly any people take advantage of it.

Learning languages is extremely useful if you are thinking about emigrating. English is surely one of the best investments you can make because considerable parts of the world speak at least some English. Spanish is the second most spoken language in the world, with over 500 million speakers. It is the official language of 20 countries, including Spain, Mexico, and much of Central and South America. Spanish is also the second most studied language in the world, after English. Learning Spanish can open up many opportunities for travel, work, and cultural exchange.

You can prepare for potential catastrophes, such as blackouts, riots, and other emergencies, whether you live in a city or the countryside. I’ve written an essay about my preparation methods.

If you live in the countryside, you might want to consider becoming less dependent on the state. This could mean having a garden, chickens, and solar panels. You could also consider having a well. If you have a fireplace with firewood, you will not freeze when the power goes out in the winter.

The Marxian agenda influencing much of today’s politics in the West views the nuclear family as an adversary. Some agencies even label the family as a potential terror cell and threat. Strong families and communities pose a challenge for the state. They remain united, resist control, and refuse to cooperate. We observe how immigrants, particularly from Muslim countries, bring entire clans with hundreds of family members to Germany. Some of these clans are so powerful that the state has chosen to avoid confrontation. Therefore, we must build strong families, communities, and networks. We need to create our own parallel societies where we can live freely and independently.

The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5, Section 20

To build resilience, do things that are hard. This could mean lifting weights, running, taking cold showers, fasting, and practicing delayed gratification. Practice stoicism, the APA (American Psychological Association) thinks it is harmful.

They want you to be weak, dependent, and obedient. Take your pills, get your yearly booster, take your sun blocker, stay inside, smoke your weed, go to therapy, cry, stay woke, and remain passive, feeble, and harmless. Instead, do the opposite, and you’ll lead a fulfilling life. Read the Stoics, such as Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus. Build resilience and anti-fragility, and most importantly, “do things they hate.”

The Hopeful Vision: Why the Strike Is Not the End, but a Beginning

The future is unclear, and we can still hope that people wake up before it is too late. We can either take the decision to bring back more economic and personal liberty and freedom to the people, or the decision will be made for us. If the people choose socialism a third time, they will have to pay the price. The state will fail and dissolve into mob rule and civil war, robbing the people of everything they have, and the looters will be left with nothing. Like in every totalitarian socialist utopia, at some point the money runs out.

But history teaches us a relentless lesson: when a society chooses coercion over liberty, it is not just prosperity that withers—it is the spirit of the people themselves. The cycle repeats until the system, built on plunder and sacrifice, collapses under the weight of its contradictions. In that darkest hour, when the old order crumbles and the looters are left with nothing but the ashes of their making, a new opportunity emerges—a return to the principles that once made greatness possible. It is at this moment of reckoning that the vision of a different future, founded on reason and individual sovereignty, can be reclaimed.

John Galt’s Speech – again, because it is so powerful 😅

When the looters’ state collapses, deprived of the best of its slaves, when it falls to a level of impotent chaos, (…) and dissolves into starving robber gangs fighting to rob one another—when the advocates of the morality of sacrifice perish with their final ideal—then and on that day we will return. We will open the gates of our city to those who deserve to enter, a city of smokestacks, pipe lines, orchards, markets and inviolate homes. We will act as the rallying center for such hidden outposts as you’ll build. (…) Those who choose to join us, will join us; those who don’t, will not have the power to stop us; hordes of savages have never been an obstacle to men who carried the banner of the mind.

Then this country will once more become a sanctuary for a vanishing species: the rational being. The political system we will build is contained in a single moral premise: no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force. Every man will stand or fall, live or die by his rational judgment. If he fails to use it and falls, he will be his only victim. If he fears that his judgment is inadequate, he will not be given a gun to improve it. If he chooses to correct his errors in time, he will have the unobstructed example of his betters, for guidance in learning to think; but an end will be put to the infamy of paying with one life for the errors of another. (…)

Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence of that which is man: for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the Morality of Life and that yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, any grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed on this earth. You will win when you are ready to pronounce the oath I have taken at the start of my battle—and for those who wish to know the day of my return, I shall now repeat it to the hearing of the world: I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

— Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

The collapse of an old, oppressive order is not merely an end—it is the fertile ground from which renewal can spring. Just as Rand’s heroes retreated to Galt’s Gulch to build anew, today’s pioneers are forging parallel worlds: from digital frontiers, to private cities, to network states, from open markets to unstoppable code. The same principles endure—self-ownership, property, freedom, responsibility, and the dignity of voluntary cooperation. In our time, the question echoes in a new form. “Who is John Galt?” once captured the longing for a world shaped by reason and liberty.

Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?

Today, we ask, “Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?” The answer is not just a name, but an invitation—a challenge to join the ranks of the builders, the creators, the defenders of human sovereignty. The future belongs to those who choose to think, to act, and to build. Will you be among them?

[^dpajm2025aa]: Welt, dpa/jm (2025): Für gut jeden Zweiten ist Auswandern ein reizvoller Gedanke

[^lindsay2021ss]: James Lindsay (2021): A Manifesto for the Based

The Modern Atlas Shrugged: The Looters in Action

Mon, 26 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT

In “Atlas Shrugged,” the looters are depicted as politicians, bureaucrats, and businessmen who exploit government power to seize resources from productive people to redistribute them, justifying their actions with collectivist rhetoric.

When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion—when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing—when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors—when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you—when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice—you may know that your society is doomed.
— Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“Directive 10-289” is one of the most controversial examples in the novel. It freezes all employment and prohibits workers from leaving their jobs. Additionally, it mandates that production levels remain unchanged; all businesses must produce the same amount as before. All patents and innovations must be surrendered to the government.

The “Anti-Dog-Eat-Dog Rule” bans “destructive competition” and is used to undermine Dan Conway’s Phoenix-Durango railroad to protect established companies.

“The Equalization of Opportunity Bill” restricts individuals to owning only one business, forcing Hank Rearden to divest his ore mines and coal operations.

The government nationalizes all railroad companies and develops “Project X” using stolen technology as a tool for coercion. Steel producers are compelled to supply steel based on “need” rather than market principles, regardless of their ability to pay. Despite its superior qualities, Rearden Metal faces production limits because it is accused of having “unfair advantages,” which prevents it from harming competitors. Hank Rearden is prosecuted for selling his metal to customers of his choice. As the story unfolds, the government increasingly resorts to blackmail, coercion, and even torture.

Government Overreach

The Absurdities of Overregulation

The European Union, which started as a free trade zone, has transformed into a bureaucratic leviathan that intrudes into every aspect of life. It has become a tool for the wealthy elite to maintain their power and wealth at the expense of ordinary people. There is no area of life that the EU does not seek to control. From how people live and what they eat to how they manage their health, heat their homes, and choose their cars, there is likely a task force or group advocating for regulations on every conceivable issue. This often occurs against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of European citizens who reject these measures.

We decide something, then put it out there, and wait for a while to see what happens. If there’s no outcry or uproar because most people don’t even understand what’s been decided, then we move forward—step by step, until there’s no turning back.
— Jean-Claude Juncker, Former President of the European Commission

The EU is blindly and authoritatively adhering to beliefs about global warming and constantly intervening in the free market to promote its ideology. For example, it banned non-clear (frosted) bulbs and clear bulbs over 100 W starting in 2009. In 2012, it prohibited retailers from selling 40-watt and 25-watt incandescent bulbs. Between 2016 and 2018, it banned halogen bulbs and significantly intervened in the free market economy.

The European Union has mandated that all mobile phones, tablets, and cameras sold in the EU must use USB-C charging ports by the end of 2024. As a result, Apple has been forced to replace its lightning connectors. While this may seem like a push for standardization, it could harm customers eventually. Companies may hesitate to invest in new connector technologies because regulations often lag behind innovation. Consequently, we might still be using USB-C in 50 years due to regulatory interference in the market.

Another consumer product affected by bureaucratic intervention was the EU vacuum cleaner power regulation introduced in 2014. Initially, the limit was set at 1,600 watts but was later reduced to 900 watts. The regulation also established noise limits of 80 dB and introduced performance requirements. Critics argue that consumers now need to vacuum longer to achieve the same cleaning power, making it particularly challenging to remove pet hair.

Additionally, there was an attempt to regulate the shape and size of cucumbers under Commission Regulation (EEC) No. 1677 / 88, which specified that cucumbers should be 30 cm long with a maximum curvature of 10 mm per 10 cm. These specific marketing standards were abolished in 2009 as part of a broader effort to reduce unnecessary food waste and simplify regulations.

The absurd regulations that make headlines are just the tip of the iceberg. EU Regulation No. 852 / 2004 introduced hygiene standards for food products to ensure safety and quality throughout the supply chain. However, it has faced criticism for being overly prescriptive and burdensome, leading to increased costs for businesses and reduced competitiveness in the global market. These rules also affect rural women, preventing them from selling their cakes at local events due to the fear of being fined for non-compliance.

Another significant regulation took effect in December 2024, requiring detailed information on wood products, such as books, to ensure they are deforestation-free. This includes HS codes, the country of wood origin, geographical coordinates of the wood’s source, production date, and a deforestation-free certification. Compliance costs may lead to a decline in paper books.

A particularly controversial regulation has recently made headlines, raising concerns about food safety, political control, and the impact on local agriculture: the EU’s new regulation on insect-based food. This regulation allows the addition of insect larvae flour to various foods, including bread, pizza, and chocolate. Up to 5 grams of common house crickets can be added to 100 grams of certain meat products. However, EU regulations prohibit adding insects to animal food, creating a contradiction with the new regulation on insect-based food. Critics argue that this new regulation was introduced to handle the challenge of removing insects from food caused by strict pesticide regulations.

The EU is actively combating smoking. After an initial attempt to ban smoking in public places failed, the EU is now advocating for a ban using “all means possible.” This reflects a common pattern in the EU’s authoritarian approach to controlling its citizens’, their behavior, and their choices. If a proposed regulation or ban fails, they simply try again until they succeed.

How EU Policy Undermines Europe’s Food Security

The European Union is engaged in an ongoing battle with farmers. Regulations concerning fertilizers, and agricultural practices are making it increasingly difficult for farmers to produce food and compete in the global market. The EU Fertilizing Products Regulation (EU) 2019 / 1009 took effect on July 16, 2022, replacing the previous regulation from 2003. This new regulation expands the scope to include organic, organomineral, and secondary raw material-based fertilizers, in addition to traditional mineral fertilizers. Farmers must comply with hundreds of rules and regulations, which often conflict with one another, complicating adherence. Drones are used to monitor compliance with planting regulations and enforce adherence automatically.

Since late 2023, European farmers have been protesting across the continent due to rising production costs, particularly for fuel and fertilizer, while facing declining incomes and product prices. They oppose the EU environmental regulations from the Green Deal, which impose costly burdens without adequate compensation for farmers. Cheap agricultural imports from Ukraine, which do not have to follow the strict EU regulations, are flooding the market and driving down prices by 40%.

The War on Wheels: The Push to Confine and Control Citizens

The EU is waging a war on individual mobility with its ongoing attacks on cars. Its latest initiative, innocuously titled “Updated Rules for Safer Roads, Less Air Pollution, and Digital Vehicle Documents,” is marketed as a step toward improved public safety and environmental stewardship. However, beneath the surface, it represents another move in a coordinated plan that aligns with the World Economic Forum’s vision—“You’ll own nothing and be happy”—and the United Nations’ Agenda 2030 sustainability goals. The EU’s Transport Commissioner, Apostolos Tzitzikostas, claims a noble mission: to halve road deaths and serious injuries by 2030. On paper, who could object? In practice, however, these rules focus less on safety and more on control and the gradual erosion of personal mobility.

Consider the following numbers: In 2024, Germany recorded only 2,780 road traffic deaths, the third lowest since 1953. In contrast, violent knife attacks resulting in serious injuries totaled 8,160 in 2022, three times higher than traffic fatalities. Despite these statistics, Brussels remains focused on cars, particularly on the “challenges posed by unsafe and aging vehicles.” They have now introduced a plan requiring every car over ten years old to pass annual inspections. This expensive and inconvenient process will compel many to scrap reliable vehicles. Since half of Germany’s cars are over ten years old, this measure effectively targets the working and middle classes who depend on older, affordable vehicles.

Accident statistics indicate that human errors—such as turning mistakes, failure to yield, tailgating, speeding, and impaired driving—are the main causes of road accidents, rather than vehicle age. Nevertheless, the EU justifies its crackdown by promising to “save 7,000 lives and prevent 65,000 serious injuries” by 2050. This claim seems unconvincing in light of the actual causes of accidents.

What’s truly at stake is independence. The unmonitored, unbugged private car represents one of the last bastions of personal freedom, much like cash in the digital age. The EU’s war on cars is a war on autonomy. New mandatory digital “Driver Monitoring” systems enable authorities to restrict movement, ration kilometers, and track every journey, transforming vehicles into rolling surveillance devices. The transition to “Software Defined Vehicles” and electric cars replaces robust, repairable machines with complex, expensive, and tightly controlled systems—far removed from the practical cars of the past.

Meanwhile, regulatory and financial pressures are mounting. Higher taxes, insurance costs, parking fees, and increasingly strict emissions rules are making car ownership less affordable. Even obtaining a driver’s license is becoming prohibitively expensive, and older drivers must undergo regular tests to justify their continued mobility. In Germany, innovative punishments—such as revoking licenses for unpaid child support—set a precedent for further restrictions based on social compliance.

From the authorities’ perspective, car use is tolerated only if it serves the needs of the state. The ideal scenario is the “15-minute city,” where citizens are confined to small zones, work from home, and rely on digital surveillance. The EU’s relentless push for control, masked as concern for safety and the environment, is more about limiting citizens’ freedom to move, own, and make their own decisions.

Central Planning in the Digital Age

Lately, the EU has introduced numerous new regulations, including the AI Act, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the AI Liability Directive, the Digital Services Act (DSA), the Digital Markets Act (DMA), and the EU Accessibility Act. While each regulation may offer valuable concepts, they collectively stifle innovation and impose excessive costs on businesses. Until mid-2025, every company in the EU must migrate all their digital products to comply with the EU Accessibility Act. This presents a significant financial burden, estimated to range from €28 billion to €70 billion.

The DSA, in particular, is used as a tool to control the internet and limit freedom of speech. It is no wonder that there is a lack of innovation and large companies in Europe. Bureaucrats seem to focus solely on regulation.

America innovates, China replicates, Europe regulates.

The European Union has become an unwieldy bureaucratic apparatus that stifles innovation and imposes excessive costs on businesses. It regulates cookie banners on websites and plastic caps on bottles while suffocating markets with central planning, regulations, and bureaucracy. The EU employs 58,000 people, and the cost of transporting staff between Brussels and Strasbourg totals 114 million euros per year. The annual administrative budget to maintain this bureaucracy is 11.3 billion euros, representing 6% of the EU’s total budget.

The Public Sector

Across Europe, the public sector has emerged as a colossal employer, funded largely by taxpayers. In Germany, the state employs over 5.2 million people, making it the nation’s largest employer. This number has climbed steadily from 4.7 million in 2010 to 5.2 million by 2025, signaling a growing reliance on government jobs. Among Germany’s top 25 employers, five are directly state-owned, including Deutsche Bahn (100% federally owned), while others like Volkswagen (with 20% voting shares held by Lower Saxony) reflect significant state influence. Roughly half of the top 10 employers are state-affiliated, including public services at federal, state, and municipal levels, as well as social insurance agencies.

This trend isn’t unique to Germany. Throughout the EU, public sector jobs often outnumber private sector opportunities, fostering stability but also dependency. Rand’s vision of a “mixed economy”—where government encroaches on private enterprise—finds an echo here, as the state’s dominance in employment reshapes economic priorities.

Economic Costs and Inefficiency

The financial toll of bureaucracy is staggering. In Germany, personnel costs in the federal budget jumped from 6.1% in 2021 to an estimated 9.7% in 2024, yet essential services like healthcare remain understaffed, with only 210,000 of the 5.2 million public employees in critical roles. The annual cost of bureaucratic red tape is estimated at €146 billion, a burden that disproportionately hits small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)—the lifeblood of the economy. These firms struggle to comply with a maze of regulations, echoing the plight of Rand’s fictional innovators like Hank Rearden, crushed by government overreach.

The EU amplifies this burden. Elon Musk, speaking at the 2025 WELT Economic Summit, called the EU headquarters in Brussels a “cathedral of bureaucracy,” pointing to the added layer of complexity it imposes on national and provincial rules. Despite a smaller administrative footprint than the U.S., the EU’s directives deepen the regulatory quagmire, frustrating businesses and citizens alike.

Tax Code Complexity: A Growing Web

Bureaucratic sprawl extends to tax systems. Over two decades, France and Germany have doubled the word count of their tax codes, turning compliance into a labyrinthine ordeal. This complexity fuels a vast network of tax authorities and advisors, further bloating the public sector. The OECD’s push for tax harmonization has exacerbated this trend, aligning Europe’s tax systems in a web of intricacy. Advocates for a flat tax argue it could slash bureaucracy, but opposition citing equity concerns stalls reform.

This pattern is echoed across the European Union. In Italy, businesses often face overlapping and sometimes contradictory tax rules at the regional and national levels, leading to frequent disputes and administrative headaches. Spain’s tax system, riddled with exceptions and special regimes for autonomous communities, demands constant interpretation and adjustment from both taxpayers and officials. In the Netherlands, incremental changes have led to a sprawling tax code that requires even small enterprises to seek professional help for basic filings. The introduction of EU-wide regulations, such as the DAC6 directive on tax transparency, has imposed additional layers of documentation and reporting, further complicating compliance for cross-border activities. Even routine processes, like reclaiming VAT across member states, involve intricate forms and lengthy verification procedures. Critics note that this administrative complexity not only increases costs but also creates uncertainty, discouraging investment and innovation throughout the EU.

A Modern-Day Big Brother

The European Union is increasingly infringing on the autonomy of its citizens through regulations and surveillance. Germany is a leader in surveillance, actively pursuing user data from tech giants. Over the past decade, German authorities have requested information on 709,400 accounts—seven times the global per-person average. With 850 requests per 100,000 residents, Germany ranks second only to the United States, far surpassing Austria (136 requests) and Switzerland (245 requests per 100,000 citizens). In 2022 alone, requests surged by 38%, with a 65.4% response rate from tech companies. For example, Apple complied with 83% of German requests, up from 75% in 2016. This relentless data collection indicates a state eager to scrutinize every aspect of its citizens’ digital lives.

The German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Verfassungsschutz) amplifies these concerns. Since Thomas Haldenwang took over in 2018, the agency has accumulated 485,000 datasets of personal information. Critics label it “Stasi 2.0,” referencing the legacy of the East German secret police and its extensive surveillance. Is this a “defensive democracy” or the foundation of a surveillance state? Public unease grows as historical parallels clash with modern realities. They even have an extensive dossier on the former president of the Verfassungsschutz, Hans-Georg Maaßen, who served from 2012 to 2018. He was dismissed from his position due to public statements regarding false claims of far-right attacks on migrants in Chemnitz, which were later proven to be false by a court, as Maaßen had claimed. Since then, Maaßen has been categorized as an enemy of the state, and they have started collecting material to use against him.

Germany’s influence extends beyond its borders, shaping policies across the EU. Under the Digital Services Act (DSA), effective since October 2022, Germany leads in requests to platforms like Meta, reflecting its strict approach to online content regulation. Human Rights Watch has identified Germany’s 2021 surveillance laws as a threat to privacy, yet the country continues to advocate for stricter digital oversight.

The EU’s surveillance saga is a decades-long struggle between security and liberty. In 2006, the Data Retention Directive required telecom providers to store user data for up to two years to combat serious crime. However, in 2014, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) struck it down, citing its disproportionate invasion of privacy. Despite this, the EU persisted. A 2016 EU-US data-sharing agreement aimed to balance law enforcement needs with privacy, while countries like Germany and France expanded national surveillance laws after the 2015 terror attacks—moves often criticized for their breadth.

In 2021, the EU tightened export controls on surveillance technology to curb abuses abroad, but domestic practices remain contentious. The 2023 Child Sexual Abuse Regulation (CSAR) proposal suggests further monitoring, underscoring a pattern: each setback spurs new attempts to entrench state power.

Post-2025, the EU’s surveillance ambitions may intensify. Proposals for encryption backdoors threaten secure communications and could revive mass telecom surveillance. Harmonized data retention laws might reappear, disguised as “technology-neutral” solutions to security threats. While export controls on surveillance technology may tighten, domestic use remains contentious. The EU’s ongoing struggle between security and privacy—enshrined in its Charter of Fundamental Rights—promises further legislative battles.

It is unlikely that the rules applied to you will also be enacted for politicians like Ursula von der Leyen. She has faced scrutiny over her use of SMS in two significant scandals: the defense consultancy affair during her tenure as German Defense Minister and the Pfizergate scandal related to COVID-19 vaccine contracts. The first scandal involved allegations of cronyism in awarding contracts to consultants. The investigation encountered challenges when her phone data, deemed evidence, was wiped by the Defense Ministry, which claimed it was for security reasons. This action was criticized as an attempt to sabotage the probe, but it remains unclear if the investigation was officially halted. The Pfizergate scandal centered on text messages between von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla during vaccine negotiations. Her refusal to release these messages has led to legal challenges and ongoing investigations by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO).

Who Is Watching Your Wealth?

Another dark cloud of totalitarian control is emerging on the horizon. The European Union plans to systematically record and manage assets through the introduction of an asset register. A central database will consolidate all asset values exceeding 200,000 EUR. Citizens will be required to declare all account movements, stock holdings, company investments, cryptocurrencies, and even cash. Additionally, assets located outside the European Union must be registered. Violating this reporting obligation can result in hefty fines of up to one million euros for individuals and over ten million euros for banks.

The new Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA) will be granted extensive sanctioning powers, including the ability to block accounts and prevent transactions.

Furthermore, the EU intends to allow access to the asset register not only to state authorities but also to “persons with a legitimate interest.” Journalists, NGOs, universities, and international institutions will have access to sensitive data. This access increases the risk of abuse, targeted spying, and political pressure. Supporters of unpopular projects could quickly become targets for media scrutiny and NGO actions. Public shaming could lead to account suspensions or blocked transactions. A Europe-wide mega database becomes an attractive target for cybercriminals.

The EU plans to tighten asset confiscation measures and can seize assets under certain conditions. The burden of proof is reversed; citizens must demonstrate that their assets are legal, rather than the state proving they are illegal. The government can utilize assets to address economic crises even without any criminal suspicion.

This lays the groundwork for a digital euro, announced for late 2025, which will facilitate a surveillance system and provide direct access to citizens’ assets.

Additionally, access to cash is being restricted. In the EU, a €10,000 cash payment limit will be implemented in three years to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. Member states can establish lower limits. This rule excludes private transactions between individuals, such as selling a car to a neighbor. However, the EU often encroaches gradually on civil liberties, so it is possible that this limit may be lowered and applied to private individuals in the future.

Who Is Watching Your Health?

Lately, the European Union has significantly expanded its digital infrastructure, with Germany leading the way in implementing new technologies to streamline public services. A key example is the introduction of the digital patient record (elektronische Patientenakte, ePA), which became mandatory for all citizens with statutory health insurance in Germany starting in 2025, although opting out is still permitted. This digital file stores sensitive health data, prescriptions, and medical histories, making them accessible to healthcare providers and, under certain conditions, to insurance companies and government agencies.

While the official justification is increased efficiency and improved medical care, critics warn that these measures indicate a shift toward a surveillance society reminiscent of dystopian worlds. The EU’s broader push for digital identity frameworks, combined with data retention laws and the expansion of AI-powered monitoring, raises serious concerns about personal autonomy and freedom. The EU plans to implement the European Health Data Space (EHDS), a central system that aims for nearly all member states to join by 2025, with exchanges starting in early 2028. This system will enable cross-border access to electronic health records, including patient summaries, prescriptions, medical imagery, and laboratory results. Participation will be mandatory, with no option to opt out.

In Germany, the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection has repeatedly criticized the lack of robust safeguards and the risk of unauthorized access or misuse of personal health information. The ePA was hacked before its introduction by hackers in Germany, who gained access to the system, raising alarms about the security of sensitive data. This incident highlighted vulnerabilities in the digital infrastructure and the potential for abuse by state authorities or private entities.

Citizens fear that these systems could be used to profile individuals, influence insurance premiums, or restrict access to services based on algorithmic assessments. As the lines between public health, private data, and state oversight blur, many worry that the promise of digital convenience comes at the expense of fundamental rights. This echoes warnings about technocratic control and the loss of individual agency. Given the massive overreach of the state during COVID-19, these developments are particularly alarming.

State Control Mechanisms

Media Bias & Propaganda

Germany has the largest public broadcasting network in the world, with a budget of around 10 billion euros collected from every citizen, regardless of their service usage.

The system is enforced via mandatory fees (€18.36 per month), with critics claiming this compulsion is akin to financial coercion, especially given the perceived lack of neutrality and the one-sidedness in representation. A refusal to pay this fee can lead to the seizure of personal assets and even imprisonment. Georg Thiel became widely known for his imprisonment due to his refusal to pay the German broadcasting license fee. He was brought into administrative detention (“Erzwingungshaft”) to force compliance with court-ordered payments and remained in prison for 181 days (nearly 6 months). He didn’t pay his debt but needed to be released due to limits on administrative detention.

This broadcasting system funds 22 television stations, 67 radio stations, and over 175 YouTube channels, employing more than 25,000 people.

Ninety-two percent of its employees support socialist parties: the Green Party “Die Grünen” (57.1%), the former SED party “Die Linke” (23.4%), or the Social Democratic Party “SPD” (11.7%).

When the public broadcasting system was founded, it aimed to be independent and free from government influence. However, over the years, it has become increasingly politicized and biased. Critics argue that the system has lost its original purpose and now acts as a mouthpiece for the government and ruling parties, particularly the left-wing parties.

The claim that ARD and ZDF serve as platforms for “Regierungspropaganda” (government propaganda) has merit. Their vast budgets allow for continuous broadcasting across many channels, leaving little space for dissenting voices. Several former and current employees have shared their experiences in this culture of censorship and manipulation. They express concern over the lack of political and social diversity within the editorial staff.

In 2017, the ARD commissioned a “Framing Manual” from a communication scientist to train staff in using specific linguistic and psychological techniques to persuade the public of the value of public broadcasting. This internal PR initiative cost €120,000. The manual recommended “manipulative communication tricks,” which critics labeled as evidence of top-down propaganda.

Critics argue that public broadcasters often attack all opposition, labeling dissenters of government policy as “rechtsextrem” (right-wing extremist). This practice effectively stifles genuine democratic debate and stigmatizes opposing political forces. Furthermore, public media and affiliated organizations engage in coordinated efforts to silence or marginalize alternative media and dissenting voices. A notable criticism was directed at ARD’s show “Die 100 – Was Deutschland bewegt” (The 100 – What Moves Germany), which relied on dystopian, emotionally manipulative tactics instead of fostering sincere dialogue. The audience is depicted as passive “game pieces,” while the medium prioritizes creating “social pressure and emotionalization” for conformity over promoting public reasoning or maturity.

During the COVID-19 era, the German population experienced a clear use of “military-grade” propaganda techniques. Government-aligned experts dominated television talk shows, while opposing views were largely absent. This contributed to a sense of a monolithic narrative and heightened public fear.

An INSA survey found that trust in ARD and ZDF has plummeted. The majority of the adult population now mistrusts these public broadcasters, a trend that corresponds with accusations of perceived bias.

The public broadcast network frequently attracts negative attention due to its manipulation of interviews and biased reporting. In the first three months of 2025, it staged hundreds of interviews. A common practice involves using local politicians from left-wing parties disguised as “normal citizens.” On several occasions, the network even featured its own employees as interview partners without disclosing their affiliations. Multiple media outlets, such as the 𝕏 account ÖRR Blog and Critical Cat, track these instances of fraud and propaganda. It is clear that anyone consuming content from this state broadcaster is either unaware of the decline or refuses to acknowledge it.

Political Lawfare: Silencing Dissent

At the EU level, lawfare manifests as legislative initiatives designed to expand state power over speech. Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, has proposed a new law to criminalize “hate speech” throughout the EU. This initiative requires unanimous approval from all member states and faces political challenges, particularly from leaders like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Slovakia’s Robert Fico. The law’s broad scope—criminalizing not only discrimination but also negative stereotyping of groups—has raised concerns that it could suppress legitimate discourse, including reporting on immigration-related crime statistics.

In Germany, lawfare is directly targeted against individuals who criticize the state. A significant group of politicians, particularly from the Green Party and the FDP, including Robert Habeck, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, Annalena Baerbock, and Katrin Göring-Eckardt, leads in suing ordinary citizens. Some have filed lawsuits against over 1,000 citizens. Many of these cases involve the services of the agency SO-DONE, which specializes in automatic cease-and-desist letters. They utilize AI to scan social media platforms and identify posts that infringe on their clients’ rights.

Germany has several sections in its criminal code that are frequently used against its citizens. In addition to the regular insult law (§ 185 Beleidigung), which punishes insults with up to one year of imprisonment or a fine, there is also a law introduced under Angela Merkel that targets defamation of individuals in political life (§ 188 Gegen Personen des politischen Lebens gerichtete Beleidigung, üble Nachrede und Verleumdung). This law is invoked thousands of times each year to raid the homes of citizens for memes, jokes, or puns directed at politicians.

A report on the American TV show “60 Minutes,” which aired in February 2025, highlighted Germany’s approach to combating online hate speech. The report features interviews with German prosecutors from the “Central Office for Combating Hate Crime on the Internet” in Lower Saxony, who share their views on the limits of free speech. The prosecutors explain how they conduct early-morning raids to seize individuals’ phones and laptops over allegedly illegal social media posts, even if the posts were merely shared and not authored by the individual. The lawyers joked that the main punishment is confiscating devices rather than fines, suggesting that this practice serves as a tool of oppression against dissent. Typically, all electronic devices—computers and mobile devices—are confiscated, and in numerous instances, individuals never get them back. This results in significant harm to individuals, who must replace all their devices and may struggle to perform everyday tasks without them.

The worst paragraph is incitement to hatred (§ 130 Volksverhetzung), a vague provision that can be applied to anyone for any reason. Originally intended to combat anti-Semitism and to prevent calls for violence against specific groups, it is now used for a wide range of issues. If you mention the overrepresentation of a particular ethnic group in crime or express dislike for LGBT propaganda, your words can be interpreted as hate against groups or subsets of groups. This law is consistently enforced against the political right, but rarely against the left. At the same time, courts regularly rejected all reports of discrimination against the unvaccinated or any right-wing group, as such discrimination is deemed acceptable. A court ruled, for example, that the party leader of the AfD, Alice Weidel, had to live with being called “Nazi-Schlampe” (Nazi slut).

Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.
Lavrentiy Beria, secret police chief of Joseph Stalin

All these laws are regularly enforced against critics of the state and its measures. Once a person gains a certain level of influence, the state directs all its resources against them. They often face house searches and a variety of accusations. The state has unlimited resources, so when they lose a case, they use taxpayer money to cover the fees and simply try again. Some individuals, particularly those who have been critical of the COVID-19 measures, such as Professor Stefan Homburg, have been targeted multiple times.

The house of Paul Brandenburg, a doctor and entrepreneur, was raided in May 2022 on suspicion of violating the War Weapons Control Act. His firearms, which he had legally obtained as a sport shooter and hunter, were confiscated. Before this incident, he was summoned by the State Security Police for allegedly delegitimizing the state and inciting violence. He faced harassment, and his social media accounts were deplatformed, forcing him to leave the country.

Anabel Schunke, a freelance journalist and author, was charged with incitement to hatred based on an 𝕏 post from April 2022. In that post, she criticized Sinti and Roma and accused Interior Minister Nancy Faeser of stifling criticism by labeling it as racism. The Goslar District Court initially imposed a fine of €5,400. However, on appeal, the Braunschweig Regional Court acquitted her, determining that her statements did not violate human dignity.

Another journalist and blogger, Boris Reitschuster, is recognized as an expert on Russia and a critic of COVID-19 measures. He was targeted after a complaint filed by WDR, which led to a police search of his home on May 19, 2021, presumably for defamation. On May 22, 2021, he was detained at the border. A second investigation was also launched regarding an op-ed, but both investigations were ultimately discontinued as baseless. Reitschuster left Germany in August 2021 and now resides in Montenegro. He describes his departure as “expulsion” due to state pressure and has published a book about it titled “Meine Vertreibung” (My Expulsion).

One famous case that gained international attention was the “Schwachkopf Professional” incident. A meme depicting Green Minister Robert Habeck as a “Schwachkopf” (imbecile) led to a police raid on the home of Stefan Niehoff, who posted the meme and was charged with defamation. This incident sparked outrage and highlighted the lengths to which the state is willing to go to suppress dissenting voices. Although the case was eventually dropped, a charge for Volksverhetzung (incitement to hatred) was reopened against him based on material found during the raid.

Shortly after, another case reached an international audience due to its severity. David Bendels, the Editor-in-Chief of Deutschland-Kurier, was sentenced to seven months of suspended imprisonment for posting a meme of Nancy Faeser, the former Minister of the Interior, on 𝕏. The meme depicted her holding a sign that read “Ich hasse die Meinungsfreiheit” (I hate freedom of speech).

Christian Schneider, the host of the Libertarian podcast “Aethervox Ehrenfeld,” has been charged three times with insult and defamation. His offense? He mocked politicians and journalists on 𝕏, referring to them as “Hexe” (witch) and jokingly saying “Ab ins Feuer” (into the fire). The court issued him a warning, and he must pay the associated fees. Another case is still pending, in which he referred to two policewomen exiting a bakery as “Puddingteilchen” (pudding pastries), accompanied by these emojis: 💅🧁

These are just a small fraction of the public cases I am aware of. The trend extends beyond individual instances. Political opponents, particularly from the AfD, experience de-banking, de-housing, and de-personing—tactics that undermine their financial and social standing. Several banks closed AfD accounts during election campaigns, hotels denied entry to party leader Alice Weidel, and civil servants affiliated with the AfD faced threats of dismissal. These actions, often legally questionable, expose a system that punishes dissent not through debate but through exclusion and coercion.

In addition, the government is misusing the “Verfassungschutz” (Office for the Protection of the Constitution) to target the opposition. A few weeks ago, just days before the new government took office, it released a 1,108-page secret report aimed at classifying the AfD as “confirmed right-wing extremist.” The report was shared with several government-friendly newspapers, while the AfD was denied access to the file. Shortly thereafter, someone leaked the report to two alternative media outlets, including Nius, which published the full document for public access. The report is ridiculous and embarrassing for the authorities, as it compiles memes and quotes from social media posted by AfD politicians. While the memes are quite funny, nothing in the report justifies the classification, and everything falls under free speech.

On May 15, 2025, an event occurred that I never thought possible in a democratic state, bringing Germany one step closer to resembling a second GDR. The German Federal Police prevented eight activists from identitarian right movements from leaving the country, as reported on Nius. They were traveling to Milan to attend a “Remigration Summit.” Armed officers detained the activists at Munich Airport, interrogating them for several hours while searching and confiscating their devices. The police justified the travel ban by citing the risk of reputational damage to Germany if right-wing extremists participated in the event and promoted extremist ideology. This ban, based on paragraph 1 of the § 10 Passgesetz (PassG) (German Passport Act), was imposed for travel to Switzerland, Austria, and Italy until May 18. The activists were required to report to a police station on the following days; failure to comply would result in a €100 fine. The legal basis for this action appears questionable, as there is no evidence of specific criminal activities.

The Welfare State: Dependency Over Productivity

Germany’s welfare state, a cornerstone of its social policy, has grown into a behemoth that consumes a disproportionate share of public resources. In 2024, social security spending—including unemployment insurance—accounts for 45.9% of the federal budget, overshadowing investments in education (5.1%), infrastructure (1.9%), and public transport (0.5%). Additional welfare programs, such as asylum seeker and family benefits, add another 5.2%, bringing total social spending to over half the budget. This allocation leaves little room for investments that could drive long-term economic growth, a concern libertarians view as a misprioritization of resources. Critics, echoing Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, argue that such policies risk fostering a society of “moochers”—those who live off the productivity of others without contributing themselves—thus perpetuating dependency over self-reliance.

The middle class, the backbone of Germany’s industrial strength, bears the brunt of this system. For example, the average worker contributes 18.6% of their gross wage to the pension system but receives only a fraction of this in retirement benefits. With an aging population and a shrinking workforce, this disparity is widening, creating a system where the productive are heavily taxed to sustain an increasingly unsustainable entitlement structure. This fosters dependency, reduces work incentives, and undermines individual responsibility.

A striking example of perceived government overreach is the policy in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where welfare recipients and asylum seekers receive subsidized vacations—up to €30 per day per family member for seven nights. Funded by taxpayers, this initiative is considered a misallocation of resources, diverting funds from productive sectors to consumption-based handouts. Such policies reflect collectivist excesses, where the government prioritizes equality of outcome over economic vitality, ultimately dragging society toward stagnation.

Across the EU, the scale of the welfare state is equally troubling. Europe accounts for 50% of global social spending despite comprising just 7% of the world’s population. In many countries, public social spending exceeds the OECD average of 21% of GDP, with some nearing 30%. Yet, this high spending has not eradicated poverty, particularly in Southern Europe, suggesting inefficiencies that indicate government failure. The EU’s economic stagnation, lagging behind the US and China in productivity and innovation, is intertwined with this oversized welfare state, necessitating reforms to enhance competitiveness.

Taxation: Choking Innovation and Growth

Germany’s taxation system exacerbates the burdens of the welfare state, imposing some of the highest rates in the world on both individuals and corporations. In 2024, a €100,000 income incurs an annual tax burden of €36,500—the highest among G7 nations—compared to €26,600 in the US and €24,800 in Japan. This leaves German workers with significantly less disposable income, limiting their ability to save, invest, or build wealth. Over the past 55 years, social security contributions alone have risen from 26.5% to 42.5% of an employer’s gross salary, reducing an average worker’s annual take-home pay by €8,467 compared to 1970 rates.

Corporate taxation presents a similar challenge. Germany’s high corporate tax rates deter investment and entrepreneurship, which are key drivers of economic dynamism. As other European nations lower rates to attract businesses, Germany’s increases indicate a disconnect from global trends, jeopardizing its competitiveness. Energy taxes further illustrate this burden: 50-55% of gasoline prices consist of taxes (e.g., €0.65 energy tax, €0.08 CO₂ tax, plus 19% VAT), while gas stations earn only €0.10-0.15 per liter. This disparity highlights a system where the government extracts significant revenue without providing proportional value, resembling parasitic governance.

High taxation distorts markets and discourages risk-taking. Reducing the tax burden could unleash entrepreneurial potential, fostering innovation and growth. Instead, Germany’s policies mirror the suffocating regulations in Atlas Shrugged, where excessive taxation drives the productive to disengage, causing the economy to falter.

Germany also has an exit tax system (Wegzugbesteuerung) that is similar to the Reich flight tax (Reichsfluchtsteuer) introduced in 1931 and repurposed by the Nazi regime after 1933. The old law required emigrants to pay 25% of their total assets when leaving the country. The current law applies to unrealized capital gains on shares when a person who has lived in Germany for at least 10 years and holds substantial shareholdings (generally at least 1%) emigrates, imposing an approximate tax of 25% on the value of those shareholdings. Since 2025, the exit tax also includes investment fund shares.

The middle class—Rand’s “Atlases”—is heavily taxed to sustain a welfare state that prioritizes dependency over productivity, while high taxation stifles the innovation needed to reverse industrial decline.

The Hidden Tax: How Inflation Quietly Destroys Middle-Class Wealth

But it is not only taxation that burdens “Atlas”—the middle class and productive industrialists. Inflation, driven by government expansion of the money supply, acts as a hidden form of taxation. Unlike obvious taxes on income or property, most people do not immediately recognize its effects. As new money enters the economy, it redistributes wealth toward those who receive it first (Cantillon effect)—typically governments, banks, and politically connected entities—at the expense of everyone else, especially fixed-income earners, savers, and pensioners. This process benefits the government and its allies, allowing the state to siphon off resources while diminishing citizens’ purchasing power without the transparency of direct taxation. This not only extracts wealth but does so in a way that is harder for the public to understand and resist than overt taxation. Inflation also hurts savers and pensioners the most, as their stored wealth loses purchasing power over time.

Throughout history, states have resorted to inflation—by debasing coinage or printing money—to cover expenses and benefit insiders. The Roman government frequently debased its currency by reducing the silver content of its coins and mixing them with cheaper metals like copper to fund its spending. Over time, this caused severe inflation, eroded trust in money, and ultimately forced the state to collect taxes in kind because its coins had become worthless. By the late third century, the currency had lost so much value that Rome could no longer pay its soldiers and officials in money; instead, taxes were collected in supplies or bullion, and the state resorted to forced labor.

Inflation is taxation without legislation.
Milton Friedman

After World War I, the German government printed vast amounts of money to finance expenditures and reparations, leading to one of the worst cases of hyperinflation in history. By November 1923, the mark had plummeted to 4,200,000,000,000 to the dollar. Those dependent on monetary assets or fixed incomes—such as savings, insurance, bonds, mortgages, and pensions—were devastated. The intellectual and productive middle class, traditionally the backbone of the country, lost all its property and became proletarianized. Hyperinflation signifies a complete breakdown of the economic production structure that had developed over centuries. It rendered trade, production, and all activities impossible, forcing people to scrape for the bare essentials of life. This turmoil fueled the rise of Adolf Hitler.

The inflation of the 1920s in the United States, characterized by easy credit and asset bubbles, led to an economic crash. This was followed by government interventions, including further currency devaluations. This cycle paralyzed the economy, resulting in widespread unemployment and the closure of schools, services, and businesses.

Monetary expansion transfers wealth and distorts economic calculations for businesses, complicating planning and investment. Assets, contracts, and business plans that assume stable money become less reliable, increasing uncertainty and risk for all market participants.

In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation (…) There is no safe store of value.
— Alan Greenspan

The gold standard historically provided a natural check on government inflation. Gold’s scarcity limited the creation of money and enforced fiscal discipline. As Rothbard explains, under the gold standard, if a country inflated its supply of paper money, it would lose gold reserves to other countries. This loss would force a correction and restore balance. With the end of the gold standard—especially after Nixon closed the gold window in 1971—money became entirely fiat, allowing governments to print without hard constraints. The results have been staggering: since 1914, both the US dollar and British pound have lost over 95% of their value relative to gold. Unchecked fiat expansion leads to persistent inflation, economic booms and busts, and a general erosion of capital accumulation and real wages. The effects of this devastating decision are illustrated in numerous graphs on the website WTF Happened In 1971?.

Hard Money - WTF Happened in 1971? (2020)

Inflation is so evil because most people do not understand its causes and how it silently erodes their wealth. If you had placed €1 under your mattress in 1989, it would have a purchasing power of only €0.35 in 2024. Prices in Germany have nearly tripled, resulting in a total inflation rate of 184.9% from 1989 to 2024. The state has effectively taken two-thirds of your wealth and lifetime. And this is on top of all the different taxes you have already paid.

Modern states and their economists have changed the public’s understanding of “inflation.” They have shifted the focus from the growth of the money supply, which is the true cause, to changes in consumer prices, which are merely the effect. This redefinition obscures state responsibility and allows for additional money creation without provoking direct public backlash.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the expanding reach of the European Union and national governments across Europe mirrors the dystopian overreach depicted in Atlas Shrugged. Excessive regulations, surveillance, and a bloated welfare state have stifled innovation, undermined personal freedoms, and burdened the productive middle class with ever-increasing taxes and inflation. These trends, justified by collectivist ideals and technocratic control, risk eroding the foundations of prosperity and individual liberty that once defined Europe.

Unless there is a decisive shift toward deregulation, transparency, and respect for personal autonomy, the current trajectory will only deepen dependency, inefficiency, and social division. The lesson from history and literature is clear: societies that prioritize control and redistribution over individual initiative and freedom ultimately face stagnation and decline.

The Modern Atlas Shrugged: The Signs of Decline

Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT

The Western world, particularly Europe, is facing a decline and a concerning shift towards bureaucracy, authoritarianism, collectivism, and socialism. Many people sense that something is wrong, but few understand the underlying causes. This feeling of uncertainty and insecurity leads them to demand increased government control, a larger welfare state, and more laws and regulations, which are counterproductive and will ultimately worsen the situation. Many refuse to acknowledge this reality because they were born during a post-war period of economic growth and continue to consume mainstream propaganda that misleads them into believing that “everything is fine.”

You did not care to compete in terms of intelligence—you are now competing in terms of brutality. You did not care to allow rewards to be won by successful production—you are now running a race in which rewards are won by successful plunder. You called it selfish and cruel that men should trade value for value—you have now established an unselfish society where they trade extortion for extortion. Your system is a legal civil war, where men gang up on one another and struggle for possession of the law, which they use as a club over rivals, till another gang wrests it from their clutch and clubs them with it in their turn, all of them clamoring protestations of service to an unnamed public’s unspecified good. You had said that you saw no difference between economic and political power, between the power of money and the power of guns—no difference between reward and punishment, no difference between purchase and plunder, no difference between pleasure and fear, no difference between life and death. You are learning the difference now.
— Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Everyone who has read Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged” and doesn’t consume state propaganda news notices the striking parallels to her 1957 work, as highlighted by Elon Musk in this interview.

Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged Book Trailer

I first read Ayn Rand’s fiction in March 2023. Since then, I have read numerous economic books, explored libertarian literature, and studied the Austrian School of Economics. I read as many works by Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Friedrich Hayek, and Hans-Hermann Hoppe as possible.

“This is John Galt Speaking.”

My favorite chapter from the book is Part 3, Chapter VII, “This is John Galt Speaking.” In this chapter, the ominous John Galt takes control of all broadcasting in the country and presents a four-hour argument that human reason and individual self-interest form the foundations of a moral and productive society. He rejects altruism and collectivism as destructive forces that enslave the capable to the incompetent. Galt asserts that the mind is the source of all value and calls on the “men of the mind”—the innovators and producers—to withdraw from a world that punishes their virtues, leading to its inevitable collapse. This chapter defends capitalism, personal freedom, and the pursuit of happiness through rational self-reliance.

John Galt’s Speech

The world of Atlas Shrugged portrays a landscape of industrial decline, with factories closing across the country and essential products becoming scarce. The government nationalizes the private sector, implementing price controls and economic regulations. A crucial rail bridge, the Taggart Bridge, collapses due to substandard materials. Train schedules become unreliable, resulting in frequent derailments and accidents caused by poor maintenance and incompetent employees. One significant incident is the Taggart Tunnel disaster, which leads to the deaths of many passengers from coal smoke. New York City goes dark when the power grid fails.

Many productive individuals mysteriously disappear. Incompetence is rising, and many positions are filled based on connections rather than merit. Sacrifice and need are valued more than achievement and productivity, while political interests influence scientific research.

The socialist government is developing a secret weapon system called “Project X” and has initiated Directive 10-289, which freezes employment, production, and wages. The government justifies its increased control by citing the crisis, while successful individuals are blamed for societal problems.

People use the phrase “Who is John Galt?” to express their frustration and anger at government policies. If you recognize these signs, congratulations! You are not alone. If you don’t, allow me to share my thoughts.

Who is John Galt?

Industrial and Economic Decline

Industrial Giants in Crisis

Sixteen years ago, the economies of the European Union and the United States stood shoulder to shoulder, each a titan of global prosperity. Today, the US boasts a GDP of €25,5 trillion—50% larger than the EU’s €16,6 trillion. At the heart of Europe’s faltering fortunes lies Germany, once an industrial juggernaut, now a shadow of its former self. The International Monetary Fund ranks it last among the world’s top 30 economies, and it ended 2023 with a negative growth rate of 0.3% GDP. Germany has fallen from 6th in global competitiveness in 2014 to 24th in 2024. This decline is not only a national crisis—it’s a warning for Europe and the West. What went wrong? A toxic mix of energy missteps, industrial neglect, and excessive state control has dragged Germany into an economic mire, with ripple effects threatening the broader Western world.

The statistics present a troubling scenario. Germany’s GDP decreased by 0.2% in 2024, and productivity growth has stalled. The IMF reduced its 2025 forecast by 0.5 points to just 0.3%, while the country’s long-term potential growth has halved from 1.4% to 0.7% over five years. In contrast, the US has seen its potential growth rise to 2.8%. Globally, Germany’s share of GDP has fallen from 5% to 4% over the past decade, while the US’s share increased from 22% to 26%. Domestically, the DAX index of export giants surged by 18.56% in 2024, masking the MDAX’s decline of 5.35%. Wealth per person has dropped to €68,000, leaving Germans poorer than Slovenians and ranking 30th worldwide. These figures are not only statistics; they signal distress from a nation losing its economic stability.

Germany’s industrial strength is unraveling. The automotive sector, once a global leader, is stumbling—Volkswagen’s stock has dropped from €250 in 2021 to €86 in 2024. The steel, chemicals, and shipbuilding industries are also struggling as production declines. Family businesses, the backbone of the economy, are suffering: 20% plan job cuts in 2025, while only 16% intend to hire—the lowest rate since 2015. Investment is hesitant due to uncertainty and bureaucracy, with 62% of firms citing overregulation as a barrier. Job statistics reveal the situation: the car industry has shrunk to 97.5% of its 2021 workforce by 2024, while public administration has grown to 106%. Meanwhile, German companies are looking to Poland for lower costs, and tech firms are moving to the US. The industry isn’t just declining—it’s defecting.

The economic decline seeps into society. The middle class shrinks, social mobility stagnates, and the lower classes sink deeper into poverty. Real estate is unstable as aging Boomers, who own most of it, will pass away—prices could implode within a decade. Trust erodes: satisfaction with the federal government plummeted from 60% in 2022 to 12% in 2024. A “dictatorship of opinion” silences dissent, and media illusions replace reality, driving people into escapism. Talent flees—90% of EU tech workers would move to the US for better pay (50% higher) and funding (five times more). In Berlin, startups face suspicion; founders are labeled “capitalist parasites.” Germany isn’t just losing wealth—it’s losing hope.

Germany’s troubles resonate across Europe. The EU has no trillion-dollar companies, while the US has nine. Europe’s top 100 firms have dwindled from 46 in 2007 to 18 today, while China maintains nine. French President Emmanuel Macron warns, “The EU could die… we are over-regulating and under-investing.” Tesla’s Giga Berlin faced protests over “techno-colonialism,” a symptom of Europe’s anti-innovation mindset. Berlin’s startup scene avoids risk, while Silicon Valley embraces it. The result? A brain drain to the US and Southeast Asia, where opportunity outweighs red tape. Europe clings to its past—a “museum,” as one observer put it—while the future slips away.

When Bridges Fall: The Cost of Neglect

One sign of decline is the collapse of infrastructure. In Germany, public infrastructure investment is critically low, ranking near the bottom in the EU. This situation is exacerbated by planning delays and a shortage of skilled labor. Despite the potential for course correction, experts suggest it may already be too late, raising concerns about Germany’s ability to catch up with other EU countries in infrastructure development.

A prime example of this is the Carolabrücke in Dresden, which partially collapsed on September 11th, 2024, narrowly avoiding casualties during peak traffic hours. The left-wing city council majority rejected a crucial structural integrity review requested by the Free Voters, prioritizing political affiliations over public safety. More than half a year later, the debris remains uncleared, and the construction of a new bridge is not to be expected before 2035.

Germany is facing a significant investment backlog. Schools require €55 billion, and roads need €48 billion, bringing the total to €186 billion, which represents a 12.4% increase from the previous year. This situation raises questions about how such a large investment gap exists despite high tax revenues, suggesting inefficiencies or misallocation in government spending. Similar to the U.S., a key reason for this is the lack of political will to prioritize infrastructure investment over other concerns. Germany invests in bicycle paths in Peru but lacks the political will to improve its infrastructure.

Ironically, Germany is lagging behind Brazil and Peru in terms of average internet connection speeds. The LTE and 5G infrastructure is so underdeveloped that I have no internet connection in parts of the train route between Hamburg and my birthplace, Wolfsburg.

Delays, Disruptions, and Decline

While trains in China reach speeds of up to 800 km/h, in Germany, you are fortunate if they arrive at all. Deutsche Bahn exemplifies the inefficiencies and decline of the German railway system. Although it operates as a stock company, the state owns 100% of Deutsche Bahn AG, making it state-owned. In 2024, only 62.5% of long-distance trains arrived within six minutes of their scheduled time. Cancellations and disruptions are common, often due to ongoing construction and an aging infrastructure that requires extensive repairs. The company has launched a new initiative to improve punctuality and reliability, with plans to reduce delays by 2027 and achieve a punctuality rate of 75-80%.

Cancellations are so frequent and problematic that anyone who has taken a train can share horror stories about their experiences. I have several stories, including instances where I was late by three hours or more due to snow, fallen trees, or suicides. I injured my leg when someone pushed me while I tried to board a replacement bus that arrived two hours after the trains stopped, as 500 people attempted to enter a bus with room for only 120.

The train service has deteriorated to the point that some neighboring countries have halted connections from Germany. This includes not just individual trains but increasingly entire routes. Since April 29, 2025, the EC7 and EC9 connections from Germany have been terminated at Basel Central Station in Switzerland due to significant delays on German trains. In contrast, 93% of all trains in Switzerland arrive on time. The termination of these connections will remain in effect at least until December.

Infrastructure decline is a critical issue. Decades of underinvestment have led to an aging network. The Rail Network Condition report for 2022, published by DB InfraGO, highlighted a year-on-year deterioration, with replacement costs rising by 75% due to inflation and global economic pressures. This decline is evident in outdated signaling systems and track conditions, which contribute to delays and operational inefficiencies. The network, spanning approximately 39,200 km, is operating at full capacity and cannot accommodate additional trains without significant upgrades.

Postage Up, Service Down

Another company declining is the Deutsche Post AG or DHL Group. Although privatized in the 1990s, the state still holds nearly 17% through the KfW Bank. The company has been struggling with labor shortages, particularly in logistics and transportation. The shortage of truck drivers has led to delays in deliveries and increased costs for businesses. The company has also faced criticism for its treatment of workers, including low wages and poor working conditions, which have led to strikes and protests.

More people than ever formally complained about the postal service last year. Over 44,000 complaints about the former state-owned company reached the Federal Network Agency in 2024, marking a 7% increase from the previous year and setting a record.

Compared to 2021, the number of complaints has nearly tripled. While criticism affects the entire postal and parcel industry, 89% of all complaints are directed at market leader DHL and its mail division, Deutsche Post. Customers are not only voicing concerns about delivery issues but also about branches that closed during their stated opening hours. The company typically attributes these problems to staff shortages.

However, the postal service is contributing to these issues itself. By the end of the year, the company plans to cut 8,000 jobs nationwide, which is over 4% of the 187,000 jobs in the German mail and parcel sector. Additionally, the post office significantly increased postage rates at the beginning of this year.

Educational Decline

The Competency Crisis: When Germany’s Talent Pipeline Runs Dry

In 2015, Germany’s education system faced a sobering reality check when the PISA results revealed a sharp decline in students’ reading, math, and science competencies. A decade later, this downward trend continues, with reading scores plummeting since Angela Merkel’s 2015 open-door refugee policy. This is not just a statistical anomaly; it reflects a broader competency crisis that threatens Germany’s future. The nation is grappling with a combination of demographic, educational, and societal shifts that require urgent attention. What is driving this decline, and how did a country once renowned for its precision and intellect reach this point?

Germany’s competency crisis starts with its demographics. For over 50 years, fertility rates have remained between 1.2 and 1.5 children per woman, well below the replacement level of 2.1. This has created an age pyramid with a large cohort of baby boomers, born in the 1960s, who are now nearing retirement. These workers, who form the backbone of Germany’s skilled trades and industries, will soon leave the labor market, taking decades of expertise with them. The result is a shrinking working-age population and a growing knowledge gap that younger generations are ill-prepared to fill.

Compounding this demographic challenge is a significant shift in education. While 90% of baby boomers trained in trade schools to become electricians, nurses, or police officers, today, 60% of high school graduates pursue college degrees, often in fields like business or social sciences. This educational expansion has lowered entry standards to accommodate average or below-average students, leaving vocational trades to recruit from the bottom third of the cognitive pool. Once drawing from a broad talent base, trades now struggle with less-qualified trainees, which erodes the quality of essential services. Germany’s economic engine, long fueled by skilled labor, is sputtering as a result.

Integration or Erosion?

Migration adds another layer of complexity. Over 40% of children in Germany now come from migrant families—a diverse group, many of whom are well-integrated, but there has been a disproportionate rise in low-educated segments. This is the only growing demographic in an otherwise aging nation, which poses challenges to an education system struggling to adapt. The influx following Merkel’s 2015 policy has strained resources, contributing to the decline in PISA scores. Without targeted support, this growing population risks being left behind, amplifying the competency gap.

The stakes are high as youth from migrant backgrounds approach 50% of Germany’s young population. Their educational outcomes will shape the nation’s future, yet integration efforts are faltering. PISA 2022 data reveals a significant gap in math scores between immigrant and native students. Language barriers, underfunded schools, and cultural differences hinder progress, leaving many migrant youths unprepared for higher education or skilled trades. This failure limits individual potential and jeopardizes Germany’s ability to maintain a competent workforce.

The crisis is already evident. In classrooms, 25% of children leave primary school unable to read or write properly, according to an IGLU study. PISA confirms a decade-long decline in core subjects, yet standards continue to drop—30% of students now receive top grades despite weaker performance. Competition, once a driver of excellence, is now avoided. Beyond schools, this decline extends to the roads: 50% of candidates fail the theoretical driving test, a record low that psychologist Florian Becker attributes to “low IQ, Verdummung (dumbing down), and fehlende Selbstdisziplin (lack of self-discipline),” as reported by Focus.de.[^becker2025aa] Overprotective parenting and lowered expectations have left youth unprepared for practical responsibilities, signaling a broader erosion of capability.

Too often, fingers point outward—to schools, teachers, or abstract “systems”—while ignoring internal factors like motivation and discipline. Shielding children from failure risks stunting their development. Meanwhile, the societal taboo against acknowledging cognitive differences or rewarding excellence stifles honest debate. Germany’s future depends on capable individuals, yet the current trajectory prioritizes comfort over competence.

Energy Crisis

Green Dreams, Harsh Realities

One of the main drivers of the economic decline is Germany’s ideologically driven Energiewende policy, which aims to achieve climate neutrality by 2045. This policy seeks to transition the nation from fossil fuels and nuclear power to renewable energy sources like wind and solar. Since 1971, the energy mix has evolved significantly, with low-carbon alternatives—such as wind, solar, biofuels, and hydropower—gaining traction. However, a crucial decision made under Angela Merkel and finalized under Olaf Scholz phased out nuclear power entirely, reducing capacity from 23 GW to 0 GW by 2023. This move, influenced by public fears following Fukushima and pressure from the Green Party, aimed to satisfy environmentalists but left Germany vulnerable. Over the past 25 years, the nation has invested more than €500 billion in renewables, constructing 30,000 wind turbines and over 3 million solar panels—many sourced from China. Yet, the promise of a stable, green energy future remains unfulfilled.

The fragility of this transition becomes evident during “Dunkelflaute”—periods of cold, windless, and cloudy weather when renewable energy production declines. In late 2024 and early 2025, Germany experienced several such events, with wind and solar output plummeting to as low as 0.7 GW out of a 56 GW capacity—just over 1%—on December 27, 2024. During a week-long Dunkelflaute across Central Europe, which intensified over two days, wind energy provided almost nothing, and solar energy contributed zero. Electricity demand surged, but renewables could not keep up. Despite its scale, Germany’s renewable infrastructure fails to meet demand when nature does not cooperate.

The opposite problem, a recent term coined “Hellbrise” (bright breeze), occurs during summer when the sun shines, flooding the grid with excess energy. In Germany, rooftop power plants produce 40 GW of solar energy on sunny days, and they cannot be turned off. The grid cannot absorb this energy, resulting in overproduction and instability. Germany must pay other countries to take the excess energy, or regular power plants must be shut down. This process can take hours, as turbines continue to rotate for another 30 minutes after the power plant is turned off.

Record Imports, Soaring Costs

With nuclear power eliminated, Germany turned to imports and fossil fuels to fill the gap. In 2024, the nation imported record amounts of nuclear-generated electricity from France, where plants achieved their highest output since 2019. Meanwhile, domestic coal and gas usage surged, covering 93.8% of demand during periods of low renewable energy. This reliance came at a steep price: electricity costs at the power exchange spiked to over €1156 per megawatt-hour—ten times the usual rate—forcing companies to temporarily halt production. Since 2000, electricity prices have risen by over 50%, reaching 35 euro cents per kWh by 2022, which has driven per-person consumption down since 2017. Households and industries now bear the burden of paying for two parallel systems—renewables and conventional backups—along with an expensive grid expansion, a cost structure that critics deem unsustainable.

The system is on the brink of collapse. During a near-blackout event in 2024, imports and conventional plants nearly met the entire demand, while renewables contributed very little. Experts warned that a complete blackout in winter could destabilize the grid and shift public opinion, potentially affecting federal election outcomes. The loss of nuclear power increased this risk, as its steady output had previously helped alleviate such crises. The industry felt the strain most acutely: creeping deindustrialization, a key result of green policies aimed at CO₂ neutrality, accelerated as companies faced unbearable energy costs and production stoppages. Critics argue that this situation was self-inflicted—Germany chose this path, not external forces like Russia or the U.S., and is now paying the price.

Grid on the Brink: How Renewable Energy Undermines Grid Stability

New regulations, such as the Solarspitzen-Gesetz (solar peak law), have contributed to the chaos. This law aims to manage solar surpluses on sunny days by mandating smart meters. However, it risks causing brownouts—regional shutdowns—when production exceeds demand. Additionally, it reduces compensation for solar producers without lowering costs for consumers. This shift toward state control and increased regulatory complexity, combined with failed smart meter rollouts and cybersecurity concerns, frustrates both providers and users. Meanwhile, the renewable energy fleet is aging: many wind turbines that have been operational for 20 years are nearing obsolescence, and their replacement could cost trillions. Germany’s dependency on China for new components deepens, exposing supply chain vulnerabilities and undermining energy sovereignty.

Germany’s energy transition is struggling. Plans to increase wind capacity to 115 GW and solar capacity to 215 GW face skepticism, as they do not provide more energy when needed and further destabilize the grid. Storage remains a distant goal; buffering a week-long Dunkelflaute would require 10 TWh of capacity—equivalent to 200 nuclear plants—yet only 0.1% currently exists. The slow pace of fossil fuel reduction, projected to reach zero by 2473, undermines the alleged urgency of climate goals. Industrial decline, soaring costs, and energy insecurity now define Germany’s trajectory. Some advocate for a return to nuclear power, but political inertia and green dogma prevail. Germany’s self-imposed wound—shutting down nuclear power—may lead to its downfall, serving as a cautionary tale of ideology overshadowing practicality.

The fragility of the European power grid became evident in April 2025. Spain, Portugal, and southern France experienced a nationwide blackout due to a massive overload. Solar power production peaked at over 20 GW, rapidly injecting excess energy into the grid. Conventional power plants struggled as turbines accelerated instead of slowing down when energy demand dropped. The grid frequency rose above 50 Hz, creating an imbalance that triggered protective measures. Automatic systems disconnected power plants and isolated sections of the grid to prevent damage. This incident highlighted the grid’s reliance on renewable energy, which, lacking sufficient mechanical inertia, makes it more vulnerable to sudden energy shocks.

A few days before the blackout, Repsol issued a mandatory stock market notice to inform investors about the risks associated with heavy reliance on solar energy. Spanish political leaders ignored warnings about energy issues, prioritizing ideology over practical concerns. Teresa Ribera, a key figure, shifted her stance from supporting nuclear energy to advocating for a clean transformation in the EU. She also contributed to the flooding in Valencia by preventing necessary maintenance for ecological reasons. One thing became painfully clear: photovoltaic systems and wind turbines cannot sustain the power grid alone, due to insufficient rotating mass. The blackout in Iberia could be a Chernobyl moment for renewable energy. This time, Europe was fortunate because enough black start-capable power plants were available. As a result, power could be restored after 12 hours. Next time, we may not be so lucky.

Societal Breakdown

Knife Attacks and Rising Violence

Since Angela Merkel’s decision to permit an unlimited influx of immigrants in 2015, Germany has seen a significant increase in crime rates. In 2023, there were 21,000 reported knife attacks—nearly 60 per day. The online project Messerinzidenz collects publicly available knife crime data and displays these attacks on a map daily. Nancy Faeser, the former Federal Minister of the Interior and Community, presented the Federal Crime Statistics (PKS), which reveal alarming figures and underscore the serious situation.

Similar alarming trends are evident in crimes against sexual self-determination, which have surged from 30,000 to 80,000 per year since 2015. In 2023, group rapes in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) showed that 13% of suspects had clearly German names, while 34% had clearly foreign names, despite foreigners making up only 16.1% of the population in NRW. This indicates an overrepresentation of non-Germans in these crimes.

Statistics on migrant violence from 2016 to 2022 reveal stark contrasts for selected crimes. For completed homicides, the numbers are 17 for Germans compared to 191 for immigrants; for attempted homicides, 329 versus 930; and for sexual offenses, 733 versus 19,097, according to BKA (Federal Criminal Police Office) reports.[^bka2025aa] Afghan nationals are notably overrepresented in serious crimes such as rape and murder, intensifying debates on migration and crime. Furthermore, it is not only a problem among adult criminals; according to the BKA, a girl is raped every three days by a 12- or 13-year-old. There are currently 688 registered sex offenders aged between 6 and 8.

In 2023, 85,552 violent crimes were attributed to non-Germans out of a total of 248,700 offenses, accounting for 34.4%. This equates to approximately 234 daily incidents.

During New Year’s Eve 2024, over 400 people were arrested in Berlin for attacking police officers. The German news magazine Nius obtained a list of the first names of the arrested individuals through a whistleblower within the police. The list revealed that 58.3% of the names sounded non-German (e.g., Abdul, Ahmed), while only 13.5% sounded German (e.g., Benjamin, Emil), suggesting cultural differences in offender profiles.

The significant overrepresentation of non-Germans in crimes indicates cultural differences that cannot be solely explained by socio-economic factors. Other countries, such as Sweden, face similar integration issues and rising crime rates. Sweden is struggling with gang violence, bomb attacks, and child recruitment, reflecting broader migration challenges across Europe.

Terrorism on the Rise: How Islamist Attacks Shook Germany’s Sense of Security

Additionally, Islamic terrorism has become a significant issue in Germany, with multiple attacks capturing international attention. In 2016, a truck was driven into a crowd at a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 and injuring 55. ISIS claimed responsibility for this attack. In 2024, another Christmas market was targeted by a car, resulting in 6 deaths and 299 injuries, motivated by Islamist beliefs. That same summer, a 25-year-old Afghan national named Sulaiman Ataee stabbed several people, including a police officer who was critically injured in the neck and died the same day from his injuries. On January 22, 2025, another knife attack occurred in Aschaffenburg, Bavaria, targeting a kindergarten group in a park. A 28-year-old Afghan man was arrested at the scene. The attacker killed a 2-year-old Moroccan boy and a 41-year-old man, with several others injured, including another child.

Since the last WEF ranking in 2015, Germany has fallen 31 places in terms of security, now ranking 51st, behind Romania, Kuwait, Albania, Poland, and Tajikistan. The Australian Foreign Ministry rates Germany’s danger level as equivalent to that of Turkey and South Africa, reflecting international concerns. Chinese advisories warn travelers about specific ethnic groups.

How does the government respond to these issues? By closing borders, deporting criminals, or addressing the root causes of immigration? Of course not. Instead, they have enacted laws that restrict law-abiding citizens, such as limiting the carrying of pocket knives and creating large “knife-free zones” in public spaces, trains, and buses, criminalizing regular citizens. The Berlin police department faced ridicule for proposing to revoke drivers’ licenses after six knife attacks within 24 months.

When the government fails to protect its citizens, the “social contract” is broken, which can lead to vigilantism. The rise of gated communities indicates a societal shift toward private safety solutions in response to perceived state failure. In Cologne, investor Christian Ley is constructing a guarded complex with fences, gates, and surveillance, catering to affluent residents seeking safety amid rising violence. Cologne, the largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia and the fourth most populous city in Germany, has nearly 1.1 million inhabitants, with 24.3% of the population having a migration background.

The significant increase in migration has not only raised crime rates and terror attacks but also had substantial economic and social impacts. Germany has absorbed a considerable portion of EU migration, with 6 million out of 14 million migrants arriving between 2013 and 2022, due to its open borders and generous welfare system. The country has struggled to accommodate such a large influx of people in a short time. Every aspect of daily life has worsened, from waiting times for administrative procedures to securing doctor appointments. Where I could get a dental checkup appointment a month in advance a few years ago, it now takes nearly six months.

While socialist parties present immigration as the future and backbone of our economy, the reality is quite different. A significant number of young migrants lack the education needed to fill available jobs. Among 20-34-year-olds in 2023, 82.3% of Iraqis, 81.5% of Syrians, 78.3% of Afghans, and 49% of Turks lack vocational training, which predicts higher unemployment and welfare dependency. Additionally, 29.9% of Germans also lack qualifications, compounding the issue.

A House Divided

Europe is more divided than ever. Even though some bureaucrats dream of a United States of Europe, this will never happen. The cultures, languages, and people are too different. Besides, the EU doesn’t want to create a federal system like the United States has with a constitution and 1st and 2nd amendment rights, but rather a centralized system that is more similar to the Soviet Union. Critics mock the EU as EUdSSR.

The concept of a European state is more complex than just domestic trade and free travel; the countries involved are too diverse. Ideologically, we have progressive nations like France and Germany, alongside conservative ones such as Poland and Hungary, which hold vastly different views on migration, LGBTQ+ rights, and the rule of law. Financially, the countries are also divided. Wealthier nations like Germany and the Netherlands are net contributors, while poorer countries like Italy, Greece, and Spain face higher debt and unemployment, seeking more financial support from the EU.

The EU comprises core countries and newer members, with 20 nations using the Euro while others maintain their currencies, resulting in varying economic policies and levels of integration. Some EU states serve as direct entry points for migrants and asylum seekers, while others cannot be accessed legally by land. Additionally, some countries are pro-US and critical of Russia, while others prefer greater autonomy and dialogue. Western and Northern nations advocate aggressively for climate action, whereas Eastern countries are slower to phase out coal and transition to green energy. We also see countries that prioritize joint defense, like France, contrasted with those that emphasize national sovereignty, such as Hungary and Poland.

The European Union, under the leadership of Ursula von der Leyen, actively promotes the progressive ideas of specific countries, such as the Green Deal, an open border policy, and a confrontational stance against Russia. Countries that do not comply face fines and penalties. Potential candidates from right-wing parties are targeted. Marine Le Pen from France was excluded from the elections, Călin Georgescu’s election victory in Romania was annulled, and the AfD (Alternative for Germany) was labeled as “securely right-wing extremist.”

The Euro devalues each year, and inflation is rampant. The EU has lost credibility, and the European Central Bank (ECB) is losing its independence. The ECB’s policies are increasingly influenced by political interests rather than economic stability, leading to a decline in confidence in the Euro. The ECB’s balance sheet has expanded significantly, raising concerns about inflation and the long-term sustainability of its policies. The Euro may face failure in the near future. The rushed introduction of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) signals desperation, as the ECB attempts to regain control over monetary policy and combat inflation to prolong its Keynesian money policies. This move raises concerns about privacy and government surveillance, as digital currencies can be easily tracked and monitored. The introduction of CBDC does not address the problems facing the Eurozone; rather, it highlights deeper economic issues.

Two Countries in One

The situation in Germany remains challenging. Thirty-six years after reunification, the country is more divided between East and West than it was when the Berlin Wall fell. The AfD (Alternative for Germany) has gained significant support in the East and is also growing in the West, making it the strongest party. This division is not only political; it reflects deeper cultural and ideological gaps that have persisted since reunification. However, the ideological divide between the AfD and other parties hinders the formation of a center-right coalition. The CDU (Christian Democratic Union) has broken all its pre-election promises and increased the debt by €1.5 trillion for rearmament, infrastructure, and ecological projects. They formed a coalition with the SPD (Social Democratic Party), the former leading party whose government collapsed prematurely, and continued the policies of the previous failed administration.

Friedrich Merz, the new chancellor and a former Black Rock employee, understands that his party may cease to exist in the near future if it fails to deliver on its promises. He will face significant challenges in keeping these promises, as the socialist coalition partner will do everything possible to obstruct him. His election as chancellor was already embarrassing, as he became the first chancellor in the history of the republic to fail to secure a majority in the first round of voting. He needed additional support from the former SED—the Wall Murderer Party—to finally be elected chancellor in the second round.

When examining economic maps of Germany, the East remains significantly poorer than the West. The average income in the East is about 20% lower than in the West. In many cities, such as Hamburg, salaries exceed the national average by 10%. The annual household income in the West ranges from €20,000 to €25,000, while in the East, it falls between €17,500 and €20,000. Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania has the lowest household income in Germany, with figures between €15,000 and €17,500. This region also has the highest percentage of voters for the AfD, as seen in the city of Groß Luckow, where 74.7% of the votes went to the AfD. In contrast, the lowest support was in the district of Sternenschanze in Hamburg, with only 2.8% of the votes in the last elections.

The east of Germany is worse off in every regard. Unemployment in the west is in the low single digits, while in the east it reaches up to 16%. Workers in the east put in 69 more hours annually (1,350 hours per year compared to 1,281 hours in the west) but earn less. Life satisfaction is significantly lower in the east, and even car ownership lags behind. The effects of 41 years of socialism are still evident today, despite over €1,000 billion having been invested in the east since the fall of the wall.

It is no surprise that the pain of Germany’s decline is felt most acutely in the east. The AfD has capitalized on this discontent, gaining support from those who feel abandoned by the political elite. Additionally, the former SED (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands), now known as “Die Linke” (The Left), remains strong in the East. This strength can be attributed to two different mindsets: “Ostalgie” (nostalgia for the East) and the lingering memory of a totalitarian dictatorship. While some long for the days when the nanny state cared for everyone, others remember the state’s repression, including the imprisonment of dissidents and the killing of over 1,000 people attempting to flee the socialist GDR. East Germans serve as the canary in the coal mine, as they are the first to recognize similarities to the former GDR amid rising authoritarianism in Germany, eroding civil rights, declining free speech, and the economic consequences of central planning.

While the western part of Germany predominantly voted for the CDU, cities leaned towards the Green Party or socialist parties. In contrast, the East was divided between left-wing and right-wing socialist parties. The AfD is not a unified party; it encompasses three distinct factions. The left wing, led by party leader Alice Weidel, is partly market libertarian and advocates for a Swiss model of participation. The right wing, led by Björn Höcke, is a nationalist faction that promotes a new form of nationalism with some socialism. Additionally, many conservatives who were previously in the CDU have joined the AfD. The party is not a monolith but rather a collection of diverse ideas and ideologies. However, they are united in one key aspect: the rejection of the current government and its policies.

The significant estrangement of many Germans from their culture has led to a notable resurgence of nationalism. On TikTok, many young people strongly identify as German. A new type of woman has emerged, the “Ostmulle,” who take pride in their heritage and openly express their love for their country. They are often attractive young blonde women or heavily tattooed and pierced individuals. The rise of the AfD is inevitable, as it resonates strongly with young people in both the East and West, who feel the effects of economic decline and unregulated immigration most acutely. Meanwhile, the boomer generation, which will pass away in the next few decades, tends to vote very left-wing and green, supporting groups like “Omas gegen Rechts” (Grannies against the right). In contrast, the younger generation is divided: half are aggressively woke and green activists, gluing themselves to the streets and vandalizing art with paint, while the other half is becoming more conservative, religious, and nationalistic.

But not only is the country divided politically, it is divided on nearly any topic. While the divide is not clear by group in every topic, they seem to align with Thomas Sowell’s view of the world, with the left representing the “unconstrained” (utopian) vision and the right representing the “constrained” (tragic) vision.

Followers of the utopian vision view human nature as malleable, believing that people can develop morally and intellectually to achieve higher ideals, sometimes even perfection. They focus on intentions and aspirations for social improvement, emphasizing what should be rather than what is. They see social problems as solvable with the right knowledge, will, or commitment, leading to deliberate, categorical interventions and solutions. They value flexibility, direct action, and collective decisions aimed at achieving morally preferable outcomes, even if it means overriding existing processes or constraints.

In contrast, followers of the tragic vision see human beings as inherently flawed and limited, both morally and intellectually. They believe that social evils and conflicts arise from these inherent limitations, not merely from poor institutions or a lack of effort. They argue that society must acknowledge these permanent limits. Progress involves finding workable trade-offs rather than pursuing perfection; attempts to achieve ideal outcomes can be futile and counterproductive. They emphasize evolved traditions, systemic processes (such as markets and families), and the importance of incentives, rather than relying solely on rational planning or moral intentions. Justice and freedom are viewed in terms of fair processes and the absence of arbitrary power, rather than guaranteed outcomes. They advocate for incremental social change, as categorical or sweeping changes often overlook complexities and lead to unintended consequences.

The greatest psyop of all time. – Snicklink

The country is divided on many issues, making it difficult to keep track: climate change, energy policies, immigration, gender ideology and LGBTQ+ matters, COVID-19 vaccines and lockdowns, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, free speech, religion, the Ukraine war, the Israel-Palestine conflict, meat consumption, language, education, and even the concept of “freedom” itself. While the left was the peaceful faction in the 1970s, it has now become authoritarian and collectivist. They demand censorship against “hate speech” and “misinformation,” call for rearmament, and even advocate for open war with Russia, all while promoting a new form of moralizing authoritarianism. The terms “Nazi,” “Fascist,” and “Hitler” are used so frequently that they have lost their meaning. They support globalist agendas like the Sustainable Development Goals, Agenda 2030, and plans for a one-world government and 15-minute cities, pushed forward by organizations such as NATO, the UN, WHO, and the WEF. While many people might still have diverse opinions on topics, it has become nearly impossible to voice opinions without risking the loss of friendships, jobs, or even being reported to the reporting centers. The left has become the new authoritarian faction, and the right has become the new peaceful faction.

A survey by Datapraxis and YouGov, conducted across all European countries, reveals shocking results. As of 2021, only about 11% of Germans “feel free” to speak openly, meaning they believe they can express themselves without fear of repercussions. This figure has dropped from 68% in 2019 to its lowest point ever recorded.

The Gender Divide

The divide extends even between genders. A striking article in the Financial Times from January 2024 examined how the perspectives of women and men aged 18 to 30 have evolved since the 1990s. The article compares several countries in the East and West, presenting diagrams for South Korea, the USA, Germany, and the UK. In Germany and the US, men have become slightly more conservative over time, while women have become more progressive by 20 to 30 points. In the UK, men have become 20 points more progressive, while for women it increased by 50 points. In South Korea, women have become 30 points more progressive, while men have become 20 points more conservative. The gender divide encompasses issues such as sexual harassment, immigration, and racial justice. This ideological split could have long-term societal implications, potentially influencing political landscapes, marriage rates, and social dynamics.

While it may initially seem that men have issues with women becoming more independent, there are other explanations. The modern world has disconnected people, particularly women, from the real dangers of life. A world built and maintained by men—where in some jobs, men comprise 90% or more—creates the illusion of a consequence-free environment. Additionally, women tend to be more empathetic. While it is natural and beneficial for them to direct this empathy toward their offspring, family, and community, many women, particularly childless women, extend this empathy to the entire world, including strangers, animals, and nature. Dr. Gad Saad, a professor of marketing at Concordia University, coined the term “suicidal empathy” to describe this phenomenon. He argues that it results from the modern world’s disconnect from reality. This form of empathy can lead to a misunderstanding of the real dangers and consequences of certain ideologies and policies, ultimately causing societal harm.

This phenomenon is evident on social media and in the news, featuring numerous horrifying stories about independent women traveling in dangerous places like India, Africa, or the Middle East, where they become victims of harassment, rape, and even beheading. It also appears in the support for risky policies such as open borders, which allow entry to individuals who are anti-Semitic, anti-gay, and suppress women in their cultures. The result of this world view is bizarre groups like “Queers for Palestine,” whose members would be thrown off roofs or hanged from cranes just 30 minutes after arriving in Palestine.

Cem Özdemir, the former minister of agriculture and member of the Green Party, was confronted with his party’s open border policies in 2024, when his daughter, already a victim of occasional racism, was sexualized by migrants.

Recently, there was a trend where women were asked whether they would prefer to meet a man or a bear alone in the forest. Most women chose the bear, highlighting how disconnected they have become from real danger.

Man or Bear? (The world is a stupid place full of stupid people)

The widespread support for the LGBTQ+ movement, especially the Trans and Queer movements, is shortsighted. At its least harmful, it threatens women’s sports and reduces opportunities for biological women. In more toxic forms, it allows predators access to protected spaces such as women’s shelters, bathrooms, and changing rooms, as well as access to children in kindergartens and schools. The severe misuse becomes apparent weeks or months after a country introduces these new “privileges.” Criminal men switch their gender and rape women in women’s prisons, while trans individuals start suing companies or individuals for dead naming or to gain access to certain spaces. In its most harmful form, this movement causes permanent and irreversible damage to young children. As Jordan Peterson states, it is a butchery that is as bad, if not worse, than eugenics or lobotomies.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Germany’s and Europe’s decline reflects a deeper crisis beyond economics—one rooted in cultural division, overregulation, and the erosion of individual responsibility and merit. As bureaucracy expands and ideological policies override practical concerns, trust in institutions and social cohesion falter. The result is a society marked by stagnation, rising conflict, and a loss of hope for the future.

Without a renewed commitment to personal freedom, open debate, and pragmatic solutions, these trends will only worsen. The warnings of Atlas Shrugged resonate today: when achievement is penalized and mediocrity rewarded, decline becomes inevitable. Only by facing uncomfortable realities and valuing competence and liberty can Europe hope to change course.

[^becker2025aa]: Prof. Dr. Becker, Florian (2025): Psychologe erklärt, warum junge Menschen „zu blöd zum Autofahren“ sind

[^bka2025aa]: Bundeskriminalamt (2025): Polizeiliche Kriminalstatistik, Nichtdeutsche Tatverdächtige nach Alter und Geschlecht

Fuck you, Sonos: Journey of Disappointment and Search for New Audio Solutions

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I’ve reached a breaking point. How is this even possible? How can a company I would have rated 10/10 stars ten years ago now be considered a 0/10 stars? Sonos was never a cheap brand, but in November 2012, when I started with a Sonos Bridge, a Play:5 (Gen 1), and a Play:3, it was worth the investment. It was one of the first products to offer perfectly synchronized wireless sound across multiple speakers and rooms, allowing streaming from all providers. It was a dream. Not only that, but it worked reliably, just as I expect a sound system to function: don’t bother me with updates and configuration; I just want to listen to music. I had the Play:5 in my living room and the Play:3 in my bedroom.

In October 2013, I bought a Play:1 for my bathroom. The small speaker looked cute and stylish.

In June 2014, I bought a Sonos Playbar to connect to my TV, and I was amazed by the sound quality. While watching an episode of Friends, I could hear conversations in the background of the scene. It was the first time I experienced such excellent sound from a TV, as I had always relied on the built-in speakers.

In 2019, my first device, the Sonos Bridge, broke down and stopped working. I felt disappointed but thought, “Okay, it’s 7 years old; it was a great product.” I replaced it with a Sonos Boost and received an upgrade offer. However, in 2020, my Play:5 also failed, leaving me puzzled. Again, after just 7 years? The speakers from my childhood sound system still worked after 20 years, and that was a cheap €80 system with two cassette decks, a 3-CD player, and two speakers—not a device that cost over €500. I was skeptical and frustrated but received an upgrade offer for a Sonos Five for just €400. So, I accepted the upgrade. The box was fantastic and looked beautiful, so I ordered a second one that same month to use as a stereo pair. Later, I connected it to the Playbar to create a surround sound system. I was thrilled with the sound quality and the overall experience.

In May 2024, the company released a completely redesigned app that faced widespread criticism. The update, which Sonos claimed would provide “a new look and feel,” was plagued by bugs, missing features, and performance issues.

Sonos CEO Patrick Spence initially defended the redesign, controversially claiming it took “courage,” but the backlash continued to grow. By October 2024, the company announced steps to increase transparency and extend product warranties to regain customer trust. The controversy ultimately led to Spence’s resignation in January 2025.

The app performed poorly, so I primarily used Spotify’s device connection feature to play music on my speakers. However, I had started listening to podcasts, which reduced my music consumption, so I didn’t notice the pain too often. I continued using the Sonos system, but I was no longer satisfied with it. The app was slow and buggy, and the music didn’t start or stop immediately when I pressed the button.

In March 2025, the system suddenly stopped working and became unreachable. I followed all the advice in the documentation, watched YouTube videos, and tried everything I could: shut down the WLAN, disconnected all the speakers, restarted the router, and reconnected everything. I used Grok AI in voice mode to guide me through the troubleshooting steps. It helped me to factory reset each device and connect the boxes directly to my router with LAN cables to upgrade the firmware. It was a nightmare. I nearly had a nervous breakdown, and the process took over five hours. Finally, the system was working again.

This morning, I wanted to start my music for my sports session, but I received the error message again. I was so frustrated that I decided I would never buy or replace a Sonos product again. I’m done with it. I’ve had enough. I’m tired of the company, the app, and the products. I’m fed up with not being able to listen to music without worrying about how to make it work. I’m also tired of having to factory reset my devices every few months just to get them to function properly.

This time, I managed to get it running again by turning off my WLAN, restarting both my mobile devices, and reconnecting one of my speakers to the WLAN. I then waited 10 minutes for an update to install, which took only 1.5 hours total time to resolve the issue. However, Sonos has disappointed me one too many times. I’m done. I will now search for replacement products for music and a TV sound system. The next time a product breaks down, I’ll throw it in the garbage, where it belongs.

My 2025 Note-Taking System: Obsidian, Readwise, and AI

Sun, 16 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I have been using the Zettelkasten note-taking method for a few years, and Obsidian since its initial release in March 2020. I’ve written multiple articles about note-taking, including how I process information in various media using Obsidian and how I work with references. However, I have never written a complete essay on how I use Obsidian. My last essay on note-taking was three years ago, and a lot has changed since then. I thought it might be a good time to write a new one. I’ll include other tools besides Obsidian that I use to process information and to create notes.

Statistics

I currently have 5,220 notes and 241 assets (images, videos, PDFs), and I use the paid Obsidian Sync service. You can synchronize for free with cloud providers like iCloud, but the encrypted sync is reliable and fast and allows me to support the developers.

Layout

Obsidian allows you to configure the window layout to your liking; you can drag and drop panes and tools and set everything up how you prefer. It is possible to save and restore specific layouts with a core plugin.

I use stacked tabs (known as sliding panes). This allows me to have multiple notes open side by side and move them left and right with my mouse.

The Obsidian Layout

My left pane has files, search, and bookmarks in the upper section, with bookmarks open 90% of the time. Below this section, I use a calendar. This is new; I started with loose journaling in January 2025. I briefly note down important things—who I talked to, what we discussed, or what important things I learned or did that day. At the end of the left column, I have the Git community plugin pane to see and work with changed files.

The right pane starts with the local graph (1 level deep), followed by a pane with the outline that shows all the headlines as a list. The next pane is outgoing links, and the backlinks are next to it. Backlinks are visible at the end of each note, I don’t need that pane regularly. The last pane in this column is the tag’s pane.

I have had this layout for many years, nearly unchanged. I use numerous keyboard shortcuts to navigate around, jump to the search, or toggle the side panes.

File and Folder Structure

I use folders sparingly because they limit how you can work with files. I use them to separate files that are of different categories.

├── assets
├── canvas
├── clippings
├── data
├── drawings
├── journals
├── pages
├── references
└── templates

The assets folder contains all images, videos, and PDF files. The canvas folder is for my canvas. I use these a lot when I work on essays to structure my thoughts and notes. The clippings folder is quite new, and I use it with the Obsidian Web Clipper, which allows me to clip a complete website as a Markdown document. The drawings folder is reserved for Excalidraw documents. The journals folder holds my journal entries in subfolders by year, e.g., 2025, and with a note name of the day, e.g., 2025-01-31.md. My notes are all in the pages folder. The references folder holds only one document, my literature.bib file for BibDesk. It is my tool of choice to create unique database entries for sources. The last folder is for templates. I currently have six different templates, but more about that later.

Plugins

Obsidian has numerous built-in plugins that can be enabled on demand. However, the community provides over 2,000 additional plugins for every use case you can think of. It doesn’t make sense to list all the plugins I use, but the ones I use the most and find the most useful.

Core Plugins

Backlinks

The backlinks plugin shows all notes that link to the current note. This is a powerful feature to see how notes are connected and to find related notes. It is one of the core features of the Zettelkasten method. The note-taker should, during the process of writing a note, link to other notes that are related to the current note. This creates a network of notes that are connected and can be explored in different ways. The plugin can be configured to show the backlinks at the end of each note.

Bookmarks

The bookmarks are my most used pane in Obsidian. I rarely use anything besides the search or bookmarks. There is no need for me to use the file explorer because I can use the quick switcher or autocomplete inside a Wiki link. I group my bookmarks into categories like Important, Todo, Literature Notes, and a few others.

Canvas

Canvas is a newer plugin that allows users to create a canvas to structure thoughts and notes. It is a great tool for creating a mind map or a concept map. I use it to structure my essays and to create a visual representation of my thoughts.

Daily Notes

I started using this plugin on January 1st, 2025, and want to see if I can maintain the habit of journaling. I don’t write much, a few bullet points about things that happened that day. I started linking people’s names to be able to find all the days I spoke to them. I mention important things that happened that day.

Graph View

The Graph view is one of the coolest features to show to other people when introducing Obsidian. Many people think it does not have much use, but I like it. The graph shows how well my notes are connected to each other, an important part of the Zettelkasten method. I configured, in addition to the default colors for notes, non-existing notes, files, and tags, all notes with a special tag: MOC (maps of content). These are notes that hold nothing but links for a specific topic. I give all my journal notes a different color. The graph allows me to find connected notes and gain a graphical understanding of how things are connected.

Additionally, you can search for specific words and see how notes are connected. There is a cool feature that shows the history of your notes, how they were created and changed over time.

The Obsidian Graph View

I’m proud that my notes are well-connected. And yes, my Graph View looks like the Death Star, that’s a coincidence. When others share their graph view, it is often a mess of notes that are not connected or massive separated clusters connected with only a few connections. Connecting notes is one of my main tasks to create a useful Zettelkasten. When I’m finished with my notes, I always link important words in my notes and additionally search for notes that might relate to my note.

Random Note

I love the Random Notes plugin. Every day, I use it to open 5 random notes to read the content, improve the structure, or connect them to other notes.

Templates

I use the templates a lot to create predefined notes that have a specific format or type. I’ll show my templates later in this essay.

Unique Note Creator

Of the core plugins, I use this plugin every day multiple times. The unique note creator creates a note with a specific format and template. For me, this is the Zettelkasten format: YYYYMMDDHHmm. This allows me to create a new note without the need to think about the title. Later, after I finish my note, I rename it to a more meaningful title. I replaced all shortcuts and ways to create a new file to create a unique new file.

Community Plugins

Advanced Tables

It stinks to create tables in Markdown. The advanced tables plugin allows users to create tables with a graphical user interface. It is a great tool for creating tables quickly and without effort.

AI Image Analyzer

This fantastic plugin uses Ollama and a llava-llama LLM model to analyze images. It can describe the content of an image, detect objects, and even generate alt text for images. It is a great tool for analyzing images and gaining a deeper understanding of the content. It works together with the Omnisearch plugin and allows users to search all images for text.

Better Word Count

Better Word Count adds a feature I love from iA Writer: the option to show the word count, character count, and reading time in the status bar. It is a small feature, but I like it a lot.

Calendar

The calendar plugin is what you would expect—a simple calendar. It shows the week number and small dots for each day with a journal entry. You can create a journal entry by clicking on a day.

Callout Manager

I love Obsidian’s callout feature. Callouts are small boxes with a colored background and a small icon. The callout manager plugin allows you to create and manage callouts. I use them to summarize notes, highlight important information, or create a visual separation in a note.

Data View

The Dataview plugin is a powerful tool for querying and manipulating data in Obsidian. It allows users to create tables, lists, and other views of data. I use it to create lists of books, movies, links, people, or notes that are missing specific information, such as a date field.

Editor Syntax Highlight

This plugin is important for developers or anyone who writes notes with code examples. Using GitHub-flavored Markdown with code fences and the name of the programming or markup language, the plugin highlights the code in the note with color.

Git

I use the Git plugin every day multiple times and configured it to auto-commit every 30 minutes if new changes are present. Even though I use Obsidian Sync, I like to have a backup of my notes in a private Git repository. It has helped me a few times when I messed up something in my note vault.

GitHub Copilot

I have been using GitHub Copilot since it was first released as an Alpha version, paid for it myself, and currently, my employer pays for it. It is not only a valuable tool for generating code, but can help with generating text. I use the Obsidian GitHub Copilot plugin to create text for my notes and to accelerate my writing process.

HTML Tags Autocomplete

This plugin is a simple but helpful tool to autocomplete HTML tags. It is a small feature, but it saves time and makes writing HTML in Markdown easier. As a frontend developer, I use it a lot.

LanguageTool Integration

I’m a paying customer of LanguageTool and use it in Obsidian to check my notes for spelling and grammar mistakes. It is a great tool for improving the quality of my notes.

Link Embed

The link embed plugin is a great tool to embed links in a note. It shows a preview of the linked website, a small description, and the title. I use it a lot in my notes that are based on articles, podcasts, or videos to have a quick reminder of what the content was about.

Note Refactor

The Note Refactor plugin is my most used and loved plugin. It allows me to work on a big note and refactor it into smaller notes. I have a shortcut that I use multiple times every day to extract the currently highlighted text into a new note. It automatically creates a file name from the first line of the extracted text and links the new note to the original note. In the original file, it creates a list item with the Wiki link to the new note, and the new note links back to the old note.

Omnisearch

The Omnisearch plugin is a recent addition to my plugins. It allows searching with local AI models in all notes, images, and PDFs. It is great for a deep search in all my notes.

Paste URL into Selection

This plugin is a small but helpful tool for pasting a URL into the current selection. It is a minor feature, but it saves time and makes the process of adding links to notes easier.

Prettier Format

Prettier is a code formatter frontend developers use for nearly all their projects. It automatically formats various file types. I copy notes from other tools, for example, Raycast Notes into Obsidian, and the indentation might be different, which can mess up my notes. I use the Obsidian plugin to automatically format Markdown files in the same way.

Reading Time

The reading time plugin is a small but helpful tool to show the reading time of a note. It is a minor feature, but I like it a lot.

Simple Embeds

The Simple Embeds plugin is another embed plugin, but it provides several embeds, for example, YouTube videos, 𝕏 posts, Instagram posts, Reddit posts, and many more. It recognizes the pasted URL and automatically shows a preview of the content.

Templater

The Templater plugin is a powerful tool for creating templates for notes, but I use it in the most basic way. For example, I use it to automatically create links for the previous and next day in my journal notes. However, it has a powerful templating engine that allows for the creation of complex templates.

Update Time on Edit

I added this plugin recently to my setup, and it helps me cut down a lot of manual work for my notes. I use a created and updated field in my notes and had to update these manually until I found this plugin. It automatically sets the created field upon creating a new note and updates the updated field when I edit a note.

Templates

I use different templates for various types of notes. I currently have 6 different templates:

Note: A regular note
Daily Note: A note for my daily journal
Literature Note: A note to summarize a book, article, podcast, or video
Person: A note for a person
Book: A note for a book
Movie: A note for a movie

Note

My templates are similar, but each type has different specific fields. All my notes are in German, translated into examples for convenience. This is, for example, my basic note template:

---
type: Note
created:
updated:
aliases:
tags:
  - BOAT
urls:
related:
reference:
---

The created and updated fields exist in every note and are filled and updated automatically with the Update Time on Edit plugin.

The aliases field is a special type of field in Obsidian that allows linking to a note with a different name. It is one of the most useful features because it allows adding pluralization, alternative names, nicknames, acronyms, and more to a note while linking to the same filename. This ensures your notes don’t get messed up in case you rename the main note. I always use aliases, even if I use the same name for the Wiki link and the filename.

I use tags less now than when I started, and only for broad categories. The BOAT tag is a special tag I use for notes that have no incoming or outgoing links. The idea is taken from the LYT Kit and stands for “Block of Atomic Thought.” In general, you should avoid notes that have no links, but occasionally, you need to think about how to link them, or it is not possible to link them. Another tag I use is MOC for notes that are maps of content, notes that hold links to other notes, like a topic collection. I color these in a different color in the graph view. I use the 🔐 tag for notes that are private and should never be shared, and the ⭐ tag for notes that are important to me.

The urls, related, and reference fields are all lists. I use urls for external links and related for notes that are related to the current note. All internal items are Wiki links. The reference field is used to add BibDesk references for a note (if they exist).

Daily Note

---
type: Daily Note
created:
updated:
aliases:
tags:
  - Diary
urls:
related:
---

# <% moment(tp.file.title,'YYYY-MM-DD').locale('de').format("dddd, D. MMMM YYYY") %>

← [[journals/<% tp.date.now("YYYY", -1) %>/<% tp.date.now("YYYY-MM-DD", -1) %>|Yesterday]] | [[journals/<% tp.date.now("YYYY", 1) %>/<% tp.date.now("YYYY-MM-DD", 1) %>|Tomorrow]] →

---

- …

---

### Created today

```dataview
List FROM "" WHERE file.cday = date("<%tp.date.now('YYYY-MM-DD')%>") SORT file.ctime asc
```

### Changed today

```dataview
List FROM "" WHERE file.mday = date("<%tp.date.now('YYYY-MM-DD')%>") SORT file.mtime asc
```

I use template syntax for the daily note to create navigation and the Data View plugin to list all notes that were created or changed that day.

Literature Note

---
type: Literature Note
created:
updated:
aliases:
reference:
tags:
urls:
authors:
related:
---

## Summary

## Notes

The literature note is a special type of note. After I finish a book, article, or podcast of special importance, I take my time to write notes on each highlight I created in Readwise. I use many AI tools to help me with this process. More on that later in this essay. My general way of working is to copy all the highlights from Readwise into the Notes section and analyze and summarize them. Then I use the Note Refactor plugin to extract the notes into separate notes, leaving bullet points in the Notes section. In the last step, I use AI to create a summary of all the bullet points. The reference field links to the original source, and the authors field lists all authors of the source.

Person

---
type: Person
created:
updated:
aliases:
tags:
  - BOAT
  - Man
  - Woman
  - USA
urls:
birthday:
death:
location:
quotes:
books:
articles:
podcasts:
videos:
related:
---

The person note is used for people. I use tags to categorize the sex, country, and other categorizations. The birthday and death fields are date fields, and the location is for geo-coordinates. There is a Map View plugin that can show all notes with a location on a map. The quotes, books, articles, podcasts, and videos fields are lists for references to the person.

I start with famous people by using a Grokipedia intro, which I rewrite and shorten with AI, to have a brief introduction to the person. Subsequently, I write my thoughts and notes about the person.

Book

---
type: Book
created:
updated:
aliases:
reference:
tags:
  - BOAT
urls:
published:
authors:
genres:
rating:
pages:
---

The published field is a date-time field for the publication date. The authors field is a list of authors. The genres field is a list of genres. The rating field is a numeric field for my rating of the book. The pages field is a numeric field for the number of pages. I use the alias field for the full title, which sometimes includes a : that is not allowed in the filename or for alternative translations of the title.

Movie

---
type: Movie
created:
updated:
aliases:
reference:
tags:
  - BOAT
urls:
directors:
actors:
genres:
rating:
IMDb rating:
---

The directors, actors, and genres are all lists. The rating field is a numeric field for my rating of the movie. The IMDb rating field is a numeric field for the IMDb rating of the movie.

How I Work with Notes

My Obsidian vault of notes has become, in the last year, an extremely valuable tool because it is my one source of truth. All my notes will finally land here. I might use Raycast Notes for quick notes or drafts I’m working on, but when it’s a note that I want to preserve, I move it to Obsidian.

There are multiple ways for a note to make it to my vault. It might be something original that I have, but many of my notes start as the thoughts of somebody else. I read many books, articles, listen to podcasts, watch videos, and read 𝕏 posts. I use several tools to process this information and create notes. I’m not a Zettelkasten purist. I think even if you were to write out every thought by hand yourself, it is impossible to keep all the ideas in your head. The only important thing is that you understand the note you have written.

Using Readwise to Create Literature Notes

One of my most used tools as a base for notes is Readwise. Over the years, it has become one of my valuable tools. Readwise works as a hub to import notes from a huge number of input sources and allows exporting them into a wide variety of export formats, including Obsidian notes. You can use, for example, your Kindle to highlight passages that are then automatically exported to Readwise. You can use the Readwise browser extension to highlight directly on any website, or save any website into Readwise Reader to read and highlight it later. Readwise supports RSS feeds, can receive 𝕏 tweets and threads, audio transcripts from podcast services, and you can even watch YouTube videos while highlighting sections in the AI-improved transcript.

I use additionally other tools like Aiko or Whisper CCP to transcribe audio or video into text.

I export my highlights from Readwise to Obsidian once a week, but I keep them in a separate vault and copy over the notes that I want to work on in detail in my literature notes.

Readwise recently added the feature to talk to your highlights and notes with AI, allowing you to ask questions, get context for a highlight, and much more. This has made it an additional tool for me to create notes in Obsidian while talking to my highlights. The AI will provide structured answers to your questions and links to the highlights in your vault. I have dipped my toes into this feature, but I see giant potential in it. This feature has changed how I highlight from now on, because I know that anything I highlight will be part of the permanent AI brain in Readwise and can be accessed later by talking to the AI.

Readwise Chat

In the future, I’ll likely use this feature every day to get answers for my notes. The good thing is that, in contrast to regular AI, which uses a web search to find the first few articles for a question and uses those as context, in Readwise I know that all the highlights I marked before as important and worth remembering make the answer much more valuable. But with all content, you get out what you feed it. If you read and highlight shallow articles or view things only from one side, your AI answers will be shallow and biased.

With the introduction of the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open standard that facilitates seamless integration between large language models (LLMs) and external data sources and tools, it is now possible to use external tools to interact with my highlights. Last month, Readwise released an MCP, which I used to connect Raycast AI with their new MCP feature, allowing direct interaction with my highlights.

Raycast AI with Readwise MCP

Using AI for Research

There are many people who think AI is bad for writing because it might replace the writer. However, AI is a great tool to accelerate the writing process and improve the understanding of the notes. I don’t see an issue with using AI to help me cut down on the time this work takes. I always read, check, and understand the output of AI and correct it when it produces incorrect output.

I use all kinds of AI to summarize articles for me and to extract the gist of an idea. There is, for example, the built-in AI in my browser Brave, Leo AI, which uses either Claude 3 Haiku by Anthropic, Llama 3.1 8B, or Mixtral. You can also add local AI with Ollama and provide your prompts. Another useful browser extension is Perplexity.

Brave Leo AI

But my main tool are the AI models in Raycast Pro. I have subscribed to the biggest plan and use it every day. The advantage of Raycast is that you can use all the AI models for one fixed price of either €8 or €16 (for the bigger models) instead of subscribing to a dozen models. However, each model has its advantages and disadvantages, one model will likely not fulfill all your needs. Presently, Raycast supports the following providers with all their models: OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, Meta, Mistral, DeepSeek, Google, and xAI. There are many models to choose from: fast models, big models, models with knowledge about current events, models specialized in code, models that answer unbiasedly, or models that can reason. I wrote a whole article about Raycast.

Raycast AI: Summarize Website

Raycast provides a browser extension that allows access to any website and to ask questions about the content or code. AI models allow others to add files, PDFs, URLs, or images. Some can generate images.

Using AI to Create Literature Notes in Obsidian

To illustrate how I work with AI on literature notes, I’ll provide an example of a book I read recently and how I created notes for it. I recently finished the book Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein. I was inspired by a documentary about the book to dive deeper into the politics and ideas of the book—which are not Fascist—as the director of the movie never read the book and misunderstood it.

One of the quotes I highlighted on my Kindle, which was transferred to Readwise and exported to Obsidian, was this quote:

As it is, with some of you, I pity the poverty of your wealth. You! I’ve just awarded you the prize for the hundred-meter dash. Does it make you happy?“

„Uh, I suppose it would.“ „No dodging, please. You have the prize—here, I’ll write it out:

‚Grand prize for the championship, one hundred-meter sprint.’ „He had actually come back to my seat and pinned it on my chest. „There! Are you happy? You value it—or don’t you?“

I was sore. First that dirty crack about rich kids—a typical sneer of those who haven’t got it – and now this farce. I ripped it off and chucked it at him.

Mr. Dubois had looked surprised. „It doesn’t make you happy?“ „You know darn well I placed fourth!“

„Exactly! The prize for first place is worthless to you … because you haven’t earned it. But you enjoy a modest satisfaction in placing fourth; you earned it. I trust that some of the somnambulists here understood this little morality play.

This is a scene from school where the protagonist listens to his school teacher. In this scene, Heinlein uses the teacher, Mr. Dubois, to explain his philosophy in the same way Ayn Rand used “Atlas Shrugged” to explain her philosophy, Objectivism.

I highlight the quote and use my most important Raycast AI command, TL;DR, to summarize it.

Raycast AI: TL;DR

My AI Command uses this prompt:

Extract all facts from the text and summarize all relevant aspects in up to 7 bullet points and a 1-liner summary. Pick a good matching emoji for every bullet point. Don’t use the same emoji twice.

Use:
- Active voice
- Direct statements
- No phrases like "the text discusses" or "the article explains"
- Present tense
- Focus on the core message and actions
- Emoji at the beginning of the bullet point

Example transformation for the summary:
Instead of:
The text criticizes the discrepancy between political ideologies and highlights challenges...

Write as:
Political ideologies clash fundamentally, creating tension between individual freedom and state control.

Text: {selection}

The AI will analyze the text and provide a summary like this:

- 🏆 The protagonist receives an award for the 100-meter dash.
- 😕 The protagonist expresses uncertainty about his joy at receiving the award.
- 🎭 The conversation reveals tension between the protagonist and Mr. Dubois, highlighting feelings of bitterness.
- 🥇 Mr. Dubois emphasizes that the value of an award depends on the effort one puts into earning it.
- 📉 The protagonist finishes in fourth place, which he considers more meaningful than receiving a first place award.
- 🤔 The situation serves as a morality play about the importance of personal achievement over undeserved accolades.

Summary: A conversation about a sprint award provides an example for the conflict between the value of earned success and unearned awards.

The AI helped me summarize the gist of the quote. So when I come back to this note later, I can easily scan the bullet list with emojis and refresh my memory. However, I still need to do some manual work, which is to extract the gist of the quote into a note title that I want to remember:

A prize acquired without merit is worthless.

This is the title of my note. I start with an Obsidian callout with the summary, followed by my notes and the bullet list summary. I keep the quote as a reference at the end of the note.

The next part is the most important part. I need to place the note in context and find similar notes. In this case, I would search for words like merit, success, or value.

I link matching notes either without a comment in the header or with a comment in the note, depending on the importance of the connection.

Conclusion

As you have seen, there is nothing magical about my note-taking process. I use various tools to process information and create notes. I use AI to accelerate the process and improve the quality of my notes. I use Obsidian as my main tool to store and work with my notes. I have several plugins that help me create and manage my notes. I have a collection of templates for different types of notes. I use the Graph View to see how well my notes are connected. I use the Bookmarks pane to quickly access my used notes. Additionally, I connect my notes and use titles that summarize an idea. If you follow a process like this, your second brain will become a valuable tool for storing and processing information. Most importantly, it will help you see connections between ideas and create new ones.

Beyond the Bookshelf: My Reading Journey of 2024

Fri, 27 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT

format, genres, books, pages, options, } from "../../../data/journal/beyond-the-bookshelf-2.ts";

In the previous article, we explored the transformative power of reading in our digital age, discussing how to build a meaningful reading practice through home libraries, effective reading techniques, and the integration of various reading formats. We learned that successful reading habits don't require dramatic lifestyle changes, but rather consistent, small efforts.

Putting these principles into practice, I read 66 books with a total of 24,602 pages in 2024, more books than I've ever read in my life. This achievement wasn't about racing through pages, but about creating sustainable habits that allowed for deep, meaningful engagement with diverse literature.

This essay offers insights into some of the books I've read and what I've learned. It also provides additional resources, such as videos, TV shows, and articles, for further exploration. To view the complete list of books I've read, please visit my Goodreads 2024 Reading Challenge.

Reading Statistics

Books

Pages

Formats

Genres (multiple per book)

Fiction

The Foundation Series

I started the year by reading the last three books of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. I read Foundation in German when I was a child, but in 2023, I decided to read all the books in the order recommended by the author. I began with “I, Robot” from the Robot series, then moved on to the Empire series, and finished with the Foundation series.

It remains one of the best science fiction series, despite inconsistencies and weaker books. The story is fantastic, spanning thousands of years with two consistently appearing characters. If you first want to know if you like the story, you can start with the [] Apple TV+ show that was released in 2021. While it took many liberties and made unnecessary gender and race changes, I found it entertaining.

Cloud Atlas

I have watched the movie Cloud Atlas multiple times and have always liked it, even though the story is complicated and strange. This year, I decided to read the book, and I found that the story is similar to the movie; some chapters are nearly word-for-word from the book. However, the narrative structure differs. While the movie presents the stories in order and then quickly switches between them at the end, the book is structured like a pyramid, starting with the first story, moving to the fifth, and then going backward.

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

I first saw the 2005 movie and am aware of the cult-like following of the book and the memes surrounding the number 42. However, I had never read the book before and wanted to give it a try. The book is fine, but it’s not my favorite, and its humor doesn’t quite resonate with me.

Ted Chiang’s Short Stories

Somewhere, I heard Tim Ferriss recommend the short stories of Ted Chiang, so I decided to read them without any prior knowledge. Both books are collections of short stories. “Stories of Your Life and Others” includes two stories that left a lasting impression on me: “Tower of Babel” and “Story of Your Life.” As I read the second story, I realized I was familiar with it and discovered that the movie Arrival (2016) is based on this story, with the script co-written by Ted Chiang.

Libertarianism and Economics

I have always scored as Libertarian on the Political Compass test, but I wasn’t knowledgeable about the political movement. However, several events in the last years sparked my interest in exploring it further. First, the authoritarian measures during the COVID-19 pandemic made me more anti-state and libertarian than I was before, and I’m not the only person. Many people who endured lockdowns, social exclusion, and propaganda have taken the red pill and will never trust the web of lies spun by our politicians again. Ever. Klaus Schwab and the media are really scared of the Libertarian movement, that wants to tear down their authoritarian control of governments into private life.

Javier Milei

Multiple interesting events occurred in 2024 for Libertarianism. Javier Milei took office in Argentina as the first anarcho-capitalist president, bringing libertarianism into public consciousness with Minarchist policies. He used the chainsaw, his ‘Afuera’ aproach, and his strong opposition to statism and socialism to dismantle nearly 100 years of central planning, corruption, and hyperinflation, aiming to liberate the markets from regulation. The left-wing media attempted to discredit him as a nut job and a far-right Nazi, but his achievements are noteworthy. By the end of 2024, Argentina experienced 8 percent more economic growth than Germany.

Renato Moicano

The second interesting aspect was the Brazilian mixed martial artist Renato Moicano. After winning a match in April 2024, he yelled into the microphone, “Read Ludwig von Mises, motherf**kers!”[^Durden2024aa] This caused a significant spike in Google searches for Ludwig von Mises.

In September 2024, during his victory speech, he insulted Macron and “all the totalitarian globalists,”[^Bishop2024aa] urging people to read Hans-Hermann Hoppe, another prominent libertarian writer. This also led to a substantial increase in Google searches for Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Thus, my libertarian reading journey of 2024 began.

Ludwig von Mises

I began with a free audiobook, a biography of Ludwig von Mises by Thorsten Polleit titled Ludwig von Mises: Der kompromisslose Liberale. It was fascinating to learn about Mises, one of the most significant economists in history.

I read [M] Liberty and Property, [M] The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, [M] Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow, [M] Ludwig von Mises on Money and Inflation: A Synthesis of Several Lectures, [M] Bureaucracy, [M] The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, and his masterpiece, [M] Human Action: Scholar’s Edition. The scholar’s edition of this book was quite complex. I attempted to read it halfway through, then restarted and combined the audiobook with the e-book for better understanding. It is a dense and advanced economic text. You can get many of these books for free at the Mises Institute.

Murray Rothbard

I began reading books by Murray Rothbard, the founder of modern libertarianism, and a student of Ludwig von Mises. I started with his shortest work, [M] Anatomy of the State, which takes about an hour to read. This book is essential; everyone should read it. A free German audio version is available.

Next, I followed the recommended Libertarian books from the Mises Institute and read [M] The Progressive Era. Although this book is much longer, it is fascinating. It offers detailed insights into the history of the USA from the 1890s to the 1920s, a period when the laissez-faire state transformed into a welfare state. I believe this was the book I learned the most from in 2024. I now understand where Ayn Rand drew her ideas for her book Atlas Shrugged.

I read [M] What Has Government Done to Our Money? and The Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar, [M] Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure, [M] Education: Free and Compulsory, and his most famous work, the libertarian bible: [M] For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto. I learned a great deal from all these books, but the last one became my favorite. It addresses common questions people raise when Libertarians propose a stateless society, such as: Who will build the streets? What about police, firemen, and infrastructure? Rothbard offers logical answers to these concerns. Before reading Rothbard, I considered myself a Minarchist, but his arguments prompted me to explore more radical ideas like anarcho-capitalism.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe

If you read Rothbard, you’ll inevitably encounter Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a German libertarian and one of Rothbard’s students. His ideas are even more radical and intriguing. They were too extreme for the USA, so he now resides in Turkey. I started with his most famous book, [M] Getting Libertarianism Right, which presents fascinating and radical concepts. A free German audio version is available. Next, I read [M] Democracy: The God That Failed, which is equally radical and also available as a free audiobook. Hoppe has given many lectures in English and German, which you can find on the Mises Institute’s channel or by searching for his name on YouTube.

Leonard Read

I also read a book from Leonard Read, the founder of the Foundation of Economic Education (FEE): [M] Anything That’s Peaceful: The Case for the Free Market. I knew Read before from reading his world-famous book, [M] I, Pencil, which shows that no one person can produce a pencil on his own, but thousands of people and industries around the globe are necessary to produce something as simple as a pencil. Both books are available for free.

I discovered FEE years ago when they released a fantastic video series on their YouTube channel called Out of Frame. The show ran for over five years and produced 70 engaging videos that explain economics, liberty, and libertarian values through examples from TV shows, movies, books, and comics. If you want to cut back on your streaming services and need something interesting to watch, I highly recommend this free series, it’s super entertaining!

Other Books

I read [M] How to Think about the Economy: A Primer by Per Bylund, which was recommended by the Mises Institute. It’s a good book for beginners to start learning about economics.

Additionally, I read [M] A Free-Market Monetary System and The Pretense of Knowledge by Friedrich A. Hayek, as well as [M] Against the Left: A Rothbardian Libertarianism by Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.

Tuttle Twins

While researching Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, I came across a children’s book series by Connor Boyack and Elijah Stanfield called The Tuttle Twins. I was intrigued to find children’s books featuring humorous cartoons that explain the topics of economics and liberty. Out of curiosity, I ordered The Tuttle Twins and the Search for Atlas. It presents the story of Atlas Shrugged in a simplified manner for children. I found out that of the 14 books, 12 are also available in German, so I ordered one for my 10-year-old nephew.

I ordered more for myself out of curiosity: The Tuttle Twins and the Road to Surfdom (based on The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek), The Tuttle Twins and the Fate of the Future (inspired by The Anatomy of the State by Murray Rothbard), The Tuttle Twins and the Messed Up Market (based on Human Action by Ludwig von Mises), and The Tuttle Twins and the 12 Rules Boot Camp (inspired by 12 Rules for Life by Jordan B. Peterson).

These books are humorous and recommended for ages 5 to 11. They also offer many titles for children aged 12 and up, covering topics like logical fallacies, biases, entrepreneurs, heroes, villains, conspiracies, hyperinflation, and more. Additionally, they provide books for toddlers, as well as iPad apps, cartoons, graphic novels, audiobooks, and translations in 13 languages.

They even have a Tuttle Twins TV show with two seasons, along with a YouTube channel and Instagram accounts (Tuttle Twins, Tuttle Twins TV).

The Vampire Economy & Killing History

These days, political discourse is so embarrassing, as many people show their ignorance by throwing around insults like “fascist” or “Nazi” without even knowing what those terms mean. TIKhistory is one of my favorite YouTube history channels that creates videos about these topics. He is a British YouTuber who has read an incredible amount of primary sources on these topics and can explain the ideologies in simple terms so that people understand the differences.

He created a five-hour video titled Hitler’s Socialism: Destroying the Denialist Counter Arguments, which argues that National Socialism was a form of socialism. He also produced a shorter, condensed version lasting 40 minutes called Hitler’s Socialism: The Evidence is Overwhelming. Additionally, he made an engaging video that compares national socialism, Italian fascism, and British fascism, titled Comparing the Ideologies of Hitler, Mussolini, and Mosley. Another noteworthy video highlights the differences between National Socialism and Fascism, called Fascism Defined: The Difference Between Fascism and National Socialism. His playlist on National Socialist ideology, politics, and economics currently contains 47 videos.

He recommended two intriguing books that I read in 2024: The Vampire Economy: Doing Business Under Fascism by Günter Reimann and Killing History: The False Left-Right Political Spectrum and the Battle between the ’Free Left‘ and the ’Statist Left‘ by L. K. Samuels. The first book was particularly engaging because it uses letters and other primary sources to illustrate how the National Socialists took control of Germany’s industries.

The second book detailed how various socialist ideologies—such as socialism, national socialism, fascism, Leninism, Marxism, and Trotskyism—belong on the same side of the Left/Right spectrum. While some are positioned slightly more to the right than others, they are all fundamentally opposed to libertarian and liberal ideas. The author meticulously demonstrates that leaders such as Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky, and Mussolini viewed themselves and were perceived by the world as Left. However, Marxists have rewritten history to distance themselves from the crimes associated with 20th-century socialist ideas, aiming to preserve their utopian vision. To be historically accurate, these ideologies are, in fact, all Right in the original context of how the French National Assembly was seated.

After watching the videos and reading the books, you will be able to counter Marxist propaganda, such as claims that Hitler was a fascist or that he wasn’t a socialist.

Ideologies

This year, I decided to explore various books on ideologies, as they seem to be resurfacing as if the 20th century never occurred.

Thomas Sowell

In 2024, I read two books by Thomas Sowell: Basic Economics (belongs in the economics section above) and The Quest for Cosmic Justice. These were the last two on my reading list. In 2023, I had read a significant number of Sowell’s books the years before. Basic Economics is a fantastic and accessible introduction to economics. It is detailed without being overly complicated.

The Road to Serfdom

I read Friedrich A. Hayek’s book [M] The Road to Serfdom, written between 1940 and 1943. In it, he warns of the danger of tyranny that inevitably arises from government control of economic decision-making through central planning. There is even a cartoon version available for free at the Mises Institute.

Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis

In 2023, I attempted to read Ludwig von Mises’ book [M] Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, which has a foreword by Hayek, but I found it a bit too challenging at the time. However, this year I finally finished it. I also read [M] Marxism Unmasked: From Delusion to Destruction by Mises. Both books effectively dismantle the socialist economic model.

Der Todestrieb in der Geschichte: Erscheinungsformen des Sozialismus

The German economist Markus Krall recommended a fantastic book by a Russian dissident that explores socialist ideologies throughout history, long before the term “socialism” was coined. Der Todestrieb in der Geschichte: Erscheinungsformen des Sozialismus (The Death Drive in History: Manifestations of Socialism) is a captivating history book that examines socialist ideas from antiquity and around the world, highlighting their devastating consequences.

Kreide für den Wolf

The second book recommended by Krall, who wrote the foreword, was even better and became one of my favorites of the year: Kreide für den Wolf (Chalk for the Wolf) by Roland Baader. His writing style is clear, direct, and harsh, which I greatly appreciated. He predicted that the fall of the Berlin Wall would not mark “The End of History” (as Fukuyama suggested) but rather the return of socialism, a trend we are witnessing today with increasing intensity within the European Union. I’ll dive into more of Baader’s books next year.

Dystopian Books

There are several dystopian books that everyone should read at least once in their life: 1984, Brave New World, Animal Farm, and Fahrenheit 451.

These works serve as warnings about political patterns that unfortunately resurface in our times. In Germany, this situation has an ironic twist. The Minister of Economy and Ecology, Robert Habeck, recently wrote the foreword for the German version of 1984. He is a member of the eco-socialist Green Party that introduced many dystopian laws and prohibitions in the last 3 years. They are also main reason for the rapid decline of Germany’s industry. It is particularly striking that he does not recognize that the ruling party in 1984, called INGSOC, stands for “English Socialism.” I must be cautious with my words, as he has already sued over 800 people for insulting his intelligence or competence in 2024. One persons house was raided by the police at 6 AM for posting the 💩 emoji on 𝕏 to the minister. So every German knows now who is talked about when someone says the word “Schwachkopf” (idiot). Streisand effect 😅

Animal Farm

I had never read Animal Farm, but I was familiar with the basic story of how a socialist farm of animals gradually turns fascist, leading to the murder of animals and actions typical of totalitarian regimes. However, I wanted to understand it better, which is why I finally decided to read it. It’s a book that every child should read.

Fahrenheit 451

I have now read all the dystopian novels mentioned above, and Fahrenheit 451 impressed me the most. Its language is poetic, and even though it is a dystopia, there is a glimmer of hope.

Biography

Hillbilly Elegy

I watched [Netflix] Hillbilly Elegy on Netflix in 2020. I became aware of the movie because many critical articles about it were published by the left-leaning press. They seem to disdain the poor white communities in Appalachia because the existence of poor white people challenge their narrative of systemic racism and shows that poverty often arises from economic circumstances and poor life choices rather than racism. The film shows the hard life of growing up in Appalachia, with drug abuse and poverty everywhere. I remember the movie was well-made and going down a rabbit hole into Appalachia after watching it.

I discovered the YouTube channel Soft White Underbelly by Mark Laita, which features interviews and portraits that explore the human condition. The channel presents heartbreaking stories filmed in black and white, covering topics such as drug abuse, prostitution, addiction, war, poverty, life, and love. One particularly shocking story is about the Whittaker’s, an inbred family from Appalachia.

I also found a fascinating 13-part documentary about Appalachia by Peter Santenello.

This year, when I heard that J.D. Vance was running for Vice President alongside Donald Trump, I couldn’t believe that this J.D. Vance was the same person from the movie. I decided to read his biography, also titled Hillbilly Elegy, which is a fantastic book.

Classics

Edgar Allan Poe

I watched the TV show [Netflix] The Fall of the House of Usher on Netflix in 2023 and thought it was one of the best shows of the year. I learned that the series is loosely based on several stories by Edgar Allan Poe. I decided to read a collection of his stories, but it wasn’t my cup of tea. However, the TV show is a must-see.

The Brothers Karamazov

Another book I had wanted to read for more than 15 years was The Brothers Karamazov. It’s a good, lengthy book, but definitely not an easy read.

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

The longest book I’ve ever read, and probably the longest I will ever read, is The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. I always wanted to read it, but the sheer number of pages intimidated me. Although it is nearly 250 years old and has its flaws, it remains impressive for those interested in history.

From the book, I remember mostly that humans are murderous, sociopathic, and power-hungry. It details the killings of entire families and cities, including gruesome acts like skinning, ripping out nails, and cutting off noses and ears. It’s one murderous psychopath after another killing the previous one and his entire family, only to be killed along with his family by the next usurper, and so on. The cycle of murder, rape, pillaging, revenge, and atrocities continues for 1,500 years.

But I still recommend reading it because you can’t understand the present without understanding the past.

If you’re interested in history, I recommend two podcasts: Hardcore History® by Dan Carlin, which features hour-long episodes on ancient and more recent history, all presented in an engaging manner. Another impressive show is the Fall of Civilization podcast, which currently has 18 episodes exploring the decline of various high civilizations.

Comics

Lone Wolf and Cub

Lone Wolf and Cub (子連れ狼, Kozure Ōkami), is a brilliant manga by Kazuo Koike and with the visuals of Goseki Kojima first published in 1970. I have seen the many movies and TV shows in my teenage years and was always fascinated by the epic samurai adventure.

The lonely Rōnin and his young son in a wooden stroller with squeaky wheels have achieved cult status. Even Adult Swim, the studio behind Rick and Morty, created a two-part homage titled Lone Wolf and Cub: Samurai & Shogun (Part 1) and Samurai & Shogun (Part 2).

Additionally, a fan produced a shot-by-shot comparison.

When a high-quality Master Edition was announced in 2022, I decided to buy it. It consists of 12 impressive volumes, each nearly 700 pages long. The final volume will be released in 2025.

Blame

The last manga series I started in 2024 was Blame! by Tsutomu Nihei, who is also the creative mind behind the sci-fi anime Knights of Sidonia. I first heard about Blame! in 2017 from PewDiePie.

In 2024, Dami Lee, one of my favorite architecture YouTube channels, made a video titled This Manga Took Me to a Strange Place, focusing on the architecture in Blame!. This inspired me to buy the manga.

Blame! is a six-part cyberpunk manga set in a bizarre, futuristic megastructure with unusual architecture. It has a dark and grim tone, featuring almost no dialogue. It is a pure work of art to appreciate. Additionally, there is a compelling 30-minute documentary titled Unraveling Blame! that explores the manga in greater depth. And Netflix has an anime adaptation of [Netflix] Blame!.

Conclusion

In 2024, my reading journey took me through an expansive landscape of literature, from classic dystopian novels and epic manga series to profound economic and libertarian works. The books I consumed not only broadened my understanding of various subjects but challenged my existing perspectives, particularly in areas of economics, political philosophy, and societal structures. The diverse mix of fiction and non-fiction, ranging from Asimov’s Foundation series to the works of Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard, created a rich tapestry of knowledge and insight.

What stands out from this year’s reading is how historical works continue to illuminate our present circumstances. Gibbon’s extensive examination of Rome’s decline, the prescient warnings in dystopian classics like Fahrenheit 451, and the economic analyses of Austrian School thinkers all demonstrate that the challenges and patterns of human society repeat themselves. As we navigate an increasingly complex world, the wisdom found in these pages becomes ever more relevant. It reminds us that understanding the past and its lessons is crucial for shaping our future.

[^Durden2024aa]: Tyler Durden (2024): "Read Ludwig von Mises, Motherf**kers!" - Brazilian UFC Fighter's Victory Speech Pumps Austrian Economics.

[^Bishop2024aa]: Tho Bishop (2024): Underdog Moicano Wins UFC Fight, Bashes Macron in France, Promotes Hoppe.

Beyond the Bookshelf: Rediscovering the Magic of Reading in a Digital Age

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I enjoy reading books. My earliest childhood memories are connected to them. I remember lying on the carpet in my parents’ living room, looking at the pictures in a book about the Seven Wonders of the World and the illustrations in John Seymour’s books on self-sufficiency.

There must be something in books, things we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.
— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

The City Library

When I was a child, every Saturday, our family followed the same routine. We drove into the city, parked at my grandmother’s flat, and then visited the farmers’ market. While my parents bought meat, eggs, and vegetables, I was dropped off at the nearby city library, the Alvar Aalto Cultural Center.

Alvar Aalto, a renowned Finnish architect, emphasized the importance of even indirect light in his designs. This approach minimized distracting shadows on open books, papers, and other surfaces while preventing harsh reflections from bright lights in the viewer’s eyes.[^Lee2022aa]

Every so often, I would sit there for an hour until the whole family finished shopping in the city. The library had a special children’s section filled with comics and children’s books. It was here that I first read the adventures of Tintin, Nick Knatterton, Dick Tracy, and Prince Valiant.

I remember the main library with its beautiful lighting, the room filled with index cards for locating books, and the large, hidden library in the cellar that few visitors knew existed. There was a special room for magazines that housed expensive collector’s editions, such as The Japanese Architect, stored in designated folders.

My Grandfather and His Books

Another memory related to books is of my grandfather. In his large house, he had a dedicated room with five-meter high ceilings, huge glass windows overlooking the garden and the living room below, a fireplace, a leather massage chair, and over 4,000 books. Every day after lunch, he would retreat to his library for a “nap,” which was his way of saying, “Do not disturb me while I recharge and read.” He would close the curtains and be gone for an hour. Many of his thousands of books were about World War II, in which he fought as a young man and was wounded near Stalingrad. I think the books were his way of coping with the trauma of losing friends in the war.

Once, I found a book in his library about the secret initiations of the Illuminati. My grandfather told me he had saved it when his unit was ordered to burn all the books from a house where the owner had just died. While emptying the shelves for the National Socialist book burning, he discovered the book and hid it beneath his shirt, risking his life in the process. He couldn’t bear to watch books being burned. It must be his book-loving genes that were passed down to me.

The Joy of Reading

If you don’t enjoy reading, let me persuade you to start this habit in the following sections. You are missing out on many advantages that reading offers.

Anyone that reads, does not forget.

Everyone has their reasons for reading. Some are curious to learn about times long gone, while others seek entertainment or engagement. Reading can help people relax and reduce stress, slow down time, or explore the lives of others. As Joffrey Jans says in his short film, It’s through the stories of others that we experience ourselves.

The Importance of Reading Books

Ryan Holiday states that reading is a moral duty; to understand the present and future, you must learn about the past. To be an informed citizen, don’t just read the news—read books. Don’t settle for the basics; delve deeper. Reading is a conversation with the dead. You can learn from others without having to repeat the mistakes they made and find solutions to problems they have already solved.[^Holiday2021aa]

A person who does not read good books has no advantage over a person who cannot read.
Mark Twain

Reading enhances your thinking and writing abilities. The more books you read, the more connections you create in your brain between seemingly unrelated concepts. Paul Graham states that you must be good at reading and read good things to think effectively. He emphasizes, You can’t think well without writing well, and you can’t write well without reading well.[^Graham2022aa]

A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man’s mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?
— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

People who read have more topics to discuss, engage in lively conversations, think critically, and are generally more interesting.

Shallow Reading

In her article The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books in The Atlantic, Rose Horowitch discusses a new phenomenon that has emerged with the rise of social media, particularly short formats like TikTok. This has led to students struggling to read books.[^Horowitch2024aa]

But not only the short attention span of videos reduces the capacity of people to read, the internet itself and its short texts encourage shallow reading by skimming the text.

Maryanne Wolf states in her article Skim Reading Is the New Normal: The Effect on Society Is Profound in The Guardian that reading is crucial for developing various skills, including concentration, attention span, patience, empathy, critical analysis, and wisdom. People who don’t read are more susceptible to misinformation and manipulation by demagogues. She mentions several scientific papers that investigate how reading paper books is significantly better for understanding and recalling the chronological order of actions. The tactile experience of paper enhances haptic memory. In contrast, reading on digital devices and skimming can lead to decreased comprehension of text complexity, emotional depth, and appreciation of beauty. Significant negative effects have been observed in children starting in grades 4 and 5.[^Wolf2018aa]

The misconception that these skills will not be needed in the future may exclude people from the benefits of upcoming developments in AI. Anjney Midha, a notable figure in the technology and venture capital sectors, recently wrote on 𝕏:

One the saddest realizations for me when we were scaling the @midjourney server at @discord in ‘22 was seeing millions of US gen z kids struggle to prompt.

They literally don’t have the words. Broken english. Pidgin lingo. Translating thought to language is insanely hard for them.

— Anjney Midha

Those who are unable to use words will be excluded from the benefits of AI. I noticed this when I began using AI image generation tools like Stable Diffusion and later FLUX. Friends and coworkers I shared my work with felt disappointed with their results, even when using the same tools. They assumed I had secrets for creating good images, but my prompting skills came from using clear, descriptive language to convey the desired image.

We move closer to the dystopian predictions of the 20th century, as Neil Postman writes:[^Wolf2018aa]

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.
— Neil Postman

Owning Books

Even though I have embraced the digital age and read e-books, a physical library of books holds a special charm. It may impress visitors, but that’s not the main point. A library fills a room with life and warmth, capturing the eye during moments of deep thought. I have read nearly all my 700 physical books, and I love the concept of an Antilibrary.[^Marshall2022aa]

Umberto Eco owned a library with over 50,000 books. For him, the library was not a tool for ego-boosting, but a resource for research. As Dami Lee states in her video essay, books in his library had an aura. […] He mentioned that as he roamed around his library, he would often stumble across a book. When he read it, that book magically contained vital information for his research.[^Lee2022ab]

If my living space were larger, I would build my own Antilibrary and have many more books. However, I have reached the physical limits of my current space. When I want to buy new physical books, I must remove old ones to make room, which is difficult for me. Therefore, I try to buy only beautiful and well-designed physical books, while opting for e-books for everything else.

How to Read More Books

I tumbled upon a fantastic documentary about how to read more books by Max Joseph. He embarks on a journey to visit beautiful book stores around Europe and Southern America and to talk to specialists to help him read more books.

The first person he spoke to was Tim Urban, an entrepreneur, TED speaker, author, and the creator of the blog Wait But Why. He first asked Max how many books he reads in a year and then tested his reading speed. Max told him he reads one book per year, which, based on his reading speed, amounts to 1.64 minutes of reading each day. This would allow him to read an estimated 55 books by the end of his life. However, if he increased his reading time to 30 minutes per day, he could reach 1,000 books.

Listening to an audiobook while making coffee in the morning would be sufficient to meet the daily goal. Reading for 2 hours on a Saturday would allow him to reach 4/7 of his week.

Max reads 20 minutes of news per day and 30 minutes of social media, which amounts to 304 hours per year, the equivalent of 30 books.

Next, Max visited Eric Barker, the author of the popular blog Barking Up The Wrong Tree. He reads 50 to 100 books a year to be able to write his blog posts. One of his secrets is to not use social media and instead redirect the urge to distract himself to the Kindle app. His approach is based on a technique from habit psychology: minimal viable effort. Take the smallest possible step toward your goal. Start by reading just one page. If you can maintain this goal, gradually increase it over time.

This is how willpower becomes a habit: by choosing a certain behavior ahead of time, and then following that routine when an inflection point arrives.
— Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit

Reading is a habit. The difference between a reader of 55 books and one of 1,000 books lies in having the right habits. Consistency and minimizing bad habits enable you to read more books.

I decided to expand my reading habits. For years, I looked down on e-books until a co-worker convinced me to try a Kindle. Reading paper books had felt like a snobbish way to elevate myself, but once I moved past that mindset, I found e-books to be fantastic. E-Books make highlighting easy, and by using a service like Readwise, you can synchronize your highlights and revisit them or take notes. A few years after I started reading e-books, I developed the habit of writing literature notes in my note-taking app, Obsidian.

The same applies to audiobooks. I had always considered people who listen to audiobooks as not being authentic readers. However, if someone like Joe Rogan, who hosts the most popular podcast in the world, runs a comedy club, writes stand-up material, and comments on UFC fights can find time to read books through audiobooks, I thought I should give it a try.

In 2023, I subscribed to Audible and began listening to one additional book each month included with the subscription. I initially chose novels as audiobooks because I seldom create highlights on them, which lets me enjoy the story.

However, after discovering the Whisper sync feature in Kindle—a function that allows you to read and listen to the same book if you own both versions—I found it to be a game changer. I started reading and listening to more complex books in parallel. This feature enabled me to listen to a book while walking and then continue reading while sitting on the sofa.

Additionally, I have been using Readwise Reader more frequently because of its excellent support for e-books. It offers the best highlighting feature among all the apps. For example, you can double-tap a paragraph to highlight it, eliminating the need to drag a cursor across the words. Readwise supports fantastic AI-generated voices in many languages and can read any article or e-book. I use it to highlight and follow along with YouTube videos using its AI-supported transcript feature.

To increase my reading, I reduced my podcast consumption and became more selective about the episodes I listen to. I also cut back on streaming services, which was easy since the writers’ strike led to fewer quality TV shows being released in 2024. Many shows still promote woke ideology and have poor ratings, making them not worth my time.

Conclusion

Reading is a vital skill and an enriching habit in our digital age, offering benefits that go beyond mere entertainment. As we've explored, from the personal sanctuaries of home libraries to the reasons for reading and owning books, as well as techniques for reading more, books have the power to shape our minds, enhance our thinking, and connect us across generations. The challenges posed by modern technology—such as shortened attention spans and shallow reading habits—make it more important than ever to cultivate meaningful reading practices.

The path to reading more books lies not in dramatic lifestyle changes but in small, consistent habits and embracing various formats. Whether through traditional paper books, e-books, or audiobooks, the key is finding methods that work for your lifestyle while maintaining the depth and quality of engagement. By implementing strategies like minimal viable effort, reducing digital distractions, and utilizing tools like Whisper sync or Readwise, I was able to read 66 books totaling 24,602 pages in 2024. This journey demonstrates that with the right approach and tools, anyone can significantly expand their reading horizons while maintaining the deep, meaningful connection with literature that has enriched human lives for centuries.

[^Lee2022aa]: Dami Lee (2022): How slow reading can change your brain.

[^Holiday2021aa]: Ryan Holiday (2021): How To Read More Like Ryan Holiday.

[^Graham2022aa]: Paul Graham (2022): The Need to Read.

[^Horowitch2024aa]: Rose Horowitch (2024): The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books.

[^Wolf2018aa]: Maryanne Wolf (2018): Skim reading is the new normal. The effect on society is profound.

[^Marshall2022aa]: Colin Marshall (2022): The Virtue of Owning Books You Haven’t Read: Why Umberto Eco Kept an “Antilibrary”.

[^Lee2022ab]: Dami Lee (2022): This makes everything special (Aura).

Raycast: The Must-Have Productivity App for macOS

Fri, 19 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT

There are few applications that have improved my workflow as much as Raycast. Raycast is an exceptionally fast and extendable launcher for macOS, iOS and soon Windows (waitlist).

Raycast is equipped by default with more tools than a Swiss Army knife, and it can be extended with over 1,300 additional extensions. Furthermore, it is a free app that can be enhanced with even more cool features through Raycast Pro.

I’ve used other application launchers before. Alfred was a good companion for years, but Raycast’s interface is so well-designed. The context menus, keyboard shortcuts, and extensions work consistently the same everywhere. I have used Raycast now for more than 1.5 years and pay for Raycast Pro for nearly 9 months.

Application Launcher

The Raycast Launcher with 4 pinned favorites.

The most basic feature that you get is an application launcher like Apple Spotlight, but it’s prettier, has fuzzy search, and, as with everything in Raycast, an alias and a keyboard shortcut can be assigned. I navigate between my main apps without exception using keyboard shortcuts.

I use Karabiner-Elements to transform the useless caps lock key into a Hyperkey (✦). This means I can use it to press ⌘ ^ ⌥ ⇧ at the same time. I also use it as ␛ in my code editor, Neovim. Additionally, I can combine it with h, j, k, and l to navigate anywhere with the arrow keys.

My application navigation is a combination of ✦ plus a letter, like ✦ b for the Brave browser or ✦ t for Things, for example. I have 19 of these shortcuts for the apps I use all the time, the rest I open with Raycast over the search.

I use Raycast in combination with a window manager (I use AeroSpace). AeroSpace allows to configure on which space the apps open. If you are using Apple Spaces, it is also possible to assign apps to specific spaces with a right-click on the application, then select Options from the menu.

Raycast is the only application with consistent app switching behavior. When I press my keyboard shortcut, it opens the app if it’s closed. If it’s open but not focused, or I’m in a different space, it moves me to that space and focuses on the app. And if I look at it, it hides the application.

Calculator

Raycast has a magically powerful calculator. It can perform all the normal calculations and also convert angles, area, currency, data rate, data size, density, length, mass, power, pressure, speed, temperature, time, typography, volume, color, flight tracker, and many more.

You can choose the output format for the calculation. For example, you can calculate how much time 12 seconds saved per day amounts to in a year: 12 seconds * 7 * 52 in minutes. It’s over an hour per year. You can also calculate e-book reading time, for example 0:48:50 / 9:21:31 in percent rounded which is 9%. This is really helpful to update my Goodread reading status, because Audible is unable, even after 12 years of people requesting this feature, to show you the percentage. 🙄

The calculator history allows you to view previous calculations and pin useful ones to the top.

Calendar

Calendar showing the next meeting, appointments of the current day, following days.

The Calendar feature is incredible. It allows you to open a schedule overview directly in Raycast and join calls, block times, delete events, copy or open links, copy event title or details, and open the camera.

But the feature I love the most is the menu bar events. You can see the time until the next meeting or until the end of the current meeting in the menu bar.

Raycast Notes

Raycast Notes (previously Floating Notes) are the perfect companion for storing ideas, ticket numbers, making quick notes in a meeting, removing formatting from copied text, and much more. I constantly use this feature. Raycast launched Raycast Notes at the end of 2024. They support now Markdown, code blocks, and multiple notes.

Raycast Notes

Clipboard History

Another feature I use constantly is Clipboard History. It allows accessing the history of everything you copied, not only text, but images, files, links, and colors. They can be filtered, searched and directly copied, opened, edited, or deleted.

Screenshots

Search Screenshots with text recognition.

The screenshots I create are saved in a cloud storage folder. With Raycast, you can search all your screenshots (images and videos) in multiple locations with a preview. You can search and filter them by date, name, and even by text inside a screenshot. My process is to use Cleanshot X to capture and create full-length screenshots. I then send them directly to Cleanshot X from Raycast to annotate them and paste them back into a chat or work ticket.

Snippets

I have used various paid and open-source solutions for snippets throughout the years. However, why use separate software when you can have it included in your favorite application?

A text snippet is a piece of text that you frequently write and don’t want to repeatedly type or remember, such as personal information or boilerplate answers. I have well over 100 snippets, which include addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, date and time snippets, ASCII art, replacements for common spelling mistakes, and many more. About a third of these snippets have a specific trigger, which is a combination of characters I type to activate the snippet. The rest can be quickly accessed using a keyboard shortcut and searched.

There may be snippet applications available with more features (like programming in snippets), but Raycast supports everything I need: cursor position, clipboard content, custom date and time formatting, dynamic arguments, and embedded snippets.

Emoji & Symbols

Search Emoji & Symbols with pinned and frequently used emoji.

In a remote setting, it’s important to transfer emotions to lift the mood and make sure the text is not misunderstood. I use the Emoji & Symbols feature many times each day. The Raycast Emoji & Symbol app shows all emojis in a beautiful grid, shows recently used emojis, and allows you to pin the emojis important to you.

And recently, the feature got even better for Pro users, now you can search for anything and AI will find all Emoji that fit the search term.

Search Emoji & Symbols with AI

Search Files

This allows to search your hard drive for files, folders and optionally for the contents of your files. From there you can get information about the file, open, move, copy, duplicate and perform other commands on the selected file.

Window Management

This is the only feature I don’t use a lot because I have a window manager that automatically allows me to arrange, rotate, center, and move my applications around. But Raycast’s Window Management is powerful and surpasses many paid apps with its features.

I would love if my window manager AeroSpace worked together with Raycast, but currently using Raycast shortcuts will stop the window from working with yabai until I move them again with the mouse.

Quicklinks

Search Quicklinks

A feature I initially overlooked and started using a few months ago after watching the useful Quick Tips playlist by Raycast on YouTube is Quicklinks. But now I use it more and more. Quicklinks allows linking to URLs, files on your hard drive and even include a query for a search. I use Quicklinks a lot to create names I can remember to link to important documents, folders or work URLs.

Script Commands

Script commands are the intermediary step before you create your own extension, perfectly suited for simple commands. They can be written in the programming languages Bash, AppleScript, Swift, Python, Ruby, and Node.js.

You can store scripts in multiple folders on your hard drive. If you are not a programmer or are scared to write custom commands, you can browse the massive collection of over 600 community script commands on GitHub.

I use several script commands, which are publicly available in my raycast-scripts repository. I have a few to open or close all my work-related apps, connect to the VPN, or create a backup of my IMDb data.

Raycast AI 💰

Raycast AI with custom configuration. This images shows my Japanese Assistant.

In case you don’t know how to program custom scripts, you can use Raycast AI as a paying Pro member to help with that. Raycast AI is one of the features I use the most. It uses multiple models under the hood, including OpenAI (ChatGPT), Mistral, Perplexity, Meta (Llama), and Anthropic (Claude). Instead of subscribing to each services and using a web interface, you can switch between the models and use it everywhere on your computer and work with highlighted text.

You can type a question directly in Raycast and press the ⇥ key to trigger the answer. If the AI is unable to answer the question, it will use Google to find the answer on the internet and additionally add the sources of the answer.

You can continue (or start) a regular ChatGPT session in an extra window that conveniently floats on top of all apps. It is possible to configure each chat with a custom name, model, system instructions, and creativity level. The smaller models of each provider are included in the Pro subscription. If you want the powerful models with huge context, you have to upgrade.

I have several assistants that I use for specific tasks, providing the necessary instructions and context. I have one that helps me solve coding issues, one that helps me learn Japanese grammar, and one for training tips.

Search AI Commands

But the feature I like the most is Search AI Commands. These commands allow you to create specific custom commands that perform a task on your text. The built-in AI commands include:

Fix Spelling and Grammar
Make Shorter
Make Longer
Change Tone to Friendly
Change Tone to Casual
Change Tone to Confident
Change Tone to Professional
Improve Writing
Rephrase as Tweet
Explain This in Simple Terms
Explain Code Step by Step
Find Bugs in Code

Raycast includes another 10-20 AI commands as ideas, and I have created many more for my use cases. I have one that takes a text, summarizes the content as bullet points with matching emojis in the German language, and provides a short sentence summary. I use it frequently for my second brain notes in Obsidian. Another one translates text to German in either formal or informal language. I have one command that takes a YouTube video description, removes all promotional links, hashtags, advertising, and unnecessary content, and generates a concise summary from the video description. This is particularly helpful for bookmarking videos in my bookmark manager, Raindrop.io.

Translator 💰

Translator. Translating “Epitaph for Poet’s Tomb” by Shuntaro Tanikawa.

As a Pro subscriber, you have access to a fantastic built-in translator that can translate in nearly all languages. You can dictate and listen to the translations.

Miscellaneous

Raycast has many more features to mention, but here are a few:

Search System Settings
Perform system commands, such as emptying the trash, shutting down, restarting, or putting the computer to sleep
Access Apple shortcuts
Search contacts
Navigate windows
Search menu items
Define words
Explore Raycast Prompts, Snippets, and Themes

Raycast Store

This alone combines the features of a dozen or more, often paid apps. But the reason Raycast is so successful is its built-in app store that allows developers to provide custom extensions. Raycast provides a convenient and robust API to build extensions with React, one of the most popular JavaScript libraries. Under the hood, the components are converted into native code.

Because the number of extensions is huge, I’ll show in the next section how I use third-party extensions to work in specific areas.

Browsing & Searching

Search Brave Tabs

One of my most favorite extension in this section is the Brave extension that allows you to control the Brave browser from anywhere. With it, you can search, create new tabs, and access the browser history and bookmarks from anywhere. When I’m working somewhere and want to go to a specific tab, I don’t have to switch to the browser, find the tab, and click it. Instead, I can immediately jump to the correct tab instantly. There are similar extensions for other browsers, for example Arc.

Brave Search

My default search engine these days is Brave Search. Google is just too biased and suppresses too much information. With the Brave Search extension, I can search with auto-complete from anywhere and directly open the search results in the browser.

Search Raindrop.io Bookmarks

The third of my most favorite extension is Raindrop.io. It allows me to search in my favorite bookmark manager (30K bookmarks) and see the title, tags, and date of saving directly, and open the bookmark directly.

Other honorable mentions are the Reddit Search, Wolfram Alpha, SimpleLogin, or Apple Maps Search.

Developer Tools

I’m a Frontend Developer by profession and work a lot with code, but also with design tools.

Search GitHub Repositories

As a developer, you work a lot with version control. I use the GitHub, GitHub Enterprise, and GitHub Gist extensions. They allow you to view or create pull requests, discussions, read notifications, search repositories, and much more. The Git Repos extension allows searching on the local hard drive for Git repositories.

Homebrew Search

I use the Kill Process extension to terminate hung processes. The Port Manager allows me to view or kill ports. The Brew extension allows me to use Homebrew from Raycast. I work a lot with Neovim and tmux in my Ghostty terminal. The Tmux Sessioner allows me to jump directly into the terminal in a specific project.

I use extensions to format or create code. For example, I use SVGO to optimize SVGs, SVGR to create React components from SVGs, and tools like Format JSON and Prettier Code to format any code. It’s convenient to format the code before pasting it anywhere on the web.

Tailwind CSS Search Colors

A significant amount of a developer’s time is spent reading documentation to understand how libraries or tools work. I frequently use Can I Use to determine browser support for web features, the HTTP Status Codes extension to look them up, search npm packages, and browse the TypeScript or Tailwind CSS documentation.

Additional honorable mentions include the Web Converter, which converts various web units, a Random Data Generator, a RegEx REPL, URL Tools for encoding or decoding URLs, and cURL for making HTTP requests.

Raycast itself build the useful online tool ray.so that allows to format code and export it as image or SVG. There is an extension to do this directly from Raycast.

Design Tools

Raycast is not only a fantastic tool for developers, but designers can also benefit a lot.

I love the Color Picker extension, which allows you to directly pick colors from anywhere and manage them. The Ruler extension enables you to measure distances.

Image Modification allows you to convert images and vector graphics, flip, scale, resize, add filters and distortions, optimize the size, and perform real-time image manipulations.

Search Google Fonts

There is a Google Fonts extension that allows browsing and directly downloading fonts.

Search Glyphs

Glyph Search helps you find Unicode characters.

Search Unsplash Images

Unsplash enables looking at the massive collection of stock photos, and the Figma File Search allows for direct searching and opening of designs. I started using the Eagle extension to locally search all my assets stored in Eagle.

Note-Taking & Text-Editing

I write a lot, including blog posts, documentation, chat messages, and code. Raycast’s various extensions can help.

Lorem Ipsum allows you to create placeholder text. Link Cleaner removes all tracking parameters from the last URL in the clipboard.

Change Case

One of my favorites is Change Case. I use it many times each week to convert, for example, the title of a Jira ticket into a branch name in Git. The Word Search extension is fantastic for finding adjectives, antonyms, rhymes, synonyms, or missing letters.

Browser Readwise Library

All the tools I use for note-taking have companion apps: Obsidian, Readwise, Readwise Reader, DEVONthink, and Notion.

Project Management & Productivity

Things Show Someday List

There is most likely an app for most online tools available in this category. I, personally, use two of them: Jira and Things. Jira is the ticket management tool we use at work, and Things is my personal to-do application.

Fun fact: The Jira application needed approval by my company’s IT. I opened a request the day we moved to Jira Cloud, and there were already 5 other requests opened for the Raycast app by co-workers in my company. 😅

Media

Search for GIFs

Raycast extensions are not just for work, but also for fun. Everyone needs to generate memes or find funny GIFs, right? Well, there’s an extension called Meme Generator and GIF Search for exactly that purpose.

The Movie Database Top Rated

If you’re into movies and TV shows, I frequently use The Movie Database for information and JustWatch Search to find out where they are available for streaming.

Spotify Your Library

I use the Goodreads extension to discover books or authors and the Spotify Player to manage music.

YouTube Search Videos

I regularly use the YouTube extension to search videos or channels and YouTube Downloader, as well as the Twitter/𝕏 Video Downloader, to download videos onto my hard drive.

Raycast iOS

Raycast for iOS (and iPad) was launched in April 2025 and now supports all AI models with voice and image capabilities, along with Notes, Quicklinks, and Snippets. Additionally, your information are synchronized across all devices.

Miscellaneous

Browsing the Raycast extension store is a good idea to find interesting extensions. You may not use all the extensions regularly, but it’s useful to keep ones that you need occasionally.

I really like the Coffee extension, which prevents my Mac from going to sleep. I use it every week when I do ink drawings and watercolor painting and need to keep my computer awake while looking at a reference photo on my monitor without touching the devices.

The Hue extension lets you control your Hue lights at home through Raycast.

In my opinion, the File Manager extension is more intuitive than the built-in file extension. The Downloads Manager is a convenient extension for working with recent downloads.

All Raycast

Raycast is an app that is not only improving your productivity by a considerable margin, it’s also fun. The onboarding Walkthrough is one of the best onboarding I’ve seen in an application, and the developers are constantly releasing new features. They are approachable and responsive to feedback, you can share feedback directly through Raycast.

With a Pro account, you can design your own Raycast color themes, and Easter eggs like Confetti or Bounce Animations are built into Raycast.

The second year in a row, you get one of the best year reviews. People proudly share their images on 𝕏 (#RaycastWrapped). Here is my Raycast Wrapped 2024 summary:

Raycast Wrapped 2024

Raycast offers a range of useful resources. You can find the changes for each release in the Changelog, which is also accessible within Raycast. Additionally, the blog features informative and engaging articles.

Pedro Duarte is the official Community Manager of Raycast. He shares valuable extensions, tips, and sneak peeks on his 𝕏 account @peduarte. Make sure to also follow the official Raycast account @raycast. On the official Raycast YouTube Channel, he frequently posts quick tips, updates, and interviews with community members.

Conclusion

Raycast will improve your workflow and fun at your computer a lot. And it is free, as are all the community extensions.

When you realize the usefulness of Raycast, you may want to consider supporting them by subscribing to their Pro plan. Additionally, they offer team accounts that enable sharing scripts, snippets, and extensions with your entire team.

If you’re a developer, you might be interested in creating your own extension. The YouTube channel offers coding sessions in multiple videos, and the API documentation is well-written.

Discovering Thomas Sowell: The Voice That Challenges Conventional Thinking

Sun, 29 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMT

In his article The Day the Delusions Died,[^Kisin2023aa] British comedian and podcaster Konstantin Kisin discusses how the brutal massacre of 1,400 innocent people by Hamas shattered the worldview of many, leading them to become conservatives overnight. He then explores Thomas Sowell’s straightforward and compelling explanation for political disagreements.

In 1987, Sowell published A Conflict of Visions,[^Sowell1986aa] in which he argues that these disagreements stem from differing views on human nature. He presents two competing visions that provide contrasting narratives about human nature, influencing our perception of the world.

Supporters of the “unconstrained” or utopian vision believe in the potential for humans to change and the possibility of solving social problems through collective action and effective strategies. They view poverty, crime, inequality, and war as challenges that can be addressed through investments in resources. This perspective is commonly associated with a progressive mindset.

The “constrained” or tragic vision holds that human nature is a universal constant. Humans are driven by self-interest, and resources and empathy are limited. Social issues can be managed but not fully resolved. It opposes extensive social engineering as ineffective, instead placing faith in the rules and self-organizing dynamics of a free society. This perspective is associated with a conservative mindset.

There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.
Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles

Unfortunately, for over 50 years, most policies in Western democracies have been influenced by the unconstrained vision. The elites, experts, and intellectual class, referred to as “the Anointed” by Sowell, drive these policies. These include various political topics, such as open borders in immigration, prioritizing rehabilitation over punishment for crimes, establishing an extensive welfare state, and undermining a country’s self-reliance on energy, food, and security. The unconstrained vision is particularly evident in movements like Marxian identity politics (Wokeness) and zealous climate activism groups.

So, it came as a surprise to many people to see those groups align with the terrorist group Hamas and openly propose antisemitism on the streets. But it is only the logical conclusion of these ideologies.

Thomas Sowell is a visionary because he wrote about the issues 40 years ago, when they could first be observed in small corners of universities.

He wrote a three-part book series[^Sowell1986aa][^Sowell1995aa][^Sowell1999aa] solely focused on the ambitious visions of experts who tirelessly strive to shape society according to their utopian ideals, yet never face any consequences.

Thomas Sowell is arguably the most influential black intellectual in history, yet he remains relatively unknown to many. At the age of 93, he recently published his 54th book titled Social Justice Fallacies[^Sowell2023aa] in September 2023. So, who exactly is Thomas Sowell, and why should you be familiar with him?

A Short Biography

I’ll keep the biography short to have more time for his works, but I highly recommend the excellent 1-hour-long free documentary about the life of Thomas Sowell.

Early Life and Education

Thomas Sowell, an African American born in 1930, faced the struggles of the Great Depression. Despite the challenges, he found a love for learning and was supported by his great-aunt and mentor, Eddie. His access to education and guidance from Eddie greatly impacted his life and led him to success.

Military & Photography

He enlisted in the Marines in 1951 and served in the Marine Corps Combat Camera Division, where he taught pistol shooting and captured photographs. His experiences in the Marines influenced his passion for photography, which became his artistic outlet. In both his photography and political writings, Sowell emphasizes the importance of trade-offs and prioritizes them over grand visions and solutions.

Higher Education in Economics

Sowell’s time at the Chicago School of Economics taught him the value of discipline and hard data. Despite being a Marxist, a course with Milton Friedman did not change his beliefs. However, during a summer internship at the U.S. Department of Labor, his study of economics made him realize the potential negative impact of raising minimum wages on job losses for the poor. This experience showed him the government’s lack of concern for policy effectiveness. As a result, he reevaluated his assumptions and gained a more profound understanding of previously elusive concepts. In 1968, he obtained his PhD in economics from the University of Chicago and taught at Cornell University during the turbulent 1960s. He disagreed with the school’s affirmative action policies, believing that lower standards for black students led to unintended consequences of racial divisions.

Academic Career

Thomas Sowell was a highly influential educator and economist, having taught at various prestigious universities such as Cornell, Howard, Rutgers, Brandeis, Amherst, and UCLA. Despite being offered the position of head of the economics department at Howard University, he chose to pursue other opportunities. Sowell’s extensive experience and insightful contributions have solidified his reputation as a prominent figure in the field of economics.

Hoover Institution

In 1980, Thomas Sowell left his teaching position to join the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Despite no longer teaching, he continued to reach millions of readers with his insightful work. Writing became his passion, and he found freedom and independence at Hoover, greatly increasing his productivity as a writer. Additionally, he appeared multiple times on William F. Buckley Jr.’s show, Firing Line, to discuss topics such as the economics of race and privatization.

How I Became a Fan of Thomas Sowell

I discovered Thomas Sowell in 2020 through a short video by an Australian YouTuber.[^IndependentMan2017aa] The video showcased a segment from Sowell’s 1981 interview on Firing Line with William F. Buckley.[^Buckley1981aa] In that interview, Sowell adeptly debunked arguments about the wage gap and racial discrimination that continue to be raised today. Since then, I have consumed every Sowell video I could find and have begun reading his books. I am currently on my sixth book by Thomas Sowell, and I intend to read more in the future.

What makes Thomas Sowell appealing? He is a unique and sincere intellectual, and his writings are accessible to non-academics. He follows the facts, regardless of their direction, and values truth over popularity. Not only that, but he does not compromise for social politeness and strongly defends his opinions. Reading Sowell’s books will challenge your beliefs about race, crime, immigration, culture, history, economics, and politics. His books are thoroughly researched and contain clear, real-world examples.

The media recognized that it is extremely hard to refute Thomas Sowell’s arguments, so they chose instead to ignore them, which is the only reason you probably never heard about him.

Diving Into Thomas Sowell’s Works

Even though most of Thomas Sowell’s books are easy to read and understand, I know that not many people enjoy reading these days. It is still possible to learn more about Sowell through other media formats.

Videos

Thomas Sowell, despite having much of his work made public, is a very private person. He is reluctant to give interviews and has made journalists wait for years before discussing his life and work. Nevertheless, here are some of the interesting videos with Thomas Sowell:

Thomas Sowell appeared multiple times on the TV show Firing Line between 1981 and 1986.[^Buckley1981aa][^Buckley1983aa][^Buckley1986aa][^Buckley1986ab]

Dave Rubin, the host of The Rubin Report, managed to convince him to appear on his show and discuss his 2018 book.[^Rubin2018aa]

The Hoover Institution has a playlist containing 17 interviews with Thomas Sowell. These interviews took place between 2008 and 2023 and focused on his books. They are all fascinating. You can find the playlist here.

After Skool created an animated video of a book discussion with Thomas Sowell on his book The Quest for Cosmic Justice in 1999.[^AfterSkool2023aa]

You can also find numerous other videos featuring interviews and talks by Thomas Sowell. There is an unofficial YouTube channel that collects videos of Thomas Sowell.

Podcast

Many people prefer audio formats because they are more accessible than books or articles. They can be listened to while walking, doing laundry, or engaging in sports. Several of Thomas Sowell’s books are available as audiobooks, and there is a fantastic podcast solely dedicated to Sowell called The Genius of Thomas Sowell™. It was created by Alan Wolan (𝕏) in 2021 and is really fantastic.

Wolan presents the works and ideas of Thomas Sowell by discussing current and controversial topics. The content includes interviews with interesting guests, quotes from Sowell, opinions, and music. Wolan has created an easily shareable presentation about Thomas Sowell, which can be accessed here. Additionally, there is a collection of Sowell’s best quotes that can be found here. Physical stickers featuring Sowell’s quotes are also available for purchase on Etsy. I highly recommend listening to all episodes.

Essays

Thomas Sowell’s essays and weekly columns have been published in more than 300 newspapers and periodicals, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Fortune magazines. Although Sowell’s empirically grounded arguments were often regarded as insightful, they frequently faced criticism, particularly from academics. Some of his best essays are available as books.

There are numerous essays and archives of his work available on the internet, making it impossible to provide a comprehensive list. RealClear Politics has a collection of essays from 2005 to 2006, and there is an archive of his essays for Creators Syndicate spanning 1998–2006. Creators itself features essays from 2006 to 2016. National Review offers articles from 2006 to 2016, while Townhall has a collection from 2003 to 2022.

Sowell wrote on every social, economic, or political issue imaginable, including essays on the conflict in the Middle East: Thomas Sowell: There is no Middle East ‘peace process’ or Thomas Sowell: Cease the cease-fires.

Many individuals have written about Thomas Sowell, including Gad Saad in his article Ten Reasons Why You Should Love Thomas Sowell,[^Saad2021aa] Rob Henderson in his piece Lessons I Learned From Thomas Sowell’s Memoir,[^Henderson2023aa] and Maddox Locher for FFE in the article 30 Priceless Quotes from the Great Thomas Sowell.[^Locher2023aa] I recently read these works.

Thomas Sowell’s quotes are fantastic. There is an unofficial 𝕏 account dedicated to them. I have highlighted over 1,000 quote blocks in the six books I’ve read so far.

Books

In 2021, I began by reading Sowell’s book, Intellectuals and Race.[^Sowell2013aa] Later, I discovered that this was an excerpt from a larger book called Intellectuals and Society,[^Sowell2009aa] which I read in 2023.

The second book I read in 2022 was A Conflict of Visions,[^Sowell1986aa] which was mentioned in the introduction. If you’re ambitious, I recommend starting with this book. The next book, The Vision of the Anointed,[^Sowell1995aa] was the most enjoyable to read. For casual readers, this is probably the best book to begin with. While Sowell provides a more balanced analysis of the two visions in A Conflict of Visions, in the second book, he thoroughly criticizes the elite class and experts, aligning himself with the constrained vision.

In 2023, I read the book Knowledge And Decisions by Thomas Sowell.[^Sowell1979aa] It builds upon F.A. Hayek’s The Use of Knowledge in Society and explores decision-making in various contexts, including economics. The book emphasizes the significance of trade-offs in calculations and discusses how decision-makers in academia or the civil service often lack proper feedback loops. The book is a foundational work that informs many of Sowell’s later conclusions.

The last book I read was Sowell’s newest book, Social Justice Fallacies.[^Sowell2023aa] It became an instant New York Times bestseller. Sowell challenges the myths behind the social justice movement. He presents documented facts that debunk commonly held beliefs and highlight the historical consequences of pursuing a social justice agenda. Sowell acknowledges the fallibility of all humans, including social justice advocates, but raises concerns about their unwavering certainty and the dangers of ignoring evidence and obstacles. Ultimately, he prompts readers to reflect on the consequences of continuing on this path without consideration.

Some things are believed because they are demonstrably true, but many other things are believed simply because they have been asserted repeatedly and repetition has been accepted as a substitute for evidence.
— Thomas Sowell

Next on my list is The Quest for Cosmic Justice[^Sowell1999aa] to complete the trilogy, along with Thomas Sowell’s books on political theory. I also intend to explore his economics books, such as Basic Economics,[^Sowell2000aa] which provides an excellent introduction to understanding economics. Additionally, Applied Economics[^Sowell2003aa] and Economic Facts and Fallacies[^Sowell2007aa] are included in my reading list.

I plan to read some of his books, in which he explores cultures worldwide. However, I need to do further research to determine which ones to read next on this topic.

Dr. Neema Parvini has created a fascinating video discussing Thomas Sowell’s books. In the video, he categorizes, summarizes, and recommends Sowell’s top 10 books.[^Parvari2018aa]

He categorizes Sowell’s books into six categories:

Academic Economic Theory (not recommended for casual readers)
Economic Introduction
Political Theory
Race and Ethnicity in Economics
Sowell’s Theory on Ethnic Disparities Throughout History
Occasional studies, and Hot Button Topics.

Conclusion

I highly recommend everyone engage with Thomas Sowell’s content through reading, listening, or watching. In the Western world, there is a prevalent bias towards the utopian vision, which is promoted by media organizations, think tanks, NGOs, and the political and intellectual elite. This vision has resulted in considerable suffering, harm, missed opportunities, and loss of life. In its most extreme form, it fueled the ideologies that led to the atrocities of the 20th century. Thomas Sowell will change your thinking permanently for a better life.

[^Sowell1986aa]: Thomas Sowell (1986): A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles, Basic Books.

[^Kisin2023aa]: Konstantin Kisin (2023): The Day the Delusions Died, https://www.thefp.com/p/the-day-the-delusions-died-konstantin-kisin.

[^Kisin2023ab]: Konstantin Kisin (2023): VIRAL SPEECH: The Day the Delusions Died by Konstantin Kisin, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyW4SMK0Fpc.

[^Sowell1995aa]: Thomas Sowell (1995): The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy, Basic Books.

[^Sowell1999aa]: Thomas Sowell (1999): The Quest for Cosmic Justice, Free Press.

[^Sowell2023aa]: Thomas Sowell (2023): Social Justice Fallacies, Basic Books.

[^FreeToChoose2021aa]: Free To Choose Media (2021): Thomas Sowell: Common Sense in a Senseless World, Free To Choose Network, https://www.sowellfilm.com/.

[^IndependentMan2017aa]: Independent Man (2017): Thomas Sowell: Show Me the Evidence, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxygmc_SMAU.

[^Buckley1981aa]: William F. Buckley, Thomas Sowell, and Harriet F. Pipel (1981): The Economic Lot of Minorities, https://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6660.

[^Buckley1983aa]: William F. Buckley and Thomas Sowell (1983): The Economics and Politics of Race, https://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6749.

[^Buckley1986aa]: William F. Buckley, Milton Friedman, Paul Starr, Thomas Sowell, Bill Honig, and Albert Shanker (1986): Resolved: That We Should Move towards Privatization, Including the Schools-Part I, https://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6867.

[^Buckley1986ab]: William F. Buckley, Milton Friedman, Paul Starr, Thomas Sowell, Bill Honig, and Albert Shanker (1986): Resolved: That We Should Move towards Privatization, Including the Schools-Part II, https://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6868.

[^Rubin2018aa]: Dave Rubin and Thomas Sowell (2018): Discrimination and Disparities | Thomas Sowell, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ivf9jrXGAY.

[^AfterSkool2023aa]: After Skool and Thomas Sowell (2023): Equity: The Thief of Human Potential - Thomas Sowell, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WYi-64MejU.

[^Parvari2018aa]: Neema Parvini (2018): The Complete Guide to Thomas Sowell’s Books (including a Top Ten), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhyY0DpTlLk.

[^Saad2021aa]: Gad Saad (2021): Ten Reasons Why You Should Love Thomas Sowell, https://www.gadsaad.com/post/ten-reasons-why-you-should-love-thomas-sowell.

[^Henderson2023aa]: Rob Henderson (2023): Lessons I Learned From Thomas Sowell’s Memoir, https://www.robkhenderson.com/p/31-lessons-i-learned-from-thomas.

[^Locher2023aa]: Maddox Locher (2023): 30 Priceless Quotes from the Great Thomas Sowell, https://fee.org/articles/30-priceless-quotes-from-the-great-thomas-sowell/.

[^Sowell2013aa]: Thomas Sowell (2013): Intellectuals and Race, Basic Books.

[^Sowell2009aa]: Thomas Sowell (2009): Intellectuals and Society, Basic Books.

[^Sowell1995aa]: Thomas Sowell (1995): The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy, Basic Books.

[^Sowell1979aa]: Thomas Sowell (1979): Knowledge And Decisions, Basic Books.

[^Sowell1999aa]: Thomas Sowell (1999): The Quest for Cosmic Justice, Free Press.

[^Sowell2000aa]: Thomas Sowell (2000): Basic Economics: A Citizen’s Guide to the Economy, Basic Books.

[^Sowell2003aa]: Thomas Sowell (2003): Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One, Basic Books.

[^Sowell2007aa]: Thomas Sowell (2007): Economic Facts and Fallacies, Basic Books.

Website Relaunch 2023: How I built my personal website using Astro, Tailwind CSS, and Preact

Fri, 16 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT

After five months of hard work, I'm proud to present my new personal website, built with Astro. Back in February 2023, I began working on the project. I had been wanting to try out Astro for a while, but when content collections were released, I was finally convinced. I also wanted to experiment with Tailwind CSS, so I decided to use it for this project.

Information Architecture, Content, and Design

I always start by thinking about the content and identifying pages to remove, add, or update. I wanted to improve my sketchnotes gallery and add a new AI art gallery.

Previously, many pages were difficult to access, hidden on subpages. To make them easier to find, I added a footer containing all important links to all sections. I also slimmed down the main navigation to only three links: About, Journal, and Projects. I reduced the social links to the three most essential ones: 𝕏, GitHub, and Instagram.

The journal pages received a bigger update. I removed the grouping by years, since most of my essays are timeless, and instead introduced a new card design for each essay. On the journal page and the essays, I added the ability to filter by tags.

I also introduced some new pages, such as the tools listing my work equipment, hardware, and software, and a page with all rules, beliefs, and princibles I live by.

Artificial Intelligence

I've utilized AI a lot for my new website. Not only for coding with GitHub Copilot, but also ChatGPT (with Raycast Pro) to debug complex issues during development, generate TypeScript types, or automatically generate code. I used it to write and rewrite text, replace template tags with components, fix typos, and much more. In addition, I used Stable Diffusion to create my profile and cover photos. And I used AI image upscaling to increase all old cover photos.

Previously, I had cover photos on my website, but I removed them because it was too time-consuming to find a new stock photo for each entry. However, with Stable Diffusion, I can now quickly generate a cover photo that fits the topic while experimenting with different art styles and techniques. I started with a few, such as the Bonsai on the homepage and the last 7 essays. I'll fill in the others over time. Likewise, I'm also planning to write a comprehensive tutorial on how I used Stable Diffusion to generate the bonsai cover image.

Development

Recreating my previous website with Astro was a lot of fun. It was impressive how quickly it was set up and how easy it was to find anything in the documentation. And the speed of Astro is impressive, nearly all of my pages have a perfect 100% rating in Unlighthouse.

Unlighthouse Results

I opted for Preact for components, even though many didn't need interactivity. I'm glad I could use MDX and map components to markdown elements. Update: I moved now to Astro components with a few interactive React components in the meantime.

It was my first time using Tailwind CSS. Initially, I was skeptical because I didn’t like the idea of writing CSS in HTML. But after using it, I really like it. Writing CSS is much faster and I don’t have to think about naming classes. Additionally, I reduced the CSS size by 30%.

If you're interested in the plugins, tools, and libraries I used, take a look at the About page or the source code on GitHub.

Shokunin: The Spirit of an Artisan

Wed, 08 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT

I first came across the Japanese word shokunin (職人) when I watched a documentary about the accomplished bonsai artist Ryan Neil, the founder of Bonsai Mirai outside Portland, Oregon.

The word can be translated as craftsman, artisan, tradesman, worker, or workman. Yet, the literal translation is not sufficient to transport its full meaning – as with many Japanese words.

Shokunin are a people who love their craft and work, have high work moral and discipline. They repeat the same processes over and over. They are proud of their work and try to improve (改善, kaizen) constantly and strive for perfection. They are aware that they’ll never reach perfection, but follow its path nevertheless for their whole life.

Whatever is rightly done, however humble, is noble.
Henry Noble

Japanese culture embodies what it means to take pride in every aspect of one’s work, regardless of what activity one is engaged in. People take pride in their work, even for the simplest of tasks or menial occupations in Japan. Visitors to Japan can see and feel the result of this dedication everywhere. Everything is clean, orderly, made with care and everybody is on time, friendly, and helpful.

In the 2003 movie The Last Samurai, the captured US captain Nathan Ulgrin (played by Tom Cruise) notes with admiration in his first weeks as an involuntary guest in a village of Samurai:

From the moment they wake, they dedicate themselves to the perfection of whatever it is that they pursue.

This is called shokunin kishitsu (職人気質), the spirit of a true artisan.

It is the opposite approach to work as we have in Western countries. People here are driven by upward mobility, thrive to earn more and more money, achieving titles, and getting promotions. If this means stopping doing what one loves, so be it. The loyalty to an employer is low, and the average duration of a job is 4 years. Dedication to a profession is rare, and low work is seen with pity or even disgust.

Traditional Shokunin

Traditional shokunin work as farmers during the summer and collect materials from their area. In winter, when their fields are covered with snow, they pursue their craft as shokunin. These highly qualified artisans, whose families passed down the production process over generations, specialize in one particular area of craftsmanship. The repetition of the craft is not only done by each individual artisan, but stretches over generations. They work together with other families to improve the community. Each family might only produce one part of the production process for a final product.

What makes the work of a shokunin different from that of an artist, is that such one-time creations are really the result of endless repetitions of splitting, planing and so on. It is not just from practice of my own lifetime, but from the experience handed down to me from my ancestors in a perpetual line of accumulated wisdom from ancient times.
— Shuji Nakagawa

Sachiko Matsuyama writes in Shokunin and Devotion[^matsuyama2018aa] that she sometimes takes guests with her when she visits shokunin studios. They often ask how long it takes to make a piece. The shokunin, who is sometimes annoyed by this question, replies, A lifetime.

Shokunin and Taoism

I think that shokunin kishitsu has its roots in the Taoist philosophy. Japan was influenced by two major religions, by Shintoism (神道, Shintō) and Buddhism (仏教, Bukkyō). The latter is influenced by Confucianism (儒教, Jukyō) and Taoism (道教, Dōkyō).

The Tao Te King describes the wise person as somebody who does the job, completes it effortless, and stays humble about the result.

(…) It does its work but claims no merit. Because it claims no merit, merit is never lacking in it. (…) When the work is done and the task complete the people will say: It just happened.
— Laozi, Tao Te King, II and XVII

Zhuangzi describes in his story of The Dexterous Butcher the difference between a mediocre, a good and a masterful craftsman:

A good cook changes his knife once a year — because he cuts. A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month — because he hacks. I’ve had this knife of mine for nineteen years and I’ve cut up thousands of oxen with it, and yet the blade is as good as though it had just come from the grindstone. There are spaces between the joints, and the blade of the knife has really no thickness. If you insert what has no thickness into such spaces, then there’s plenty of room — more than enough for the blade to play about it. That’s why after nineteen years the blade of my knife is still as good as when it first came from the grindstone.

He describes how the shokunin butcher knows every part of the animal, every bone, muscle, and tendon and his knife glides between them and everything falls apart magically. This is the description of a person who brought the art of their craft to perfection.

Jiro Dreams of Sushi

The term shokunin was popularized by the 2011 documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi. It is about Jiro Ono, born 1925 (now 98 years old), who started working in a restaurant at the age of 7. He became a qualified sushi chef at the age of 26, and opened in 1965 his sushi restaurant called Sukiyabashi Jiro in Ginza subway station, Tokyo, Japan. He has three Michelin Stars and still works every day in his restaurant.

The restaurant is tiny and has seats for 10 people. The menu has 20 courses and costs at least 30,000 yen (€200), no appetizer or menu dishes are available. Barack Obama called his meal there the best sushi he had ever had.[^millerzeke2014]

Jiro’s talent is to create incredible sushi, and has been doing so for 50 years.

Shokunin try to get the highest quality fish and apply their technique to it. We don’t care about money. All I want to do is make better sushi. I do the same thing over and over, improving bit by bit. There is always a yearning to achieve more. I’ll continue to climb, trying to reach the top but no one knows where the top is. Even at my age, after decades of work I don’t think I have achieved perfection. But I feel ecstatic all day I love making sushi. That’s the spirit of the shokunin. When to quit? The job that you’ve worked so hard for? I never once hated this job. I fell in love with my work and gave my life to it. Even though I’m 85 years old I don’t feel like retiring. That’s how I feel.
— Jiro Ono

The apprenticeship in his restaurant is difficult and lasts 10 years. It starts with the preparation of hot cloths for customers and ends with the preparation of tamago (egg omelet) in the 10th year. One apprentice tells how it took him 200 tries before he got the perfect tamago. The chefs that complete this training receive the title of shokunin by Jiro Ono.

Digital Shokunin

I was always fascinated by art and craftsmanship since I remember. My great uncle was a carpenter, my grandfather was a carpenter and civil engineer, my uncle is a civil engineer, and my father learned to be a toolmaker.

My grandfather made sure I was exposed to craftsmanship early on, I remember having a children’s workshop with metal tools for drilling, carving, sawing, and sanding with wood. A wooden sword, I crafted and painted for my uncle’s initiation as a president of the local Lion’s Club, is still hanging on the wall of his office today.

As a web developer, I create digital crafts, but the philosophy and care is the same as with physical objects, using digital tools. I have multiple websites I work on to improve my craft, I constantly re-create them with new tools or new designs. One website is in its 9th iteration (1999) and another in its 4th (2006).

I found it always strange meeting web developers that don’t have any websites or that aren't concerned with the web. It’s like meeting a librarian who doesn’t read or a carmaker who doesn’t drive a car. I enjoy trying new techniques, libraries, and tools. I enjoy integrating tools into my workflow that speed me up or make the work more enjoyable. I tinker around with the Terminal, Neovim or the TMUX terminal multiplexer, learn new programming languages like Lua and enjoy learning the latest things in the CSS styling language.

The Search for Shokunin

Even though my craft is digital, I love observing any craft made with care, no matter if physical or digital. I enjoy buying well-made physical things, like my Traveler’s Notebooks or my French Laguiole en Aubrac pocket knife.

Over the years, I found countless examples of the shokunin spirit, before I even knew the word. The following is a collection of things that I think express the spirit of shokunin.

Bonsai Releaf

Bonsai Releaf is one of the most fascinating Bonsai YouTube channels I know. Each video is the work of months or even years of preparation.

The presentation is made with such care, I rewatch the videos sporadically for relaxation. Everything is incredible, from the planning and sketching to the final tree. The artist uses professional camera techniques, depth of field, macro shots, time-lapse, and music.

The Last Artisans of Japan

NOWNESS, one of my favorite YouTube channels, created the 6-part series The Last Artisans of Japan. The series follows Japans fast-disappearing, traditional food producers.

Short videos present the production of Vinegar, Tea, Soy Sauce, Sake, Mirin, and Kamaboko.

The Varis Japan Story

This short documentary by Dan Olivares shows the Japanese company Varis, that produces aerodynamic racing car parts.

Shokunin: Japanese Arts and Crafts Across Borders

Shokunin: Japanese Arts and Crafts Across Borders is a documentary series with 10 standalone episodes. Each episode showcases a different art or craft, such as shamisen making, kimono dressing, wood joinery, and hand tattooing.

Shokunin Series by Rachel and Jun

The YouTube creators Rachel and Jun created a 5-part series about shokunin showing the dying of kimono, the production of Taiko drums, pottery and sculptures, candy sculptures, and Gifu fans.

Shokunin Woodwork

This 9 minute long documentary shows the craft of Japanese woodwork. Japanese woodwork is known to create houses, furniture, and other wooden objects without the use of iron nails or glue. The wood parts are fitted perfectly to be stuck together like a puzzle.

Karakuri Box

The wooden designs of Karakuri Box are based on a 120-year-old traditional craft of “secret boxes” made in the Hakone Odawara region of Japan. Each box has a different design and way of opening. Even the smallest boxes might take a puzzle master five minutes to open.

The company has a club program that automatically sends each Christmas season a new box puzzle to a member. You can pick out of the currently ten craftsmen for your present.

The YouTube channel has plenty of videos presenting the designs (including solutions).

Irezumi – Japanese Tattoo

Since I first saw Japanese tattoos in a Yakuza movie, I've been obsessed with the art form and bought several art books on the topic.

One of the most renowned tattoo artists is Horiyoshi III, Japans undisputed tattoo master. The tattoo motives are not random, but symbolize religious or mythic stories and have a long history. The art form was submitted over many generations of tattoo masters.

The Reluctant Master

The Reluctant Master is a short documentary about Sasuke, one of Japan’s well-known blacksmith brands. Yasuhiro Hirakawa is the master of a 22 generation old tradition leading back to ancient times when his predecessors crafted guns for Japanese Daimyō (Warlords). For the last 5 generations since 1867, they have produced knives and gardening scissors, where the most expensive items can cost up to tens of thousands of dollars. A second short documentary shows him creating a $35,000 Bonsai Scissor.

Crafting a Traditional Japanese Noh Mask

Noh is a traditional Japanese theater art with a legacy that dates back to the 14th century. It often draws from traditional literature and often involves the supernatural, with masks playing an important role in the performance.

In this short documentary Mitsue Nakamura carefully crafts each mask from Japanese cypress, cutting and chiseling it to create the nose, lips, and eyes. She then applies coating and lacquers, mixing a concoction of seashell powder and rice glue. Pigments are hand-blended and the teeth are blackened in a practice known as ohaguro, which has been around since the 8th century.

Masterful Techniques Unveiled! Japan’s Top 5 Artisan Skills

This captivating documentary explores Japan's elite artisanal craftsmanship, highlighting five traditional skills that embody the nation's commitment to precision. From Hacoa's walnut wooden keyboards to Nihon Takkyu's premium hinoki table tennis equipment, each segment unveils the extraordinary detail of Japanese craftsmanship.

The documentary delves into the unique cultivation of Kami bananas, Uchiyama Industrial Co.'s sophisticated cork stopper production using Portuguese cork, and Kyugetsu Co.'s intricate Ichimatsu doll-making. It meticulously showcases the specialized techniques, materials, and traditions that define these exceptional crafts, while illuminating the artisans' profound commitment to preserving their time-honored skills.

Underwear (Atelier)

Atelier [Netflix] (the original title is Underwear, but changed for the Western market to Atelier) is a brilliant Netflix TV Mini Series from Japan. It’s one of my favorite Japanese TV Shows.

The story follows a young lady who is a “fabric geek.” She manages to get the rare position of an apprentice in the Atelier of a famous lingerie designer and has to work through a hard training to become a shokunin at her art. I love recommending this TV Show to people for its fine depiction of Japanese craftsmanship and culture.

Chef’s Table

Chef’s Table [Netflix] (2015–) is an Emmy-nominated documentary following the best Chefs in the world. Each episode is a carefully crafted biography of the presented Chef with fantastic cinematography and beautiful music.

At this time, there are three spin-offs available: Chef’s Table: France [Netflix] (2016), Chef’s Table: BBQ [Netflix] (2020), and Chef’s Table: Pizza [Netflix] (2022).

Abstract

Abstract: The Art of Design [Netflix] (2017–) is an ongoing documentary TV Show on Netflix that shows the craft of world-famous designers, illustrators, architects and interior designers, and photographers.

Midnight Diner

Japan has a category of TV Shows, I’ve never seen before. I would call it a Docudrama. They have several fantastic shows that connect a beautiful story with the skillful presentation of Japanese craftsmanship.

Midnight Diner is one of the best examples of this kind. The TV Show is so good, it has two TV Shows: Midnight Diner [Netflix] (2009–2014) and Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories [Netflix] (2016-2019) and a Korean and Chinese Spin-off.

Additionally, it has three full-length movies: Midnight Diner (2014), Midnight Diner 2 (2016), and Midnight Diner (2019). People love the story.

It is a beautiful drama about a diner that opens at midnight and closes at seven in the morning. Each episode tells the story of one of its guests. Just beautiful! And each time, a specific Japanese dish is the focus of the story, and its creation is shown.

Samurai Gourmet

Samurai Gourmet [Netflix] (2017) is the second TV Show of this format (I know of). The story follows the recently retired Takeshi who discovers his culinary passion in restaurants around his town while following an imaginary Samurai.

Kantaro

The third TV Show of this format is Kantaro: The Sweet Tooth Salaryman [Netflix] (2017). The story follows a salaryman who works extra fast to have time to take time off his job and to try different sweets around his town.

Thermae Romae Novae

Thermae Romae Novae [Netflix] (2022) is a TV Show of the most unusual kind. The Anime follows a proud ancient Roman bath architect who starts falling into his baths and travels through time to modern Japan’s bathhouses. At the end of each episode follows an extra documentary of a few minutes showing the Anime creator visiting different Japanese bath houses where the owners proudly present their ancient baths and the individual specialties.

Prime Japan

Prime Japan: Nihon no kokoro ni deau [Prime Video] (2016–2017) is one of the best made documentaries on the pursuit of “Japan’s heart” I’ve ever seen. In 12 episodes, different Japanese themes as Sushi, Ramen, Japanese Design, Tea, or Japanese Swords are explored in detail. Unfortunately, the show is currently not available anywhere for streaming or even for sale.

The Great Shokunin

The Great Shokunin is a Chinese TV Show (with English subtitles) with 20 episodes that shows a broad variation of shokunin. I found a second season with 12 parts (and English subtitles).

Takuya Matsuyama

As my final example, I present Takuya Matsuyama, an indie app developer from Osaka, Japan. He develops the Markdown note-taking app Inkdrop. I include him in this list because I think he presents a modern digital version of a shokunin.

His well-made YouTube videos on his channel devaslife attracted in less than 4 years over 160,000 subscribers.

As he is not a native English speaker, he found a brilliant way to teach other people development without speaking. He rarely speaks, but types the instructions as custom designed chat messages while recording his screen. Each video takes him a very long time to create, but he leaves errors and mistakes intentionally included in his videos because they are a natural part of the software development process.

He uses interesting locations for his videos, from a hotel lounge, to a Zen temple, to hotel rooms with a fantastic view, and in nature, at a lakeside or the sea.

The silent videos with surrounding noises and the clicking of the keys from his mechanical keyboard deliver an ASMR sensation.

Conclusion

I hope this short reflection of my thoughts of shokunin kishitsu will help the one or other person to see work and profession in a different light or to admire things made well more. A society that is centered around cheaply made, quickly exchanged goods needs this old, Japanese philosophy.

[^matsuyama2018aa]: Sachiko Matsuyama (2018): Shokunin and Devotion.

[^millerzeke2014]: Miller, Zeke J (2014): Barack Obama Just Ate The Best Sushi In The World.

The Advent of AI: Getting Started with Text-to-Image Generation

Sat, 24 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Text-to-image generation needs a powerful NVIDIA GPU with at least 4 GB VRAM. You can run Stable Diffusion on an Apple M1 chip. The easiest way to get started is either with UnstableFusion for Windows, Mac, and Linux, or with Diffusion Bee for Mac.

Though it’s possible to run it on the CPU, this is extremely slow and not recommended. For comparison, I generated images with the same prompt on DreamStudio in 9 seconds, on my iPad Pro M2 in 58 seconds and with Diffusion Bee on a MacBook 2016 in 7 minutes.

If you’re just curious and don’t to pay for the necessary hardware, or create an account on one of the platforms, you can try the old DALL·E Mini. It’s now a free service rebranded as Crayon. The quality of the results is months behind the quality of the current models, but it’s a good starting point to get to know the technology. Another option is to use the free contingents of various services mentioned in the last essay.

Draw Things

If you have an iPad or iPhone, you’re in luck because a free app is available on the App Store that allows using dozens of free image models based on Stable Diffusion. The name of the app is Draw Things: AI Generation, developed by Liu Liu. The app is mind-blowing and I highly recommend it.

Draw Things app for iOS/iPadOS

The developer improves the app constantly by adding interesting new models. I downloaded over 50 GB of model data. Besides the official versions of Stable Diffusion, there are models from the community. The most important website for models is Hugging Face, an AI community to build, train and deploy models powered by the reference open source in machine learning. It’s the GitHub for AI. You can find exciting projects on Huggingface, for example diffuse the f rest, where you draw an image and provide a prompt and the AI will generate a better version of it.

Diffusion Models

You can find most models available in the Draw Things application on Hugging Face. A lot of the models are trained in a specific style. I list here all available models of the app at the time of writing, you can see examples of each model at the linked URLs. You can find here a more extensive list of models for Stable Diffusion.

Stable Diffusion v1.4
Stable Diffusion v1.5
Stable Diffusion v1.5 Inpainting – Inpainting in existing photos
Stable Diffusion v2.0
Stable Diffusion v2.0 768-v (HD)
Stable Diffusion v2.0 Inpainting – Inpainting in existing photos
Stable Diffusion v2.1
Stable Diffusion v2.1 768-v (HD)
MiniSD v1.4
Waifu Diffusion v2.1 – high-quality anime images
Nitro Diffusion v1.3 – this model can create multiple styles: Archer style, Arcane style, or modern Disney style
Cyberpunk Anime Diffusion – Cyberpunk anime characters
Redshift Diffusion v1 – high-resolution 3D artwork
Redshift Diffusion 768 (HD) – Stable Diffusion 2.0 trained on Redshift style
Dungeons and Diffusion – trained on DnD characters
Tron Legacy – trained on screenshots of the film Tron: Legacy
Openjourney – model trained on Midjourney images. If you love Midjourney, you’ll like this style
Anything v3 – model for high-quality anime
Classic Animation Diffusion v1 – this model creates the classic Disney animation style
Modern Disney Diffusion v1 – Creates the style of modern Disney movies
Arcane Diffusion v3 – model trained on the style of Arcane.
Hassanblend v1.4 – ⚠️ model trained on NSFW content
Van Gogh Diffusion v2 – model based on the movie Loving Vincent
Spider-Verse Diffusion v1 – model trained on movie stills from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Elden Ring Diffusion v3 – model trained on the game art from Elden Ring
Paper Cut v1 – model trained on paper cut images
VoxelArt v1 – model trained on Voxel Art images
Balloon Art v1 – model trained on Twisted Balloon images
F222 – ⚠️ model trained on NSFW content
Super Mario Nation v2 – model trained on Gerry Anderson’s Supermarionation
Inkpunk Diffusion v2 – model on dream booth, inspired by Gorillaz, FLCL, and Yoji Shinkawa
SamDoesArt v3 – model trained on the art style of Sam Yang.

To show what the models are capable of, I used my profile picture with different diffusion models. I used the same seed, no prompt, 50 steps, a guidance scale of 13,0, a strength of 46%, and the Euler Ancestral sampler. 46% as a strength value means it took roughly half of the source photo and the rest was creative. Lower values generate an image that looks like the source image, higher values generate images that look like the style the model was trained on. If you combine it with a prompt, you can get even more creative results, but you can never change the basic geometry of the image. For that, you need to train a new model with your face in Dreambooth.

My profile picture in different diffusion models

Diffusion Models

When you start with text-to-image generation AI, many terms will not make any sense to you. But without understanding these basics, good results are mostly luck.

The first term you’ll hear, is “Diffusion Model.” As I can’t explain it myself, I asked GPT-3 to explain it:

It is a model that is trained to generate images from text. It is called “Diffusion Model” because it is based on the diffusion process. The diffusion process is a mathematical model that describes how a substance spreads in a medium. The diffusion process is used in many fields, for example in biology, chemistry, and physics. In the context of text-to-image generation, the diffusion process is used to describe how the model spreads the text information over the image pixels.

In this video, you get the whole process of how AI image generators work explained.

Prompt

The most important part of the generation of AI images is the “prompt.” Entire books with hundreds of pages exist about how to write a good prompt. The prompt is your way to talk to the AI.

If you write a simple prompt, the result might be good at random or total crap. Each generator has its own rules on how to write a good prompt, but the basic technique is similar. You have to write detailed and descriptive what you want to see in the image, the word parts are usually separated by commas. The order of words is essential.

Some generators allow negative prompts, to exclude specific things from the image. You could, for example, ask the AI to generate a picture of a jungle, but exclude the color green from it. Often it’s possible to weigh specific parts of the prompt, to signal the AI which parts are more important. In Midjourney you use the more weight::2.0 (negative or positive numbers) to weigh a part of the prompt, in Stable Diffusion you can use the more weight:2.0 or brackets ((more weight)) to weigh a part of the prompt.

My first prompt was basic, I asked the AI to generate a cyberpunk wizard. The result was impressive, but random luck. I recreated the first two images with the same seed and upscaled the second one to add more detail. But the third image, generated with a new seed, created a complete different picture.

A cyberpunk wizard

The art or skill of writing a good prompt is somewhere between programming, art direction, art history, photography, and writing. The more you know about formats, lenses, colors, lighting, art, artists, photography, painting, and many other art forms, the better you can write a good prompt.

Many websites are helping with the creation of prompts. Some have a build in search engine, others vast documentation, or even generators for prompts for different models.

PromptoMANIA has a Prompt Builder that supports Midjourney, DreamStudio, Stable Diffusion, CF Spark, and Generic prompts. Prompthero allows searching millions of images for Openjourney, Stable Diffusion, DALL·E, and Midjourney. AiTuts has a huge prompt library with fantastic images, a free prompt book (The Big Book of Prompts), and a blog with useful getting-started articles on many generators. Diffusion Land has a search and archive for many Stable Diffusion models. ArtHub.ai has a prompt library and a massive collection of community art. Rex Wang has a website with a Dynamic Prompt generator. He has also the remarkable project Teapots and Midjourney, which explains styles, themes, mediums, materials, camera properties, and many more things for Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and DALL-E at the example of a Utah Teapot.

Style Guides

Speaking of all the different styles, the next thing is to look at style guides. To create a good prompt, you need to know as many things as possible about everything related to the appearance of your image. But unless you hold a degree in art history or are a professional photographer, art director, or artist, you will need one of the many style guides on the internet. Here is a short list of interesting ones:

Even though, the style guides are explicitly for a specific generator, you can learn a lot from them and achieve a similar result with a different generator.

Seed

A seed is a starting point for generating an AI image. It can be a random value or a specific input, like a text description or sample image. The seed determines the initial conditions for the image generation process. If you know the seed of a generated image, you can use it to create the same image again. This is useful for generating a series of similar images, such as a series of images featuring the same person.

Inpainting & Outpainting

Inpainting is a technique used in image processing and computer vision to fill in missing or corrupted parts of an image. Inpainting algorithms can be used to restore damaged or degraded images, remove objects from an image, or fill in gaps in an image. These algorithms work by using information from surrounding pixels in the image to estimate the values of the missing or corrupted pixels. In the context of AI image generation, inpainting can be used to improve the quality of generated images by filling in any missing or incomplete pixels.

AI Inpainting

The simplest form of inpainting is to remove a specific object from an image. For example, if you want to remove a person from an image, you can use an inpainting algorithm to fill in the missing pixels with the surrounding pixels. It is possible to fill the area in with a prompt. In the image above, I asked Stable Diffusion to fill in a teddy bear, sitting on a sofa.

DALL·E and Stable Diffusion support outpainting. With this technique, the AI tries to fill in the missing parts of an image and extend it. Here is a longer Stable Diffusion Outpainting Colab Tutorial showing how to do it with a GoogleColab notebook.

Other Settings

Depending on each generator, there are other settings. The most important is the format of the image. You need to pick the aspect ratio and size, it’s not easily possible to recreate for example an image generated in a 1:1 format in 16:9. The different size will generate a different image, even with the same seed. With some luck, it might look similar.

You need to select how many steps should be applied to the image, the higher the number the better the result, but the longer the process takes. I use Stable Diffusion with values between 30-50 steps.

Stable Diffusion has a Guidance Scale setting that decides how literally the AI takes your prompt, higher values are more faithful to the prompt. I usually use some value between 7-13. Other generators have similar settings.

It’s possible to use different samplers in Stable Diffusion, but the details are too scientific for me. Even the explanation of ChatGPT for the different samplers didn’t help me understand it. The Draw Things app writes:

Different samplers can converge at different steps and may result different visual styles. Euler A is known to generate more dreamy images while DPM++ 2M Karras can generate high quality images in no more than 30 steps.

Conclusion

You are now equipped with the knowledge to start your journey with AI. I covered speech-to-text generation, text generation, text-to-image generation, the various generators and Stable Diffusion models, and the different settings. I hope you will have fun with it and create spectacular images.

🤖 I researched this series of essays with ChatGPT, wrote it with GitHub Copilot, created the cover artwork with Stable Diffusion, and improved their quality with Real-ESRGAN.

The Advent of AI: Text-to-Image Generation

Wed, 21 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Another type of AI that captures the time and minds of people around the world for months is text-to-image generation. You might have seen the website This Person Does Not Exist, which generates a new face on every reload. Text-to-image generation is even better, you can generate images just with a text input.

The video above is one month of work by an artist, created in Midjourney out of 10,000 images. If you’re curious about what artists created with these AI generators, have a look at these stunning videos:

Disturbed – Bad Man (Official Music Video) – Midjourney
How I Faked My Life Using Ai: Or (The Life and Death of Ryan Gosling Person) – Stable Diffusion & Dreambooth
BINARY DREAMS: How A.I. Sees the Universe – Midjourney
Voyage through Time - a Generative AI journey – Stable Diffusion
Shroudcity Yuu – DALL·E
Frank Hughes OMG V1 – DALL·E
Billingsley - Serenity – DALL·E
Venosic - Denial of Decree – Midjourney
Vlad In Tears - Running Up That Hill – Midjourney
I’ve made DALLE-2 neural network extend Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” – DALL·E
A snippet from my full-length animated philosophy video – Stable Diffusion
A quick demonstration of how I accomplished this animation – Stable Diffusion

My First AI Project

Two weeks ago, when a colleague left our company, a designer from our team had the idea to create a fantasy-based goodbye card on a Miro board because the leaving colleague is a huge fantasy fan.

The designer created a map of Essos from Game of Thrones and added the journey of the leaving colleague to his new company as a path on the map. People could sign the route with their goodbye wishes. He created fantasy cards for each member of our team.

I had started using text-to-image generation a month earlier and had spoken with him about AI. He asked me if I could do magic and make us look more fantasy. And thanks to text-to-image AI, I was able to transform us into wizards, warriors, elves, and dwarfs. The demand for more people signing the card grew, and I was creating lots of fantasy photos for co-workers from other teams.

My chat exploded with questions: How did you do this?, Can you teach me how to do this?, and Can I book a personal hour to learn how to do this?

Text-to-image AI is a large language model capable of generating images from text descriptions (prompts), using a neural network trained on a dataset of text-image pairs. Currently, there exist four ways for text-to-image generation that the public can use. You have to pay for two of the options, the others are open source, and you can run them yourself.

The two commercial generators are DALL·E 2 by OpenAI and Midjourney by an independent research lab.

DALL·E 2

You pay DALL·E 2 per image and resolution, the price is between $0.016 (256×256 pixels) and $0.020 (1024×1024 pixels). You can use your free $18 gift for the generation of images (or text).

It’s excellent at coherency, can create unique zoom animations, and is easy to use. On the downside, it’s expensive, very censored, and you have limited artistic control. You can see incredible art created with DALL·E 2 in the Reddit Subreddit DALL·E 2.

Midjourney

Midjourney has different membership plans, the cheapest is $10 per month and allows you to generate ~200 images. The Standard membership costs $30 per month and allows unlimited images in relax mode and 15 GPU hours for upscaling of images. More upgrades are available, for example, to have a private visibility option. Corporate Membership costs $600 per year for one person. With a new account, you get 20 image generations for free.

You create images on a Discord server using the Midjourney bot. Midjourney has extensive documentation and a massive community. Artists and designers love Midjourney because it produces dreamy and artful images. It’s in the sweet spot between creative control and ease of use, it’s very stylistic, and has fantastic developers working on it. On the downside, it’s less coherent. To see images generated with Midjourney, visit the official Reddit Midjourney Subreddit.

Stable Diffusion

The third generator is Stable Diffusion, developed by Stability AI Ltd. It has a permissive license that allows for commercial and non-commercial usage. You can run Stable Diffusion on your local computer, but you need to fulfill some minimum hardware requirements. It needs an NVIDIA GPU with at least 4 GB VRAM, and hard drive space of 10 GB. On a Mac, you’ll need a M1 chip or better to run it properly.

The company develops DreamStudio, a paid service using Stable Diffusion. For $10 you can create ~5,000 images with the app, 500 images are free with a new account.

It’s probably the generator with the highest quality, it’s very coherent, very fluid, and open source. On the downside, you require experience with AI generators, and it can be confusing to newcomers.

If you want to see what it’s capable of, look at Stable Diffusion: DALL-E 2 For Free, For Everyone!, and Stable Diffusion Is Getting Outrageously Good! by Two Minute Papers. The Subreddit StableDiffusion is a constant stream of mind-blowing things.

Another fantastic technique you can do with Stable Diffusion is Dreambooth. It allows people to train the AI with custom images (for example with photos of you or your pet) to generate personalized images. You can learn more about Dreambooth in the article Training Stable Diffusion with Dreambooth using 🧨 Diffusers. Another option is one of the commercial platforms. On Astria you can train a model for $5 with up to 20 photos. Dreambooth is another option with a yearly price tag of $29.99. You can browse the funny gallery with famous people.

OpenArt has an incredible free Stable Diffusion Prompt Book that is constantly updated. It’s one of the best resources I know for learning Stable Diffusion.

GoogleColab

Another way to run text-to-image generation is GoogleColab notebooks. The website is a way to prepare complicated code to generate AI in a user-friendly way, where beginners can click through the code steps. It’s fully controllable and allows for more specific use cases. On the downside, it’s not very user-friendly, slow if you don’t pay for faster generation, and requires a lot of technical knowledge.

You can find Disco Diffusion, VQGAN, and many others. With a bit of technical knowledge (Python) you can create wonderful things without limitations on your computer. This video gives a brief introduction to how to generate AI images with Disco Diffusion. But if you don’t have the hardware or want to invest the money for fast execution, it’s slow, I used the free version of Disco Diffusion, and it took 35 minutes to create one image.

You can run Dreambooth on GoogleColab. This tutorial video or this video explain the steps.

Playgrounds and Services

Plenty of services are available to generate images. Playground allows using Stable Diffusion (1000/day), or with the Pro Plan for $15 per month (2000/day). You can use the DALL·E add-on for $10 per month to create 800 DALL·E images per month.

Lexica is a Stable Diffusion search engine that allows the creation of 100 images without any payment. The best feature is that each artwork has its prompt (the text used to talk to the AI), its settings, dimensions, and seed (a random number to create noise for the image). With this information, it’s possible to create a similar image (but never the same).

DreamStudio is the application of the creators of Stable Diffusion and gifts users 500 images for free. 5,000 images cost $10 per month.

The image models compete constantly for the throne, and with each update, people discuss the differences between the generators. Nobody can tell you which of the generators is the best. It’s taste, depends on your prompting skills, and the style you want to achieve.

Text-to-Video, Text-to-3D, Text-to-Audio, and Brain-to-Image

Here are a few links to other interesting research that I don’t cover here in detail, lacking information. Google Video AI can create impressive videos from text with Imagen Video.

And another project of Google, DreamFusion is capable to generate 3D models from text.

Riffusion is a model that uses Stable Diffusion to create images of spectrograms that can be converted to audio. You can basically create music from text. Harmonai created with Diffusion Radio, a radio station that streams 24/7 AI-generated music.

And the paper Seeing Beyond the Brain: Conditional Diffusion Model with Sparse Masked Modeling for Vision Decoding decoded visual stimuli from brain recording to create images.

AutoDraw is a fun tool to create images from painting. It will recognize what you tried to draw and suggest an illustration.

The Advent of AI: Text Generation

Sat, 17 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMT

GitHub Copilot

The most prominent text generation model, used by over 80 commercial apps, is GPT-3 by OpenAI. I learned late that GitHub Copilot, a code completion tool I used for over a year, uses GPT-3. I used GitHub Copilot for a few months during its trial period, and it helped me tremendously. The first time it blew my mind was when I created a TypeScript array with all letters of the web font of XING (a patched variant of Fira Sans). I had the task to write a visual testing page to observe changes to our font. We planned to roll out a big update to the font and wanted to make sure nothing breaks. The file that generates the testing page looked like this, including all letters, numbers, special characters, and ligatures.

const fontLetters = [
  "A", // The uppercase A
  "B", // The uppercase B
  "C", // The uppercase C
  // …
];

GitHub Copilot was able to complete the array with all letters, including a comment about the letter. When GitHub Copilot turned into a premium service, I decided to invest the $10 per month because it’s a great help, in completing code or sentences each day.

Later I learned the underlying model is Codex, a descendant of GPT-3, specialized for code completion. I use the Vim plugin and the Visual Studio Code extension every day. I learned that GitHub Copilot does not only write code, but it can explain code and generate code from text input.

Writing a comment like this in the code:

Create a React component in TypeScript and Styled Components taking children and returning a red button.

Will create code like this:


const RedButton = styled.button`
  color: red;
`;

export default ({ children }) => ;

GitHub Copilot can explain and write regular expressions or answer development questions.[^copilotqna][^levelupcopilot] And because it’s GPT-3, it can answer nearly any question:

q: what is the capital of france?
a: paris

A good one is to ask for colors, the AI completes the sentence and adds the color #f1c40f:

The hex color for the sky at sunset is #f1c40f.

GitHub is working on GitHub Copilot CLI, which allows using GitHub Copilot in the terminal. I’ve added myself to the waiting list.

GPT-3

GPT-3 is the language model that drives Codex. To play with the model, you don’t need to subscribe to GitHub Copilot. You can create an OpenAI account and play on its Playground. With the creation of an account, you get a gift of $18. You can use these for text or image creation (though image creation is more expensive). OpenAI is a non-profit organization, but somebody needs to keep the lights on. The training and servers cost money, and somebody has to pay the bill.

The Example section lists nearly 50 examples of how to use GPT-3. From Grammar correction, translation, calculation of time complexity, product name generation, code conversion, summary, and recipe creator (eat at your own risk) to the creation of study notes, the examples are a lot of fun to try out. My favorite is the Movie to Emoji example that converts movie titles to emojis.

Convert movie titles into emoji.

Back to the Future: 👨👴🚗🕒
Batman: 🤵🦇
Transformers: 🚗🤖

The language models are constantly improved. The newest model can even fill in the blanks in a text, as demonstrated in the video OpenAI’s New AI: Video Game Addict No More! by Two Minute Papers.

AI Text Generation in the Wild

The number of projects and companies using GPT-3 (or similar models) under the hood exploded in the last few months. It’s nearly impossible to keep track of them. Productivity and note-taking apps like Notion, Mem, Craft, and Coda have all implemented (or are implementing) AI in their products. You can use Notion AI for example to write blog posts, meeting agendas, social media posts, press releases, job descriptions, sales emails, poems, and more. This will increase the productivity of customers a lot.

Then there is Lex, a word processor with AI baked in to help write text. The service is free right now with a waiting list. It can generate headlines or full paragraphs using GPT-3. Nathan Baschez, the creator of Lex, shows in this video what Lex can do. Another cool AI writing app is HyperWrite, a personal writing assistant. It has a built-in editor that suggests text while you write, and a Google Chrome extension to do the same on the web. Jasper is another writing app with AI, but it’s too expensive for many casual users.[^iawarw]

The GitHub user nhaouari created a plugin for my favorite note-taking tool, Obsidian, that uses GPT-3 to generate notes. Shubhro Saha integrated GPT-3 into Google Sheets.

Another tool, Dramatron, can write screenplays. It uses AI to generate ideas for characters, plots, and scenes.

Ghostreader in Readwise Reader

My favorite project using GPT-3 is the newly introduced Ghostreader in Readwise Reader, the new product of Readwise. I’m a happy customer of Readwise for two years, and use it all the time to collect and learn highlights from various sources (books, articles, tweets, and podcasts) and to transfer them into my knowledge database in Obsidian. Their newest product, Readwise Reader, is in now in public Beta. The product allows reading books, articles, video transcripts, and numerous other sources. It has a built-in RSS Reader.

A few weeks ago, they integrated GPT-3. The reading assistant with the name Ghostreader is a lot of fun. It can simplify complicated text (for example scientific papers), summarize sections or paragraphs, explain words and terms, create flashcards for learning, and even create haiku or emoji from highlighted text. I use the TL;DR feature all the time to create short comments for highlights.

I read last month an article by the Foundation of Economic Education written by Jon Miltimore about the true source of power.[^riddleofsteel] I’ll show how Ghostreader works with a highlight of this article talking about the 1982 movie Conan the Barbarian. For this example, I highlighted the following text:

Unfortunately, Conan’s attempt to penetrate the cult goes sideways, and he’s taken captive. After being beaten to a pulp, Conan is brought before Thulsa Doom, who doesn’t even remember destroying Conan’s village or killing his parents. But he does hold an answer to an important mystery: the riddle of steel.
Thulsa Doom: There was a time, boy, when I searched for steel when steel meant more to me than gold or jewels.

Conan: The riddle… of steel.

Thulsa Doom: Yes! You know what it is, don't you boy? Shall I tell you? It's the least I can do. Steel isn't strong, boy, flesh is stronger!

At this point, Thulsa Doom looks up at the cliffs that surround him and Conan. Several young women stand in flowing white robes on rocks, arms folded passively.

“Come to me, my child,” Thulsa Doom says in a gentle voice to a young woman.

Obediently, the woman steps away from the rocks above … and calmly plunges to her death.

“That is strength, boy! That is power!,” Thulsa Doom tells Conan. “What is steel compared to the hand that wields it?”

— Jon Miltimore, How the ‘Riddle of Steel’ in Conan the Barbarian Reveals the Secret of Power

When I use Simplify on the text, it generates this:

Unfortunately, Conan gets captured and brought to Thulsa Doom. Thulsa Doom doesn't remember hurting Conan's family, but he knows the answer to an important mystery called the "riddle of steel". Thulsa Doom tells Conan that steel isn't strong, rather, it is the person who uses the steel that is strong. To prove his point, Thulsa Doom calls out to a young woman on the cliffs above. The woman steps away from the rocks and falls to her death. Thulsa Doom explains that this is strength and power, and asks Conan what steel is compared to the hand that wields it.

When I use Summarize on the text, it generates this:

Thulsa Doom reveals the 'Riddle of Steel' to Conan, which is that steel is not strong, but the flesh is. He then demonstrates this by having a young woman obediently plunge to her death to prove the strength of power.

Using TL;DR creates this short sentence:

Steel is not as powerful as flesh.

The Haiku it wrote for me couldn’t be better, if I had it written:

Riddle of steel's power 🔪
glimpsed in Thulsa Doom's wisdom 🧠
strength of flesh conquers all 💪

I asked for a pure Emojify of the highlight:

🤴🏼👦🏼👊🏼💥🧱💪🏼🧚🏼‍♀️⛰🗣️🙏🏼🤚🏼💔😰🤯💥

And finally, it created a flashcard for me:

Q: What is Thulsa Doom's explanation of the riddle of steel?
A: Steel is not strong, flesh is stronger. What is steel compared to the hand that wields it?

It’s possible to use custom templates with the Jinja templating engine. You could ask for example what the top 5 key takeaways of the article are, let it create a blog post, or ask any other question.

ChatGPT

OpenAI created the biggest wave yet with the release of ChatGPT (GPT-3.5) in December 2022. It’s a natural language processing model developed by OpenAI. It’s designed for chatbot applications, and you can use it to create conversational agents that can engage in human-like dialogue. Millions of people tried it out in the weeks since its release. Currently, it’s constantly overloaded and OpenAI works on scaling the servers up to the growing demand.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve seen incredible applications of ChatGPT. People tried to use it in the most creative ways possible. Dr. Jordan B. Peterson asked the AI to write the 13th chapter for his book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. He then asked the AI to write it in the style of the KJV Bible and then as a KJV and Daodejing hybrid. He asked the AI to evaluate if the 2020 US election was stolen, and to define postmodern Neo-Marxism.

You could use ChatGPT for creative tasks. Simon Willison used ChatGPT to learn the Rust programming language. Dylan Black taught ChatGPT to Invent a Language. Guy Parsons asked ChatGPT to create a movie script, including the script and images of the protagonists.

Other people used it for assistive or consulting tasks. Alex Cohen created a weight loss plan, with calorie targets, a grocery list, and a workout plan. Daniel Gross created a WhatsApp bot with ChatGPT that served as his personal assistant. Roxana Daneshjou tried to use ChatGPT as a medical chatbot. The German 𝕏 user Velofisch asked ChatGPT to evaluate recent political events in Germany for its ethics and morality. Its answer was a poor certificate for the German government because it declared all political decisions as immoral.

And we could see numerous people trying to let it develop things. Rakshit Lodha asked ChatGPT to build a Twitter bot without knowing any programming language. Jonas Degrave build a virtual machine inside ChatGPT. Sarah Gooding used ChatGPT to create a working WordPress plugin on the first try. The game of an 11-year-old boy created with ChatGPT created a lot of attention. Amjad Masad used ChatGPT as a debugging companion. Lech Sokolowski asked ChatGPT to create Blender scripts that arranged cubes in a random, in a circle, facing the center, and in a sphere.

People tried to hack ChatGPT in all possible ways. But OpenAI works constantly to prevent those abuses. This 𝕏 thread shows all the ways to get around ChatGPT's safeguards, for example allow it to browse the internet, talk rude, or give tips for a perfect murder.

People created many interesting projects related to ChatGPT in a matter of days. LearnGPT and showGPT are platforms that collect fascinating prompts and allow rating them in Reddit style. Awesome ChatGPT Prompts is a GitHub repository collecting cool ideas. This collection highlights the shortcomings of ChatGPT and where it lacks. ShareGPT is a platform and Google Chrome browser extension that allows sharing your results with others. Wang Dàpéng created a ChatGPT Google extension that shows the response to a question alongside the search results. Hello Cognition, Inc. created a ChatGPT search engine that looks at the results of a search for answers to a question. Abiel Zulio M created an unofficial ChatGPT extension for Raycast.

GPT-4

And this is only the beginning, rumors around the internet say that GPT-4 will be coming soon, sometime between December 2022 and February 2023.[^gpt4romeroapr][^gpt4rumornov][^gpt4rumorasw] GPT-3 has 175 billion parameters, but GPT-4 is 500 times more powerful with 100 trillion parameters.

[^copilotqna]: Visual Studio Code (2022): Copilot Q&A, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRNo_JOl-9g.

[^levelupcopilot]: Visual Studio Code (2022): Level up with Copilot, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq7ppvXCBDM.

[^iawarw]: Shu Omi (2022): 3 Best AI Writing Apps Compared!, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLycRKwNdd0.

[^riddleofsteel]: Jon Miltimore (2022): How the ‘Riddle of Steel’ in Conan the Barbarian Reveals the Secret of Power, https://fee.org/articles/how-the-riddle-of-steel-in-conan-the-barbarian-reveals-the-secret-of-power/.

[^gpt4romeroapr]: Alberto Romero (2022): GPT-4 Is Coming Soon. Here’s What We Know About It, https://towardsdatascience.com/gpt-4-is-coming-soon-heres-what-we-know-about-it-64db058cfd45.

[^gpt4rumornov]: Alberto Romero (2022): GPT-4 Rumors From Silicon Valley, https://thealgorithmicbridge.substack.com/p/gpt-4-rumors-from-silicon-valley.

[^gpt4rumorasw]: Andrew Steinwold (2022): 𝕏, https://x.com/AndrewSteinwold/status/1594889562526027777.

The Advent of AI: Introduction

Wed, 14 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract

This is a four-part series of essays that investigates different aspects of AI. From political and social impact to AI research. I’ll dive deeper into the topics of speech-to-text, text generation, and text-to-image generation and share useful resources, videos, and links.

Humanity will remember 2022 as a year of tremendous progress in Artificial Intelligence (AI) advancement. This year, AI made a gigantic leap into consumer products. I use now four products every day that have AI built in.

My journey into AI started with the introduction of GitHub Copilot in the summer of 2021. Based on Codex, a language model, I used the beta product, trained by OpenAI to write computer code. It’s based on GPT-3 (Generative Pretrained Transformer 3), another language model by OpenAI that can be used for a variety of natural language processing tasks, such as language translation, summarization, and question-answering.

Political and Social Impact of AI

Humans had always a mixture of fear and admiration for artificial intelligence. This is expressed in countless books, movies, TV shows, and games. The Grokipedia article List of artificial intelligence films lists nearly 150 movies since 1927. Iconic movies as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, The Terminator, Ex Machina, and Her show various degrees of dystopian futures with AI.

This is one potential danger of AI. Accidentally or with malicious training, AI could endanger humanity. Recently, an aggressive AI threatened to kill humans in a test with AI interviews using GPT-3, LaMDA, and Synthesia avatars. This AI isn’t a danger yet because it’s not self-aware. But it proves that AI can be dangerous if it is not trained properly.

Other potential dangers are surveillance, manipulation, and control by authoritarian governments. AI could be used to manipulate people, their behaviors, and emotions, to spread misinformation, influence elections, and manipulate news (as seen in the computer game Deus Ex). It could be used to control the economy, for example by manipulating the stock market.

Combined with advanced robotics, AI could be used by police forces and the military to crush protests, kill people, and control the world.

These are dangers in a further future. The most immediate danger is that AI could replace humans in many jobs. This could lead to massive unemployment and huge social unrest. It would lead to a massive wealth gap between the rich and the poor. The number of jobs that could be replaced is huge, for example, copywriters, translators, authors, journalists, programmers, designers, lawyers, doctors, actors, influencers, and many more. Creative people feel threatened by what AI can do today. The boards are full of angry arguments about how AI is not creative, AI doesn’t create anything new, or just mixes existing things. Stack Overflow started to ban AI-generated answers from their platform. Angry developers filed the first lawsuits.[^ghcinvestigation] AI will likely be subject to regulation soon.

Developers discussed the future of our profession everywhere in the last few weeks.[^theprimagen] But because humans are bad at predicting the future, I would take these discussions as nothing more than a guess.

I, personally, think that AI will help humans in the future, at least in the near-time future. It will help humans as a tool, helper, muse, or pair programmer. For now, the AI-generated output is not good enough to rely on. A lot of generated texts have wrong information, or images get generated with flaws and distortions. For many years, AI will enhance our jobs, not replace us.

AI Research

A wide variety of companies and laboratories are doing research in artificial intelligence, for example DeepMind (a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.), OpenAI, Google Brain (a deep learning research team within Google), Meta AI Research, Microsoft Research AI, Baidu Research, and AWS AI. These organizations do research in machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing, computer vision, and robotics.

OpenAI

OpenAI is one of the few companies that is not driven by profit. It’s a non-profit research company founded in 2015 by Elon Musk, Sam Altman (CEO), Greg Brockman (CTO), John Schulman, and Ilya Sutskever (Chief Scientist).[^crunchbase] The company has raised $1.7 billion in funding.

Elon Musk is a Co-Founder, board member, and doing Executive Operations at OpenAI. He is also the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and 𝕏; co-founder of SolarCity and The Boring Company. His recent interview at TED, A future worth getting excited about, is a must-watch.

The company has been working on Generative Models for several years. In 2019, OpenAI released GPT-2, a large-scale unsupervised language model that generates coherent paragraphs of text. In 2020, OpenAI released CLIP, a new approach to image and text understanding. In 2021, OpenAI released DALL·E, a new approach to image generation. In 2022, OpenAI released Codex, a new approach to code generation.

Other interesting areas of research are Robotics, Music AI, Gaming AI, and speech recognition. Its robotics research released Roboschool, a physics simulator for robotics research. They trained a human-like robot hand to perform a variety of tasks. In 2019, it was able to solve Rubik’s Cube with a robotic hand.

Its music AI research released MuseNet and Jukebox, large-scale neural networks that generate music.

Its gaming AI research released Dota 2 AI, a neural network that plays Dota 2. The AI was tested at the International 2019, the biggest Dota 2 tournament in the world. It was able to beat the world’s best human players. OpenAI released Neural MMO, a massively multiplayer online game that can be played by AI agents. In 2022, the AI learned to play Minecraft with Video PreTraining (VPT).

In 2022, OpenAI released Whisper, a speech recognition system that can transcribe speech in real-time, as Open Source. It’s able to transcribe speech with poor sound quality, such as in a noisy environment or with a bad microphone, in more than 50 languages and translate it into another language.

They constantly work on making machine learning research more accessible to the public. Deep RL is an educational platform that teaches the basics of reinforcement learning. It’s a collection of interactive tutorials that teach you how to build and train reinforcement learning agents.

Speech-to-Text

In the following sections, I’ll show examples of AI-generated content, starting with speech-to-text. I’ll focus on the bigger topics and mention the less-researched topics.

When OpenAI released Whisper as Open Source, Andrej Karpathy announced on 𝕏 how he had downloaded and transcribed 322 episodes of the Lex Friedman Podcast thanks to Whisper and published them on his project Lexicap. I wanted to try it out myself because it doesn’t need expensive hardware for calculation or payment.

I’ll show in this section how to download a video, transcribe and translate it with Whisper. The tool requires a running Python environment with PyTorch and FFmpeg installed. It’s picky about the versions, I’ll walk you through what I did.

Install the Dependencies

I use Homebrew as my package manager and asdf as my version manager. I install the version manager (feel free to use another one), youtube-dl to download a video as audio, and the dependencies listed for Whisper.

brew install asdf
brew install youtube-dl
brew install ffmpeg

Next, I install the correct Python version.

asdf plugin add python
asdf install python 3.9.9
asdf global python 3.9.9

Now I install Whisper and its dependencies.

pip install torch torchvision
pip install git+https://github.com/openai/whisper.git

Download a Video

I decided to download a short video from Muji Global in Japanese. It’s short, the processing will be fast. First I find out the available video and audio formats, and then I pick m4a as an audio format for download.

youtube-dl -F https://www.youtube.com/watch\?v\=j86NOoAcq24
youtube-dl -f 140 https://www.youtube.com/watch\?v\=j86NOoAcq24

Generating the Transcript

I rename the downloaded file to input.m4a and transcribe it with Whisper. For that, it has to download a 1.42 GB model. Different models are available, for some languages or use cases a smaller model is enough. Start the command and grab a coffee.

whisper input.m4a --language Japanese --model medium --task translate

It took me about 7 minutes to transcribe the 1 minute of audio on my MacBook Pro 2016.

Whisper will generate three files (some with time code) and print the output to the console.

[00:00.000 --> 00:02.000]  How to make an order curtain
[00:03.000 --> 00:04.000]  Hello.
[00:04.000 --> 00:09.000]  I will show you how to make an order curtain.
[00:11.000 --> 00:14.000]  There are three necessary information.
[00:15.000 --> 00:17.000]  First, the width of the curtain rail.
[00:18.000 --> 00:20.000]  Second, the length from the runner.
[00:21.000 --> 00:23.000]  Third, how to attach the curtain rail.
[00:23.000 --> 00:29.000]  The width of the curtain rail is measured from the edge of the rail.
[00:30.000 --> 00:34.000]  The height is measured from the bottom of the runner.
[00:35.000 --> 00:41.000]  When measuring the height of a large window, it is easy to measure from the floor to the top.
[00:42.000 --> 00:46.000]  Check how the curtain rail is attached.
[00:46.000 --> 00:48.000]  How was it?
[00:48.000 --> 00:52.000]  If you can confirm so far, please select the curtain article.

The output is not too impressive, but this is an example. I tried it on long videos with poor audio quality, and it picked up even chatter in the background. If you would like to learn more, you can watch OpenAI’s Whisper Learned 680,000 Hours Of Speech! by Two Minute Papers describing the scientific paper and learn more about Whisper.

[^crunchbase]: Crunchbase (2022): OpenAI, https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/openai.

[^ghcinvestigation]: Matthew Butterick (2022): Maybe you don’t mind if GitHub Copilot used your open-source code without asking. But how will you feel if Copilot erases your open-source community?, https://githubcopilotinvestigation.com/.

[^theprimagen]: ThePrimagen (2022): ChatGPT - What does this mean for programmers?, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQYXM4U831A.

The Return of the News Feed: The case for RSS in the age of algorithmic feeds

Sat, 05 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMT

People always ask me how I stay up to date with all those new tools, libraries, memes, jokes, industry or political news without getting overwhelmed. My answer is simple: I use an RSS feed reader for as long as I can remember. I follow 817 sources. I read everything within my RSS Reader, from blogs to news sites, YouTube videos, 𝕏, and Reddit, to newsletters.

A Short History of the News Feed

At the beginning of the internet, there were not many websites, and bookmarking those and visiting them from time to time was easy. But as more and more people discovered the internet, people started to create curated lists of “cool things” to look at. But the number of websites grew, and it got harder and harder to find the good things. The invention of search engines allowed to crawl the internet and create indexes of everything. Finding things was now possible again. As soon as you wanted to stay up to date with more than a handful of websites, you were out of luck. Too much effort was necessary to check all the cool websites every day.

A New Hope

Clever people started to think about ways to create machine-readable ways to deliver content to solve those issues. The RSS (Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) format was created in 1999, but it gained widespread usage between 2005 and 2006.

The idea is simple: Instead of visiting a website to see if new content is available, the website updates a small machine-readable file that is frequently read by a feed reader. It started similarly to news tickers. At first, those websites delivered headlines and occasionally a short excerpt, but soon many delivered the full content. Google created the Google Reader in 2005, a fantastic way of staying up to date.

The Empire Strikes Back

But with the advent of social media, many content creators moved their content to those social media platforms and they build walls around it. They discovered that the idea of content aggregation ran against their business model of advertising to the user. Google tried monetizing news feed advertising by buying the company Feedburner. The companies discovered that giving control over when and how users consume content harmed the companies revenue. Instead, they started investing in algorithms to deliver sorted and ranked content to the user inside their social media feeds. Google retired Google Reader in 2013 and gradually removed features from Feedburner and in 2021 they retired the service and kept a minimal interface alive to proxy feeds.

But over the years, more and more content creators discovered that they lost control or even ownership over their content and customers. This funny comic by The Oatmeal visualizes the dilemma content creators are in right now.

Social media companies started to misuse their algorithms for maximal profit and to push politically biased content. It started with conservative people that saw their reach limited or throttled, content removed or pages deplatformed. But with the acquisition of Twitter (now 𝕏) by Elon Musk, even the most progressive left-leaning person realized that ownership and policies in those walled gardens can change quickly. More and more content creators start moving back to good old newsletters, RSS feeds, and their websites. They post links to their content on all social media sites, but the content lives on their sites.

The Return of the News Feed

And even though not many people use this technology, it never went away. It was kept alive in Open-Source projects, specialized services, or hidden beneath famous applications (like Apple podcasts). And with the realization that social media companies abused our trust, many tools bring back this old technology. Brave introduced in 2020 Brave News to their browser as a built-in newsreader that supports RSS. Readwise created a brand-new reading experience with Readwise Reader that has an RSS Reader built-in. The recipe app Mela uses RSS to collect recipes from around the internet and to add them with one click to your recipe collection. And RSS is the underlying technology of all podcast apps.

Introduction to News Feeds for Beginners

It is best I start briefly explaining the technical terms you might come along with when using a newsreader. News feeds are available as different formats: RSS, Atom, and JSON feed. As a user, you don’t need to know the differences, the first two formats are supported by nearly every reader, and the last format is newer and has less support. RSS and Atom can be used interchangeably, even though there are slight differences that don’t have to bother a non-tech person. It’s a file that is updated by the website you want to subscribe to and regularly checked for updates by your RSS Reader or RSS Aggregator. If you’re curious about how a file looks like, you can have a look at my RSS feed.

Another term is OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language), a format that is used to export and import a list of sources you follow. When you want to create a backup of your subscriptions or use a new app, you export your current list of sources to this format and import it to the new app.

RSS Reader vs. RSS Aggregator

As RSS is an open format, there are as many ways of consuming content as there are tastes. You have to pick what you value. A pretty interface, easy usage, advanced features, or even artificial intelligence. RSS Readers or RSS Aggregator are two ways of reading your content.

An RSS Reader is a direct connection to each source, and you can pick at what interval all the sources should be checked for new content. Depending on the number of sources you follow, this might take a few seconds or minutes to ask each website for changes. Many applications can do this in the background. They come built into some applications, for example in DEVONthink or Brave Browser, as browser plugins or applications for Desktop or Mobile. The price range is from free over a small one-time price to monthly payments. I use Reeder on macOS, iOS, and iPadOS. Here is a short list of applications: Reeder, NewNewsWire, Fiery Feeds, lire, ViennaRSS, Unread, or Fluent Reader. But there are much more available by searching for RSS Reader on the internet or your preferred App Store. I suggest downloading a free or cheap RSS Reader at first and start using a RSS Aggregator when you need more features.

An RSS Aggregator is a service that does the fetching for you, and they add more useful features to justify a monthly fee. They might allow subscribing to email newsletters or have a powerful search. Some might provide a 𝕏 subscription or a connection to other services. They might hide sponsored advertising, provide a nice reading experience, allow you to listen to podcasts, see changes in updated articles, create filter or muting rules, or even use artificial intelligence to enhance the experience. The price range is between $4-12 per month.

I used Feedly since 2013, but switched last year to Feedbin because I didn’t need the artificial intelligence features of Feedly and Feedbin provided the features I wanted for a better price. It’s possible to use RSS Aggregators with RSS Readers. I read my news in Reeder, but Feedbin is my aggregator. I additionally started using Readwise Reader, which is in late Beta. Other aggregators are NewsBlur, InnoReader, BadQux Reader, or The Old Reader. If you are technically skilled, you can even host your aggregator with tools like FreshRSS or Tiny Tiny RSS.

Subscribing to a News Feed

Many RSS Readers allow subscribing to a website by clicking a button and pasting the URL of the website. Browser extensions allow doing this directly from within a browser. RSS Aggregators provide often a way to discover news sources inside the application. Feeds can be organized by adding them to folders or adding tags. This allows reading everything about one topic before moving to the next. It’s not only websites you can subscribe to, but many services have hidden RSS features.

# YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<ID>
https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?playlist_id=<ID>

# Odysee

https://odysee.com/$/rss/@<USER>

# Reddit

https://www.reddit.com/.rss
https://www.reddit.com/r/<NAME>.rss
https://www.reddit.com/r/<NAME>/hot.rss
https://www.reddit.com/r/<NAME>/new.rss
https://www.reddit.com/r/<NAME>/rising.rss
https://www.reddit.com/r/<NAME>/top.rss
https://www.reddit.com/r/<NAME>/best.rss
https://www.reddit.com/user/<USER>.rss
https://www.reddit.com/user/<USER>/m/<NAME>.rss
https://www.reddit.com/r/<NAME>+<NAME>+<NAME>.rss

# Hacker News

https://news.ycombinator.com/rss
https://news.ycombinator.com/showrss
https://hnrss.org/newest?points=250
https://hnrss.org/newest?q=Django
https://hnrss.org/bestcomments
https://hnrss.org/best

A much longer list is provided in the article Use RSS for privacy and efficiency and in a huge GitHub gist with endpoints. For websites that don’t provide an RSS feed, there is the option of scraping. Scraping is the technique of scanning a website and extracting data. RSS Bridge is an open-source project that generates RSS or Atom feeds for websites that don’t provide one. Some content aggregators like Feedly have a built-in scraper. The only way to prevent content from being scraped is through a password-protected site.

Providing a News Feed

But why share content on the internet, if you don’t want people to find and read it? Every so often, I come to a tech blog that doesn’t provide an RSS feed. This always leaves me with a mixture of perplexity, confusion, and anger. When I like the content, I write an email to the website owner asking to provide one, if they don’t add one I try using a scraper or never come back.

Don’t lose potential readers, customers, or fans by not providing an RSS feed. Adding a feed is easy. Many CMS systems, web frameworks, and static site generators have the feature either built-in, or it can be activated in the settings, added with a plugin, or with custom code written in 15 minutes. Here is information on how to add an RSS feed to WordPress, Ghost, Joomla, Magnolia, Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, Ruby on Rails, Django, Next.js, Hugo, Gatsby, Jekyll, Nuxt, Hexo, Astro, Vuepress, Eleventy, SvelteKit, Gridsome, or Metalsmith.

After an RSS feed is published for your website, you need to make sure RSS Readers and RSS Aggregators can find it. This is done by adding the URL to the feed(s) to the <head> of your website. Many CMS do this automatically for you.

It is a good idea to provide multiple feeds if you provide different content types. That way, the readers can subscribe to the topics they are interested in.

I provide a feed for my essays and for my Haiku poetry:

<link
  href="https://www.stefanimhoff.de/index.xml"
  rel="alternate"
  title="Stefan Imhoff"
  type="application/rss+xml"
/>

<link
  href="https://www.stefanimhoff.de/haiku.xml"
  rel="alternate"
  title="Stefan Imhoff (Haiku)"
  type="application/rss+xml"
/>

Conclusion

Social media companies have shown us many reasons to mistrust them. They don’t create content, but aggregate, sort, and filter the content of others to advertise, make money, push political messages, or outright steal the content of creative people. Any content creator that uses social media sites or video sites as the only way to connect to their consumers will regret this decision because they will lose control over their content and customers.

RSS feeds provide a relaxing way for readers to follow many interesting sources of content around the internet without the possibility of manipulation through social media companies. For content providers, RSS feeds provide a direct connection to the reader without the interference of third-party providers. Your content is delivered fast and direct to the reader, within minutes.

Tools for Better Writing: The essential toolkit I rely on for clearer, cleaner, more effective writing

Fri, 09 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMT

As I mentioned in a previous essay I write a lot. Not just essays, but also notes, poetry, books, technical documentation, discussions, and proposals at work. And because English is not my native language, I use plenty of tools to write better text. In the last two weeks, I reviewed all my essays and fixed hundreds of spelling mistakes, bad wording, shortened long or complicated sentences, or deleted redundant sentences.

I plan to improve the internal documentation of my company’s Design System. I investigated a multitude of tools to find a toolkit of useful applications for me.

Writing good text consists of two components, correct translation, and error-free, understandable writing.

Translation

If you’re a native speaker, you might want to skip this section.

Raycast Pro Translate

For most of my translations, I use the build-in translation of Raycast Pro. It supports more than 140 languages and is available everywhere on my computer with a keyboard shortcut.

Google Translate

I used Google Translate for a long time as my primary translation tool. I use the website and the browser extension, the iOS app, and the Raycast Google Translation application.

Google Translate has supports 135 languages.

DeepL

And although DeepL supports fewer languages (26) than Google Translate, the translation is much better as I see it. I use the website, the macOS application, iOS application, and the Chrome Extension that allows direct translation on websites.

Full-page translations and full document translations are exclusive to the DeepL Pro subscription, but I’m considering getting it.

I’m using also the DeepL API (500,000 characters are free per month) to directly translate in Raycast with the Deepcast application.

Dictionaries & Thesaurus

Dictionary.com & Thesaurus.com

Dictionary.com is a fantastic platform with useful tools. It has besides the regular dictionary an Emoji dictionary, one for Slang, Acronyms, Pop Culture, Memes, and more.

The platform has good resources for learning English with games, lists, flashcards, and even a free Grammar Coach.

Thesaurus.com is the associated site of Dictionary.com. It allows searching for synonyms and antonyms. It’s possible to seamlessly jump between both sites.

Linguee

Linguee is the Dictionary of DeepL. It has over 1,000,000,000 translations. Searching for a word shows a dictionary entry, a Wikipedia excerpt, and external sources using the word in full sentences. It’s possible to activate the dictionary in DeepL by clicking on any word. A mobile app is available for iOS and Android.

Forvo

Forvo is a useful dictionary with a gigantic database of pronunciations spoken by native speakers.

Urban Dictionary

Urban Dictionary is the best resource for niche definitions and special terms.

Acronymfinder

Acronymfinder is my favorite dictionary to look up acronyms. The acronyms are grouped for better understanding in categories such as “Information Technology”, “Military & Government”, “Science & Medicine” and others.

Lose the Very

Lose the Very is a cool project that allows you to find replacements for adjectives in combination with very. Instead of very good you could write exceptional, sterling, splendid, super, excellent, or marvelous for example.

dict.cc

dict.cc is a useful dictionary I use for years. It even has a Latin dictionary.

German Dictionaries

OpenThesaurus is a synonym dictionary for the German language.
MundMische is a dictionary for German slang and proverbs.
Sprachnudel is a German dictionary with synonyms and rhymes.

Japanese Dictionaries

Jisho is a minimalistic Japanese dictionary, including animations and stroke order for Kanji.
Tangorin is a website with a dictionary and vocabulary lists of widely used learning systems like JLPT or Jōyō.

Copywriting

AI Commands in Raycast Pro

The AI Commands of Raycast Pro are now my most-used way to write text. They allow me let AI easily fix spelling or grammar mistakes for me, suggest synonyms, shorten long sentences, improve understanding, and more.

LanguageTool

LanguageTool is a powerful Open Source proofreading software, linter, and grammar checker for more than 25 languages.

It has the most integrations I’ve seen in any tool yet. Besides the free translation on their website that supports the translation of Word documents, there is the LanguageTool Editor. With an account, you can write directly in the browser and keep a personal dictionary.

LanguageTool has browser extensions for Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari, and Opera.

It has an iOS, macOS, and Windows app. Add-ons for E-mail (Gmail, Thunderbird, Apple Mail) and Office (Google Docs, Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, and LibreOffice).

LanguageTool for macOS Desktop is under development (Beta). It allows using the service directly in Apple Mail, Apple Notes, and Apple Messages. Soon, it will support all macOS apps.

LanguageTool has a plugin available for my note-taking application Obsidian that allows checking the text directly in Obsidian.

Plugins allow using LanguageTool in Vim and Neovim and Visual Studio Code.

I subscribed to LanguageTool Premium because it has extra features. Enhanced grammar, punctuation, and style checking features, suggestions to improve style and tone, 100,000 characters limit per text field, detection of incorrect names, titles, and numbers, add-ins for Microsoft Word and Google Docs, and a style guide. I like to support the project.

Grammarly

Grammarly is another powerful proofreading software. The basic plan includes checking for grammar, spelling, punctuation, conciseness, and tone. Premium adds more features including checks for clarity, engagement, delivery, and the detection of plagiarism. Grammarly supports the English language. You can edit texts in the online editor, the macOS application, iOS, Android, and with the Chrome extension in the browser. The desktop app supports checking in every app.

iA Writer

iA Writer is my favorite app to write text. I write nearly everything with iA Writer. I have in my Apps, for example in Neovim, Visual Studio Code, and Obsidian a shortcut, to open the current document in iA Writer, make changes, save it and go back to the other application.

With iA Writer, the writing is bliss. Focus mode allows writing distraction-free while highlighting the active sentence or paragraph. It supports powerful syntax highlights to spot weak verbs, repetition, and clutter. And a useful Style Check to remove fillers, clichés, and redundancies.

The last update in iA Writer brought support for the WikiLink syntax that allows me to navigate and write notes on my Obsidian vault.

Hemingway App

The Hemingway App is a free online editor to check text for Readability, passive voice, complicated phrases, hard sentences, and other unpleasant things.

Linters and Text Checkers

The community around linters and text checkers is big, and a wide variety of tools written in different languages can help out writing good text.

Alex is a Node.js package to catch insensitive, inconsiderate writing.
Write Good is a linter for English prose written in Node.js.
Proselint is another linter for prose written in Python.
Joblint is a tool written in Node.js to test job posts for issues with sexism, culture, expectations, and other recruiter fails.
Codespell is a tool to find common misspellings in text files written in Python.

Vale

Vale is one of the coolest projects. It’s an Open Source command-line tool that allows for creating a custom editorial style guide.

The good thing is that Vale supports all (except Codespell) of the packages I mentioned above, plus style guides of major companies such as Red Hat, Microsoft, and Google and Readability.

Readability is a collection of popular readability metrics. It includes the Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease, Flesch Kincaid Grade Level, Gunning Fog Score, SMOG Index, Coleman Liau Index, and Automated Readability Index. All those are mathematical formulas that calculate the complexity and level of a text. I’ll leave it up to you to research the different metrics.

It’s possible to configure Vale to use packages in parallel. If you work on a personal project, two or three of the packages should be more than enough. If you write text for a company, you might start with a writing style guide, for example, Microsoft’s style guide. But you can create a custom company style guide, that knows about all the special terms and acronyms and words not to use. You can include the style guide in any project and automatically check every written text.

Vale has nine integrations, for example, Visual Studio Code, Vim, Emacs, or Obsidian.

Installation

To install Vale on macOS, you can use Homebrew:

brew install vale

I recommend creating a global configuration file in your home directory that will work even when Vale is not configured to work with a specific project.

cd ~
touch .vale.ini # This creates the configuration file

You open this .vale.ini file in a text editor to add your configuration. Vale has a config generator that can help create the configuration. You pick the style guides you want to use, and the generator creates it for you.

This is my configuration file. You can maintain custom vocabulary files, I use one: Base. Inside the projects is a Vocab folder that includes a Base folder with an accept.txt and a reject.txt. You add one word per line to each file.

I use no base style and three supplementary style guides. My configuration limits the checking for Markdown and Text files, but it’s possible to check any file type. I turned off two rules that annoyed me.

StylesPath = .vale

MinAlertLevel = suggestion
Vocab = Base

Packages = Readability, proselint, write-good

[*.{md,mdx,txt}]
BasedOnStyles = Vale, Readability, proselint, write-good

# Turn off rules
Vale.Terms = NO
write-good.E-Prime = NO

[formats]
njk = html

To install all selected packages, you’ll need to run this command in your home directory (or in a projects’ directory, in case you installed it for a project):

vale sync

Now you’re good to go, everything should work and Vale is running. The next time you open a supported editor with the installed Vale plugin, everything should be underlined in white, yellow, or red (depending on the warning level). You’ll be surprised how much your text sucks. 😂

Civil War for Truth: Conclusion

Mon, 18 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMT

The Black Pill or the White Pill?

We discovered that all Gated Institutions are captured and corrupted. As a result, we can’t trust any politician, corporation, media company, journalist, academia, or science member without validating their claims. The corruption has very far proceeded and there is no quick way to resolve it. Equipped with that knowledge, what can we do?

In the introduction, I explained the concept of the blue and the red pill. James Lindsay mentions two more pills in his podcast, the black pill and the white pill. The analogy stands for how we deal with the information we gain by swallowing the red pill and accepting the state of the world as it is.

Taking the black pill means adopting the belief that everything is hopeless. The bad people won, and the society will turn to Authoritarianism or Totalitarianism, all that is left is a steady decline and downfall of society, or even revolt, war, and mass murder. Swallowing the black pill is fatalism, defeatism, and determinism. You give up. We will live soon in Neofeudalism. The rich people will rule the world, we will be their slaves. We will be restricted in movement and travel, a social credit system will punish any dissent. Critics will be fined, incarcerated, re-educated, tortured, or exterminated.

But there is the concept of the white pill. It stands for hope, resistance, for the belief that those people can’t win with their ridiculous plans to control the world. All bad ideologies or central planning will fail eventually and expose them for what they are. And even though at times it looks very bleak and the push for central control, censorship, removal of encryption, the introduction of surveillance, and eroding civil rights is worrying, swallowing the white pill, resisting, and fighting bad ideas is the only option with a future worth living.

But how can we fight back as individuals?

Select Your Sources Carefully

What do you do if the Gated Institutions are no longer trustworthy? The first thing you need to do is equip yourself with knowledge and learn the opinions, arguments, and truths about the different discussed political or social topics. That is work-intensive and not everybody is willing to do so. But even if you’re unwilling to invest the time and effort into digging into the truth of a topic, there are ways to at least be better informed than the regular person.

The quality of your thinking is directly proportional to what information you consume. It is similar to a diet. You can eat healthy foods and unhealthy foods. In the same way, the quality of content differs massively.

Books, audiobooks, and scientific papers are the best sources of input, but even inside the categories exist differences. If you read garbage, like Bill Gates’s newest book, reading will not help a lot. Reading books by activists is less valuable than by economists, philosophers, or scientists. If the theory has proven its value in the real world, the better.

Podcasts I categorize as the next best option to learn things, especially long-form interviews with a variety of different thinkers on various heterodox topics. Long-form podcasts make it easier to spot bullshit. You might be able to not contradict yourself in a 30-minute interview, but after 3 hours of intensive discussion, you’ll get a feeling about the person, their position, and the coherence of their arguments. In a podcast, is little room for manipulation. And they are nearly impossible to censor and cheaply to host. You don’t need the approval of big platforms to subscribe to any podcasts, a simple RSS feed is enough. You can consume podcasts while doing your dishes, walking, doing laundry, carrying your baby, or sitting on the toilet. You can play them faster (or slower) in many podcast apps.

As with books, not every podcast is of quality. If you listen to a state-sponsored podcast, you will not gain a new perspective, but hear the same talking points pushed by mainstream media again and again. Propaganda is propaganda, regardless of what the medium is.

Articles are the next best thing to consume, preferably by independently supported journalists instead of large media companies.

The worst information you’ll get is by reading the only headlines of news articles, consuming social media posts on Facebook, or watching the news on television. Staged talk shows and pretend discussions on television are in many cases garbage.

The big censoring on social media platforms gave birth to a massive, growing alternative media ecosystem.

Recommendations

Books

The more interesting people you listen to on podcasts, the more book recommendations you’ll get. Services like Readwise allow one to collect and learn highlights from those books (or articles). You can follow people on Goodreads or Literal to find new reading recommendations. Jordan Peterson keeps a list of Great Books, Ryan Holiday has a Reading List, Tim Ferriss has many articles with book recommendations, and the platform Most Recommended Books lists book recommendations of more than 500 experts.

Podcasts

The list of interesting podcasts is huge, you’ll need to pick your topics. I prefer long-form interviews with various people on topics like science, economics, health, or politics. I can recommend Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, Lex Fridman, Michael Malice, Bari Weiss, Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, Eric Weinstein, James Lindsay, Matt Walker, or Andrew Huberman. You can see a full list of the podcasts I listen to here.

To extract information from podcasts, you can use an app like Snipd or Airr. They allow the request of full transcripts for each podcast and then clip specific parts of the conversation as text.

Articles

Substack has become the number one place for writers, journalists, doctors, and scientists to publish their articles and essays without fear of being censored or taken down. You’ll find journalists and writers like Alex Berenson, Bari Weis, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, or Abigail Shrier, whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, health experts and medical journalists like Robert Malone, Pierre Kory and Steve Kirsch or scientists like Heather Heying or Colin Wright. Many publications are free, and others have sometimes paid articles to support the authors.

New Discourses is one of the best websites to get educated on ideologies. James Lindsay explains complicated philosophical texts to a broad audience. Sovereign Nations is a website dedicated to the ideas and ideals of a Constitutional Republic.

RSS is the best way to consume content in your time and your speed without algorithms that manipulate what you see and what they think is important. A lot of RSS readers are either free or low-cost. I use Feedbin as a content aggregator, it supports reading Newsletters, 𝕏, YouTube, Reddit, and any RSS, Atom, or JSON feed. I use the Reeder app on iOS and Mac to read my subscriptions.

Projects like Ground News are a fantastic way to see your biases and blind spots. The website shows how different news outlets cover a news story and exposes blind spots. They provide a browser extension that will show on many websites the political bias of that source.

Videos

Instead of YouTube you can watch videos on Odysse, Rumble, BitChute, and on many more platforms. The more decentralized a platform is, the better. Prominent journalists like Glenn Greenwald, who broke the story on Edward Snowden, moved exclusively to Rumble.

YouTube has a massive variety of critical content creators, even though censorship and deplatforming risk make it harder for content creators to discuss controversial topics. Paul Joseph Watson (Anything Goes) is one of my favorite political commentators. His comment is always on point, it hurts, and he doesn’t give a shit if somebody might be offended by the truth. Foundation for Economic Education creates fantastic videos explaining the economic, ethical, and legal principles of a free society with examples from current movies and TV Shows. ReasonTV is an interesting Libertarian channel with independent opinions, documentaries, interviews, and political discussions. Tim Pool, Don’t Walk, Run! Productions, and Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar create good political content. Comedians like Russell Brand, Jimmy Dore, or Leo Kearse create much better journalistic work than “mainstream” journalists. James O’Keefe’s organization Project Veritas provides good undercover journalism, with regular leaks and whistle blows.

Social Media

Instead Facebook, you can read news on Minds, Gettr or Parler. Another uncensorable platform to build communities is Locals. Many political or cultural thinkers build communities on this platform. The platform allows supporting the creators financially. But Social Media is the worst possible way to consume news because it is manipulated by algorithms that are programmed by extremely progressive-left biased companies. 𝕏 got really useful for getting news, since Elon Musk bought it. You could first read about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump on 𝕏 and Joe Biden announced there to not run for president anymore.

Alternative Media in German

If you want to consume German-speaking alternative media, you are lucky because many heterodox content creators gathered on a new independent website: theplattform. The publicly funded broadcasting companies in Germany don’t fulfilled their contract for balanced political reporting since at least 2010, but still, every German person is forced to pay €17 per month for state propaganda. Germans have to pay even if they don’t watch (or own) any television or radio. They even put people refusing to pay the fee into prison for up to 6 months.[^welt2021uc] And while other countries like the UK or France plan to stop publicly funded broadcasting, Germany instead increased the price during a recession.

Why You Need to Do Your Research

One thing you don’t learn in school is how to do your research. If you lack those skills, it will be helpful to develop them. But why should you do the work?

If you don’t check a discussed topic for yourself, you might go along with a lie and you or your family might get harmed. Every lie, false belief, or ideology will eventually fail but creates tremendous harm until this happens. Depending on the extent of a lie, everything is possible, from destroyed economies to people freezing, starving, and dying, or even the end of whole civilizations. If you believe a lie, you live in a pseudo-reality and are caught in a delusion.

That’s why it is important to listen to the “other side” of any argument. It’s up to you (after listening to their arguments) to come to your conclusions. Here is a list of examples of inconvenient facts, I learned by reading books, reading scientific papers, listening to podcasts, or watching video essays:

People overestimate the chance of dying by an accident 300 times over, dying of Diabetes.[^blackwell2020aa]
The people in the Mid-Victorian times (the 1850s) were healthier than we are today and lived a similarly long life (after the age of 5). They had 10% fewer degenerative sicknesses.[^clayton2009uw]
The best way to stave off cognitive decline is not a cognitive activity, but exercise, especially weight lifting and cardiovascular exercises.[^peterson2021dc]
80% of all immigrants to Germany in 2015 were young, male Muslims with a below-average educational level for European standards. They dominate now the majority of violent crimes, in particular against women, homosexuals, and Jews.[^unger2021pf]
Berlin has 9% Muslims, but 70% of inmates in youth arrest are Muslims.[^unger2021pf]
308 of the arson attacks of 2019 in Germany had an extremist Left motivation, 20 had an extremist Islamic motivation, and 17 had an extremist Right motivation.[^frank2021gt]
The poverty rate among black married couples in the USA has been less than 10 percent every year since 1994.[^sowell2018ca]
Young, black males, whose homes included newspapers, magazines, and library cards have similar academic outcomes to their white counterparts, going back to 1969.[^sowell2018ca]
Police shootings that are reported in a media storm in the news (e.g., George Floyd), lead to a significant reduction in police work and a catastrophic increase in crimes as a result. For every dead black person reported on the news, an additional 900 people die because the police retreat after bad publicity.[^blackwell2020aa]
Black men in the USA are twice as likely to be killed by police than white. The black population is 14% in the USA, but make 34% of deaths by police. White Americans are killed twice as likely by the police than Asian Americans. White Americans commit twice as many crimes as Asian Americans.[^edwards2019aa] The differences are not a result of racism but can be explained by the crimes committed by individual racial groups.[^blackwell2020aa]
35% of all police murders in the USA are committed by black perpetrators.[^blackwell2020aa]
Black Americans commit 7 times more murder than White Americans.[^blackwell2020aa]
Unarmed black people are shot 23.5 percent less likely by the police than unarmed white people.[^fryer2016aa]
Donald Trump never called Neo-Nazis fine people. He was talking about peaceful protesters. Media companies intentionally cut the quote. In the same interview, he explicitly condemned racism, Neo-Nazis, and the KKK.[^cortes2019aa][^charlottesvilletrump2017]
Donald Trump didn’t build detention centers for illegal immigrants at the Mexican border (aka kids in cages), Barack Obama did.[^dore2022jp] They need to hold the children until their parents are found because traffickers send children regularly without their parents.
Donald Trump never mocked a disabled person. He used the same motion he always used to show that a person doesn’t know what they’re doing. Trump has a history of supporting disabled people throughout his career.[^kvon2020disabled]
Barack Obama brought the USA from 2 wars to 7 wars.[^dore2022jp]
Barack Obama dropped more bombs than George W. Bush. His drone program killed 90% of innocent people.[^dore2022jp]
Barack Obama deported more Hispanics than Donald Trump could ever dream of.[^dore2022jp]
Joe Biden signed 19 Executive Orders in the first 3 days, Barack Obama 5, Donald Trump 1, Bill Clinton 1, and George W. Bush 0.
Joe Biden called Obama the first mainstream, African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and nice-looking. He told a mostly black audience that booed him at a speech to [put them] back in chains. He mocked Indians and Mexicans, called black kids roaches, and gave a eulogy for a former KKK recruiter.[^kvon2020racist]
The COVID-19 vaccine by Pfizer was promised to be nearly 100% safe and effective but proved to be neither safe nor effective. Pfizer never claimed their vaccine would prevent hospitalization or death because their study didn’t prove this. The absolute efficiency of the vaccine was reported as 95%, but the relative efficiency was only 0.8%. Of the 40,137 study participants, only 165 in the placebo group and 8 in the vaccinated group got COVID-19. 15 people died in the unvaccinated group, and 16 died in the vaccinated group. There were over 1,500 adverse reactions that Pfizer tried to hide. A 12-year-old Girl, Maddie de Gray, who is wheelchair-bound since her inoculation, was reported as having “bowel problems.”[^ccca2021iq]
Pfizer was court-ordered to release the documents the FDA used to give emergency use authorization for the Pfizer vaccine. They show that Pfizer falsified data in their study by ignoring PCR positive results, even in symptomatic people. They claimed only 8 COVID-19 positive cases in the vaccinated group, but 75 showed a positive PCR test. This would have reduced the risk of infection for the vaccine by about half of the 95% they claimed.[^team2022ko]
Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline are the two companies that had to pay the biggest penalties of all time for criminal acts.[^rogan2022yc]
The COVID-19 vaccines created in one year more adverse reactions than all vaccines of the last 30 years combined.[^blaylock2022ya]
The continuously repeated sure, vaccines may cause an increased risk of myocarditis and pericarditis, but it’s lower than the increased risk of the same from having gotten COVID-19 was proven to be false by a large scientific study from Israel.[^tuvali2022dn]
Masks do not only not work against viral load, the infection rate is lower for unmasked individuals as shown in a large, well-controlled study.[^tunevall1991fo]
Virus aerosol sub-microns are so small they pass any mask, and even in a droplet they stick to the mask and the mask acts as a nebulizer. The aerosol virion (0.1-03 microns) hangs in still air for 1-2 weeks. A 1% edge gap in your mask is a 50% leakage, and a 2% gap is 75%.[^drewnick2020cn]
Even conservative estimates of severe adverse reactions of the COVID-19 vaccines by Prof. Dr. Harald of the Charite Berlin and a study from Sweden are now 0.8%.[^rebmann2022kw]
The German health insurance BKK ProVita can access the data of 11 million insured people, who did an extrapolation from their data and estimated 2.5 to 3 million German people with severe adverse reactions from the vaccines. The CEO of health insurance was fired one day after he made the data public.[^schreyer2022uf] After 3 months of waiting the health insurance finally had to release a report that shows that 2.5 million of the 61 million (172 million vaccinations) vaccinated in 2021 had so severe adverse reactions that they needed medical attention. This is a severe adverse reaction rate of 1.5%, for every 70th person.[^frank2022ma]
The EU database for adverse drug reactions, EudraVigilance, lists 1,928,328 adverse reactions (July 2022) for the EU, and around 50% are severe. The underreporting rate is estimated to be between 1-10%.
FIFA reported a 5-fold increase in sudden cardiac and unexplained deaths in 2021.[^sones2021dx]
The rate of people that will die in 12-24 months after their COVID-19 vaccination from an autoimmune disease (ADE, antibody-dependent enhancement) is estimated between 0.01% and 2%.[^ziegler2021qp]
The nano-lipid carriers of the mRNA “vaccines” don’t stay in the muscle as proclaimed, but circulate in the whole body and can be found in high concentrations in the ovaries and the bone marrow.[^blaylock2022ya]
The mRNA shots reduce the fertility of men by 22% for five months (abstract) and levels continue to decline after that (hidden in the data).[^berenson2022aj][^gat2022ot]
The mRNA vaccines introduce a spike protein to the body that is neurotoxic and impairs DNA repair mechanisms. The suppression of type I interferon responses result in impaired innate immunity, and the vaccines increase potentially the risk for infectious diseases and cancer.[^seneff2022ru]
The scientific article that was published in The Lancet in February 2020 and in Nature Medicine in March 2020 that denied the Wuhan Lab as the origin of the virus was written by Peter Daszak, the president of EcoHealth Alliance. He is the same person whose organization was responsible for the gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Lab. He didn’t declare any conflicts of interest in his paper.[^crawford2021bv]
Drinking water from bottles (0.3-liter oil) produces 1000 times more CO₂ than drinking tab water (0.3-milliliter oil).[^jonas2020kd]
We don’t have a climate catastrophe or climate crisis. There is a warming of the earth, but nothing humanity cannot handle.[^perry2019pd]
The claim 97% of all scientists are sure that humans are the reason for climate change, is a misrepresentation of the study. The scientist and activist John Cock evaluated 12,000 scientific studies (abstracts only) from scientific publications between 1980 and 2013 to check if humans were mentioned as the reason for climate change. Less than 1% of the studies explicitly contradict the claim. 32.6% claimed humans as the source of climate change, and 66.4% of the studies didn’t make any claim about who was to blame. Cook eliminated those studies and suddenly 97% agreed.[^unger2021pf] 32.6% of scientists are sure humans are the reason for climate change doesn’t sound too impressive, right?
It will cost Germany €1,500 billion to reduce their CO₂ from 2% of the world’s output to 1%. This will cost each household an additional €320 net every month for the next 30 years. Following Greta’s demands of 100% renewable energy in 15 years would cost each household €620 net every month. This will bring a massive portion of the German population below the poverty line (€1,890 net) and destroy the industry in Germany.[^unger2021pf]
China is pumping out the same amount of CO₂ additionally every year that Germany would reduce in 30 years.[^unger2021pf]
If the sectors of traffic and warmth would need to switch to 100% renewable energy, Germany would need an additional 1,150 Terawatt hours. This would need a 200-meter-high wind turbine every 1.5 kilometers across the whole country.[^unger2021pf]
Australia has a critical energy crisis in 2022. The winter is too cold and there is a threat of blackouts, a fate that Germany will share in a few months. The move to renewable energy in Australia was too successful, which made coal energy unprofitable. Energy providers shut down the power plants. 30% of power plants don’t deliver energy because they are being repaired or maintained. Most power plants are from the 1970s or 1980s. 25% of the possible coal production stands still.[^frank2022ay] If you destroy the incentive for industry, it will die. You can't just turn it on again later. It takes 30 years to destroy an industry and 30 years to build up an industry.
During the Roman Empire it was possible to grow wine in Great Britain and the Vikings harvested crops on Greenland.[^muller-ullrich2021ko]
The Earth is much greener today than 35 years ago. A team of 32 scientists used satellite images by NASA and found a massive greening of the Earth over the last 35 years as a result of higher CO₂.[^nasa2016so] I learned in school in 1995 that the Sahel Zone would soon turn into a desert, because of global warming. Today it is a lush green forest.

This was a small sample of controversial topics. You might have had a bad feeling reading the one or other fact. This is your cognitive dissonance. Your brain was fed media propaganda and tries now to protect that sacred knowledge to prevent you from feeling pain.

Don’t outsource the fact-checking to biased companies, funded and sponsored by the same people that write the articles. Basic research is not as hard as it sounds.

All you need is a good search engine and a few minutes. If somebody shares a news article, try finding its sources. If they don’t provide any, that’s a warning sign. You can search for names of products, people, and companies and get basic facts about them on Grokipedia or their websites. You can often see who funds the organization or with whom a person is affiliated.

The Google Knowledge Graph is a good way to find out relationships between people and their occupations. Companies are often legally obligated to publish their donations. For example, you can search on the website of The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for donations.

All these searches are quick and easy, and you can at least confirm who the person in the stories is and might see potential conflicts of interest.

Keep in mind that many search engines, especially Google, are heavily biased and have blacklists to bury stories that contradict their political bias. Use Brave Search or MetaGer instead.

If you don’t find what you’re searching for, try other search engines like Yandex, Qwant, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, Swisscows and many more. Brave Search rolled out a new feature called Goggles, which allows for the intentional use of a specific content filter. I created already two Brave Goggles and will likely create more.

Keep in mind that some search engines use the Google index. Brave Search builds its index and even shows you how independent your search results are.

If you want to search for facts, you can use Wolfram Alpha. Does your vegetarian co-workers’ virtue signal again how much CO₂ they save by not eating meat? Show them how little the impact is if you live in the developed world. Our World in Data has interactive charts on a huge number of topics like this. Wikipedia is mostly reliable in many scientific areas, but useless for political topics. Activists have taken over the website and used it as a political weapon to smear people. Use with caution or use Grokipedia instead.

You should learn to use the WaybackMachine to find out if the content was deleted or changed later. They provide a browser extension to quickly save a website to the archive. The extension can auto-save a website and show contextual information. The Internet Archive is an incredible source of information, it has millions of historical documents, audio, video, books, software, and images to search. Do you want to listen to Martin Luther’s The American Dream or But If Not? The Archive will provide.

Another good service is archive.today which provides an extension to quickly save a website to a permanent archive.

Feedbin has a great feature that shows changes made to any subscribed article. This allows keeping track of changes made later to articles.

Raindrop.io is my favorite bookmark manager. It saves articles offline in case somebody deletes an article and informs about article deletions by checking for broken links. You wouldn’t believe how many COVID-19 articles got deleted later by news companies when it was proven they lied.

Note-Taking

If you want to increase your knowledge on a topic, you’ll need to write your research notes and connect ideas and insights. There are many ways to do this, I use the Zettelkasten method.

The number of tools is massive. A massive community of people is now interested in note-taking, which created many wonderful tools. There is Obsidian (which I use), Logseq, Roam Research or Notion, to name a few. The idea is to create small notes and connect them and over time build your knowledge system.

Privacy and Security

If you can’t trust the companies and institutions, you should keep them from listening to your conversations and getting your data or benefitting from it.

You can use an encrypted messenger like Signal, Telegram, Element/Matrix, Session, or Status instead of using chat tools of social media companies. Signal is good for private conversations, Telegram has a fantastic group chat feature. Matrix is a decentralized messenger that can provide uncensorable communication. Session is completely anonymous and uses an Onion router for messages. Status and Session use peer-to-peer technology. There is a reason authoritarian politicians hate encryption, they dislike that people can communicate without them listening. That obviously doesn’t apply to them, as the SMS communication between Ursula von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla showed.

Start using secure browsers like Brave, Firefox or Tor. Brave has a built-in Tor browser, which is sufficient for being anonymous in most cases. If your life depends on it, better use the Tor browser. Brave has the Wayback Machine built-in, in case a site is missing.

I recommend the encrypted mail service Proton Mail, but there are many other options. The website Privacy Tools provides an up-to-date list of the best software, services, and tools in each category to maintain your privacy and security.

I hope that over time more and more people start using decentralized services which are harder (if at all) to censor, don’t allow central control by one company, and free the people. I wrote a three-part series on that topic: The Decentralized Web.

Whom To Trust?

One of the reasons why many people are reluctant to stop consuming mainstream media is because it is convenient and nice to be told what the truth is. You outsource your thinking to somebody you hope is smarter than you. Does the USA invade Iraq for oil? Good! Does Russia invade Ukraine for Gas? Bad! The media serves simple narratives without any nuance or context. They decide what you should think about any given topic and serve the necessary propaganda to ensure you follow along. This is how The Current Thing Meme was born, to mock how media pushes always one topic on all channels until another topic comes around to replace it.

Some things are believed because they are demonstrably true, but many other things are believed simply because they have been asserted repeatedly.
— Thomas Sowell

If you’re on your own, it might be intimidating at first to do your research. But studies show over and over that fake news and disinformation are easier to spot by average people than politicians try to make us believe. And you can train to learn to trust your gut feeling.

Ask yourself a few simple questions: Cui bono? (Latin, to whom is it a benefit?) Who has financial interests? Who has conflicts of interest? Who risks their reputation? Who is more often right with their predictions than others? How often is a person wrong with their predictions and claims? Do they own their mistakes and explain where they went wrong? Are their arguments simple and easy, or nuanced and complex?

People who try to convince you a topic is simple, are usually not right. It doesn’t matter what the topic is, be it global warming, energy, racism, salary differences, immigration, or health. Avoiding the people on both isles of the political spectrum that provide easy answers is a safe way to not follow wrong ideas.

Stay away from the extremes, it doesn’t matter whether it’s QAnon or Blue Anon. If you think rationally about a topic, you’ll move along the center on many topics. Learn your biases. You can take personality tests like the Big 5, The Political Compass, Meyer-Biggs, 8values or PersonalityDNA. Big 5 is the only test that is backed by years of scientific study, but the others are fun and will reveal interesting things to you.

Learn how to spot bullshit. There is an excellent, free university lecture on the topic on YouTube: Calling Bullshit in the Age of Big Data.

Avoid people that use terms like Trust the Science™ or Trust the Experts, they have no clue how science works and don’t deserve your trust. Arguments from authority are one of the most common cognitive fallacies. Authority can never replace critical thinking, and you’ll have a better life by adopting Anarchist ideas:

Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or the engineer. For such or such special knowledge I apply to such or such a savant. But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor savant to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, and their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure. I do not content myself with consulting a single authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions, and choose that which seems to me the soundest. But I recognize no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others.
If I bow before the authority of the specialists and avow my readiness to follow, to a certain extent and as long as may seem to me necessary, their indications and even their directions, it is because their authority is imposed on me by no one, neither by men nor by God.[^malice2021bc]

— Mikhail Bakuninas quoted from ‘The State and Marxism’ (1867) and ‘God and the State’ (1870), The Anarchist Handbook

Bakunin continues that all subordination under authority needs to be voluntarily and temporary:

Each directs and is directed in his turn. Therefore there is no fixed and constant authority, but a continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and, above all, voluntary authority and subordination.

But it is not only Anarchists that know this to be important, it’s the basis of science.

One of the great commandments of science is, Mistrust arguments from authority. (…) Too many such arguments have proved too painfully wrong. Authorities must prove their contentions like everybody else.
— Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Speak Up (Or at Least Don’t Lie)

If nothing helps and the majority of society walks down a dark path into Authoritarianism or even Totalitarianism, there are still ways to try to prevent this.

The most important thing is to try to be a person of virtue. Stoic virtues such as Wisdom, Temperance, Courage, and Justice are important personal qualities. If you can follow an inner compass or moral, you’re less likely to go along with the mob and take part in unjust actions.

A common cognitive bias is the false consensus effect. This is how dictatorships and other repressive movements keep their power. If everybody is too afraid to speak up, everybody believes that everybody else supports the prevailing unjust cause. This is the reason you should never bow down to authority or injustice, especially if the worst-case harm is to annoy a few people, be hated by a few, or maybe have fewer career options.

Each of you, for himself or herself, by himself or herself, and on his or her own responsibility, must speak. It is a solemn and weighty responsibility and not lightly to be flung aside at the bullying of pulpit, press, government or politician. Each must decide for himself or herself alone what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man, to decide it against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor. It is traitorous both against yourself and your country.
Let men label you as they may, if you alone of all the nation decide one way, and that way be the right way by your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country, hold up your head for you have nothing to be ashamed of.

— Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth

J. Michael Straczynski took Twain’s quote as inspiration and formulated this catchy quote:

**It doesn’t matter what the press says. It doesn’t matter what the politicians or the mobs say. It doesn’t matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right.** Republics are founded on one principle above all else: The requirement that we stand up for what we believe in, no matter the odds or consequences.
When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move. Your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth and tell the whole world:

No, you move.

— J. Michael Straczynski, The Amazing Spider-Man: Civil War_ (emphasis mine)

In the early stages of a society that descents to Totalitarianism, you have the option to reject bad ideas. Use your right to vote, to remove unfit candidates from power. Use your voice to reject unjust policies. And if you can’t because the price you might have to pay is too high, you should follow the advice of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:

Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.

Expose and Mock Ridiculous Ideas

Mocking bad ideas is an important weapon against creeping Authoritarianism. Share and create jokes, memes, and collages that expose hypocrisy and idiocy. Tyranny and incompetency crumble when exposed to light.

Absurdity must be exposed, and no acid is more corrosive to the absurdity of tyranny than laughter pointed in its general direction.[^lindsay2021ss]
— James Lindsay, A Manifesto for the Based, New Discourses

A massive community of artists and writers is dedicated to mocking political ideology. There are funny Standup comedians like JP Sears (AwakenWithJP), Brent Pella, and Ryan Long.

Zeducation is a funny satire channel with nearly 1 million subscribers that shows Memes and exposes hypocrites and liars in media, Hollywood, and entertainment. The Right To Bear Memes is a fantastic Meme channel on 𝕏.

Argo Nerd is a German commentator who creates commentary by putting two contradicting news articles next to each other.

Plenty of fantastic cartoonists mock political and ideological ideas. My favorites are George Alexopoulos, Bob Moran, Tatsuya Ishida and Stonetoss, but it’s worth following FreedomToons, Grrr Graphics and Comically Incorrect.

The Babylon Bee is the funniest satirical website on the internet. They recently started hiring the creator of Libs of TikTok, a hilarious channel exposing crazy leftist ideas. The Babylon Bee has a sister news site, Not the Bee, that collects stories that sound like satire but are unfortunately true.

Music is another way to mock ridiculous ideas. Country musician Buddy Brown releases regularly based political commentary and fun guitar songs in “Truck Sessions” on his YouTube channel. The rapper Tom MacDonald is a phenomenon. He regularly takes over the billboard charts, but the media tries to block and remove him from any public discussion. He is a unique rapper who voices social and political problem in a sometimes funny way, for example People So Stupid, Clown World, Im Corny, Dummies, and Buttholes. His library of songs is immense, and each song is impressive and touches on topics people would never talk about: Fake Woke, Snowflakes, Brainwashed, New World Order, The System, and Everybody Hates Me.

Parallel Societies

When a descent into Totalitarianism is no longer preventable, few options remain. You can either leave the country (if possible), fight tyranny, or live under totalitarian rule. If you decide to resit, there are many interesting books on Guerrilla warfare. Ironically, Socialist tyrants like Ernesto Che Guevara or Mao Zedong wrote useful books. To summarize in one sentence: Attack the train support lines and shoe factories. Total Resistance by Swiss military theorist Hans von Dach is worth a read.

If you decide to live inside a totalitarian system, there are various options to reject the ruling power. If a totalitarian regime can’t be overthrown with force, a viable option is the creation of parallel societies. Parallel societies begin in spontaneous acts of mutual self-defense in different parts of society.[^academyofideas2022qi]

Parallel structures do not grow (…) out of a theoretical vision of systemic change (…) but from the aims of life and the authentic needs of real people, writes Václav Havel in his book The Power of the Powerless[^academyofideas2021bb]

People that don’t support the current regime and its cause start to build alternative structures of trade and support, and over time a new society blooms inside the repressive system. Those parallel societies get stronger with more people joining, and it is even possible that a parallel society replaces the tyrannical regime at some point.

Self-Reliance

Self-reliance is a natural antidote against tyranny. If you’re dependent on the state for money or support, you’ll be the slave of the state. Don’t expect a politician or the state to solve your problems.

The nine most terrifying words in the English language are:{" "} I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.
— Ronald Reagan, The President’s News Conference, August 12, 1986

Learn to get independent of others. This can be as simple as learning how to sew and knit, how to repair things, or how to grow your food. You can support each other in small communities of family, friends, or neighbors. During the COVID-19 crisis, more people reached out to me from all around the world than ever before in my life. If you shine a light in the darkness, people will find you.

Prepare for the worst case, expect that incompetent and corrupt politicians will create bad policies which will result in suffering. If bad things happen, they will not be held accountable, don’t expect them to care about their actions. If you’re mentally and physically strong and prepared, you’ll suffer less in case things go sideways.

It’s up to us, to decide if we take part in unjust systems, bad ideologies, discrimination, and anti-humane ideas.

You’re a human being and you can choose whether or not to participate in that system and other systems as well. We can decide if we want to stop complying, to become disobedient on mass, to not participate in systems that we disagree with. Reality isn’t a foregone conclusion, we participate in its construction through our consent, through our discourse with it and through our willingness to submit to it.[^brand2022rv]
— Russell Brand, Something Big Is Coming

The more people decide not to take part or to actively resist unjust policies, the more people exercise civil disobedience, and the more power we remove from authoritarian politicians, greedy and woke corporations, and captured Gated Institutions back to where it belongs, to the people.

[^welt2021uc]: Redaktion (2021): Nach 181 Tagen im Gefängnis – Georg Thiel ist wieder frei, https://www.welt.de/fernsehen/article233329219/Rundfunkbeitrag-verweigert-Georg-Thiel-ist-nach-181-Tagen-Gefaengnis-wieder-frei.html.

[^blackwell2020aa]: Matthew Blackwell (2020): Black Lives Matter and the Mechanics of Conformity, https://quillette.com/2020/09/17/black-lives-matter-and-the-mechanics-of-conformity/.

[^clayton2009uw]: Paul Clayton and Judith Rowbotham (2009): How the Mid-Victorians Worked, Ate and Died, https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/6/3/1235/htm.

[^peterson2021dc]: Jordan B. Peterson and Jocko Willink (2021): 13. Jocko Willink, https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/the-jordan-b-peterson-podcast/id1184022695?i=1000515852353.

[^unger2021pf]: Raymond Unger (2021): Vom Verlust der Freiheit: Klimakrise, Migrationskrise, Coronakrise, Europa Verlag.

[^frank2021gt]: Gunter Frank (2021): Der Staatsvirus: Ein Arzt erklärt, wie die Vernunft im Lockdown starb, Achgut Edition.

[^sowell2018ca]: Thomas Sowell (2018): Discrimination and Disparities, Basic Books.

[^blackwell2020aa]: Matthew Blackwell (2020): Black Lives Matter and the Mechanics of Conformity, https://quillette.com/2020/09/17/black-lives-matter-and-the-mechanics-of-conformity/.

[^fryer2016aa]: Roland G. Fryer (2016): An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force, https://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/empirical-analysis-racial-differences-police-use-force.

[^cortes2019aa]: Steve Cortes (2019): Trump Didn’t Call Neo-Nazis ‘Fine People.’ Here’s Proof., https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/03/21/trump_didnt_call_neo-nazis_fine_people_heres_proof_139815.html.

[^charlottesvilletrump2017]: (2017): Read the complete transcript of President Trump’s remarks at Trump Tower on Charlottesville, https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-charlottesville-transcript-20170815-story.html.

[^dore2022jp]: Jimmy Dore (2022): It’s Official! Elon Musk Buys Twitter! NBC News Just Learned That Politicians Lie! W/ Kurt Metzger, https://youtu.be/too_zD0gPkI.

[^kvon2020disabled]: K-von (2020): Trump vs Biden: Handicap Face-Off, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIfRUIm3Kuc.

[^kvon2020racist]: K-von (2020): Trump vs Biden: Which Candidate is RACIST?, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZfzJATDmXs.

[^edwards2019aa]: Frank Edwards, Hedwig Lee, and Michael Esposito (2019): Risk of being killed by police use of force in the United States by age, race-ethnicity, and sex, https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793.

[^ccca2021iq]: Canadian Covid Care Alliance (2021): The Pfizer Inoculations For COVID-19 – More Harm Than Good – VIDEO, https://www.canadiancovidcarealliance.org/media-resources/the-pfizer-inoculations-for-covid-19-more-harm-than-good-2/.

[^team2022ko]: Health Advisory & Recovery Team (2022): First finding from Pfizer trials, https://www.hartgroup.org/first-finding-from-pfizer-trials/.

[^rogan2022yc]: Joe Rogan and Maajid Nawaz (2022): The Joe Rogan Experience 1780 - Maajid Nawaz, https://open.spotify.com/episode/1ugbn7cuab3mNgKbo81ajM.

[^blaylock2022ya]: Russel L. Blaylock (2022): COVID UPDATE: What is the truth?, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9062939/.

[^tuvali2022dn]: Ortal Tuvali, Sagi Tshori, Estela Derazne, Rebecca Regina Hannuna, Arnon Afek, Dan Haberman, Gal Sella, and Jacob George (2022): The Incidence of Myocarditis and Pericarditis in Post COVID-19 Unvaccinated Patients—A Large Population-Based Study, https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0383/11/8/2219.

[^tunevall1991fo]: Th. Göran Tunevall (1991): Postoperative wound infections and surgical face masks: A controlled study, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01658736.

[^drewnick2020cn]: Frank Drewnick, Julia Pikmann, Friederike Fachinger, Lasse Moormann, Fiona Sprang, and Stephan Borrmann (2020): Aerosol filtration efficiency of household materials for homemade face masks: Influence of material properties, particle size, particle electrical charge, face velocity, and leaks, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02786826.2020.1817846.

[^berenson2022aj]: Alex Berenson (2022): URGENT: The Covid vaccine paper on declining sperm counts is even worse than it seems at first, https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/urgent-the-covid-vaccine-paper-on/.

[^gat2022ot]: Itai Gat, Alon Kedem, Michal Dviri, Ana Umanski, Matan Levi, Ariel Hourvitz, and Micha Baum (2022): Covid-19 vaccination BNT162b2 temporarily impairs semen concentration and total motile count among semen donors, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/andr.13209.

[^seneff2022ru]: Stephanie Seneff, Greg Nigh, Anthony M. Kyriakopoulos, and Peter A. McCullough (2022): Innate immune suppression by SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccinations: The role of G-quadruplexes, exosomes, and MicroRNAs, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027869152200206X.

[^rebmann2022kw]: Kai Rebmann (2022): Schwere Nebenwirkungen: Was verschweigt das Paul-Ehrlich-Institut?, https://reitschuster.de/post/schwere-nebenwirkungen-was-verschweigt-das-paul-ehrlich-institut/.

[^schreyer2022uf]: Paul Schreyer (2022): Krankenkassenchef warnt: Zehn mal mehr Impfnebenwirkungen als offiziell erklärt, https://multipolar-magazin.de/artikel/mehr-impfnebenwirkungen.

[^frank2022ma]: Gunter Frank (2022): Bericht zur Coronalage – Paul-Ehrlich-Chef feuern, Lauterbach entlassen – sofort, https://www.achgut.com/artikel/bericht_zur_coronalage_24.06.2022_paul-ehrlich-chef_feuern_lauterbach_entlassen_sofort.

[^sones2021dx]: Mordechai Sones (2021): 5-fold increase in sudden cardiac and unexplained deaths among FIFA athletes in 2021, https://americasfrontlinedoctors.org/2/frontlinenews/500-increase-in-sudden-cardiac-and-unexplained-deaths-among-fifa-athletes-in-2021/.

[^crawford2021bv]: Matthew B. Crawford (2021): Science has become a cartel, https://unherd.com/2021/05/how-scientists-sacrificed-scepticism/.

[^ziegler2021qp]: Jochen Ziegler (2021): Schlechtere Krankheitsverläufe nach Covid-Impfung?, https://www.achgut.com/artikel/schlechtere_krankheitsverlauefe_nach_covid_impfung.

[^jonas2020kd]: Uschi Jonas (2020): Gesundheit, Umwelt, Kosten: Welches Wasser Sie trinken, hat große Auswirkungen, https://www.focus.de/perspektiven/nachhaltigkeit/kolumne-in-kleinen-schritten-die-welt-retten-gesundheit-umwelt-kosten-welches-wasser-sie-trinken-hat-einen-grossen-effekt_id_10958059.html.

[^perry2019pd]: Mark J. Perry (2019): There Is No Climate Emergency, Say 500 Experts in Letter to the United Nations, https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/there-is-no-climate-emergency-say-500-experts-in-letter-to-the-united-nations/.

[^nasa2016so]: NASA (2016): Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth, Study Finds, https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth.

[^muller-ullrich2021ko]: Burkhard Müller-Ullrich and Sebastian Lüning (2021): Indubio Folge 162 – Tausend Jahre Klimawandel, https://www.achgut.com/artikel/indubio_folge_162_tausend_jahre_klimawandel.

[^frank2022ay]: Stefan Frank (2022): Australien: Stromkrise im Energieparadies, https://www.achgut.com/artikel/australien_stromklrise_im_energieparadies.

[^malice2021bc]: Michael Malice, Murray Rothbard, Max Stirner, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, David Friedman, Peter Kropotkin, Mikhail Bakunin, Lysander Spooner, Emma Goldman, and Louis Lingg (2021): The Anarchist Handbook, Independently published.

[^lindsay2021ss]: James Lindsay (2021): A Manifesto for the Based, https://newdiscourses.com/2021/05/manifesto-for-the-based/.

[^academyofideas2022qi]: Academy of Ideas (2022): The Parallel Society vs Totalitarianism | How to Create a Free World, https://academyofideas.com/2022/02/parallel-society-vs-totalitarianism-how-to-create-a-free-world/.

[^academyofideas2021bb]: Academy of Ideas (2021): How to Escape from a Sick Society, https://academyofideas.com/2021/09/how-to-escape-from-a-sick-society/.

[^brand2022rv]: Russel Brand (2022): Something Big Is Coming, https://youtu.be/Ks_qkWXW-ho.

Civil War for Truth: Science

Mon, 11 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Science Is Fundamentally Broken

I had shown in my last essay with the example of the humanities how corrupt parts of science are. Unfortunately, it’s worse than that. Even though the ideology of identity politics is creeping into other areas outside the humanities rapidly, it is not the worst problem the institution has.

John Ioannidis showed in his scientific article “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False”[^ioannidis2005ud] from 2005 that 90% of all published medical information is flawed. He and his team found out after years of meta-analysis research that 80 percent of non-randomized studies (by far the most common type) turn out to be wrong, as do 25 percent of supposedly gold-standard randomized trials, and as much as 10 percent of the platinum-standard large randomized trials.[^freedman2010fe]

Marcia Angell, editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, wrote:

It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Ioannidis’ research was not controversial, and the scientific community was relieved somebody finally addressed the problem. His paper is one of the most-downloaded papers in the history of the journal and is considered foundational to the field of metascience.

He mentioned in his article the many reasons that lead to the problem. Bias is one of the reasons. It is easy to manipulate the results, even unintentionally or unconsciously.

Moreover for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias.[^ioannidis2005ud]
— John Ioannidis, Why most Published Research Findings are False

The only way to ensure this bias is found is through rigorous scrutiny by other scientists. But this is not done.[^freedman2010fe]

The ultimate protection against research error and bias is supposed to come from the way scientists constantly retest each other’s results—except they don’t. Only the most prominent findings are likely to be put to the test because there’s likely to be publication payoff in firming up the proof or contradicting it.

The peer-review process itself provides only a minimal assurance of quality, and that the public conception of peer review as a stamp of authentication is far from the truth, stated Nature in 2006.[^freedman2010fe]

Bret Weinstein goes further in his assessment and thinks the whole process is corrupt and doesn’t ensure scientific quality, but is used by gatekeepers to filter out new, heterodox ideas and to protect scientist carriers and research money.

A recent study from September 2022 investigated the connection between status and anonymity in the peer-review process.[^huber2022ez] The paper found strong evidence for […] status bias: while only 23 percent recommend ‘reject’ when the prominent researcher is the only author shown, 48 percent do so when the paper is anonymized, and 65 percent do so when the little-known author is the only author shown. The authors suggest that double-anonymization is a minimum requirement for an unbiased review process.

One of the reasons false studies live so long is that thousands of scientists have already built their careers on flawed papers. It’s like an epidemic, in the sense that they’re infected with these wrong ideas, and they’re spreading it to other researchers through journals,[^freedman2010fe] says Ioannidis.

Another huge problem is that scientists need to get constantly funding to stay afloat. To get tenured positions or to continue researching, they have to constantly publish in respected journals that have a rejection rate above 90 percent. Only noticeable papers can achieve this. It is much more rewarding to publish new findings than to re-prove someone else’s research.

Considerable parts of science are funded with third-party funds. Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg explained in an interview that today, scientists proceed with their carrier only if they can find funding. It becomes secondary who pays the funding, which leads to corruption in science. Firstly, it means that research is only carried out for topics that can be used to earn money. And secondly, research results that the sponsor dislikes are not published at all. This might result in the repetition of harmful tests with candidates in the future. Wodarg demands that every study should be registered so that one can trace what became of the results.[^wodarg2022et]

Many of the scientific claims in medical research or nutritional sciences are outright false or turn out as the opposite years later. Nutritional sciences are so often wrong that their rate of being wrong reaches nearly 100 percent. Ioannidis suggests a simple approach on how to deal with those findings: ignore them all.[^freedman2010fe]

The problem was known for years to the scientific community but went unnoticed by the public. The devastating consequences of this unresolved problem could be seen during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Jon Jureidini and Leemon B McHenry wrote in their 2022 scientific article The illusion of evidence based medicine:

The philosophy of critical rationalism, advanced by the philosopher Karl Popper, famously advocated for the integrity of science and its role in an open, democratic society. A science of real integrity would be one in which practitioners are careful not to cling to cherished hypotheses and take seriously the outcome of the most stringent experiments. This ideal is, however, threatened by corporations, in which financial interests trump the common good. Medicine is largely dominated by a small number of very large pharmaceutical companies that compete for market share, but are effectively united in their efforts to expanding that market. The short term stimulus to biomedical research because of privatization has been celebrated by free market champions, but the unintended, long term consequences for medicine have been severe. Scientific progress is thwarted by the ownership of data and knowledge because industry suppresses negative trial results, fails to report adverse events, and does not share raw data with the academic research community. Patients die because of the adverse impact of commercial interests on the research agenda, universities, and regulators.

Bret Weinstein told in an interview on the podcast The Portal a horrifying story from his discovery as an undergraduate. He discovered that the Telomere of lab mice were much longer than those of mice in nature, due to selective breeding of younger mice. The longer Telomeres gave the mice nearly no protection from tumors (that are never observed because the mice die early), but an infinite capacity to replace damaged tissue. These lab mice are much more resilient to damage from drug experiments than normal mice, which results in the false belief a tested drug is safe. All mice used for science in the USA come from one laboratory. Bret Weinstein’s finding was buried by what Eric Weinstein calls the Distributed Idea Suppression Complex (DISC)[^weinstein2020rj] and the problem is not addressed until today.[^weinstein2020ac]

Science as a Religion

Even though science is flawed, it is our only tool to slowly approach the truth. It becomes problematic if people expect absolute truths from science and demand authoritarian measurements from politicians based on a flawed scientific basis.

Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.
— Richard P. Feynman

Science can’t deliver absolute truth, ever. It can only try to formulate how likely a scientific result is. Science uses a hypothesis as an assumption before the research is started. It formulates a question that can be tested. A theory is a principle formed to explain the results shown by the data resulting from the research.

But during the COVID-19 “pandemic” people looked up to “The Science™” (Trust the Science) as bringers of absolute truth. Science became a substitute for religion. It showed all the signs of a religious cult.

Society itself is a codified hero system, which means that society everywhere is a living myth of the significance of human life, a defiant creation of meaning. Every society thus is a “religion” whether it thinks so or not: Soviet “religion” and Maoist “religion” are as truly religious as are scientific and consumer “religion,” no matter how much they may try to disguise themselves by omitting religious and spiritual ideas from their lives.
— Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

There were prophets like Anthony Fauci, Christian Drosten, and Karl Lauterbach. People wore shirts with iconized faces of the prophets, walls were sprayed with their faces and people even tattooed them on their bodies. There were many willing members of the scientific community (the clergy) to legitimize the political decisions of the leaders (the nobility). We had rules, dogma, rituals, and holy artifacts to recognize the good ones: social distancing, masks, and digital passports. There was the miracle, the “holy” mRNA vaccine. People stood for hours in the rain to be baptized with the holy substance. The heretics, that questioned the proportionality of the political measures or the safety and effectiveness of the novel vaccines, were hated and publicly shamed. Those who didn’t follow the rules were punished by the inquisition with high fines. The pariahs who didn’t obey were shunned and excluded from society.

Statements like ‘The Science says’ serve as the twenty-first-century equivalent of the exhortation ‘God said’. Unlike science, the term ‘The Science’ serves a moralistic and political project. It has more in common with a pre-modern revealed truth than with the spirit of experimentation that emerged with modernity. The constant refrain of ‘Scientists Tell Us’ serves as a prelude for a lecture on what threat to fear (…) those who do not heed the warnings of experts are frequently castigated as irresponsible if not evil.[^ideas2022wm]
— Frank Furedi, How Fear Works: Culture of Fear in the Twenty-First Century

“The science” was not even science, but pseudoscience. The difference is in pseudoscience you don’t ask questions, but conduct a model based on preconceived ideas, go on to find data that fits the model, and discard data that does not fit the model. You keep the experiment hidden and don’t publish the data. Trust the experts.

When advised to #FollowTheScience during Covid, we have often been handed a consensus position that was arrived at out of view of the public, generally with no sharing of process or data, and therefore with no ability to vet the results. (…) Consensus is not arrived at so quickly, or so completely. Coercion is. Coercion is anti-scientific. So is faith.[^heying2022dx]
— Heather Heying, On not being a contrarian

The media manufactured consensus. Massive parts of the scientific community were suppressed and silenced. People like Dr. Robert W. Malone, the inventor of the mRNA technology, Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche, virologist and vaccine expert, formerly working at GAVI and The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations, or former chief scientist of Pfizer, Dr. Mike Yeadon, were demonized and removed from public conversations for their views.

Even John Ioannidis who predicted early on a median overall IFR of 0.23 and a median IFR for the under the 70s of 0.05 (a value which was nearly on point) was ignored and removed from the discussions.[^clark2020hx] He corrected his values later down to 0.15-0.2 and to 0.03-0.04 for the age group under 70[^ioannidis2020xo] and calculated a global IFR of 0.15.[^ioannidis2021zp]

Working treatments like Ivermectin, which showed to be effective in meta-studies[^ivmmeta2022ra] and multiple countries such as India or Peru, were targeted and demonized in large-scale campaigns. The industrial-scientific medical complex didn’t even shy away from starting an opposing meta-analysis under Andrew Hill that came to other conclusions. Tess Lawrie spoke to Andrew Hill in a Zoom call, where he admitted having been instructed to change the conclusion of the paper by unnamed authors.[^lawrie2022jo][^weinstein2022el]

Eric Weinstein coined the sentence follow the silence, to describe a situation where considerable parts of the scientific and medical communities were too afraid to speak up, because of social or professional pressure and a drastic narrowing of acceptable scientific opinions.

The Crimes of the Past

What can happen if politicians follow pseudoscience instead of science can be seen in the example of Lysenkoism. Trofim Lysenko was the agriculturalist of the Soviet Union under Stalin, and his unscientific beliefs led directly to the death of tens of millions in the Soviet Union and later in Maoist China, where his ideas were implemented. Massive famine and death were the results of his pseudoscientific ideas.[^lindsay2021ew]

But there was another pseudoscientific theory broadly accepted by wide parts of the scientific community in the 20th Century: Eugenics. This discredited belief that certain families have better ancestry and are meant to lead the society was supported by prominent people like Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill, Alexander Graham Bell, Leland Standford, H. G. Wells, Bernard Shaw, and universities like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, Stanford and Johns Hopkins. The Rockefellers were massive supporters of Eugenics and supported the research with lots of money.[^corbett2020oq]

The theory survived for more than 50 years and lead directly to the atrocities of the Nazis who used it as an excuse to sterilize or kill “unworthy” lives like mentally or physically disabled people, criminals, and other “asocial” people. After the war, Eugenics became unpopular, but it is still popular in specific circles and words like “population control” and “reproductive health” are modernized euphemisms of the same ideology.

Bill Gates’s father, Gates Sr., served on the board of Planned Parenthood after the founding of the organization. It was a re-brand birthed out of the American Eugenics Society.[^news2020rh]

This family history of the Gates makes the connections of Bill Gates to child-sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein just more suspicious. The New York Times reported that Epstein owned a ranch in New Mexico that he wanted to use for controlled breeding using his DNA to improve humanity.

Mr. Epstein’s vision reflected his longstanding fascination with what has become known as transhumanism: the science of improving the human population through technologies like genetic engineering and artificial intelligence. Critics have likened transhumanism to a modern-day version of eugenics, the discredited field of improving the human race through controlled breeding.[^stewart2019tg]
— James B. Stewart, Matthew Goldstein, and Jessica Silver-Greenberg, Jeffrey Epstein Hoped to Seed Human Race With His DNA

The Influence of Billionaires on Science

Many billionaires, especially Bill Gates and his foundation “The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,” try to influence and control public policy and perception of their deeds in a growing and worrying way with hundreds of million USD every year. They claim to do this out of love for humanity, but this is hard to believe. The reasons for the investments are likely more sinister. Buying influence, getting more power or money, greed and fame (or even worse goals). Bill Gates himself boasted in an interview that his investment in vaccines resulted in an [over] 20:1 return on investment.[^quick2019ry]

But even if all his intentions were altruistic, why should we give control over the health of billions of people to a high-school dropout without any medical degree?

Bill Gates is not a trustworthy person. The more you research into his business with vaccines in Africa or India and the damage his foundation has caused with their vaccination programs, the more suspicious you will get. India kicked the foundation out of the country[^kumar2014ma] and it is one of the reasons Pfizer won’t try to get regular approval of their COVID-19 vaccine in India because the government demands after their experiences with the foundation now too many safety checks for Pfizer.

Bill Gates’ massive investment in industrial farming and farmland which made him the biggest private farmland owner in the United States is another worrying development.[^kennedy2021aa][^brand2021mm][^estes2021ex] Not to mention his megalomaniac idea of blocking the sun with dust particles.[^cohen2021kf]

Everything Gates does is perfectly echoed by the final words by Federal Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, who presided over the Gates/Microsoft antitrust-fraud case:

Gates has a Napoleonic concept of himself, an appetite that derives from power and unalloyed success, with no leavening hard experience, no reverses.

But his behavior is not a coincidence, he follows the playbook of his idol, John D. Rockefeller.

After John D. Rockefeller owned nearly all oil production in the country, he searched for new ways to increase his wealth. He discovered that he could find new ways to use his oil to open new markets. One of those markets was medicine.[^willis2021dd] We can see Gates working similarly. He identified a product (vaccines) and a market (developing countries) and pushed relentlessly for the implementation of his agenda. Of his 10 TED talks, more than half are on this topic.

Next, John D. Rockefeller bought every newspaper in the country and printed massive ads for his new oil-based medicine. The same happens now but on a much larger scale. Following in the footsteps of John D. Rockefeller, today, the pharmaceutical industry spends at least twice the amount as big oil every year to influence laws, policies, and public perception, writes Mikki Willis in his 2021 book Plandemic.[^willis2021dd] Big Pharma spends $5 billion every year in the United States on advertising alone. 75% of the total advertising budget for 2020 was paid by Big Pharma.[^brand2022tz] The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation spent $5.822 billion in total in 2020, $1.793 billion on Global Health alone.[^suzman2020qp] The money goes everywhere to influence politicians, doctors, scientists, and journalists.

If you follow the money and look at the conflict of interests, you’ll, again and again, stumble on strange coincidences. For example, the husband of Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, is the medical director of the US pharmaceutical company Orgenesis since September 2020.[^loyen2021vi] The husband of “scientific” YouTube media influencer Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim is a director at Merck Group, one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world. German TV doctor and comedian Eckart von Hirschhausen’s foundation received €1.4 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.[^wallasch2022cg] This is just the tip of the iceberg with examples of German politicians and scientists, the pattern repeats across the globe.

An unnamed data scientist created 2021 a graph with over 6,500 objects including individuals, NGOs, companies, and documents connected with more than 7,200 links. The graph shows the flow of money and relationships and was created from public data. The document is 169 pages long (in the English language, and can be downloaded exclusively at Club der klaren Worte.[^langemann2021oc]

Rockefeller founded the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research and put his brother in position as the head. He used his scientific influence to drive out all natural—and therefore unpatentable and unprofitable—medicines, creating a new market for oil-derived drugs.[^willis2021dd] In the same way, Gates uses his influence to change science to his preference by supporting the causes he cares about. He is the second-largest donor to the WHO, with 13% of the donations. 20% are paid by the member states, and 80% are donated by private sources. The list of donors includes pharmaceutical companies like AstraZeneca, Bayer, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Merck. Gates's influence helped for the first time in the history of the WHO a questionable candidate for the director position who was not a doctor.

Still, was it any surprise that Tedros emerged victorious? With Gates behind him—as well as other powerful allies including the Clinton Global Initiative and the Chinese Communist Party—he was a shoo-in. The fact that he wasn’t even a doctor was easily ignored. More disturbingly, however, were some of the scandals in his past that were quietly swept under the rug. Prior to his appointment, Tedros was a high-ranking member of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front in Ethiopia, a brutal and corrupt political group responsible for crimes against humanity, including bombings, kidnappings, tortures, and killings. He also was accused of helping to cover up to three different cholera epidemics in the African nation that occurred under his leadership as health minister.[^willis2021dd]
— Mikki Willis, Plandemic: Fear Is the Virus. Truth Is the Cure

No wonder the WHO seems to always be aligned with the interests of Big Pharma. They redefined the definition of a pandemic during COVID-19, so they could declare it a pandemic because it didn’t meet the criteria. The WHO re-defined “herd immunity” and wrote herd immunity could only be achieved with mass vaccinations.

John D. Rockefeller shelled out hundreds of millions of dollars to transform his reputation from the most hated man in America to a benevolent philanthropist,[^willis2021dd] writes Willis. In the same way, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation influences public perception.

John D. Rockefeller donated millions to everybody who supported his cause, and so does Gates. When it showed that Rockefeller’s coal- and oil-based medicine was causing cancer, he founded the American Cancer Society in 1912.[^willis2021dd] We can hope the massive push and investment of Big Pharma into mRNA technology do not work out similarly.

Scientific Fraud

It’s not an accident we find prominent people like Anthony Fauci or Christian Drosten at the center of the COVID-19 crisis. And neither is the most likely location of the outbreak, the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The famous PCR test for COVID-19 is an example of the scientific fraud that plagues the medical scientific community. These things happen if research and financial interests collide. The scientific paper for the PCR test of Christian Drosten was reviewed and declared “Gold Standard” in less than 48 hours. A peer-review process normally takes many months. Dr. Simon Goddek, a peer-reviewer himself, showed in detail in his long essay how the fraud happened.[^goddek2021tr]

This crisis itself was “prepared” for a long time. Willis interviewed for his book Dr. David P. Martin, a credentialed doctor and medical expert, founder, and CEO of CAM Inc., a company for property-based financial risk management. One of their fields of expertise is auditing patent quality.

Dr. Martin found out that in the late 1990s, a new and puzzling trend was emerging in that sea of data. During 1999 alone, fifty-nine new patents were issued for medical discoveries related to the “coronavirus” disease family. (…) We know that Anthony Fauci, that Ralph Baric, that the Centers for Disease Control and the laundry list of people who wanted to take credit for inventing coronavirus were at the hub of this story (…) From 2003 and 2018, they controlled 100 percent of the cash flow that built the empire around the industrial complex of coronavirus.[^willis2021dd]

He discovered a massive patent fraud in the scientific community, by analyzing the digital fingerprints of the filed patents. This way he could track down the grants and their affiliations.

Before long, you see that the Patent Office, the CDC, the FDA, the NIH, and the National Science Foundation are all in this massive collusive network, which is essentially a way to take public funds and underwrite corporate programs, and—probably most egregiously—pay exorbitant amounts of money to universities that rely on federal grants as one of their primary funding sources. Ultimately, the patent represents the commercial greed of an individual or organization, because what they’re trying to do when a patent is filed is the obstruction of the free market, by definition. As a result of that, there is a high incentive to obstruct free markets across the system. And there is a high incentive to lie about it. And it turns out that when nobody was watching the store, both of those happened.[^willis2021dd]
— Mikki Willis, Plandemic: Fear Is the Virus. Truth Is the Cure

This drive of the medical-scientific community to patent life is illegal, says Dr. Martin. Under 35 US Code, Section 101, nature is prohibited from being patented (…) Either SARS coronavirus was manufactured, therefore making a patent on it legal, or it was natural, therefore making a patent on it illegal. If it was manufactured, it was a violation of biological and chemical weapons treaties and laws. If it was natural, filing a patent on it was illegal. In either outcome, both are illegal.[^willis2021dd]

It will take many years to uncover the whole truth about the scientific fraud and corruption that lead to the outbreak of the coronavirus. Gain-of-function research is dangerous and should be outlawed, as Obama decided in 2014. But it is not enough to outlaw the research in one country because then it gets moved to another country, like China, with less medical security, and the next pandemic will happen. Biological research should be treated like nuclear research. Regulated and far away from civilization (preferably on a ship on the ocean).

[^ioannidis2005ud]: John P. A. Ioannidis (2005): Why Most Published Research Findings Are False, https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124.

[^freedman2010fe]: David H. Freedman (2010): Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/308269/.

[^huber2022ez]: Juergen Huber, Sabiou M. Inoua, Rudolf Kerschbamer, Christian König-Kersting, Stefan Palan, and Vernon L. Smith (2022): Nobel and Novice: Author Prominence Affects Peer Review, https://ssrn.com/abstract=4190976>.

[^wodarg2022et]: Wolfgang Wodarg (2022): Warum liegt die Forschung im Argen?, https://odysee.com/warum-liegt-die-forschung-im-argen:d5c02f44357c5cc9bea81f4e649d7cdb299d9435.

[^weinstein2020rj]: Eric Weinstein (2020): 18: Eric Weinstein (Solo) - Slipping the DISC: State of The Portal/Chapter 2020, https://youtu.be/QxnkGymKuuI.

[^weinstein2020ac]: Eric Weinstein and Bret Weinstein (2020): 19: Bret Weinstein - The Prediction and the DISC, https://youtu.be/JLb5hZLw44s.

[^ideas2022wm]: Academy of Ideas (2022): Fear Psychosis and the Cult of Safety – Why are People so Afraid?, https://academyofideas.com/2022/04/fear-psychosis-and-the-cult-of-safety/.

[^heying2022dx]: Heather Heying (2022): On not being a contrarian, https://naturalselections.substack.com/p/notacontraria>.

[^clark2020hx]: Ross Clark (2020): How deadly is Covid-19?, https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-deadly-is-covid-19-.

[^ioannidis2020xo]: John P. A. Ioannidis (2020): Global perspective of COVID-19 epidemiology for a full-cycle pandemic, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13423.

[^ioannidis2021zp]: John P. A. Ioannidis (2021): Reconciling estimates of global spread and infection fatality rates of COVID-19: An overview of systematic evaluations, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13554.

[^ivmmeta2022ra]: ivmmeta.com (2022): Ivermectin for COVID-19: real-time meta analysis of 84 studies, https://ivmmeta.com/.

[^weinstein2022el]: Bret Weinstein and Neil Oliver (2022): Keeping Sane: Bret Speaks with Neil Oliver, https://youtu.be/0ytv1pzjiSw.

[^lawrie2022jo]: Tess Lawrie (2022): A Letter to Dr Andrew Hill, https://odysee.com/@OracleFilms:1/2022.03.04-A-Letter-to-Andrew-Hill-V8_HD:3.

[^kennedy2021aa]: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (2021): Bill Gates and Neo-Feudalism: A Closer Look at Farmer Bill, https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/bill-gates-neo-feudalism-farmer-bill/.

[^lindsay2021ew]: James Lindsay (2021): The Dawn of Medical Lysenkoism, https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/new-discourses/id1499880546?i=1000516473942.

[^corbett2020oq]: James Corbett (2020): Who Is Bill Gates?, https://youtu.be/TY-vLrz9XCc.

[^news2020rh]: TOTT News (2020): The Gates Family, Eugenics and COVID-19, https://tottnews.com/2020/04/09/gates-family-eugenics-covid-19/.

[^stewart2019tg]: James B. Stewart, Matthew Goldstein, and Jessica Silver-Greenberg (2019): Jeffrey Epstein Hoped to Seed Human Race With His DNA, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/31/business/jeffrey-epstein-eugenics.html.

[^quick2019ry]: Becky Quick and Bill Gates (2019): Bill Gates and the return on investment in vaccinations, https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/01/23/bill-gates-and-the-return-on-investment-in-vaccinations-davos.html.

[^brand2021mm]: Russel Brand (2021): The Great Reset: Bill Gates & Farming - WHAT'S GOING ON?, https://youtu.be/fg0c2x74mgU.

[^estes2021ex]: Nick Estes (2021): Bill Gates is the biggest private owner of farmland in the United States. Why?, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/05/bill-gates-climate-crisis-farmland.

[^kumar2014ma]: KP Narayana Kumar (2014): Controversial vaccine studies: Why is Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation under fire from critics in India?, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/healthcare/biotech/healthcare/controversial-vaccine-studies-why-is-bill-melinda-gates-foundation-under-fire-from-critics-in-india/articleshow/41280050.cms.

[^cohen2021kf]: Ariel Cohen (2021): A Bill Gates Venture Aims To Spray Dust Into The Atmosphere To Block The Sun. What Could Go Wrong?, https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2021/01/11/bill-gates-backed-climate-solution-gains-traction-but-concerns-linger/.

[^willis2021dd]: Mikki Willis (2021): Plandemic: Fear Is the Virus. Truth Is the Cure, Skyhorse.

[^brand2022tz]: Russel Brand (2022): This Is Impossible To Ignore, https://youtu.be/uEoNZSLabLc.

[^suzman2020qp]: Mark Suzman (2020): Annual Report 2020, https://www.gatesfoundation.org/about/financials/annual-reports/annual-report-2020.

[^loyen2021vi]: Bernhard Loyen (2021): Die STIKO, eine Expertengruppe für Impf- und Finanzspritzen, https://apolut.net/die-stiko-eine-expertengruppe-fuer-impf-und-finanzspritzen-von-bernhard-loyen/.

[^wallasch2022cg]: Alexander Wallasch (2022): 1,4 Millionen von Bill Gates für Hirschhausen-Stiftung, https://reitschuster.de/post/14-millionen-von-bill-gates-fuer-hirschhausen-stiftung/.

[^langemann2021oc]: Markus Langemann (2021): Exklusiv. Das Netzwerk-Dokument, https://clubderklarenworte.de/das-netzwerk-dokument/.

[^goddek2021tr]: Simon Goddek (2021): How Scientific Fraud took the World Hostage, https://www.goddeketal.com/how-scientific-fraud-took-the-world-hostage/.

Civil War for Truth: Academia

Mon, 04 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMT

The Long March Through the Institutions

Academia is one of the most worrying institutions to break down because the education system is the basis for everything that will happen in the future. Children, teenagers, and young adults can be molded easier into an ideology because the brain isn’t fully developed until the age of 25.[^cox2011vs]

All ideological systems have tried to indoctrinate the youths into their belief systems, even the democratic ones. But the harm emerges if these ideologies are not based on truth and facts, glorify the collective, teach obedience to the state, weaken the resilience of mind and body or stir up hatred against parts of the population. The Nazis did this with their Hitler Youth, the Maoists did this with their Red Guards, or African dictators do this with their child soldier armies.

Give me just one generation of youth and I’ll transform the whole world.
— Wladimir Iljitsch Lenin

The modern universities in Western countries are breaking down due to something the Marxists coined as The long march through the institutions. It is a Marxist long-term plan to change society from within over many generations by indoctrination of the education system.

Large parts of the Western intelligentsia were (and are) in favor of socialist ideologies. Between the 1950s and 1970s, the crimes and failure of Marxism and Socialism could no longer be denied. Dissident writers like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (The Gulag Archipelago) wrote in length about the horrors of those totalitarian regimes. The death tolls of Stalinism and Maoism became public.

It is estimated that Stalin killed more than 20 million people,[^conquest1968ar] between 3 and 5 million died as the result of the destruction of the Kulak class, which resulted in massive famine. More than 1 million were executed and an unknown number of people died through forced labor, deportation, famine, massacres, and detention and interrogation.[^haven2010xg]

Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward policy killed in 4 years (1958-1962) an estimated 45 million people, making it the biggest episode of mass murder ever recorded.[^somin2016ht]

Post-Modernism

Confronted with these facts, many academics moved in the direction of post-modernism, a philosophy Gad Saad calls intellectual terrorism.[^saad2020aa]

Post-Modernism is the granddaddy of idea pathogens because it removes the most fundamental epistemological premise of reality, which is that there are universal truths we can regularly count on. That’s the whole premise of science. There are natural laws that we are trying to discover. Post-modernism says, there is no absolute truth. Everything is shackled by subjectivity, by personal biases, by relativism.
— Gad Saad, Joe Rogan Experience #1816 – Gad Saad

In the 1970s, a group of poststructuralist French philosophers developed a radical critique of modern philosophy. They included people like Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, and others. They developed relativist ideas like deconstructionism (there is no reality outside language, language creates reality) which gave birth to a huge amount of related ideas and ideologies like social constructivism, cultural relativism, gender studies, radical feminism, critical theory, and a cultural phenomenon which is today summarized as “Social Justice Activism,” “Identity Politics,” or “Wokeness”.

Slowly, over the next 40-50 years these ideologies spread, foremost in the humanities departments of many universities. While those ideas pathogens often start with a noble premise like we should not discriminate against …, once they develop into a field of study they spread like cancer.

The problem arises when domains that should be reserved for the intellect are hijacked by feelings. This is precisely what plagues our universities: what were once centers of intellectual development have become retreats for the emotionally fragile. The driving motto of the university is no longer the pursuit of truth but the coddling of hurt feelings.[^saad2020aa]
— Gad Saad, The Parasitic Mind

Cultural Relativism

Relativism produces cultural relativism, which brings forward ideas that all cultures are equally right, and that we should not judge other cultures’ customs and traditions. This weird form of multiculturalism accepts the horrors of other cultures (like female genital mutilation, child brides, and honor killings) and fetishize[s] all Muslims as inherently noble, peaceful, and kind, a new manifestation of the myth of the Noble Savage, writes Gad Saad in his book The Parasitic Mind.[^saad2020aa]

This leads to the idea that cultural artifacts are holy or “taboo” and using or developing them further would be “Cultural Appropriation,” and this idiotic idea. Not only is it nearly impossible to identify a founder of a cultural phenomenon in most cases, but additionally cultures develop the same idea independent of each other multiple times (for example Dreadlocks in African tribes and Vikings), and culture mixes and builds new cultures on each other.

Obsession with Power, Language, and Knowledge

The activists of these ideologies are obsessed with power, language, knowledge, and the relationships between them. They interpret the world through a lens that detects power dynamics in every interaction, utterance, and cultural artifact—even when they aren’t obvious or real. This is a worldview that centers on social and cultural grievances and aims to make everything into a zero-sum political struggle revolving around identity markers like race, sex, gender, sexuality, and many others, write Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay in their book Cynical Theories.[^pluckrose2020he]

This leads to more and more fields of studies like Critical Queer Theory, Critical Fat Theory, and Critical Race Theory.[^lindsay2022ty] These ideas leaked into public consciousness in the last few years. It is the reason parents have to fight at school board meetings against CRT (Critical Race Theory) or gender ideology, to remove it from the curriculum.[^carroll2021so][^newsweek2021qd][^foxnews2021od] It is the reason we see fashion advertising with morbidly obese models,[^watson2022fh] trans-athletes crushing biological women in nearly all sports,[^watson2019wf] trans-men getting moved to female prisons (by self-identifying as female) where they rape and impregnate inmates,[^watson2022ua] or why we have now a pregnant man emoji on our phones. Ideology has real-world consequences.

The Words Don’t Mean What You Think They Mean

The problem is that the activists use sophistry. The words they use don’t mean what most people think they mean. This ideology is sometimes called DIE, because of its core principles of Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity.

At first glance, these ideas sound nice, don’t they? But this is because of assumptions we have about what they mean, which are not shared with activists. In their opinion, Diversity never means diversity of thought (or race or gender). Inclusion doesn’t mean including all people. It means bringing in more people of the same ideology under the guise of diversity and inclusion. This is the reason people that share a preferred race, for example, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) or sexual orientation, as LGBT+, but not their ideology, are viciously attacked. Larry Elder, a black conservative radio moderator who ran for the governor position of California, was called a Black face on White supremacy.[^chasmar2021ut]

Equity is even more worrying because it stands for equality of outcome. It means that if you see any difference in gender, sex, race, or any other attribute, the reason is always a systemic underlying condition that holds people down. It ignores preference, interest, merit, diligence, hard work, genes, or luck as contributing factors. Ironically, gender activists try to reduce a multi-level problem to a binary in this case.

This all resulted in a prominent victimhood culture at the universities, where trigger warnings are now necessary before you read Shakespeare or listen to a Standup comedian or philosophical talk. It produced a culture that invented the concept of Microaggressions and sees those in statements like Merry Christmas or Women bear children, and believes that Words are Violence.

Gad Saad coined the term Collective Munchhausen for this faux-victimhood mentality. Rather than feigning a medical condition or inflicting an injury, sufferers of Collective Munchhausen seek attention, sympathy, and empathy by advertising their supposed victimhood status (or piggybacking on the victimhood of others, Collective Munchhausen by Proxy).[^saad2020aa]

How crazy this victimhood culture can be observed by watching the Democratic Socialists of America National Convention 2019. I do not recommend watching the full convention, it might cause permanent brain damage to the viewer.

Diving into the understanding of this ideology is like being Alice following the rabbit into Wonderland. The amount of invented words by these activists is mind-blowing: Ableism, Acting White, Ally, Birthing Person, Black Lives Matter, Body Positivity, Critical Race Theory, Cisgender, Deadname, Decolonize, Demisexual, Diversity, Equity, Fatphobia, Gender Pronouns, Hate Speech, Healthism, Healthy at Every Size, Intersectionality, Latinx, Oppression, People of Color, Privilege, Queer, to name a fraction. James Lindsay started collecting and describing these terms in his Social Justice Encyclopedia with the activists’ own words.

This ideology brooded for years inside academia, but the internet made it possible to spread them easier around forums, boards, and social media platforms.

In late 2016 and 2017 three major events happened that catapulted the craziness inside the universities into the global consciousness.

Jordan Peterson Against Compelled Speech Laws

On September 27, 2016, Jordan Peterson, a professor at the University of Toronto, released the first of three videos speaking out against political correctness and Bill C16. Peterson was purposely mischaracterized as transphobic by activists and media because he objected to the introduction of a compelled speech law in Canada, which would force people to use the preferred pronouns of a trans person or face a criminal investigation for a hate speech crime. The controversy lasted nearly two months and included multiple rallies by activists against Peterson and a debate between Peterson, law professor Brenda Cossmann, and UBC Educator Professor Mary Bryson.[^simpson2016cg] Jordan Peterson and Gad Saad gave full testimony on Bill C16 in May 2017 at the Canadian Senate.

Forced into the public sphere, Peterson used his media presence in a calm, polite, and relaxed way to make the public aware of the problem at the universities. His breakthrough was an interview on Channel 5 News with Cathy Newman. Newman tried to attack him repeatedly and misinterpret his words, but was defeated and ridiculed by Peterson’s calm argumentation. The Jordan Peterson debate on the gender pay gap, campus protests, and postmodernism has nearly 38 million views (2022) and is something everybody should watch.

Ironically, the vicious attacks on Peterson made him more popular and catapulted him into the position of one of the most influential intellectuals of our time.

Evergreen State College Incident

The second event catapulted two deeply progressive professors at the Evergreen State College into public consciousness. Bret Weinstein and his wife Heather Heying, both with a Ph.D. in biology, fell victim to a campus mob that labeled them as “racist” and “white supremacists” and both professors lost their tenured jobs at the university.

The controversy started when in May 2017 for the first time white people were asked to leave the campus on the yearly “Day of Absence.” This yearly day allowed people of color to stay away from campus for one day to bring into consciousness how important diversity is. In 2017, the voluntary absence was changed into a mandatory absence for white people. Bret Weinstein, who merely questioned the event was made an example of and after massive riots, the students even took teachers hostage and hunted them on the campus property.

A three-part documentary (1, 2, 3) by filmmaker Mike Nayna documents the insanity that happened at the college with a mix of real-time video footage uploaded by activists and interviews. It shines a light on how a progressive college destroyed itself with ideology. The documentary is deeply disturbing and leaves viewers baffled and speechless. Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying worked since the incident, self-employed on their fantastic DarkHorse Podcast. Bret Weinstein testified to Congress about the free speech crisis on US college campuses.

The Evergreen State College experienced a 27% drop in enrollments after the riots, got into financial problems, and continues to decline.[^weissmann2020xp] The former president of the college, George Sumner Bridges, who collaborated with the protestors resigned in 2021 and the college was unable to find a successor yet.[^sexton2020mk] Evergreen State College is a sad example of ideology destroying an institution of higher education.

The Grievance Studies Affair

In 2017 and 2018 a group of three authors, Peter Boghossian, James A. Lindsay, and Helen Pluckrose started a project to expose the political corruption in several academic fields. They wrote and submitted bogus papers to academic journals in cultural, queer, race, gender, fat, and sexuality studies to see if they could pass peer review. They wrote 20 articles that had purposely absurd ideas. One of the most famous papers investigated rape culture in dog parks, another one investigated how transphobia could be reduced by penetrating men anally with sex toys, one proposed Fat Body Building, and one study rewrote Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf in feminist language.[^lindsay2018zb]

The team failed with their approach at first and decided to understand and study the ideologies to write more effective hoax papers. Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay worked their insights into the ideologies into a book on the topic. They both started projects to fight corruption in Academia. Helen Pluckrose started Counterweight, a project to reduce political polarization that is threatening science and James Lindsay started New Discourses, a magazine, podcast, and education platform on post-modernist and Neo-Marxist ideology.

By the time of the reveal 4 papers had been published, 1 paper won a prize, 3 had been accepted, but not yet published, 6 had been rejected and 7 were under review. Filmmaker Mike Nayna produced a short documentary about the Grievance Studies Affair.

Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay were guests on Joe Rogan’s Podcast to talk about the project.

The incident is at the same time funny and terrifying but revealed how corrupted Academia is. It might be beyond repair.

Real-World Consequences

One could ignore what happens in Academia, but unfortunately, it is not What Happens in Academia, Stays in Academia. Scientific papers are written by scientists that work in Academia. Their ideologies will reflect in studies and have real-world consequences.

Another consequence is that students don’t stay students forever, but are released into the labor market. They bring their ideologies into corporations, media, and politics. We see this in social media companies and the tech industry, which are saturated with progressive-left activists. Most of those companies, like Netflix (99.6%) or Twitter (now 𝕏) (98.7%) have a left-biased workforce.[^molla2018fz]

Media companies have a strong cultural influence with their hegemony on movies, TV Shows, news articles, and social media influence. This leads to problems I discussed in previous essays of this series regarding censorship, bias, echo chambers, and political division.

But more and more of these ideologies find their way into HR departments of traditional companies, which create policies that affect all employees.

A few recent examples show what can happen if ideology destroys the workplace.

Wokeness Harms Company Culture

Spotify got repeatedly into troubled water since its acquisition of the Joe Rogan Experience on its platform. Employees staged multiple walkouts and had tearful breakdowns every time a guest on Joe Rogan talked about a controversial topic such as Transgender, COVID-19, or politics in general. But for now, the profit was more important to the company than pleasing the grievances of triggered employees.[^hamilton2020aa]

Another recent example is the resignation of the Jewish opinion writer Bari Weiss in 2020 from her position at The New York Times. The harassment she had to endure on internal Slack channels for her center-left positions became unbearable.[^weiss2020vp]

Coinbase was one of the first companies that drew a line for activists in 2021 because it started to affect the company negatively. Employees got the instruction from their CEO Brian Armstrong to keep their activism out of the workplace and do it in their time.[^pachal2020gj]

The small software company Basecamp with its 57 employees was troubled in 2021. In 2017, the company signalized how important they thought the topics of diversity, inclusion, and equity were and allowed a new hire to work on the topic. Roughly one-third of its employees took part in working on DIE issues on a dedicated company message board. This was a major mistake. As we learned earlier, the core premise of the ideology is to problematize everything and find grievances in every small thing. This small thing was a list of funny customer names that floated around the company.

There was a huge internal discussion where people claimed the company would be riddled with “White Supremacy.” Basecamp’s head of strategy, Ryan Singer, questioned the existence of “White Supremacy” in the company but was forced to resign.[^monroe2021im][^ruby2021ba] As a result, CEO Jason Fried introduced new rules banning political discussions from internal message boards.[^fried2021kq] A severance package was offered to employees wanting to leave the company and one-third of the employees left. Now, that the dust is settled it doesn’t look like the company has taken any long-term harm, they announced to expand into their second project massively, HEY. Basecamp made the grave error to give activists an inch. They always take a mile.

The problem of universities breaking down and releasing activists into the public is here to stay with us for a longer time. But high tuition fees that produce massive student debt and useless degrees like “gender studies,” creating employees who are too fragile to withstand a normal day in the working place or contribute to the success of a company, is not a viable long-term business solution.

The only way this can be stopped is when more companies stand up against activists that threaten their companies. You don’t kowtow to the mob. The companies that understand this will survive this phase, the others won’t because the majority of people are fed up with woke shit and will stop buying and consuming those politicized products.

[^cox2011vs]: Tony Cox and Sandra Aamodt (2011): Brain Maturity Extends Well Beyond Teen Years, https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=141164708.

[^conquest1968ar]: Robert Conquest (1968): The Great Terror, NY Macmillan.

[^haven2010xg]: Cynthia Haven (2010): Stalin killed millions. A Stanford historian answers the question, was it genocide?, https://news.stanford.edu/2010/09/23/naimark-stalin-genocide-092310/.

[^somin2016ht]: Illya Somin (2016): Remembering the biggest mass murder in the history of the world, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/08/03/giving-historys-greatest-mass-murderer-his-due/.

[^saad2020aa]: Gad Saad (2020): The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense, Regnery Publishing.

[^pluckrose2020he]: Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay (2020): Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity - and Why This Harms Everybody, Pitchstone Publishing.

[^lindsay2022ty]: James Lindsay (2022): What is Critical Race Theory?, https://youtu.be/BED_D6Hc6TU.

[^carroll2021so]: Craig Carroll (2021): Fighting Critical Race Theory in Schools, https://areomagazine.com/2021/07/19/212494/.

[^newsweek2021qd]: Newsweek (2021): Watch Black Father Blast Critical Race Theory At Board Meeting In Viral Video, https://youtu.be/m66rcHzWaPU.

[^foxnews2021od]: Fox News (2021): Parents fed up with critical race theory are trying to oust school board members, https://youtu.be/Kgx49-lJrYA.

[^watson2022fh]: Sydney Watson (2022): The bizarre downward spiral of fat acceptance and "Health at Every Size", https://youtu.be/hwL-8cSiK6Q.

[^watson2019wf]: Sydney Watson (2019): Are transgender athletes pushing women out of sports? (here’s the data), https://youtu.be/C7jULL7ov7k.

[^watson2022ua]: Sydney Watson (2022): How hundreds of biological men INVADED women’s prisons, https://youtu.be/k6PEmajzrc0.

[^chasmar2021ut]: Jessica Chasmar (2021): Newsom rally speaker calls Larry Elder ‘a Black face on White supremacy’, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/newsom-speaker-larry-elder-black-face-white-supremacy.

[^simpson2016cg]: Kaitlyn Simpson (2016): The Explainer: Timeline of the Jordan Peterson controversy, https://thevarsity.ca/2016/11/21/the-explainer-timeline-of-the-jordan-peterson-controversy/.

[^weissmann2020xp]: Sara Weissmann (2020): Two Years After Protests, Evergreen State College Works to Boost Enrollment, Retention, https://www.diverseeducation.com/students/article/15106098/two-years-after-protests-evergreen-state-college-works-to-boost-enrollment-retention.

[^sexton2020mk]: John Sexton (2020): Evergreen State College president George Bridges is leaving...next year, https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2020/02/26/evergreen-state-college-president-george-bridges-leaving-next-year-n310139.

[^lindsay2018zb]: James Lindsay, Peter Boghossian, and Helen Pluckrose (2018): Academic Grievance Studies and the Corruption of Scholarship, https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-grievance-studies-and-the-corruption-of-scholarship/.

[^molla2018fz]: Rani Molla (2018): Tech employees are much more liberal than their employers - at least as far as the candidates they support, https://www.vox.com/2018/10/31/18039528/tech-employees-politics-liberal-employers-candidates.

[^pachal2020gj]: Pete Pachal (2020): Coinbase Has Drawn a Line in the Sand for Its Activist Employees, https://www.coindesk.com/coinbase-has-drawn-a-line-in-the-sand-for-its-activist-employees.

[^hamilton2020aa]: Isobel Asher Hamilton (2020): Spotify is reportedly fighting with employees about hosting episodes of Joe Rogan’s podcast that some consider transphobic, https://www.businessinsider.com/spotify-report-joe-rogan-transphobia-fight-employees2020-9.

[^weiss2020vp]: Bari Weiss (2020): Resignation Letter, https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter.

[^monroe2021im]: Nick Monroe (2021): REVEALED: Basecamp employees cried, threw tantrums after boss rejected woke culture, https://thepostmillennial.com/revealed-basecamp-employees-cried-threw-tantrums-after-boss-rejected-woke-culture.

[^ruby2021ba]: Matt Ruby (2021): I was employee #1 at Basecamp. Here’s my take on the recent blowup there., https://mattruby.substack.com/p/i-was-employee-1-at-basecamp-heres.

[^fried2021kq]: Jason Fried (2021): Changes at Basecamp, https://world.hey.com/jason/changes-at-basecamp-7f32afc5.

Civil War for Truth: Media and Journalism

Mon, 27 Jun 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Internet killed the Newspaper Star

Journalism and News Media are considered to be the “Fourth Estate” of a Democracy. Journalism has the unspoken responsibility to check the balance of Legislative, Judicial, and Executive. Additionally, they should speak the truth to power and expose corruption in politics and corporations. That is the reason it is dangerous when the institution breaks down because it directly affects our Democracy.

The decline of news media started with the dawn of the Internet age and took its first big hit around 2004 with the massive gain in popularity of Google, but the global take-off of social media, especially Facebook, around 2014 accelerated it massively.[^eagle2022hi][^pewresearchcenter2021cm][^pewresearchcenter2021sx] Many newspapers didn’t make it into the new medium, and the old advertising and paper business was not transferable to the new medium. I worked myself in the publishing industry for five years and tried unsuccessfully to bring a publishing company, founded in 1786 to the new medium. In the end, the company was swallowed by a bigger publishing house and survived only by name.

A famous visualization project from 2015 used open data on newspaper sales to create a tool that predicted when a specific newspaper would go bankrupt.[^disselhoff2015io] It didn’t look good for news outlets.

Additionally, a culture expecting free content on the internet locked newspapers into a banner advertising model they could only lose. It resulted in a vicious circle of the need for clicks, achieved with rage and clickbait content. Not only does sex sell, hate, too.

The journalistic integrity and quality of news reporters dropped continuously. Newspapers could not compete with the speed of 𝕏 posts. The drive for clicks resulted in a reduction of journalistic quality, which included checking the validity of sources.

The profession of journalism lost its quality because many news outlets required fewer of the old skills. The education in that field became expensive and only upper-middle-class people continued this route, compared to the previous 50 years when journalists came from all classes. This resulted in an influx of social justice activists.

These new “journalists” of the Millennial generation are coming out of the universities where a new culture of grievance, complaining, and entitlement has taken over the institutions. Instead of doing journalistic work, many of the new hires are foremost social activists and spend their days writing hit-pieces about people that violate their woke ideology or harassing people on 𝕏. In a recent scandal at The Washington Post, David Weigel, one of their best reporters, was suspended without pay for a month for retweeting a joke. The newspaper’s leadership followed the demands of a co-worker, Felicia Sonmez, to punish Weigel for his “offense.” This wasn’t enough for her, she went on a 𝕏 shit storm for days, demanding multiple people to get fired, attacking colleagues, and mocking her bosses which got her finally fired after multiple days.[^maher2022mr]

There is no place outside universities more biased than media companies. A poll from 2015 found that 92% of all employees of the German public media company ARD voted Red (Social Democratic and Socialist) or Green.[^hanfeld2020xv] With this imbalance, any objectivity is impossible. The Pew Research Center found similar numbers in the USA in 2004, where 93% of all journalists were politically left.[^wolan2021uu]

Kat Rosenfield argues in her article “The media is run by trolls” that the 2008 recession, and the mass layoffs in media (…) fundamentally transformed how news was covered.[^rosenfield2022sj]

Imagine a horde of freshly unemployed veteran writers, alongside new journalism grads, desperately trying to claw out a livelihood in a world where writing had been completely devalued. (…) Gone was the $2-per-word magazine staff writer position; gone was the local shoe-leather reporting job that might launch a lifelong career. Now, a writer’s best option was freelance blogging, churning out listicles and aggregated new stories at $15 a pop — and with a quota, which at some outlets ran as high as 20 posts per day.[^rosenfield2022sj]
— Kat Rosenfield, The media is run by trolls

The model of publishing switched to mass, low-quality opinion posts instead of high-quality investigative journalism.

Clickbait and Rage

Rosenfield writes that in 2014 the news cycle became increasingly outrage-driven, and our thinking about the type of post that was deemed worthy of coverage changed. (…) this mode of coverage blurred the boundaries between identifying a trend and manufacturing one.[^rosenfield2022sj]

Many newspapers used a new approach: Clickbait and rage for the masses and politically biased news coverage for their subscribers. Their job was reduced to confirming the bias of their readers. Other newspapers became financially dependent on the state or billionaires and started confirming the message of the ruling class.

Additionally, we can see an influx of former media employees moving into prominent government positions. It is common practice that former journalists and media people are “bought” by the government into well-payed positions. Michael Meyen, professor of communication sciences at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, lists Steffen Seibert, the former spokesperson of the German government, who was previously a TV moderator. This way the government buys the image of seriousness, neutrality, and possibly credibility. Meyen lists the example of a German federal state where three of four of the national correspondents of the daily newspapers moved into state ministries.[^meyen2021xq]

And what trust is left in newspapers that get funded by billionaires with an industrial-medical agenda, like The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation? The German newspaper Spiegel Online received $2,537,294 (2018) and $2,000,000 (2021) in donations to raise global health awareness. This donation has paid off for Bill Gates, who was recently left out in a hit piece by Spiegel about “lawless” billionaires.[^thurnes2022ru]

Big Pharma pay 75% of the total advertising budget of the USA in 2020. They spend 2020 $4.58 billion on advertising in the USA.[^brand2022tz] It’s unlikely a media company writes negative things about people that give them money.

The result of all these things is a new form of “journalism” that doesn’t report the news, but sees its responsibility in lecturing and educating the people on what is the “correct” opinion. They use psychological techniques like Framing, Nudging, Gaslighting, and outright propaganda.

Framing

Framing is a technique where the journalist sets the frame and outcome of a news article. Instead of reporting the facts, it starts with the premise of how the reader should think about the issue. It’s common practice now to smear the opposite side as deniers, conspiracy theorists, alt-right, far-right, white nationalists, or Nazis. In Germany, nearly every accusation includes a reference to the 3rd Reich.

Other techniques of framing include panel discussions that include only people of one opinion and exclude the other side or inviting one mild critic to relentlessly attack them with many discussion participants for the whole talk show.

It’s unbelievable how many people can be fooled and have their opinions controlled with this technique. Especially the tax-funded public broadcasting companies in Germany are guilty of this. The apocalyptic health minister Karl Lauterbach was invited to 29 talk shows during the COVID-19 crisis in 2021 alone, where he spread his fear and panic for the next killer mutation. But of the 16 sessions of the Health Committee, he only attended 5.[^dts2022iy] Priorities.

A prominent example of framing is the controversy around the podcaster, Joe Rogan. When he got infected with COVID-19, he took several drugs, including Ivermectin and his test was negative 2 days later, 5 days later he was back to the gym training. This is not the story the medical cartel of Big Pharma would like to be heard for the “deadly” virus. Even though Ivermectin has proven itself in 63 studies as effective,[^ivmmeta2021ra] it needed to be attacked by the media because Ivermectin is patent-free and doesn’t generate billions in revenue. The framing techniques used against Rogan were creative. The medicine was framed as “Horse Dewormer” and “Horse Paste,” even though Ivermectin is foremost a human drug and was used billions of times around the globe and its founders William Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2015.

Rolling Stones Magazine outright made up a story that gunshot victims in Oklahoma could not be treated because many people overdosing on Ivermectin would block the hospitals.[^wade2021vr]

CNN took the Instagram video of Joe Rogan and colored the video intentionally green to make him look sick.[^rogan2022gh]

Another example is the framing of detention facilities along the American-Mexican border to detain illegal immigrants. The “cages” were built by Barack Obama. After Donald Trump became president, they were framed as “kids in cages” and “concentration camps.”[^miroff2020jm] Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez performed a fake photo session in front of an empty parking lot where she cried tears for the camera about the fate of the kids in cages.[^re2019as]

During the riots in Kenosha, where Kyle Riddenhouse shot two of the rioters that tried to kill him, the media framed it as White Supremacy, even though the killed men were both white with criminal records (including child abuse).[^carlson2021ca] No wonder the verdict of the case came unexpectedly for the left-biased press. Many people learned, with the verdict for the first time, that the victims were not black.

From the shooting of Michael Brown (who tried to grab a policeman's gun) and Breonna Taylor (her mother called the BLM movement a fraud), the death of George Floyd (who had Fentanyl, Meth, and other drugs in deadly doses in his blood) to the “summer of love” (the riots of BLM, aka “Burning, Looting, Murdering”), framing was a constant companion. Nearly nothing the press reported was accurate. The resulting riots injured 700 policemen, killed 50 people, resulted in 3 billion damages, and burned down more than 100 stores. The “Defund the Police” campaign left many black neighborhoods with insufficient police and resulted in a 30% yearly rise in Black murder. Portland reported a surge in murder of 2,000%.[^faria2021qg] Framing kills.

Nudging

Another technique now common is nudging. It is the usage of psychological manipulation of people to achieve the desired behavior. During the COVID-19 crisis, we could witness the widespread usage of this unethical tactic. The British government used its Nudge unit to instill fear in the British people.[^furedi2022wg][^wintour2010ba] Even the co-founder of the unit, Simon Ruda regrets now that they used these manipulation techniques.[^ruda2022ze]

The German Interior Ministry used scientists to create a report that aimed to terrify the German people. When the paper was leaked to the newspaper “Die Welt,” everybody could see what Nudging techniques they used.[^dowideit2021ze] They asked scientists to manufacture the fear of suffocation with proper images and to highlight the guild of children being the reason for killing their parents and grandparents.

These techniques should be outright illegal and never used in a Democracy. The loss of trust in government because of this will take decades to win back.

Gaslighting

Gaslighting is another technique from the playbook. The term comes from the 1944 movie “Gaslight” with Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, and Joseph Cotten. In the movie, a husband tries to convince his wife that she is mentally unwell to steal from her. He is dimming the light of the house and tries to tell her nothing had changed. Gaslighting can be seen every day when activists try to convince people that what they think of an issue is not correct.

It is often used with the Motte-and-Bailey Fallacy, where a controversial argument (the “bailey”) is presented along with an easier-to-defend argument (the “motte”). When the activist realizes the opposite side understands the issue, they retreat to the motte and defend the least controversial topic.

Propaganda

Former US State Department official and Time Magazine editor, Richard Stengel, defines propaganda as the deliberate dissemination of information that you know to be false or misleading to influence an audience.[^johnstone2022zu] Media companies and governments use propaganda to manufacture consent.[^jazeera2017it]

The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.
— Aldous Huxley

Many claims on the news need to be categorized as outright propaganda. It is terrifying how easy it is to fall for propaganda. Henry T. Conserva published a book about propaganda and listed 89 techniques.[^hirsch2021hw] Even when you know them all, you will fall for it occasionally.

The most brilliant propaganda technique will not succeed unless one basic principle is constantly carried in mind – it must be limited to a few points and repeated over and over.
— Joseph Goebbels

Propaganda can be identified regularly on nearly any hot-button topic. Propaganda was the prominent technique used against unvaccinated people during the COVID-19 crisis. Many of the slogans we could hear throughout the “pandemic” were not accidentally the same around the globe because they were likely thought up by Think Tanks and coordinated political campaigns. Propaganda slogans like “pandemic of the unvaccinated” (a lie), “the vaccine is 100% effective” (a lie), “the vaccine has no side effects,” (a lie), or “if you are vaccinated you can’t spread the virus” (a lie) were used by Big Pharma to push a global agenda supported by many governments.

And propaganda works, even months or years after claims have been proven wrong, the propaganda continues to exist in many people’s brains. The German Federal Court based a verdict in 2022 about mandatory vaccination for health workers on the false assumption it would stop the spread of the virus.

Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred.
— Joseph Goebbels

Unfortunately, as Dr. Daniele Ganser pointed out in his talk, it is not possible to not be influenced by propaganda.[^ganser2020em] The only way is in his opinion to go into nature, to train mindfulness, and be skeptical about everything, be careful if somebody wants to sell you war or hate of a specific group of people. As a historian, Ganser said, we are always 20 years late. With every conflict people think that this time the government tells the truth and that this perceived threat is real.

Ganser mentioned the war propaganda of the Iraq War in 2003, where a young woman claimed Iraqi soldiers would have killed incubator babies by throwing them on the floor. Later it was revealed she was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador. No matter where you look, from Vietnam, 9/11, Ukraine 2014 and 2022 to COVID-19 you’ll find propaganda, used to manipulate how you think about a topic.

It should be the goal of every person to teach children how to identify propaganda, and everybody should train to identify when somebody tries to use propaganda on us. Our lives might depend on identifying and rejecting it.

Eroded Trust

All these techniques undermine the trust in mainstream media and gave birth to a huge amount of alternative media. A Gallup poll of 2020 asked how much people trusted the news in the USA. 60% trusted it either not at all or not very much, which is the highest value ever recorded. The trust for Democrat voters was the highest with 75%, followed by independent voters with 36%, and Republican voters with 10%.[^bedard2020aa] In 2021 the numbers sank again and reached their second-lowest in 25 years.[^brenan2021mz]

And the trust will erode further once the COVID-19 crisis is over and the lies and propaganda are uncovered. The media was the main driver of mass hysteria, mass psychosis, and fear that made the pandemic much worse than the virus alone could have ever done.

The scientific paper “COVID-19 and the Political Economy of Mass Hysteria”[^bagus2021lf] concluded:

In short, mass hysteria sponsored by a biased media sector may run out of control in a modern welfare state.

We are now in a time when you can either trust mainstream media and be lied to, or invest the time and effort into following hundreds of small alternative media outlets contradicting official narratives and validate the truth yourself with the information you receive.

There used to be something called a mass audience. And that meant [that] there were massive numbers of people all essentially looking into a gigantic mirror in which they saw themselves reflected. So most people were consuming the same content and there was a common denominator.
The digital revolution has shattered that mirror, and now the public inhabits those broken pieces of glass. So the public isn’t one thing; it’s highly fragmented, and it’s basically mutually hostile. It’s mostly people yelling at each other and living in bubbles of one sort or another.[^illing2019bz]

— Martin Gurri, A decade of revolt

Biased Social Media

Social Media has a front and center seat in the media drama. However, if they react to demands from either side, they lose. Politicians and corporations that see their narratives questioned demand stronger censorship, disguised as a “War on Disinformation,” and multiple bills for regulation are currently waiting for review. Currently, social media companies have special rights under Section 230 that allows them to be treated as a platform and not be responsible for their content and at the same time be able to moderate content as a publisher.

This opens endless possibilities for social media companies to apply moderation rules in an unbalanced manner. In the majority of tech companies, the amount of progressive employees is at the high 90%. At Twitter (now 𝕏), 98.7% of all employees vote for the Democrats.[^molla2018fz] These are the employees who program the algorithms and moderate the content. Objectivity is impossible with this imbalance.

The number of censorship techniques reached dangerous levels in the last 5 years. From marking content as age-restricted, to prevent it reaches children, to Demonetization and De-Ranking of content, to Shadow Banning, Throttling, and Content Blocking to the final stages of Strikes and Deplatforming.

But as companies in Silicon Valley coordinate with each other, it doesn’t stop here. De-banking is these days an inexhaustible used weapon. Companies like PayPal, Stripe, and MasterCard started creating “No-Buy” lists.[^sacks2022py] Other companies help voluntarily to destroy the lives of targeted people, by removing them from hosting providers, email providers, eCommerce providers like Shopify, music providers like Spotify, and transportation providers like Uber or Lyft and even Airbnb. They don’t even shy away from collective punishment and remove accounts of spouses or family.[^sacks2022py]

These tactics previously known to be used against adult actors and their companies since the introduction of Operation Choke Point[^weinstein2020lw] is now used against anybody with a political view deemed wrong. A dangerous trend should it continue will lead to violence or civil war.

The scientific study “Is radicalization reinforced by social media censorship?” shows what Free Speech advocates knew all along. Centralized censorship leads to radicalization because the isolated individuals continue their beliefs unchecked. Safe spaces help the short-term but harm a community long-term.[^lane2021lh]

The social media platform Minds follows a different approach. Its CEO Bill Ottman hired Daryl Davis to invest in studying censorship, radicalization, and deradicalization.[^rogan2022jm] Davis is a black activist who deradicalized dozens of KKK members over the years by listening to them and making them leave the clan.[^bruzzone2020aa] The documentation Accidental Courtesy shows how he used patience and friendship to deradicalize.

Get Woke, Go Broke

The woke narrative doesn’t work anymore for many people, they see through it and see what it is, the flip-side of far-right ideology.

But woke agenda is pushed relentlessly through all media companies. Producers care neither about an existing fan base nor profit and produce content that is doomed to fail.

Netflix is known to produce huge amounts of ugly woke content for the US market. The French movie “Cuties” released in 2020 sexualizes teen girls and reached an audience score of 16% on Rotten Tomatoes, while (left) critics loved the movie with an 88% rating. This movie is one in a never-ending amount of woke movies and TV shows produced by Netflix. In 2022, the subscription service lost subscribers for the first time in a decade and its stock price fell 32%. Elon Musk commented the woke mind virus is making Netflix unwatchable.[^kay2022eh] The growing competition is part of the story, but he is right. I loved watching “Sense 8,” an LGBT-friendly TV Show. But it had a good story and didn’t push the ideology with force. The garbage I get recommended these days is unwatchable. The only reason I still have a Netflix account is that the content produced outside the US (for example Korea, Japan, and the Middle East) is of fantastic quality. Recently, the company put brakes on its woke employees. Netflix added an “Artistic Expression” policy to its company culture memo and told their woke employees If you’d find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you.[^soave2022pw]

Hollywood is tanking one franchise after the other. They destroyed Star Wars, Star Trek, James Bond, Ghost Busters, and many more. The writers forgot that a good story needs to come first. If the story is outstanding, they might risk adding a political message. The gay community successfully used humor and funny TV Shows to increase acceptance since the 1990s. Nobody wants to be aggressively lectured, this approach will fail and increase resentment.

The gaming industry destroyed a huge amount of good franchises by adding woke agenda. Nobody wants to play as a female, disabled soldier in a World War I game.

And when they get called out and punished with dismal ratings, they deflect the criticism and claim that bigots, far-right trolls, or toxic masculinity made their products fail. The rating platform Rotten Tomatoes shows the disconnect between common people and woke media critics for years. Rotten Tomatoes has two scores: The Tomatometer reflects the rating of “professional” critics, and the audience score reflects the users’ ratings. The bigger the difference, the better (or worse) the movie is. Over the years, I learned to ignore the professional critics and look for the audience score to have a fun experience.

Disney got recently into a shit storm and lost an estimated $50 billion[^kotkin2022re] when a Zoom call leaked to the public in which they announced their policy to push woke content into future shows.[^brand2022qs] Parents are sensitive when companies try to brainwash and manipulate their children. Should Disney lose the trust of parents, it will destroy more than 60 years of trust, and they might never gain it back.

YouTube removed recently the Dislike button because it allowed people to see the ratio and quality of a video. The negative ratings affected the political speeches of Joe Biden, political propaganda, and woke content. This useful extension brings the button back.

CNN had to shut down its new subscription streaming service CNN+ after less than one month. They invested around $100 million and hired hundreds of employees to gain around 10,000 subscribers.[^wile2022wa] Joe Rogan mocked CNN on his podcast and asked why they thought anyone would pay for this garbage if people don’t even watch the free content anymore.[^dore2022it] CNN averages 517,000 viewers per prime-time show.[^sears2022jo]

Meanwhile, independent non-woke content publishers like “The Joe Rogan Experience” gain massive amounts of users. Rogan reaches on average 11 million listeners per episode.[^hibberd2022qn] This is twenty times more than CNN reaches in its prime time.[^dore2022it] For interesting guests or controversial topics, Rogan can reach 40 million and more listeners.

And painting him as a conspiracy theorist or anti-vaxxer and writing hit pieces made him more popular. The controversy around a many-year-old usage of the N-Word brought him 2 million more subscribers on Spotify.[^hibberd2022qn]

This shows a trend that gives hope. People are sick of woke political agenda. They want no more second-long soundbites and moderated, biased shows. They prefer listening to the sometimes 2-3 hour long conversations with people of all political and social backgrounds instead because in long conversations everything is unfiltered, unmoderated, and you can’t hide an agenda. You need to be honest. Honesty is rare these days.

[^eagle2022hi]: James Eagle (2022): Most Popular Websites Since 1993, https://youtu.be/hNDILCdZmRo.

[^pewresearchcenter2021cm]: Pew Research Center (2021): Total estimated circulation of U.S. daily newspapers, https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/chart/sotnm-newspapers-total-estimated-circulation-for-u-s-daily-newspapers/.

[^pewresearchcenter2021sx]: Pew Research Center (2021): Newspapers Fact Sheet, https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/newspapers/.

[^disselhoff2015io]: Felix Disselhoff (2015): Und wann stirbt Ihre Zeitung? Open-Data-Projekt sagt Halbwertszeit von Printmedien voraus, https://meedia.de/2015/01/05/und-wann-stirbt-ihre-zeitung-open-data-projekt-sagt-halbwertszeit-von-printmedien-voraus/.

[^maher2022mr]: Bill Maher (2022): New Rule: Democracy Dies in Dumbness, https://youtu.be/5tu9JGK_yHo.

[^rosenfield2022sj]: Kat Rosenfield (2022): The media is run by trolls, https://unherd.com/2022/06/the-media-is-run-by-trolls/.

[^hanfeld2020xv]: Michael Hanfeld (2020): 92 Prozent für Rot-Rot-Grün, https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/medien/ard-volontaere-wie-divers-ist-die-ausbildungs-generation-17038169.html.

[^wolan2021uu]: Alan Wolan and Wilfred Reilly (2021): Wilfred Reilly on Thomas Sowell, https://www.buzzsprout.com/1826734/9077711-wilfred-reilly-on-thomas-sowell.

[^brand2022tz]: Russel Brand (2022): This Is Impossible To Ignore, https://youtu.be/uEoNZSLabLc.

[^furedi2022wg]: Frank Furedi (2022): ‘Nudge’ has no place in our democracy, https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/01/14/nudge-has-no-place-in-our-democracy/.

[^wintour2010ba]: Patrick Wintour (2010): David Cameron’s ‘nudge unit’ aims to improve economic behaviour, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/sep/09/cameron-nudge-unit-economic-behaviour.

[^ruda2022ze]: Simon Ruda (2022): Will nudge theory survive the pandemic?, https://unherd.com/2022/01/how-the-government-abused-nudge-theory/.

[^dowideit2021ze]: Anette Dowideit and Alexander Nabert (2021): Innenministerium spannte Wissenschaftler für Rechtfertigung von Corona-Maßnahmen ein, https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article225864597/Interner-E-Mail-Verkehr-Innenministerium-spannte-Wissenschaftler-ein.html.

[^johnstone2022zu]: Caitlin Johnstone (2022): Ten Times Empire Managers Showed Us That They Want To Control Our Thoughts, https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/05/29/ten-times-empire-managers-showed-us-that-they-want-to-control-our-thoughts/.

[^jazeera2017it]: Al Jazeera (2017): Noam Chomsky - The 5 Filters of the Mass Media Machine, https://youtu.be/34LGPIXvU5M.

[^hirsch2021hw]: Oliver Hirsch (2021): Propaganda erkennen lernen, https://clubderklarenworte.de/propaganda-erkennen-lernen/.

[^dts2022iy]: dts Nachrichtenagentur (2022): Unionsfraktion schreibt Brandbrief an Lauterbach, https://www.oldenburger-onlinezeitung.de/nachrichten/unionsfraktion-schreibt-brandbrief-an-lauterbach-85408.html.

[^ivmmeta2021ra]: ivmmeta.com (2021): Ivermectin for COVID-19: real-time meta analysis of 63 studies, https://ivmmeta.com/.

[^wade2021vr]: Peter Wade (2021): Gunshot victims left waiting as horse dewormer overdoses overwhelm Oklahoma hospitals, doctor says, https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/gunshot-victims-horse-dewormer-ivermectin-oklahoma-hospitals-covid-1220608/.

[^rogan2022gh]: Joe Rogan (2022): Yellow Journalism, https://www.instagram.com/p/CYcLCESpFws/.

[^miroff2020jm]: Nick Miroff (2020): ‘Kids in cages’: It’s true that Obama built the cages at the border. But Trump’s ‘zero tolerance’ immigration policy had no precedent., https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/kids-in-cages-debate-trump-obama/2020/10/23/8ff96f3c-1532-11eb-82af-864652063d61_story.html.

[^re2019as]: Gregg Re (2019): PolitiFact stands by AOC 'parking lot' fact-check after online mockery, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/politifact-aoc-parking-lot-fact-check-mockery.

[^carlson2021ca]: Tucker Carlson (2021): Tucker: Kyle Rittenhouse facts are different than what we were told, https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/tucker-kyle-rittenhouse-facts-are-different-than-what-we-were-told.

[^faria2021qg]: Zachary Faria (2021): Portland cut police funding and got a 2,000% surge in murders, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/portland-cut-police-funding-and-got-a-2-000-surge-in-murders.

[^ganser2020em]: Daniele Ganser (2020): Daniele Ganser: Propaganda - Wie unsere Gedanken und Gefühle gelenkt werden, https://youtu.be/ooM3rrBoiBA.

[^bedard2020aa]: Paul Bedard (2020): Just 9% trust media ‘a great deal,’ 33% ‘none at all,’ highest ever, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/just-9-trust-media-a-great-deal-33-none-at-all-highest-ever.

[^brenan2021mz]: Megan Brenan (2021): Americans’ Trust in Media Dips to Second Lowest on Record, https://news.gallup.com/poll/355526/americans-trust-media-dips-second-lowest-record.aspx.

[^bagus2021lf]: Philipp Bagus, José Antonio Peña-Ramos, and Antonio Sánchez-Bayón (2021): COVID-19 and the Political Economy of Mass Hysteria, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7913136/.

[^illing2019bz]: Sean Illing (2019): A decade of revolt, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/12/26/21004797/2010s-review-a-decade-of-revolt-martin-gurri.

[^molla2018fz]: Rani Molla (2018): Tech employees are much more liberal than their employers — at least as far as the candidates they support, https://www.vox.com/2018/10/31/18039528/tech-employees-politics-liberal-employers-candidates.

[^sacks2022py]: David Sacks and Bari Weiss (2022): How Big Tech Is Strangling Your Freedom, https://www.honestlypod.com/podcast/episode/2b0f956c/how-big-tech-is-strangling-your-freedom.

[^weinstein2020lw]: Eric Weinstein and Ashley Mathews (2020): Ashley Mathews (Riley Reid) on The Portal, Ep. #021 - The Mogul & Brains Behind America’s Sweetheart, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHNBCVGH34c.

[^lane2021lh]: Justin E. Lane, Kevin McCaffree, and F. LeRon Shults (2021): Is radicalization reinforced by social media censorship?, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/350372124_Is_radicalization_reinforced_by_social_media_censorship.

[^bruzzone2020aa]: Victor Bruzzone (2020): Oppositional Thinking and the Importance of Compassion, https://areomagazine.com/2020/08/25/oppositional-thinking-and-the-importance-of-compassion/.

[^rogan2022jm]: Joe Rogan, Daryl Davis, and Bill Ottman (2022): The Joe Rogan Experience 1792 - Daryl Davis & Bill Ottman, https://open.spotify.com/episode/2hM2E1WkW2QBJQV7T5ikwb.

[^kay2022eh]: Grace Kay (2022): Elon Musk says Netflix is losing subscribers because ‘the woke mind virus’ is making it ‘unwatchable’, https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-netflix-losing-subscribers-because-woke-mind-virus-2022-4.

[^soave2022pw]: Robby Soave (2022): Netflix Adds ‘Artistic Expression’ Policy, Says It Will Not ‘Censor Specific Artists’, https://reason.com/2022/05/13/netflix-dave-chappelle-artistic-expression-company-culture/.

[^meyen2021xq]: Michael Meyen (2021): Michael Meyen: Die Medien-Matrix, https://youtu.be/jE2SkKXxtYQ.

[^thurnes2022ru]: Mario Thurnes (2022): „Spiegel“ im publizistischen Kampf gegen Milliardäre – Bill Gates wird verschont, https://www.tichyseinblick.de/feuilleton/medien/spiegel-fuehrt-puplizistischen-kampf-gegen-milliardaere-und-verschont-bill-gates/.

[^brand2022qs]: Russel Brand (2022): The Truth About “Woke” Disney, https://youtu.be/MfsgiSIIaUc.

[^wile2022wa]: Rob Wile and Bryan Logan (2022): CNN+ is shutting down, https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/cnn-streaming-service-cnn-plus-is-shutting-down-rcna25406.

[^dore2022it]: Jimmy Dore (2022): No, 270 “Doctors” Didn’t Criticize Joe Rogan, https://youtu.be/JUavjbM3gi4.

[^sears2022jo]: JP Sears (2022): What We DON’T Want You To Know! - News Update, https://youtu.be/uE3EFV5DE18.

[^hibberd2022qn]: James Hibberd (2022): Joe Rogan Claims Massive Subscriber Boost Due to Recent Controversies, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/joe-rogan-spotify-subscribers-1235134232/.

[^kotkin2022re]: Joel Kotkin (2022): Do we need a capitalist civil war?, https://unherd.com/2022/05/do-we-need-a-capitalist-civil-war/.

Civil War for Truth: Political Division

Mon, 20 Jun 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Changing Power Dynamics – Left and Right

Politics have changed over the last 30+ years and people haven’t updated their model. In the 20th century, the conservatives tend to be the people calling for censorship, on topics of sex, comedy, or profanity. While comedian Lenny Bruce was arrested and persecuted in the 1960s for his comedy, George Carlin broke this wall with his Seven Dirty Words in the 1970s. But censorship is still prominent in American television.

But the sides of power changed. Today, authoritarian censorship comes from the extreme left. Now, that they have cultural control, they apply censorship on books or standup comedy. The sad part is that they believe they are the good ones.

Four years of bombing kids in the middle east while hollowing out America’s economy for the benefit of weapons contractors, Wall Street, and predatory transnational corporations. All hail the resistance. Just a hunch, but if your political consensus is shared and amplified by every major cultural institution, establishment media empire, and billionaire tech oligarch in the world, maybe, just maybe, call me crazy but, maybe you’re not the resistance?[^watson2021aa]
— Paul Joseph Watson, AMERICA 2021

I, personally, don’t like either side censoring content or name-calling critics. I want neither religion nor CRT taught in school. I don’t want conservatives to censor porn or progressives to remove books critical of gender dysphoria. But should I decide which side does more harm, I would choose the progressive left. If conservatives go uncontrolled, stagnation is the result. This is bad, but not harmful. If progressives go uncontrolled, society-destroying things can happen.

Not just has the power switched, but the terms for the Left and the Right don’t fit more to their original meanings. The origins of these terms lie in the French Revolution of 1798. Supporters of the king at the National Assembly stood to the president’s right and supporters of the revolution stood to his left.[^carlisle2019pn] Those terms were used to describe the Right as people who stand for tradition, order, hierarchy, or conservative values and the Left as people who want liberty, equality, liberalism, or progressivism.

The classical definition of a left person 20 years ago was a person fighting for workers’ rights, unions, equality, and similar goals. The Left of today couldn’t be further away from these values, which is the reason they get called Progressives or Leftists. Today the Left is the upper-middle-class and upper-class, the people in power, the notebook elites, who are called Gauche caviar (“Caviar left”) in France. This can be observed in how the different economic classes vote in Western countries. Because the Left abandoned the middle and lower class, they tend to vote more for populist parties if there is no alternative.

Most parties in Germany moved further left in the last 15 years, leaving a new spot for the populist party AfD (Alternative for Germany). For classic liberals, there is barely an option to vote for. The Christian party CDU/CSU couldn’t have moved further away from Christian values, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the green party get mostly voted by progressives. At the last election, the winning party SPD barely reached 25% of the votes and no longer represents the majority of the people. Even together with the Green party, they didn’t reach an electoral majority, and they needed the support of the economic liberal party FDP. The coalition nearly broke at the vote for mandatory vaccinations, and many experts don’t think it will last the legislative period. The SPD and Green party were strongly in favor of mandatory vaccination, but the liberal party remembered that this would violate their liberal values and voted against the bill.

And it doesn’t look better in other European countries. Emmanuel Macron faces a serious crisis of legitimacy, the voter turnout for the first round of parliamentary elections was just 47%. People despise his authoritarian leadership. Macron’s electoral support is dwindling. He has been deserted by the young and professionals who have voted for the left, the workers who have voted for the far right, and the traditionalists who cling on to the old right. His electorate now mainly comprises the retired and the wealthy.[^devellennes2022lx]

People stop following their leaders and will bring their opinions to the streets rather than the ballot box. This is what Mary Woods was talking about in her speech at Davos.

By a classical definition of left/right, the sides have switched on many issues in reality. But even historically, the definition doesn’t make any sense. Being right is used as a derogatory term, comparable with being a Nazi and not a conservative. But even that is debatable, as the Nazi Party, the NSDAP, which is usually termed a far-right party is called “Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei“ (National Socialist German Party). And looking at their agenda in detail, it wasn’t that different from the Communist party except for the definition of the “In-Group”. In reality, Fascism is a form of Socialism. (…) Fascists are Socialists with a national identity.[^dsouza2017mo]

Even the better idea of the Political Compass which defines two-axis, an economic left/right axis, and a social authoritarian/libertarian axis, is still a simplification. Many political parties in Western Democracies find themselves in the Authoritarian right sector, which is a tragedy for somebody like me in the Libertarian left sector.

I think, really, Socialism comes from the heart, right? We all wanna be Socialists. Capitalism comes from the head because there are always cheaters in any system, and there is an incentive in any system. So, when you’re young, if you’re not Socialist, you have no heart, when you’re older and you’re not a capitalist you have no head, right? You haven’t thought it through. So, I understand where it comes from.
I always liked Nassim Taleb’s take on this: With my family, I’m a Communist. With my close friends, I’m a Socialist. At the state level of politics, I’m a Democrat. At higher levels, I’m a Republican, and at the federal levels, I’m a Libertarian.

So, basically, the larger the group of people you have massed together, who have different interests, the less trust there is, the more cheating there is, the better the incentives have to be aligned, the better the system has to work, the more you are towards capitalism. The smaller the group you’re in, you’re in a Kibbutz, you are in a commune, you’re in your house, you’re in your tribe, by all means, be a Socialist.

With my aunts, with my brother, with my cousins, with my uncles, my mom, my family … I’m a Socialist. That’s the right way to live a loving, happy, integrated life. But when you’re dealing with strangers, you wanna be a real Socialist? Great, open all your doors and windows tomorrow. Please, everybody, come and take what you want. See how that works out.[^rogan2019ul]

— Naval Ravikant, Joe Rogan Experience 1309

I wish more people would take over Nassim Taleb’s ideas and be less binary in their political choices.

I think it is time to dismiss those terms as oversimplified labels to discredit ideas you don’t like and instead look at each topic individually and then define a standpoint as conservative/traditional or progressive/modern. You need both sides to negotiate a contract, or society will tumble into tyranny and chaos.

Free Speech

I’m a free speech absolutist as far as possible, following the definition of free speech by John Stuart Mill. I live in Germany, which means we have more limited speech than the USA due to our history, but even free speech in the USA has exceptions.

But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.[^saad2020aa]
— John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, rev. ed. (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1863) 35–36

Freedom of speech can only be applied to everybody with the same rules. Just because you don’t like some person's speech or think it’s hateful, is not a reason. Hate is, as truth, not objective and what one person finds hateful, doesn’t bother the other. And the exceptions we have in most Western countries are already good enough.

If you are only for free speech, if it’s your speech, you are not for free speech. Every dictator in history allowed speech he liked. The African dictator Idi Amin said: You have freedom of speech. It is freedom after speech that I cannot guarantee.

If you believe in freedom of speech, you believe in freedom of speech for views you don’t like. Goebbels was in favor of freedom of speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re in favor of freedom of speech, that means you’re in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise.
— Noam Chomsky

There is no need for the protection of free speech for mainstream views. Because, as Mick Hume writes, in the end, it is only those views deemed too extreme or offensive that need defending on free-speech grounds.[^hume2020aa]

Without free speech there is no possibility to find common ground, there is no discussion, and conflicts can’t be resolved without violence. Free speech is the only tool we have to stay on a balanced ground between tradition and progress. There is an evolutionary reason people come with different temperaments, and it is no accident people tend to get more conservative with age. Old people have lived a long life and learned what works and what does not, and want to preserve these learnings for the next generation. Progressive new ideas are also needed, to prevent society to stagnate or dying out, if the external conditions change. But every new idea needs to be checked and tested. That is what free speech is for.

If freedom of speech is taken away, dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the slaughter.
— George Washington

Freedom of speech doesn’t mean you need to listen. This is the most ridiculous counterargument which always comes up to attack free speech advocates that block impolite people. If I mute or block your speech for me, I don’t prevent you from reaching others. Free speech is not made to make the most extreme ends change their mind, but to allow the silent majority to listen and make up their minds.

Freedom of Speech is equivalent to “Freedom of Reach”. If you prevent a person from speaking on famous social media platforms with the argument, you can do this somewhere else, it is violating free speech. This doesn’t mean anybody needs to listen.

Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay define four rules of free speech.[^pluckrose2020ed]

The Freedom to Speak – Every person can utter all their ideas without obstruction or punishment.
The Freedom to Listen – Every person can listen to all ideas without obstruction or punishment.
The Freedom not to Speak – No person can be forced to share their ideas or to talk to any person.
The Freedom not to Listen – No person can be forced to listen to ideas or any person.

The freedom to speak without obstruction includes all things used by social media to limit the reach of people, be it throttling, de-ranking, shadow-banning, deplatforming, or similar tactics. It means nobody needs to worry somebody is coming for their job, friends, or life when they speak up.

The freedom to listen includes that ideas don’t get hidden or the access to them get obstructed in any matter, be it with warning labels, hiding the ideas, or making them “adult-only” (even though they don’t violate any youth law).

The freedom not to speak includes that people can stay silent if they wish, and nobody can force you to take positions. Nobody has to tell you to put gender pronouns in your email or profile, nobody has to tell you to “bow a knee” or proclaim “silence is violence.”

The freedom not to listen includes that a person can mute or block any person they want to avoid interacting with.

Bad ideas can be defeated only with good ideas, blocking them doesn’t make them go away, they go somewhere else, somewhere hidden. The result might be more extreme ideas if they go unchallenged in echo chambers. We want bad ideas out in the open to expose them to the light of truth. If they can’t defend their position, they lose and go away. Blocking them makes them more attractive.

The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away.[^letterjustice2020]
— A Letter on Justice and Open Debate

If we don’t apply Freedom of Speech equally, we need an arbiter of truth. But there is no such thing as objective truth, and the last thing we want is to give this power to the state. Things change quickly and the regulations and censorship you cheered for because they benefited your side, might be used against you in the next election cycle.

This realization came as a surprise to many people when Elon Musk recently tried to buy Twitter (now 𝕏). The whining was huge. For weeks, all progressive media outlets wrote hit pieces on Musk. The idea that a funny, libertarian centrist, that stands for free speech, wants to open source the ranking algorithm of Twitter to make the company more transparent, and introduce encryption for direct messages scared the heck out of these authoritarians.

For years conservatives and centrists had to listen to the argument It’s a private company, if you don’t like it, build your own. After removing Donald Trump from Twitter, people moved to Parler. Then Google and Apple removed the app from their stores. If you don’t like it, build your own app store. People started using the app on the web. Amazon decided to remove the AWS web servers the platform was hosted on. If you don’t like it, build your own servers.

Nobody ever complained that billionaires are buying media companies to steer public opinion in their favor.

(…) people are worried about a billionaire having so much influence, but billionaires own pretty much all of the media. Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post, John Henry bought The Boston Globe, Sheldon Adelson bought The Las Vegas [Review-]Journal, Laurene Powell Jobs bought The Atlantic, Patrick Soon-Shiong bought the L.A. Times, Mark Benioff bought Time, even the supposedly independent Guardian is funded by Bill Gates and the people who own social media companies like Mike Zuckerberg are billionaires with political agendas.
The problem seems to be that Elon Musk has the wrong political agenda by not really having a political agenda. He’s a centrist who donates to both the republican and the democratic parties instead of just slavishly following the woke leftist agenda. This balance is a threat to the woke establishment.[^kearse2022wb]

— Leo Kearse, Comedian Leo Kearse on the Elon Musk Twitter takeover making woke lefty liberals CRY

Suddenly, the authoritarians realized they opened Pandora’s box with the introduction of biased algorithms, deplatforming, and censorship. The next midterm election is coming up soon, and it doesn’t look good for the Democrats. There is a realistic chance that a Republican, possibly even Trump, will move into the White House and starts using all those weapons against the other side. Now they cry for regulation.

Probably the funniest effort along those lines was this passage:

We need regulation… to prevent rich people from controlling our channels of communication.

That was Ellen Pao, former CEO of Reddit, railing against Musk in the pages of… the Washington Post! A newspaper owned by Jeff Bezos complaining about rich people controlling “channels of communication” just might be the never-released punchline of Monty Python’s classic “Funniest Joke in the World” skit.

Many detractors went the Pao route, suddenly getting religious about concentrated wealth having control over the public discourse. In a world that had not yet gone completely nuts, that is probably where the outrage campaign would have ended, since the oligarchical control issue could at least be a legitimate one, if printed in a newspaper not owned by Jeff Bezos.[^taibbi2022tg]

— Matt Taibbi, Twitter’s Chickens Come Home to Roost

One would hope they learned out of this that it is not a good idea to give the state and companies more power, powers that might be used against themselves.

On the contrary, the Biden administration announced a week later the introduction of a new “Disinformation Governance Board” (aka “Ministry of Truth”) inside of Homeland Security.[^johnstone2022rm] The same department that recently declared misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation to domestic terrorism.[^weinstein2022qv] [^security2022mq]

- Misinformation is false, but not created or shared with the intention of causing harm. - Disinformation is deliberately created to mislead, harm, or manipulate a person, social group, organization, or country. - Malinformation is based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.[^agency2022mu]
— Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, Mis, Dis, Malinformation

Malinformation is insidious because it defines a fact that is the truth, but causes you to distrust the government which means to the extent that your government is not trustworthy, and you discuss it, you are guilty of terrorism.[^weinstein2022hg]

Anyone who thinks that this is only a problem in the USA is far from it. In Germany, the Federal Ministry of the Interior led by Nancy Faeser, introduced this year a new category of extremism: Delegitimization of the state relevant to the protection of the constitution (Verfassungsschutzrelevante Delegitimierung des Staates). It categorizes any form of criticism of lockdowns, mask mandates, school closures, retail store closures, and closures of cultural institutions, as a form of right-wing extremism.[^lengsfeld2022sv]

This form of delegitimization usually does not take place through direct questioning of democracy as such, but through constant agitation against and contempt for democratically legitimized representatives and state institutions and their decisions. This can shake trust in the state system as a whole and impair its ability to function.[^bmi2022kl]
— Bundesministerium des Innern und für Heimat, Verfassungsschutzbericht 2021

This is a new form of undermining a Democracy because it puts any criticism and mentioning of undemocratic, authoritarian, or totalitarian tendencies in a category of enemies of the state. They would rather not be exposed. Writing this sentence makes me technically a domestic extremist.

But even the former Federal Judge Hans-Jürgen Papier criticizes for example the Asylum and refugee policy of the German government as a breach of law[^schattauer2020qd] and the measurements of the COVID-19 crisis as a danger to freedom.[^schmalz2021ht]

The doctor and podcast host Paul Brandenburg was raided and (temporarily) arrested by a special task force in May 2022. The Federal Ministry of the Interior had tried in the months before the incident to charge him because his opinions would delegitimize the state.[^douglas2022zf]

Germany didn’t learn anything from the Third Reich and the DDR, something similar to the STASI is slowly introduced again in Germany. The similarity in Authoritarian reaction in different Western countries at least suggests that there is some global coordination or playbook (Operation Lockstep) politicians follow along.

It’s only a question of when the state will start the hunt on regular people for the “War on Truth.”

And their chances of getting things right don’t look good. They censored the “Lab Leak Hypothesis,” now regarded as the most probable reason for the COVID-19 pandemic. They censored the “Hunter Biden Laptop” story, critical information for the US presidential election, now known to be true and even admitted by the most left newspapers. A study found out that 16% of Biden voters wouldn’t have voted for him, would they had known the story, which would have resulted in Trump staying the president.[^palmieri2022gb]

The European Union doesn’t look better, they plan a similar task force to fight fake news, and they recently announced to increase their efforts to fight disinformation (that is “the information we don’t like you to know”).[^parker2019va]

The Gated Institutions want to make sure their narrative doesn’t get questioned because informed people ask questions, challenge decisions, and hold politicians and companies accountable.

All of the most critical factors determining what people’s lives are like are invisible now. Most people don’t even know they’re happening. Oligarchy. Neoliberalism. Imperialism. Used to be you knew who the king was, and he’d openly do anything he wanted. Now that’s all kept carefully hidden.[^johnstone2021kj]
— Caitlin Johnstone, Patriot Act 2, Censorship, And Other Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

The reason most people have no clue how bad the state of the world is the result of the breakdown of another pillar of our Gated Institutions: Media and Journalism.

[^watson2021aa]: Paul Joseph Watson (2021): AMERICA 2021, https://youtu.be/p1kUN0MyMHw.

[^carlisle2019pn]: Madeleine Carlisle (2019): What to Know About the Origins of ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ in Politics, From the French Revolution to the 2020 Presidential Race, https://time.com/5673239/left-right-politics-origins/.

[^dsouza2017mo]: Dinesh D'Souza (2017): Is Fascism Right Or Left?, https://youtu.be/m6bSsaVL6gA.

[^devellennes2022lx]: Charles Devellennes (2022): Macron’s crown is already slipping, https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/06/16/macrons-crown-is-already-slipping/.

[^rogan2019ul]: Joe Rogan and Naval Ravikant (2019): The Joe Rogan Experience 1309 - Naval Ravikant, https://youtu.be/3qHkcs3kG44.

[^saad2020aa]: Gad Saad (2020): The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense, Regnery Publishing.

[^hume2020aa]: Mick Hume (2020): A good year for free-speech haters, https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/12/23/a-good-year-for-free-speech-haters/.

[^pluckrose2020ed]: Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay (2020): Freedom of Speech and the Fallacy of Demanding to be Heard, https://newdiscourses.com/2020/01/freedom-of-speech-fallacy-demanding-heard/.

[^letterjustice2020]: (Hrsg.) (2020): A Letter on Justice and Open Debate, https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/.

[^kearse2022wb]: Leo Kearse (2022): Comedian Leo Kearse on the Elon Musk Twitter takeover making woke lefty liberals CRY, https://youtu.be/UTShD7VIgv0.

[^taibbi2022tg]: Matt Taibbi (2022): Twitter’s Chickens Come Home to Roost, https://taibbi.substack.com/p/twitters-chickens-come-home-to-roost.

[^johnstone2022rm]: Caitlin Johnstone (2022): Oh God It’s Going To Get SO Much Worse, https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/04/30/oh-god-its-going-to-get-so-much-worse/.

[^weinstein2022qv]: Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying (2022): Bret and Heather 115th DarkHorse Podcast Livestream: Don’t Say Anything at all, https://youtu.be/Nfhg1PcTync.

[^agency2022mu]: Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (2022): Mis, Dis, Malinformation, https://www.cisa.gov/mdm.

[^weinstein2022hg]: Bret Weinstein and Robert Malone (2022): If a Fiberglass Tree Falls in a Forest… Bret Speaks with Dr. Robert Malone, https://odysee.com/Bret-Malone2:27eda26764c7244b1f703dc58c9932f93e382951.

[^lengsfeld2022sv]: Vera Lengsfeld (2022): Der Verfassungsschutz wird zur Staatssicherheit, https://reitschuster.de/post/der-verfassungsschutz-wird-zur-staatssicherheit/.

[^bmi2022kl]: Bundesministerium des Innern und für Heimat (2022): Verfassungsschutzbericht 2021 vorgestellt: Steigende Zahl von Extremisten in fast allen Phänomenbereichen, https://www.bmi.bund.de/SharedDocs/pressemitteilungen/DE/2022/06/verfassungsschutzbericht2021.html.

[^schattauer2020qd]: Göran Schattauer (2020): Ex-Bundesrichter Papier rügt deutsche Asylpolitik: "Mitgefühl ersetzt kein Recht", https://www.focus.de/politik/gerichte-in-deutschland/deutschlands-hoechster-richter-a-d-klagt-an-ex-bundesrichter-papier-ruegt-deutsche-asylpolitik-mitgefuehl-ersetzt-kein-recht_id_11580201.html.

[^schmalz2021ht]: Alexander Schmalz (2021): Ex-Verfassungsrichter: Corona-Politik war irrational und kopflos, https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/news/ex-verfassungsrichter-corona-politik-war-irrational-und-kopflos-li.186983.

[^douglas2022zf]: Holger Douglas (2022): Überfallartige Hausdurchsuchungen bei Medizinern, https://www.tichyseinblick.de/daili-es-sentials/hausdurchsuchungen-paul-brandenburg-und-stefan-hockertz/.

[^palmieri2022gb]: Jacob Palmieri (2022): Here’s How The Hunter Biden Story Would Have Changed The 2020 Election, https://thepalmierireport.com/heres-how-the-hunter-biden-story-would-have-changed-the-2020-election/.

[^security2022mq]: Homeland Security (2022): DHS Issues National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) Bulletin, https://www.dhs.gov/news/2022/02/07/dhs-issues-national-terrorism-advisory-system-ntas-bulletin.

[^johnstone2021kj]: Caitlin Johnstone (2021): Patriot Act 2, Censorship, And Other Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix, https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/patriot-act-2-censorship-and-other.

[^parker2019va]: Tom Parker (2019): Europe wants to create a Digital Media Observatory to fight fake news, https://reclaimthenet.org/european-commission-disinformation-initiative/.

Civil War for Truth: Corporatism and Technocracy

Mon, 13 Jun 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Corporatism

It’s nearly impossible to separate, these days, Politics, and the Economy from each other. Blunt corporatism captures most Western countries.

Corporatism is the economic policy component of fascism, an ideology thought up by Giovanni Gentile.[^dsouza2017mo] It is economic totalitarianism as practiced by Mussolini and Hitler.[^dilorenzo1994uv] Mussolini was praised by many people, including Winston Churchill, who admired him as late as 1940.[^dilorenzo1994uv]

Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state. (Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato.)[^ideas2021hh]
— Benito Mussolini

This revived trend is worrying because when governments and corporations work together they can create a lot of evil. The state can outsource things that aren’t legal to corporations (such as censorship), or use companies for the enforcement of laws they wouldn’t have the resources for otherwise (such as checking COVID-19 passports). And corporations can control the market and harm the people if they go unchecked by the legislative branch.

Everybody in Washington knows that the laws are made by companies and financial institutes and not by politicians. This is the same in most Western Democracies. It prevents good candidates from entering politics, drives away the few good politicians left, and leaves us with a Kakistocracy, a system of government run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens.

Most politics these days is political theater, what Chris Williamson coined as Performative Disagreement in his interview with General Robert Spalding.[^williamson2022ud]

We could observe this in the primaries of the US elections in 2019 when candidates like Kamala Harris accused Joe Biden indirectly of being a racist because he opposed public school buses and worked with segregationists in his past.[^breuninger2019gm] She accused him indirectly of rape when she said she believed Biden’s accusers for sexual misconduct.[^burke2019hj] After she lost in the primaries she was picked as his running mate, nevertheless, proving the political theater. This trend can be observed not just in the USA, but throughout Western Democracies.

And the growing influence of unelected organizations like the World Economic Forum (WEF) under Klaus Schwab and their direct influence on politicians and companies is a worrying trend. The WEF is in reality only exchange for Corporatism, even if they call it euphemistic Public-Private Partnerships.[^matuschek2022gv]

Klaus Schwab bragged publicly in 2017 about how his followers had penetrated all political cabinets.[^schwab2017aw] A huge amount of rising politicians are part of his “Young Global Leaders” program.

Luckily, it begins to fail. Mary Woods, professor of Global Economic Governance at the University of Oxford complained at the WEF conference in November 2021, that the people stop following their leaders:

At Davos a few years ago, the Edelman survey showed us the good news is that the elites across the world trust each other more and more. So we can come together and design and do beautiful things together. The bad news is that in every single country they were polling, the majority of people trusted their elite less. So we can lead, but if people aren’t following, we’re not going to get to where we want to go.
— Mary Woods, The World Economic Forum’s Great Narrative Conference_, November 2021 (via James Lindsay)

Lobbyism, Sponsoring, and Corruption

Current politics in Western Democracies are flooded with problems like nepotism, insider trading, and corruption. All of this is illegal, but nearly never do politicians get held accountable. And it doesn’t matter in which country you look, be it, Nancy Pelosi, in the US continuously benefitting from the stock market from her inside knowledge,[^zilber2022sc] or the corruption affair of the current German chancellor during his time as mayor of Hamburg city.[^latsch2022le] But there is another legal form of corruption.

Lobbyism is a growing problem in Western Democracies. In Germany, only donations to political parties that exceed €50,000 need to be specified. Yearly donations over €10,000 need to go into the annual report. In 2021 alone, all German political parties received more than €11.6 million in donations, as Sahra Wagenknecht, a politician of the party Die Linke mentions in her report. The Ministry of Health received €60 million in donations from corporations.[^wagenknecht2022qo]

Worrying are also the continued donations of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to politicians, education, and science. The “German Society for International Cooperation” (GIZ) received 2021 over $138 million in donations from the foundation. It is a company that works together with the Development Assistance Ministry and other ministries.[^wallasch2022ih]

Another huge problem for hidden corruption is sponsoring political events because it is exempt from any reporting. A party congress can easily exceed 50 corporate sponsors, each paying between €10,000 and €20,000 for a booth.[^winter2019yu] The party congress of the SPD, the leading German party, was sponsored by Pfizer, DocMorris, and Microsoft, all beneficiaries of the Corona crisis.[^wagenknecht2022qo]

Sahra Wagenknecht mentions another problem: The revolving door effect. Politicians that work in a specific resort together with Lobbyists of a company get often promoted into well-payed positions in exactly those companies later. A department head responsible for contracts for the Corona warn-app given to Deutsche Telekom got shortly after a lucrative position at Telekom.[^wagenknecht2022qo]

This continual interchange of personnel (…) between business and government (…) create[s] a state within the state to serve private interests which are not always in harmony with the general interests of the nation.[^dilorenzo1994uv]

These legal, non-transparent tricks to buy influence into legislation should be outlawed and called what it is: corruption.

A Loss of Separation of Powers

An important fundamental base for liberal democracy is the division of a state’s government into different branches: legislative, executive, and judicature. In theory, they are not allowed to reach over the borders into another branch. In a dictatorship, the dictator decides on the laws, decides whom to punish, and sometimes even does the execution himself.

During COVID-19, but starting already in the years earlier, these lines got blurry. In many countries, it is common practice to appoint former politicians to the position of a federal judge. Former German chancellor Angela Merkel placed her political friend Stephan Harbarth as president of the Supreme Court. This move was useful for her during the Corona crisis. The Supreme Court didn’t touch any one of the over 10,000 lawsuits against Corona restrictions in the two years of the pandemic and then ruled all measurements to be constitutional.[^rbb242021qk] This is the opposite of what for example the Spanish Supreme Court or the New Zealand Supreme Court ruled. This government-friendly ruling by the German Supreme Court might be the result of a nightly dinner the former chancellor gave to the judges of the Supreme Court.[^focusonline2021hh]

But not only the Supreme Court ruled, worrying during the pandemic. There were uncounted cases of house searches and confiscations of property of judges, doctors, or scientists that spoke out against the measurements of the state. Most of them were baseless accusations and the cases were dismissed, but it still is an effective tool to punish critics. Critics get raided, computers get confiscated (sometimes for months), and the press smears their names. Even if it is unjustified, the damage is done. These worrying tendencies have damaged the population’s trust in the legal system for a long time.

And the executive branch didn’t increase their trust either. The uncounted beatings of demonstrators around the world will be a stain on that branch for decades. Police don’t deserve our trust anymore.

It is shocking how violent they have been against demonstrators. The images of police brutality from around the world, for example from Amsterdam where they used attack dogs,[^griptnews2022xn] or the images from Berlin where they crashed old ladies with their skulls on the ground will never be forgotten. Nils Melzer, the former “UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment”, started an investigation into these acts of violence.[^rtde2021zl]

Misuse of Emergency Powers

During COVID-19, we saw a worrying misuse of emergency powers. Some countries, like Germany, implemented new laws, other countries already had laws in place, and some of them were implemented as the result of the War on Terrorism.

It is a rule of nature that powers once gained are very rarely given away voluntarily. We have to be all the more careful about the powers we give to politicians.

Maajid Nawaz mentioned on Joe Rogan’s podcast just three examples of state powers that were never given away.[^rogan2022yc] Egypt has a constitution that protects ideas, but it is suspended for over 20 years since 1981 after the assassination of Anwar Sadat. The Patriot Act was introduced as a result of 9/11 and allowed the state to extend its surveillance to spy on regular citizens of the USA. The imminent threat is over, but the law is still in place. The UK implemented a law that removed the “right to remain silent” and treated it as a criminal offense for fighting terrorism.

COVID-19 was used as an excuse to remove basic rights of citizens as the right to free speech, the right to peacefully assembly, and the right to bodily integrity.

The state is going to start telling me what I have to put in my body and when and if I don’t agree, I can’t travel. If I don’t agree, I can’t work. If I don’t agree, I can’t leave my home. (…) Now that, I believe, is such a fundamental shift in our social contract in the relationship between you and the state that it requires not only a broader discussion, I think, that requires a democratic mandate to bring in because it’s such a fundamental change in direction in Western liberal democracies when it comes to the relationship we have with the state.
What do I mean by that? If I said to you, Joe‚ listen, you got two kidneys. I need one, you’re going to give it to me because the state says, you have to look after me. Now. I’ve checked, if I have done that without your involvement, without your choice for the common good, and I have the power to be able to do that. And if the reasoning I am giving is that there are people that deserve this kidney and you have a spare one and that you have to look after other people.

Now, it could be kidneys. It could be anything. It could be any medical procedure and generally beyond that. It can be anything you have to do for other people’s sake.

Now, if I want to redefine that relationship because up until now you had every right to say my blood is my blood and I know someone needs a blood donation or an organ donation. I know, I should care for people, but it’s still my decision.

If I’m going to change that and it’s no longer your decision. Right? Then it requires a broader and deeper conversation. And it requires, I’d say, that’s referendum level change in our culture.[^rogan2022yc]

— Maajid Nawaz, The Joe Rogan Experience 1780 – Maajid Nawaz

These laws were rushed in without the consent of the people, and without a vote during an election, often by decree. They were applied often in hypocritical ways to preserve the powers of the state, for example by forbidding “bad” demonstrations against measurements and restrictions and allowing “good” demonstrations for social causes like “Black Lives Matter” or the environment.

Canada used its emergency laws, implemented against terrorism and catastrophes, to freeze the bank accounts of Truckers that demonstrated against mandatory vaccination. This was a blunt violation of a law meant for an entirely different case. And even worse, it was the first state-driven use of de-banking as a weapon against civilians.

The most worrying thing is that Trudeau not only froze the accounts of the Truckers but the accounts of every person helping in any form retroactively. This means that people selling petrol or ice cream to the Truckers got their bank accounts frozen (sometimes for many weeks) because they did something in the past which was not illegal at that time.

David Sacks mentions how bad the negative consequences will be because this precedent makes it dangerous to donate to any political campaign that might collide with the interests of the state in the future. This will damage the trust in government and the finance system for a long time.[^sacks2022py]

The Oligarchs and Technocratic Elites

Corporations merge into monopolies or oligarchies. We have Big Oil, Big Food, Big Finance, and Big Pharma. Most industries of the world are controlled by a handful of companies. Black Rock and Vanguard own the world. And governments don’t want or can’t control these tendencies. The existing antitrust laws are rarely applied.

The elite meets in Davos at the World Economic Forum (WEF). They don’t even hide their dystopian agenda, but proudly praise a technocratic future.

Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better.

This is a quote from the WEF website, which was removed after a massive backlash. Their plans for a “Great Reset” are considered a conspiracy theory, but it is the book title of Klaus Schwabs’ book.

People are too lazy to read what these technocrats plan for us and instead believe the “Fact Checkers” bought by the same people that assure us, it’s all not true. Until it is.

The Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany commissioned a study in 2020 about the future in 2030 with the title The Future of Values Held By People in Our Country.[^bmfbuf2020ah] Hidden in the full text of the study at the end of a modern, friendly, and fancy-looking website they openly fantasize about the introduction of a social credit score system that will reward people who do volunteer work, care for relatives, donate their organs, safe for retirement, behave in traffic and have a low carbon footprint with faster and easier access to education.

Points can be collected for certain behaviors in the points system operated by the state (e.g. voluntary work, caring for relatives, organ donation, pension provision, traffic behavior, CO2 footprint). In addition to social recognition, collecting points also has advantages in everyday life (e.g. shorter waiting times for certain courses).
In this way, the state and political institutions can achieve certain goals through incentives to change behavior (e.g. controlling the labor and education markets) and also forecast future behavior more accurately. (…) Companies have the option of docking onto the points system and monetizing the data with the prior consent of the citizens (e.g. personalized risk premiums).[^bmfbuf2020ah]

— Federal Ministry of Education and Research, The Future of Values Held by People in Our Country

Hidden behind marketing speech and euphemistic language, camouflaged as a hypothetical scenario, a social credit system as implemented in China is being flirted with. In blunt corporatist language, they want to additionally allow companies to benefit from your behavior.

Occasionally, I despise the TV Show Black Mirror because it seems technocrats use it as a source of ideas and not a warning. They also regularly get inspired by 1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451.

Comedian Tim Dillon joked about listening to conversations between technocrats on Clubhouse.

These people on this app are talking about the new world that everyone will live in which will be digital forever. It is the dystopian nightmare that you feared. They are preparing it for you as you sleep.

He remarks how cold and calculated they are. Listening to them would be like if there was an app in the 1800s where slaves could ask questions to their masters.[^dillon2021dn]

The wet dreams of these technocrats is a future with a central digital currency that can be controlled at will and allow governments or corporations to ensure the money is only spent on things they deem sensible.[^rogan2022yc]

The coming automation and progress in robotics and AI will result in massive parts of the population not being needed anymore. The resulting basic income, combined with digital passports, and constant surveillance that can track your health or mood, will allow governments to crush any dissent.

They advertise eating bugs[^fleming2018xl] or synthetic meat[^shieber2021jc] to the masses, while they surely continue eating the best steak. And while you are asked to shower not daily anymore to save energy,[^anti-spiegel2022ak] they fly with private jets to Climate Change Conferences,[^newsau2021yw] preach about rising sea levels while at the same time buy villas near the ocean.[^vujinovic2020gg] They think we’re stupid.

There will be soon a gigantic class of dispossessed people that rent everything from the technocrats. It will start with convenience, but once renting replaced everything, it is easy to restrict and limit the movement of people. Nobody would ever think of introducing a social credit system, right? Linking all those things together will allow them to easily remove your access to liberty, money, movement, or food with the click of a mouse if you utter criticism or don’t behave as expected.

[^dsouza2017mo]: Dinesh D'Souza (2017): Is Fascism Right Or Left?, https://youtu.be/m6bSsaVL6gA.

[^ideas2021hh]: Academy of Ideas (2021): Is 1984 Becoming a Reality? – George Orwell’s Warning to the World, https://youtu.be/vEMlvpMY7yw.

[^williamson2022ud]: Chris Williamson and Robert Spalding (2022): China’s Secret Playbook For War – General Robert Spalding | Modern Wisdom Podcast 463, https://youtu.be/tEKFE37IqgI.

[^breuninger2019gm]: Kevin Breuninger (2019): Kamala Harris attacks Joe Biden’s record on busing and working with segregationists in vicious exchange at Democratic debate, https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/27/harris-attacks-bidens-record-on-busing-and-working-with-segregationists.html.

[^burke2019hj]: Michael Burke (2019): Harris: ‘I believe’ Biden accusers, https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/437107-harris-i-believe-biden-accusers/.

[^schwab2017aw]: Klaus Schwab and David Gergen (2017): Strengthening Collaboration in a Fractured World-Featuring Special Guest Yo-Yo Ma, https://youtu.be/AoBRnrtX9U4.

[^matuschek2022gv]: Miloz Matuschek (2022): Sprechen wir doch mal über Verschwörungspraxis, https://www.freischwebende-intelligenz.org/p/sprechen-wir-doch-mal-uber-verschworungspraxis.

[^dilorenzo1994uv]: Thomas J. DiLorenzo (1994): Economic Fascism, https://fee.org/articles/economic-fascism/.

[^zilber2022sc]: Ariel Zilber and Thomas Barrabi (2022): Joe Rogan takes aim at Nancy Pelosi, pols for ‘insider trading’, https://nypost.com/2022/04/11/joe-rogan-slams-nancy-pelosi-pols-for-insider-trading/.

[^latsch2022le]: Gunther Latsch and Ansgar Siemens (2022): Strafanzeige gegen Kanzler Scholz und Bürgermeister Tschentscher, https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/cum-ex-affaere-um-warburg-bank-strafanzeige-gegen-kanzler-scholz-und-buergermeister-tschentscher-a-b5abc953-46cd-49ef-b7d0-184829e31ba1.

[^wagenknecht2022qo]: Sahra Wagenknecht (2022): Lobbyismus, gekaufte Politik, Meinungsmache – Leben wir in einer liberalen Demokratie?, https://youtu.be/dOCB87649D0.

[^wallasch2022ih]: Alexander Wallasch (2022): Hat Anne Will Geld von Bill Gates bekommen?, https://reitschuster.de/post/hat-anne-will-geld-von-bill-gates-bekommen/.

[^winter2019yu]: Sabrina Winter (2019): Lobbyismus auf Parteitagen: Das sind die Sponsor*innen der Parteien, https://www.abgeordnetenwatch.de/blog/lobbyismus/lobbyismus-auf-parteitagen-das-sind-die-sponsorinnen-der-parteien.

[^rbb242021qk]: RBB24 (2021): Oberstes Gericht erklärt Corona-Notbremse für verfassungsgemäß, https://www.rbb24.de/politik/thema/corona/beitraege/2021/11/bundesverfassungsgericht-urteil-bundesnotbremse-schulschliessung.html.

[^focusonline2021hh]: FocusOnline (2021): Angela Merkel und das pikante Abendessen mit den Verfassungsrichtern im Kanzleramt, https://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/vor-prozess-gegen-kanzlerin-merkel-laedt-verfassungsrichter-zum-essen-spaeter-sollen-diese-ueber-sie-urteilen_id_13485292.html.

[^griptnews2022xn]: Gript News (2022): Police Dogs Used to Attack Anti-Lockdown Protestors in Amsterdam, https://gript.ie/watch-police-dogs-used-to-attack-anti-lockdown-protestors-in-amsterdam/.

[^rtde2021zl]: RTDE (2021): Wegen Polizeigewalt in Berlin - UN-Sonderbeauftragter Melzer kündigt “offizielle Intervention” an, https://de.rt.com/inland/121923-wegen-polizeigewalt-in-berlin-un-sonderberichterstatter-intervention/.

[^rogan2022yc]: Joe Rogan and Maajid Nawaz (2022): The Joe Rogan Experience 1780 – Maajid Nawaz, https://open.spotify.com/episode/1ugbn7cuab3mNgKbo81ajM.

[^sacks2022py]: David Sacks and Bari Weiss (2022): How Big Tech Is Strangling Your Freedom, https://www.honestlypod.com/podcast/episode/2b0f956c/how-big-tech-is-strangling-your-freedom.

[^bmfbuf2020ah]: Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (2020): Zukunft von Wertvorstellungen der Menschen in unserem Land, https://www.vorausschau.de/.

[^dillon2021dn]: Tim Dillon (2021): Tim Dillon Talking To Tech Giants On Clubhouse, https://youtu.be/3hBw0ZR8q6I.

[^fleming2018xl]: Sean Fleming (2018): Good grub: why we might be eating insects soon, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/07/good-grub-why-we-might-be-eating-insects-soon/.

[^shieber2021jc]: Jonathan Shieber (2021): Bill Gates wants Western countries to eat ‘synthetic meat’; Meatable has raised $47 million to make it, https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/23/bill-gates-wants-western-countries-to-eat-synthetic-meat-meatable-has-raised-47-million-to-make-it/.

[^anti-spiegel2022ak]: Anti-Spiegel (2022): "Die Deutschen sollen sich weniger waschen" und wie russische Medien darüber berichten, https://www.anti-spiegel.ru/2022/die-deutschen-sollen-sich-weniger-waschen-und-wie-russische-medien-darueber-berichten/.

[^newsau2021yw]: news.com.au (2021): Outrage as 400 VIP jets converge on Glasgow for global warming summit, https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/outrage-as-400-vip-jets-converge-on-glasgow-for-global-warming-summit/news-story/e6a4da0ca2454aec4d3b79d594655511.

[^vujinovic2020gg]: Nebojša Vujinović (2020): Bill and Melinda Gates Purchase a $43 million Oceanside Villa, https://demotix.com/bill-melinda-gates-villa/.

Civil War for Truth: Introduction

Mon, 06 Jun 2022 00:00:00 GMT

I was never interested in politics and could barely recollect the names of the current political leadership team. But the last ten years—in particular the last two years—were far too turbulent and politics got gradually more authoritarian, which resulted in me getting gradually more political.

Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.
Pericles

The last years felt like something wasn’t right anymore in many parts of society. Many people share this feeling.

At first, I couldn’t point the finger at the reasons for why all these things happened, but when I listened at the end of 2021 to James Lindsay’s podcast “Welcome to the Second Enlightenment”[^lindsay2021bi] I was finally able to understand.

Lindsay explains in the podcast his hypothesis that we find ourselves at the beginning of a new enlightenment phase.

We all felt that the internet was a big leap forward, but we weren’t aware of the deep-reaching consequences because the transition between periods is never abrupt and hard to comprehend when living in one.

The internet age started for early adopters in the mid-90s, but it took 15-20 years until it reached the whole globe and technology became ubiquitous to enable massive parts of the population to participate in the exchange of ideas.

Maajid Nawaz reminded recently in a podcast that all technology disrupts power structures, the invention of the internet is comparable with the invention of the Gutenberg Press. After its invention, the church lost its gated narrative over the bible because common people could start reading it themselves. This led to plenty of uprisings in Europe and the 30-Year-War.[^rogan2022yc] Existing power structures don’t let go of their power without a fight. But in the end, free information led to the Enlightenment.

Maajid Nawaz is sure that we are in the midst of a civil war, even though it’s not fought with physical violence.

So, the powers that be, who are losing that power need to clamp down. (…) It’s an internal civil war in a hybrid war context, over truth, and over information. Centralization versus decentralization. Basically, it’s no longer about left or right, it’s about up versus down. It’s about power versus those who don’t have power.[^rogan2022yc]
— Maajid Nawaz, The Joe Rogan Experience 1780 – Maajid Nawaz

Neil Oliver, a British television presenter, archaeologist, and author, formulated a possible hypothesis in an interview with Bret Weinstein on why we don’t see physical violence in this civil war. The horrors of the 20th century were committed by generations who had seen and done terrible things. Neil Oliver has his doubts that the people who are running the show now, who were born and raised in peace, have the guts to do the necessary “wet work.”[^weinstein2022el]

Enlightenment 2.0

James Lindsay coins the term Enlightenment 2.0 in his podcast to describe this new period we live in.

He uses Marx’s theory of economic development as an analogy to explain his hypothesis. Without going into too much detail, Marx described human progress from Tribalism (Phase 1) over Clan Structures (Phase 2), Feudalism (Phase 3), Capitalism (Phase 4), Socialism (Phase 5), and Communism (Phase 6).

Lindsay’s main point is that we falsely believe that we were already in Phase 4 of the information economy, as we are in Phase 4 for property and material goods. Capitalism and the invention of property rights allowed humanity to make a giant step forward and resulted—after we figured out the problems of monopolies—in the creation of a rich middle class.

This belief was wrong. Lindsay argues that we recently left Phase 3 (Information Mercantilism) and just entered Phase 4 (Information Capitalism). The internet was the missing piece to reach this phase.

Nobody knows the history of the 20th century because it’s all been behind official narrative, which has been dramatically distorted in favor of generating this very corrupt information aristocracy that uses it to create a technocracy by which they rule over us, which some people refer to as the deep state (…), nobody does know the history of the 20th century accurately.
But that won’t be true of the 21st century, unless they get their way, unless they can continue to control the institutional narrative and force people via something like social credit to participate in the lie that maintains their power and advantage and their vision for molding the world as they think it should be molded regardless of what’s good for us, regardless of what’s good for any individual person. Because they become our betters, our aristocratic lords who are going to take good care of us by protecting us from ourselves. And um, they’re wrong. They’re arrogant and they’re wrong.[^lindsay2021bi]

— James Lindsay, Welcome to the Second Enlightenment

Lindsay explains that all the political, social, and economic difficulties we see now, are a result of the breakdown of our Gated Institutions. It is an attempt of globalist, technocratic elites to keep their power and move society as quickly as possible into Phase 5 (a centralized, controlled information economy) with assisted living and thinking under the control of a technocratic regime.

Many intellectuals observe the same issues and try to formulate hypotheses for what we witness. The American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt wrote the well-received article “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid”[^haidt2022wy] in The Atlantic in April 2022. Andrew Doyle wrote “The experts are lying to you”[^doyle2022gf] in UnHerd in June 2022. Steve Patterson wrote last year “Our Present Dark Age, Part 1”[^patterson2021km]. Eric Weinstein said in a discussion with Sam Harris in 2019 I can’t think of a single institution I trust.[^weinstein2019qo] And those are just a fraction of the articles and discussions regarding this topic.

Everybody can see the narratives of the Gated Institutions crumbling right in front of our eyes. The COVID-19 crisis made this only more obvious. We see the fraud, corruption, and incompetence of an obsolescence system. We see the “expert class” losing its shit. Likewise, we see the Gated Institutions, for example, the WEF in Davos, the WHO, CDC, NHS, UN, EU, or other institutions fail and fail again. They can’t keep up with the connected knowledge of crowds that can disprove their lies and reveal their agendas in a matter of hours.

We know they are lying.\ They know they are lying,\ they know that we know they are lying.\ We know that they know that we know they are lying.\ And still they continue to lie.
— Aleksandr Solženicyn

We see how their pristine leadership program “Young Global Leaders” releases morons that can’t speak properly or can’t stay scandal-free for a few months. They plagiarize speeches, books, or dissertations. We catch them when they have secret agreements, receive money from corporations, delete SMS or destroy hard drives with incriminating material. Their embarrassments get ridiculed with memes around the internet, shared and mocked. The internet doesn’t forget.

We see them panicking and answering with censorship, deplatforming, rampant biased fact-checkers, and character assassination. They attack encrypted messengers and alternate social media platforms, increase surveillance, reduce privacy, and try to outlaw encryption. They claim to fight “disinformation,” “misinformation,” “conspiracy theories” and “fake news,” but the fakest news gets released as propaganda by Gated Institutions.

They manipulate surveys and use PR agencies or Think Tanks to steer public opinion. They don’t even shy away from using psychological warfare with Nudging techniques against the populace.[^furedi2022wg]

They remove critical experts from the discourse or fire them from their jobs. They ask captured government organizations to give them the excuse for political measurements, or pressure independent scientists to give them the results they want. They create unelected expert groups that rule without legitimation by the parliament. When people use their constitutional right to demonstrate, they forbid demonstrations or use brute force to crush dissent. The mask is off, we see their authoritarian agenda.

The Blue Pill or the Red Pill?

Lindsay uses the metaphor in his podcast of taking a blue pill or red pill from the 1999 movie The Matrix. The hero Neo gets offered two pills by the mysterious character Morpheus.

This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
— Morpheus, The Matrix (1999)

Being “red-pilled” means seeing the truth and being able to see through the lies and misinformation, to see the state of the world and our Gated Institutions as it is. If you take this pill, you’ll never be able to unsee it. And it will be a terrifying moment when your belief in the world’s state is crushed. So, be warned.

Why Do the Gated Institutions Break Down Now?

Jordan Peterson describes in his 2017 lecture “Personality and Its Transformations”[^peterson2017ab] at the University of Toronto how a system can break down on all levels at the same time:

That happens if you are an ideologue. You identify really hard with that plan. The problem is, if something comes up to confront it, well how do you act? You can’t let go of the plan, because you drown. Then you cling to it rigidly. Well, that’s no good, because then you can’t learn anything.
If that’s you, you are a totalitarian. You are not gonna learn anything. You are gonna end up in something that is close enough to hell so that you won’t know the difference. And you might drag anyone along with you.

That happened plenty of times, it’s the whole story of the 20th century. It happened over and over and over, and it happens in people’s states, it happens in their business organizations, it happens in their cities, it happens in their provinces, it happens in their states and it happens in their psyches. All at the same time.

You can’t blame the manifestation of that sort of thing on any of those levels. When a society goes down that way it goes down everywhere at the same time. It’s not the totalitarians at the top and all the happy people striving to be free at the bottom. Not at all. It’s Totalitarianism on every single level of the hierarchy.[^peterson2017ab]

— Jordan B Peterson, 2017 Personality 22: Conclusion: Psychology and Belief (45:00)

To understand why our Gated Institutions break down all at the same time, we need to understand the problems first and how they are connected. I’ll shine a light on the offenders like politicians, corporations, academia, science, media corporations, journalism, and social media in the next parts of this essay.

[^lindsay2021bi]: James Lindsay (2021): Welcome to the Second Enlightenment, https://newdiscourses.com/2021/10/welcome-to-the-second-enlightenment/.

[^haidt2022wy]: Jonathan Haidt (2022): Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/.

[^doyle2022gf]: Andrew Doyle (2022): The experts are lying to you, https://unherd.com/2022/06/the-experts-are-lying-to-you/.

[^patterson2021km]: Steve Patterson (2021): Our Present Dark Age, Part 1, https://steve-patterson.com/our-present-dark-age-part-1/.

[^rogan2022yc]: Joe Rogan and Maajid Nawaz (2022): The Joe Rogan Experience 1780 – Maajid Nawaz, https://open.spotify.com/episode/1ugbn7cuab3mNgKbo81ajM.

[^weinstein2022el]: Bret Weinstein and Neil Oliver (2022): Keeping Sane: Bret Speaks with Neil Oliver, https://youtu.be/0ytv1pzjiSw.

[^weinstein2019qo]: Eric Weinstein and Sam Harris (2019): Sam Harris – Fighting with Friends, https://youtu.be/6FQy9BLVzxQ.

[^furedi2022wg]: Frank Furedi (2022): ‘Nudge’ has no place in our democracy, https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/01/14/nudge-has-no-place-in-our-democracy/.

[^peterson2017ab]: Jordan B. Peterson (2017): 2017 Personality 22: Conclusion: Psychology and Belief, https://youtu.be/J9j-bVDrGdI.

Manage References for Note-Taking: A sane system for finding and citing what you read

Fri, 22 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMT

When using a note-taking system like Zettelkasten, it’s essential to always keep references somewhere (preferably separate from your notes). This way, you make sure to attribute where your ideas came from and make sure you don’t plagiarize.

Taking notes is like a funnel. You put in plenty of things, but few refined ideas come out at the end.

The input can come from a broad variety of sources. Books, articles, scientific papers, quotes, graphs, podcasts, movies, TV shows, videos, or images.

Not every source is of the same quality, but even the most mundane, low-quality reference might have this one paragraph worth remembering.

Feedbin

I follow my sources at one location, in Feedbin, my RSS/Atom Feed-Reader. It doesn’t matter if it’s a blog, a news site, a YouTube channel subscription, a 𝕏 user, a Reddit thread, a newsletter, companies, technologies, or trends.

I picked Feedbin because I want to read and watch everything in one source. I have additional sources like books that can’t be added to Feedbin.

If I see an interesting item, I open it and skim the content. I decide if this is appealing to be read or watched later or not. If it’s a (potentially) fascinating item, I move to the next step.

Pocket

I recently made a massive change to my workflow. I used Pocket for many years as the tool of choice for collecting items to process. But in the last few months, I got more and more unhappy with Pocket. Even though it’s the best-integrated tool of that kind, I had the feeling the company focuses on the wrong things. Instead of improving the interface and retrievability of my collected items, they focused on features to discover new things. I don’t need nor want that, I distrust algorithms because they transport the bias of their programmers. And many programmers are left-leaning, and the result is an inaccurate and biased view of the world. I decide whom I follow and what I consume.

Instead of allowing me to use the full size of my monitor to quickly browse my collection on a masonry grid, everything is crammed into small columns with small thumbnails. At least the tagging feature got love lately.

And the search is a nightmare, it doesn’t work properly. It’s slow and even if I remember reading an item two weeks ago and searching for the exact words, it’s unlikely to be in the results. The results are pages long, but sometimes outright wrong. Filtering for oldest/newest/relevance is broken and doesn’t work anymore. Once something is in Pocket, I will never find it again.

Raindrop.io

In 2020, I stumbled on the new bookmark manager Raindrop.io. I used it for a while, tried Pro for a year, and then quit it again. It was nice but didn’t convince me at first. I continued using it, by transferring my Pocket bookmarks with IFTTT to Raindrop.io.

Occasionally, I used its delightful big view and ultra-fast and fantastic search to find a bookmark, but I used Pocket to collect and read my items.

Over the next year, Pocket became more annoying to me and I used Raindrop.io more. Last month they added the brand-new Highlights feature, and it is incredible. It allows highlighting text on any website (in four different colors) and to add notes. A browser extension even keeps the highlight active the next time you visit the website. Additionally, the highlights are collected in a highlights section of the app.

I decided to look into the features of Raindrop.io again and discovered things I didn’t know it was able to do. Each collection can have a different view (List, Card, Headlines, Moodboard). You can upload PDFs, images, and videos. There is an Alfred Plugin, manual sorting, export functionality of your bookmarks, and a shortcut to search inside the browser bar for bookmarks. The Pro version allows full-text search, nested collections, permanent copies, finding duplicates, and broken links. I decided to go Pro again.

And last week I discovered that it’s possible to share collections publicly or with specific people. It’s possible to collect with different people to collections, and if the owner of a collection has a Pro plan, every collaborator has access to the Pro features. 🤩

Two weeks ago, I switched the direction from Raindrop.io to Pocket. Now, my items in Raindrop.io get copied with IFTTT to Pocket. I use the fantastic Raindrop.io browser extension to collect items.

I would like to see a full export of my uploaded assets to start using it as a Pinterest replacement to collect inspiration.

One thing I really like about Raindrop.io is how they handle bugs and feature requests. They created an extra website where users can post feature, translation, and integration requests or vote on them and report bugs. Labels transparently show what features they work on, and are planned or reviewed. 👍

There is too much content to write notes on. I use Readwise.io to find it in the future. The fast search, collections, and tags help me find interesting items again, should I want to research a specific topic more in the future.

After I consumed the content I collected, I add tags, and then I move it to an archive folder.

DEVONthink

If a reference is important to me, I’ll collect it into DEVONthink. Even though Raindrop.io has an offline feature, allowing me to keep articles, if the content goes offline, I never trust cloud solutions. With DEVONthink the content is mine, it’s offline. I save articles with the DEVONthink web clipper as Markdown (sometimes PDF, or full websites) into my reference archive.

I have currently 21K bookmarks in Raindrop.io and 5K reference items in DEVONthink, roughly ¼ of all reference items make it offline.

BibDesk

If I decide to write a note or article on a topic that references a reference item, I’ll create an entry in my BibDesk database. Currently, I have 457 entries in that database.

BibDesk allows adding Bibliography, like author, title, date, or link and creates a unique cite key.

The items are recorded in a specific format in the background:

@webpage{Thiel2022vp,
 author = {Thiel, Peter},
 date-added = {2022-04-12 14:59:36 +0200},
 date-modified = {2022-04-12 15:00:10 +0200},
 journal = {Bitcoin 2022 Conference},
 keywords = {BitCoin},
 month = {04},
 title = {Paypal Co-Founder Peter Thiel - Bitcoin Keynote},
 url = {https://youtu.be/ko6K82pXcPA},
 year = {2022},
 bdsk-url-1 = {https://youtu.be/ko6K82pXcPA}}

If I want to use this key in a note in Obsidian, I can use my Markdown template to copy the entry and paste it into the note.

[^thiel2022vp]: Peter Thiel (2022): _Paypal Co-Founder Peter Thiel - Bitcoin Keynote_, <https://youtu.be/ko6K82pXcPA>.

The format is not official Markdown syntax, but citations from MultiMarkdown. Even if a tool doesn't support it, you can still read it. If a tool supports it, like iA Writer, you get automatically nice reference notes.

If I want to write a note and add a reference, I would do it like this:

[[Peter Thiel]] mentioned that [[ESG]] is a hate
factory that is used to label enemies. There is
nothing _environmental_, _social_ or _governance_
with the companies labeled ESG-friendly, the CCP
is ESG-friendly.[^thiel2022vp]

When I decide to write a Markdown post that should be published, I can convert the MultiMarkdown to regular footnotes, but replace the # in the cite key with ^.

A sentence, that references the footnote.[^thiel2022vp]

[^thiel2022vp]: Peter Thiel (2022): _Paypal Co-Founder Peter Thiel - Bitcoin Keynote_, <https://youtu.be/ko6K82pXcPA>.

I consume between 100 and 300 items per week and produce around 10-15 notes. 3-15 % of the things I consume will create a note. The rest is waiting in my archive and is searchable for potential future usage.

iA Writer Template: Shibui

Fri, 18 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMT

After I finished my first template, I decided to create my second template immediately, based on the aesthetic style I used for my branding. I called it Shibui (渋い) because that is the style I based my design on.

The template comes with a light and dark design, and I’ll improve it, probably over time. To check up on changes, feel free to watch the GitHub repository. If you find any issues, please open an issue on the repository.

iA Writer Template: Nanzan

Thu, 17 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMT

I write a lot. Not only essays, but notes, poetry, books, technical documentation, discussions, and proposals at work. The things I write are usually in Markdown because it’s one of the quickest and best Markup languages that exist.

You don’t need any tools besides a simple text editor to write Markdown, but it helps to have a nice Markdown writing app. For me, this app is iA Writer since the day it was released. I like its simplicity, minimalism, and its powerful writing tools (focus, syntax, or style modes).

iA Writer supports preview templates and besides the included templates they offer additional templates. When you write on one side of the app your Markdown, you can see it presented in a pleasant formatted form on the other side.

Recently, I finished the book Engaging Japanese Philosophy: A Short History, which was set in beautiful typography.

On a Sunday morning, I decided to create a prototype based on the typesetting of this book in CSS. It had interesting challenges and I did it for fun.

Later that week, I decided to create my first iA Writer template based on that style. I called the template Nanzan (南山) because the book was typeset by the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture. The template is free, and you can download the code as a ZIP archive and double-click the .iatemplate file.

I Counted Everything I Own: Minimalism, measured

Tue, 25 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMT

things, rooms, categories, options, } from "../../../data/journal/i-counted-everything-i-own.ts";

When I started to be interested in Minimalism in 2017, I decided to count all my stuff.

The average European citizen owns 10,000 items and I wanted to know how much I own. I counted 2,490 items five years ago.

Last week Minimalist and filmmaker Matt D’Avella released a new video titled I counted everything I own as a minimalist. He also created other videos showing how little stuff he owns when he showed his apartment, his wardrobe, or what is in his pockets.

After watching his video I decided to recount my items and this time have everything neatly organized in a spreadsheet with columns for amount, room, category, date of buying, and price (if known).

Rules for Counting

Back in 2017, I counted way too strict, I even counted each dental brush as one item. Matt had some good ideas for “what’s a thing”:

A box of screws is one thing
All loose screws are one thing
All sandwich bags inside a box are one thing
A hard drive and its cable is one thing because it needs it to operate
A pair of socks is one thing
Counting all consumables (except food)

The Items I Own

Matt D’Avella counted 1,641 items in his home (together with his wife); 1363 things, and 278 consumables which is not a lot. He owns 498 items, his wife the rest.

After counting my flat and cellar on the weekend the results are finally in. I own 2749 items, including 397 consumables. Matt won.

I still own 659 books and way too many coffee cups (I don’t even drink coffee) 🤷‍♂️ And I still have way too many clothes, but even though I don’t wear my dress shirts very often, I still love them too much to get rid of them.

Things vs. Consumables

I did the same as Matt and checked all my items if they are a thing or consumable. 397 items are consumables, the rest are things.

Things vs. Consumables

Rooms

Most of my items are in the living room, followed by the bedroom, kitchen, cellar, corridor, bathroom, and balcony last.

Rooms

Now I have a good list where I can add new items I buy and remove items I sell or throw away. Additionally, the list is useful for traveling or in case I need to move. I can compare if a category or a room has too many things quickly. And with the new purchase price column, I can calculate how much I buy each year.

Dreaming of the Old Normal: A portrait of normalcy, drawn from memory

Thu, 06 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Last night I dreamed of the “Old Normal”, the one we called previously life.

Visiting a museum.
Walking up a mountain.
Have a party with friends.
Paddling a canoe on the river.
Watching children play soccer.
Smile at a person on the subway.
Sitting in the sun eating ice cream.
Eating lunch with friends or co-workers.
Having a barbecue with my extended family.
Quickly grabbing groceries at the supermarket.
Feeling the wind on my face, cruising on a catamaran.
Chatting with the waiter while eating Pho in my favorite restaurant.
Reading in the shadow after swimming for an hour in the Atlantic Ocean.
Sitting on a bench with a perfect view of the river, watching ships going by.

But then I wake up and open my eyes. It is dark outside, cold, and rainy. The weather is matching the mood of this world.

I recently gave away a few dozen books. Thirty of the books have now a new owner I never met. She wanted to have a contactless handover. To be safe. I put the books in front of my door. I admit I peeked through the peephole when she rang the bell. The New Normal.

It’s lunchtime and I go for a walk. I see faceless children coming from school, nobody is talking or laughing. Empty eyes. I read that 500 children tried to kill themselves in the second lockdown.[^nrz2022gq] No wonder, I wore my mask for less than eight hours in total in 2021, they have to wear it eight hours a day. The New Normal.

I pass by a bridge and a woman yells at me, I should keep six feet distance. Six feet away, six feet under. I always mix those two up. The New Normal.

When I walk through the park, I see the blue light of four police cars parking. Eight faceless policemen surround a bench with a middle-aged woman sitting on it. They yell at each other. She wants to be left alone, I hear. She must have committed a serious crime. I wonder. She must be dangerous. Otherwise, you wouldn’t send four police cars, right? As I walk by, I see she is probably just drunk and depressed. The police grab her roughly and strap her hands with plastic bands and push her inside a car. The New Normal.

I follow a path through the woods and see two faceless seniors walking behind each other. The path is wide. They see me and walk off the path into the mud. Better dirty shoes than to be dead, I assume. The New Normal.

Back at home, I open the news. I see hate, discrimination, lies, and propaganda. I read that around 30,000 “Neo-Nazis” and “Plague Deniers” walk each Monday in the whole country to demonstrate against the political measures. I learn it’s probably more than 100,000 people, getting more each week.[^redaktion2022ia] Journalists wouldn’t lie, would they? I watch a few videos of the marches. I see families, children, and seniors; I see the middle of the population. I see people fed up with the broken promises, lies, division, and hate of politicians. I don’t see any “Neo-Nazi”, though. The New Normal.

When the people did their Monday walks in 1989 to demonstrate for a reunification, the SED call the people “Neo-Nazis”, too.[^sed] This has a tradition here.

The measures are dire, but there is room to grow. Fiji leads the charts of the worst of the worst, we are #2. China is on #6.[^stringency] How can we be worse than a dictatorship? The New Normal.

Munich made walking illegal, I read.[^dpa2021ra] At least the walkers don’t get attacked by paramilitary troops and attack dogs, like in Amsterdam.[^guerrilla] They get fined €3,000 or dragged into a police car and beaten up behind a curtain.[^disclose] The New Normal.

Another 25-year-old soccer player collapsed and died today from a heart attack[^obrien2022hl] and a news anchorman collapsed on live TV.[^world2022zi] FIFA reports a 5-fold increase in sudden cardiac and unexplained deaths among FIFA athletes in 2021.[^sones2021dx] Damn, climate change is getting really nasty. The New Normal.

I regret opening the news. I rarely open the news these days.

I see a video on 𝕏 of people standing in line for more than a kilometer on a Sunday morning in the rain to get the Eucharist. I heard it is blessed and will protect its recipient in 37%[^buchan2022li] of the time of getting a running nose, headache, and a sore throat for three days. The New Normal.

I am accompanying a friend to a nearby lake. She has been in pain for weeks. There must have been poison in her Eucharist. This happens extremely rarely, the government promises. She takes off her shoes and walks in shallow water. I think I see a smile.

Eucharist is a funny word. Where did I read it? I remember.[^muraresku2020aa] 500 years before Jesus took the drink with his apostles, people traveled for the Eleusinian Mysteries a long distance from Athens to Eleusis to receive a holy substance.[^konstantinos2018zz] Every religion needs mythic tales, holy items, prophets, obedience, rituals, taboos, pariahs, and enemies. Religion has a comeback. Maybe we can observe self-flagellation again soon.

When the Antonine Plague hit the Roman Empire between 165 and 180 AD, it killed 10 percent of the population. In Rome alone, 2,000 people per day died. Emperor Marcus Aurelius sold his treasures to help fight the disease, before he died from the plague himself. Our leaders enrich themselves instead.

I learn that psychologists believe the world is in a mass conformity psychosis.[^skool2021xw] Isolation and alternating phases of terror and relaxation. This is how totalitarian states keep their power. With Menticide.[^meerloo1956hc] Another funny word. Fear is the mind-killer.[^herbert1965bp] Paul Atreides knew this.

I close the browser and put my phone in the drawer. It’s getting dark. Do I watch a TV Show? I read that Black Mirror didn’t get the 6th season because everybody was already too depressed by reality.[^hibberd2020nv] I used to love playing dystopian games like Deus Ex[^deusex] or Half-Life 2.[^halflife2] You can turn off the PlayStation at any time. You can’t turn off reality.

I decide to read a book instead. I never read much fiction. Now I love fiction. When the glow of my e-book reader shrouds the darkness with cold, white light, I get tired. My eyes close and I drift away. I hope I dream again of the Old Normal.

[^nrz2022gq]: NRZ (2022): Corona: Dramatischer Anstieg bei Suizidversuchen von Kindern, https://www.nrz.de/region/corona-dramatischer-anstieg-bei-suizidversuchen-von-kindern-id234241693.html.

[^stringency]: COVID-19: Stringency Index (2022), https://ourworldindata.org/covid-stringency-index

[^redaktion2022ia]: Tichys Einblick (2022): „Montagsspaziergänge“: Über 100.000 Menschen demonstrieren in Deutschland gegen Corona-Maßnahmen, https://www.tichyseinblick.de/daili-es-sentials/montagsspaziergaenge-3-januar-hunderte-staedte/.

[^sed]: Stefan Homburg (2022): https://x.com/SHomburg/status/1478804761088786432

[^dpa2021ra]: Agentur dpa (2021): "Corona-Spaziergänge" verboten: Bayerische Großstadt macht nach Randale ernst, https://www.nordbayern.de/politik/corona-spaziergange-verboten-bayerische-grossstadt-macht-nach-randale-ernst-1.11677526.

[^disclose]: Disclose.tv (2022): https://x.com/disclosetv/status/1478338456044642309

[^buchan2022li]: Sarah A. Buchan et al (2022): Effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines against Omicron or Delta infection, https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.30.21268565v1.

[^guerrilla]: Guerrilla Reporters (2022): https://x.com/GuerrillaRepor1/status/1477624939113029634

[^obrien2022hl]: Josh O’Brien (2022): Marcos Menaldo dead: Deportivo Marquense star, 25, dies after cardiac arrest in training, https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/marcos-menaldo-dead-heart-attack-25850291.

[^world2022zi]: The COVID World (2022): Brazilian TV Presenter Rafael Silva Suffers Cardiac Arrest During Live Broadcast 1 Week After Receiving COVID-19 Booster Shot, https://thecovidworld.com/brazilian-tv-presenter-rafael-silva-collapses-from-cardiac-arrest-one-week-after-covid-booster-shot/.

[^muraresku2020aa]: Brian Muraresku (2020): The Immortality Key: Uncovering the Secret History of the Religion with No Name.

[^konstantinos2018zz]: Konstantinos Arvanitakis (2018): Eleusis - The Great Mysteries, https://youtu.be/iaprpVwW-QU.

[^skool2021xw]: After Skool (2021): MASS PSYCHOSIS - How an Entire Population Becomes MENTALLY ILL, https://youtu.be/09maaUaRT4M.

[^meerloo1956hc]: Joost A.M. Meerloo (1956): The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing.

[^herbert1965bp]: Frank Herbert (1965): Dune.

[^hibberd2020nv]: James Hibberd (2020): Black Mirror creator not working on season 6 because we already feel depressed, https://ew.com/tv/black-mirror-season-6-coronavirus/.

[^deusex]: Deus Ex, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

[^halflife2]: Half Life 2

Setting Up a Web Developer Work Environment: Neovim

Thu, 23 Dec 2021 00:00:00 GMT

As I mentioned in my introduction, I use Vim for a long time. My shortcuts and commands have carved their way into my memory, and I don’t even need to think about 80% of my shortcuts. Occasionally, I can’t even recall them without doing them.

The Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2021 lists Neovim as the most loved editor [and] the 10th most wanted editor.[^stackoverflow2021] And this has a reason. Vim is fantastic on its own, but Neovim adds features we know from code editors like Visual Studio Code. And it is fast, super fast. What editor (besides Emacs) can load a 50 GB large log file without crashing?

Learning Vim looks hard, people even joke the hardest part is to exit Vim. But don’t forget, nobody knows all features of Vim. But the constant learning of new cool things keeps you motivated for years, and you’ll fall in love with the editor. If you only know regular editors, you have no idea what you’re missing. Fast, precise movement and editing without ever lifting the fingers of the keyboard.

Learning Vim

I won’t go into a long list of tutorials and screencasts, but it’s easy to find these resources with one search. There are uncounted articles, books, screencasts, or games available to learn Vim.

These tutorials and videos are a good start:

The number of plugins can be overwhelming, there are always three alternatives (because developers like options).

Good Defaults

The good thing is that Neovim and its plugins come with reasonable defaults. You don’t need to configure a lot to get started. If you develop wishes later, you can always use a custom configuration.

These are things I learned accidentally. When I reviewed my old .vimrc I decided to check each setting in the documentation. Searching for :h mouse will show you the configuration options for mouse usage. If the setting has a default, I removed it from my configuration file (mouse is not). This reduced my settings to around 75 lines.

I decided to move full-in Neovim and be backward-incompatible with Vim and started using init.vim instead of .vimrc. Once the Vim APIs in Lua are completed and stable, I might migrate to Lua.

Mappings

Mappings are one of the reasons people love Vim. Instead of having a developer decide what keyboard shortcut you have to use (or giving you the option to remap everything), Vim allows you to create shortcuts for everything. You can use typical keys as ⇧, ⌃, ⌥, or ⌘ as in any other software. But you’ll soon run out of options.

Vim introduced the concept of a Leader key. A key you can press (default \) and thereafter, it will wait for a combination of more keys to execute a command. This can be one letter or even a full word. I use for example this mapping to turn spell checking on or off:

nnoremap <silent> <leader>rs :set spell!

My leader key is remapped to the space bar. If I press space followed by rs it will execute the command. The ! switches the previous value to its opposite.

I use mnemonic aids for my key combinations. This might be pf (pretty format) or cf (current file) for example.

If you want to see all my regular mappings, please look at the mappings.vim file. I keep the mappings for plugins now in separate files for each plugin.

Functions

You can write functions in Vim Script or Lua and bind them to shortcuts. I cleaned up and removed all functions I never used, and now my functions.vim file is short.

Auto Commands

Auto commands are commands that get executed automatically if a specific condition matches. This can be entering a file or mode, loading a specific file type, saving a file, or much more.

Previously, I had more than 150 lines of auto commands, but I decided to remove a lot of them. A lot of my auto commands were setting the right syntax highlighting for specific file types. I guess with Treesitter this should not be necessary anymore. My autocmd.vim file has a few settings for my used languages.

Plugins

Neovim has many features inherited from Vim and Vi, but the developers can’t add all features. This is where plugins help out. The amount of Vim plugins is uncountable. The tag vim-plugin or vim-plugins matches nearly 1800 repositories on GitHub (but a lot of the best, plugins aren’t even tagged). No matter what your wish is, somebody has written a plugin.

Plugin Managers

Even for installing plugins, you have multiple options: You can download and copy the file manually (nobody does this) or install one of the many plugin managers. I use vim-plug. All you need to do is add a line pointing to the plugin to your configuration, reload Vim, and run :PlugInstall.

Vim Plug

Plugin Configuration

I decided on my new repository to keep all configuration, settings, mappings, functions, and auto commands for a plugin in a dedicated file and load this file from one central file. In this way, no unnecessary lines stay around should I replace a plugin with a better plugin in the future.

Additionally, I can write the configurations in Vimscript or Lua, depending on the plugin, and don’t need to use the ugly syntax to embed Lua in Vimscript:

lua << EOF
-- Some Lua code
EOF

The amount of my plugins is currently 78. I will use the rough categories of my plugins.vim file to group the plugins in this article. I will not mention all plugins. If you’re interested in what current plugins I use, please refer to the file above.

Language Server Protocol

The built-in LSP client of Neovim is a fantastic feature. But it’s the most complicated part to set up at the moment. Of all the plugins, I struggled the most in setting up LSP. The main plugins to help are lspconfig and nvim-lsp-installer will help to create configurations for the LSP servers and to install them without additional manual work.

LSP Installer

One of the LSP servers is the diagnostics language server. There is an unofficial collection of configurations for useful things such as prettier or ESLint.

Trouble is a cool plugin to show errors, warnings, or hints for your code.

Completion

Vim has a nice completion engine with omnicomplete, but with nvim-cmp it feels much more modern. The recommended setup includes more plugins by the same author to complete LSP, buffers, path, vim’s command line, and snippets of one of the four biggest snippet plugins.

Completion

I decided to stay with Ultisnips because it’s the most starred, creating snippets is quick and easy and with vim-snippets it brings a massive collection of snippets. There is a source for nvim-cmp.

The plugin lspkind-nvim will add pretty pictograms for LSP completions, known from Visual Studio Code.

File Management & File Editing

Telescope is my favorite plugin. It is a plugin to find, filter, preview, and pick files. It supports built-in dozens of features, for example, files, Vim features, LSP, Git, and many more. But it can be extended to browse the file system, fzf, recently used files, node_modules, or browser bookmarks.

Telescope

I don’t use Tree plugins much because Telescope is fast and finds everything, but every so often you want to browse a specific folder structure. NerdTree is the most famous tree plugin, but I use a newer version written in Lua: nvim-tree.lua.

In Visual Studio Code, I liked the GitLens plugin that showed on each line the author of the last commit. The plugin blamer.nvim will add similar functionality.

Multiple cursors are a fantastic feature that is not a default option in Neovim. But the vim-visual-multi plugin can add this feature.

The plugin nvim-autopairs will add support for automatic pairing characters, including options to configure the behavior of the cursor position.

Vim has a mark feature built-in, but I use an additional bookmark plugin for a long time now: vim-bookmarks. It shows the marks with pretty pictograms, additionally, a comment can be added to the mark, and they can be saved automatically on the hard drive and restored later.

One of the most interesting Twitch streamers in the Neovim community created the Harpoon plugin. It is a tool to quickly jump between a handful of files you’re currently working on. When I saw it first, I thought why should I need this, but now I don’t want to miss it.

File-line is a small plugin I use for many years. It allows you to directly open a file and jump to a specific line by adding the line number to the filename, e.g., vim index.html:20.

I love Tabular and use it for many years. It allows aligning content on specific characters. I found a function that even realigns automatically when a | is typed, which is helpful for Markdown tables.

Another old plugin I use all the time is VisIncr. It allows us to visually increase numbers of all kinds on multiple lines at once.

Gitsigns is a plugin that integrates Git decorations to Neovim. Additions, deletions, and changes are highlighted with a color bar at the side. It is possible to stage code from inside Neovim.

Finding and replacing multiple files is not that intuitive in Vim. Luckily, I found Far, a pretty plugin that simplifies the interface.

I work with GitHub Enterprise at work and need to share code positions with other developers all the time. The plugin vim-gh-line is made for this. In Vim, I position my cursor on a code line and press a shortcut to open the same position in GitHub.

It should be possible to use LSP to run Prettier on Neovim, but I couldn’t yet figure out how. That’s why I installed neoformat for now to do the job for me.

Window Improvements

A lot of new Vim users get confused: Vim supports buffers, windows, and tabs. A buffer is the instance of a file, a window is a view on a buffer, and a tab is a collection. Because buffers are not visible by default, beginners don’t know how to see all open files. Bufferline will add a feature to show all open buffers as if they would be tabs.

Another thing on the opposite end of the window that many people want is a status line that shows all kinds of information: Vim mode, Git branch name, errors, file type, language, time, column, or many more. Lualine adds a pretty bar that brings these features and can be configured to meet your needs.

Cursorline is a plugin that will highlight the current word and all occurrences automatically without searching for the word.

Neoscroll is a plugin that adds smooth scrolling to Neovim.

I like to work distraction-free. In Visual Studio Code there is the Zen mode which will hide all unnecessary things. For Vim, the plugin Goyo does a similar thing. It centers the editor and removes all distractions.

Goyo

Syntax Highlighting

Treesitter is the newly built-in parsing library of Neovim. Syntax highlighting was always a hassle because syntax plugins were built with Regular Expressions. Treesitter understands the code semantically and will be able to support many cool new features in the future. The list of supported languages is impressive. The Treesitter plugin allows easy installation of languages.

But in case a language is not yet supported, I use Vim Polyglot. The plugin supports 598 languages and loads the needed ones for a file.

The only problem I have is support for Styled Components. It’s an open issue on Treesitter and the official plugin is unmaintained and doesn’t support new syntax as transitional properties, which creates linting issues for me. I hope this issue can be resolved soon.

As a Front-end Web Developer, I love to see my color values visualized. The plugin colorizer.lua does this fast and pretty.

Colorizer

Another plugin I use is Emmet. It allows using this simple syntax to automatically create HTML or CSS.

For Markdown, I use the Pandoc and Pandoc Syntax plugins. They make writing Markdown enjoyable.

Custom Text Objects

The most powerful feature of Vim was part of Vi. Vim has its own “language” to move around and edit text objects. It is for example possible to change a complete paragraph with cip (change inner paragraph). The base language supports many text objects, but plugins can extend the language even further.

I use text object for indent, xml attributes, date and time, URIs, or comments.

Custom Motions

I love sorting things. Vim has a sort feature built-in, that can even remove duplicates (:sort u). But you need the visual mode to mark the content you want to sort. The plugin vim-sort-motion allows sorting with a few keystrokes with text objects.

The plugin exchange.vim allows switching two words without the visual mode.

Vim allows you to jump to nearly every position with a few keystrokes, but vim-easymotion increases the precision to directly jump to any letter.

Tim Pope Plugins

Tim Pope is one of the most famous plugin creators. He created nearly 50 plugins, a few of the most used by the community.

I use vim-surround which allows replacing, removing, or adding things around text objects. The plugin vim-repeat adds the functionality to repeat an action in many other plugins. His plugin vim-fugitive is a fantastic Git wrapper, and vim-commentary allows commenting out lines or blocks of code.

I use more plugins from Tim Pope, it’s worth checking out all his plugins.

TMUX

And finally, I use three plugins to make working with Vim in TMUX more enjoyable: vim-tmux-navigator and Vimux. The first plugin allows moving seamlessly between Vim and TMUX, including splits. The second plugin allows interaction with TMUX from inside Vim. There are additional plugins available to run test suites for specific languages.

Conclusion

Investing in your tools is something every developer should do. It does make you more productive, and faster, and you enjoy working with these tools more. If you’re not yet a Terminal user, start learning the basics and learn something new every day. Learning Vi/Vim/Neovim is a life-long journey, but it’s rewarding and enjoyable. Once you started using Vim, you never want to go back to another editor.

[^stackoverflow2021]: Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2021, https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#section-most-loved-dreaded-and-wanted-collaboration-tools.

Setting Up a Web Developer Work Environment: Terminal, Zsh, and TMUX

Mon, 20 Dec 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Tools are what differentiates humans from other animals. A few animals, such as Crows and chimps, and dolphins are all known to fashion and use tools but are limited by their ability to carry them places.[^heying2021ug]

Learning how to build and use tools might be the most important skill for a human. The wrong tools might harm or kill the person using them, or others. Each profession has its tools. You better hope the scalpel of the doctor is in perfect condition when you’re lying on an operating table, or the plumber brought the right tools to fix your broken water pipes.

The Computer as a Tool

The same is true for people who use a computer as their tool. Basic knowledge in installing software, maintaining, and caring for hardware and software should be acquired by each person handling a computer. Another essential skill is learning to use the input devices of a computer, the mouse, touchpad, and keyboard. And yes, this means learning how to type fast with all ten fingers.[^tipp10]

I’m surprised how little people invest in their tools and skills, given their livelihood depends on a computer. This is even more true for developers.

I consider using the Terminal an essential skill for every developer. There is always the need to run a development server, log in to a remote server or Docker container, compress images or use a version control tool like Git. You shouldn’t depend on finding Software with a graphical interface or an online tool to do basic work. Terminal tools change much slower than graphical interfaces and stay around much longer. The text editor Vi was released in 1976 and its descendants will likely be used in 100 years.

I’m a Vim user for more than 15 years. It’s one of those editors, if you once started using it, you never want to use another editor again. I use Vim keybindings in my Browser with Vimium and use the Vim mode in my note-taking software Obsidian.

For the last few years, I used Vim inside Visual Studio Code with the extension VS Code Neovim. I did this because I wanted to be able to use the Language Server Protocol on my TypeScript projects and keep Vim with my keybindings, settings, and helpers. But loading a big TypeScript project in Visual Studio Code is slow, and the Neovim integration is frozen until everything is loaded. Additionally, it’s not a lot of fun to work with multiple projects in Visual Studio Code.

When a new co-worker joined, he sent me the video talks of the Vimconf 2021. Neovim 0.5 which was released in the summer of 2021 has now built-in support for Language Server Protocol (LSP). It has an integration of the parsing library Treesitter that allows improved syntax highlighting, code navigation, refactoring, text objects, and motions. Seeing all those Vim talks inspired me to recreate my whole working environment from scratch, reevaluate my scripts and tools, remove things I never used, and replace them with better tools.

Dotfiles

I use dotfiles for my work environment to be able to quickly set up everything I need on a new computer. It’s common practice for developers to share their settings and host them in a Git repository.

Dotbot

My previous dotfiles used a custom script to create symbolic links from inside the Git repository for all configuration files to my home directory. This time I did use dotbot, a tool to bootstrap my configuration files.

Terminal

Previously, I used iTerm2 as my terminal application, but it is slow and using Vim is sluggish. I heard of Kitty and Alacritty and tried both. In the end, I decided to use Kitty as my new terminal application. It is a cross-platform, fast, feature-rich, GPU-based terminal. Additionally, it has built-in support for Ligatures.

Terminal

Shell

There are three main shells: Bash, Zsh, and Fish. I started with Bash, but today my default shell is Zsh. It’s been the default shell on a Mac for a while now. I tried Fish shell, but could never get used to it.

But because it’s annoying to work to get additional features and tools for Zsh installed, I used a plugin manager.

Plugin Manager for Zsh

I previously used oh-my-zsh, but it’s a monster, with over 300 plugins and 140 themes. And there are useful tools out there that are not included in the package.

This is where Antigen comes in. It’s a lightweight plugin manager for zsh that allows using all plugins from oh-my-zsh and others.

I use more than 30 plugins for all the software I use on a regular or occasional basis. These plugins bring features, shortcuts, or helper functions that extend zsh. Three of these plugins I find useful:

If you want to see all plugins I use, have a look at my zshrc file in the repository.

Prompt

In the past, I configured my prompt myself, but this was always a lot of work. Last year I came across the cross-shell prompt Starship which is superfast (build in Rust) and customizable. But even without any configuration, it fulfills every dream of a developer.

Nerd Font

To be able to use icons and pictograms in the terminal, a patched font is necessary. Nerd Font has fonts that are patched with 845 Font Awesome icons, 197 Devicons, 228 weather icons, 172 Octicons, 2000+ Material Design icons and many more.

I use a patched version of FiraCode in my terminal. I love the ligatures of this font.

Color Theme

I remember the days of ugly terminals with 16 colors. Fortunately, these days are over. But still, it was always a hassle to find and download a nice color theme for each tool I used. Since Chris Kempson created base16, this is not an issue anymore. It is an architecture for building themes and is available for nearly every tool you can think of.

While it is possible to download color themes for each tool, I use base16-shell and base16-vim. It is possible to select and quickly switch to one of the 128 color themes available, and Neovim will automatically use the same color theme as the terminal. This is useful because occasionally, I present code in a video call, and a bright color theme is better for that, but a dark color theme is much more convenient for the eyes. I use the color theme Tomorrow Night for many years.

Terminal Multiplexer

The terminal beginner uses a new terminal window when wanting to run something while a process is in progress. The intermediate terminal user uses the built-in feature of terminals to create new tabs. The advanced terminal user uses the built-in feature to split windows into separate sections. The professional terminal user uses a terminal multiplexer. It allows you to switch between several programs in one terminal and detach them while keeping them running in the background.

TMUX

A co-worker introduced me to this concept 10 years ago. Since then, I use tmux. It allows me to run many work projects and private projects at the same time and switch with a few keystrokes between them.

I use the tmux plugin manager tpm to install additional plugins that improve tmux. You might want to see your battery status, CPU load, the weather, your Pomodoro session, or your current song playing.

Tmuxinator

One thing tmux can’t do out-of-the-box is saving and restoring sessions after a reboot. While it’s technically possible to save sessions to disk and reload them later, it’s much easier to use a tool like tmuxinator to manage tmux sessions.

Tmuxinator allows it to create sessions via YAML configuration files. Windows, splits, layouts, software to start, and much more can be saved and opened as wished at any time.

Moving Around the Terminal and Previewing Content

The first thing you learn when starting learning terminals is moving around. You move with cd (change directory) and move with cd .. to the parent folder. But this way of moving around is slow, even with auto-complete and suggestions.

This is where useful tools like z and fzf help out.

Z

Z is a simple program that keeps a list of your most-used locations and suggests based on frequency and recency the most likely match (even with a partial match).

FZF

FZF is my favorite tool on the terminal. It is a general-purpose command-line fuzzy finder that is blazing fast and can be combined with every tool thinkable.

FZF

You can take nearly any output and pass it to FZF to get a list that can be filtered down with a fuzzy search in seconds. It can handle tenths of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of items with a fantastic performance.

Bat

Terminals have tools like cat, head, or tail to quickly view content without opening them in a more powerful editor. Cat is the most used tool of this kind, but it doesn’t have plenty of features except showing the content.

Bat

Bat is a content viewer like cat, but with powerful features like syntax highlighting, line numbers, git integration, and paging. I replaced it nearly everywhere where I used cat before. It can be combined with FZF to view the code.

Searching on the Terminal

There are many search tools built-in to the operating system, for example, find or grep. Over the years, many tools were created to provide more speed or better usability. Ack was the first tool of this kind I came across years ago. It advertised itself as “beyond grep”. The next tool I used was The Silver Searcher (ag) which was similar to ack, but faster.

My current tool to search in files is ripgrep (rg). It’s built in the Rust programming language and is the fastest.

If I want to search for a filename, I use fd which is more intuitive to use than find.

Getting Help

Nobody can remember all the commands of a terminal, let alone all the optional parameters that come with each command. The oldest way of reading the documentation on a tool is man. You can search for the documentation like this: man zip.

But these documentations are long and detailed, and under time pressure we want the gist. “Give me the command I need!”

This is where tldr (too long, didn’t read) comes to help. Instead of reading through pages of manuals, it shows you the most used commands and how to use them, e.g., tldr zip.

Another helpful tool is navi. It provides interactive cheat sheets for hundreds of commands.

Package Manager

macOS doesn’t come with a built-in package manager like Linux distributions. That is the reason Homebrew was created. It’s convenient to install terminal tools and programs on the command line. I keep a list of all the tools I install on a computer in a brew.sh file in my setup folder. The documentation next to each line is for me to remind myself what the tool does.

Homebrew Cask

Plenty of people don’t know, but Homebrew is capable to install macOS applications. By providing the --cask option, it’s possible to install the applications you need. The command brew install --cask brave-browser will install the Brave Browser. You can find a list of all the software I install this way in the cask.sh file in my setup folder.

Version Control with Git

Git is the only version control system a developer needs to learn. With hosting platforms like GitHub or GitLab, it is possible to host git projects (for free) to have a backup of your version control history.

GitHub even has an Archive Program that stores all public repositories regularly on silver halide film that can last over 1000 years. They then ship it off to Svalbard, Spitsbergen, where they store it in a 400-meter-deep decommissioned coal mine in the permafrost. If your repositories are stored in the archive can be seen by unlocking the Arctic Code Vault Contributor badge, as you can see on my GitHub profile.

I install a row of additional Git tools that help with a better experience:

git-extras – Several helpful Git utilities
git-quick-stats – A tool to provide quick statistics of a Git repository
hub – A command-line tool that makes it easier to use GitHub. I use the command hub pr checkhout 1234 all the time to check out my co-worker's code for review and testing.
lazygit – A simple terminal UI for Git.

Programming Language Environments

Each developer needs different environments for Software development. As a Frontend Web Developer, I require Node.js. But I keep a Ruby and a Python environment running because those languages are common, and I used both before for work or private projects. And I plan to have a more in-depth look into Lua soon.

I use a version manager for every tool because it’s otherwise hard to work with different versions of the same programming language.

Node.js

For Node.js, I use the Node Version Manager nvm. The setup script nvm.sh does the installation for me.

If possible, it’s considered best practice to keep the binaries of a JavaScript project with the project. But a few Node.js tools I install globally. The npm.sh script lists all my installations.

Ruby

For Ruby, I use the Ruby Version Manager rbenv. This ruby.sh script installs the environment for me.

The list of globally installed Gems in gem.sh is not large because I don’t use Ruby anymore at work.

Python

I don’t code in Python currently, but plenty of plugins in the Vim community need a functioning Python environment. This will likely change as the community is switching to Lua as the programming language of choice in Neovim. More and more plugins are written now in Lua.

I use pyenv for version management with Python and virtualenv to create isolated virtual environments for Python. The file python.sh will install everything I require for Python.

Window Manager

There are dozens of window managers available, paid or free. Even the built-in macOS split feature might be enough for regular people. But a powerful window manager is crucial for effective working. As a developer, we use two or even more monitors to constantly monitor services, browse the documentation, write code, check email or chat, and browse the internet. The context switches throughout the day, sometimes the Browser is a primary tool (when surfing), and other times it’s a secondary tool (when coding). Moving windows around monitors, resizing and arranging them is therefore important.

Hammerspoon

I use Hammerspoon for nearly 10 years. It is a bridge between macOS and a Lua scripting engine. It’s possible to control nearly everything with it and listen to Wi-Fi or USB events. I use it mainly for window resizing, window layout management, and application switching. If you’re interested in my configuration, you can find it in init.lua and additional helper functions in functions.lua. Those are copied because I had no clue about Lua 10 years ago.

[^heying2021ug]: Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein (2021): A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life, Swift Press.

[^tipp10]: TIPP10 – Learn touch typing for free, https://www.tipp10.com/

If— Guidance for a Virtuous, Stoic Life: A Modern Interpretation of Rudyard Kipling’s Great Poem

Mon, 13 Dec 2021 00:00:00 GMT

After my last poem interpretation for The Gods of the Copybook Headings, I saw a recommendation for another poem by Rudyard Kipling: If—. It is a shorter poem, but each sentence has a profound meaning. Kipling must have had an in-depth understanding of human nature.

As I described in my article Learning Poems in August, I wanted to learn this poem and I did. It became my serenity prayer for these times.

Historical Background

The poem was written in 1895 and published in 1910 in Brother Square Toes. It is considered to be a prime example of Victorian Stoicism. Kipling wrote this poem for his son as a guideline to become a man.

The Poem

The poem consists of four stanzas of equal length with a rhyme scheme of ABABCDCD (except the first stanza with AAAABCBC). It summarizes virtues and moral values to follow for a good life and a good character. He tells his son how to deal with loss and failure.

Each stanza consists of multiple sentences starting with If the last stanza resolves what will happen if the reader follows these virtues.

Stanza 1

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

The first sentence describes a virtue that a few people possess: Tranquility. I’m puzzled and shocked by how easy it was to scare at least a third of the population to give up freedom and liberty for perceived protection against a respiratory virus. And even though it has a IFR between 0.05 and 0.2 percent and mostly affects the old and overweight.

We are caught in an ever-worsening vicious circle of hate, agitation, and exclusion. This scapegoating against a minority (“the unvaccinated”) is a well-known behavior that brought us previously the inquisition, witch trials, lynch mobs, and darker behaviors we promised to never repeat. It is a result of “externalized fear,” as Prof. Dr. Ulrike Guerot explains in the documentary “Eine Andere Freiheit” (Another freedom).[^marchart2021eq]

The next sentence of the poem deals with self-confidence. It is a reminder, that you don’t need the approval of others, but should trust in your reason and judgment. J. Michael Straczynski wrote once, it doesn’t matter what the press says. It doesn’t matter what the politicians or the mobs say. It doesn’t matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right. […] When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move. Your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth and tell the whole world: No, you move.

Everybody has the responsibility to decide for themselves what is right and what is wrong in a free society. This faculty cannot be passed on to others. A rule by edict or an “expert-class” that can’t be questioned should have been something we left behind us with the Enlightenment, but we didn’t. The second part of the sentence is a reminder to allow other people to come to a different conclusion and try to find a compromise.

Patience is another important Stoic virtue. Things need time and can’t be accelerated.

The next part covers lies and hate and how to deal with them. It’s tremendously hard to not answer lies with lies and hate with hate. The Corona crisis is a prime example. I’ve never seen as many lies and destructive hatred as now in my whole life. It takes character to not return the hate.

The last sentence of the first stanza is a warning against vanity and arrogance, a reminder to always stay humble.

Stanza 2

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

To be able to dream up a better future is an essential virtue, but following a “dream” can become an end in itself. It is significant to not be obsessed with them and to re-evaluate and discard the ones that are not useful anymore.

Reason is one of the “Four Virtues” of the Stoics. Thinking is important for everything. But here, again, is the reminder to make sure it doesn’t become an end in itself.

The next sentence is a reminder to keep serenity. The Stoics’ reputation is to be calm, no matter if good or bad things happen. The works of Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and Seneca are filled with examples to remind them that all fame and suffering are impermanent.

Marcus Aurelius reminded himself, that this is a dead fish. A dead bird. A dead pig. Or that this noble vintage is grape juice, and the purple robes are sheep wool dyed with shellfish blood. Or making love—something rubbing against your penis, a brief seizure, and a little cloudy liquid. Perceptions like that—latching onto things and piercing through them, so we see what they really are.[^aurelius2002bo]

The third sentence is a reminder, that you’ll need to be able to endure wickedness. Other people will take your words and misrepresent your intent deliberately, take you out of context, or misquote you. And fools will fall for it, and you can’t do a lot about it. It is all the more important to speak carefully and have sources that support your case.

The last sentence of the second stanza is about the maxim of Amor Fati (love of one’s fate). It is [to treat] each and every moment—no matter how challenging—as something to be embraced, not avoided. To not only be okay with it, but love it and be better for it. So, that, like oxygen to a fire, obstacles, and adversity become fuel for your potential.[^holiday2017ho]

We will inevitably suffer defeats, injuries, and suffering. But again and again, we should bend down and repair as much damage as possible. The Japanese art of Kintsugi (金継ぎ) is an example of how to deal with damages. The shards of a broken vessel are reassembled, and the cracks get connected with gold.[^puschak2014df][^schooloflife2016sk]

Stanza 3

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

Sometimes in life, you need to risk something to change your life. As philosopher Gunnar Kaiser recently said in his video essay “Sprung ins Ungewisse” (Jump into the unknown), we know we have to get out of here, but we don’t know where. And that’s why we persist. That’s why we stay where we are. Unhappy, unable to break out. […] We don’t dare to jump. […] People only achieve significant things in a leap. […] At some point, you have to take the plunge into the unknown. […] Even if we don’t know where we are going to hit, we sometimes have to jump, sometimes we have to let go to not perish in a standstill. A leap into freedom is always a leap into the unknown. But at a time when the certainty of repression seems to be overwhelming, we must learn to fly. What is supposed to go wrong?[^kaiser2021ze]

We can always fail. However, then we start again, and we don’t complain.

The last part of the third stanza is a reminder that we should live not only for ourselves but for a cause. As long as we live, we can force ourselves to aim our motivation, thoughts, and body at a target that will live on when we are gone. This will not only improve the world, but it is additionally an anchor for ourselves, a compass needle that shows us the direction when we are lost at sea and all our strength has been used up. We need to keep at least the will that forces us to push forward.

Stanza 4

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

It is hard to keep our virtue when we are around plenty of other people because few people are in pursuit of virtue. With whom we spend our time, will be who we become. Marcus Aurelius reminded himself in his second chapter on how hard it is to keep our virtue: When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil.[^aurelius2002bo]

As equally hard is it not to become arrogant and aloof if we are around power. The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius are filled with reminders to himself to not forget this. As the most powerful man on earth, he could get everything he wanted, and kill whomever he wanted, but he did not. He is one of the rare exceptions to the wisdom that “power corrupts.”

The Stoics don’t take insults personally because it is outside our control, what others think of us. We have only control over how we react. Marcus Aurelius continued but I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own—not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions.[^aurelius2002bo]

The second part of the sentence is speaking about being reliable to others, but not to the point where they depend on you too much.

The third sentence of the last stanza is a reminder to use the day (Carpe Diem) because we can meet death at any time (Memento Mori). Even the wasted minute waiting in line or in a traffic jam can be used and filled with something useful. Be it the reflection of the day, taking a few breaths, or acquiring of new knowledge and skills.

Finally, Kipling concludes the listing of virtues. When we follow and train these virtues, we will be able to handle everything the world is throwing at us. Kipling directed this poem to his son to show him the way to be a future leader and an example of a good man.

[^marchart2021eq]: Schutzfilm (2021): Eine Andere Freiheit, https://www.eine-andere-freiheit.com/.

[^aurelius2002bo]: Marcus Aurelius and Gregory Hays (2002): Meditations, Modern Library.

[^holiday2017ho]: Ryan Holiday (2017): Amor Fati: The Formula for Human Greatness, https://dailystoic.com/amor-fati-love-of-fate/.

[^puschak2014df]: Evan Puschak (2014): Kintsugi: The Art of Embracing Damage, https://youtu.be/lT55_u8URU0.

[^schooloflife2016sk]: The School of Life (2016): Eastern Philosophy – Kintsugi, https://youtu.be/EBUTQkaSSTY.

[^kaiser2021ze]: Gunnar Kaiser (2021): Sprung ins Ungewisse, https://youtu.be/f4WfDY9Gals.

How to Prepare for the Worst Case: Plan now, panic less later

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMT

I tended to have a more positive image of human nature than Thomas Hobbes, I believed in sharing, cooperation, and “The Wisdom of Crowds.” But since Corona, I had to revise my idea of human nature. I can’t believe how easy it was to scare more than half of the population with a virus that has a more than 99.98% survival rate to forget all their virtue and liberal values.

The thing about civilization is, it keeps you civil. Get rid of one, you can’t count on the other.
Amos Burton (James S. A. Corey), The Expanse, S5.6: Tribes

When parts of the population decided against vaccination (a novel gene therapy that provides time-limited personal protection and no protection of others) the rhetoric escalated. A politician of the CSU party tweeted Impfen macht frei[^mooser2021lp] (Vaccination sets you free), words that echo the crimes of the National Socialists. Oliver Welke, the host of the comedy show “Heute Show” called unvaccinated asocial[^rnd2021rc] a term invented by the National Socialists to devalue classes of undesirables as inferior and harmful to society. The term “Volksgesundheit”[^hendrig2020jc] was suddenly used everywhere, despite its tainted past and better words available to describe public health. Patriotism[^link2021kt] was quick en vogue again, after being left for years to right-wing parties. Noam Chomsky called out in a public interview to segregate unvaccinated from society and starve them into submission.[^nationalpoststaff2021vm] Shortly thereafter, Austria and Germany introduced lockdowns for unvaccinated. Austria went even further and introduced mandatory vaccination for everybody.

People are tribal. The more settled things are, the bigger the tribes can be. The churn comes, and the tribes get small again.
Amos Burton (James S. A. Corey), The Expanse, S5.6: Tribes

If a virus with a mild illness can awaken tribalism, the wish for discrimination and segregation, and hate in people, what will starvation or fear for life through violence do?

Praemeditatio Malorum

I have a personality that likes to plan as if things might not go as planned. In Stoicism, this technique is called praemeditatio malorum, and it’s considered good practice to think and act at least sometimes as if things might go wrong.

Rehearse them in your mind: exile, torture, war, shipwreck. All the terms of our human lot should be before our eyes.
— Seneca, Letters from a Stoic (p. 178)

The Stoics had techniques to train and prepare mentally and physically for potential future challenges. This makes one resilient and panic less likely if things go wrong. The Stoics were trained to eat basic food, wear basic clothes, or sleep on the floor from time to time to train in this mindset. Hard physical work or demanding physical training are other good ways to toughen the body and mind. It helps to learn to be uncomfortable.

Blackouts & Other Threats

Recently, after reading the book Vom Verlust der Freiheit[^unger2021pf] (On the loss of freedom) by Raymond Unger, I decided to invest more in my security and safety. Ungers’ book has a chapter about the consequences of a Blackout, and it’s not an easy read.

We throw around the term “Blackout” when the energy goes out for 10 minutes, but people are not aware those aren’t Blackouts. A Blackout is dangerous, life-threatening, and society-destroying. After one week the first people will start dying, after two weeks we would be back to the middle-ages with warlords and the rule of the strongest.

Float to the top or sink to the bottom. Everything in the middle is the churn.
Amos Burton quoting Lydia (James S. A. Corey), The Expanse

The whole European energy grid is in a bad state. The push for green energy will worsen the problem soon. Germany had two Brownouts (near Blackouts) in the last two years that could be prevented by transferring energy from neighboring countries.

And Blackouts are yet one possible threat to civilization. A solar flare might destroy our grid and computers, as Bret Weinstein describes in his article.[^weinstein2021rg] It’s much more likely our civilization might end from a solar flare than global warming or an asteroid.

Other things might be natural disasters like floods or storms, social uprising, riots, disrupted supply chains[^roussinos2021dl] due to wars and catastrophes, hacker attacks on infrastructure, or the prospect of a future war with China.

Enough reasons to start thinking about what to do if shit hits the fan. I’ve seen how poorly the German government handled the 100-year flood in 2021, the Corona crisis, and how our soon-to-be chancellor Olaf Scholz failed as mayor of Hamburg to protect the city when hundreds of Antifa rioters unleashed violence on the city for multiple days during the G20 Summit in 2017.[^spiegel2017oz]

I’m not betting on politicians to be able to solve a crisis quickly (or at all).

Getting Comfortable

I think we all got comfortable — and I’m not excluding myself from this. We depend on our phones, buy new things instead of fixing them, love convenience, and order food or groceries online. This is even more true for people living in cities. We expect things to work, transportation to be fast and good, and the next hospital to be nearby. We never think or even like to think about how things might go wrong.

But cities will quickly turn into deadly traps in case of catastrophes. That’s what I’ve learned from The Walking Dead. Leave the cities when something happens. I think the CEO of Oracle once mentioned on a podcast that he has a packed motorcycle in his garage in case of emergency. Forget your car, that’s another thing I learned from The Walking Dead, there is always a traffic jam of cars on the road out of a city. You need a bicycle or motorbike to survive.

Boy Scouts and Military Service

Because I’m over 40, I had the “privilege” to be born before the internet and before personal computers were common in every household. Until the personal computer arrived when I was a teenager, I was outside. I created bows and spears and learned how to shoot with them. I practiced throwing knives until they kept sticking to the wall. My friends and I built fortresses and bunkers in the forest and played war. I remember a school friend who needed to visit the hospital after a stone hit his head in a war scenario.

I was a Boy Scout for many years and got my first knife when I was 7 or 8. I stayed in Boy Scout camps for long cold weeks during the holidays in Denmark or in mountains and forests in Germany, where we build bridges and slept in tents. We baked bread and had watered-down tea. The next supermarket was miles away. I never liked it too much, but hardship builds character.

I did obligatory military service for nearly a year, learning to shoot with pistols and rifles, crawling over wet meadows, and freezing in the snow in cold winter. I fell into a cold river while crawling in darkness through a forest. I didn’t like that either but don’t regret the experience. Germany discontinued obligatory military service, which is why younger people have no clue what I’m talking about. For them, a bad WLAN connection is the most uncomfortable thing they experienced.

Preparing for a Blackout

Countries like Austria or Switzerland prepare their population for a Blackout.[^bundesheer2021dn] Germany doesn’t care, our politicians think all is fine, and no action is needed. We don’t even get sirens running on the yearly alarm day. Austria produced a documentary[^hanslik2018wu][^poet2019ss] that shows what happens during a Blackout. The film mentions what an Austrian citizen should have to be prepared for:

10-15 l of water per person
Camping stove and fuel paste
Plenty of canned food and dry goods (pasta and rice)
Passport
First aid kit
Trash bags
Hygiene items
Emergency power generator with diesel supply
Protective clothing (mask, rubber gloves)
Radio with batteries
Flare gun
Knife

I can check off everything on this list except the flare gun and power generator because they are impractical for a city flat.

My Survival Equipment

This list is a good start, but I decided to stock up on more things. I tend to buy things in stock, out of laziness and convenience. I always use the same shampoo, why not buy three at once? Why not have things that hold longer times?

I have a huge military ammunition box that holds my equipment. Parts of it I own for more than 25 years, and other things I bought recently.

Food

I have an extensive amount of food in stock, all things I regularly consume and restock.

Couscous (1 kg)
Asian Noodles, e.g., Mie, Ramen, Somen, Soba (3 kg)
Pasta (5 kg)
Rice (6 kg)
Potatoes (2 kg)
Cans with stew, meat, goulash, and soup (10)
Chocolate, dark (1 kg)
Bread, deep-frozen (2)
Buns, deep-frozen (16-20)
Eggs (10-20)
Nuts and legumes (500 g)
Sausages, air-dried and deep-frozen (700 g)
Beef, deep-frozen (2 kg)
Duck, deep-frozen (2 kg)

Drinks

Water, glass-bottled (20 l)
Apple Juice, opened it lasts 6 months due to a vacuum (40 l)
Orange Juice (10 l)
Breakfast Juice (10 l)
Dark Multivitamin Juice (10 l)

Cooking

Additionally, I have equipment for cooking and food. I bought titanium equipment from a company called Boundless Voyage which is lightweight, small, durable, antibacterial, strong, and resistant to heat or cold.

I own a set of drinking cups, a pot and pan, a pot with a lid, a drinking bottle, cutlery (including chopsticks, a straw), a pan plate, and a water filter.

Fire, Heat & Light

My precious purchase is a portable camping stove. It’s small and can cook with wood and alcohol. But I additionally bought a gas cooker and a few gas cartridges for easy cooking in case of a blackout for one or two weeks.

I have a pack of lighters and fire steel to start a fire. I have a flammable wood block to start a fire when it’s wet.

A pot hanger allows me to hang a pot over an open fire. I bought solid fuel to survive the first few days before I need to chop wood.

For that, I own a wood saw, a wire saw, and a set of Tomahawks. They are not the best to chop wood but can be used as a hammer, pick, and weapon. I bought later additionally a good ax.

I own a Maglite flashlight and a radio with a crank that can produce bright light without any batteries. I have a bag with 100 tea lights, to have light during a blackout.

For winter, I own a pocket warmer with a pack of hard coal I have since I had to do guard duty at the military for 4 hours straight in winter. A piece can burn and give heat for many hours.

Shelter

For basic shelter, I bought a tarp tent and a Snugpack Special Forces 2 Sleeping Bag. I have a waterproof pad and a camping mat. My rain poncho can be used as a tarp.

Clothes

I have two leather pants, military camouflage pants, a T-shirt, a jacket, a jungle hat, and two camouflage nets to conceal myself. Abdominal protection and tactical gloves complete the equipment.

I bought a military rain poncho, recommended by a Green Beret, which is large enough to be used as a tarp. The 60 meters Paracord I bought can be used to create a temporary shelter or for climbing.

Movement & Orientation

I have two bicycles, an older mountain bike with a suspension fork and a new Cube Hyde Pro city bike with a belt drive system. Those should be sufficient to leave the city when the energy is not restored after a week. I bought a few physical maps to reach my bug-out location by bike.

When I was a teenager, I bought a US military compass that I own. Additionally, I have binoculars and a monocular.

Medicine, Health & Security

This category lists equipment like a first aid kit, emergency blankets, and a whistle. Additionally, a tactical pen and tactical credit card, a 20-meter rope with an anchor, multiple carabiners, a waterproof tarpaulin, a folding spade, and 3 packs of toilet paper. I have those in stock since people got crazy with toilet paper in the first lockdown.

I own a pocket radio with crank, solar, and batteries. It supports all common frequencies and has built-in LED lights, a warning light, and a siren. It can load batteries via the sun or physical labor. This is useful because batteries are always empty when you need a flashlight. But this one doesn’t need batteries; the crank is enough to get it running.

I learned in the documentary that owning a radio is important because without energy all communication breaks down. With no cell phones or landlines, the only way of getting information from emergency teams is a radio or CB radio.

Tools & Weapons

The description of the second week after a Blackout is unsettling. Police and military will be occupied with protecting nuclear power plants and securing important governmental zones, and hospitals. The rest will be a lawless war zone.

My theory is that people behave and are friendly as long as the crisis has a foreseeable end in sight and nobody is starving. But still, bad people will start looting and plundering. With no possibility to call the police, you will be on your own. Locking yourself into the flat and hoping nobody forces their way in is one option. But what if the food runs out, or you need water or wood?

That’s why everybody should have at least basic skills in martial arts to be able to defend themselves and their family. I started doing martial arts at the age of 12. Karate was my first martial art. I trained it for 8 years. Then I switched to Ninjutsu because it’s an authentic martial art and not a sport. I learned kicks and punches, levers and throws, and handling weapons. I trained for 12 years in that martial arts before I stopped. I’m not the best martial artist, but I know enough to do a lot of damage to an attacker.

Because I always loved knives and swords, I own a few. They are all legal by German law. But besides a pocket knife, you are not allowed to carry those outside your property in Germany. I own a Ka-Bar combat knife, a Kukri military-style machete, and a few more. The knives that can be carried every day are my Laguiole en Aubrac, a beautiful French knife, my Higonokami, a Japanese pocket knife, and a Swiss Army knife.

I own a blowpipe and a recurve bow with a few dozen arrows. I always loved shooting with a bow, and I’m good with it. I have wood and carbon arrows and bought a pack of hunting arrowheads. A quiver and protection gear complete the set.

As I mentioned in the wood and fire section, I bought two Tomahawks which can be used as weapons.

Since I started Martial Arts, I love Japanese Swords. I got my first blunt sword at Christmas with 12. Today I own a set of Daishō (Japanese 大小, big-little), which is a Katana and a Wakizashi. They are hand-forged from carbon steel and unbelievably sharp. One of these swords can cut a human in half. You can expect me to move around the wasteland like Michonne from The Walking Dead in case of mayhem.

A sharpening stone and sword care set are part of my equipment.

Books

My favorite books on the topic of self-sufficiency are the books of John Seymour. He was a British farmer and author who wrote brilliant, illustrated books like The New Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency, New Self-Sufficient Gardener, or Forgotten Arts & Crafts. These books teach how to be self-sufficient.

English

German

Another fantastic book is The Book, a project I supported on Indiegogo. It’s a 400-page illustrated guide on how to rebuild civilization.

I own a version of Der Reibert from when I was in the military. It’s a useful book with thin paper with all information about warfare, survival, navigation, and more.

The Bushcraft series is a series of useful books about survival: Bushcraft 101, First Aid, Trapping, Gathering, and Cooking in the Wild, Advanced, and the Illustrated Visual Guide.

English

German

Conclusion

I plan to bug in for 1 to a maximum of 3 weeks. Should the crisis not be resolved, I’ll move to my bug-out location in the countryside. It has options to hunt or keep animals, plant and harvest crops, and vegetables and not starve to death.

I don’t idealize or look forward to catastrophe, that is sure. I prefer having my warm flat, good food, Netflix, and the internet.

But I want to be prepared. Civilization is sewn with a thin thread. It doesn’t harm to at least stock up food and equipment for the worst case.

Update (June 2022)

This year I came across the concept of a “bug out bag”, first I heard it in a video about a Digital Bugout Bag. A bug-out bag is a portable kit to survive an emergency for at least 72 hours.

If something bad happens, you might have a few minutes or an hour to leave your home. That is not enough time to bring all my items out of my cellar and pack. Additionally, if the energy is down, it’s hard to find your items in total darkness. This means you need to be ready and packed. I created an encrypted, digital bug-out bag on two SanDisk Extreme Pro 64 GB microSD, holding all my important files.

Next, I bought a waterproof 45L Military Tactical Army Backpack with two additional Molle bags, a foldable Molle bag, a Molle bag for my drinking bottle, an outdoor first aid kit, and a chest bag. The bag is huge and holds all items previously stored in my huge wooden box. Additionally, I bought a bag for my bow, that holds bow tendons, arrowheads, hand/arm protection, and other equipment. I have two arrow quivers, one for easy access and one for safe transportation.

And yes, I bought the Gadsden flag sticker additionally. It’s the flag used by Libertarians around the world. The snake design and the words "Don’t Tread On Me" is a warning of vigilance and willingness to act in defense against coercion. 😂

Bug Out Bag

[^mooser2021lp]: Barbara Mooser (2021): Skandal im Netz: Abgeordneter Huber im Twitter-Gewitter, https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/ebersberg/falscher-hashtag-skandal-im-netz-abgeordneter-huber-im-twitter-gewitter-1.5388590.

[^rnd2021rc]: RND (2021): Oliver Welke in „heute-show“ über Impfverweigerer: „Leider irgendwie asozial“, https://www.rnd.de/medien/heute-show-oliver-welke-kritisiert-impfverweigerer-leider-irgendwie-asozial-DKSKOLVJSNFZRATN7KT5UH4OZE.html.

[^hendrig2020jc]: Björn Hendrig (2020): "Corona" und "Volksgesundheit", https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Corona-und-Volksgesundheit-4705250.html.

[^link2021kt]: Albert Link (2021): Bin ich kein Patriot, wenn ich mich nicht impfen lasse?, https://www.bild.de/politik/inland/politik/kritik-an-spahn-bin-ich-kein-patriot-wenn-ich-mich-nicht-impfen-lasse-77336652.bild.html.

[^nationalpoststaff2021vm]: National Post Staff (2021): Noam Chomsky says the unvaccinated should just remove themselves from society, https://nationalpost.com/news/world/noam-chomsky-says-the-unvaccinated-should-just-remove-themselves-from-society.

[^unger2021pf]: Raymond Unger (2021): Vom Verlust der Freiheit: Klimakrise, Migrationskrise, Coronakrise.

[^weinstein2021rg]: Bret Weinstein (2021): How the sun could wipe us out, https://unherd.com/2021/07/how-the-sun-could-wipe-us-out/.

[^roussinos2021dl]: Aris Roussinos (2021): This is how civilisations collapse, https://unherd.com/2021/11/this-is-how-civilisations-collapse/.

[^spiegel2017oz]: Der Spiegel (2017): G20 in Hamburg: Eine Stadt im Ausnahmezustand, https://youtu.be/ojToYs6nCnk.

[^bundesheer2021dn]: Österreichs Bundesheer (2021): Blackout - ein weiträumiger, eventuell gar europaweiter Stromausfall, https://youtu.be/mHWcOQ_7Y-U.

[^hanslik2018wu]: Christoph Hanslik, Matthias Dechant, Andreas Wetz, and Paul Poet (2018): Ist Österreich auf einen Blackout vorbereitet?, https://www.addendum.org/blackout/.

[^poet2019ss]: Paul Poet (2019): Was passiert, wenn der Strom wirklich länger ausfällt, https://youtu.be/UQR9xXNKojw.

The Decentralized Web: Develop and Publish a Website

Mon, 08 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMT

In the last part, we will get our hands dirty and play with IPFS to publish a website. If you want to dig deeper into IPFS later, please have a look at the official documentation hosted on IPFS.

You can use IPFS Desktop and the IPFS Daemon with the same data, but not run them at the same time. You need to stop the one to use the other. But you can use the IPFS commands to interact with a running IPFS Desktop service.

Installation

To install IPFS Desktop, you download the binary for your operating system (Mac, Windows, or Linux/FreeBSD).

If you want to use Brave, you can navigate to the browser settings and activate in the IPFS section the IPFS Companion. You can click on the My Node button to open the Web UI. You can change the IPFS Node type in the settings of the companion to use the external node from the IPFS Desktop installation. I haven’t figured out yet if it’s possible to use the command-line tool to access the native Brave IPFS node.

To follow along with the tutorial, we use the command-line tool. You can install IPFS via Homebrew on a Mac:

$ brew install ipfs

For other options, like the M1 install, please look at the installation instructions.

IPFS Web UI

If you installed IPFS Desktop, you’ll see the Web UI inside a window which can be accessed through the app itself. You can open it through the My Node button of the companion extension, or by using the URL shown to you when you start the command-line daemon.

The interface has navigation with multiple items: Status, Files, Explore, Peers, and Settings.

Status is a monitor of incoming and outgoing traffic of your IPFS node. Files show all your hosted and pinned files and folders. Explore is an advanced tool to explore hashes. Peers shows a world map with nearby peers. Settings allows configuring language, public gateway, API address, and other things. The CLI-Tutor-Mode is a useful thing for beginners. It shows next to each command in the graphical interface the accompanied terminal command.

Initializing the Repository

If you didn’t install the IPFS Desktop, you’ll need to initialize the IPFS repository before the first start:

$ ipfs init

Exploring Files

You can explore objects in your repository with the ipfs cat command, for example:

$ ipfs cat /ipfs/QmQPeNsJPyVWPFDVHb77w8G42Fvo15z4bG2X8D2GhfbSXc/readme

Or contents of folders with the ipfs ls command:

$ ipfs ls /ipfs/QmQPeNsJPyVWPFDVHb77w8G42Fvo15z4bG2X8D2GhfbSXc/

Start the Node

To run the node on the command line, you have to start the daemon:

$ ipfs daemon

If the IPFS Desktop app is running, you’ll get an error that tells you, another process is already using the repository:

Error: lock /Users/username/.ipfs/repo.lock: someone else has the lock

Add your First File

Create your first file and add it to the repository:

$ echo "Hello World" > hello-world.txt
$ ipfs add hello-world.txt

With the same ipfs cat command from above, but using the hash of the hello-world.txt file, you can see its contents.

Create a Simple Webpage

We will create now a simple webpage:

$ cd ~
$ mkdir simple-webpage
$ cd simple-webpage

We download an image of a cute cat from IPFS:

$ ipfs cat QmW2WQi7j6c7UgJTarActp7tDNikE4B2qXtFCfLPdsgaTQ/cat.jpg > cat.jpg

Create a new file named index.html inside the folder and paste this basic HTML inside:

<!doctype html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Nice Kitty</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <center>
      <h1>Nice Kitty</h1>
      <img src="cat.jpg" />
    </center>
  </body>
</html>

We’ll now add this folder and all its content (-r for recursively) to IPFS:

$ cd ..
$ ipfs add -r simple-webpage/

You’ll see an output like this, but with different hashes:

added Qmd286K6pohQcTKYqnS1YhWrCiS4gz7Xi34sdwMe9USZ7u simple-webpage/cat.jpg
added QmY3ayxXcXMs7qdDvPy7QKcVQ492JBNyC9Zf3jp1LrQRCA simple-webpage/index.html
added QmNa1YdawLNeD2fumihKGxuna4GqAws2QsvRsMjzpY2mM2 simple-webpage
 433.02 KiB / 433.02 KiB [==========================================] 100.00%

You can see your website now by opening the following URL in Brave:

https://ipfs.io/ipfs/<website-hash>

It should work in other browsers because this URL is using a gateway, but it might be slow or take a while until the file is available.

In Brave, you’ll see a button in your URL bar to open it directly in IPFS (without a gateway). This will change the bar to show an IPFS icon and the IPFS address.

Publishing to IPNS

Each time you change something with your website, you’ll get new hashes for the changed files and folders affected, which makes it hard to always serve your recent version to the world. This is where IPNS (the InterPlanetary Name System) comes into play. You create an IPNS hash that is tied to your Peer ID.

We publish now our website to IPNS:

$ ipfs name publish <website-hash>

You’ll get an output like this:

Published to <your-peer-id>: /ipfs/<website-hash>

This peer ID is now available by accessing it in your browser:

https://ipfs.io/ipns/<your-peer-id>

In Brave, you can directly access it with the ipns:// protocol (it might take a few seconds, until it’s available):

ipfs://<your-peer-id>

You can check where the IPNS is pointing by using this command:

$ ipfs name resolve <your-peer-id>

If you change your website, add it again to the IPFS repository, and publish it again, you’ll see the updated content at that address.

Use a New IPNS Name Key Pair

To publish multiple projects at fixed URLs, you’ll need to generate a new key pair:

$ ipfs key gen <some-name>

You can see your keys with this command:

$ ipfs key list
self
<some-name>

You can publish to a different IPNS name by adding another key pair to the publish command:

$ ipfs name publish --key=<some-name> <website-hash>

MFS – Mutable File System

If you open the IPFS Web UI and navigate to the Files section, you might wonder why it’s empty.

The reason is that files in IPFS are content-addressed and immutable. You can’t overwrite them, create a new version. The hashes in your repository get additionally cleaned up automatically (unless they are pinned) when the cache is full, or you run the cleaning task (garbage collection) manually:

$ ipfs repo gc

If you add a file with ipfs add it will automatically be pinned.

MFS helps to make working with files more comfortable. We can now copy our website to the MFS:

$ ipfs files cp /ipfs/<website-hash> /simple-website

This will create a new folder at the root of the Mutable File System and copy the contents of the website to it. If you reload the Files section of the IPFS Web UI, you’ll see the folder, see its contents, and hashes. You would use MFS for projects you plan to keep track of and have them stay around longer.

You can use a row of UNIX-like commands to create a folder, write files, and copy and move files on MFS. Furthermore, you can find all commands starting with ipfs files in the Command-line reference. This command would create a new file inside a folder:

echo "Hello, World" | ipfs files write --create --parents /my-new-folder/hello-world.txt

Pinning

If you share content on a decentralized, distributed network, it will be available, if at least one node serves it. If you’re the only node on the network and turn off your computer, the data won’t be accessible.

Pinning services solve this problem for you, they allow pinning CID’s to keep them online. I tried Pinata because they offer 1 GB of storage for free.

Hosting IPFS Content With a Domain

There are plenty of different options to serve content with a human-readable name. You could register an ENS name, and connect it to your latest CID, buy a domain at Unstoppable Domains, or use a service like Fleek, to name a few options.

I use Fleek because I just wanted to play around with IPFS, and they offer free hosting. I connected the GitHub repository of my website with Fleek and automatically deploy my website on each push to IPFS. Not only that, but I deploy it currently to a subdomain by adding a CNAME record in my DNS settings, but have bought an Unstoppable Domain.

Conclusion

I’m happy with how the decentralized internet is progressing and even though it feels bumpy and like the early days of the internet. A lot of tinkering, and trying out new ideas and technologies, but it is this feeling that makes me hopeful that we witness the beginning of something new.

I hope we will be able to bring back the control of the internet to the masses and give control of data to the individual.

We need to stop malicious and greedy big tech oligarchs and authoritarian politicians from infringing on our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The Decentralized Web: The Wild West Web

Mon, 01 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMT

The construction of the DWeb (decentralized web) is in full progress for a few years. It’s going on unnoticed by the public, and it’s proceeding slowly. One of the most prominent examples of the decentralized web is Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum). Bitcoin is nothing less than freedom money,[^gladstein2021on] [^fridman2021vm] says Alex Gladstein, chief strategy officer of the Human Rights Foundation.

Except for cryptocurrencies, few parts of the decentralized work are visible to the public. Working on technologies for the decentralized web is hard, unpaid pioneer work, that might (or not) bring massive wealth to the pioneers in the future.

It takes a lot of time and know-how to solve problems for a decentralized web. New technological solutions need to be developed for the three fundamental components of the internet: Storage, Naming, and Databases.

And developers need a long breath. Steve McKie explained in his Medium article the three generations of the DWeb[^mckie2020ar]: Generation 1 was the development of decentralized Browsers (for example Brave Browser), of Ethereum, the Ethereum Name Service (ENS), and IPFS (The InterPlanetary File System).

The 2nd generation is currently being developed: It includes technologies like Handshake, Filecoin, Ethereum 2.0, or WebAssembly. KcKie estimates another 2-3 years are needed to finalize these.

The 3rd generation will bring decentralized governance, name registrars, content storage apps, web hosting, P2P databases, identity management, mesh networking, and social networking. The first contenders of this generation are appearing.

The DWeb has far too many projects, ideas, and technologies to be able to follow all. If you start researching the topic, it quickly becomes overwhelming. It’s nearly impossible to follow all the projects that get created, funded (or not), are discontinued, or die. Many ideas are tested and some will prevail. These will get more stable over time and easier to use, which is important to bring the ideas to the public.

I picked a few decentralized projects I found personally interesting and will explain them in more detail.

Mastodon

Mastodon is an open-source, distributed Microblogging service similar to 𝕏. It is not owned by one company but consists of multiple, decentralized instances owned by private individuals, associations, or companies.

Each instance has its policies and rules. By default, all instances can talk to all other instances, but it’s possible to restrict the communication to other servers or set up filters for specific types of content.

It’s up to the user if they join a progressive-left LGBT+ instance or a right-wing Christian instance. With technical knowledge and a server, you can even set up your instance and create your policies.

It’s possible to mark Toots (the equivalent of a Tweet) with content warnings in case of NSFW, spoilers, or other potential upsetting content.

I like the design and friendliness and its weirdness.

Minds

Minds is a blockchain-based social network. You can earn money or cryptocurrency for using Minds and use the earned tokens to boost posts or support other content creators. Minds has a strong focus on free speech and doesn’t delete content unless it violated a law. They use a 3-strikes system for posting harassment and spam or not tagging NSFW content properly.

Minds has a premium membership program for content creators that want to access exclusive content or monetize their income. But even with a basic account, it’s possible to use the earned tokens to boost your content.

I like the clean design and how nice and big the content is shown. And the edit feature is fantastic to fix a typo later. With a basic account and a few posts, I earned $20 in tokens in 3 years.

Minds has a built-in encrypted chat that was recently migrated to Matrix.

Matrix

Matrix is an open network for secure, decentralized communication. It’s feature-rich and allows communication between different servers running (similar to Mastodon). Additionally, Matrix allows communication over bridging with external services like Slack, Microsoft Teams, IRC, XMPP, Telegram, WhatsApp, Facebook, Hangouts, Signal, and many more.

It’s end-to-end encrypted, supports WebRTC VoIP/Video, and has no single point of control or failure due to its decentralized architecture. Matrix has a feature-set similar to commercial apps, and it introduced recently Spaces, a feature to group rooms and people together (similar to a workspace in Slack).[^chishtie2021ed]

To connect to the Matrix federation, you use a client. You are not forced to use a specific one and can even create your own. The most used client is Element, available for Web, Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Mozilla switched recently from IRC to Matrix,[^gruner2019aa] Minds switched their chat to Matrix. Gitter joined Element,[^le-pape2020xh] Automattic invested nearly $5 Million into New Vector (the company founded by the core Matrix team in 2017),[^hodgson2020aa] [^lomas2020aa] and Element raised $30 Million.[^le-pape2021xi]

More and more governments use Matrix. The French government forked the messenger and created their own messenger Tchap, the German states of Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg use Matrix, and the German military introduced the BwMessenger for communication.[^loynes2020ie]

Matrix provides a service to create a link for any instance to share with people of different instances to connect.

Beaker Browser (dat)

Beaker Browser is a fun peer-to-peer Web browser. It is based on the Chromium engine and uses the dat protocol (dat://). The dat foundation has other interesting Web3 project as Digital Democracy.

It’s easy and fun to create web projects in Beaker Browser and share them with the whole community. The browser is made for developers and has a JavaScript API. Each browser is automatically a node to share content with all other browsers to create a decentralized network.

Filecoin

Filecoin is one of the important project achievements of the decentralized web because it solves with a new cryptocurrency the problem of hosting content and paying for it.

It will democratize the hosting and allow smaller customers to run servers and provide hosting for a decentralized internet. Centralized hosting makes it easy for the provider to dictate prices and remove or block content.

Decentralization helps with the distribution of content because storage providers can repost popular files and grow with the demand and transport it to all regions of the world, where it is requested, making it faster to access.

If somebody wants to store content, they can negotiate with storage providers and pick the best option. The provider earns the storage fee over time. To ensure the data is correctly stored, cryptographic proof verifies the data.

A user who would like to request a file finds a provider that stores the content, pays, and receives the file.

LBRY & Odyssee

LBRY is an open, free, and fair network for digital content. Most people access it via the video-sharing platform Odysee which is similar to YouTube.

But LBRY is more. It is a protocol (lbry://) for any type of digital content, for example, videos, music, e-books, or video games. It has the aim to become the digital library of the future.

The content of the network is distributed across a network of hosts similar to BitTorrent, but with built-in possibilities for monetization, while the metadata lives on a blockchain.

Content creators can set a price or give the content away for free, content consumers can tip content creators or purchase paid content. LBRY uses its own cryptocurrency LBC (LBRY Credits).

The project is open-source and the company behind the project, LBRY Inc. build it in a way that it can never become a single point of failure, should it turn evil. LBRY is very censorship-resistant. The video platform Odysee has a mild content policy and blocks horrific or infringing content from its server, but the LBRY Desktop app can access every file of the network without relying on the servers of LBRY Inc.

As long as one node is distributing the content, it’s nearly impossible to get rid of the content. It’s possible to host content anonymously or within a user's namespace. Popular content is hosted by dozens, hundreds, or thousands of computers, depending on its popularity. The possibility of pretty URLs makes content shareable.

This is different from other decentralized video platforms such as BitChute, DTube, or Dlive, where the website is usually the single, centralized control point to discover content. Should the website turn evil, or disappear, all content is gone.

With the recent aggressive deletions of videos by YouTube of scientists talking about COVID-19 or other controversial political topics, more and more content creators started using Odysee. It provides a YouTube Sync option (for YouTube channels with recent and regular content and a minimum of 300 subscribers), has an iOS app, and an LBRY app for Android. It provides RSS feeds for each channel, and it’s possible to download any video to the hard drive.

IPFS

IPFS is one of the decentralized projects that has massive potential and is mature. I first discovered it when the Brave web browser added native support for the IPFS protocol in January 2021.[^brave2021yc][^bondy2021ag]

IPFS stands for InterPlanetary File System and is a peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol (ipfs://). This name is not a joke but hints at the possibilities of the protocol in the distant future. Currently, communication between Mars and Earth takes around 13 minutes,[^ormston2012dr], and transmitting 30 MB of data can take up to 20 hours.[^nasa2012gh] Not the best conditions for a person on Mars to browse the internet. But IPFS and its features could help with this, by storing hashes on nodes on Mars to reduce the access time to commonly requested files dramatically.

Any file in the IPFS network is split into smaller chunks, which are cryptographically hashed and have a unique fingerprint, a CID (content identifier). It is the permanent record for this file as it exists at that point.

Other nodes on the network look up the file and store a copy of it, becoming a provider of the content until the cache is cleared.

IPFS allows the pinning of content to keep it forever. Each node decided this way what content it is interested in.

Each new file or change in the content creates a new hash and thus making it resistant to tampering and censorship. All files stored in IPFS are automatically versioned.

The advantages of IPFS compared to the current web are improved performance because the content is loaded from the nearest location. The bandwidth is improved, with data savings improving up to 60% for video. The network is resistant to censorship. The decentralization helps to be resistant in cases of bad connectivity (flaky Wi-Fi, natural disasters, or in the developing world) and prevents central authorities from mandating rules or limitations on its users.

To run your node, you can either use Brave Browser, IPFS Desktop, the IPFS Companion extension (available for most browsers) or the command-line tool. If you use Brave and visit the first-time an IPFS address, you’ll be asked if you want to run your node or use a public HTTP gateway.

The IPNS decentralized naming system can help to find the latest version of a file, and DNSLink allows mapping CID’s to human-readable DNS names.

[^gladstein2021on]: Alex Gladstein (2021): Bitcoin Is Protecting Human Rights Around the World, https://reason.com/video/2021/02/05/bitcoin-is-protecting-human-rights-around-the-world/.

[^fridman2021vm]: Lex Fridman and Alex Gladstein (2021): #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights, https://lexfridman.com/alex-gladstein/.

[^mckie2020ar]: Steven McKie (2020): The Decentralized Web -- Explaining the Impending DWeb Explosion, https://medium.com/amentum/the-decentralized-web-509caa2a87a6

[^gruner2019aa]: Sebastian Grüner (2019): Mozilla wechselt von IRC auf Matrix und Riot, https://www.golem.de/news/chat-mozilla-wechselt-von-irc-auf-matrix-und-riot-1912-145664.html.

[^hodgson2020aa]: Matthew Hodgson (2020): Welcoming Automattic to Matrix!, https://matrix.org/blog/2020/05/21/welcoming-automattic-to-matrix.

[^lomas2020aa]: Natasha Lomas (2020): Automattic pumps $4.6M into New Vector to help grow Matrix, an open, decentralized comms ecosystem, https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/21/automattic-pumps-4-6m-into-new-vector-to-help-grow-matrix-an-open-decentralized-comms-ecosystem/.

[^loynes2020ie]: Steve Loynes (2020): BwMessenger goes live for Bundeswehr!, https://element.io/blog/bwmessenger-goes-live-for-bundeswehr/.

[^le-pape2020xh]: Amandine Le Pape (2020): Gitter is joining Element, https://element.io/blog/gitter-is-joining-element/.

[^le-pape2021xi]: Amandine Le Pape (2021): Element raises $30M as Matrix explodes!, https://element.io/blog/element-raises-30m-as-matrix-explodes/.

[^chishtie2021ed]: Nad Chishtie (2021): Spaces: The next frontier, https://element.io/blog/spaces-the-next-frontier/.

[^brave2021yc]: Brave (2021): Brave Integrates IPFS, https://brave.com/brave-integrates-ipfs/.

[^bondy2021ag]: Brian Bondy (2021): IPFS Support in Brave, https://brave.com/ipfs-support/.

[^ormston2012dr]: Thomas Ormston (2012): Time Delay Between Mars and Earth, https://blogs.esa.int/mex/2012/08/05/time-delay-between-mars-and-earth/.

[^nasa2012gh]: NASA (2012): Communications with Earth, https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/mission/communications/.

Haiku 23

Mon, 01 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Abzweigung am Weg, nicht genommener Weg im Nebel – Ich schaue nicht zurück.
Junction on the way, the path not taken is in the fog – I don't look back.

The Decentralized Web: Why Do We Need It?

Mon, 25 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMT

It’s been at least 25 years since I first used a modem to dial through the landline into “the internet”. You’ll never forget the robotic beeping when you grew up with Dial-Up Modems.

I was curious and hopeful for the future of the internet. I even took on a job that depends on it. And the rise of social media (Web 2.0) looked promising and full of opportunities. But over the following years, I had to watch how Big Tech and Big Sales took over large parts of the internet. They build gigantic walls around their properties, stopped supporting open protocols wherever possible, developed proprietary technical solutions, and siloed people into their platforms.

The internet became less diverse and less fun, and the big companies started tracking, tracing, and collecting any activity of us to use to make even more money. Data became the most valuable commodity. But many people didn’t care because it meant a bigger reach, easier access to an audience, and free entertainment.

The Free & Open Internet is Dying

5 years ago, I started noticing worrying trends on the internet. Plenty of companies started consolidating their powers. Google dropped the “Don’t be evil” credo after they started negotiating with weapons manufacturers. The companies started to use their reach and power to spread their political and social ideologies. It started slowly, subtly, and nearly unnoticeable with biased ranking algorithms under the pretension of “showing more relevant content to users”.

As a center-left Libertarian who follows conservative outlets, I noticed the political bias much earlier than people who read exclusively left-wing news. I witnessed how the hypocritical inequality and standards applied to different political ideas increased a lot. Search results of Google and their competitors started to look like being from a different planet. I stopped using Google products and switched to privacy products like Brave Browser, Brave Search, or DuckDuckGo.

Wikipedia started locking down numerous pages and a hard progressive-left bias became visible on plenty of pages. Biographies of liberal or progressive people were missing known scandals. For right-leaning people, every fringe accusation was rolled out in length (preferably using labels as alt-right or conspiracy theorist) and grounded on claims by dubious biased media outlets or left fact-checker sites. Wikipedia became a weapon for political smears. They discontinued allowing multiple big conservative newspapers as sources and even the Co-Founder of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger, started to warn people about Wikipedia’s obvious bias.

The big Deplatforming started with fringe conspiracy people like Alex Jones but quickly continued with political agitators with the “wrong opinions” like Milo Yiannopoulos or Gavin McInnes and even liberals such as Carl Benjamin. Big Tech companies colluded to take down people in coordinated campaigns with made-up claims for violations of the community guidelines. The accusations were never clear or precise and could rarely be challenged. Even worse, sometimes they colluded with payment or server providers to make it nearly impossible for an affected person to continue to run a business or live a normal life.

Techniques of Censorship

But Big Tech developed a range of techniques to control opinion on their platforms:

Age Restricted Content is a technique to make it harder for people to access unpopular opinions. It’s not violent or sexual content that gets ranked by this, but political or religious information that runs against the ideology of Big Tech. To view the content, a person needs to be an adult and prove this by adding an ID or credit card information. And even then, you have to dismiss annoying warning labels to confirm to see “unsafe” content.
Demonetization is a subtle educational tool to punish content creators for talking about the “wrong” opinions. Even though there are always advertising companies interested in advertising on nearly any content, Big Tech decides wrong opinions can’t be monetized. But they continue running ads on demonetized content, but don’t transfer the money to the content creator and keep it for themselves.
Shadow Banning is a technique where a specific content or comment is invisible to the community, without the awareness of the author that the content can’t be seen. Sometimes complete topics or hashtags get shadow-banned.
De-Ranking is used to make sure only the correct opinions can be found. De-Ranked content appears much later in search results. People have to scroll by prioritized content that is of the opposite opinion.
Throttling is used to reduce the reach of unfavored opinions by slowing down how fast the content can be shared or who can see the content.
Content Blocking is an invasive technique where social media platforms blacklist words, hashtags, or links from being shared, sometimes even in private conversations.
Strikes are another educational method, applied with a three-strikes system, where the account gets deleted after the content creator collected three warnings for violations of community guidelines.
Deplatforming is the final stage where the account of a content creator gets banned, blocked, or deleted either for a few days, weeks, months or forever. You’ll see this technique applied coordinated between Silicon Valley companies to remove a person on all platforms at once.

The beginning of President Trump’s presidency marked a date where both sides of the political spectrum became ruthless in spreading misinformation and fake news. Other countries like China, Russia, and Iran started stirring up hate with bots. The political divide in the West deteriorated rapidly. The trust in media sunk to the lowest point in decades.[^johnson2021qe] Divisive ideas as Critical Theory[^lindsay2020da] started dividing people based on immutable characteristics like race, sex, or gender.

All that was needed was a match—the death of George Floyd—to ignite the worst race riots in decades. There was the release and cover-up of a likely man-made Virus on the world[^rogin2021rn]. Then the suppression of important compromising information about a presidential candidate,[^harsanyi2020yv] a suspicious election, the deplatforming of a sitting president, and the removal of the conservative social media service Parler[^crichton2021km] by competitors poured gasoline on the fire.

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes? (Who Watches the Watchers?)

The censorship and deplatforming that previously “only” affected conservative or libertarian people started to affect public safety and unleashed harm and killed people.

Scientists that didn’t support the stories of the WHO or CDC – both unelected, suspicious organizations with decades-long histories of corruption and mismanagement – were deleted and removed.

Governments in multiple countries (including my country, Germany) asked “scientists” for strategy papers that would allow repressive techniques to control the population.[^fminterior2020qo]

The unholy alliance of power-hungry governments, Big Tech, and new media started drumming up the panic narrative which became worse with each week. Each of the parties had different reasons: Politicians to acquire more power and control, Big Tech to enrich themselves massively, news media for clicks and money, and scientists for fame, money, and attention. Deviating or critical voices were silenced, slandered, and insulted.

People died because politicians send infected patients back into elderly homes or put them on ventilators too early. A rushed vaccine developed without sufficient clinical testing was released to the world without proper systems to track adverse side effects.

Effective treatment with known (patent-free) drugs like Ivermectin was forbidden – likely to not risk the billions made from the vaccines. A meta-analysis of Ivermectin[^ivmmeta2021ra] and real-world success stories, as from India (Uttar Pradesh), Peru, and large parts of Africa showed its effectiveness against COVID-19. But the media wouldn’t stop calling out podcaster Joe Rogan, who took prescribed Ivermectin to fight his COVID-19 infection, for taking “Horse Paste”, “Life Stock Pills” or “Horse Dewormer.”

The damage by the vaccines (taken from multiple adverse databases from the EU, CDC, or WHO) is after half a year in the millions (excluding massive underreporting), but the powerful cabal of censors is unstoppable.

Objective science was removed, and the people in power use their fact-checkers to smear all opinions they don’t approve of, or directly flag posts on social media for removal. Scientific papers get unpublished overnight without explanation, and review processes that should take 6 months, are reduced to one day.[^goddek2021tr] It’s the endgame of an information war.

Even though I focused on censorship, many more grave dangers are looming in the world, that currently don’t affect the West, but might soon. Increasingly authoritarian and totalitarian regimes around the world control, monitor, block or cut off access to the internet. The Great Firewall of China is one example. Other countries have cut off the internet temporarily for political reasons, for example in Turkey. The EU has legally forbidden access to Russian news outlets since the Ukraine war started. Additionally, considerable parts of the world have to rely on inflationary currencies that destroy their savings. Decentralization can help to repel these infringements on personal liberty.

The End of Freedom

The future looks dark for freedom-loving people, who believe in personal responsibility, the autonomy of choice, and an informed and open citizen. The rise of China as a totalitarian Dictatorship and the intentional weakening from within the USA might result in a dystopian future unless people wake up and resist. China has bought half of the world. Their influence on media and culture is strong and will be a nightmare for a free and open society. And Big Tech and governments showed which side in the war they will pick if it was either business or freedom.

I fear the current internet can’t be saved anymore. Too powerful is the grip of the tech giants. The antitrust case won’t go far, because of the strong ties between the government and Big Tech. Too many people have sold out to Big Tech or China.

The only hope for a free future is a decentralized internet where people can get information without governments being able to control the flow of information. One where you own your data and that is in control by the people and smart contracts, not governments or corporations, and one that can’t be controlled or censored.

[^johnson2021qe]: Ben Johnson (2021): Americans Have World’s Lowest Trust In Media: Survey, https://www.dailywire.com/news/americans-have-worlds-lowest-trust-in-media-survey.

[^lindsay2020da]: Dr. James Lindsay (2020): Critical Theory, https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-critical-theory/.

[^harsanyi2020yv]: David Harsanyi (2020): How the media covered up the Hunter Biden story — until after the election, https://nypost.com/2020/12/10/how-media-covered-up-the-hunter-biden-story-until-after-the-election/.

[^rogin2021rn]: Josh Rogin (2021): New congressional report says covid-19 likely emerged in Wuhan months earlier than originally thought, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/02/new-report-says-covid-emerged-in-wuhan-months-earlier/.

[^crichton2021km]: Danny Crichton (2021): The deplatforming of President Trump, https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/09/the-deplatforming-of-a-president/.

[^fminterior2020qo]: Bundesministerium des Innern, für Bau und Heimat (2020): Wie wir COVID-19 unter Kontrolle bekommen, https://www.bmi.bund.de/SharedDocs/downloads/DE/veroeffentlichungen/2020/corona/ szenarienpapier-covid19.html.

[^ivmmeta2021ra]: ivmmeta.com (2021): Ivermectin for COVID-19: real-time meta analysis of 63 studies, https://ivmmeta.com/.

[^goddek2021tr]: Dr. Simon Goddek (2021): How Scientific Fraud took the World Hostage, https://www.goddeketal.com/how-scientific-fraud-took-the-world-hostage/.

Haiku 22

Fri, 01 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Kalt bläst der Herbstwind, ich wandere verlassen im Wald – Erinnerung an den Sommer.
Autumn wind blows cold, I wander deserted in the forest – Memory of summer.

Using Readwise with Obsidian for Note-Talking: Make your highlights work for you

Tue, 14 Sep 2021 00:00:00 GMT

I recently rediscovered Readwise again. I’d heard of the service before, but couldn’t see the immediate advantage for me, and had forgotten it again.

But when I heard a beta version of a Readwise plugin for Obsidian was released, I started my 30 days testing period for Readwise. And it changed the way I write notes.

I read a lot: of books, articles, and tweets, and use Raindrop.io to highlight interesting sentences or paragraphs. I highlight on my Kindle, in PDFs, and in Markdown files, which made it confusing to find a highlight again later.

I highlight too much to extract everything into my Zettelkasten, but I would have loved to be able to look for my highlights later. Searching in DEVONthink is nice, but I couldn’t get my highlights from Feedly or Pocket into it. Readwise solved this problem for me.

Importing Highlights

Books

Readwise has many possibilities to import highlights. You can import highlights from your Kindle, Apple Books, or Google Books. You can even scan paper books with fantastic OCR. Likewise, you can drop your highlighted PDFs into Readwise, and it will extract the highlights.

Articles

Articles can be imported from Pocket, Instapaper, Feedly, Medium, or from every webpage. I like in particular how easy it is to send 𝕏 tweets or complete 𝕏 threads into Readwise.

Podcasts

It’s even possible to get your Podcast highlights from Snipd or Airr. I started using it to request transcripts. Mark the podcast in between two-time codes, and the text will be transferred into Readwise.

And these are only the services I use, Readwise has more, and they constantly add new services.

It’s possible to get the favorite highlights of other readers from Goodreads or Supplemental Books.

Review of Highlights

I started reviewing my highlights of the day. Occasionally, I correct or improve the metadata (Title, Author, or Category) or add tags. If a highlight is important, I immediately create a permanent note in my Obsidian Zettelkasten.

Readwise sends out emails at a preferred time to review the highlights, but I prefer to use the app. Every morning, 5-6 random highlights are presented in the app. With a simple touch, it’s possible to reject or keep a highlight for spaced repetition learning or mark it as a favorite.

Since a few weeks ago, it’s possible to create Themed Reviews. These allow for creating custom reviews of a specific source and reviewing them at a specific time. It’s possible, for example, to create a “Stoicism” Review and add everything tagged with stoicism and specific Stoic books as a source.

Exporting Highlights

As I mentioned before in my essays, I stopped using web services that don’t allow the convenient export of my content. I don’t even consider them.

Readwise goes beyond exporting the highlights. It allows exporting continuously every highlight to Obsidian, Notion, Evernote, Roam, and others. And as Obsidian’s content is offline with pure text (Markdown) it is impossible to be unreadable in the future.

Readwise Obsidian Plugin

The Readwise Obsidian Plugin (in Beta) is fantastic. It automatically exports all highlights as Markdown into the vault. You have the freedom to change the template, and select in what time interval it should import the highlights.

Every section (Books, Articles, Tweets, Podcasts) is a separate folder, and every source is a separate Markdown file. The highlights are listed in those files, including metadata such as tags, categories, author names, or URLs.

If a file was once downloaded, additional highlights will be added to the end with a date and timestamp. This allows you to add or change the content without overwriting the changes with the next synchronization. If needed, a file can be deleted to import it new the next time.

I started my test by adding the Readwise imports into my Zettelkasten vault but quickly decided against it. The Zettelkasten should be reserved for your notes, written by you, and not hold any references. References are to be stored somewhere else. I store my references in a DEVONthink database.

I decided to create a new Obsidian vault for highlights to have my highlights—which are references until I write them in my words—separate from my notes. Another advantage is that the imported tags and links don’t mix with mine. As the imports are from various sources, you can’t control them, but you can change them after the import.

The Graph View gets more useful over time, as sources, authors, and tags are connected over time. The full-text search of Obsidian or DEVONthink, in which I indexed the vault, allows finding the highlights again.

I subscribed to Readwise after the trial ended.

Haiku 21

Wed, 01 Sep 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Blätter tanzen im Wind, verborgen im dichten Nebel — mein Herz ist so schwer.
Leaves dancing in the wind, hidden in thick fog – my heart is so heavy.

The Old Man on the Bench: A quiet friendship found on a forest path

Tue, 31 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMT

When my daily routines were changed by the Corona crisis, I picked up a new habit: Walking. Each day I walked around lakes and through forests in the morning, during lunchtime, or in the evening.

One day in the spring I saw an old man, sitting on a bench next to a lake in the forest. His foldable bike next to the bench, a binocular in his hands, he was watching birds.

The weeks went by, and I saw him again and again. Our encounters started with a nod, then a short greeting, each time I passed by the bench. And one day he lifted his hand, signalizing to me, that he would like to say something. I don’t remember what he wanted to talk about, it might have been how nice the weather was or that he was happy it stopped raining.

Weeks passed, and we greeted each other, and every so often we talked for a few minutes.

One day, the bench was empty, which wasn’t unusual because we didn’t see each other every day. When I followed the path through the forest, I saw him sitting on a fallen tree in the middle of the forest. I asked why he had changed his location, and he told me the bench was occupied when he approached it.

We talked, and he asked me about my life and job. I learned he was a painter, and he was proud to be always able to live from creating art. He had worked for a long time in his life as a stage artist for the Opera. The backgrounds and artwork used today were his work. I told him that I worked in the building next to the Opera and I could hear the opera singers practicing during the days.

I learned of his passion for rock climbing and how he immigrated from Austria to Germany. He told me how much he misses the mountains and climbing, but at 82 it wasn’t possible anymore to climb. When he talked about grabbing the rocks with his fingers, I could see the fire in his eyes. He regretted having lost contact with his family and his children.

There are not many birds in the forests these days, he told me with a sad face. I asked him what he meant because the forest would be full of loud twittering birds. He realized that the birds were still there, but his ears couldn’t hear them anymore. I think that day, he felt for the first time that he was old.

That was the last time I saw him. Weeks passed by, then months, but the bench stayed abandoned. I don’t know if he gave up looking for birds he was unable to hear, got sick, or if he died. But I’m glad I talked to him.

I wrote this Haiku for him.

Learning Poems: Verse you can carry anywhere

Mon, 23 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMT

I’ve been enjoying learning poems for a few months now. It started when I heard a fantastic visual recitation by Lauren Southern of Rudyard Kipling’s The Gods of the Copybook Headings.

The poem is an echo from 100 years ago. Full of wisdom and a mirror held up to our generation. It’s deep and hard to understand, which was the reason I dug into it. I wrote a modern interpretation of the poem a few months ago.

And then I started learning the poem. First for fun, and I wasn’t sure I would be able to remember it because it’s long (10 stanzas with four lines). I was surprised and impressed when I was able to remember it after two weeks in its entirety.

I used a simple spaced-repetition method to remember it. I used the spaced-repetition application Anki, but there are other with similar features. And recently, I found a Flashcard-Based and Note-Based Spaced Repetition Plugin for Obsidian, the note-taking app of my choice.

Next, I learned the English translation of Epitaph for “Poet’s Tomb” by Shuntaro Tanikawa. I first heard the poem in the visual epitaph Hikari in 2017. The film remembers the Japanese poet Hiraki-san, who took her life after struggling with depression.

Compared to The Gods of the Copybook Headings, this poem was easy to learn in 1-2 days. Learning it in Japanese took longer, but I can recite it now. I had to use the cloze feature of Anki to learn the sentences step by step. It also helped me to use AI to let the words and grammar explain to me. It improved my Japanese skills a lot.

The next poem on my list is If— by Rudyard Kipling. It provides traditional advice about how to live a good life and is considered to be one of the best examples of Victorian stoicism.[^jenson2016ib]

When I tried to remember what poems I had to learn in school, I couldn’t remember a single one. I think the reason is, that we didn’t have to remember any. I think we didn’t even read poems. I remember we sang the Niedersachsenlied (the song of the Lower Saxons) in music class.

I think learning poetry faded out in the generations before mine. My parents and grandparents had to learn poems in school. Sadly, we stopped learning poems.

But it is a fantastic way to train the brain and to remember the wisdom of our ancestors. If we stop, we lose our culture and the teachings of the past. This will result in making the same mistakes, or as a quote, misattributed to Mark Twain[^research2014ej] says History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.

[^jenson2016ib]: Jamie Jenson (2016): If— by Rudyard Kipling, https://poemanalysis.com/rudyard-kipling/if/.

[^research2014ej]: Quote Research (2014): History Does Not Repeat Itself, But It Rhymes, https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/01/12/history-rhymes/.

Haiku 20

Sun, 01 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Regen fällt leise, grau verhangener Himmel — drinnen ist es warm.
Rain falls softly gray cloudy sky – it’s warm inside.

DEVONthink and Obsidian: The Perfect Pair of Tools for Note-Taking

Fri, 23 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMT

With the release of the mobile versions of Obsidian last week, my note-taking workflow got even more comfortable.

The mobile versions are fantastic. They support all plugins of the Desktop version, even community plugins.

The mobile version has additional settings for mobile, to customize the toolbar and quick action.

Synchronization

To sync between Desktop and mobile devices, the Obsidian vaults have to be moved to an iCloud system folder.

The synchronization is superfast (I assume thanks to Apple CloudKit). It takes 2-3 seconds to see a change reflected live on another device.

My Updated Setup

I moved my Obsidian vault to the iCloud system folder to be able to synchronize between devices. I kept the Git Repository and commit changes regularly every day. I use this simple shell script for that:

#!/bin/sh

gstatus=`git status --porcelain`

if [ ${#gstatus} -ne 0 ]
then
  git add --all
  git commit -m `date +%Y-%m-%d-%H%m%S`
  git pull --rebase
  git push
fi

I plan to run this script soon with a daemon at regular intervals.

The same vault is indexed in my DEVONthink Archive database.

And because the vault lives in iCloud, all changes in Obsidian or DEVONthink to any file are reflected immediately. DEVONthink supports the Markdown syntax of Obsidian, which makes it convenient to edit files regardless of which of the two applications.

Obsidian has better tools for linking and thinking than DEVONthink, but DEVONthink is more powerful in storing reference items, analyzing text, tagging, and plenty of other features.

My Note-Taking Workflow

When I come across an interesting article, quote, audio, or video, I capture the item as explained in my previous article How I Process Information Into Notes.

If it is text in an image, I use the OCR feature to convert it into selectable text. I’m curious how my workflow will improve with the upcoming Apple updates this fall, which will bring native text selection in images.

Articles I always save as Markdown to my reference database for later reference. The DEVONthink capture feature is one of the most useful features I know. It grabs the article, cleans it from advertising and layout elements, and converts it to Markdown, including all links.

I use the Markdown highlight feature (==highlight==) to mark appealing parts of the text. These parts get converted into permanent notes in Obsidian. To remember where I got the note from, I create a new entry in a BibDesk database (which lives inside my Obsidian vault in a subfolder) and add the reference key to the note.

I tag my notes with hashtags (#tag) which I convert to system tags with DEVONthink.

To link notes together, I use the auto-complete feature of Obsidian to find related notes.

Haiku 19

Thu, 01 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Oft sah ich ihn dort, den alten Mann auf der Bank – jetzt ist sie verwaist.
I often saw him there, the old man on the bench – now it is abandoned.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings: A Warning Against Loss of Virtue, Morality, and Reason

Sat, 12 Jun 2021 00:00:00 GMT

A few months ago, I stumbled over the poem The Gods of the Copybook Headings by Rudyard Kipling. I had never heard of the poem before, but the visual interpretation of the poem by filmmaker and author Lauren Southern put me under a spell. I watched it over and over again and can recite the poem from my memory.

As a reasonable person with political libertarian views, I’m utterly frustrated with the ongoing global movement against reason that accelerated over the last 5 years. The poem echoes this feeling.

Historical Background

The poem was released at a deeply confusing and worrying time. The First World War had killed 17 Million people—Kipling’s son one of them—and the Spanish flu killed an additional 59-100 Million people between 1918-1920.

Disillusioned from the war, Pacifism became popular, Patriotism unpopular, and religion and morality suffered a major setback.

The Russian Revolution had removed the Tsar in 1917 and many people looked at Marxist socialism as the solution to all humanity’s problems.

Kipling was not happy with the political developments. He feared that giving up morals and values would lead to people not trusting each other and result in the destruction of the civilization.[^spiller2000]

The poem is his warning.

Copybook Headings

A page from a 19th-century copybook, in which the printed headings have been copied. The homily is paraphrased from a 17th-century sermon of Isaac Barrow, Against Detraction — “Good nature, like a bee, collects honey from every herb. Ill nature, like a spider, sucks poison from the flowers.”

Copybook Headings were lined pages with short wisdom, aphorisms, or verses at the top, used to practice cursive writing. The student was challenged to repeat the sentence a few dozen times on the page and by doing not only learned the handwriting but took in the wisdom and morals transmitted from one generation to another.

The Poem

The poem was released in London on 26th October 1919 in the Sunday Pictorial. In 1920, it was released in the USA under the title The Gods of the Copybook Margins.

It is a poem with ten stanzas, each with four lines (Quatrains) with a rhyme scheme of AABB CCDD.

The poem is a conservative poem. Its basic message is that everything progressive and new isn’t new at all. It was tried before and it failed. It is a call to return to reason, values, and objective truth. Human progress is dependent on ideas, but few of them will survive the test through the Gods, the rest will be destroyed.

Stanza 1

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

The poet travels metaphorically through different times and as different people, and bows to the Gods of the Marketplace.

The Gods of the Marketplace, are those temporary fads like Dutch tulip bulbs, dot-com stocks, mortgage-backed securities, and […] carbon credits,[^levinson2011kv] writes William A. Levinson. These gods are promises and ideas, social progress, and delusory ideologies that despise the truth. The 20th century had no shortage of these ideas, even though Kipling didn’t know about the harm that Socialism, Fascism, or Nazi ideology would unleash on the world.

And the new century has, unfortunately, no shortage of bad ideas: The resurrection of Postmodernism and Neo-Marxism, Identity Politics, Critical Theory, victimhood culture, the war on drugs, boys, masculinity, the nuclear family, merit, and free market-based capitalism, or living on debt, to name a few.

But all these bad ideas will fail and crumble and the Gods of the Copybook Headings will prevail because they are the nonpartisan, scientific, and implacable laws of economics and human behavior.[^levinson2011kv]

Stanza 2

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

The poet tells the story that these laws were there from the beginning. Early humans learned from the errors others made: Fire will burn you, poisonous berries will make you sick, and a predator will eat you. This common knowledge became stories and turned into myths over time.[^peterson2017yx]

But new gods arrived that looked more promising: progress, money, wealth, or comfort. Humanity forgot the common knowledge and wisdom and moved on.

Not every progress is good for the individual. While agriculture led to an explosion in the growth of population for example, it resulted in declined health of humans and higher mother and child mortality. Less food variation resulted in malnutrition. Dense living conditions with other humans and animals, poor sewage, and waste conditions resulted in declining health. The bones and skulls of those humans were much smaller than their hunter-gatherer ancestors.[^curnoe2017dn] We can see this even today, where most people need their wisdom tooth’s removed because they don’t fit in the jaw because we don’t chew hard things anymore.

Stanza 3

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

The Gods of the Marketplace end civilizations that ignore common knowledge and objective truth.

Where the hunter-gatherer knew if I hunt two monkeys today, I have to walk twice as long tomorrow, the humans who follow the Gods of the Marketplace don’t learn. Again and again, we can see them failing.

Be it Rome that fell through decadence and politics unable to defend the Empire against invading barbarians, or the Maya that created cities with millions of inhabitants, artificial soil, and streets but destroyed themselves with endless war and unrestrained extraction of natural resources.

Stanza 4

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch.
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch.
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings.
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

Denial of objective truth is one of the signs of a society’s downfall.

We live in a time filled with lies that deny objective truth and create pseudo-realities that can eventually lead to Totalitarianism.[^lindsay2020aa] If enough people believe a lie, societies become unable to solve their problems and fail.

Large parts of the world honesty believe that Black people are hunted by racist police in the streets. Instead of researching the topic to get to the truth, the self-proclaimed social justice warriors replace their social media profile images with black images to show solidarity. This doesn’t help to solve the structural problems of Black communities but gives a quick way of feeling self-righteous and morally superior.

But when investigated, the stories begin to crumble quickly. The “Black Lives Matter” organization was founded on a lie repeating the mantra Hands up, don’t shoot of the Michael Brown case.[^elder2020aa] More worrying is that the organization was founded by confessing Marxists. The founders have ties to the radical-left terrorist organization “The Weather Underground” which bombed buildings like The Capitol and Pentagon in the 60s and 70s.[^kohls2020aa]

Until recently, they stated one of their goals was the “destruction of the nuclear family.” The organization is used every four years to help the Democrats win elections. It is used to transfer billions of donations through dubious channels to political agitators, the money will likely never reach Black communities. Even the mother of Breonna Taylor, a victim of a police shooting, called the organization a fraud.[^byrne2021pl] The co-founder, however, grew exceptionally rich for a Marxist since she started the organization.[^vincent2021en]

While they claim Blacks are hunted in the streets by racist cops, the number of shot unarmed Blacks for 2019 was between 13-27 (depending on the database), and the numbers for Whites are higher.[^mccaffree2021li] Taking the crime and murder rate to the proportion of the US population these numbers are explained as unfortunate accidents.

Though each shooting is tragic, it’s far from being a major problem, considering that the police conduct over 300 million checks each year.

The big elephant in the room, on the other hand, is regularly ignored by everybody: 93% of Black murder victims are murdered by Blacks.[^sherman2013rw]

Murder is the leading cause of death for Black males between 15-34.[^qiu2014mo] The absence of a father in the home is one of the reasons for the high crime rate in Black communities. 72% of Black children (in some cities more than 80%) are born out of wedlock.[^jacobson2013cp] The Father Absence Crisis is the major problem of the Black Community.[^steward2013aa]

The riots and looting of 2020 and the defunding or abolishing of the police in cities in the USA resulted in massively increasing murder rates (Portland reported a 2,000% surge)[^faria2021qg] and destroyed communities for decades. As Thomas Sowell noted, many black ghettos are still desolated decades after the race riots of the 60s.[^sowell2013aa]

Ironically, it’s mostly white progressives who want to abolish the police in Black neighborhoods, 81% of Blacks want the same level or more of policing.[^gillespie2020dv]

Another worrying pseudo-reality is the denial of biological sex. Allowing the most radical activists to determine the discourse can lead to bad outcomes.

Women’s sports are in the progress of being eradicated by biological males competing with biological females and dwarfing their records everywhere. Trans MMA fighter Fallon Fox broke recently the skull of a female opponent twice to win a match.[^emmons2020ln]

Aggressive male criminals can self-identify in California as female and are transferred to women’s prisons where they are put together with biological women.[^emmons2020en] Soon women’s shelters might be forced to take in biological males, that self-identify as female.[^desanctis2021db]

Gender dysphoria in Swedish teen girls is up 1,500 percent since 2008.[^dms2020ck] Teenage girls are insecure and prone to social peer pressure, which explains the sky-rocking numbers with whole groups of girls coming out as ”Trans” or “Non-Binary.” In some countries, it’s possible to use puberty blockers or even sex reassignment surgery without the consent of the parents. This results in irreversible damage that can’t be reversed should the child change their mind later.[^robbins2018sc][^jackson2020cv]

Radical activists try to compel speech and intimidate others to recognize the 70+ made-up gender pronouns, while it is perfectly possible to respect any transgender with the existing two pronouns.

The denial of objective truth shows itself in the invention of words like birthing person (mother), chest feeding (breastfeeding), or in statements like men can menstruate and give birth or a trans-woman is a woman which are objectively false.

Attacks on scientists of biology or evolution biology increased in the last few years. Multiple scientists retracted their papers out of fear of being canceled. Naval Ravikant said in a recent interview: Biology will suffer the most. Synthetic biology, for example, a lot of this will end up in China because you won’t be able to map facts and reality and actions together.[^rogan2019ul]

The denial of objective truth will not only endanger women and children but drive all science of biology into foreign countries, resulting in a huge scientific knowledge drain.

Stanza 5

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

The Cambrian is a reference to the Welsh Lloyd George, prime minister during World War I. He negotiated the peace treaty in Versailles in 1919. The disarmament of the Germans was negotiated but at the same time the disarmament of the winners. The peace didn’t hold for long, and Germany rearmed in secrecy.

This stanza is a warning to believe nobody who promises lasting peace. A country needs to ensure it’s always able to defend its values and borders (if needed with violence) against aggressors, or it will cease to exist.

If you don’t, you will get conditions like France, where 226 people were killed by Islamic terrorists between 2011 and 2021.[^ap2020wm] The parallel societies grew so dangerous in the past years, that the police don't go anymore into some city districts. 20 retired generals and 1,000 soldiers warned in April 2021 in an open letter,[^bbcnews2021eu] followed by another warning, signed by 130,000 people, that a civil war might soon break out.[^bbcnews2021uf]

It is important to be able to defend oneself because a harmless man is not a good man. A good man is a very, very dangerous man, who has that under voluntary control, as Jordan B. Peterson stated.

One can become worried about the security of Western values and way of life when reading that the US military ends gender-neutral fitness tests for soldiers to be more inclusive[^ffn2021ru] or starts implementing woke ideology[^nightingale2021ne] while Chinese soldiers train in harsh weather and the government works on programs genetically enhancing their soldiers.[^dilanian2020je] A recent joke goes like this: When the Chinese soldiers invade, the US soldiers will ask them what their pronouns are.

Stanza 6

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

The Feminian Sandstones is a reference to the emancipation of women. The stanza is additionally a reference to relaxed sexual morality.

The results of the sexual revolution and women in the workforce are positive for the individual. But the plunging birthrates in Western countries are a serious threat to these countries. If the fertility rate falls below the replacement level, a population is unable to recover and will die out. Problems arise much earlier with an aging population because social security systems, health care, and retirement plans stop working.

The stable nuclear family is declining, with one-person households increasing dramatically. Senseless One-Night-Stands, pornography, and girls making their income as prostitutes on OnlyFans are a side effect of constantly lowered sexual morality. Finding a partner is reduced to dating apps, where people get “swiped” by their looks.

Children are hypersexualized and objectified in TV shows like “Cuties” or “AJ, and the Queens”, indoctrinated into the idea that sex is a “spectrum”, that women and men are biologically the same, and are exposed to porn long before they reach puberty.

The rate of STDs in the USA hit a record high for the 6th year in a row in 2019, with 2.5 million Americans having either chlamydia, gonorrhea, or syphilis infections. Less than 20 years ago, these infections were at a historic low or close to elimination.[^rt2021kd]

Secularism is on the rise and people search for meaning in substitute gods like money, fame, identity politics, or social justice.

As Martin S. Spiller writes: Without sexual morality, the traditional social contract based on trust between the sexes would vanish, and the people would eventually abandon marriage. Without marriage, the family, the most basic unit of any civilization, would wither and die.[^spiller2000]

Stanza 7

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

This stanza is a reference to lending money to pay off debt or handing out free money, which is the common way in many countries these days to deal with problems. This will not work for much longer, inflation (or even hyperinflation) will be the result. Rich people move their money into cryptocurrencies and other assets to prevent the devaluation of their assets.

As Elon Musk put it in harsh words on Joe Rogan’s Podcast: Now let me just break it to you, the fools out there. If you don’t make stuff, there’s no stuff.[^rogan1470]

Socialism is again high in favor in Western countries, particularly among the educated, bored, upper-middle-class that live every day a comfortable life through the means of capitalist production while at the same time rail against it.

They paint capitalism as the devil even though it cut extreme poverty (less than $1.90 per day) in half between 1990 and 2010.[^murphy2018ez][^mitchell2018qu][^rosling2015lc]

It seems we never learn from our past. More and more people want to destroy the current way of life. Everywhere, people talk about a restart of “how we live”, “degrowth”, or a “Great Reset.” These utopian ideas always end in bloodshed and millions of dead people because you can’t create a society on the drawing board. But these people that think they have the idea for a perfect society, regularly fail dramatically, because as James Lindsay qyotes Communism doesn’t know how[^lindsay2021ut] which is why it fails each time. 100-200 million murdered or starved people should have been enough to learn that it won’t work, but it seems like it doesn’t.

Stanza 8

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew,
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four—
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

When an idea or dogma is failing, and it becomes obvious how bad it was, the liars either double down and try to keep the lie alive for as long as possible, or they disappear.

We can see this now regarding the Corona crisis. The crisis will not be remembered for its virus because the death rate is only around 0.13%.[^margolis2020aa] It will be remembered, because of how incompetent, corrupt, and authoritarian our political leaders, news media, the science community, and Big Tech reacted to the crisis.

I remember how everybody rallied around ventilators in the spring of 2020. Buying ventilators was the most important political topic for weeks. Sick people were put on ventilators early on. The image of ventilators was used as a tactic to intimidate people into social distancing and masking. A few doctors knew all along what is now known: Putting people on ventilators kills them in 50% of the cases (regardless of their condition).[^thompson2020wr] There are much better methods without ventilators that result in a drastically reduced death rate for intensive care patients. But the specialists were silenced, censored, or removed from social media. A hundred thousand died needlessly of wrong medical care. Politicians moved sick elderly back into senior homes everywhere, where they infected each other and died.[^posteditorialboard2021kc] These were not COVID-19 deaths, but deaths caused by incompetent politicians.

Masks and lockdowns were presented as the one perfect solution to prevent infections, but the data after a year shows countries without mask mandates or lockdowns had similar death rates.[^mcmaken2020qu]

Drugs such as Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin were (and still are) rejected by large parts of the medical community, even though the doctors could see the results of their effectiveness in their patients. Ivermectin has proven itself highly effective in multiple meta-studies as a drug for prevention, treatment, and possibly even to treat Post-COVID or vaccine side effects.[^weinstein2021zr]

The further the time will progress, the more scandals around COVID-19 will come to light. Sharing the “right-wing” Lab Leak Hypothesis one year ago could have gotten a person deplatformed, and now it’s a broadly accepted hypothesis. Big Tech and the media prevented this story from discussing. Now they retroactively stealth edit old articles, push forward all kinds of reasons why they got it so wrong, and blame others.[^hlusa2021ag][^watson2021pa]

Stanza 9

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man—
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began:—
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

This stanza is a depressing realization that humanity will not learn from its mistakes. We will repeat them again, and again, and again.

Bad ideas like Socialism, Communism, or Fascism are kept alive or revived. It’s 2021, and we have again concentration camps in China and the world pretends nothing happened because we don’t want to risk our business opportunities with China.

Racist, sexists, anti-scientific, anti-reason, postmodernist ideas like Critical Theory are pushed into the education system and companies and destroy these institutions[^nayna2019qz] unless brave people stand up against these toxic ideas.[^pachal2020gj][^monroe2021im]

People get segregated by race, and have to disavow their “whiteness” or acknowledge their “privilege.” People of color that doesn't subscribe to these ideas are labeled “race traitor”, “Uncle Tom”, “or not being authentically (race/sex/sexual orientation).”

Identity politics divide people into smaller and smaller sub-categories that fight each other. Discourse is shut down with compelled speech codes, trigger warnings, or safe spaces. People are bullied into compliance, harassed, doxed, or fired from their jobs for disagreeing.

And many progressives don’t understand the ideas behind these movements that look appealing. We won’t learn unless we burn our fingers again.

Stanza 10

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

The last stanza is the 4th thing that is certain from the previous stanza. It is a closing loop to previous stanzas. The brave new world is a reference to Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Act V. scene 1 line 183. The title for Huxley’s Brave New World is derived from Shakespeare’s play. The dystopian novel has numerous references to our times.

The conservative commentator Michael Knowles was recently asked by Chris Williamson on his podcast if we live currently more in Brave New World or 1984. He answered that we live 10% in 1984 and 90% in Brave New World.[^williamson2021uf]

Reaching for Utopia (Greek “not a place”) always results in a Dystopia (Greek “bad place”). Utopian ideologies are psychopathic and arise from the inability to live in the reality.[^lindsay2020aa]

There will be no war, that ends all wars, no “Great Reset”, no restart without getting rid of millions of people that don’t subscribe to the idea. All zero-point ideologies were devastating and always resulted in totalitarian systems or totalitarian thinking, stated Prof. Nobert Bolz in a recent podcast.[^muller-ullrich2021bu] He fears that the Western world is again in a situation where serious intellectuals are thinking about whether we could go back to zero, construct a new form of society and economy, a new human nature.

The pandemic or climate crisis offers convenient reasons to justify authoritarian or totalitarian ideas for “the greater good.” The German Supreme Court hinted that massive personal restrictions might be justified to reach the climate goals.[^escritt2021ap]

A recent survey asked how many Germans would be willing to pay every month to stop climate change. If I remember correctly, the number was below €20 per month. Even risking disillusioning large numbers of people, every German (including children and senior citizens) would have to pay between €300 and €600 net every month for the next 30 years to reach the climate goals of the Paris Agreement.[^unger2021pf] This would reduce Germany’s global CO₂ emissions from 2% to 1%, which is as many savings as China generates additionally each year.[^unger2021pf] It will not only destroy the country’s competitiveness, and make the energy supply unreliable, but have no measurable effect. Neither will stop eating meat. But if the self-righteous voters demand measures from the politicians, that will be what we are given.

Be prepared to have fewer (or no) flights in the future, to lose your car, and to be restricted in your movement and freedoms. If you think the COVID-19 restrictions were bad, you have no clue what is coming with digital IDs and CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies).

All these endeavors ignore human nature, reason, personal liberty, and self-determination. To achieve a reset one would have to suppress, intimidate, incarcerate, reeducate, or even kill millions of people. I don’t think any sane person would like to live in a totalitarian, digitalized surveillance state like China is currently building. We have to call out and shame people that push for these ideas before it is too late.

Reality will always win, eventually. But to what price? A lie doesn’t become true because everybody wants it to be true. The Gods of the Copybook Headings can’t be ignored, without paying a high price.

[^levinson2011kv]: William A. Levinson (2011): The Revenge of the Gods of the Copybook Headings

[^peterson2017yx]: Jordan B. Peterson (2017): 2017 Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief (University of Toronto)

[^curnoe2017dn]: Darren Curnoe (2017): Was agriculture the greatest blunder in human history?

[^lindsay2020aa]: James Lindsay (2020): Psychopathy and the Origins of Totalitarianism

[^emmons2020ln]: Libby Emmons (2020): Biological male who broke a woman’s skull named “bravest athlete in history”

[^spiller2000]: Martin S. Spiller (2000): Joseph Rudyard Kipling

[^emmons2020en]: Libby Emmons (2020): Gov. Newsom signs bill allowing male inmates who identify as ‘women’ to be housed in women’s prisons in California

[^desanctis2021db]: Alexandra Desanctis (2021): The Washington Post ‘Reports’ on Biden Policy to Let Men into Women’s Shelters

[^dms2020ck]: Decision Magazine Staff (2020): Gender Dysphoria Cases Rise 1,500% Among Teenage Girls in Sweden

[^robbins2018sc]: Jane Robbins (2018): Why Puberty Blockers Are A Clear Danger To Children’s Health

[^jackson2020cv]: Mary Jackson (2020): Study: Effects of puberty-blockers can last a lifetime

[^rogan2019ul]: Joe Rogan & Naval Ravikant (2019): Joe Rogan Experience #1309 – Naval Ravikant

[^elder2020aa]: Larry Elder (2020): The Ferguson Lie

[^kohls2020aa]: Christopher Patrick Kohls (2020): The Secret Origins of Black Lives Matter

[^vincent2021en]: Isabel Vincent (2021): Marxist BLM leader buys $1.4 million home in ritzy LA enclave

[^byrne2021pl]: Kerry J. Byrne (2021): Breonna Taylor’s mom slams BLM chapter in Louisville as a ‘fraud’

[^mccaffree2021li]: Kevin McCaffree & Anondah Saide (2021): How Informed are Americans about Race and Policing?

[^sherman2013rw]: Amy Sherman (2013): In the 513 days between Trayvon dying, and today’s verdict, 11,106 African-Americans have been murdered by other African-Americans.

[^qiu2014mo]: Linda Qiu (2014): The No. 1 cause of death for African-American males 15-34 is murder

[^jacobson2013cp]: Louis Jacobson (2013): More than 72 percent of children in the African-American community are born out of wedlock

[^steward2013aa]: Melissa Steward (2013): The Father Absence Crisis in America

[^faria2021qg]: Zachary Faria (2021): Portland cut police funding and got a 2,000% surge in murders

[^sowell2013aa]: Thomas Sowell (2013): Intellectuals and Race, Basic Books, Pos. 1037

[^gillespie2020dv]: Nick Gillespie (2020): 81 Percent of Black Americans Want the Same Level, or More, of Police Presence: Gallup

[^ap2020wm]: The Associated press (2020): A timeline of extremist attacks in France in recent years

[^bbcnews2021eu]: BBC News (2021): Anger as ex-generals warn of 'deadly civil war' in France.

[^bbcnews2021uf]: BBC News (2021): French soldiers warn of civil war in new letter.

[^ffn2021ru]: Natural News (2021): US Army ends gender neutral fitness test because female soldiers keep failing… men and women are different after all

[^nightingale2021ne]: Hannah Nightingale (2021): US Army shuts down YouTube comment section of ’woke‘ recruitment ad for the ’safety and well-being‘ of soldiers

[^dilanian2020je]: Ken Dilanian (2020): China has done human testing to create biologically enhanced super soldiers, says top U.S. official

[^rt2021kd]: RT (2021): America’s STD rate hits record high for 6th year in a row

[^rogan1470]: Ellon Musk & Joe Rogan (2020): The Joe Rogan Experience 1470 – Elon Musk

[^murphy2018ez]: Robert P. Murphy (2018): Extreme Poverty Rates Plummet Under Capitalism

[^mitchell2018qu]: Daniel J. Mitchell (2018): Welfare Spending Did Not Decrease Poverty, Capitalism Did

[^rosling2015lc]: Hans Rosling (2015): ‘How To End Poverty in 15 years’ Hans Rosling – BBC News

[^lindsay2021ut]: James Lindsay (2021): Communism Doesn’t Know How

[^margolis2020aa]: Matt Margolis (2020): Did a WHO Official Admit that COVID-19 Has a Death Rate Similar to the Flu?

[^thompson2020wr]: Dennis Thompson (2020): Are Ventilators Helping or Harming COVID-19 Patients?

[^posteditorialboard2021kc]: Post Editorial Board (2021): New report details even bigger lies by Cuomo to cover up nursing home scandal

[^mcmaken2020qu]: Ryan McMaken (2020): The Evidence Keeps Piling Up: Lockdowns Don’t Work

[^weinstein2021zr]: Bret Weinstein & Pierre Kory (2021): COVID, Ivermectin, and the Crime of the Century: DarkHorse Podcast with Pierre Kory & Bret Weinstein

[^hlusa2021ag]: Headline USA (2021): WaPo Stealth-Edits Report That Said Wuhan Lab Leak Theory was ‘Debunked’

[^watson2021pa]: Paul Joseph Watson (2021): Vox Stealth Edits March 2020 Article “Debunking” Lab Origin of COVID

[^nayna2019qz]: Mike Nayna (2019): The Devils of Evergreen State College

[^pachal2020gj]: Pete Pachal (2020): Coinbase Has Drawn a Line in the Sand for Its Activist Employees

[^monroe2021im]: Nick Monroe (2021): REVEALED: Basecamp employees cried, threw tantrums after boss rejected woke culture

[^williamson2021uf]: Chris Williamson & Michael Knowles (2021): Michael Knowles – The Problem With Political Correctness | Modern Wisdom Podcast 331

[^muller-ullrich2021bu]: Burkhard Müller-Ullrich, Nobert Bolz, and Cora Stephan (2021): Indubio Folge 131: Das alte und das neue Normal

[^escritt2021ap]: Thomas Escritt (2021): Germany must tighten climate law to protect young people’s future, court rules

[^unger2021pf]: Raymond Unger (2021): Vom Verlust der Freiheit: Klimakrise, Migrationskrise, Coronakrise, Europa Verlag.

Haiku 18

Tue, 01 Jun 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Im Schutz des Baumes – kalter Regen fällt nieder, doch wir sind trocken.
Under shelter of the tree – cold rain pouring down, but we are dry.

How I Process Information Into Notes: Turn what you read into what you remember

Thu, 13 May 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Everybody is consuming content, through books, articles, videos, podcasts, or other media. We consume content for entertainment, to be informed, or to learn and grow. But few people take the time to extract the valuable parts from the content they are consuming.

As I wrote in my previous essay Zettelkasten Note-Taking Method With DEVONthink, we are prone to the Collector’s Fallacy, the belief that consuming information enables us automatically to remember and apply this knowledge later. This is sadly not true. The only way to remember things is by writing them down, creating connections between them, and regularly revisiting them.

I started using the Zettelkasten note-taking method a year ago, and this essay is an overview of the different types of content and how and with what tools I process them.

Tools

Before I go into details about the different media types and how I process them, I want to mention my main tools. These don’t change too often—if at all—and I use them for many years.

DEVONthink

DEVONthink is my main tool to store content: Text, images, documents, and much more. All content is stored safely and securely on my local hard drive (good for backups) but is at the same time shared (encrypted) through a Cloud provider with my different mobile devices and computers.

It would take an extra essay to mention all the features of DEVONthink. With DEVONthink 3.7 the tool got fantastic support for Markdown, including the different syntax of tools like Roam, Obsidian, and iA Writer.

MindNode

MindNode is the app I use to prepare content for processing. I dump in the ideas and connect them to Mindmaps, adding tags and links. When I have a rough idea about the structure, I move the ideas to notes in Obsidian. You can see one of the mind maps I created to study Japanese Design and Aesthetics online.

Obsidian

Obsidian is my favorite tool to create notes. My Obsidian note vault lives locally on my hard drive in a Git repository, synchronized with a private GitHub repository. Additionally, it is indexed in DEVONthink and synced across all devices.

iA Writer

iA Writer is my favorite text editor. I write all text with iA Writer. I sometimes open Obsidian notes in iA Writer to check my syntax. It is a simple and powerful text editor with a minimalistic interface and helpful tools for writers.

Automation

I like to automate my workflow as much as possible because manual work sucks. The only part that needs to be manual is the note creation part, because of how the brain works. A note needs to be written in your words, to be able to remember the content.

I use IFTTT for as many services as possible. I created applets that will save items to Raindrop.io when I like, star, upvote, or interact with them.

Getting Content Into the System

There are many media types I regularly consume. Each type needs a different approach to process the information, text is the easiest to process in my opinion.

Books

Texts come in many forms, the most valuable is in my opinion the book. Books are content-rich, the authors condense a lot of information to make a topic accessible.

I read my books mainly as e-books these days because it’s convenient, the books are easy to carry around, you can read in low-light conditions, and highlighting is easy. I highlight interesting paragraphs and add letters as comments to categorize them: Q for quotes, E for examples, and R for further research. I took this idea from Tim Ferris.

I extract the highlights from my e-book reader with Readwise.

Hardcopy books I read with my Traveler’s Notebook Passport Size nearby to transfer the notes I highlighted on a page. I add the page number in case I need to revisit the section. Later, after I finished reading, I transfer the notes to Readwise.

Additionally, I add each book I’ve read to a BibDesk library that lives in my Obsidian vault. A (modified) plugin for Markdown, as described in Manage Citations for a Zettelkasten, helps me add the citations to my notes. I do the same with articles, podcasts, videos, or other content I want to remember the citation.

Documents

All the papers companies send to me (invoices, contracts, reports, …) get converted into PDF (with OCR) via Scanner Pro. Automation in DEVONthink copies them from iCloud to my inbox in DEVONthink. I add tags and archive them with the move shortcut into year folders in a document database.

Articles

If I come across an interesting article on the internet, I use Raindrop. io (Pro) to save it for later reading. The Pro version of Raindrop.io saves the full text offline and allows looking for all text, even if the article isn’t available anymore.

I use the highlight feature of Raindrop.io and recently started enjoying the highlighting directly in Readwise Reader as a Beta tester. No matter where I annotate, all highlights get collected in Readwise.

The majority of my articles I read directly in Reeder or Readwise Reader.

I consume everything possible now exclusively in Feedbin: RSS/Atom Feeds, YouTube videos, 𝕏 feeds, Reddit topics, Google News keywords, Google Alerts, newsletters, … I can read it in my time, and chronological order.

Intriguing articles I save as cleaned up Markdown with the DEVONthink Clipper to my inbox. This is one of my favorite features of DEVONthink. The Markdown files are stored in yearly folders in my Reference database.

Photos & Images

I love collecting inspiring photos and images. Architecture and Interior, Logos, Typography, Sculptures, Japanese Tattoos, UI Design, advertising, … if I like it, I’ll save it. My Inspiration database has more than 30,000 items.

I save them either directly into DEVONthink to Go or export them from iPhoto into it when I’m on the sofa or away from my computer. When I’m at my computer, I drag items directly into my Inbox.

If I come across an article with multiple photos, I use the Fatkun AI Downloader to download all images at once.

Audio

Podcasts are my main way of interacting with audio, but occasionally, I create voice memos to remember something.

I am using Overcast and Snipd as my podcast apps. Overcast allows me to add podcast episodes to a queue and set my preferred playback speed to 1.8x. The best feature of Snipd is its feature to create AI-supported transcripts. They allow you to press a button and bookmark a specific time range of the podcast episode, add comments, and if available, read the transcript. This can be done in private or publicly.

When I’m walking outside while hearing podcasts, I bookmark all the interesting parts. It automatically bookmarks a selected range of seconds before the bookmark. Later I edit the bookmark to include the exact start and end of an appealing section and add comments.

It’s convenient to transfer the notes and transcript to Readwise from the app to create notes.

Video

A lot of content I consume comes from videos. I watch videos with at least 1.6x the speed and use the Video Speed Controller to change the speed and jump forward and back in the video. Other plugins I use are Enhancer for YouTube and Unhook to remove annoying and distracting parts of YouTube.

One browser extension I use to write notes on exciting videos is YiNote. It allows watching a video and creating notes in a side drawer. It’s possible to export the notes as a PDF, including a screenshot of the frame with the note and the time code. I convert these notes then into notes in Obsidian and store the document as a reference.

Working with Notes

The most important part of note-taking is connecting ideas. Sönke Ahrens, the author of How to Take Smart Notes, explains the science of why this method works. I recommend reading this fantastic book; it is useful for anybody who wants to write notes.

There is an interesting interview with him on YouTube if you wish to avoid investing the time and money for the book.

Connecting ideas is the first step. The long-term goal is to either understand a topic in more depth or to create output, as in articles, essays, or books.

Obsidian

I use Obsidian and the Zettelkasten note-taking method for that. Obsidian is by far the best tool you have ever used for note-taking.

Obsidian has many ways of customizing and making it work for your workflow, starting from the look-and-feel with themes to an ever-growing collection of plugins and community plugins.

Plugins

I make regular use of a lot of the core plugins.

The Graph View is incredibly useful. It allows one to see and navigate the connection between notes. It is possible to search, filter, group notes, drag them around, and explore similar or related notes.

I use starred notes to remember notes to work on and use plenty of Tags. Tags allow a secondary layer of connecting notes without directly connecting them. I convert the hashtag syntax of my notes to macOS tags with DEVONthink.

My favorite feature is the WikiLink syntax, including a fast fuzzy search. One of the guidelines of the Zettelkasten method is to connect notes to similar other notes. I search for keywords or topics in the search menu of WikiLinks and connect any note that might be a good companion.

Community Plugins

Obsidian started to allow community plugins. Every time I look into the collection, there are new fantastic plugins to improve my workflow.

Sliding Panes is one of the plugins I love because it enables me to keep 10-20 notes (depending on the monitor size) at the same time open and moves between the notes to compare or connect notes. Update 2022: It’s now a native feature of Obsidian.

I found recently Note Refactor. The plugin allows me to write all my notes to a topic in one note and later extract parts into separate smaller (atomic) notes thanks to a shortcut. It takes over the work of creating the filename, using a preferred file template. It moves the section to the new file and links to it in the original note.

Connecting Notes To Understand and Create

I use the Zettelkasten method for more than a year and Obsidian since May 2020. The first time I had an “Aha” moment was after three months when I found a connection of a node to an existing cluster of notes. Since then, this feeling repeated regularly, and I love it.

The Graph view in particular allows me to see if a specific topic isn’t yet good enough researched because there are not enough notes connected to it.

The final step is to produce content out of the notes. I have MindNode open on one monitor and my Obsidian vault on the second monitor, and follow the links and connections of a topic to write an Outline for the essay. Because the notes are small, it is possible to quickly create the outline and create a structure to tell a story.

The final step is then to write the text in iA Writer. My vault has now more than 1,000 notes but compared to Niklas Luhmann’s 70,000 notes when he died this is nothing. I’m curious how the note collection improves over time as long as I add, edit and link notes.

Haiku 17

Sat, 01 May 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Auf dem Berg ein Schrein, moosbewachsene Stufen – die Götter sind nah.
A shrine on the mountain moss-covered steps – the gods are near.

New Website 2021: Faster site, simpler stack, happier writer

Sat, 24 Apr 2021 00:00:00 GMT

My brand-new website is online, using Eleventy as its static site generator. The development was quick and fun, and Eleventy gives me a huge amount of flexibility. And it’s fast, very fast. Burned by my last technology choice, I did this time a performance test before picking the tool. I created 1000 large Markdown pages and let Eleventy render them to HTML. It was done in an astonishing 3.8 seconds.

New Website 2021 Homepage

What’s New?

My new website looks familiar but different. I changed the complete code and picked a much simpler technology stack while keeping the design. I polished it everywhere, removed unneeded or complicated parts of the website, and extended it to other parts.

Typography

The new font is Secuela, a variable font with weights from thin to black. The new font allows having a slimmer weight for the dark mode. This ensures the contrast doesn’t bleed and blends the eyes.

Projects

The project area is now generated from a data file. Adding a new project needs no additional CSS or Markup.

Haiku

I simplified the Haiku section and removed unnecessary sections. It’s now a brief introduction and links to my Haiku. Gone are the different-colored layouts. Haiku was the only section using the green layout. Sketchnotes were the only section using the brown layout. The blue layout I didn’t use at all. All these are gone.

Sketchnotes

The last Sketchnote section didn’t get a lot of love. The relaunch brings a nice grid layout with a detail page for each item.

Journal

The journal got the most significant change. I started splitting my posts into three categories: Posts, links, and quotes. Posts are my essays and posts, links are my retired monthly link post, and the new irregular link post format. I added a quote format because some quotes are too good not to be shared. I took the time to extract all interesting quotes from my monthly posts and create separate quote posts out of them.

Update 2022: I removed the links and quotes because they are hard to maintain. You can follow my link recommendations instead on Raindrop.io and my favorite highlights on my Readwise page.

The overview page of the journal is now chronological, grouped by year. Small icons added to link or quote posts differentiate those from regular posts.

Homepage

I added a new section showing featured posts, the latest posts, links, or quotes.

RSS/Atom Feeds

The feed produced by Gatsby created plenty of problems. I was unable to remove the CSS classes added by Styled-Components, and the custom MDX tags blew up the file size so much that a lot of feed readers couldn’t parse it anymore.

All these issues are history with Eleventy. I created an RSS feed.

Why Did I Change the Technology Stack?

Given the fact that my last relaunch was 10 months ago, why did I relaunch again?

The short answer is: Gatsby was too slow.

While I was developing my last website, I felt it getting slower with advancing development time. Each GraphQL query, each Markdown file, each image, and each technology added increased the build times.

To give you hard numbers: Building my previous Gatsby site with 77 posts took up to 3 minutes on a MacBook Pro 16" 2020 with 16 GB RAM:

success open and validate gatsby-configs - 0.307s
success load plugins - 5.841s
success onPreInit - 0.041s
success delete html and css files from previous builds - 0.005s
success initialize cache - 0.007s
success copy gatsby files - 0.215s
success onPreBootstrap - 0.047s
success createSchemaCustomization - 0.005s
success Checking for changed pages - 0.003s
success source and transform nodes - 15.801s
success building schema - 0.565s
success createPages - 0.122s
success Checking for changed pages - 0.004s
success createPagesStatefully - 0.471s
success update schema - 0.040s
success onPreExtractQueries - 0.001s
success extract queries from components - 4.080s
success write out redirect data - 0.012s
success Build manifest and related icons - 0.483s
success onPostBootstrap - 0.499s
info bootstrap finished - 35.813s
success run static queries - 6.581s - 22/22 3.34/s
success run page queries - 24.880s - 114/114 4.58/s
success write out requires - 0.006s
success Building production JavaScript and CSS bundles - 40.079s
success Rewriting compilation hashes - 0.004s
success Building static HTML for pages - 18.687s - 114/114 6.10/s
success Generating image thumbnails - 105.103s - 521/521 4.96/s
success onPostBuild - 35.452s
info Done building in 163.798668245 sec

My new technology stack is so fast, the JavaScript compiles in 422ms, the PostCSS is converted to CSS in 900ms, Eleventy generates over 230 files and copies over 300 files to the dist folder in 3.62s. This includes a plugin doing work on my images (adding sizes, lazy loading, and blur-up). Adding time between the processes and the generation of a service worker with Workbox, my whole production build is done in 14,5s.

That’s the time Gatsby needed for processing the GraphQL queries. 😳

My old stack was so slow I had to switch from building via GitHub on Netlify to building locally and uploading via the Netlify CLI because my 300 free build minutes per month were used up early each month. And a build took nearly 8 minutes on Netlify.

Over the last few months, my frustration rose with each essay I wanted to write because seeing a mistake in the published text and fixing it could take up to 30 minutes of my time.

High Maintenance

Let’s be honest: My old stack was too complicated for a website. A blog shouldn’t be a SPA (Single Page App), a good old MPA (Multi-Page App), or a website (as we used to call it) is the right choice.

I previously used TypeScript, Styled-Components, MDX, GraphQL, wrote hundreds of Jest unit tests, and used 120 npm packages. Updating and keeping a stack like this alive is work, not fun. The Saturday morning is gone, after updating 120 packages with dozens of major updates.

The New Tech Stack

Eleventy

Eleventy is flexible. Multiple template languages are officially supported, and more can be added with plugins. I picked Nunjucks as my template engine because it’s inspired by the Django template engine, which I liked a lot.

Eleventy takes a lot of the ideas of Jekyll and adds more features on top. It’s easy to create collections out of data or files. Every JSON file in the data folder is automatically available to each template. Adding tags to content creates collections. This can be done quickly per folder in a JSON file. It’s possible to create custom collections and sort, modify, or group collections with JavaScript.

With YAML, frontmatter layouts can be chosen for each file or collection of files, and permalinks can be generated programmatically or per file.

Filters allow the modification of content, a few are built into Eleventy, and others depend on the template language. It’s effortless to create custom filters.

Shortcodes allow creating custom helpers to be used and generate output. I used them to replace a lot of my components.

I used these four Eleventy plugins:

@11ty/eleventy-plugin-rss – Helps to create RSS/Atom feeds.
@11ty/eleventy-plugin-syntaxhighlight – Adds code highlighting via Prism on build time.
eleventy-plugin-lazyimages – Adds width and height attributes to all images, lazy loading, and blur up technique.
eleventy-plugin-reading-time – Calculates the reading time.

Eleventy uses Markdown It as the default Markdown parser. I added plugins to support footnotes, GitHub headings, spoiler, subscript, superscript, and external anchors.

PostCSS

I used PostCSS to generate the CSS of my website, with a few plugins. I added a few features to use SASS-style variables. I might move to CSS custom properties in the future. For now, I use them for color variables.

Another thing added is the nesting of CSS because it makes the writing easier, and it’s more clear what belongs together.

Sorting media queries is a helpful plugin when using nested media queries. The plugin collects all CSS of one media query size and combines them.

Gulp

I started development without any JavaScript bundler, but it’s convenient to be able to use modules or ES6 syntax. I used Gulp for my workflows.

Source Code

I learned a lot by looking at other developer’s Eleventy code, honorable mention goes to:

Zach Leatherman, the creator of Eleventy.
Jecelyn Yeen, who wrote a full series on creating a blog with Eleventy.
Phil Hawksworth who created multiple Eleventy starters to learn from.
Stephanie Eckles, who created 11ty Rocks!, wrote multiple articles about Eleventy and created a free Egghead course.
Max Böck, who writes a lot about Eleventy in his blog.

My source code on GitHub is as always public for everyone, including all commits I did since I started the project in mid-March 2021.

Haiku 16

Thu, 01 Apr 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Hinter der Hecke, feuerrote Ahornblätter – verweil’ ein wenig.
Behind the hedge, fiery red maple leaves – stay a little.

Haiku 15

Mon, 01 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Die Luft riecht nach Moos, raschelnde Schritte im Wald – ein Jahr geht zu Ende.
The air smells of moss, rustling footsteps in the forest – a year is coming to and end.

Haiku 14

Mon, 01 Feb 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Kühle Luft zieht auf, Blätter taumeln im Wind – letzter Sonnenstrahl.
Cool air draws in, leaves tumble in the wind – last ray of sunshine.

Haiku 13

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Ach, der Herbst ist da – Da sind sie wieder: Laubbläser. Ich vermisse den Rechen.
Oh, autumn arrived – They are back: Leaf blowers. I miss the rake.

Best of 2020: The year’s most compelling rabbit holes

Tue, 22 Dec 2020 00:00:00 GMT

This article is a distilled collection of my favorite topics, articles, videos, podcasts, people, or other things in 2020. I tried to get the recommendations in order, you can expect similar topics to follow each other.

What I’ve Learned

What I’ve Learned by Joseph Everett is one of my favorite channels regarding health, productivity, and psychology. He puts great effort into summarizing dozens of scientific studies or meta-studies in a digestible way. One of his goals is to fight modern dogma.

This year he created four fantastic videos on health: Meat: Grows the Brain or Rusts the Body?, What made the Ancient Egyptians Fat and Sick?, Does Coffee make you Fat and Anxious?, and Does Instagram Lower your Testosterone?

And three videos on Psychology and Neuroscience: Willpower is for Losers, Why are you Uncertain, Unfocused, and Anxious? What should we do about it?, and Why do we find Satisfying things so Satisfying? (Neuroscience and Pleasure).

Why We Sleep

I discovered Matthew Walker, the author of Why We Sleep, first on The Joe Rogan Experience 1109. His book summarizes years of studies on sleep and the severe effects of too little sleep.

Since I read his book and listened to his TED talk, I increased my median sleep duration from 6 hours to 8 hours a night.

What is Happiness?

I found the YouTube channel of Will Schroder through his fantastic video How To Remember Everything You Learn in 2018.

This year, he created a three-part series about Happiness: What is Happiness?, The Foundations of Happiness, and The Secret to Happier. The amount of work he put into this long documentary is impressive!

Aydin Paladin

A new channel about politics, news, social psychology, media psychology, human communication, and memes I discovered in 2020 was Aydin Paladin. Her essays are impressive! In one-hour-long videos, she entertainingly summarizes studies. I found her through her destruction of Critical Race Theory studies. That was interesting. In How Russians Hacked My Memes: Dissertation Destruction she destroyed a recent doctoral dissertation.

Jordan B Peterson

Jordan Peterson was finally back at the end of 2020. He needed a long recovery, because of the severe side effects of a medication he took to deal with anxiety resulting from the cancer diagnosis of his wife.

He announced his new book Beyond Order and released three of the six parts of his 12 Rules for Life Tour in Australia: Brisbane, Melbourne, and Sydney.

I finished his lecture 2017 Personality and Its Transformations (University of Toronto), highly recommended for everybody interested in psychology and personality.

Andrew Doyle wrote a fantastic article about Peterson on Spiked: Jordan Peterson: how the left manufactured a folk devil.

The Art of Manliness

I love the work Brett and Kate McKay are doing on their website, The Art of Manliness. In times of declining male values and the rise of weak, whiny, pathetic men (Soy Boys) their work is relevant. They promote Stoic values, adventure, responsibility, leadership, courage, learning, strength, and virtue – for women and for men.

Their blog is a vast collection of well-written articles, precise tips, lists, and recommendations. If I could read one blog, it would be this.

In 2020, they wrote articles about Pocket Knives, Lessons from Homer’s Odyssey, Kaizen, Cooking Steak, 100 Skills Every Man Should Know, Being Uncomfortable, James Bond Stoicism, Hygge, or 100 Must-See Movies, to named a few.

The Art of Manliness Podcast has over 600 episodes and 2.5 million monthly downloads. They interview interesting people and discuss important topics for example breathing correctly, physical autonomy, the code of the warrior, how to deal with bullies, how to thinking for yourself, why people build bunkers, organizing your life like a chef, getting in shape, learning for its own sake, Greek tragedies for therapy, male loneliness, or turning fear into fuel.

exurb1a

I can’t even categorize this YouTube channel properly. Stories, comedy, science, and philosophy? 🤔 But you need to watch the videos Sleep is Just Death Being Shy, Let’s Build a Time Machine With Pickles and Sadness, The Moon is a Door to Forever, How to Be Correct About Everything All the Time, and There's No Such Thing As Orange.

Psychedelics & Religion

I listened too much to Joe Rogan, but even though I never took any drugs in my life, I now think that psychedelics need to be legal.

A lot has changed since the criminalization in the 70s put an end to the studies of psychedelics. Scientists started studying the topic again with incredible results. Jordan B Peterson gives an introduction to the recent studies in Heroic and Shamanic Initiations from his lecture 2017 Personality and Its Transformations (University of Toronto). It’s incredible how one dose of Psilocybin can change the personality permanently by one standard deviation in Openness. Psychedelics reduce anxiety, lift the fear of death, and make people friendlier.

I watched the funny, artful Tales from the Trip by Comedy Central that animated the stories of people taking psychedelics in short 5-minute episodes.

Roland Griffiths presented the science of psilocybin and its use to relieve suffering at TED.

The visit of Brian Muraresku & Graham Hancock on The Joe Rogan Experience 1543 was fascinating. Brian Muraresku wrote nearly 12 years on his book The Immortality Key. It is an intriguing dive into the history of psychedelics. It connects the old ruins of Göbekli Tepe, spiked beer and wine to the Stone Age, the Mysteries of Eleusis, Demeter, Dionysus, and the Eucharist. Who would have thought that the early Christians were high? 😅

But the thing that fascinated me was Eleusis. I was always interested in Greek history but never heard of this mystical religion that spanned over 2000 years. Even Marcus Aurelius took part in the Mysteries.

Religious institutions are in the process of breaking down, people losing their faith, and replacing it with personalized gods (health, food, politics, technology, or money). But people cannot find meaning without religion.

I think it is the right time to bring back psychedelics. Restoring our ancient connection to psychedelics after 2000 years of a ban by the Catholic Church could change life on Earth for everybody for the better.

Aliens & Flying Saucers

I never took too much notice of Alien stories besides Science Fiction. But the recent releases of videos by the Pentagon and credible people coming forward got me interested in the topic.

Bob Lazar claims to have been hired by a government organization to work in a secret research facility S-4 several kilometers south of Area 51 to reverse engineer the engines of vehicles of unknown origin. He does not give many interviews and dislikes being the center of attention, but I enjoyed his visit on The Joe Rogan Experience 1315. I watched the documentary Bob Lazar: Area 51 and Flying Saucers [Netflix] about his story.

Other fascinating interviews about Aliens and UFOs were the ones with George Knapp and Jacques Vallée.

David Favor, a decorated fighter pilot commander with an incredible career, was interesting to listen to. He and his wingman and another fighter saw a Tic Tac shaped 40 feet (ca. 12 m) long object for more than 5 minutes that hovered over the water off the coast of Southern California. It behaved against all physical laws, blocked the radar, and flew off with speed no human invention can reach. The incident was recorded in 2004 and leaked to the public before the Pentagon confirmed its authenticity. David Fravor was interviewed on The Joe Rogan Experience 1361 and Lex Friedman Podcast 122.

Like Stories of Old

Like Stories of Old by Tom van der Linden is one of my favorite channels of all time. He takes movies (and sometimes games) and tells stories that cross the boundary between film analysis and life lessons, mixed with cross-references to literature and quotes. Each of his films is a piece of art.

He analyzed the works of directors and filmmakers such as Andrei Tarkovsky, Terrence Malick, and Werner Herzog.

And he made a video about The Real Implications Of Ex Machina’s Turing Test, the Anatomy of a Global Pandemic, Lies of Heroism – Redefining the Anti-War Film, and Who We Really Are… When Everything Goes Wrong.

I liked his three-part series Stories vs. Reality, with The Fundamental Difference Between Stories And Reality, Your Life is Not a Hero’s Journey, and Stories as Identities: Who Are We Without Them?.

Out of Frame

I found the YouTube channel of the Foundation for Economic Education through the video This Movie Offends You? Good.

It is a delightful channel with video essays on the intersection of art, culture, and ideas. They ask questions about economics, ethics, and legal principles of a free society by analyzing movies and TV shows.

The Tiger King Is Right (About One Thing) analyses the economy of bad actors in markets. The Holocaust The New York Times Ignored tells the story of the Holocaust in Ukraine. Is Disney Praising Chinese Genocide!? is criticizing Disney for their indirect support of the genocide of the Uighur Muslim population in Xinjiang province. The Horrible Economics of 80s Horror shines a light on Hollywood's dislike of free-market capitalism. Woke Outrage: Great Marketing for Terrible Movies is about how outrage sells awful movies.

The two-part series The Social Dilemma Is Dangerously Wrong… (Part I, Part II) analyses why the documentary The Social Dilemma is an awful documentary that has massive flaws.

You Really Don't Want to Live in The Last Kingdom highlights the progress our societies made through respect for individual rights and limitations on governments.

Cops, Karens, and the Coming Dystopia is a social commentary on Coronavirus lockdowns, economic and emotional damage, riots using V for Vendetta and the idea of Dystopias. The warning label put on the video by YouTube is a sign of how precise the analysis is. Wonder Woman Got It Wrong. Did You? shows that tribalism is wrong and that the reality is more complicated than we think.

Superman Is the Hero We Need Right Now let me re-think my stance on Superman. I never liked the character, but Out of Frame convinced me I was wrong.

The Critical Drinker

The Critical Drinker is the YouTube channel of Will Jordan, author and film critic. I love his sarcastic reviews of awful movies and TV shows like Mulan or Star Trek Discovery, and his recommendations for example Cobra Kai, Fight Club, Dredd, or The Lighthouse.

Additionally, he does entertaining documentaries of movie productions that destroyed careers and drove people insane in Apocalypse Now, The Abyss, or The Island of Dr. Moreau.

Parasite

The Korean movie Parasite [Prime Video] by Bong Joon-ho was one of my favorite motion pictures of the year.

Its class critique was reviewed by Wisecrack and Just Write. The Nerdwriter did an incredible analysis of the rhythm of the movie in Parasite’s Perfect Montage.

The Handmaiden

Another Korean movie I enjoyed was The Handmaiden [Prime Video]. In Korea, in the 1930s, a young woman is hired as a handmaiden to a rich Japanese heiress. She is part of a team of swindlers that plan to rob her of her fortune. The story is brilliant, thrilling, and has numerous surprises.

I had listened to the beautiful soundtrack two years before I had the chance to see the movie and enjoyed The Beauty Of The Handmaiden (Ah-ga-ssi).

The Expanse

At the beginning of 2020, I finished the 8th book of the series: Tiamat’s Wrath. I liked it a lot and can’t wait for the last book of the series (I hope next year).

Meanwhile, the TV show is back with Season 5: The Expanse [Prime Video]. The trailer appeared in October, but it was hard to wait for December because book 5 was my favorite book of the series.

Cobra Kai

Cobra Kai [Netflix] was one of the most fun to watch TV shows in 2020. The story follows up 36 years after the end of the movie The Karate Kid and gives it a nice turn and twists the story. It’s fun and takes a few hits and kicks at the weak new generation. 😅

Nearly all actors from the original movie are part of the new TV show. The third season will arrive in January 2021. There are 25 Things You Missed in Cobra Kai, which I didn’t know.

The soundtrack of Season 1 and Season 2 combines the 80s and today's music.

Tales from the Loop

Tales from the Loop [Prime Video] is a refreshing Science Fiction and heart-warming story about the people in a city above a secret research facility.

The idea for the TV show comes from the artwork of the Swedish illustrator Simon Stålenhag. His artwork blends nostalgia and futurism.

Dark

Dark [Netflix] was one of the few German TV shows that got international acclaim. It’s a fantastic Science Fiction story. The third and final season finished the incredible story arc and solved a lot of the riddles.

But the story of Dark is so complicated that Netflix made a website to browse the different seasons and episodes, and read up on characters and the plot (spoiler-free).

Barbarians

Another German TV show that got attention outside of Germany was Barbarians [Netflix]. It shows (quite accurately) the devastating battle at the Teutoburger Forest between the Roman Army and united Germanic tribes. The fight resulted in the loss of 3 legions (⅛ of the 25 Roman legions) and was devastating for the Empire. It resulted in the construction of the Limes, a 550 km long fortified wall to protect the Roman Empire from the Germanic tribes, and stopped the Roman expansion.

There were many documentaries at the same time with the release of the TV show Origin of the Germanic Tribes, Arminius: Hero of Germania, Traitor to Rome, and channels discussing the accuracy of the TV show or the languages they spoke.

Rick and Morty

Rick and Morty [Netflix] is a TV show of its category. It’s unusual, creative, and funny. I always binge a full season in one day.

Adult Swim released two funny short films. Samurai & Shogun (Rick and Morty) is a homage to the 70s TV show Lone Wolf and Cub.

Rick and Morty vs. Genocider is another Manga-styled short film that has secret answers to the TV show.

DUST

DUST started as a platform for free Science Fiction short films.

In 2019, they started the DUST Podcast. Season 1 features multiple interesting short stories.

In 2020, they released Season 2: FLIGHT 008, multiple short stories all connected. The season told stories of passengers of Flight 008 from Tokyo to San Francisco that passes a wrinkle in space-time and landed in the year 2040. The stories were fantastic because each author thought of the possible implications of missing 20 years and progressing differently.

Season 3: CHRYSALIS was my favorite season of DUST. It’s one long story of Artificial Intelligence that awakes on Earth to find out that humanity was wiped out by a malevolent alien race. The AI starts building itself a body to revenge its builders.

Zettelkasten & Obsidian

I started this year to work intensively with the Zettelkasten method. It’s a note-taking method that allows the creation of basic ideas to remember concepts or facts, develop new ideas, and make connections. Zettelkasten simulates how our brain works.

I read the fantastic book How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens to learn more about the method.

In 2020, I wrote two articles about the topic: Zettelkasten Note-Taking Method With DEVONthink and Tools I Use For Note-Taking. My note count exceeded 800 in mid-December.

I started writing my notes in DEVONthink, where I store all my notes, references, documents, and inspirations, but the release of Obsidian changed how I write them. Obsidian is the best tool I know to write and connect ideas, and it’s free.

Obsidian is incredibly powerful with its features as backlinks, auto-complete, note graph, block references, and a huge number of plugins.

I started following the YouTube channel Linking Your Thinking that has a well-made 6-part introduction for Obsidian beginners. Effective Remote Work has many tutorials.

Konmari Folding Method

Marie Kondō, the best-selling Japanese author and organizing specialist, released three videos showing how to fold Basics, Intimates, and Menswear. I use her method for two years and love it! Much more space in the closets. Everything is quick and easy to fold and easy to find later.

The Andrew Schulz

The Corona crisis took a massive dip in the careers of many comedians. But not for Andrew Schulz. He had built up his online presence over the last few years, but this year his career took off.

His YouTube show SCHULZ has 3-5 minute long comedy sets about a specific topic and are hilarious. They were so successful that Netflix gave him a comedy special Schulz Saves America: Pandemics, Predators, Protests & Presidents [Netflix].

But the archive of his comedy is gigantic. Hundreds of videos are on his YouTube channel. Clips from Standups like Views from a Cis or Inside Jokes where he meets other comedians to work on their offensive jokes and try to squeeze out fun. He even did a TED talk: Can Comedy Be Funny Anymore?.

Awaken with JP

Another comedian I enjoyed this year was JP Sears and his YouTube channel Awaken with JP. I love his work for a few years. He made fun of the new age movement, influencers, vegans, and other gurus.

But in 2020 he became much more political due to the ever-increasing cancel culture and threads against free speech. He got threatened by Facebook. YouTube deleted a few of his videos, a clear violation of his Free Speech, guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

He made videos joking about Zoom Calls with Old People, insane and overreaching regulations during the Corona crisis, for example Emotional Distancing Guidelines, The Pandemic Hotline, or How To Be More Obedient.

He criticized the new media outlets in How News Anchors Are Trained, political division in How the Left and Right Fight, and even educated about the election in Biden Won! Here’s What You Need To Know and How a Civil War Could Start!.

He made fun of Political Correctness and Wokeness and mocked social media companies for censorship in What It’s Like Getting Censored on YouTube, Spotify Employees Censoring Joe Rogan, Why Twitter Censored the NY Post Article on Biden, and The Fact Checkers.

Ryan Long

In a similar kind, the standup comedian Ryan Long made a lot of funny and critical videos about media bias in How to Sell Protest Footage to FOX AND CNN or a New Website Curates News You Agree With (Newsyourway.net). He criticized Antifa in Meet The People Who Decide Who You Can Punch. His video library is full of funny videos mocking social justice and the woke ideology movement.

K-Von Comedy

I discovered K-Von who describes himself as ½ Persian Comedian because of his funny and educational videos where he compared Trump and Biden on specific topics: Who is more racist?, Who is against the Disabled?, Who is better with Gays?, Who Handled Covid Best?, Who Disrespects the Military Most?, and Who’s the Celebrity Choice for President?. The videos are well-researched and will surprise one or the other person.

Freedom Toons

FreedomToons is a YouTube channel creating cartoons about politics. The clips are short, seldom longer than 2 minutes. And as for the other comedians, 2020 gave a lot of material: They made fun of censorship on 𝕏 in Twitter CENSORS "Fake News" and ⓘ Official sources say this cartoon is false.

The election was a topic to make fun of in The Very Presidential Debate and Reasons To Vote For Joe Biden!.

But my favorite clips are A Brief History of Socialism and Joe Rogan interviews Tim Pool & Jack Dorsey.

James Lindsay

James Lindsay is my favorite fighter against Critical Race Theory and Woke ideology of 2020. He is an American mathematician, author, and cultural critic. He wrote together with Helen Pluckrose the book Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody, which I’ll read next.

I heard first of him for his involvement in the grievance studies affair with Peter Boghossian and Helen Pluckrose. They exposed 2018 the corruption in the humanities of American universities by submitting 20 fake papers. At the time of their reveal, 4 studies had been accepted and published, 3 accepted but not yet published, 6 were rejected and 7 were under review.

He knows the language of Social Justice activists and ideologues as nobody else and regularly comes up with new ideas to mock, trigger, and ridicule those on 𝕏. I love how he regularly renames his 𝕏 handle. For example, in December 2020 his handle is James Lindsay, Bd.E., respect my degree.

He founded New Discourses, one of my favorite magazines, writing about the pursuit of objective truth and calling out “Critical Social Justice” and other ideological dogmas. I read many of his articles, for example The Cult Dynamics of Wokeness, The Woke Breaking Point, Iconoclasm as a Prelude to Woke Horrors?, or The Great Silencing of America and the Hallmarks of Woke Totalitarianism.

He is an excellent speaker and regular guest in podcasts and at conferences to talk about woke ideology. I loved his talk Diversity, Inclusion, Equity at Sovereign Nations.

His new podcast New Discourses started in mid-2020 and is fantastic! He can talk for an hour calmly and with reason about important topics. I recommend Understanding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Biden Is Not The Room, or The Next Chapter of the American Story.

Douglas Murray

Douglas Murray is a bestselling author of six books, including The Madness of Crowds and The Strange Death of Europe. He is Associate Editor at The Spectator.

He was a guest on The Joe Rogan Experience 1538 in September 2020 and was on Eric Weinstein’s Podcast The Portal 41 – Heroism 2020: Defense of Our Own Civilization. This was a nearly 5 hours-long conversation and the best podcast episode I listened to in 2020!

Thomas Sowell

Instead of believing the narrative pushed by Black Lives Matter, I started listening to Thomas Sowell after I learned about him in Show Me the Evidence. He is a conservative economist and fellow of the Hoover Institution. And even though he is 90 years old, he doesn’t stop fighting bad ideas. His YouTube channel has numerous interesting talks, for example The Myths of Economic Inequality.

John McWhorter

John McWhorter is an American linguist and associate professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. He is one of the reasonable voices fighting the woke movement. Interesting talks with him are America Has Never Been Less Racist, or How Anti Racism Hurts Black People. With Bret Weinstein, he discussed George Floyd Protests and Race in America and with Coleman Hughes, Has Anti-Racism Become A New Religion?. He is a regular guest on Glenn Loury’s podcast Blogginheads.tv where they recently called out Ibram X. Kendi, the author of Anti Racism, as the fraud he is.

Glenn Loury

Glenn Loury is an American economist, academic, and author. He became the first black tenured professor of economics in the history of Harvard University at the age of 33.

He hosts The Glenn Show on Bloggingheads.tv. ReasonTV spoke with him about racism in America in ‘We’re Being Swept Along by Hysteria’ About Racism in America.

Coleman Hughes

Coleman Hughes is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, and an opinion columnist on issues related to race and racism at the online magazine Quillette, a fellow and contributing editor at City Journal, and host of the podcast Conversations with Coleman.

Gad Saad

Gad Saad is a Professor, Evolutionary Behavioral Scientist, and author of The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense.

He was a guest on many podcasts this year, for example The Joe Rogan Experience 1557 or Science Salon 136 with Michael Shemer.

His podcast The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad had interesting guests for example Noor Bin Ladin, the niece of Osama bin Laden or Robert O’Neill, the Navy SEAL that killed Osama bin Laden.

Colin Wright

Colin Wright is an evolutionary biologist and Managing Editor at Quillette. He fights against The New Evolution Deniers and people that don’t believe in biology. His other articles “Sex is NOT a Spectrum” – Colin Wright and Think Cancel Culture Doesn’t Exist? My Own ‘Lived Experience’ Says Otherwise, is a good read.

He was a guest on TRIGGERnometry and multiple other podcasts.

Glenn Greenwald

Glenn Greenwald is a Journalist, Co-Founder of The Intercept, a newspaper that forced him to resign in 2020 because they refused to publish his article critical of Hunter Biden. He was the Journalist who met Edward Snowden in Hong Kong in 2013 when he revealed the systemic overreach by the NSA.

Glenn Greenwald's resignation letter can be read on My Resignation From The Intercept, and his forced resignation is a worrying case for free speech.

The censored article was published nevertheless on his new home on Substack: Article on Joe and Hunter Biden Censored By The Intercept.

He was a guest on The Joe Rogan Experience 1556 and discussed Nothing Trump Did Compares to the ‘Moral Evil’ of Bush’s and Obama’s Wars on ReasonTV.

Bari Weiss

Another center opinion column writer who was bullied into leaving her employer, The New York Times, was Bari Weiss. She writes about her experiences of harassment at the newspaper that forced her to leave the paper in her Resignation Letter. She was a guest on The Joe Rogan Experience 1415 in January 2020.

Joseph Paul Watson

Joseph Paul Watson is regularly smeared as a right-wing YouTuber and conspiracy theorist by people who dislike his political criticism and comments on social issues. But his well-researched commentary is on-point, sometimes uses no words but lets the videos speak for themselves. His videos are a creative mix of facts, articles, memes, movie clips, and music. He is one of my favorite social commentators and an excellent observer of trends in society.

He criticized the similarities to communism in the BLM movement in Cultural Revolution ✊ and Ritual Public Shaming, exposed Biden’s new cabinet members of the military-industrial complex in MEET THE NEW BOSS.

He exposed the hypocrisy of stars like Lewis Hamilton in Lewis Hamilton is an Idiot and technocrats in They think you’re stupid who would like to reorganize the society with a Great Reset.

I liked his take on corporate virtue signaling and Anti-Racism in Things That Didn’t End Racism. He commented on the Islamic terrorist attacks in France in Submission.

He criticized the insanity of overreaching Corona regulations, the rise of authoritarian and totalitarian tendencies by governments around the globe during the pandemic, and everyday insanity in Attack of the Corona Karens, i s o l a t i o n 👉👈, q u a r a n t i n e 🥱, COVID-1984, and Send in the Clowns 🤡.

But his series m o d e r n i t y (part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4) is my favorite and a dark mirror of society. The excesses he shines a light on are not the majority of people, but the fringe sides of the political spectrum. But normal people need to be able to identify these bad ideas if they sneak into normality and call them out.

Bridget Phetasy

Bridget Phetasy is an American writer, comedian, and broadcaster. She feels politically homeless and took on the fight against Woke ideology. She hosts the podcast Dumpster Fire on YouTube.

She was interviewed by the satire magazine The Babylon Bee and on TRIGGERnometry podcast in December 2020.

I loved how she mocked in Naked Ballot Audition woke celebrities asking people to vote.

Blue Collar Logic

Blue Collar Logic are Jason Siler and Dave Morrison, who use logic and reason to make political commentary. If you are a Liberal (as I am) and think your media consumption is balanced — which it isn’t — and want to listen to reasonable conservative arguments, this channel is the right one. No yelling, no partisan lies, but facts and logic.

Buddy Brown

Buddy Brown is a traditional country music artist and his songs are funny. But I started following his channel because he is authentic and honest. His political commentary is on the point and delivered with humor. And I love the Southern accent. 😂

His commentary Just Sayin has topics like How to not get shot by the police, explains privilege, has nice ideas for what to do with looters or how to solve the parenting problem.

And his song I am 911 is funny. Other funny songs are The Coronavirus Song, Kids That Never Got Spanked, Driving Through the Ghetto, or Looters.

Journey

Even though the fantastic game Journey by thatgamecompany was released in 2012, I had never heard of it before I saw this homage on YouTube. I bought it for €15 for PlayStation 4 and later again for iOS. I played it at least 15 times in 2020, and it’s my favorite game of all time.

The story of the game is told without text or speech, but with music and images. You sometimes play with other people, but it’s random if you meet people. It might be one person you follow along with the whole game, multiple, or none. The game has a system of rank, visualized by the embroidery on the robe. The highest level is the white robe that you earn after finding all secrets in the game.

The music of the game was composed by Austin Wintory, and it is incredibly beautiful. My favorite song is Apotheosis. It was performed in concert at the FMF 2018 Video Games Music Gala in Poland.

After finishing the game, I can recommend watching these short videos about the story explanation, artistry of game design, and the hidden story in the soundtrack.

Ghost of Tsushima

Playing Ghost of Tsushima was a lot of fun. The story was interesting, the huge open-world huge had many vegetation and seasons: Vast grasslands, yellow maple trees, foggy swamps, long beaches, cloudy mountain ranges with Shinto temples, burned battlefields, and destroyed villages. The game is pure mono no aware (物の哀れ) and it’s hard to not constantly snap photos of the stunning scenes while playing.

And the soundtrack by Ilan Eshkeri and Shigeru Umebayashi supports the stunning landscapes for the right mood.

Tina Guo

I discovered Tina Guo after I watched her incredible Cello solo at the FMF 2018 Video Games Music Gala in Poland. She trained to play the Cello for more than 8 hours every day of her childhood.

She regularly streams training sessions on her YouTube channel and likes playing movie music, game music, and Heavy Metal.

Samara Ginsberg

Another Cellist I started following is Samara Ginsberg. She plays famous movie and TV show songs and arranges them together. I loved Knight Rider for 8 cellos and Imperial March (Darth Vader’s Theme) for 8 cellos, but she did over 20 videos in 2020.

One last thing: If 2020 has shown me one thing, it’s that you can’t and never should trust institutions, media companies, or politicians to do the right thing.

People fought and died for the privileges we have: Personal autonomy, life, liberty, freedom, and the rule of law against overreaching government, authoritarian and totalitarian tendencies in politicians and media oligarchs.

Start thinking for yourself. The media censorship and blunt manipulation I witnessed this year are mind-boggling for anybody born before the internet was invented. We slowly give away our freedoms and rights for convenience or the feeling of security and control.

One way you can do this is by supporting a decentralized internet and open source. Fight back and speak up against censorship and authoritarian tendencies, reject any legislation against cryptography or for more surveillance, dismiss the usage of fear-driven politics, and privacy violations, and expose hypocrisy in politicians, celebrities, and influencers. Vote with your money and attention.

Start using tools that support privacy, security, and encryption. Use Signal or Element instead of WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger. Brave or Firefox instead of Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. DuckDuckGo, Startpage, or Ecosia instead of Google. Proton Mail or Tutanota instead of Google Mail. Odysee, BitChute, or Rumble instead of YouTube.

The Hated One or Rob Braxman make videos with tips and tricks on how to protect your privacy online. Restore Privacy is another good resource to learn about privacy and security. You don’t need to stop using the other services, but using alternatives will move power and money away from the big social media companies.

RSS readers are my favorite way to escape curated, biased, ad-driven streams of content by companies that have not my interest as a priority. I use Feedbin together with Reeder, but there are many other ways to read the content you want. Brave released recently a news feed for their browser that will soon support custom feed URLs.

Haiku 12

Tue, 01 Dec 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Nebel am Abend, kühle Luft, feucht wie Suppe – kein goldener Herbst.
Fog in the evening, cool air, moist like soup – no golden autumn.

Haiku 11

Sun, 01 Nov 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Wind in den Blättern, wie das Rauschen von Regen hoch in den Wipfeln.
Wind in the leaves, like the rustle of rain high in the tree tops.

Haiku 10

Thu, 01 Oct 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Es ist gänzlich still, blauer Himmel und Sonne – ein Sonntag im Herbst.
It is completely silenent, blue sky and sun – a sunday in autumn.

Tools I Use For Note-Taking: Notes built for connection, not clutter

Thu, 03 Sep 2020 00:00:00 GMT

I started 6 months ago to use the Zettelkasten note-taking method. In this short time, my collection of notes grew from zero to more than 350 notes. And now I can see the first benefits of cross-linking notes.

If you want to learn more about the Zettelkasten method, I recommend the essay Zettelkasten — How One German Scholar Was So Freakishly Productive.

As I wrote in my last essay Zettelkasten Note-Taking Method With DEVONthink I started my Zettelkasten in DEVONthink. But since then, I integrated more tools into my workflow. This essay describes which tools I use for my notes and why.

DEVONthink or Obsidian? Both

After using DEVONthink for a while, a few of its disadvantages for the Zettelkasten method became obvious: The linking of notes was time-consuming manual work, it is missing backlink and graph features, and the WikiLink auto-complete does only work if I know the note ID. But as I use DEVONthink not only for note-taking but for archiving documents, or inspirational material, I found myself in a dilemma. I gave Obsidian another try and was impressed. It had tremendously improved after I first tested it. I felt frustrated to not be able to have the features of both tools in one tool. And as there is never one tool that fulfills all wishes, why not combine tools?

I use 7 different tools: 😅

Obsidian – Creating, writing, linking, and analyzing notes
iA Writer – Writing essays or longer notes
DEVONthink – Holding all my reference material, synchronizing notes across devices, and easy filtering by tags
DEVONthink to Go – Adding notes on mobile devices like my phone or tablet
BibDesk – Manage my bibliography
Raycast – Creating snippets (ID, or templates)
GitHub – Version-controlled history of all my note changes

The following sections describe my workflow and how I integrate the various tools into my note-taking process.

Tools

Obsidian

Obsidian is incredible, doesn’t matter whether you use the Zettelkasten note-taking method or any other method. It’s built for offline first. Even though it’s in Beta, it outstrips its competitors. It has 18 official plugins (as of writing) and will add community plugins with version 1.0.

One of the best features is Backlinks. Users of Roam Research are familiar with this feature. If you link a note via the WikiLink syntax, e.g., [[note]], the connected note will show this connection in a special backlink drawer. The creation of backlinks has fuzzy auto-complete, which is incredibly helpful. Linking another note is a matter of seconds.

Obsidian has a Quick Switcher that allows jumping between notes in seconds and supports a fuzzy search for files.

The Graph View is a cool feature! It displays all notes as dots (depending on the zoom level with or without the note name) and all connections between notes are visualized as lines. This allows us to see how good (or bad) the notes are connected. You can drag notes around and all connected notes will follow.

iA Writer

I like writing long texts with iA Writer, because of its minimalistic interface, focus mode, and nice features to write better texts. I found an easy way of editing any Markdown note on-demand from DEVONthink or Obsidian in iA Writer and saving the changes back. Both tools allow setting shortcuts to open a file with its default application, which is for me iA Writer for Markdown files.

DEVONthink

DEVONthink is a fantastic document management system. It allows any type of content to be stored, archived, sorted, and analyzed. Databases can be synced via Bonjour, WebDAV, USB connection, or cloud providers such as Dropbox, or iCloud. The databases are automatically encrypted on external servers.

The Tagging is incredibly fast and convenient, compared with other tools such as Evernote. And I use countless tags (currently, 23507 different tags). Tags replaced all folders for me because folders and tags are interchangeable in DEVONthink. I won’t go into much more detail on how I work with DEVONthink, as this is covered in my previous essay, Zettelkasten Note-Taking Method With DEVONthink.

One thing I changed to my previous DEVONthink-only workflow is that I use an indexed folder instead of putting my notes directly in DEVONthink. This can be achieved by adding the notes folder on the hard disk with File → Index Files and Folders…. Any change in a file on the hard disk or in DEVONthink will immediately sync across all devices.

DEVONthink to Go

I use DEVONthink to Go to quickly create new notes, and add photos, or other media to my databases. These files get automatically synced with all connected devices and are added to my Macs the next time I open DEVONthink. Additionally, I use the mobile version to search and read the content of my database when I’m not on my computer.

Obsidian Graph View of my 3,500 notes

One plugin allows opening a note via custom shortcuts in the default app, which I use to edit longer notes in iA Writer.

Obsidian has a plugin that activates the Zettelkasten Prefixer. Creating a new note will automatically prefix a date-time ID to a new note.

The search for Obsidian is powerful and fast. It supports fuzzy search, logical operators, grouping, or regular expressions.

Other nice plugins enable support for auto-pair brackets, Vim key bindings, a tag pane, starred notes, word count, a note outline, or a page preview. Each plugin can be switched on or off, you have total control over what features you want.

Obsidian supports custom CSS and has a community theme library with many delightful themes.

If you write daily notes, there is support for that. A note can be automatically prefixed with any date format.

The Random Note feature is helpful to open a random note. I use it to connect every day one or two notes to other notes.

BibDesk

I use BibDesk to manage my citations, as described in the essay Manage Citations for a Zettelkasten. For every book, webpage, or video I want to reference, I create a new entry. It’s a quick process, but immensely helpful later to find the source again.

I updated the citation template mentioned in the essay to my wishes (to support URLs).

Raycast

I use Raycast for more than snippets, but this would be another blog post. In my note-taking process, I use Raycast to create unique note IDs (e.g., 202008311912 and fill in different note templates).

GitHub

Putting my notes in a folder on the hard disk has the advantage of additionally adding version control with Git. I created a private repository in GitHub and added the Zettelkasten notes folder. I commit once per day to all changes to my notes. I don’t need to push/pull on other devices, as the files are synced via DEVONthink. But it’s a pleasant addition to seeing how the notes changed over time.

Note Creating Workflow

If I sit at one of my Mac computers, I press a shortcut in Obsidian to automatically create a new Zettelkasten note, automatically suffixed with a timestamp ID. I enter a title for the note, and a template feature of Obsidian automatically fills in the basic structure of a note. I use Raycast to create other types of notes. My note template is as simple as it gets:

Zettelkasten Principles - 202008311912.md

#

## Related

Tags:

I add the title, content, commented links to other notes, and tags. I decided to drop the ID from the title of the headline. This example is translated, I use the German language for my notes:

# Zettelkasten Principles

The 12 Zettelkasten principles mentioned in [#Clear2019aa].

1. Atomicity – Just one idea per note
2. Autonomy – A note should be self-contained and comprehensible on its own
3. Link your notes – Link the note to already existing notes
4. Explain why you’re linking the notes – Add a comment to the link
5. Use your own words – Don’t copy and paste. Writing in your own words forces you to understand the idea.
6. Keep references – Add references to your notes to remember where you got the idea from.
7. Add your thoughts – Add comments or ideas.
8. Don’t worry about structure – You don’t need folders
9. Add connection notes – If you see a connection between random notes, add new notes connecting these.
10. Add outline notes – If you see topics emerging, create outline notes, that contain just links to other notes and create a story or narrative.
11. Never delete – Don’t delete old notes, link the new notes describing what’s wrong or outdated.
12. Add notes without fear – You can’t have too many notes.

## Related

- How to add a custom template to BibDesk: [[Add BibDesk Markdown template - 202008231056]]
- Blog posts on my website on how to use DEVONthink for the Zettelkasten method: [[Zettelkasten Note-Taking Method With DEVONthink - 202005171813]]

Tags: #Zettelkasten

[#Clear2019aa]: David B. Clear (2019): _Zettelkasten – How One German Scholar Was So Freakishly Productive_, <https://writingcooperative.com/zettelkasten-how-one-german-scholar-was-so-freakishly-productive-997e4e0ca125>.

In DEVONthink I select all notes I created on a given day and press the right mouse button, select Tags → Convert Hashtags to Tags which will create Mac tags out of the Hashtags on my notes. It’s possible to activate this feature in the settings automatically, but I didn’t do it because Obsidian doesn’t have a save feature, instead automatically saves the note on every keystroke. The Hashtag feature in Obsidian supports auto-complete, but as the sync to DEVONthink is instantly the feature would create multiple meaningless tags, e.g., Zet, tel, ka, sten – depending on how fast you type or when you select the auto-completed tag.

DEVONthink can create a nice preview thumbnail of the notes and will sync all notes or changes via the sync storage with other devices (including the Mac tags).

I commit all changes or additions to my Zettelkasten folder and push the changes to GitHub. It’s not needed to pull my changes on another computer (unless I want to commit to a different computer) because DEVONthink handles the synchronization.

I try to connect notes when I find a note without connections and split notes into small notes if I stumble upon a note that is too big.

Over time, these connected notes convert into a second brain. New ideas emerge by connecting notes that weren’t originally intended to be connected.

Haiku 9

Tue, 01 Sep 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Schneebedeckter Berg – am Hang fährt ein Skifahrer, die Lawine folgt.
Snowy mountain – a skier drives on a slope, the avalanche follows.

Haiku 8

Sat, 01 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Ein Windstoß, heftig, reißt an der Zeitung so stark – in Fetzen dahin.
A gust of wind, fierce, rips the newspaper so hard – in scraps.

New Website 2020: How I engineered the stack, testing, theming, MDX, and deployment

Tue, 28 Jul 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Development

I started coding with React in mid of 2018 and began to play with the thought of using React as a technology for the website. I had followed the development of the static website generator Gatsby since version 1.0 in July 2017. In September 2018 Gatsby reached version 2.0 and was finally a good option. I selected Gatsby because of its massive community, fantastic plugin system, its utilization of React, GraphQL, and a static page generator.

This essay has no code examples, as it’s more a description of technological decisions I took and problems I ran into, and how I solved them. The whole source code is publicly available on GitHub.

Setup

Between the end of November and mid of December 2019, I worked on the basic setup of the project, which took 28 hours. I created a fresh, empty Gatsby project. I don’t remember which starter I used, but it was one of the most basic ones. The concept of Gatsby Recipes wasn’t released yet, I had to do all configuration manually.

Every project I work on these days needs Prettier installed. I don't even want to remember the times before, Prettier. Formatting and indenting are not issues anymore you think about, you write your code, and it gets automatically reformatted and re-arranged.

Next, I installed Husky, a tool to add Git hooks to a project that allows running specific commands before or after specific Git commands. With Lint-Staged which allows running linters on Git staged files, it’s the best toolkit to prevent oneself from committing invalid or broken code.

I installed Commitizen a tool that helps format Git commit messages with the AngularJS commit message convention. This creates good commits that can be identified later and encourages atomic commits—meaning not condensing a documentation change and a bug fix into one commit, but separating them into two different commits. This allows later to identify what was changed and why. Nobody likes looking at a 2,000-line commit including changes all over a code-base.

I used EditorConfig, a nice convention for ensuring consistent coding styles on a project. It wouldn’t be necessary on my website because I’m the only developer working on my website, but I like to have an industry-standard start even on private projects.

TypeScript

Next, I configured TypeScript in Gatsby. The setup is quick and easy, using the gatsby-plugin-typescript plugin. I decided early I wanted to use TypeScript on my whole project, even though this would slow me down. I started learning TypeScript a few months earlier, but I wanted to invest in learning the technology because the whole industry moves to TypeScript, including my current employer.

The initial start was rough because I had no idea how to properly structure a Gatsby/TypeScript project. But by looking into other TypeScript starters, I found good inspiration on how to do it properly.

The first two weeks were tough, and I cursed a lot at TypeScript, but then the development got quicker, and I could reuse a lot of what I learned.

Linting

I installed tools for static testing, linters for JavaScript/TypeScript (ESLint) and CSS (Stylelint). All linters check automatically every line of code I wrote before I commit them.

Unit Testing

A good code-base should have proper unit test coverage, which is why I installed and configured Jest as a testing framework and used React Testing Library for its fantastic set of testing utilities. Additionally, I added Jest Axe a Jest matcher to identify common accessibility problems.

Each of my components has a snapshot test that covers the Markup and CSS, and an Axe accessibility test to catch preventable problems. Plenty of people think Snapshot tests are a bad habit, but I disagree and during my development, I was proved correct. The snapshot makes sure you don’t accidentally break Markup or CSS without at least acknowledging it. Interactive components have additional integration tests checking for the correct handling of interactions.

Styled Components

I decided to use Styled Components as a CSS in the JS library. I long opposed to the idea of CSS in JS, and I dislike libraries that don’t use CSS syntax. I hate writing CSS in objects or JavaScript syntax (borderBottom: "10px" instead of border-bottom: 10px). But using Styled Components makes the development of components a lot faster. And it’s convenient to generate TypeScript types automatically out of variants with keyof typeof variant.

I picked Styled-System as an additional library but ripped it out later in the process because it was over-engineering for my one-person website. I don’t need super-flexible components that can be changed on the fly by a developer. I’m the developer on the project, I know what I need.

Theming

I used the Theme Provider of Styled Components to prepare my website for a light and dark theme (plus theme color variations). Coding the theme toggle was the hardest part of the whole development. It took me a good two weeks to get a working theme switcher with a theme context running. Yet, I didn’t know that worse things would come, but more to that topic later.

MDX

One of the reasons I was happy to use Gatsby on my new website was the support of MDX (Markdown with JSX). Since the early days of blogging, I was always annoyed by how hard it was to get custom things into a blog post. WordPress introduced the concept of shortcodes which was a big thing. But this is nothing compared to what MDX can do: MDX allows it to develop complex components doing what you like and then add them as normal HTML tags in the Markdown documents. This allows for interactive posts or custom-styled tags.

And the best thing is: Thanks to the MDX Provider, it’s possible to automatically provide every Markdown document with your custom components without the need of manually importing them every time. You can remap standard Markdown tags to your components.

Blog

Next, I tried to get a basic blog running by adding sample MDX files and using GraphQL to query the data and display it on the homepage. Nothing fancy, to kick off things. I didn’t work any further on the blog for the next few months.

Code Highlighting

As I write sometimes essays with code examples, I needed code highlighting. A common way of doing this is using a JavaScript library like PrismJS. I added the library and the Gatsby plugin but wasn’t happy with the solution. The library is big and slows down the loading. And all that to get code highlighted.

But then I found the community plugin gatsby-remark-vscode, and it’s magical. It allows you to use any Visual Studio Code plugin to be used on your website: Themes or syntax highlighting are the most commonly used. You don’t need to rely on the library of JavaScript library to support your wished syntax. If Visual Studio Code supports it, it will be running on your website. I picked my favorite color theme and added it to my project. Additionally, the plugin has a huge number of options, for example, changing themes matching the color scheme preferences or contrast preferences or highlighting specific lines or ranges. And the best thing is: Everything is pre-rendered, you don’t need to load one line of JavaScript for the code highlighting.

Persistent Theme Toggle and SSR Rendering

The last thing I coded on Sylvester's day 2019 was a persistent toggle, preselecting your color options by reading your system’s preferences and saving your preferences to a persistent state consistent across multiple tabs.

But in mid-January, I recognized a strange behavior: My color theme didn’t work as expected after I built the Gatsby site for production. There was always a flash and styles didn’t change consistently across the whole website. I was nerve-wrecked after coding for 3 weeks on the color scheme, everything now for nothing.

After debugging for a few days, I could narrow down the problem to the SSR (Server-Side-Rendering) of Gatsby. Gatsby creates a static website of all your pages that will run without any JavaScript. JavaScript adds a better experience and a better response to a website. And to render everything to a static file, the default theme gets picked (which was the light theme in my case). Even after React is loaded, it won’t replace the light theme with the dark theme automatically. You would need to trigger a manual re-render of the whole page, which looked like an unfavorable solution to me. Luckily, other people ran into the problem and I found out that the easiest solution is to move the colors from the theme provider into CSS Custom Properties (aka CSS Variables).

In the end, I solved the problem by using a few global JavaScript functions to change the theme by applying a CSS class to the body tag and then switching the colors thanks to CSS variables. This works perfectly and has a good performance. Plus: I didn’t need the Theme Provider anymore and could remove it.

SEO

In January 2020, I created an SEO component. As long as I work with websites, I know the importance of an SEO-friendly website. If the website can’t be crawled properly it will be bad for disabled people, content crawlers (like Raindrop.io or Pocket), or Feed Reeders) and sharing content on social media won’t work properly. Bad SEO: Your website sucks.

The component I created (I was inspired by a lot of other Gatsby developers) provides every page with the full set of necessary headers: Meta tags, title, description, OpenGraph, and 𝕏 tags (for sharing on social media sites) and plenty of other things. The component allows changing any of these parameters on a per-page basis. A specific page shouldn’t be crawled? Add a different robots rule to that page.

Easter Eggs

I started with coding the most unnecessary components first: The Easter eggs. 😬 But as I wanted the website to have uncommon and never-seen-before features, this was important to me. Next to my favorite Easter egg, I coded a LocalizedDate component, which allows the visitor to pick between three different date formats: US, German, or Japanese. Your selection will be remembered in your browser. I admit I did it because I like how the Japanese date looks but didn’t want to torture my visitors with the format.

I coded January the ColorSwatch component, a component that can display color and its values. I knew I would need this later.

SVG Generation

I created a script to generate components from SVG illustrations using SVGR. It took me a little bit to find out how to make the script export TypeScript components, but could, fortunately, figure it out.

I use the beautiful and minimalistic Remix Icons and custom icons created by me, but try to use as few icons as possible.

Web Font

The last thing I did in January 2020 was added the web font to my website. I knew from the beginning I didn’t want any dependency on a font provider, and definitely not Google. I removed all page tracking in 2019 from my website and don’t indent to add any tracking back. Adding a web font from Google Fonts will automatically bring user tracking. Additionally, the performance is never as good as if the font is directly served from your server.

That’s why I found a high-quality version of Playfair Display (Google does something to the fonts) and converted them with Font Squirrels free generator into all the necessary formats.

I use the Web Font Loader to asynchronously load the fonts. The library adds specific classes to the html tag, reflecting the different states of the web font loading. This allows swapping fonts or changing CSS depending on the state of the loading. I load initially the font Georgia in a different font weight that allows the minimal amount of jumping text when the web font is finished loading.

Components, Components, and More Components

From February 2020 to April 2020 I did one repeating thing: Developing components. I added components for typography, links, code blocks, text styles, quotations, lists, footnotes, and many more. It was a tiring process, but I knew I would need all these components.

After a few components, I got tired of always copying and pasting the folder structure of a component that I installed Plop. Plop can be used to auto-generate any file and folder structure, including automatically naming everything.

Component-Driven Development

I never worked with Storybook before, but I always wanted to try it. Storybook is an open-source tool for developing UI components isolated. It has a giant community creating plugins for every thinkable use case.

I moved all my existing components to Storybook and started with a component-driven development. I created one story (a use case) for every component variation. Then I developed the components isolated from any website code in Storybook and unit tested the stories. This made the development much easier and fun than creating a manual style guide page and developing the components on that.

Grid

In mid of May 2020, I started developing the page grid, row, and column helpers. The underlying technology is CSS Grid Layout. I wanted the grid to be as flexible as possible: Supporting explicitly placed grid items, but different size presets for simple pages and allowing content to be auto-placed on the grid if possible.

I ran into a problem because of all the designs I created for the huge Desktop size of 1800 Pixels. Each grid module was 100 × 100 Pixels wide. But a responsive page isn't concerned about pixel sizes.

Responsive Grid and Typography

Lucky, I stumbled upon a video about min(), max(), and clamp() a few weeks earlier. I had never heard of clamp before and was surprised by how supported it was. IE11 doesn’t support it, but who cares about that crappy discontinued browser? Not even Microsoft.

The combination of min(), max(), and clamp() allows responsive typography or grids, that respect a minimal and maximal size and adjust the size of anything in between these two values matching to the available screen space. This changed everything! I switched all font sizes and space tokens to clamp. This allows the grid, margins, padding, or font sizes to adjust to the screen size but stay within reasonable ranges.

Pages

At the end of May 2020, I started creating the first page: The Error 404 page. I used explicitly positioned content and could test out my grid.

Next, I created the first Markdown page: Imprint. And then the About page, another explicitly designed page. It was impressive how quick and easy it was to create all the layouts I designed months earlier in Affinity. Each page took me a day. I created the first parts of the Homepage, another explicitly set site.

Then I started with my first data-driven pages: The Traditional Colors of Japan and Haiku.

I created the colors a few years ago from a Japanese book about colors. Back then it was a blog post, but I always intended to create a full page around that, presenting all the colors in a space they deserved. I read all the color values from a YAML file and generate the page thanks to GraphQL with Gatsby using my Color Swatch component I developed a few months earlier.

My Haiku (Japanese poetry) were always cramped on one boring page on my previous website, and I wanted to present them properly. I created a proper introduction page with an explanation and information and listed all my Haiku. I generated for each Haiku an individual page, including an English translation of my in German written Haiku.

In Mid of June, I started creating the Journal aka Blog. I created a two-column layout with all essays sorted alphabetically on the left side and all monthly recommendations sorted by date on the right side. As the date is for my essays of minor importance (except the recommendations), alphabetical sorting is the best option. I created the Journal detail page, displaying an individual essay.

I created a sophisticated Row component a month earlier that can automatically align content by a fixed set of rules, and needed to make it work on small screen sizes.

I thought long about dropping the Projects page from my list for the initial launch of the new design because I had worked on the project for a long time. But then I decided to do it and invest in the two additional weeks because now is always the right time to do things. I not only created a Projects page but showcases for selected projects.

While showing all my projects, I decided to move my Sketchnotes to a dedicated section on the website.

Migrating the Content

I knew one last big task was left on my list, which was tedious work but needed to be completed: Moving all essays to my new website. This took me a whole week because I decided to correct the spelling of every essay, needed to replace custom HTML with my components, and update the YAML Frontmatter metadata of each blog post. I decided to improve the quality of the images when possible.

Recent Essays on the Homepage

The homepage was missing a design for the recent essays. My early designs in that section didn’t please me anymore, they were aligned, boring, and blunt. I decided to experiment with a Grid automatically reordering itself and content randomly offset. The idea worked, but the randomness will reposition the recent blog essays each time I deploy my website, as the SSR will embed the styles and prevent a new random positioning on each reload.

Animations & Transitions

The last bigger tasks on my list were related to Animations and Transitions. I had moved these to the end of the development, to be able to ship without them, if it got complicated or time-intensive.

I used React Transition Group and gatsby-plugin-layout to be able to transition between different pages. I kept the transition simple and pleasant to stick to the principles of Shibui.

I used gatsby-plugin-scroll-reveal to reveal content when scrolling into the viewport. The plugin uses Sal.js as a scroll animation library.

In the end, I improved the performance of all transitions on my website by changing what I transitioned. Early on I had quickly added simple transitions but got a low-performance warning from Jest.

Progressive Web App & RSS/Atom Feed

The last thing I added to my website before I got ready to launch it was converting my website into a PWA (Progressive Web App) by adding a Service Worker. With Gatsby, this can be achieved with the plugins gatsby-plugin-manifest and gatsby-plugin-offline.

The last task on my list was adding an RSS/Atom Feed. I thought this would be an easy task, but I was wrong. I tried using the plugin gatsby-plugin-feed, but couldn’t get it running. I tried another community plugin forked to support MDX, but ran into the same problems. The content didn’t want to render properly, all my custom MDX components were missing. Debugging was hard because the feed gets only generated with a production build, which is why it took me multiple hours to debug the issue. In the end, I found out accidentally, that I had to move the MDX Provider from my layout component to the wrapRootElement function. Lastly, I changed a few of my components to be better displayed in the RSS feed.

Continuous integration & Deployment

I use Netlify to host my website. When I open a pull request on GitHub, Netlify creates automatically a preview deployment on a custom URL. This is a fantastic feature and the main reason I selected Netlify. An automation workflow checks the Redirect file, mixed content, and other changes.

I use Travis CI to run the CSS and JavaScript linting and the automated tests with Jest (including coverage). The coverage report gets automatically uploaded to Codecov.

I added the Renovate bot to automatically open pull requests for package upgrades but removed it later because it would quickly use up my free build minutes on Netlify.

Source Code

If you’re interested in how I developed each step of the website, I created nearly 500 Git commits. You can check out the source code of the website at any selected time and look into how the website looked.

New Website 2020: Designing a personal site with constraints I actually wanted

Tue, 21 Jul 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Design

I have to admit that even though I’m a Frontend Developer, designing is the thing I enjoy more than development. The reason I became a developer is that as a designer without any coding skills, all your ideas stay ideas unless another developer brings them to life.

The good thing with a personal project is there are no limitations, and you’re the customer. No compromises that water down an idea, no real-world boundaries that prevent doing everything as it should be done.

When I started working on my website, I wanted to do the project as it should be done, and that means, you start with the content.

Content First

I preached this for years to my customers when they hired me to create a website for them: Content is King. Without content, you don’t have anything. Lorem ipsum placeholder text is a bad idea. You need to know your content to design it. I always cursed when a customer said: You can start designing, we send the text and photos later. These websites always ended in a bad product.

In 2018, I created nearly all the text for my website. It took long hours to hone down the text until it was short enough, content-rich, and precise in its meaning. I write all my texts with iA Writer, because of the minimal interface, focus mode, Markdown support, and plenty of other features for writing.

I hadn’t written articles for a long time and wanted to change that. In 2019, I started again regularly to create content for my website. I introduced the new format of a monthly blog post listing my favorite links, videos, movies, or books of the month.

After all the political clashes and problems with censorship and policing content creators on the major social media websites, I decided that a website is the best and future-proof investment into a living and diverse internet.

Medium is not your website, it’s another person’s website. Everything you write on Medium or elsewhere on Social Media platforms is not yours—sometimes even written bluntly in legal small-print—and can be taken down, censored, or banned if somebody disagrees.

The internet can survive if we move it back to the people and invest in decentralization: Your website instead of Medium, your news list instead of your followers, a RSS feed instead of a stream of content, Matrix instead of WhatsApp.

Everything controlled by a company can (and will) get corrupt, disappear, or be changed at any time without you being able to do anything about it. Your livelihood might disappear overnight because YouTube decides to rank the algorithm differently.

I’ll continue to use social media to extend my reach, but I moved my content back to my platform.

Typography

The next thing I moved my attention to was Typography. I always loved Typography and have many books on the topic, including the famous The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst. There is a shorter, free version available tailored to the usage of typography on websites: The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web.

I even own a copy of the 650 pages strong Decode Unicode, a book listing all 137,374 typographical characters, from the Armenian capital letter Ayb to the Khmer Letter Ka. There is even a complete website showing all characters and a two-and-a-half-hour-long movie showing all characters.

Typeface

I looked long into free options of good-looking and well-designed typefaces. I wanted to avoid including a paid font, that needs constant payment and an external server because they load slowly and tracking is nearly always included.

After long consideration, I picked the beautiful Playfair Display by Claus Eggers Sørensen. It’s available from regular to black weights. It was converted to a variable font in 2019 (but I didn’t find a use case for that yet).

I like in particular the italic font with the beautiful loops and curves. I picked its companion Playfair Display SC for small caps, used in abbreviations and acronyms.

Scale

Next, I picked a Typographic Scale. A scale is a way to pick font sizes based on a fixed set of rules, for example, a specific harmonic number or formula to create a harmonic visual image. I decided to go with the golden section (ratio 1:1.618).

Typographic Scale

I picked 20 Pixels as the base font size. Furthermore, I’m in my forties and websites pick fonts far too small. The company iA Inc. wrote 2006 the essay The 100% Easy-2-Read Standard, but still, fonts below the recommended 16 Pixels of browsers are a standard.

Ligatures and Other Gems

Playfair Display has a few beautiful ligatures—when two letters as fi get combined in one beautiful combined letter: fi—which look fantastic on large headlines.

I decided to go for hanging punctuation on block quotes and lists, where the quotation mark or bullet list item is moved into the marginalia. This creates a much more harmonious image of the text than using regular punctuation. And as in my previous website, I created the quotes with CSS, fitting to the language of the quote, including sub quotations.

However, I made a huge mistake while creating the font and repeated the mistake on the grid (more on that later) which took later in the development time to correct: I didn’t think about the responsiveness of the web. I was clear about creating a responsive website, but I didn’t anticipate that a fixed size scale might not work with a responsive website without adding dozens of media queries. That’s why I started designing with a fixed size scale and moved later to fluid typography.

At that early stage, I had thought of a substitution font while loading the web font or if web fonts are disabled. I selected Georgia because it has a similar size, width, and character.

Color

I wanted my website to have the color of Japanese Washi (和紙) paper. Early on, I knew that I would support a dark and a light theme. I tried to limit myself to a few colors: One accent color, background color, and foreground color. Additionally, I created variations of these with different intensities.

HSL Color Space

I picket the HSL color space, to be able to quickly create variations of my colors. In HSL, the first value H stands for Hue. Red is 0°, and then each color is represented by a value on a circle. The S stands for Saturation and is a value between 0% (gray) and 100% (full saturation). The L stands for Lightness and is a value between 0% (black) and 100% (white). With all three values, I was able to create the colors I wanted: First, I picked the color hue I wanted to go for. Next, I reduced the Saturation to a value below or around 10% which I found made any color instantly look Shibui (one of its identifying features is desaturated colors). To get all the other colors, I moved the Lightness value down for a dark color or up for a light color.

Color Themes

Additionally, to the main colors, I created 3 other color themes: A green one for my Haiku page, a brown one, I wanted to use for my Sketchnotes page, and a blue one I wanted to use on my projects page (but didn’t do it).

Green

Brown

Blue

I didn’t invert colors but needed to make sure to create good contrast, which is why I handpicked dark and light colors manually. I had to make another adjustment after I launched my website, I didn’t anticipate: The white text on the dark background was far too bright. This is a known problem and there are multiple solutions to fix this. You can pick a lighter font on dark—which I didn’t want to do because of the file size of additional font weights—or reduce the opacity. I picked all light text on dark with an opacity of 0.87.

Logo

Next, I moved my focus to the logo. A logo is always a difficult topic. Do I need one? Why? What should it be? My initials? An image? It’s easy to create a cheesy logo. I used a rakkan (落款), a Japanese artist seal, for at least 10 years. An artist carved it for me into stone, using the oldest Chinese font, the small seal script, introduced by the Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang, 2200 years ago. It gets pressed into red ink and then applied to the artwork as the signature. I choose the characters of my internet pseudonym kogakure (木隠), meaning “hidden behind leaves”.

Rakkan

I created a few sketches of other possible logos, but eventually, I discarded them all and moved back to my rakkan. Likewise, I decided to simplify the vector form and reduce the number of points and make it more performant and easier to recognize in smaller sizes.

Logo Scribbles

But after finishing the logo, I decided in the interest of simplicity and austerity that there is no reason to use a logo at all. I even removed my name from the header, as it’s obvious on what website the visitor is. My name is written enough around the site. The logo will appear in parts of the website, for example as an icon for the app, or on other locations, a logo fits.

Rakkan Logo

Grid

Early on I got obsessed with the Golden Canon Grid and my early designs used a complicated and sophisticated version of it.

Golden Canon Grid

But gradually I decided this would end in a nightmare when moving to code and migrating to a modular grid. However, I didn’t recognize my error of using a fixed-size module for the grid—an error I had to correct later.

I was sure to use the CSS Grid Layout, correctly named CSS Grid Module Level 1. Web developers like Rachel Andrew or Jen Simmons showed since the introduction of the CSS Grid what cool things are possible.

I used parts of the CSS Grid on the last redesign of my martial arts website. But nothing compared to the grid I used this time.

Unfortunately, the subgrid feature is not yet implemented in any browser besides Firefox (as of mid-2020). That’s why I needed to recreate my grid inside of grid containers to align content to its parents' grid.

Icons

I decided to use icons sparingly and not to invest the time creating my own because, with Remix Icon, I found a beautiful, free, minimal icon system. I even created a few icon wishes for Remix Icon early on, to get icons I thought I might need later (which I didn’t).

I started my designs using a social media bar sitting in the lower-left corner. But as time moved on, I found that the services I picked changed in importance, and they were not relevant enough to justify a constant icon in the corner. The social bar had to go.

Subtle arrows and icons for specific use cases were left. I removed complex sun and moon icons for the light and dark theme switcher in favor of a simple circle.

User Interface Design

In mid of 2019, I finally started with my design. I spend 3 hours on prototyping and mood boards and nearly 25 hours on the designs.

As my tool of choice, I picked Affinity. I love the tool since it was first released. I worked for 15 years with Adobes products and owned multiple expensive versions of their designer software. But when Adobe thought it might be a good idea to rent software instead of selling it and forcing people to regularly pay to be able to use the tools, I moved on to other software.

And working with Affinity is much more fun. They are performant and have many nice tools and features. And the price is unbeatable. I own all their products on Mac and iPad and can move between the tools, while designing, with ease.

I decided to use Aaron James Draplin's method of designing. He is a talented designer inspiring millions with his artwork and author of Draplin Design Co.: Pretty Much Everything.

As he shows in the fantastic free video, Aaron Draplin Takes On a Logo Design Challenge, he starts in the middle with an idea and then duplicates the whole version and iterates on it. If he reaches a dead end, he moves back to the last junction and moves from there in another direction. In the end, he has one giant board with dozens of variants and ideas, none of them worked into good craftsmanship or details, but keeps everything loose and ungrouped to be able to manipulate the individual pieces.

I followed this technique on all my designs and created dozens of variations, sometimes entire pages, sometimes a small detail as the footer or a meta section.

All Artboards of the base design

Variants of the Meta section

Designing was the part that brought the most fun to me. Designing is like a concert: It starts with a cello, but then more and more instruments get added until the full concert ends in a massive crescendo. The start is always the hardest, with the designer staring at a blank, white screen. But then things fall into the place and ideas multiply and in the end, everything is obvious, and the next screen is easy to create.

I started designing the blog detail page headline and moved out from there, creating text, header, footer, and small details.

About Section

Then I moved into color variations for the pages. I designed error pages, navigation, special pages, and the homepage last. I didn’t design every detail, but quickly moved from idea to idea, leaving behind a mess of unnamed layers and incomplete or outdated ideas.

Color Variants

I created a giant design for all layout variations I wanted to support on a page (e.g., the combination of an image and a text). I moved quickly to CodePen to create prototypes for these variations to validate my ideas where feasible. You can see all my prototypes on my CodePen account.

Homepage

Haiku Section

In the fall of 2019, I finished my design and left it for a few weeks untouched to see if I start disliking it. On the 25th of November 2019, I finally started coding.

New Website 2020: How Japanese aesthetics shaped my site

Tue, 14 Jul 2020 00:00:00 GMT

At the end of 2017, I had the wish to create a new website, as my old design and technology got dated. I started by collecting inspirations and ideas about the direction I wanted to go.

In 2017 and 2018 I didn’t do a lot, but browsing inspiring websites, and looking into trends and styles. I was sure to pick a Japanese-inspired topic, as all my website designs had one: My first design was inspired by Japanese Tattoo (Irezumi), my second design was based on the topic Bonsai and my martial arts website uses Bamboo as a recurrent theme since 1999.

Japanese Aesthetics & Design

I looked into Japanese Design styles, Typography, and Editorial Design as resources of inspiration—not only websites, but all kinds of design, from packaging, graphic design, architecture, and interior design to traditional Japanese art styles.

And as I always collected designs and saved them on boards or put them in folders on my computer, time went by, and I removed designs again and added new ones. A few designs I liked even after a few months or even a year, but others I quickly became bored with. To better understand why one design is quickly getting boring and others always keep my interest and tension, I decided to do a small excursion into Japanese design. I read nearly everything I could get my hands on. After one and a half years and eight books later, I knew a lot more about Japanese design.

Books on Japanese Design

I read all books from Kenya Hara, the art director of Muji, and one of the leading designers of Japan. Additionally, I read the old and famous books In Praise of Shadows by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki and Reflections on Japanese Taste: The Structure of Iki by Kuki Shūzō. I read a compendium on all major Japanese currents of Art and Aesthetics, from glamorous gold-loaded styles to minimalistic Zen styles. I mapped out my research in detail in this mind-map.

Shibui – Subtle Elegance

After looking into all the different art forms, I decided to follow my feeling and picked the style of Shibui. Shibui (渋い, adjective), shibumi (渋み, noun), or shibusa (渋さ, noun) means translated bitter or astringent taste but has additionally the meaning of subtle elegance, refined and unobtrusive, quiet and simple, and understated. It’s the opposite of amai (甘い, adjective) which means sweet.

It has its origins in the Muromachi period (1336-1573). In this period fell the Ōnin War (応仁の乱, Ōnin no Ran), a ten-year-long war that destroyed immense amounts of cultural value, beautiful art, statues, and temples. The Shōgun Ashikaga Yoshimasa handed over the power to his son and retired to the area of Kyoto and spend his life reflecting on taste and aesthetics. The new simple and quiet art forms emerged, likely out of philosophical resignation about the cultural loss.

By the seventeenth century, it had become a distinct sense of beauty. It’s closely related to the art form of wabi-sabi, but should not be confused with it.

Wabi-sabi (侘寂) is an aesthetic art form that focuses on the beauty of old and broken things and is closely related to Zen Buddhism. Many wabi-sabi objects are shibui, but not all shibui objects are wabi-sabi.

It’s a complicated concept—and I don’t have the feeling of understanding all the aspects. What makes it even more difficult is that these art forms are connected over a complicated network with different philosophical or religious ideas, for example, Shintō, Buddhism, or Daoism.

Shibui consists of seven aesthetic principles, sometimes called The Shibui Seven:

Asymmetry – fukinsei (不均斉)
Simplicity – kanso (簡素)
Austerity – koko (考古)
Naturalness – shizen (自然)
Subtlety – yūgen (幽玄)
Unworldliness – datsuzoku (脱俗)
Tranquility – seijaku (静寂)

Fukinsei – Asymmetry (不均斉)

One of the concepts is asymmetry. This style is a trend in 2020, but countless designers copy the style without understanding what makes it beautiful. The philosophical concept behind this is the idea of imperfection and irregularity. Nature creates random things that look chaotic, and humans create something straight and geometrical. Asymmetry is placed in the middle: intentional imperfection. Zen has a similar concept in Ensō, the imperfect circle, drawn by a calligraphist with a brush.

The concept can be seen in Japanese Gardens, where rocks of different sizes are placed in a pattern that looks not orderly but still perfect. The observer takes part in the creative process by completing the uncompleted in their mind.

When I created the concept for my design, I tried to integrate all seven concepts into the website. I used a lot of asymmetry in my layout, by moving photos or text on the grid to not be aligned strictly geometric.

Kanso – Simplicity (簡素)

The concept of simplicity is the most known, as Steve Jobs—who was Zen Buddhist and loved this simplicity—used the concept for Apple products.

It’s similar to the concept of Bauhaus, though its origin and philosophy are different. Bauhaus (and other similar art forms) tried to contrast the previous gorgeous decorations of royalty and replace them with something new as these powers declined.

Simplicity means the elimination of confusion, things not necessary, removal of decoration, and keeping things in a simple, plain, and natural way. All non-essential things are suppressed or excluded. At the same time, you create more space. A lot of today's industrial design follows this concept.

I tried to keep my design as simple as possible, while at the same time optimizing the content for maximal information density. The website has no unnecessary elements, the navigation is as short as possible.

Koko – Austerity (考古)

Austerity is closely related to simplicity. It means intentionally limiting a thing to fewer options or exclusion and omission. Transferred to design, it could mean limiting oneself to a few colors or one font. Or it could mean removing unnecessary things from the design. You don’t add something, that is not necessary.

It’s interesting to note that there are studies that prove that fewer options lead to more sales, for example. And people tend to be happier with fewer choices. It’s a slim zone between having no options and too many options.

I rolled back ideas multiple times because they integrated too much complexity. I removed a social icon bar I added in my early designs, removed fancy off-screen navigation, replaced complex icons with simple ones, and limited myself to a maximal amount of navigation items.

Shizen – Naturalness (自然)

Naturalness is a core concept built into Japanese life. Even the traditional houses create with their paper sliding doors (shoji) a fluid barrier between the outside and the inside. Nature is always welcome and part of life.

Naturalness means the absence of sham and artificiality. It can be achieved by integrating naturally occurring patterns and rhythms into a design. This could, for example, mean using natural colors or color combinations.

To cover this concept, I use subtle shadows and scaling effects to produce the effect of real-world elements. I selected photography and natural colors, typical shibui colors, identifiable by their high amount of grayness. I experimented long with colors until I found the shibui formula. Thanks to the HSL color space, I’m now able to shibuify any color.

Yūgen – Subtlety (幽玄)

This concept is one of the hardest to grasp, as it’s a feeling and emotion. It means subtle grace or hidden beauty, but can best be described by explaining poetic expressions:

It could be the feeling when the moon is behind the clouds and suddenly the clouds move away. Or a swarm of wild geese that are suddenly hidden by a cloud. An island on the horizon and a boat moving behind the island. It might be the feeling of wandering on and on for hours in a great forest without the thought of return.

Yūgen is described as an awareness of the universe that triggers an emotional response too deep and powerful for words. The Japanese language has a lot of these words. Take for example ikigai (域外), the reason for being, or komorebi (木漏れ日), sunlight filtering through trees. Or funny words like age-otori (上げ劣り), the bad feeling one gets after a terrible haircut, or deeply sad mono no aware (物の哀れ), the pathos of things—the awareness of the transcendence of all things, that everything will perish and disappear.

In design, yūgen can be achieved by limiting information enough to arouse curiosity and leave something to the imagination. I use photos cut off by the fold of the screen, inviting visitors to scroll. Content appears after you scrolled it into the viewport. Page transitions and scroll animations add further to this concept.

Datsuzoku – Unworldliness (脱俗)

The concept of unworldliness means something that transcends the conventional. Something happening, that gives you the feeling of surprise and excitement. The moment you realize that you can have freedom from conventions.

Examples could be a car breaking down, trains don’t drive, you are getting sick, or you are seeing something unexpected. Something that interrupts everyday life.

In design, this could be anything unusual, things the viewer wouldn’t expect. Something funny on a serious website or items not correctly placed. Ideas you wouldn’t expect in a given context.

I hid multiple Easter eggs around the website (in a previous version) for the unworldliness and unconventional and added one idea I had never seen on the internet before. You could previously click on any date and switch between English, German and Japanese formats. Additionally you could turn on Emoji mode on one hidden page and reveal hidden Emoji all over the page. I removed these features, when I turned the React page into a static page.

Seijaku – Tranquility (静寂)

The last concept of shibui is tranquility. The feeling of stillness, quietness, and solitude you can have while sitting in a Japanese garden. Time for reflection or active rest.

If you’re able to make the viewer stop or reflect—slow down—on a piece of design or art, you achieved this concept.

The last concept I cannot guarantee, but I hope the depth of the website and its many hidden gems slow down and invite relaxed exploration.

New Website 2020: After 250 hours, a complete rebuild—design, code, and content

Tue, 07 Jul 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Finally, after 3 years with 250 hours of work, I finished my longest-running project: A complete new design and code for my website. Everything is new. I created over 1,400 files with 29,000 lines of code.

There are multiple reasons it took me a while: I created not only a new design, with a light and dark theme, screen size-dependent grid, and typography. I developed it with a new technology stack, including the static-site generator Gatsby, TypeScript, Styled Components, MDX, GraphQL, and CSS Grid Layout.

Light Version Homepage

Dark Version Homepage

I always take the opportunity to learn new things while working on personal projects. This time I intentionally picked TypeScript, even though I knew it would slow me down. I wanted to learn it beyond basic training and theory, which is possible while doing it.

I had worked with CSS Grid Layout before, but never with this level of complexity. Likewise, I wrote Unit Tests for every component and screen to get faster with React Testing Library and Jest.

The inspiration and design phase took a long time. I had to read many books, study styles, designs, and art to select the direction I was aiming for.

Journal

For my Journal, previously called articles, a blog I write since 2006, I re-checked the text of every essay I wrote before and improved the quality of the images.

New Pages

I created new pages for parts of my website that previously didn’t exist or were not displayed properly.

Projects & Showcases

For the first time, the website has a Projects section showing my work, with further showcases for selected projects.

Haiku

My Haiku (short Japanese poems) collection was previously loveless, dumped on a single page without proper context. After the relaunch, I dedicated a whole section to the Haiku, including English translations.

Haiku

Sketchnotes

I had a collection of my Sketchnotes hosted on a subdomain on Tumblr and wanted to move it back to my website and created my own Sketchnotes section.

The Traditional Color of Japan

A few years back I created a small project, creating an ASE file out of Traditional Colors of Japanese mentioned in a book with the same title. This project got an own page showing all colors and the books these are from.

The Traditional Colors of Japan

The entire project stretched for three years because I didn’t work continuously on the website, and sometimes didn’t do something for multiple months.

Making-Of Series

But finally, the website is completed, and I deserve a long summer break without screen time. But I plan to release a series of Making-of posts I wrote over the next weeks. It will include a look into my thoughts and inspiration process, the design and development of the website.

Stay Updated

If you want to be updated, you can follow my RSS/Atom Feed.

I set up a Now page, based on the idea of Derek Silvers, who created a movement when he started his page. The Now page shows what I’m doing right now and will be updated irregularly.

Feedback Welcome

You can always send me a message or feedback, all possibilities to contact or connect me can be found on my About page. I don’t track anything anymore and know nothing any longer about visitors to my website. Blissful ignorance from my side to all this data-driven, growth-driven, customer-satisfaction-driven development.

Source Code

If you’re interested in the code you don’t have to wait until I release the essay, the source code is publicly available on GitHub.

Haiku 7

Wed, 01 Jul 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Flackernde Kerzen, schon endet das Lichterfest – so auch der Sommer.
Flickering candles, the festival of lights ends – So does the summer.

Haiku 6

Mon, 01 Jun 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Die Luft ist schon frisch, Cirruswölkchen am Himmel – der Sommer endet.
The air is already fresh, Cirrus clouds in the sky – the summer ends.

Zettelkasten Note-Taking Method With DEVONthink: Build a Zettelkasten that lasts

Mon, 18 May 2020 00:00:00 GMT

The way we write notes determines how we think and learn. Many studies have shown how useful writing notes is. The best retention comes with writing, reading, and listening combined. Repeated reading and connecting ideas is another important part.

The Illusion of Competence and the Collector’s Fallacy

Many people avoid taking notes and search for answers on the Internet instead. This is a grave error because it looks convenient to have all knowledge at the tips of my fingers. And worse, it produces the Illusion of Competence[^schroder2018aa] in a person. I don’t need to know this, I can always look it up is a common sentence you hear today. I can ask Siri or Alexa.

But knowledge-building doesn’t work that way. And saving content into the archive doesn’t either. I’m guilty of this myself. Having used Evernote for a decade, I was used to saving everything I wanted to remember into the tool. I sorted and curated, tagged, and sometimes even highlighted content. But I fell a victim to the Collector’s Fallacy.[^tietze2014aa] Because you collected something doesn’t mean you learned it or can explain it.

A few months ago, a co-worker pointed me to the Zettelkasten Method. At first, I discarded it as complicated. The founder Niklas Luhmann seemed eccentric to me. His physical Zettelkasten—a gigantic shelf with 90,000 notes—was an abomination to me as a Minimalist.

But a few weeks ago I found time to read into the links my colleague had sent me about the method. I learned that Ryan Holiday and Robert Greene use similar methods for note-taking.

The Zettelkasten Method

This essay is not meant to be a deep introduction to the Zettelkasten method, but to show how I implemented it into my daily workflow. To read more about the method, I recommend the fantastic illustrated essay Zettelkasten — How One German Scholar Was So Freakishly Productive by David B. Clear and Living with a Zettelkasten by Magnus Eriksson. Another good hub for information is the website Zettelkasten by Christian Tietze.

But I’ll shortly introduce the concept for better understanding: Zettelkasten is a German word meaning note (Zettel) box (Kasten).

The basic idea is that a notebook is too static and linear. It might be good to quickly capture ideas, but it’s a bad way to store ideas. But information put on index cards or notes would be loose and disorganized.

Putting notes into folders is the beginners’ approach—I’m guilty myself—but you run into problems with notes belonging thematic into different folders.

Tags are the next improvement to a note-taking system. Tags allow notes to be grouped without the limitation of physical categories or folders.

But the Zettelkasten Method went one step further: Individual notes get connected by linking them together. This is a manual but necessary step that connects ideas and creates real knowledge about topics. Over time, you add outline notes, connect similar ideas, or even complete hub pages connecting notes and outline notes of broader topics.

Principles of a Good Zettel

A good Zettel should be atomic, one idea should be on a note. It should be autonomous, being able to stand on its own, move, or merged with other notes. When you add a note, think about ways of connecting the note to existing notes. Additionally, you should always explain why you’re linking two notes. Never copy and paste (quotes are the exception, I assume), but use your words and language. Don’t think about structure, and never delete any notes.

Reference Material

Regarding the reference material, I found different ideas. Some recommend always keeping the reference to ensure no plagiarism, others process a reference and immediately delete the reference. I think the best way I somewhere in between, keeping good references and deleting the ones of lesser quality, and extracting the ideas worth saving on separate notes.

I, for example, have a huge reference database with 30,000 items. And I don’t plan to delete any of the reference material. The major part is of the inspirational kind (images, logos, photos) which can’t be captured in a note.

But I started using BibDesk to create references to books, articles, and videos worth remembering. It’s easy to create custom export templates for BibDesk as explained in Manage Citations for a Zettelkasten.

Tools

When I tried to introduce the Zettelkasten method, I reviewed several tools. Tools I owned and tools that were recommended. The good thing with this method is there is no right tool, everything from paper index cards to sophisticated software can do the job. It’s a matter of taste and convenience. A paper-based system I discarded categorically—I don’t have the time or space to maintain an analog system. I tried a good bunch of tools recommended in the Software & Gadgets section of the Zettelkasten website. I even tried their tool, The Archive. But after looking into the capabilities of my favorite document management system, DEVONthink, I decided to stay with it.

Selecting the Right Tool

After years of working with different software products, I came up with my rules for selecting a tool for any purpose. When I find a tool that might look incredible at the beginning, I slow down my decision and remember these rules:

Never use a tool or service which does not allow exporting my content easily.
Never store valuable information only on an external server that might disappear or be inaccessible.
Never use a proprietary format that depends on a specific company or tool or is hard or impossible to convert into another format.
If possible, don’t use a service or software that doesn’t support encrypting my data.
If possible, don’t use a service or software that has a monthly fee. Monthly fees make it easy for developers to not deliver good software, while the user is not being able to stop paying without losing access to the software.

Exporting Data

Plenty of tools already fail my first rule: Apple Notes, Google Keep, and Microsoft OneNote. These tools don’t allow exporting at all or exporting a single, individual note to something static like a PDF. That’s a big NO, and I would never use tools of that kind. DEVONthink allows exporting and importing every file with all its metadata.

Locally Stored Data

The second rule crosses out a lot of the famous new star apps like Notion or Roam Research. As cool and innovative as these tools are, they are not for me. I know both tools allow exporting your notes as Markdown, but being locked out of Notion for 3 days—they had problems with their mail server—is proof of the importance of my second rule. DEVONthink is local first, but cloud providers and synchronizing files are possible. You can back up your data and always access it, even without an internet connection.

Data in Open Formats

The next rule crosses out all kinds of software, that has some internal database format or virtual file format, which lets you lose your metadata when exporting a note—if this is possible at all. Tools that need you to run a specific server, plugin, or extension that might not be available any more than ten years later. I consider Evernote to be in this category. While it is possible currently to export the notes as HTML, this might not be the case in the future. They additionally bake in styles in the HTML, which leads to a lot of my notes being hard to read today—black foreground on a black background or tiny fonts. DEVONthink allows every format. It has good support for Markdown, but you can store everything you like. It allows converting files into a huge amount of different formats.

Encrypted Data

The last two rules are nice to have and not a deal-breaker: I want my data encrypted. Storing my data in the cloud where a bored employee or curious intelligence officer might read my notes is not acceptable. DEVONthink allows encrypting the local databases (or using the Mac hard disc encryption) and encrypts all cloud storage vaults by default with a high standard. They even warn their customers, that losing the password will mean you lose the data.

No Monthly Rent

Additionally, I don’t like services or software with a monthly fee. Not at all. I don’t support or approve of this trend. I get it, I’m a developer myself. It allows for a steady stream of money and supports the developers. But it opens the field for shady tactics:

Use the Loss Aversion or Sunk Cost Fallacy to bind customers to pay regularly or lose everything they created.
It allows developers to stop being innovative and releasing what customers want.

I didn’t like the old model either, when software companies pushed out a new release every year, without improvements worth paying for an upgrade. But at least the software worked. Every year, one could check the new feature and estimate if it’s worth paying for the upgrade.

I can approve software like Sketch where you pay every year, but you won’t get any further updates or improvements when you stop paying, but your software runs!

DEVONthink has a one-time price and a new version gets released every few years. They are six developers, which keeps the cost of development low. And they work on the app for over a decade and always release fantastic new features. They even release useful software for free.

DEVONthink Pro for the Zettelkasten Method

There are many reasons I decided DEVONthink would be the best possible solution for me, starting with the Zettelkasten methods, and the following section will provide insights into my research and thoughts.

I decided to stay with pure MultiMarkdown files—many people working with the Zettelkasten method do. Markdown is versatile, easy to write, easy to convert, and has no lock-in into a proprietary file format, as the files are text.

My notes are as simple as they can be. Simple is a good thing. The filename starts with a unique ID generated out of the current date and time, followed by a short and meaningful title: The Process of Habit Building - 202005171446 (translated, as I write all my notes in German).

The note itself is easy in structure:

# The Process of Habit Building

[Short introduction of the idea][#someauthor2020abc]

[Longer explanation or examples]

### Possible subsections

[…]

## Related

- [[Identity change as a goal for habit change - 202005171443]]
- [[Forget goals. Concentrate on systems - 202005171436]]
- [[The 1% rule for habit forming - 202005171425]]

Tags: #Habit #Psychology

[#SomeAuthor2020abc]: Some Author (2020): _Title of Work_, <Link>.

Originally, I had the tags included in the note, but I discarded the idea, because of the powerful tagging in DEVONthink. All tags in DEVONthink are automatically tags in the Apple file system.

The DEVONthink Sorter

One of the best features of DEVONthink is its fantastic sorter. It can be used as a menu bar item or a floating index tab, it can be triggered with various shortcuts. It allows capturing notes in many possible formats. Additionally, audio, video, screenshots, and websites. The latter one is powerful and able to strip all clutter and keep text and images or convert the content to Markdown, save it as HTML, rich text, pure text, PDF, or web archive.

The DEVONthink sorter to capture content quickly

Fast Live Search with Powerful Search Operators

The search in DEVONthink is fast and one of the core features. It’s using powerful data-science features in the background to analyze the content and show the most likely search results. It’s possible to use advanced search operators like wildcards, boolean operators, or regular expressions.

Tagging & Location Data

The tagging in DEVONthink is fantastic. No lag or buggy behavior as I was used to it in Evernote. Tags can be added with auto-complete and filtered down by clicking on a weighted tag cloud or adding more tags to filter down the result list.

Notes can contain the geographical location where the note was taken and can be viewed later on a world map.

WikiLinks & Hashtag Conversion

DEVONthink supports out-of-the-box WikiLink syntax [[…]] and provides auto-complete for WikiLinks. As I use a flat-file structure for all my notes that always start with the date-time stamp, I can autocomplete documents written on a given day.

The app allows multiple ways of linking. Besides WikiLinks, it supports regular Markdown linking to local files or external sources and linking to the unique database item, like x-devonthink-item://EE11831A-6028-4202-84E3-A4BEEA3E2551 which works from tools outside DEVONthink.

DEVONthink is capable of converting hashtags, for example, #Stoicism into tags. It can convert keywords, properties, or locations into tags.

MultiMarkdown Support

DEVONthink supports MultiMarkdown which is much more powerful than regular Markdown. It allows for example citations, critic markup, glossary, table of contents, or cross-references, to name a few. I use a custom export template in BibDesk that automatically creates a citation link for reference.

Since it’s the last update, DEVONthink supports MathJAX and Prism code highlighting. It’s possible to add a custom Markdown template. I use the CSS of the beautiful iA Writer template, GitHub Plus.

OCR Text Recognition

DEVONthink comes with built-in support for text recognition in a considerable variety of languages. This allows, for example, to convert every image to be searchable, the same as one of the features of Evernote. The text can be either stored in a file comment or annotation or converted into a searchable PDF or other compatible formats. It allows automatic correction of distortion and rotation and the addition of a custom dictionary.

Powerful Inspector

One powerful feature is the inspector. It allows editing and viewing metadata, marks (colors, flags), ratings (stars), or lock items. It can analyze text and show a word list, similar words, links in documents, a table of content, and a word cloud, to name a few.

And a document shows statistics like paragraph, word, or character count.

Workspaces

DEVONthink has a concept of workspaces that allows saving specific views of the tool as a workspace. Activating a workspace will change the layout, active folders, or sorting to adjust to the preferred working mode. DEVONthink has multiple ways of viewing the content: Lists, Symbols, Columns, and Cover Flow. The window can be changed into different layouts. Each folder remembers the assigned layout, which allows, for example, to show large images in a photo folder and a list with selected columns in another folder.

A powerful DEVONthink Alfred Workflow allows searching in DEVONthink and switching quickly between workspaces.

Another nice feature of DEVONthink is the possibility to have multiple windows of the app at the same time. This sounds like a less important feature, but having two windows next to each other is a help: Writing notes in one window while researching or searching for connection links in another window.

Sync & Mobile App

DEVONthink can sync individual databases with common cloud providers (Dropbox, iCloud, CloudMe), WebDAV, or directly with iOS devices over Bonjour. The sync storage is stored encrypted in the cloud, which makes it a safe way to sync across multiple devices without compromising private data. With DEVONthink to Go is a mobile version available.

My Workflow of Capturing a Note

Depending on where I am, I might directly open the DEVONthink Sorter to capture a thought, idea, or information into my global inbox. I drop images, documents, and everything I want to keep into the inbox.

I might write notes in one of my paper notebooks. Handwriting has plenty of advantages. Combined with Sketchnotes it enhances the memory and understanding of a topic. I transfer important notes once a day into DEVONthink.

I regularly reserve time to transfer notes, highlights, and quotes from books I’ve read into notes in my Zettelkasten.

DEVONthink view on a Markdown document with a sidebar for notes

Every afternoon I clean the inbox and properly tag the items. Every Zettelkasten note gets a unique ID and title (generated with a snippet in Alfred) and then moved into a separate database for notes. Inspirational items and documents get moved into their database.

I use another Alfred snippet to quickly create the basic template of a Zettel (though DEVONthink has template capabilities, my snippet is faster). I add an intro paragraph and the content of my thought or note and use the inspector to find related notes, which I link when possible using WikiLinks. I add citations or other links, external for links to websites and videos, or internal to other documents for images in DEVONthink using the unique document identifier.

A quick shortcut allows changing the metadata of a note without opening the inspector. Another shortcut opens a Zettel in my favorite writing app: iA Writer. Saving the content will automatically update the DEVONthink document.

Conclusion

I’m happy I was pointed to the Zettelkasten method by my colleague. It’s a good and future-proof way of writing notes. Even after a few weeks and ~150 newly created notes, I can see the first connections between the notes. I started creating connection notes, and I’m having ideas for outline notes.

DEVONthink is after a week of testing various tools the right tool for me. It allows me to use the Zettelkasten method with several useful workflows and features, next to having an incredibly powerful document management system.

Update 03.09.2020: I started using Obsidian as the primary tool for my Zettelkasten, due to its much more powerful tools, but still sync the vault via DEVONthink and add new notes to my vault with the DEVONthink sorter. To read about my updated workflow, please go to Tools I Use For Note-Taking.

[^schroder2018aa]: Will Schroder (2018): How To Remember Everything You Learn.

[^tietze2014aa]: Christian Tietze (2014): The Collector’s Fallacy.

Haiku 5

Fri, 01 May 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Flüsternde Stimmen – Gespräche in dunkler Nacht, vom Sturm weggeweht.
Whispers – talks in the dark night, blown away by the storm.

Apps, Tools & Services: My everyday apps, all in one place

Sat, 18 Apr 2020 08:00:00 GMT

This is a list of all the tools, apps, and services I use on my iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and Mac. I’ll update this list from time to time.

Productivity

Raycast 🖥

Raycast is an exceptionally powerful and versatile launcher for macOS that combines the functionality of multiple apps into a single, intuitive interface, dramatically improving workflow and productivity for users. It offers over 1,300 extensions, advanced AI capabilities, and seamless integration with numerous tools and workflows. I have subscribed to the Pro version and use it every day. I wrote a detailed review of Raycast on my journal.

Things 📱 🖥

Things is my favorite productivity tool, my task manager. I use it on all devices, and it synchronizes instantly via Things Cloud. It’s available for Mac, iPhone, Apple Watch, and iPad.

It has won multiple prices, is easy to use, but powerful, and has one of the best user experiences on the market.

It follows the GTD approach (Inbox, Today, Someday) and has areas, projects, tasks, and subtasks. Everything can have tags, due dates, start dates, and notes. Projects can be structured with headlines. You can send tasks via email, capture your ideas with a quick entry dialogue, and integrate Apple Calendar. You can use the Things URL Scheme to send commands to Things.

DEVONthink 📱 🖥

DEVONthink is my complementary tool for Things. Things stores everything I have to do, DEVONthink everything I want to remember. I’ve used Evernote for many years and Notion for a year, but both Tools had too many things I didn’t like.

The company DEVONtechnologies that creates DEVONthink (and a handful of other software products) is 6 people but provides powerful tools for over a decade. Their tools are used by Attorneys, Journalists, Researchers, or Writers.

DEVONthink fulfills all my wishes. Your data is your data, it’s stored on your local hard drive (encrypted or unencrypted). You can store anything in it: Text in various formats, including Markdown. Images, PDF, Videos. You can create folders and use tags and have multiple databases for different topics. It’s possible to sync your data with Cloud solutions (Dropbox, iCloud, CloudMe, and WebDAV) or sync between devices via Bonjour. Your data is always encrypted on cloud storage containers. They have an iOS app: DEVONthink To Go.

DEVONthink has data science algorithms that analyze your content and suggest a location to sort your file into. It has advanced features to analyze, link, sort, and find your content. It has a powerful clipper that allows you to quickly grab the content of any website (converted and cleaned in numerous formats), and add text, video, audio, and screenshots.

I store everything in DEVONthink. Notes, PDF documents (scanned with OCR), images, videos, quotes, and use over 17000 different tags in 5 databases.

Obsidian 📱 🖥

I use Obsidian to write notes and connect ideas. It’s the best tool I know for note-taking. In less than 6 months, I created over 800 notes in Obsidian. It’s Markdown-based and the files are plain text files on your hard drive. I’m currently using the Minimal theme.

Scanner Pro

I use Scanner Pro on my iPhone and iPad. Nearly every document I get in a paper format I scan with this app. The documents get converted with OCR to PDF with searchable text and can be automatically saved to cloud storage like Dropbox or iCloud. From there, I move the documents directly into DEVONthink.

Apple Calendar 📱 🖥

Apple Calendar is the only calendar I use. It looks beautiful and can be integrated with Exchange servers, Google Calendar, and other calendar providers. My calendars are currently stored in iCloud, but I’m excited to move them to Proton Mail, as soon as the Bridge supports (hopefully) their new encrypted calendar.

Itsycal 🖥

Itsycal is a tiny menu bar calendar that integrates with Apple Calendar. I use it to quickly add or look at events without opening the full calendar.

Apple Numbers 📱 🖥

I use Apple Numbers for everything I need to do with spreadsheets. Calculating and tracking my income, my stocks, yearly expenses, and salary increases. I store all spreadsheets in DEVONthink and open them from there in Numbers. This way it’s encrypted and synchronized.

Bartender 🖥

Bartender allows organizing the menu bar icons on Mac. You can rearrange icons, hide them, or show them for a short time when they update. It’s helpful to see what’s relevant at any given time on the menu bar.

Time Sink 🖥

Time Sink is a Mac app that allows tracking of how much time you spend on which app. You can see which apps are active and how long and at what times.

Apple Workflow 📱

Workflow is another automation tool, this time for iOS. Apple bought the company and integrated the tool into its ecosystem. There are much fewer services in Apple Workflow than in IFTTT, but it allows much more complicated workflows. You can automate many apps on your device depending on time, location, arrival, leaving, WLAN, Bluetooth, NFC, or opening an app. And build complex interfaces taking user input and doing something with it. But you don’t need to learn to program, it’s drag and drop.

Design, Photography & Conception

iA Writer 📱 🖥

My main tool for writing is iA Writer. I use it on Mac, iPhone, and iPad. It’s the most minimalistic, distraction-free, beautiful writing experience. It supports Markdown, and has tools to analyze your words, and count reading time, characters, words, and sentences. I write my text in Markdown and either open it from DEVONthink in iA Writer or save my texts in iCloud and index the contents of these folders in DEVONthink.

Affinity 📱 🖥

I worked with and owned Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator for over 15 years, and use Sketch at work. But Affinity is my tool of choice for everything I design: Websites, UI, flyers, and logos.

I switched away from Adobe when they started forcing people to their cloud solutions and making it impossible to buy a new version every few years, but instead have to pay monthly “rent”.

I use the iPad version and soon plan to buy a big iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil to create even cooler things with Affinity.

I also use it to work on photos or photo manipulations, I use Affinity.

It has support for RAW, PSD, 360° photo editing, HDR, batch automation, smart objects, and montage. I’m not a professional photographer, but it’s made for them.

Affinity is also an incredibly powerful DTP tool to replace Adobe InDesign or Quark Express. I started working with it, but I plan to create and lay out a book with it.

Eagle

Eagle is my favorite tool to store design assets, like images, videos, fonts, and illustrations. It’s a tool with so many cool features; I use it every day. You can just drag and drop files into Eagle from any website, tag them, and search for them. You can batch save all images or create long screenshots of websites. It even supports OCR text recognition. It’s like DEVONthink but for design assets. You can search for colors, text, and many other things. There are many plugins available, some of which I use, including AI features to search on Pinterest, enhance images, or remove backgrounds. I have over 40,000 assets saved in Eagle.

MindNode 📱 🖥

MindNode is my favorite tool to create mind notes and map out ideas. I use it on all my devices. When I learned everything about Japanese Design, I used it to map out my research.

Typeface 🖥

Typeface is my favorite font app. It’s simple and beautiful, the price is fair, and it does all I need.

Blender 🖥

I don’t use Blender a lot, but it is an incredibly complex open-source 3D creation software. I used to work a lot with 3D in my first job (3ds max, Maya, and Cinema 4D) but when I moved to the web I stopped working with 3D software regularly. I love it, and I’m currently doing online training to learn Blender properly.

Instagram 📱 🌐

I don’t like Instagram too much because the browsing experience is crappy, and you can use it on the phone. No iPad app and the web app is limited. But it’s a nice app to publish photos from time to time and follow friends and family. I use it now exclusively on the web.

Development

Neovim 🖥

I use Neovim as my primary code editor. It’s the best editor available. You can see my configuration files, the mappings, settings, functions, and the plugins I use in my dotfiles repository.

Zed 🖥

I use Zed from time to time. I use a lot of extensions, which would be too much to list them all.

Ghossty 🖥

I used iTerm2 for a long time as my terminal, moved then to Kitty, followed by Wezterm but recently, I switched to Ghossty. It has lots of fun features, is easy to configure, and much faster which is important because I use Neovim in the terminal as my primary code editor.

I use additionally tmux and tmuxinator to manage and restore multiple terminal sessions. I can switch between projects or keep multiple servers running.

GitHub 📱 🖥 🌐

GitHub (or GitHub Enterprise at my workplace) is my tool for storing and working with source code. All my websites are on GitHub and a few dozen other projects. I use GitHub for mobile and occasionally GitHub Desktop. I use Git on the command line.

Coolify 🌐

Cooligy is the tools I use for self-hosting my websites. If I push a new feature to GitHub, Coolify will automatically deploy my website on a preview URL. After all the tests have been running successfully, and I merge the feature, the new feature goes live without needing to do anything more.

Kaleidoscope 🖥

I used Kaleidoscope as my default tool for merge conflicts in Git, but Visual Studio Code has a much nicer way of fixing merge conflicts, I use Kaleidoscope to compare complete codebases or the differences in images.

Image Shrinker 🖥

Image Shrinker is a nice, free tool to minify images and graphics with one drop. Easy, fast, and useful.

Integrity 🖥

I use Integrity regularly to check all my websites for broken links. It’s not something I do every month, but when I do it, this tool is helpful.

News & Information

Feedbin 📱 🌐

Feedbin is my primary source of information. I follow all my RSS and Atom feeds, YouTube subscriptions, newsletters, Reddit, and news sources. A great feature of Feedbin is its ability to track changes in articles. Additionally, you can filter out YouTube Shorts using a video length filter. You can view stats for each RSS feed, find replacements when a website changed their feed and find dead RSS feeds.

I save everything of interest automatically into Raindrop.io for later research. I used Feedly for many years since the Google News Reader shut, but recently the pricing and features did not match and Feedbin is much more fun to use.

Reeder 📱 🖥

I use Feedbin together with Reeder 5. Reeder is a beautiful newsreader which allows using read later services (Pocket, Instapaper) and many services (Feedbin, Feedly) and directly reading RSS/Atom feeds without service and synchronizing them between all devices via iCloud.

Raindrop.io (Pro) 📱 🖥 🌐

Raindrop.io is my bookmark manager. It is a lot of fun, I save nearly everything in it. The tool allows for organizing bookmarks in collections ($), tagging, and filtering (by type of bookmark).

A deduplicating service finds broken links ($). The new highlighting feature allows using of 4 different colors and adds comments to any text. A browser extension allows highlighting the text directly on the website. Each collection can use a different view (Grid, Headlines, Masonry, or List). Full-text search will search every web page and PDF ($). Raindrop automatically creates a backup of every website for offline reading ($).

Raindrop.io can be used to create mood boards, and it is possible to upload common media files. Collections can be edited together with other users, and it is possible to share individual collections publicly (here are mine).

Readwise 📱 🌐

Readwise is my favorite tool to have all my highlights of different services in one place, no matter if it is my Kindle, Apple Books, Pocket, Feedly, Instapaper, Medium, or Twitter. Each morning, you get five random highlights to review, which is a fantastic way to be reminded of the ideas you highlighted.

I synchronize my highlights with Obsidian, where I store them permanently as Markdown documents.

Pinboard 🌐

I use Pinboard as a backup for all the links I save. They get automatically transferred from Raindrop.io to Pinboard with IFTTT. I joined Pinboard when the price was a one-time payment of 9 USD.

𝕏 (Formerly Twitter) 📱 🖥 📺 🌐

After Elon Musk bought Twitter and fired all the woke and useless people, 𝕏 became my main source of news and truth. I even subscribed to 𝕏 Pro. It has a powerful AI built in (Grok) that is one of the few AIs that is not woke and answers accurately. It can also generate images. And services are now also free for non-paying members. I read it every day because all legacy media (formerly mainstream media) has become so unreliable, framed opinion garbage, that it's the only source of news, besides some independent journalists and news outlets. I used Minds before, but it never got the traction it deserved. Mastodon was a place I had high hopes in, when Twitter was still woke and deplatforming people, but its now just a garbage dump of woke people.

Communication

Apple Messages 📱 🖥

Messages is the messenger I use with my family. We all have Apple devices, and even my grandmother can use the app. The app has nice features. I wish the Desktop app would get more love from Apple.

Apple FaceTime 📱 🖥

FaceTime is the video chat messenger I use with my family.

Proton Mail (Unlimited) 📱 🌐

Proton Mail is my main email provider, end-to-end encrypted emails. I stopped using Gmail as my main email provider years ago.

Apple Mail 🖥

I use Apple Mail on Desktop to connect to my work email on an Exchange server and my Proton Mail server via the Proton Mail Bridge.

Signal 📱 🖥

Signal is a messenger I use with co-workers and friends. It is the messenger with the most security and privacy. Additionally, it’s open source, and no malicious code can be sneaked into it by the government or private entity. After deleting WhatsApp, it’s my favorite messenger to communicate across different platforms.

Telegram 📱 🖥

Telegram is a messenger I use with co-workers and friends. A nice thing is your profile can have a link you share with unknown people to contact you. It is the messenger with the nicest features. You can edit a send text and fix errors, create public or private chat rooms and encrypt your communication (unfortunately not the default setting, people don’t do it).

You can use encrypted Git repositories and link and validate your profile with several external services. You can send messages that auto-delete and even send messages to users not yet on Keybase.

Session 📱 🖥

Session is a new decentralized messenger with an interesting security model. It collects no metadata. Not even your phone number or email. You are anonymous. The first time you use it, you get a session key. You can save a backup for this session to restore it on another device. To contact another person, all you need is to have the public session key. The chat is routed through an onion routing network, which makes it nearly impossible to leave any footprint. It’s open source and censorship-resistant.

Brave Talk 🌐

Brave Talk is a way to have unlimited video calls with up to 4 people for free. No download of any app is needed.

Browser

Brave Browser 📱 🖥

My primary browser is Brave. It has the same engine as Chrome, but ad-blocking and tracker-blocking are included by default. It blocks fingerprinting, a way to track you across the internet. Brave is eager to implement new features, for example, crypto wallets or the IPFS peer-to-peer protocol. Plus: It supports all Chrome extensions.

Firefox (Developer Edition) 📱 🖥

My secondary browser is Firefox Developer Edition. I love the features of Firefox. The developer experience is fantastic, and I like in particular the bookmarking system (this sucks with other browsers). Firefox supports tags and has a nice bookmark bar to quickly filter and search bookmarks.

Mozilla has privacy as a much higher priority than Google. Google works actively on ways to prevent ad-blocking, while Mozilla blocks trackers by default and allows and provides all kinds of additional privacy tools (like container tabs).

Media

Spotify 📱 🖥 📺 🌐

I use Spotify as my music streaming service. I stream music to my five Sonos boxes around my home and use it to wake me up, do workouts or relax on the sofa.

Sonos 📱 🖥

Sonos is my favorite sound system since 2012. I have two Play:5, one Play:3, one Play:1 and the Playbar. It’s super cool to sync all boxes around the home and have no lag between the music in different rooms.

YouTube 📱 🌐

I use the YouTube app and website a lot to watch videos from channels I follow. I use the extensions DF YouTube and Enhancer for YouTube to make the viewing experience more enjoyable. I hide all sidebars, comments, suggestions, and other needy crap. All videos stop by default and are automatically switched to full-screen mode.

Odysee/LBRY 📱 🖥 🌐

Odysee is a completely decentralized video platform that doesn’t censor anything except illegal things. It uses the LBRY network for open, free, and fair digital content. LBRY itself doesn’t censor anything, it cannot do so because the content is shared peer-to-peer and the metadata lives on the blockchain.

IMDb 📱 🌐

IMDb is one of the more used apps on my devices. I look up actors, directors, movies, and TV shows all the time. I log all my watched TV shows and movies to keep track of what I have watched.

TMDb 🌐

TMDb is a nice collaborative movie database and I started using it to link to movies on my website because I like to support open projects.

WerStreamtEs 📱 🌐

WerStreamt.es (German for WhoStreams.it) is my favorite platform to keep track of movies and TV shows. You can put movies and TV shows on a watch list and add the streaming services you have. The app will send out emails with reminders if something on your watch list has a new season or is available for streaming.

Netflix 📱 📺

I use Netflix on my Apple TV and sometimes on my iPad. I stopped watching TV seven years ago and watch movies and TV shows on Netflix. Here is a list of things I watched on Netflix.

Prime Video 📱 📺

The second streaming service I use is Amazon Prime Video. It has much fewer good movies and TV shows, but it’s much, much cheaper. Here is a list of things I watched on Amazon Prime Video.

Apple Photos 📱 🖥

Apple Photos is the default app Apple comes with. It’s good enough for me and easy enough to use by all generations of the whole family. This is where we share photos in the family.

QuickTime Player 🖥

QuickTime is a nice player, and it’s the default on a Mac. Not much more to say. I quickly record screencasts with it. It’s quicker and easier than recording with apps like ScreenFlow.

VLC 📱 🖥

VLC is a good and free player. It can play anything. Even corrupt or partial videos. I use it to stream my videos from my Synology NAS.

Shazam 📱

I use Shazam for one case: To recognize songs and find them on Spotify.

Security & Privacy

Proton Pass 📱 🖥 🌐

Proton Pass is my Password Manager. I switched from 1Password to Bitwarden, but when Proton released their own Password Manager it was included in my package and it has a pretty design.

Proton VPN 📱 🖥 📺 🌐

Proton VPN is my current VPN provider. I switched to it from NordVPN, to ExpressVPN, but now I have it included in my package and it works even on my Apple TV, so I can watch shows from other countries.

Cryptomator 📱 🖥

Cryptomator is a free tool to encrypt cloud data. I encrypt all private data either in DEVONthink or with Cryptomator storage in Dropbox.

Learning

Duolingo (Plus) 📱 🌐

I love Duolingo! I learn on Duolingo without missing one day for more than 2 years now. It’s an intuitive and fun way of learning. And it’s free! I started switching to Plus recently, which removes advertising and adds offline support and streak repair. I learn Japanese and Spanish every day. They have good podcasts for Spanish and French, stories, progress quizzes, leagues, and much more.

Shirabe Jisho 📱 🌐

Shirabe Jisho is a powerful Japanese-English dictionary. It shows nearly everything you can wish for, even the visual stroke order of the characters. The iOS app is a complete offline dictionary.

Japanese 📱

Japanese is another beautiful Japanese dictionary for iOS and Android. You can even use Flashcards and test your knowledge about Kanji.

Human Japanese 📱

Human Japanese is a paid app to learn Japanese. The interface is dated, but the content is good.

Goodreads 📱 🌐

Goodreads is the only decent social reading platform. I use it to track the books I want to read and the books I’m reading and update my status once a week. You can save books to shelves, follow friends, and get inspiration about what to read next or do a reading challenge every year. You can follow me on Goodreads or look into the books I’ve read.

Kindle 📱 🖥

I use the iPad and iPhone Kindle app and the macOS Kindle app as a companion to my Kindle Paperwhite. I use the app either to look at color photos or illustrations or after I’ve finished a book to review my marginalia (notes and markings).

Health & Fitness

Health 📱

I like the Health app of Apple, the only drawback is that there is not an iPad or Desktop version of it. It gets better with every release and aggregates data from all kinds of other apps and services. I get my Meditation times, movement data, and workouts from my Apple Watch, audio data from my AirPods Pro, my weight from my Withings Body Cardio scale, and my sleep from my Fitbit Charge – though this needs an extra app to get the data over an API, as Fitbit and Apple have a vendetta and Fitbit doesn’t give their data to the health app.

Activity 📱

The Activity app is the app delivered with an Apple Watch. It’s nice to track workouts, movement, and changes in your activity over time. It allows competition with family and friends. And the data is transferred to the Health app.

Health Mate 📱 🌐

The Health Mate app by Withings is a nice way to have an insight into my weight, fat, water, muscle mass, heart frequency, and pulse wave velocity every morning. I use the Withings Body Cardio scale, the Sleep Analyzer, the BPM Connect blood pressure monitor, and Thermo.

Reps & Sets

I use the Reps & Sets app for my Calisthenics training, multiple times per week. As an early adopter, I get the Premium features for free.

InsightTimer 📱

I use InsightTimer for my daily meditation. I honestly don’t use much of its features, except the feature to create custom timers.

Finance & Calculations

iFinance 📱 🖥

iFinance is my tool to track income and spending. Every day, I track my expenses and income for ~5 minutes and make sure everything is fine with my accounts. iFinance has nice tools to automate and analyze your expenses to find out how you spend your income.

I use the iOS or Apple Watch version to track expenses while I’m on the way. The data is synchronized with iCloud or Wi-Fi across devices.

Stocks 📱 🖥

I use the Apple Stocks app to keep track of my stocks and funds. It’s simple and easy to use and available on iOS and macOS.

Calcbot 📱

Calcbot is a beautifully designed calculator and unit converter I use for many years. It’s available for the Apple Watch and has nice features such as sending your calculations as an email, syncing across devices with iCloud, and much more.

Weather

Netatmo 📱 🌐

I use the Netatmo weather app to monitor the temperature, CO₂, humidity, noise level, and air pressure in all my rooms and on the balcony. I use a rain monitor. The devices are beautifully designed and have a long life duration (I use them since 2013).

Weather Pro 📱

WeatherPro is the best and most accurate weather app I know. It’s a free app but for €9.99 per year, you can get more detailed data, hourly forecasts, and other nice features. All advertising gets removed from apps by MeteoGroup.

RainToday 📱

RainToday is the second app from MeteoGroup on my devices. There are live updates on upcoming rain in your location that show the estimated duration, intensity, and direction of the rain.

SolarWatch 📱

SolarWatch is my favorite app to show the sunrise and sunset.

Tools

Hue 📱 🖥

I use the Philips Hue app to control the light in my home. Nearly all my light bulbs are now from Hue, and I automate a lot of my light cycles. I turn on lights automatically when dusk starts and wake me up with lights during wintertime. I dim down my lights every day at the same time and shut them off at the same time. As I always follow the same routine, this works fantastic. I use multiple different switches and Siri to control the light around my home manually. I even use an Alfred workflow to control my light directly from the computer.

Apple Maps 📱 🖥

I switched to Apple Maps because I dislike Google for a while. But occasionally, I switch and use Google Maps because the information for stores and opening times is much better.

DeepL 📱 🖥 🌐

DeepL is my favorite translation app.

Dropbox (Plus) 📱 🖥 🌐

Dropbox is my cloud provider. My Synology NAS synchronizes automatically everything in Dropbox as a backup. Never trust cloud providers.

iCloud 📱 🖥 🌐

iCloud is my second cloud provider. The new CloudKit sync is fast and seamless with Apple Devices and Apple services work optimally with iCloud.

The Unarchiver 🖥

The Unarchiver is the best, free, and only app you need to unpack nearly every format available.

DaisyDisk 🖥

I use DaisyDisk to find and delete unneeded files from my computer. It’s the best visual representation of your hard drive I know. Files can be collected and deleted with one click.

AppCleaner 🖥

AppClearner is a nice and free application that allows uninstalling unwanted apps and deleting all traces and left-over settings at the same time.

Find My 📱 🖥

I use the Find My app to find my devices … and my family. And to get random calls from my grandmother about why I’m at home and not at work. 😆

Komoot 📱 🌐

If you’re into Biking or Hiking, Komoot is the best app I know. It’s free but possible to buy better hiking maps for regions or the whole world. It allows for creating tours and sending them to the iPhone or even Apple Watch app and navigating with it. The route gets even broken down into kinds of streets, height profile, and difficulty. And you can record your tours and share them.

Citymapper 📱 🌐

Citymapper is a fantastic routing app available for selected big cities around the globe. My home city Hamburg is included. It knows all available transport options and times and calculates the best tour to your target. It even shows you when to get on and off transport and on which side of a subway you have entered.

DHL Paket 📱

The DHL Paket app is the best way to see all packages on the way to your home or somebody from your home.

Haiku 4

Wed, 01 Apr 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Die Winterwinde, das Hausdach, es knackt und knarrt – eisiger Regen.
The winter winds, the house roof, it cracks and creaks – freezing rain.

101 Things You Can Do While Being on Lockdown: Learn, create, move, and explore—without leaving your living room

Sat, 28 Mar 2020 00:00:00 GMT

A Long List of Things to Do

The novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 which can lead to the sickness of COVID-19 brought many countries into partial or total lockdown. Many people are not used to staying inside for a long time. As an introvert, I like it inside.

To help others and make it easier to stay inside, I created this list of 101 things you can do until this crisis is over:

Learn Sketchnotes – All you need is a pen and a notebook. A good start is The Sketchnote Handbook by Mike Rohde or the book UZMO – Thinking With Your Pen.
Improve Your Handwriting – There are many nice handwriting styles, why not learn Spencerian Penmanship? All you need is a pen.
Start a Journal – Uncounted famous people have written in a journal. Start small with the One Line A Day Journal or The Five-Minute Journal.
Care About a Bonsai – You can buy a small tree and a pot, wire, and scissors. Here is How to Start With Bonsai. Bonsai need a lot of care, but it’s an incredible art form, as shown in the short film American Shokunin.
Get House Plants – Buy houseplants and care for them. They improve the look of your rooms and create good air. You can learn a lot about houseplants on Summer Rayne Oakes YouTube channel.
Learn to Draw – All you need is a notebook, pencil, pen, or coal and an introduction by Alphonso Dunn. His YouTube channel is fantastic, and he wrote a few books.
Learn Urban Sketching – Similar to learning drawing is Urban Sketching. It’s less realistic and more sketchy. You can start with a ballpoint pen and a notebook and later use watercolor to make it colorful. Jens Hübner is a good start, he has a YouTube channel and wrote multiple books. Peter Sheeler has a fantastic YouTube channel about urban sketching.
Learn to Paint – If you want to learn to paint, Bob Ross is a fantastic start. His YouTube channel has hours of free paint courses.
Learn to Doodle – Doodling is similar to Sketchnotes, but you don’t plan your doodle, you draw what comes to your mind. Here is a nice video of what a doodle looks like.
Do Blackout Poetry – You need an old newspaper or book and a black marker. You search for single words that build a sentence or poem when read in order. Then you paint everything except your selected words black. Here is an introduction video.
Learn Hand Lettering – You need fancier brush pens for this. But there are techniques with double lines. This is a nice introduction.
Learn Shodō Calligraphy – Shodō is Japanese calligraphy. You need a few bamboo brushes, black ink, and good paper. It’s possible to buy an introduction set like this. Here is a nice introduction video by a Japanese calligraphy master.
Learn Sumi-e Painting – To learn the art of Japanese watercolor painting, you need the same tools as for Shodō. Here is a nice introduction.
Learn Origami – All you need is paper and your hands. You can find hundreds of folding instructions on the Internet. Jo Nakashima has a Youtube channel for Origami tutorials.
Learn Kirigami – Kirigami is similar to Origami, but you don’t fold, you cut. A knife, ruler, and scissors are tools you’ll need. Here is an introduction video.
Learn About Typography – There is much to learn about typography. The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst, is an excellent book about the topic.
Declutter your Home – There are countless methods to clean up your home. A good start is Marie Kondo’s book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying. She hosts the TV Show Tidying Up with Marie Kondo [Netflix]. You can watch Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things [Netflix] to get more inspirations on how to declutter and simplify your home.
Improve your Balcony or Terrace – If you have to stay home, you can make your outside space (if you have one) prettier. Get inspiration on my Pinterest board.
Cook Something Fantastic – Why not try the German Wedding Soup? The soup of my grandmother will be better, but you should try it nevertheless.
Play Lego – It doesn’t need to be fancy. Buy a classic box and start being creative. Or buy the re-released Pirates of Barracuda Bay, first released in 1989.
Learn Fancy Shoe Lacing Styles – Did you know? There is more than one way to lace your shoes.
Learn About Japanese Design – You can read about all the different styles in Japanese Design: Art, Aesthetics & Culture, read WA: The Essence of Japanese Design or have a look in the books of Kenya Hara.
Urban Dictionary – Have a look into The Urban Dictionary. It’s hilarious. Every day there is a new word, you never heard of. It’s funny.
Read or Write Haiku – Haiku are short Japanese poems. 5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables. They are fun to read and fun to write. You can start reading the haiku of the master: Matsuo Basho. I tried haiku myself, but they are nothing compared to his haiku.
Read Poetry – There are many poets to pick from. Epitaph for “Poet’s Tomb” by Shuntaro Tanikawa is my favorite poem. It gets recited in the short film Hikari (1:52). Watch it!
Learn to Code – It’s always useful to know how to code. I recommend freeCodeCamp. It’s free and leads you from the basics to becoming a professional developer. They additionally have hundreds of hours of free video courses.
Learn to Write – Start with a few words or a short story. Or you could write a book. Learn about the 8-Point Story Arc to improve your writing.
Build Yourself a Website – If you don’t know how to code, do not despair. You can set up a website without technical knowledge on WordPress or Squarespace.
Start a Blog – If you have a website, you can start writing a blog. We need more blogs with interesting topics. You might know a few topics better than most people. Write about it.
Learn Design & Illustration – You don’t need expensive software to start. Try Affinity. It costs nothing and is powerful. I do all my designs with it: websites, flyers, logos, brochures …
Improve Your Math – The Khan Academy is a free resource to learn everything about math, from preschool to university levels. The content is better than that in most schools. And they have more than math, courses on science & engineering and arts & the humanities.
Learn a Language – You can learn on Duolingo for free. They have courses in so many languages, you can even learn High Valyrian, Klingon or Navajo. I learn Spanish and Japanese every day.
Learn 3D Creation – Not long ago, 3D software cost thousands of dollars. But today you can learn for free with Blender. Modeling, Sculpting, Animation & Rigging, and Rendering. I’m doing the course Complete Blender Creator: Learn 3D Modelling for Beginners on Udemy.
Learn About Stoicism – This Greek philosophy is helpful to deal with hard times and develop a good character. You can start with this book: The Daily Stoic. The author Ryan Holiday runs a website and blog and a YouTube channel. Watch The philosophy of Stoicism to learn the basics. Next, you can read the book Meditations by the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. His first sentence of book two was turned into a comic by Gavin Aung Than.
Learn About Taoism – The Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu founded a philosophy similar to Stoicism. He wrote the short book Tao Te King. It’s short, dense, and not easy. The philosopher Chuang Tzu wrote another book about Taoism that is much more poetic.
Learn Meditation – Meditation and mindfulness is not an esoteric humbug, the scientific evidence of the benefits is vast. Sitting down every day for 10-20 minutes will improve your health and psyche. I recommend learning it with Headspace. The app has a free introduction course, and the paid version has uncounted courses, short meditations, daily topics, blog posts, sleep sounds, podcasts and music, and even a movement section.
Learn Calisthenics – You don’t need a gym to get fit. The last time I’ve been to the gym was 20 years ago. All you need is the floor. You can start with Push-ups. Later you can buy a Pull-up bar for your door or gymnastic rings. That’s all you need. I wrote a blog post about it.
Learn About Old Culture – History is boring? Only in school. Did you know that the Mayan culture had a custom number system, and a sophisticated calendar, and created even artificial soil? And recently, archeologists found out their culture was much more advanced than we thought. With Lidar (light detection and ranging) they scanned a small amount of the Yucatán jungle and found buildings for millions of people.
Watch South Park – It’s hilarious. And all episodes are available for free on the website of South Park Studios.
Watch or Read George Carlin – He was the standup comedian. He became famous for the Seven Dirty Words: shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits. He was a master of observation and words. He wrote three books and did more than a dozen standup specials.
Learn About the Meaning of Movies & TV Shows – My favorite channel Like Stories of Old explores the boundary between film analysis and life lessons.
Learn Philosophy – The School of Life, founded by Alain de Botton, explorers philosophy in uncounted videos and articles.
Learn About The World of H.P. Lovecraft – If you’re into horror, read his books and stories. He is considered the master of Cosmic Horror. He wrote many stories and inspired uncounted authors and filmmakers.
Learn About Alan Watts – He was an English philosopher and interested in Zen, Buddhism, and Taoism. He wrote plenty of books and gave impressive speeches.
Watch DUST – DUST has a huge amount of free sci-fi movies and short films. Start with R’ha or Wire Cutters. Every Sunday, they broadcast 1.5 hours of high-quality sci-fi.
Watch TED – TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design. They have thousands of interesting talks in their library. Start with This is what happens when you reply to spam email by James Veitch, Inside the mind of a master procrastinator by Tim Urban or How to speak so that people want to listen by Julian Treasure.
Watch Jordan Peterson’s Lectures – Jordan B Peterson, the Canadian author, clinical psychologist, and scholar who is a professor at the University of Toronto has hundreds of hours of free lectures on YouTube. I recommend you start with 2017 Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief. If you want to see how he disassembles an unfriendly and ideologically possessed interviewer, watch Jordan Peterson debate on the gender pay gap, campus protests, and postmodernism.
Watch Bruce Lee’s Lost Interview – The martial artist and philosopher Bruce Lee in his only recorded interview on the Pierre Berton Show in 1971: The Lost Interview.
Listen or Watch Joe Rogan’s Podcast – He is the most famous Podcaster in the world. For over 10 years he interviewed interesting people from around the globe: authors, artists, actors, comedians, … His show The Joe Rogan Experience gets broadcasted 5 times a week. I like in particular that he doesn’t react to any peer pressure. He talks to everybody, from scientists to conspiracy theorists. You can start with the most viewed podcasts: Elon Musk, Edward Snowden, or Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Watch HOME – HOME is a free documentary about the earth by Yann Arthus-Bertrand. It’s one of the best documentaries I’ve ever seen. Stunning aerial photography and a three-part story about the earth.
Watch HUMAN – HUMAN (Part 2, Part 3) is another fantastic documentary by Yann Arthus-Bertrand. It’s a moving story about humanity, interviews mixed with stunning aerial photography.
Watch “Life In A Day” – Life In A Day is a historic film captured for future generations. It was recorded in one day around the globe: 24th of July 2010. It follows people from around the world from midnight to midnight.
Watch “Timelapse of the Future” – Timelapse of the Future is a 3D-animated movie with quotes from scientists, fantastic visuals, and music, that explores the future of our universe to the end of time.
Watch Gary Turk’s Videos – Gary Turk, the Poet, Storyteller & Filmmaker created nice short films like Look Up, Live Rich or Introverts.
Watch “The Longest Way” – Christoph Rehage recorded in The Longest Way his attempt to walk from Beijing to Germany and took one photo every day.
Watch RSA Animates – This series of videos uses talks of world-changing ideas and draws them. Start with Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us.
Watch “You Suck at Photoshop” – The funny screencasting series You Suck at Photoshop teaches you Photoshop while being a dark comedy TV Show at the same time. Hilarious.
Watch “Abstract: The Art of Design” – Abstract: The Art of Design [Netflix] is a documentary about Design and shows the best designers from around the world.
Watch “Chef’s Table” – Even if you’re not into cooking, watch Chef’s Table [Netflix], a documentary about the best chef’s of the world It’s fantastic!
Watch Studio Ghibli Movies – The Japanese animation film studio, founded by Hayao Miyazaki, creates unbelievably good and moving films. Some of my favorites are Castle in the Sky [Netflix], My Neighbour Totoro [Netflix], Spirited Away [Netflix] or Grave of the Fireflies. But they are all fantastic.
Watch Wes Anderson Movies – Wes Anderson's movies are fantastic. My favorites are Moonrise Kingdom, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Fantastic Mr. Fox and Isle of Dogs.
Watch Quentin Tarantino Movies – Quentin Tarantino produced movies with nonlinear storylines and aestheticization of violence. My favorite movies of him are Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill: Vol. 1, Kill Bill: Vol. 2, Reservoir Dogs, Death Proof and Jackie Brown.
Read and Watch “The Expanse” – 5 years in a row the best Sci-Fi book. It is currently my favorite book series. Start with the first of the eight books: Leviathan Wakes. There is the fantastic TV Show with the same name, directed by authors of the books, available on Amazon Prime Video. It’s currently the 6th most-watched and my favorite TV Show.
Read “The Iliad & Odyssey” by Homer – The Iliad and Odyssey is the oldest book of Europe, culturally important, and the base of our civilization. Starting with the Trojan War which is ongoing for nearly ten years at the start of the book and the invasion and destruction of Troy. Following the 30 years of Odysseus’ attempts to sail home.
Read “The Histories” by Herodotus – He is called the father of history. In his book The Histories he writes about the rise and fall of empires, traditions, and customs of tribes around Europe. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read.
Read John Seymors’ Books – He was a British farmer and author, and his books are the first books I have memories of. I liked to leaf through his artful books even before I could read. I recommend The New Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency and New Self-Sufficient Gardener. I even wrote a blog article about his books.
Read Basecamp’s Books – One of my favorite companies, Basecamp (formerly 37signals), writes fantastic books about business and work. Books like Getting Real or Shape Up are even free to read. My favorite book is REWORK.
Read Ryan Holidays’ Books – Another great author is Ryan Holiday. His books are based on the Stoic philosophy and will help to build a calm, strong character. Besides the book mentioned above, The Daily Stoic, I can recommend The Obstacle Is the Way, Ego Is the Enemy and Stillness Is the Key.
Read “Dune” by Frank Herbert – This Sci-Fi book Dune series spans over 10,000 years and follows the stories around a desert planet Arrakis, known as Dune. The first book of the series is the most famous and was filmed a few times: 1984 by David Lynch, a TV Show from 2000, spanning the first three books and the eagerly awaited 2020 movie. It is now a good time to read it.
Read “Watchmen” by Alan Moore – The graphic novel Watchmen is one of Time Magazine’s best 100 novels and a New York Times bestseller. There is a good film adaption from 2009.
Read “Daytripper” by Gabriel Ba & Fabio Moon – The acclaimed graphic novel Daytripper follows a man from Brazil during different periods in his life, each with the same ending: his death. It’s a moving story about the meaning of life.
Read “Sin City” by Frank Miller – The seven-volume strong series Sin City painted in strong black and white (with tints of color) follows different people around a crime-ridden city. The first two volumes are available as movies with top-class actors: Sin City and Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.
Read “Prince Valiant” by Hal Foster – From 1937 to 1971 Hal Foster created one page of his masterpiece Prince Valiant every week. It’s one of the most artful drawings I’ve ever seen in my life. The stories follow a young prince on his way to becoming a Knight of the Round Table in the times of King Arthur. It’s a story that follows the invasion of the Huns, the decline of the Roman Empire, and other historically accurate events around Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and even America.
Read “Asterix” by René Goscinny & Albert Uderzo – Asterix is a funny story following the Gaul Asterix and his best friend Obelix in 50BC with their resistance against the invasion of the Roman Empire.
Read ”Valerian et Laureline” by Pierre Christin & Jean-Claude Méziéres – The creative Sci-Fi graphic novel Valerian follows the adventures of Valerian and Laureline, time travel agents around the Galaxy in different times.
Read “Yoko Tsuno” by Roger Leloup – Yoko Tsuno follows the adventures of Yoko Tsuno and her friends and is a creative mix of stories taking place in space, the past, and present.
Watch “Rick & Morty” – Rick & Morty [Netflix] by Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon is about Rick, a mad scientist who drags his grandson, Morty, on crazy Sci-Fi adventures. This adult cartoon is a masterpiece exploring the concept of multiverses.
Watch “Gravity Falls” – Gravity Falls is another fantastic cartoon, following two twins on a vacation during summer helping their great uncle stand in a mysterious town in Gravity Falls, Oregon. There is even a secret episode connecting Gravity Falls with Rick & Morty.
Watch Akira Kurosawa Movies – He was one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. He directed 30 films in his 57 years spanning career. His masterpieces are Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, Kagemusha, Ran, Throne of Blood and Rashomon. He influenced George Lucas in his creation of Star Wars. A few of his movies got more than one remake.
Watch “Mad Men” – Mad Men [Netflix] is set in the 1960s, following the stories around a fictional advertising agency. The story, the characters, the costumes, and the sets: everything is perfect!
Watch “Band of Brothers” – Band of Brothers is a Mini TV Show created by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg. It is drawn from interviews, journals, and letters of soldiers taking part in WW2 D-Day. The cinematography, story, and music are incredible. It’s followed by The Pacific, which takes place in the Pacific War of WW2.
Watch “Breaking Bad” & “Better Call Saul” – Breaking Bad [Netflix] is a fantastic TV Show following Walter White, a New Mexico chemistry teacher, diagnosed with Stage III cancer on his way into the deadly world of drug cartels. The prequel Better Call Saul [Netflix] plays six years before the story and connects both stories and characters from the shows.
Watch “The Secret of Kells” & “Song of the Sea” – The two movies The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea are beautiful and heart-warming animated stories.
Watch “Mr. Robot” – The TV Show Mr. Robot [Prime Video] is a contemporary and culturally resonant drama about a young programmer, who suffers from a social anxiety disorder and decides that he can connect to people by hacking them. The TV Show was brilliant in its last episode!
Watch “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is one of the best Western movies ever produced. Sergio Leone as director, Clint Eastwood as an actor, and Ennio Morricone composed the fantastic music.
Watch “Apocalypse Now” (Redux) – Apocalypse Now is one of the most stunning movies showing the madness of war. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, with top-class actors like Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Martin Sheen, and Laurence Fishburne shows this movie is the journey of a Special Forces team to locate and eliminate a gone insane Green Beret Colonel in the Cambodian jungle. The Redux version added another 49 minutes of material that needed to be cut from the original version.
Read and Watch “Fight Club” – The novel Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk is unique in every way. The story of an insomniac insurance clerk who meets a slippery soap salesman and anarchist ideas spiraling out of control. It’s a relevant book about consumerism and the meaning of life. The movie Fight Club [Prime Video] is a nearly perfect adaptation of the book.
Watch “Memento” – Memento [Netflix] [Prime Video] is one of my favorite movies: Leonard Shelby tries to track down the killer of his wife, but he has an untreatable form of short-term memory loss since an attack on his wife and himself. The movie is unique because it’s told backward in blocks of 15 minutes, which gives the viewer the feeling of Leonard’s brain damage.
Watch “Bosch” – Bosch [Prime Video] is based on Michael Connelly’s best-selling novels, stories of a relentless LAPD homicide Detective Harry Bosch who pursues justice at all costs.
Watch “Amélie” – The French movie Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain is an adorable and heart-warming story about a shy woman falling in love with a stranger.
Watch “The Bridge” – Bron/Broen [Prime Video] is a Danish/Swedish crime TV Show following the autistic inspector Saga Norén tracing the tracks of a serial killer.
Watch “The Killing” – The Killing [Prime Video] is a crime drama TV Show based on the Danish TV Show Forbrydelsen. Set in Seattle, Washington, it follows detective Sarah Linden in her murder investigations.
Watch “Dark” – Dark [Netflix] is one of the few German TV Shows that got international acclaim. It’s a Mystery and Sci-Fi Drama taking place in a small German town.
Watch “Money Heist” – The Spanish TV Show La casa de papel [Netflix] is fun to watch a story about a big heist. A mysterious man called “El profesor“ recruits a band of eight criminal specialists to rob the National Coinage and Stamp Factory of Spain.
Watch “Love, Death & Robots” – Love, Death & Robots [Netflix] is a collection of animated short stories.
Watch “Oldboy” – The Korean movie 올드보이 is an intensive story about a man who gets imprisoned, drugged, and tortured for 15 years with no clue why. After his sudden release, he tries to find revenge on his captors.
Play Games – I’m not a big Gamer anymore, but I can recommend games: Far Cry Primal is a nice shooter taking place in the Stone Age. Equipped with a bow, arrow, and spear, riding on animals, you have to fight against hostile tribes. Portal and Portal 2 are super cool action games where you have to escape from a Laboratory using a Portal gun. Mark of the Ninja is a cool sneaking and hiding Ninja game.
Listen to “Schiller” – Schiller is a German electronic band, founded by Christopher von Deylen and Mirko von Schlieffen in 1998. Songs to recommend are In Between, Aurora, Leben…I Feel You, Ein schöner Tag, Ruhe or Schiller.
Listen to “Poets of the Fall” – Poets of the Fall is a Finnish rock band from Helsinki. Their songs have poetic lyrics. Songs to recommend are Carnival of Rust, War, Lift, Locking Up the Sun and Late Goodbye.
Listen to “Enigma” – Enigma is a German musical project founded in 1990 by Michael Cretu. Songs to recommend are Return of Innocence, Modern Crusaders, Gravity of Love, The Eyes of Truth or Push The Limits.
Listen to “Recomposed By Max Richter: Vivaldi, The Four Seasons” – Recomposed By Max Richter: Vivaldi, The Four Seasons is one of my favorite classical albums. The whole album is fantastic, and I recommend listening to it when the sun sets or rises. I like in particular Spring 1, Spring 2, Spring 3, Summer 3, and Winter 1. But you should listen to it in order of the seasons.

Everyday Carry: What’s in my pockets (and why)

Sat, 14 Mar 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Things I Carry Around Every Day

A few days ago Ryan Holiday posted the essay Here’s Some Stuff Worth Carrying With You Everywhere with an accompanying video on his blog.

Ever since I read the article Meet the men obsessed with carrying all the right stuff on Vox, I had the plan to write a similar article, but never had the time to do it.

Apple iPhone

In my left pocket, I carry my iPhone 13 mini, 64 GB in black. It’s super fast and the best phone I ever had. I get a new phone every two years with my mobile contract. I use the RhinoShield SolidSuit Carbon with a 3D Impact Protection Screen to protect it.

When I’m at home, I put my iPhone into a drawer, as to not be constantly distracted by it.

Amazon Kindle Paperwhite

I always carry my Kindle Paperwhite (7. Generation) with me. It’s either in my backpack or in the pocket of my jacket. If I have a few minutes of spare time, I read my books.

Apple Watch

On my left arm I wear an Apple Watch (Series 5) in space grey with a white breathable sports wristband.

Apple AirPods Pro 2

I bought in December 2019 the AirPods Pro and used them nearly everyday. In 2023 I switched to the AirPods Pro 2. I put them in the small pocket of my jeans. They are fantastic headphones, as they shield all the noise while riding on trains or planes.

Traveler’s Notebook

In my jacket, back pocket, or bag I always carry a Traveler’s Notebook Passport Size in Camel. I have 2-3 paper notebooks in it. I have a Traveler’s Notebook Regular Size but don’t carry it with me around.

I bought my notebook at Property Of… and the leather embossing of my initials was included.

My favorite pen is the MUJI Gel Ink Ballpoint Pen 0.38 mm with black ink. It’s not smudge-proof, and I have other pens for Sketchnotes, but the writing experience of this one is good. Additionaly, I have the Brass Ballpoint Pen with me, because it is so small and has a pencil hidden inside.

Laguiole Pocket Knife

I bought my Laguiole pocket knife a few years ago, and it is always in my right pocket. It’s a traditional French knife handmade by craftsmen from Aubrac. Every knife is a unique piece and the artist carves a special pattern on the back of the knife. It’s available in all price ranges. The handle of my knife is made from ebony wood.

I always carry one because Every Man Should Carry a Pocket Knife.

Secrid Miniwallet

For more than 8 years, I own a Secrid Miniwallet, carried in my right pocket. It’s now old, I can’t even tell the original color, but I assume it was gray. A co-worker showed this Dutch brand to me, and I was instantly amazed. I always loved small wallets, but this one is the best.

It is made from leather covering an Aluminum case, preventing unwanted RFID and NFC communication or bending and breaking of the cards. It has a super cool mechanism to release the cards. Not only that, but it can hold 4-6 cards in the case and another 4 cards inside. The plastic clip can hold banknotes.

Keys and Keychain

I have all my keys attached to a KeyUnity KM01 Titan Keychain, that is attached to my belt loop.

I try to limit my keys to the minimum amount: House door, flat door, cellar, letterbox, and bicycle lock.

EDC Multitool Credit Card

I have a survival credit card in my Secrit Miniwallet. Mine was part of a survival kit, but you can find many different options. It has a small and a large screwdriver, an emergency life rope, ruler, twine knife, bottle opener, can opener, hanging hole, cutting saw, a knife, and a wrench.

Urban Assault 21 Backpack

When I’m on the road I carry the Mystery Ranch Urban Assault 21. It’s the best backpack I had so far, recommended by a Green Beret. It’s waterproof and lightweight. In its pockets I store additionaly useful things, for example loading cables, a power bank, a pen roll, an umbrella, and a water bottle. I might also carry my iPad Pro or MacBook Pro with me.

In case of a catastrophe, when I'm at home, I have a fully packed backpack containing everything I need to survive for a few days up to several weeks.

That’s it, feel free to share your Everyday Carries in a blog post or photo: Hashtag #edc and #everydaycarry. I’m curious about what other people carry around.

Haiku 3

Sun, 01 Mar 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Prasselnder Regen – eiligen Schrittes der Mann, dem Schirm folgt er nach.
Crackling rain – the man walks in a hurry, he follows the umbrella.

Haiku 2

Sat, 01 Feb 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Sturm in dunkler Nacht, Rascheln hoch in Baumkronen – Rauschende Stille.
Storm in dark night, Rustling high in the treetops – Rushing silence.

Haiku 1

Wed, 01 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Wolken, unbewegt, ein Kind lacht laut auf im Hof – weit ist der Himmel.
Clouds, unmoved, a child laughs out loud in the yard – wide is the sky.

How to Store Information: Keep what counts, where you’ll find it

Wed, 03 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Where to Store Information?

We live in an age of never-ending information. How should anyone remember anything with all the information bombarding us every day? Some of the questions you might ask yourself:

How do you make sure you find the information you saved once again?
How do you make sure you don’t lose valuable sources?
How do to know which information is valuable at all?

People have different ways of handling information. Many people don’t care at all and remember nothing, write nothing down.

But I’m not one of these people, my brain functions well, I’ll remember that I read, saw, or heard information on a specific topic, but I don’t remember where. This frustrates me the most … the annoying feeling, when you remember you saw this video explaining how to remember everything you learn, but you can’t remember where you saw it (how ironic), or who created it. You could try to find it again by searching on Google or YouTube.

But this will not work in all cases. And the Internet is a transient, floating world. Everything will disappear.

That’s why I started years ago saving I want to remember. I download fantastic videos and put them on my NAS and save websites, files, and links with tools like Evernote.

I tried countless tools: Evernote, Google Keep, Apple Notes, OneNote, Browser bookmarks, Delicious, or Pinboard.

Likewise, I used Evernote excessively since its founding in 2008. I had over 15,000 notes at a time. But then Evernote got into trouble, the service corrupted user files (which got me 2 years of free Premium). Bad press repeated over and over again, with them recently needing to fire 15% of its employees and losing four of its top managers.

Nothing is forever. I decided to think about a new strategy.

3 Rules for Storing Information

I came up with these three rules for storing information:

Never use a service, which does not allow exporting my content.
Never store valuable information only on an external server.
It’s fine to store less valuable information on an external server if it’s easily searchable and information can get back easily.

My first rule crosses out countless services. I don’t care how cool or awesome a service is, if I can’t get my information out, I will not use it … ever. This means I will not use it if I can export my files as PDFs individually. I will not use it if I can get a JSON, or if it’s complicated, and I need to buy an external tool, which tries to extract my information out of someone else’s tool.

Evernote had always a friendly you can export everything policy, why I used them. But because of rule number two, I can’t rely on Evernote.

That’s why I bought DEVONthink Pro Office last year. The software is around since the early 2000s. It’s not the prettiest contender around, and the mobile app is in its infancy (Update 2022: Both apps are now pretty and capable). But it’s powerful, thanks to its artificial intelligence and text analysis. It’s used by professionals, like scientists, teachers, authors, journalists, or lawyers. It has countless features of importing, exporting, converting, and sharing. You can index external files from all kinds of devices and store the information in databases, that you can save at any location.

Sources of Information

How does my information gathering look?

My main entry for information is Raindrop.io. I save every website, picture, link, or information (with a URL) with one click to Raindrop.io.

The regular information I consume via Feedbin in the Reeder app. For every article that I find interesting, I save it directly to Raindrop.io, which is easy with Feedbin. Each time I “star” an item, it gets automatically moved to Raindrop.io.

When I write text, blog posts, and ideas in digital form, I use iA Writer. It’s the best app to write text. Focused, distraction-free writing, Markdown support, and a few more nice features. I store my texts in iCloud.

I shoot photos of things I want to remember and store them in Apple Photos.

Fascinating quotes I send directly from my Kindle to Readwise.

Physical documents I scan with ScannerPro. The text will be processed with OCR and saved as PDFs to iCloud and Dropbox. From there I save them to DEVONthink instantly with an automation.

Inspirational images I save from Pinterest or Bēhance to my photo library and save them in albums, grouped by topics.

And I use a Traveler’s Notebook Passport Size during the day to write down things I want to remember when I’m away from digital devices.

Automating with IFTTT

I created many automated tasks with IFTTT, which collects information from all kinds of sources and bring them to Raindrop.io. When I like, bookmark, upvote, or save on services like YouTube, Vimeo, 𝕏, Reddit, Flickr, SoundCloud, GoodReads, Spotify, GitHub, Medium, or Ello an item, it will be saved to Raindrop.io, including tags.

Raindrop.io

In Raindrop.io, I process the content. I have an intensive tagging strategy, which I apply to all items. Raindrop.io (Pro) will analyze the content and suggest tags, which is helpful.

Content, which I want to remember, I immediately archive after I tagged it (like videos, I watched or links to websites to remember). Others I read, when I find the time, which might take a few days or weeks. When I didn’t like an item or think it’s not worth saving it, I delete it.

Raindrop.io has a good full-text search, that is quick and searches not only for tags but for all saved items. Additionally, the content will be stored forever. Even if a website goes offline, you can see the complete saved article (pure text and HTML).

DEVONthink

I use DEVONthink to save Documents, Images, Video, and other references I want to keep. They synchronize encrypted via iCloud between my computers and mobile devices.

Processing Books

When I read books, I mark important passages and pages. Occasionally, I draw a Sketchnote of a specific topic, to make sure I don’t forget the information. All highlights in my apps are automatically moved to Readwise.

Conclusion

I try to automate as much as possible with IFTTT. I save all information first to Raindrop.io. Furthermore, can find the information again with a powerful full-text search. Raindrop.io saves the content offline (not the videos), I don’t have to care if somebody takes the content down.

The most valuable information I save to DEVONthink.

If I want to remember information (and not remember where to find it), I use this well-known, boring way of remembering information: Write it down, draw it, make a doodle, or sketch. Read it. Read it again. And think about it repeatedly.

Morning Routine: Win the morning, win the day

Sat, 08 Sep 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about habits and routines. I’ve had always routines in my life, but I wanted to build a better morning routine because I’ve come across many sources, that emphasized the importance of routines for success in life.

You are not automatically successful with routines, but it’s unlikely to be successful or happy without one. Jordan Peterson, a clinical psychologist, author, and speaker, mentioned in his talk 2017 Personality 02/03: Historical & Mythological Context the importance of a schedule and routine:

You need to pick a time to get up, whatever time you want, but pick one and stick to it because otherwise you dysregulate your circadian rhythms and they regulate your mood.

A morning routine does not only give health benefits, but if you include time for learning, reflection, thought, and fitness, you will improve in all aspects of life.

After reading many articles, and watching plenty of talks about morning routines, a similar pattern appeared in all these routines. I sat down a month ago and created a routine for myself, which included these patterns. I took inspiration from Tim Ferris, Ryan Holiday, and other inspiring people.

My Morning Routine

Wake up at around 7:00 AM
Get up, make my bed
Open the windows everywhere to get fresh air in (Stosslüften)
Record weight
I use a nasal douche with hot salt water to clean my nose
Drink half a liter of water with a bit of juice
Take vitamins D3/K2 and zinc
Stretch for 10 minutes
Read RSS feeds for a few minues
Learn Japanese and Spanish in Anki and Duolingo for around an hour
Workout with Calisthenics for 30-45 minutes (3 times a week)
Bathroom & Clothes
Prepare and eat breakfast
Prepare for the day, by checking the calendar and selecting To-Do items for the day
Get Ready

I do this routine every day, the only difference is, that I do not use an alarm clock at the weekend, but instead wake up when I wake up, which is around 7:00 AM. I’m doing it now for a month, and I’m happy with it. Update 2022: I don’t use alarm clocks anymore, I don’t need them, and I always wake up at the same time.

Details of My Morning Routine

Wake up

I wake up at around 7:00 AM, after 7-8 hours of sleep. My bedroom is cold (open window) and pitch dark due to opaque blinds. I don’t have mobile devices in my bedroom, except for two bed Slamp lights and my Apple Watch to track sleep. Additionally, I track my sleep with a Withings Sleep Analyzer.

Get Up

Then I stand up and get up, and make my bed. Because if you want to change the world, start by making your bed, says William McRaven, a former US Navy Admiral and Navy SEAL:

If you wanna change the world, start off by making your bed. If you make your bed every morning, you’ll have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride and encourage you to do another task, and another, and another. And by the end of the day, that one task completed, will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact, that the little things in life matter. If you can’t do the little things right, you’ll never be able to do the big things right.

Fresh Air

I open the windows to all the other rooms to let in the fresh air. My bedroom always has fresh air during the night.

Record Weight

I step on my Nokia Body Cardio scale to measure weight, fat, muscle, bone, and water. It’s important to always do this every day at the same time. It’s the only way to see health trends early.

Nasal Douche

I have a dust mite allergy, and I use a nasal douche with hot salt water to clean my nose. This helps me to breathe better and reduces the risk of getting sick.

Drink

Next, I drink a half a liter of water (with some juice mixed in), this will refill lost water of the night and add quick energy for the workout.

Take Vitamins

I take vitamins D3/K2 and zinc every morning. In winter, 5,000 IU of D3/K2; in summer, 3,000-4,000 IU. And 25 mg of zinc for the immune system.

Stretch

Next, I stretch for 10 minutes the whole body while listening to a podcast with the news.

RSS Feeds

I read my RSS feeds for a few minutes. I use Feedbin as an RSS aggregator. I follow blogs, news sites, Reddit, Hacker News and YouTube channels. I use the Reeder app on my iPad to read the feeds. Interesting articles I save to Raindrop.io for later reading.

Learn

Then I learn languages for 45 to 60 minutes. I start with learning vocabulary with Anki and then learn Spanish and Japanese with Duolingo.

Workout

I do Calisthenics three times. I start with a warm-up, followed by a full-body workout, including pulling, pushing, core, and leg bodyweight exercises. In the end, I do skill work like working with rings or practicing handstands. The workout lasts between 20 and 45 minutes. Once or twice a week, I run instead for 30-45 minutes.

Bathroom & Clothes

Then I take a shower. The benefits of cold showers are well-known, but I take a warm one. In the end, I switch to a cool temperature for a minute. I shower my legs in ice-cold water, but not the whole body. I’ll leave this to Wim Hof. 😄

I put on my clothes, which is easy since I changed my style to a minimalistic one: black jeans, a black, gray, white, or colored shirt, and a belt. Furthermore, I took inspiration for my wardrobe from filmmaker Matt D’Avella, who showed his wardrobe in this video.

Breakfast

My breakfast varies throughout the week. I usually have bread with hard-boiled eggs, air-dried sausage, or honey. Twice a week, I enjoy scrambled eggs, fried sausages, and bacon with bread. On weekends, I treat myself to bread rolls and a croissant with butter and chocolate sprinkles, accompanied by a hard-boiled egg. I drink juice made from apple, orange, maracuja, acerola, and kaki.

Prepare For the Day

I prepare for the day, by checking my calendar for upcoming events, meetings, and birthdays. I open my To-Do app Things on my tablet and select my tasks for the day.

Conclusion

I’m happy with my routine for now and hope you see the benefits of building a routine in your life. The morning routine is for me the one with the most benefits. Because if you start your day successfully, the chances are high that you end the day successfully. And as Jordan Peterson said: You cannot be mentally healthy without a routine. I recommend, building yourself a morning routine.

Self-Defense in the Age of Attention: A simple playbook to protect your time, attention, and mental bandwidth

Fri, 03 Nov 2017 07:00:00 GMT

How to Win Back Our Time and Minds

It’s been a while since I started questioning my behavior with technology, but also of all of us in general.

The Internet has given us an endless stream of information, with nearly every question answered in seconds. It has given us more music to hear, more texts to read, more images to look at, and more movies to watch than one could ever consume in thousands of years.

And this is a good thing, as it allows us to extend our minds in directions our parents and grandparents never could imagine. But with every benefit always come downsides.

The most precious thing you own is not money or time. It is attention. We all have the same number of hours on this planet. But what we do with it, what we achieve, is up to us. We decide where we point our attention to. However, do we?

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

Feeding the Monster

Pointing our attention in the right direction has become harder in the last few years, even for people with a lot of willpower. We have to withstand big corporations with thousands of trained designers, engineers, or product people. They operate in a competitive market driven by advertising. And I know this because I’m one of them, and yet I am a victim myself.

Everything is about activating people, making them register, click, scroll, like, use, consume, and stay. We test every part of our interfaces to find out which color, font, and text is the most effective. Compared to the big players like Google, Facebook, or Twitter, we look like amateurs.

Every item you interact with gets analyzed, computed, and stored. Algorithms calculate your next step, your direction. This is how the companies know what you want and when you want it. It enables them to provide you with a never-ending stream of things you crave.

The human brain is prone to numerous cognitive biases and fallacies. It’s easy to manipulate because it’s the same brain as our ancestors living in the wild, seeking food, shelter, or enemies.

We want to connect to others, yearn for distraction from ourselves and boredom, we want the attention of others.

Every pull-to-refresh, every push message, every like, comment, and every new item appearing in our continuous scrolling streams triggers the release of dopamine in our brains. They create a habit loop: Trigger, routine, reward.

We are creatures of habit. A lot of our day-to-day actions are driven by subconscious habits. You don’t need to think about walking to the subway, pushing the shopping cart at the supermarket, or switching on the lights in a dark room. These have become habits. As have these movements of addiction: Grabbing for your phone, checking for updates, hundreds of times each day.

This behavior changes our brain, makes it increasingly harder to follow longer texts, focus on one thing for a long time, and to think deeply. Studies have started connecting rising numbers of depression in young people with these addictive curated streams. Because we get more of the things we like, it encloses us in filter bubbles (echo chambers). There we don’t have to deal with new or contradicting ideas, but instead get validated all the time, which strengthens our ignorance of other ideas and people. But this is a topic of its own.

And this will not get better anytime soon but will get worse, as big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence get better every day. This is why you need to learn a new skill and teach it to your kids: Fighting back on attacks to your attention.

As this is a metaphorical attack on your attention, you should handle it as one. The key aspects of successful self-defense are Avoidance, Awareness, and Prevention.

Avoidance

The first step for successful self-defense is avoidance. Try to avoid as many dangerous situations as possible. In this context, this would mean, staying away from every distraction, which doesn’t add a lot of value to your life. Does Reddit or Twitter improve your life? Does surfing hours on Instagram or Facebook help you with your life goals? If not, stay away if possible. This is a personal decision, what might be a distraction to one person, might improve the life of another.

These are the countermeasures I took in the last few years or things I experimented with:

I deleted many social media apps like Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and Instagram from my phone.
I deleted my bookmarks to social media sites from my browser and visit them once a week deliberately. I stay less than a few minutes, to get the most important things I missed during the week.
I deleted all messengers, except the ones my family is using.
I stopped reading or watching the daily news (7 years ago). I’m the last to hear about the newest terrorist attack or the newest threats by Trump to the world. And I avoid the water cooler talks and coffee machine chats as hell. You can’t avoid the news, but not actively searching for news filters out a lot of the noise.
I use RSS/Atom feeds as my major information source because I can choose where and when to get my content from. I pull the content, when I want it (Pull vs. Push Principle).
I use many analog things. I use Evernote to save content for later access, but I started writing a lot on paper. I always have a pen and a notebook with me. Likewise, I use sketchnotes to extract the key aspects of an idea. The combination of writing with hand and drawing helps me remember things. And when I save content in Evernote, I make sure to mark the key aspects and write a summary at the top.
I rarely post links to social media sites these days. I want to avoid attacking the attention of other people. People interested in what I write or like can go to my website.
I don’t check in or brag about the places I am at on social media.
I share photos with my family and not the whole world.
I block the shit out of advertising sites, these creepy ads following you around the internet. Pages using ad-block countermeasures, I leave and never come back (or grab the text for later reading). But I started supporting selected sources with money every month on platforms like Patreon. Pages should start producing more content of quality instead of masses of low-quality content. It might be that people would start to care and pay for quality content.

Awareness

One of the key aspects of successful self-defense is awareness. You need to be aware, that you are being attacked. This is not always easy, as attacks might come in different forms, like niceness or promises.

The first step is to recognize, that the own behavior is problematic and harms the well-being. We tend to think we have everything under control and are well-trained in media usage. Or we search for excuses like not having an option or needing to be informed.

My journey started 2 years ago when I began doing mindfulness meditation every morning for 20 minutes. Meditation is the opposite of distraction, it’s focused attention. It doesn’t matter if you point attention to your breath, body parts, an idea, or anything else. Meditation forces you to be. Distractions will try to lead your attention away while you meditate. The Buddhists call this Mind Monkey, as uncontrolled, restless, confused thoughts will flood the brain during a meditation session. But with time you will get better and be able to focus for longer periods and silence the monkeys.

I think my meditation practice was the main trigger in questioning my behavior with technology, and It is a key factor for a well-balanced person in the future. As we (should) train our body, to strengthen it, we should do the same with our minds.

These are a few of the things I did in the last few years to strengthen my awareness:

I started with Meditation and did more than 730 sessions, more than 210 hours since then. Besides my daily 20 minutes session, I try to do half a dozen of breathing sessions for a minute throughout the day. I used the additional short sessions of my meditation app to learn about mindful walking, eating, cooking, sleeping, running, and commuting. The app has an extra section for kids and courses for students.
I practice selective ignorance. It’s not easy, but sometimes caring less is the best option, to get the attention back.
I try not to use my headphones in the subway. When I’m reading, I can practice focusing on the book and not on my surrounding. Sporadically, I intentionally do nothing but focus on the people in the subway.
I read a lot about the brain and its weaknesses. If you know all the biases and fallacies, you are less likely to be a victim of them.
I read a lot about habit-forming, addiction, and multitasking (which is not possible in humans). I try to do intentional single-tasking: reading, eating, or watching a TV show, without the distraction of multiple other things at the same time.
I started living a Minimalist life. Fewer things mean less distraction and more attention to the things, which matter to you.
I watch and consume intentionally positive, inspiring, creative and uprising videos or texts (e.g., TED Talks), to change the ratio of positive to negative messages I hear about.

Prevention

While avoidance is about trying not to be exposed to dangerous things, prevention is more about attenuating situations. It’s about making it harder for dangerous things to be successful.

These are a few of the ideas I implemented or tried in the last few years to prevent my attention is taken away:

I deactivated many push messages, keeping a few exceptions. I disabled push messages on an app from the moment it first pushed irrelevant, triggering, needy information to me. I allow relevant apps like weather warnings, and family messages to send real-time updates. When an app has useful messages but doesn’t allow selecting which ones, I switch them off. I love Google Inbox because it allows me to select which type of message is allowed to use push messages.
I switched off all notification icons (the red, annoying counters on app icons).
I use ‘Do not disturb’ on every device, including phone, tablet, computer, and landline phone during off-hours (21:00-8:00). My inner family can bypass this wall.
My phone is silenced during work hours (vibrations turned on), and even beyond.
I switched off autoplay of videos wherever possible (YouTube, Netflix, Twitter). And if not possible, I intentionally quit the process of loading the next video, after each video. I go grab something to drink, or do push-ups before I continue watching.
When in doubt, if I will be able to be aware of the time (like when browsing on Pinterest), I set a timer to 15 or 20 minutes, to be reminded of the passing time.
I put all my devices on my worktable when relaxing on the sofa. It prevents the quick let’s answer this question habit and adds a barrier. Plus, it will give you more movement.
I put my devices upside down on the table to not get distracted by incoming messages.
I use mute filters to filter out content, which drives my attention to places I don’t want it to go.
I tried to leave my phone in another room while eating with my family.
I switched off Nostalgia features, like ‘your day one year ago,’ wherever possible. These are annoying because they attempt to activate you again.

It’s not easy and sometimes even not possible at all to overcome the obstacles of attention-grabbing media with pure willpower. But by building habits of mindful media consumption, you might be able to get your attention back. Not every day, but it is a process worth working on. It’s not the device, it’s you. The device can be used to be creative, connect to other people, and be inspired. Or it can be used to distract yourself mindless for hours. It’s your choice.

By following my advice, I was able to finish redesigning two websites and wrote a book this year.

If you have read to this point, without being distracted, kudos! Now put down your phone and look out the window for a few minutes.

I Wrote a Book in GitBook: 18 years of notes, now a book

Tue, 27 Jun 2017 00:00:00 GMT

I finished writing my first book. I worked on it for the last six months. To be honest, I didn’t write it recently, but over 18 years.

It was always available for free for everyone on my website. I started writing in 1999 with my first website, containing a collection of notes and thoughts about Ninja and their martial art, Ninjutsu.

I never indented writing a book but was asked regularly by visitors to my website, why I didn’t write a book. It was out of the question to write a commercial book because a part of the essays on my website are translations of texts by Peter Carlsson. He permitted me to use the translated version on my website (unfortunately the original is gone).

Furthermore, writing a print book is a pain, takes a lot of your life, and isn’t profitable (unless you are a mainstream author). I know of a colleague, who gets a share of €0.95 per book sold for €49.95 by a well-known publishing company. He worked nearly always on it for a year and sold 3000 copies. That’s something you do to become famous, not to earn money.

GitBook

Last year I stumbled upon GitBook, which is an Open-Source software package and a hosting service, and decided to write a book with it.

GitBook’s hosting service has a free plan, which allows public books and a custom domain. And you can add your book from GitHub. You can use the software, without the need to host your book on the hosting service.

What is Git?

If you’re a software developer, you can skip this section. Git is a version control system, created by Linus Torvalds (the creator of Linux) in 2005. It allows you to take snapshots of the current state of your project and save them securely for later reference (locally and on servers). It’s best suited for text files but allows binary files to be added. With Git, it’s easy to create alternative versions of your files, try out different ideas, compare versions, and integrate your ideas with the current state. If you want to learn the basics of Git, GitHub provides a free 15 minutes course in the browser. Because Git is fantastic, it became the de facto standard in the last 10 years for using version control.

Git and Markdown

A book is in its basic form text with basic formatting (italics, bold, and quotes). I could have written my book in Word or another proprietary software. But then I need to buy software, which allows editing the format.

The files would be likely saved in a binary format, a local database, or a mixture of text and binary format. This makes it hard to track changes over time (unless the tool provides a history functionality). And even then, creating alternative versions would mean duplicating the Word file. The integration of my changes back would be hard or even impossible.

This is one of the reasons, why the combination of Markdown and Git is optimal for writing text. Even this blog post is written in Markdown.

You can write your text in any editor you like (even Word would be possible), but optimally it should support Markdown (for a preview). Markdown can be learned in a few minutes. Markdown editors allow exporting the text into Word, RTF, or PDF.

What I’ve learned

It was fun writing the book in my favorite text editor and push (sending on a server) my changes to my GitHub repository (project container). GitBook supports Markdown or AsciiDoc to write text in, supports multiple languages, covers, plugins, a glossary, a nice theme, and much more. It provides a search out of the box. I ran the local GitBook server and while writing the book could always see the result in my browser.

There are over 600 plugins for GitBook available, but I use a few (e.g., hint boxes, BibTeX support).

As a downside, I found out the glossary feature isn’t usable at the moment.

Firstly, because it doesn’t support any special characters, non-English languages are out of luck. German umlauts? Nö. Japanese characters? いいえ.

Secondly, the page rendering gets slow, you can’t work anymore. This is a known issue that might be resolved in the future. The more the term occurs on a page, the slower the rendering gets.

And it’s visually not appealing because every occurrence of a word gets underlined. And I used the word Ninja a lot.

GitBook provides a discussion feature and change requests, which make collaborative working nice (didn’t use it yet). As the book owner, you have access to statistics and can decide if you want to provide E-Books (PDF, MOBI, EPUB), allow discussions, and inline comments (a pleasant feature to mark typos or grammar errors). You can add collaborators to work with multiple authors in the same book.

GitBook is not only good for books but to write documentation for anything.

What’s in my book?

GitBook: kogakure

First thing: The book is available in German only 😒 (the website is now in English available). I reviewed every sentence of the website for the book and changed parts of it.

I reordered sections and replaced many images with better versions (when possible vector images) and added new images. Likewise, I would have liked to replace all images of weapons, tools, and techniques, but I couldn’t find the original colored versions of all images or the 3D data on my hard disc. Any skilled illustrator around wanting to contribute to the Open-Source project?

I reviewed the whole glossary and unified the writing of all Japanese terms (using the Hepburn system). All changes are mirrored back to the website.

Additionally, I added a section with the history of my website and screenshots of how the design evolved over the years.

And I needed to design a cover in two sizes for the book.

Resources

Download PDF, EPUB, Mobi versions on GitBook
Read the online version of the book
Source code of the book
Found an error, typo, or mistake? Report the issue.

Minimalism: Less, but better—and on purpose

Wed, 07 Jun 2017 00:00:00 GMT

The Pursuit of Minimalism

Minimalism has come a long way. It recently got again a lot of traction with its highest search volume on Google ever recorded in January 2017. Because Minimalism is hard to define, it leaves a lot of room for interpretation and its meaning shifted recently more from being a philosophy to a lifestyle.

In his video Being a Minimalist, the creator JP Sears jokes about the extremes of Minimalism. People move to Minimalism for different reasons. Some are overwhelmed by capitalism and the accelerating speed of life. Others care about the ecosystem, as a result of balancing sick excesses like fast fashion and constantly rising consumption of resources. Many people follow a trend to feel unique or set a statement on their wealth, by not having things as a symbol of status.

The Spectrum of Minimalism

Many people misunderstand Minimalism as a form of a search for expensive design objects to fill their houses with, which is not Minimalism but a form of hyper-capitalism. It’s not inherently wrong to surf on sites with Minimalist items to buy or be inspired by simple design, as long as it doesn’t result in buying things to try to become a Minimalist.

On the other side of the spectrum, you can see the extreme Minimalists, living out of a box, owning 19 items, racing to be the most minimal Minimalists, and sitting in empty rooms on the floor. If you follow this philosophy, you are only allowed to use white and black colors for everything as an extreme Minimalist. This form of Minimalism is suitable only for a few people. It deters plenty of people to try out Minimalism. But it helps to be interviewed in media, sell your book, or be invited to conferences.

Minimalism is not glamorous, it’s humble and a result of deep mindful thinking. It is a mindset or philosophy, not a method. And the reduction of physical possessions is a result of Minimalism, not Minimalism itself, as Colin Wright explains in his article Minimalism Explained.

Criticism of Minimalism

Critics of Minimalism describe it as cold, empty, and without personality. People following Minimalism would deny their past or prove their inability to connect to other people. It would be a hopeless attempt to control life, as Linda Tutmann described Minimalism in her ZEIT article Alles mein.

Sorry, it doesn’t look cold, empty, and without personality. I failed as a Minimalist.

This misconception of Minimalism is the result of its shift to a lifestyle and of extreme Minimalists, who live in sterile homes. Minimalism is not about having as few things as possible. It is about not owning things, which don’t bring joy or getting rid of things, which were acquired as a result of other reasons than a need or love for an object.

The wrong reasons might be diverse: Boredom, inner emptiness, the desire for status, procrastination, the uncomfortable feeling of thinking of oneself, the attempt of freezing time for nostalgic reasons, and many more.

The Origins of Minimalism and Simplicity

As everything in this world is connected, Minimalism has its roots in multiple different schools of thinking. One closely related is Simplicity. I found this definition (source unknown) about the difference between Simplicity and Minimalism:

Simplicity is the reduction of complexity." />

Minimalism is sometimes defined as Simple Living. Simplicity will inevitably be part of a Minimalist's life. The reason is deep thinking results in love for simple forms. Objects, which are resistant to temporary fashion, which endure time and follow the concept of form follows function.

As Kenya Hara writes in Wa: The Essence of Japanese Design, the origin of Simplicity can be found in the European modernism as a result of the society getting free of sole rulers (who were defined by objects of decoration and excess of material objects). Rationality was the basis of this concept, resulting in Bauhaus in 1909 and the founding of Domus in 1928.

The Japanese Simplicity is described as Emptiness by Kenya Hara and has a complex background: Japan was positioned at the end of many routes of cultural influence. From Rome along the Silk Road to Central Asia, China, Korea, and south from Turkey over India, South Asia, and north along with Russia. But after a civil war from 1467-1477 (ōnin no ran), which destroyed countless objects of art (temples, statues, paintings, and kimonos), may be out of necessity, a new form of simple and quiet design emerged.

Different ideas like shintō, zen Buddhism, and Daoism influenced this form of Simplicity (and Minimalism) in every aspect of life. In shintō the concept of emptiness is the result of the creation of a space for the kami (deities) to fill it. Zen Buddhism brought aspects like Upādāna (Sanskrit. the attachment, clinging, or grasping on ephemeral things). As a result, many new ideas based on Emptiness, Simplicity, and Minimalism emerged: wabi-sabi, kintsugi, Japanese gardens, bonsai, ikebana, chadō or haiku.

Why Become a Minimalist?

Minimalism in its core idea should free a person many limiting things: Fewer things, to think of, less to hang your heart on, less to clean, less to deal with every day, less lingering of the past (Nostalgia), less fear of losing things, less debt, less guild for buying useless things. Instead, one gains more time, more space for people, more money, more inner peace, and more space for thinking. Time for your health, relationships, passions, growth, and contributions.

That’s why I think extreme forms of Minimalism can result in less freedom. If a Minimalist owns five shirts and needs to clean them every weekend or will run out of clean shirts, Minimalism hinders freedom.

My history as a Minimalist

I was always a Minimalist, even when the term didn’t exist. My first contact with the idea was in high school, where we had to read To Have or to Be? by Erich Fromm.

The next thing which influenced me was the book and movie Fight Club. It’s filled with quotes against consumerism, capitalism, and property. It has countless Anarchist ideas, which is the main reason it was rated PG18.

The things you own end up owning you.
Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), Fight Club

The next step was reading David Allen's book Getting Things Done (GTD), which is a productivity system, but at the beginning of the process is the inventory of your things.

This way I got rid of many things for the first time.

My office before cleaning up

The exhibition LEVEL GREEN in Autostadt Wolfsburg introduced me first in a differently drastic way to the concept of sustainability. People could learn, by answering questions about how they lived, and how big their impact on the earth was. To maintain my lifestyle from back then, I would need 1.8 planets of Earth. This changed my idea of how to live responsibly a lot.

The books of Marie Kondō brought Minimalism again into my mind, and I did another big cleanup of my flat. In general, Japan provides good ideas for the concept of Minimalism. This is because of their history (as mentioned above) and because Japanese homes are small.

In the last few years I changed my ideas of how to live in many ways:

On Getting Rid of Things

I cleaned my whole flat of things I didn’t like or needed anymore. It took me three days to clean my basement from packages, cables, and technical waste, which I acquired over 10 years.

Cleanup of my cellar

I gave more than 150 books away (I own 763) and sold my car. I use the subway, bus, car-sharing, and train to commute or travel.

Not only that, but I scanned my documents into digital form and recycled the paper.

Recently, I counted all my possessions: I own 2486 items, which is a fourth of the amount a European person owns on average (10,000 items). I counted everything, from my wardrobe to dental brushes. 356 items in my bedroom, 242 items in my corridor, 68 items in my bathroom, and 1820 items in my living room and kitchen. I repeated this count in 2022.

On Consumption

I changed my relationship with consumption. Quality over quantity. I buy natural things, made from natural materials. I learned to find the passion for nice and crafty things (I bought a Traveler’s Notebook and a Laguiole en Aubrac knife). Likewise, I try to buy fewer physical books, though I love them. My rule for books is: They need to be designed with love and care, or I’ll buy them as e-books.

On Fashion

I never had a high interest in fashion, this was easy for me. I buy good quality; simple, plain, timeless. Black, white, blue, beige, and other simple colors. No motives or fancy slogans. Cotton, wool, leather, linen, denim. And I'm not concerned with the brand. But if the nicest and best fitting glasses have Dolce & Gabbana printed on the side, fine. I try not to grab something because it’s a special brand.

On Sustainability

I switched to green energy a few years ago, buy organic food if available, and think long if I want a new product. I own no microwave or dishwasher and don’t miss them. Likewise, I do waste separation (we Germans are world champions in this discipline). My waste disposal company wrote a letter to me recently, telling me I use little garbage (and waste money). I used 305 liters of the yearly obligatory 1560 liters. I should think of selling my waste rights.

On Living

When I was young, I always wanted a big, big house (preferably on a remote private island). But living in a small space is helpful for a Minimalist. It forces you to make decisions in your interest. I live on 51 m², and this is enough space for 1-2 people. That’s why I think if I need to buy something. I like the concept of small space living, but I’m happy to have a separate bedroom. This is much more relaxing, because of the different temperatures in the living and sleeping area. And I do not keep electronics in my bedroom.

My Minimalist living room

On Digital Minimalism

I deleted many apps from my digital devices. Less distraction, fewer push messages. By uninstalling social media apps, I’m less likely to surf social media and form bad habits.

I reduced my contacts on social media to roughly around Dunbar’s Number, which is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships (150 people).

If I find information that I want to remember, I try to store it less in digital form (I used to have 10,000+ notes in Evernote), but instead, use more analog, and create Sketchnotes of the basic concepts of an idea.

My calendar is nearly empty, I attempt not to fill it with appointments and live less planned.

And on multitasking: It doesn’t work for humans, this was proven in more than enough studies. Even the best multitaskers are slower while multitasking as if they would do the tasks in sequence. That’s why I try to single-task if possible. I keep my phone on the desk while watching TV and attempt to read less while eating.

Conclusion

Minimalism is not a goal to reach, it’s a steady process, which you have to decide from moment to moment. This is possible if you are mindful and think about your relationship to material objects.

As JP Sears jokes: It’s not about being so poor, that you have the inability to have things. That’s poverty. It’s about being so rich, that you can afford to live like a poor person. Following the Minimalist philosophy will benefit your wealth. You will not be rich in things, but use your saved money to invest wisely, or spend it on intangible things, make experiences, follow your passions, and live a life worth remembering.

Underwear: A warm, beautifully crafted series about craft, character, and quiet excellence

Fri, 12 Feb 2016 00:00:00 GMT

A Fantastic, New Japanese Netflix TV Show

From time to time, a TV Show gets released, which surprises me. This happened last time in 2007 with Pushing Daisies, where I loved everything: the story, the actors, the sets, and every dialog. And now it happened again. I have a new favorite TV Show: Underwear (Underwear).

Underwear (アンダーウェア) or Atelier, is a mini-television series produced by Netflix and Fuji TV. You can add it to your watch list on Netflix here or watch a Trailer on YouTube.

It’s a story about a young girl called Mayuko (Mirei Kiritani), coming from a small town. She recently finished her studies in fabric design at the university and starts her first job at an exclusive custom tailoring lingerie store called Emotion in Ginza, Tokyo. It’s a small shop with a few designers, a few salesmen, and the owner of the workshop, who is a woman in her 50s (Mao Daichi), an honorary named Shachou (President) by her employees.

Atelier is a French word for a workshop or studio, a place, where professional artists work together and produce pieces of art. The atelier of the TV Show has multiple rooms, separated by doors, leading from the entrance hall, where customers get served, to the inner rooms of the owner. Additionally, it has a cellar with tons of fabric, accessories, and documents.

The 13 episodes provide a profound insight into Japanese culture, politeness, art, craft, and beauty. Every scene is choreographed with an eye for detail. The camera work is interesting and uses a variety of techniques. The actors are brilliant. It is a pleasure to follow the Japanese dialogs (subtitled), which can tell much with few words. Japanese is a language of context and nuances.

Every episode has at least one core scene, which transports a message or philosophy, accompanied by beautiful music.

I was surprised by this brilliant Japanese TV show and finished it in less than a week, and I’ll watch it again.

Human: The world, looking back at itself

Tue, 29 Sep 2015 00:00:00 GMT

A Film by Yann Arthus-Bertrand

Yann Arthus-Bertrand, the filmmaker of Home, artist, photographer, and specialist for aerial photography worked 3 years on his new movie: Human.

He collected real-life stories from more than 2000 women and men in 60 countries. Stories about topics, which matter to us all: poverty, war, homophobia, the future of the planet, love, and happiness. It’s a beautiful mix of moving stories, impressive aerial images, and ground photography.

The beautiful music was created by Armand Amar, who also composed the music for Home.

The movie was released in plenty of different formats and lengths. On the Internet is an extended version available, which contains 3 volumes with 90 minutes each.

On the YouTube channel there are additional videos with portraits, behind-the-scenes, and much more.

Go, watch the film! The Bettencourt Schueller Foundation, French TV France 2 and Google made an exceptional effort to bring this GoodPlanet Foundation film to everybody for free. And better bring handkerchiefs.

Motivational Video: Every quote, finally sourced

Fri, 14 Aug 2015 00:00:00 GMT

Why Do We Fall?

Last week I found an inspirational film on YouTube, focusing on motivation. It’s a good example of creating something good out of the work of others. The film uses clips and quotes from a broad variety of people and uses music from movies.

The film Why Do We Fall? – Motivational Video by Mateusz M is quite successful and was watched until now over 30 million times.

The one thing, though, that I didn’t like was how the sources were quoted. A plain comma-separated list of people and music out of context, missing where the quote was from or who said it foremost. This post aims to fix this.

Every so often, it was hard to find out in which interview a quote was said. If you have further information, please contact me, and I’ll update the sources.

Music

Music is easy, as it was quoted good below the film on YouTube:

(00:00) Corynorhinus – Hans Zimmer, James Newton Howard (Batman Begins)
(01:07) Time – Hans Zimmer (Inception)
(03:17) Barbastella – Hans Zimmer, James Newton Howard (Batman Begins)
(04:02) Why Do We Fall? – Hans Zimmer (The Dark Knight Rises)
(05:23) Mark Petrie: Polar Shift

Quotes

I wrote quotes from different movies, interviews, or speeches with as much context as possible. For interviews, it was hard to find out, where it was quoted because YouTube videos are missing the information.

Additionally, I highlight the parts used in the film.

I’d hold you up to say to your mother, this kid’s gonna be the best kid in the world. This kid’s gonna be somebody better than anybody I ever knew. And you grew up good and wonderful. It was great just watching you, every day was like a privilege. Then the time comes for you to be your own man and take on the world, and you did. But somewhere along the line, you changed. You stopped being you. You let people stick a finger in your face and tell you you’re no good. And when things got hard, you started looking for something to blame, like a big shadow. Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward? That’s how winning is done! Now if you know what you’re worth then go out and get what you’re worth. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain’t you! You’re better than that! I’m always gonna love you no matter what. No matter what happens. You’re my son and you’re my blood. You’re the best thing in my life. But until you start believing in yourself, ya ain’t gonna have a life. Don’t forget to visit your mother.
— Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone), Rocky Balboa (2006)

Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but entually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.

— Lance Armstrong, It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life. New York: Berkeley Books (2001); Quoted by Eric Thomas

I don’t know what to say, really. Three minutes to the biggest battle of our professional lives. All comes down to today, and either, we heal as a team, or we’re gonna crumble. Inch by inch, play by play. Until we’re finished. We’re in hell right now, gentlemen. Believe me. And, we can stay here, get the shit kicked out of us, or we can fight our way back into the light. We can climb outta hell… one inch at a time. Now I can’t do it for ya, I’m too old. I look around, I see these young faces and I think, I mean, I’ve made every wrong choice a middle-aged man can make. I, uh, I’ve pissed away all my money, believe it or not. I chased off anyone who’s ever loved me. And lately, I can’t even stand the face I see in the mirror. You know, when you get old, in life, things get taken from you. I mean, that’s… that’s… that’s a part of life. But, you only learn that when you start losin’ stuff. You find out life’s this game of inches, so is football. Because in either game – life or football the margin for error is so small. I mean, one half a step too late or too early and you don’t quite make it. One-half second too slow, too fast and you don’t quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They’re in every break of the game, every minute, every second. On this team, we fight for that inch. On this team, we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch. Because we know when add up all those inches, that’s gonna make the fucking difference between winning and losing! Between living and dying! I’ll tell you this, in any fight, it’s the guy who's willing to die whose gonna win that inch. And I know, if I’m gonna have any life anymore it’s because I’m still willing to fight and die for that inch, because that’s what living is, the six inches in front of your face. Now I can’t make you do it. You’ve got to look at the guy next to you, look into his eyes. Now I think ya going to see a guy who will go that inch with you. Your gonna see a guy who will sacrifice himself for this team because he knows when it comes down to it your gonna do the same for him. That’s a team, gentlemen, and either, we heal, now, as a team, or we will die as individuals. That’s football guys, that’s all it is. Now, what are you gonna do?
— Tony D’Amato (Al Pacino), Any Given Sunday (1999)

You got a dream… You gotta protect it. People can’t do somethin’ themselves, they wanna tell you you can’t do it. If you want somethin’, go get it. Period.

— Christopher Gardner (Will Smith), The Pursuit of Happyness (2006)

Don’t be afraid to fail. Anything that I’ve ever attempted I was always willing to fail.

You can’t always win, but don’t be afraid of making decisions. You can’t be paralyzed by fear of failure or you will never push yourself. You keep pushing because you believe in yourself and in your vision and you know that it is the right thing to do, success will come.

— Arnold Schwarzenegger, 6 Secrets to Success

[…] The first step, before anybody else in the world believes it is you have to believe it. There’s no reason to have a plan B because it distracts from plan A. I think that there’s a certain delusional quality that all successful people have to have. You have to believe that something different than what has happened for the past 50 million years of history, you have to believe that something different can happen.
Confucius said that he who said he can and he who says he can’t are both usually right. […]

— Will Smith, Interview

When I went to college, guys were way smarter than me. 4.0’s, 3.0’s, they went to the Ivy League schools, came to oakwood from these great schools. Most of them are not doing what I’m doing, why? Because it’s not about where you come from. It’s about heart.
You come to a place where you know being smart ain’t enough. You got to have heart.

That’s why I wake up every morning at two o clock, two-thirty, coz I got my momma counting on me, I got my sister counting on me. I got my son and my daughter counting on me. I got a world that gets up every morning and watches me.

Stop being this high school dropout. Stop giving up, stop sleeping on the street, stop walking up and down Finkle avenue like you ain’t got none, and get your GED. Stop being afraid to take a test. Stop being afraid to go to college coz your daddy didn’t go and your mommy didn’t go.

I don’t do well in math, your right. you ain’t never studied. I’m not good at writing, coz you have never written before! You can get to a writing class and you got tutor after tutor, resource after resource. The problem is, you ain’t never felt no pain before! You’re soft! It’s a soft generation. you quit on everything.

You have to give it everything you’ve got! No more TV, no more parties, no more playing. If you have a 4.0 what you need to be doing is studying!

And when you get to the point where all you want to do is be successful as bad as you want to breathe, then you will be successful! And I’m here to tell you number one that most of you say you want to be successful but you don’t want it bad, you just kinda want it. You don’t want it badder than you want to party, you don’t want it as much as you want to be cool. Most of you don’t want success as much as you want to sleep! Some of you love sleep more than you love success!

And I’m here to tell you today if you’re going to be successful, you’ve got to be willing to give up sleep!

So you say you want it as bad as you want to breathe, then it’s showtime! It’s examination time! It’s time to get tested! To test your will, your endurance, it’s time to test your heart, to test your limits!

But I’m exactly where I want to be because I realize, I’ve got to commit my very being to this thing. I got to breathe it, I got to eat it, I’ve got to sleep it. And until you get there you will never be successful in life.

But once you get there I guarantee you the world is yours.

So work hard and you can have whatever it is you want!

— Eric Thomas, How Bad Do You Want It Part 1, Secrets to Success Part 1, Heart of Detroit Mixtape, No Sleep (Produced by Mikestro Music)

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

— Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles; Ch. 7; Section 3 (1992); p. 190. Quoted by Timo Cruz (Rick Gonzalez); Coach Carter (2005)

Many young people are getting so much advice from their parents and from their teachers and from everyone. But what is most important is that you have to dig deep down, dig deep down and ask yourselves, who do you want to be? Not what, but who. Figuring out for yourselves what makes you happy, no matter how crazy it may sound to the people.
— Arnold Schwarzenegger, 6 Secrets to Success

There’s a redemptive power that making a choice has rather than feeling like you’re an effect to all the things that are happening. Make a choice. Just decide what it’s gonna be, who you’re gonna be, how you are going to do it. Just decide. And from that point, the universe will get out of your way.
— Will Smith, Interview

The way I look at it within myself, why not? Why can’t I be the MVP of the League? Why can’t I be the best player in the League? I don’t see why-why-why can’t I do that? I think I work hard, I think I dedicate myself to the game and sacrifice a lot of things at a young age and I know if I continue to do good, what I can get out of it and if that’s me going out or doing whatever, I’m willing to do it because I know in the long run, it’s going to help me.
— Derrick Rose, Interview

What is it you said to the kid? It ain’t about how hard you can hit; it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward… How much you can take and keep moving forward. Now get up, get up and don’t ever give up.

— Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone), Rocky Balboa (2006)

I don’t know what to say, really. Three minutes to the biggest battle of our professional lives. All comes down to today, and either, we heal as a team, or we’re gonna crumble. Inch by inch, play by play. Until we’re finished. We’re in hell right now, gentlemen. Believe me. And, we can stay here, get the shit kicked out of us, or we can fight our way back into the light. We can climb outta hell… one inch at a time. Now I can’t do it for ya, I’m too old. I look around, I see these young faces and I think, I mean, I’ve made every wrong choice a middle-aged man can make. I, uh, I’ve pissed away all my money, believe it or not. I chased off anyone who’s ever loved me. And lately, I can’t even stand the face I see in the mirror. You know, when you get old, in life, things get taken from you. I mean, that’s… that’s… that’s a part of life. But, you only learn that when you start losin’ stuff. You find out life’s this game of inches, so is football. Because in either game - life or football - the margin for error is so small. I mean, one half a step too late or too early and you don’t quite make it. One-half second too slow, too fast and you don’t quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They’re in every break of the game, every minute, every second. On this team, we fight for that inch. On this team, we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch. Because we know when add up all those inches, that’s gonna make the fucking difference between winning and losing! Between living and dying! I’ll tell you this, in any fight, it’s the guy who's willing to die whose gonna win that inch. And I know, if I’m gonna have any life anymore it’s because I’m still willing to fight and die for that inch, because that’s what living is, the six inches in front of your face. Now I can’t make you do it. You’ve got to look at the guy next to you, look into his eyes. Now I think ya going to see a guy who will go that inch with you. Your gonna see a guy who will sacrifice himself for this team because he knows when it comes down to it your gonna do the same for him. That’s a team, gentlemen, and either, we heal, now, as a team, or we will die as individuals. That’s football guys, that’s all it is. Now, what are you gonna do?
— Tony D’Amato (Al Pacino), Any Given Sunday (1999)

The most important thing is this: to be able at any moment - to sacrifice what you are, for what you will become!
— Eric Thomas, How Bad Do You Want It Part 1, Secrets to Success Part 1, Heart of Detroit Mixtape, No Sleep (Produced by Mikestro Music)

Most of you won’t be successful because when you’re studying and you get tired, you quit.

— Eric Thomas, How Bad Do You Want It Part 1, Secrets to Success Part 1, Heart of Detroit Mixtape, No Sleep (Produced by Mikestro Music)

When I went to college, guys were way smarter than me. 4.0’s, 3.0’s, they went to the Ivy League schools, came to oakwood from these great schools. Most of them are not doing what I’m doing, why? Because it’s not about where you come from. It’s about heart.
You come to a place where you know being smart ain’t enough. You got to have heart.

That’s why I wake up every morning at two o clock, two-thirty, coz I got my momma counting on me, I got my sister counting on me. I got my son and my daughter counting on me. I got a world that gets up every morning and watches me.

Stop being this high school dropout. Stop giving up, stop sleeping on the street, stop walking up and down Finkle avenue like you ain’t got none, and get your GED. Stop being afraid to take a test. Stop being afraid to go to college coz your daddy didn’t go and your mommy didn’t go.

I don’t do well in math, your right. you ain’t never studied. I’m not good at writing, coz you have never written before! You can get to a writing class and you got tutor after tutor, resource after resource. The problem is, you ain’t never felt no pain before! You’re soft! It’s a soft generation. you quit on everything.

You have to give it everything you’ve got! No more TV, no more parties, no more playing. If you have a 4.0 what you need to be doing is studying!

And when you get to the point where all you want to do is be successful as bad as you want to breathe, then you will be successful! And I’m here to tell you number one that most of you say you want to be successful but you don’t want it bad, you just kinda want it. You don’t want it badder than you want to party, you don’t want it as much as you want to be cool. Most of you don’t want success as much as you want to sleep! Some of you love sleep more than you love success!

And I’m here to tell you today if you’re going to be successful, you’ve got to be willing to give up sleep!

So you say you want it as bad as you want to breathe, then it’s showtime! It’s examination time! It’s time to get tested! To test your will, your endurance, it’s time to test your heart, to test your limits!

But I’m exactly where I want to be because I realize, I’ve got to commit my very being to this thing. I got to breathe it, I got to eat it, I’ve got to sleep it. And until you get there you will never be successful in life.

But once you get there I guarantee you the world is yours.

So work hard and you can have whatever it is you want!

— Eric Thomas, How Bad Do You Want It Part 1, Secrets to Success Part 1, Heart of Detroit Mixtape, No Sleep (Produced by Mikestro Music)

The separation of talent and skill is one of the greatest misunderstood concepts for people who are trying to excel, who have dreams, who want to do things. Talent you have naturally. Skill is only developed by hours and hours and hours of beating on your craft.
— Will Smith, Interview

If you’re not making someone else’s life better, then you’re wasting your time. Your life will become better by making other lives better.

— Will Smith, Interview

Don’t cry to give up! Cry to keep going! Don’t cry to quit! You already in pain, you already hurt! Get a reward from it!

— Eric Thomas, How Bad Do You Want It Part 1, Secrets to Success Part 1, Heart of Detroit Mixtape, No Sleep (Produced by Mikestro Music)

I’d hold you up to say to your mother, this kid’s gonna be the best kid in the world. This kid’s gonna be somebody better than anybody I ever knew. And you grew up good and wonderful. It was great just watching you, every day was like a privilege. Then the time comes for you to be your own man and take on the world, and you did. But somewhere along the line, you changed. You stopped being you. You let people stick a finger in your face and tell you you’re no good. And when things got hard, you started looking for something to blame, like a big shadow. Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done! Now if you know what you’re worth then go out and get what you’re worth. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain’t you! You’re better than that! I’m always gonna love you no matter what. No matter what happens. You’re my son and you’re my blood. You’re the best thing in my life. But until you start believing in yourself, ya ain’t gonna have a life. Don’t forget to visit your mother.
— Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone), Rocky Balboa (2006)

I can’t thank you guys for the opportunity. I’m gonna tell you something if tomorrow wasn’t promised… what would you give for today? Forget everything else. Forget that there was any sunlight left what would you spend today. Thinking about? Yourself? Or the man that’s beside you or the man that you know you’d give everything in your heart for? We get one opportunity in life. One chance in life. To do whatever you gonna do to lay our foundation, to make whatever mark you gonna make whatever legacy you’re going to leave your legacy! And it’s found through effort wins and losses come a dime a dozen. But effort? Nobody can judge effort! Because effort is between you, and you! Effort ain’t got nothing to do with nobody else. So that team that thinks they’re ready to see you? They think what they’ve seen on film? They ain’t saw what film shows! Because every day is a new day! Every moment is a new moment! So now you’ve gotta go out and show them that I’m a different creature NOW than I was five minutes ago. Because I’m pissed off. For Greatness! Because if you ain’t pissed off for greatness, that means you okay with being mediocre. And ain’t no man in here that okay with being just basic. So let’s do what we do! Tonight!
— Ray Lewis, Interview

Imma show you, how great I am. Last night, I cut the light off in my bedroom and was in bed before the room was dark. Imma show you, how great I am. Only last week, I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalized a brick. I’m so mean, I make medicine sick. Imma show you, how great I am. This kid’s gonna be the best kid in the world. This kid’s gonna be somebody better than anybody I ever knew. Imma show you, how great I am. I have wrestled with an alligator, I done tussled with a whale, I done handcuffed lightnin’, thrown thunder in jail. Imma show you, how great I am. All you chumps are gonna bow when I whoop him, all of you. I know you got him, I know you’ve got him picked, but the man’s in trouble. Imma show you how great I am.
— Muhammed Ali, Speech before his match against George Foreman (1974)

I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone - if possible: Jew, Gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness - not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world, there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard, and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood, for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.

To those who can hear me, I say - do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

Soldiers! don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think, and what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don’t hate! Only the unloved hate, the unloved and the unnatural! Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty!

In the 17th Chapter of St Luke it is written: “the Kingdom of God is within man” Not one man nor a group of men but in all men! In you! You, the people have the power, the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.

Then, in the name of democracy, let us use that power, let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill that promise. They never will!

Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfill that promise! Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers! in the name of democracy, let us all unite!

— Hynkel - Dictator of Tomania (Charlie Chaplin), The Great Dictator (1940)

I don’t know what to say, really. Three minutes to the biggest battle of our professional lives. All comes down to today, and either, we heal as a team, or we’re gonna crumble. Inch by inch, play by play. Until we’re finished. We’re in hell right now, gentlemen. Believe me. And, we can stay here, get the shit kicked out of us, or we can fight our way back into the light. We can climb outta hell… one inch at a time. Now I can’t do it for ya, I’m too old. I look around, I see these young faces and I think, I mean, I’ve made every wrong choice a middle-aged man can make. I, uh, I’ve pissed away all my money, believe it or not. I chased off anyone who’s ever loved me. And lately, I can’t even stand the face I see in the mirror. You know, when you get old, in life, things get taken from you. I mean, that’s… that’s… that’s a part of life. But, you only learn that when you start losin’ stuff. You find out life’s this game of inches, so is football. Because in either game - life or football - the margin for error is so small. I mean, one half a step too late or too early and you don’t quite make it. One-half second too slow, too fast and you don’t quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They’re in every break of the game, every minute, every second. On this team, we fight for that inch. On this team, we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch. Because we know when add up all those inches, that’s gonna make the fucking difference between winning and losing! Between living and dying! I’ll tell you this, in any fight, it’s the guy who's willing to die whose gonna win that inch. And I know, if I’m gonna have any life anymore it’s because I’m still willing to fight and die for that inch, because that’s what living is, the six inches in front of your face. Now I can’t make you do it. You’ve got to look at the guy next to you, look into his eyes. Now I think ya going to see a guy who will go that inch with you. Your gonna see a guy who will sacrifice himself for this team because he knows when it comes down to it your gonna do the same for him. That’s a team, gentlemen, and either, we heal, now, as a team, or we will die as individuals. That’s football guys, that’s all it is. Now, what are you gonna do?
— Tony D’Amato (Al Pacino), Any Given Sunday (1999)

Never say never, because limits, like fears, are often just an illusion.
— Michael Jordan, Interview

Calisthenics: Strong with nothing but gravity

Tue, 19 May 2015 00:00:00 GMT

Getting Started with Body Weight Training

I’m doing body weight training for almost a year now and like it. It’s free, you can do it anywhere, all you require is something to push from and to pull to, and it is fun.

Two years ago, I stumbled upon a new training concept founded by a group of people in Munich: Freeletics. They trained with body weight and had impressive physiques.

Freeletics and CrossFit

I had heard of CrossFit, which is popular in the USA. I bought the Freeletics training guide, which included a 15-week training. But Freeletics is a HIIT course and was far too extreme for me. I couldn’t even walk a few hundred meters, after the first few training sessions, the muscle aches were bad.

And reading more about these extreme sports, I found out they come with the danger of getting Rhabdomyolysis, which is a dangerous degenerative muscle injury. It destroys the muscles and can even lead to death. The body of beginners may be incapable to do high-intensity training sessions as long or hard, as they are done in CrossFit or Freeletics.

Calisthenics

Other names for body weight training are Street Workout, Ghetto Fitness, or Calisthenics. The word Calisthenics comes from the Greek words καλός (kalos), which means beautiful and σθένος (sthenos), which means strength.

Arm Elbow Lever on Beer Bottles

With Calisthenics, you use basic movements like Lunges, Crunches, Push-ups, Pull-ups, Squats, Dips to strengthen your body. You gradually expand your skills and proceed to more difficult exercises. That’s why it’s called Progressive Calisthenics.

Adding 5 kg of weight to the barbell doesn’t feel as good.

The nice thing with this training is you do small steps and improve sustainably. Your body needs time to learn the movements correctly and get used to them. If done correctly you might reach advanced exercises like Muscle-ups, Pistol Squats, Human Flag, or One-Arm Push-Ups. Each time you reach a goal and master a trick, this is a fantastic feeling of accomplishment. Adding 5 kg of weight to the barbell doesn’t feel as good.

Progressive Calisthenics

Calisthenics is suitable for everybody, you can start with the simple exercises possible. If you are untrained, you can even start sitting right on your sofa. You can’t do a Pull-Up? There is a progression route for that.

When I started with Pull-Ups two years ago I could do barely 1 or 2 Pull-Ups, now I’m at 20 in a row. To find out, how advanced an exercise is, you can have a look at this Periodic Table of Body Weight Exercises. The website Body Weight Training Area provides multiple progression guides and even a poster to print out and put on your fridge. Calisthenics 101 provides a complete list of Calisthenics exercises.

And yes, everybody can learn Pull-Ups. Have a look at Cornelia Rizkes’ Workout with other women or see the professional Star Craft 2 player Madeleine Leaner doing Human Flags, Muscle-Ups or Lever.

Building a New Habit

I’ve read James Clear’s article How to Build a New Habit: This is Your Strategy Guide. He writes in his article building a new habit has five key points:

Start small
Increase small
Break big habits into chunks
Never miss twice
Be patient

I followed his advice and started small, with a few repetitions and a few sets, but increased the repetitions, sets, and difficulty constantly.

To reach a big goal like doing a Human Flag needs to be broken into parts: Build core strength, back strength, and arm strength.

I keep track of my workouts in a diary and can see the training days in a calendar, to see if I missed too often.

If a father of three can do it, what is your excuse?

And I am patient. It’s more about the journey than about the goal. It’s an effort to train every day, to convince me to do my workout, even if the day isn’t a good one. I decided to train early in the morning, a few minutes after I got up. This way I don’t need as much willpower as I would in the evening. Unfortunately, we are all victims of Ego Depletion, and later in the day, it may be gone.

Training Sites and Equipment

Calisthenics is far more popular in other countries, like Russia or the United States, where you will find a lot of good outdoor training courses. Working out is everyday life, as you can see in this Street Workout video from Ukraine. In Germany, this is unfortunately not the case. German cities don’t provide good outdoor training courses, and if they do, the height of bars is more fitted for children.

But with creativity, you’ll always find a solution. If prisoners can train Calisthenics in their small cells, you should find ways to train without a perfect training course. You can pull up to branches of trees or fences, dip on handrails, or bicycle stands. I, for example, found a playground nearby with decent bars. Not high enough to hang with my legs stretched, but I can train. Additionally, I bought a Doorway Pull-Up Bar and Dip Bars because I got tired of using two chairs for dips.

Build Muscle, Endurance, and Strength

One thing you read all over the internet is the question if it is possible to gain muscles with Calisthenics. The answer is yes. It may be harder than weight training, but your physique will be more balanced, and you will be a lot stronger. There is no value in training arms like Popeye or focusing on a Six pack. With Calisthenics, you can improve your strength, and endurance, and build muscles.

You can find plenty of articles on this topic on the internet, but as a general rule you need to do low repetitions, multiple sets, do them slow, and reduce rest time.

Motivation and Inspiration

Finding resources on how to do the movements is an easy task. YouTube is filled with videos on how to do anything. And these channels provide regular motivation. Frank Medrano, a vegan athlete, has over half a million followers.

Other good channels to follow are Strength Project, OfficialBarstarzz, Brendan Meyers, BaristiWorkout, Corey Hall, Al Kavadlo, Calisthenic Movement or Cornelia Ritzke.

And now get started with Body Weight Training.

Introduction to Gulp.js 16: PostCSS

Tue, 30 Dec 2014 00:00:00 GMT

This is the 16th part of my series Introduction to Gulp.js. Today, I will show how to use PostCSS to process CSS files. I will replace Ruby Sass with PostCSS and additionally show how to lint stylesheets automatically in the background while developing with Stylelint.

Compass, Sass, LESS, Stylus … why do we need more tools?

I use Sass and SCSS now for a long time, started with Compass, moved to Ruby Sass and wanted to move to libSass, but dependencies on my beloved Gems held me back.

There are numerous Preprocessors, Libraries, and Frameworks, which extend CSS. And a lot of them do good work and I didn’t want to miss variables, nesting, or mixins. But Ruby Sass and Compass in particular are slooooooooow because Ruby is slow. Compiling my website’s styles took 7-8 seconds, but I know of projects where one change will trigger a recompile, which takes more than a minute!

What is PostCSS, and why should I use it?

There is a new kid on the block: PostCSS. I don’t care if it’s a Preprocessor, a Postprocessor, or a Processor. You write something, it will process your files, and it will put out CSS.

Why should you use a new tool, if Sass and its competitors do their job? Because it’s fast (3-30 times faster), modular and extendible. I bet you need a small fraction of your Preprocessors functionality.

With PostCSS, you can choose what you require from currently over 200 plugins. If you don’t find the plugin you require, you can write a plugin or syntax.

You get it all: variables, mixins, extends, color helpers, fallbacks, optimizations, grids … you pick. You can even start using future CSS syntax today, let PostCSS transpile it for you.

I swapped out Ruby Sass with PostCSS and my CSS is now transformed in 2-3 seconds. Go and take a look at my beautiful new code. I use Responsive Typography, Autoprefixer, and the fantastic LostGrid.

PostCSS

In this part of my series, I will rip out Ruby Sass and add PostCSS instead. So follow me along …

First, I will install all needed Node modules:

$ npm install gulp-postcss@6.0.1 precss@1.2.3 gulp-cssnano@2.0.0 gulp-util@3.0.6 autoprefixer@6.0.3 css-mqpacker@4.0.0 --save-dev

I add basic plugins, but you can add more if you like later. I add gulp-postcss, precss (which will allow Sass-like syntax), gulp-cssnano (which will compress and optimize the CSS), autoprexifer for automatic vendor prefixes and css-mqpacker for combining media queries.

Next, I will add the configuration for the new task:

gulp/config.js

styles: {
    src:  srcAssets + '/styles/*.css',
    dest: developmentAssets + '/css',
    options: {
      precss: {},
      autoprefixer: {
        browsers: [
          'last 2 versions',
          'safari 5',
          'ie 8',
          'ie 9',
          'opera 12.1',
          'ios 6',
          'android 4'
        ],
        cascade: true
      },
      mqpacker: {}
    }
  },

I add the new task to my development folder:

gulp/tasks/development/styles.js

var gulp = require("gulp");
var postcss = require("gulp-postcss");
var precss = require("precss");
var nano = require("gulp-cssnano");
var plumber = require("gulp-plumber");
var sourcemaps = require("gulp-sourcemaps");
var gutil = require("gulp-util");
var browsersync = require("browser-sync");
var autoprefixer = require("autoprefixer");
var mqpacker = require("css-mqpacker");
var config = require("../../config");

function onError(err) {
  gutil.beep();
  console.log(err);
  this.emit("end");
}

/**
 * Run CSS through PostCSS and its plugins
 * Build sourcemaps and minimize
 */
var processors = [
  precss(config.styles.options.precss),
  autoprefixer(config.styles.options.autoprefixer),
  mqpacker(config.styles.options.mqpacker),
];

gulp.task("styles", function () {
  browsersync.notify("Transforming CSS with PostCSS");

  return gulp
    .src(config.styles.src)
    .pipe(
      plumber({
        errorHandler: onError,
      })
    )
    .pipe(sourcemaps.init())
    .pipe(postcss(processors))
    .pipe(nano())
    .pipe(sourcemaps.write("."))
    .pipe(gulp.dest(config.styles.dest));
});

Rename SCSS files and folders

I rename the scss folder to styles and create inside this folder a new folder partials. I rename all .scss files to .css and move them into the partial’s folder (except the main.css). Furthermore, I recommend commenting out all lines in this file for now and bringing them back later. Otherwise, it will not run properly because the syntax is different.

Update the Code

Next, I will need to replace the lines of the old sass task with my new styles task. If you have never seen a DIFF file: a - (and red line) in front of a line has to be removed and a + (and green line) in front of a line has to be added:

gulp/config.js:132

- sass:    srcAssets + '/scss/**/*.{sass,scss}',
+ styles:  srcAssets + '/styles/**/*.css',

gulp/config.js:154

- css: srcAssets + '/scss/base/',
+ css: srcAssets + '/styles/partials/base/',

gulp/tasks/development/watch.js:9

- gulp.watch(config.sass,    ['sass', 'scsslint']);
+ gulp.watch(config.styles,  ['styles', 'scsslint']);

gulp/tasks/development/build.js:11

- 'sass',
+ 'styles',

gulp/tasks/production/build.js:10

- 'sass',
+ 'styles',

gulp/tasks/development/base64.js:8

- gulp.task('base64', ['sass'], function() {
+ gulp.task('base64', ['styles'], function() {

I remove these lines from my optimize-css.js task because cssnano does the job:

gulp/tasks/production/optimize-css.js:2

- var csso = require('gulp-csso');

gulp/tasks/production/optimize-css.js:7

- * Copy and minimize CSS files
+ * Copy CSS files

gulp/tasks/production/optimize-css.js:11

- .pipe(minifycss(config.options))

FontCustom has to be changed to copy the Vector fonts CSS to the new location and provide CSS instead of SCSS:

fontcustom.yml:34

- css: app/_assets/scss
+ css: app/_assets/styles

fontcustom.yml:48

- templates: [ scss, preview ]
+ templates: [ css, preview ]

After I updated the FontCustom config file, I have to run the task for creating the Vector Fonts again:

$ gulp fontcustom

The syntax of the different PostCSS plugins is different. I use PreCSS, which is a lot like Sass, but things look different. Writing all the changes I made to the CSS would extend the scope of this tutorial too much, as it’s a long file. But you can have a look, at how I refactored all CSS files with updated syntax in my GitHub repository. If you are interested how I replaced Singularity (which is the best Sass grid available) with LostGrid and all the other things, look into my websites source code.

You can run gulp again now, and PostCSS will process the styles.

Linting CSS with PostCSS plugins

We want to write clean and beautiful stylesheets. That’s why we should always run a Linter, which checks our CSS.

Until now, a Ruby gem did this job and was checking the SCSS syntax for errors. But now we use CSS and need a better (and faster) solution.

First, I install the Node modules, which are needed:

$ npm install stylelint@1.2.1 postcss-reporter@1.3.0 --save-dev

Now I’ll add the configuration for Linting to my Gulp config:

gulp/config.js

lintStyles: {
    src: [
      srcAssets + '/styles/**/*.css',
      '!' + srcAssets + '/styles/partials/_syntax-highlighting.css',
      '!' + srcAssets + '/styles/partials/_sprites.css',
      '!' + srcAssets + '/styles/partials/fontcustom.css'
    ],
    options: {
      stylelint: {
        'rules': {
          'string-quotes': [2, 'double'],
          'color-hex-case': [2, 'lower'],
          'value-no-vendor-prefix': 2,
          'declaration-no-important': 0,
          'rule-non-nested-empty-line-before': [2, 'always', {
            ignore: ['after-comment']
          }]
        }
      },
      reporter: {
        clearMessages: true
      }
    }
  },

I watch all CSS files, except the generated (FontCustom and Sprites) and the syntax highlighting file (which I don’t touch).

You can define linting rules for stylelint. These 5 rules are just an example, there are a lot more. As CSS style is taste, you should pick the rules you like. 0 means ignore (default), 1 is a warning and 2 is an error. Sometimes rules require additional options.

Next, I will add the Gulp task:

gulp/tasks/development/lint-styles.js

var gulp = require("gulp");
var postcss = require("gulp-postcss");
var stylelint = require("stylelint");
var reporter = require("postcss-reporter");
var config = require("../../config");

gulp.task("lint-styles", function () {
  return gulp
    .src(config.lintStyles.src)
    .pipe(
      postcss([
        stylelint(config.lintStyles.options.stylelint),
        reporter(config.lintStyles.options.reporter),
      ])
    );
});

All I need to do now is replace the linting task in my watch task:

gulp/tasks/development/watch.js:9

- gulp.watch(config.styles,  ['styles', 'scsslint']);
+ gulp.watch(config.styles,  ['styles', 'lint-styles']);

If you run gulp, the task will lint your CSS files, save them, and show errors with filename, line number, and broken rule in the Terminal. PostCSS provides even a plugin to bring the errors to your browser.

PostCSS will likely have a bright future. Since it got popular, countless people got excited. Companies like Google, 𝕏, Alibaba, and Shopify use PostCSS. And Bootstrap v5 will be likely in PostCSS.

I’m sure we will see more exciting Plugins in the future.

Conclusion

This concludes the 16th part of my series Introduction to Gulp.js. We learned how to use PostCSS to process our CSS files and how to use Stylelint to lint the CSS files for errors.

View Source on GitHub →

Introduction to Gulp.js 15: Performance Improvements with WebP and Gzip

Sun, 21 Dec 2014 00:00:00 GMT

This is the 15th part of my series, Introduction to Gulp.js. Today I’ll add tasks for performance improvement of the website with WebP for images and Gzip for text files.

Using WebP for images

WebP is a new image format developed by Google. With WebP, it’s possible to achieve much better compression with better quality, as with JPEG or PNG. Multiple browsers like Google Chrome, Opera, or Konquerer support this image format.

On my website, I use a header image which is in JPEG format 69 KB in size, the same image is in WebP 44 KB. WebP can reduce the size of images by 25-34%, which is a lot.

That’s why I will create a task, which creates WebP images of my PNG and JPEG images and let the server deliver the smaller format to browsers, which supports it.

First, I install the Gulp.js module for WebP:

$ npm install --save-dev gulp-webp@2.1.1

I add an entry to the configuration file:

gulp/config.js

webp: {
  src: productionAssets + '/images/**/*.{jpg,jpeg,png}',
  dest: productionAssets + '/images/',
  options: {}
},

The task is short and straightforward:

gulp/tasks/production/webp.js

var gulp = require("gulp");
var webp = require("gulp-webp");
var config = require("../../config").webp;

/**
 * Convert images to WebP
 */
gulp.task("webp", function () {
  return gulp.src(config.src).pipe(webp(config.options)).pipe(gulp.dest(config.dest));
});

This task needs to be run for production and has to be executed after the revisioning of the images is finished because the server will deliver a WebP image of the same name to the browser.

gulp/tasks/production/build.js

var gulp = require("gulp");
var runSequence = require("run-sequence");

/**
 * Run all tasks needed for a build in the defined order
 */
gulp.task("build:production", function (callback) {
  runSequence(
    "delete",
    "jekyll:production",
    // ...,
    "revision",
    "rev:collect",
    "webp",
    callback
  );
});

It’s necessary to tell the server to rewrite the URLs of our images. There are multiple techniques for this, but I’ll use a .htaccess file:

app/htaccess

---
layout: null
slug: .htaccess
---





AddType image/webp .webp

It is possible to use a .htaccess file and include it in the configuration file. Otherwise, Jekyll will ignore hidden files and don’t copy them to the target directory.

But I like it more to add YAML Front Matter and create the file this way. Another advantage is that the file isn’t invisible.

If you sync your production website to a server, it will deliver to browsers, which support WebP the WebP format when requesting a JPEG or PNG.

Gzip text files

Many servers compress files by default with Gzip before sending them to the browser. But it is always good to pre-gzip the files because it will be faster, as the server doesn’t need to compress the file on every request. And it will need less CPU and the compression rate will be much higher with pre-gzipped files because many servers don’t use the maximum compression rate.

First, I install the Gulp.js module:

$ npm install --save-dev gulp-gzip@1.2.0

I add an entry to the configuration file:

gulp/config.js

gzip: {
  src: production + '/**/*.{html,xml,json,css,js}',
  dest: production,
  options: {}
},

Next, I create the task, which is short:

gulp/tasks/production/gzip.js

var gulp = require("gulp");
var gzip = require("gulp-gzip");
var config = require("../../config").gzip;

/**
 * Gzip text files
 */
gulp.task("gzip", function () {
  return gulp.src(config.src).pipe(gzip(config.options)).pipe(gulp.dest(config.dest));
});

I add the task in my production build file to a JavaScript Array together with the webp task because this task and the Gzip task may run in parallel; WebP works with images and Gzip with text files.

gulp/tasks/production/build.js

var gulp = require("gulp");
var runSequence = require("run-sequence");

/**
 * Run all tasks needed for a build in the defined order
 */
gulp.task("build:production", function (callback) {
  runSequence(
    "delete",
    "jekyll:production",
    // ...,
    "revision",
    "rev:collect",
    ["webp", "gzip"],
    callback
  );
});

Conclusion

This concludes the 15th part of my series Introduction to Gulp.js. We learned how to convert images to the WebP format and how to compress text files with Gzip. Every byte we can reduce will increase the speed of the website.

View Source on GitHub →

Introduction to Gulp.js 14: Deploying the Website with Rsync

Fri, 31 Oct 2014 00:00:00 GMT

This is the 14th of my series Introduction to Gulp.js. Today I will write a task to sync the files of my Jekyll site to my web server.

Deploying the Website

There are plenty of possibilities to get a website on the server. You may use FTP, SFTP, SCP, SCP2, Rsync, or Git. I use Rsync because it’s fast and easy to use.

I write another task as an entry point: deploy

gulp/tasks/deploy.js

var gulp = require("gulp");

/**
 * Start rsync task
 */
gulp.task("deploy", ["rsync"]);

This will start the rsync task. But I could add more tasks, for example, a task, which creates a zip archive of the build and copies it to a backup on my hard drive.

$ npm install --save-dev gulp-rsync@0.0.5

gulp/config.js

rsync: {
  src: production + '/**',
  options: {
    destination: '~/path/to/my/website/root/',
    root: production,
    hostname: 'mydomain.com',
    username: 'user',
    incremental: true,
    progress: true,
    relative: true,
    emptyDirectories: true,
    recursive: true,
    clean: true,
    exclude: ['.DS_Store'],
    include: []
  }
}

This task will grab all files in my production folder, connect to my server, and copy all files recursively to my website root. It will delete old files and add changes to the server.

gulp/tasks/production/rsync.js

var gulp = require("gulp");
var rsync = require("gulp-rsync");
var config = require("../../config").rsync;

/**
 * Copy files and folder to server
 * via rsync
 */
gulp.task("rsync", function () {
  return gulp.src(config.src).pipe(rsync(config.options));
});

Conclusion

This concludes the series Introduction to Gulp.js. Developing and deploying with Gulp.js is fun.

I like the UNIX philosophy of Gulp.js: Having small files, which do one task and connect these to larger workflows. And because I kept my Gulp.js tasks small, pluggable, and shareable, I was able to add Gulp.js to my second website in less than five minutes.

View Source on GitHub →

Introduction to Gulp.js 13: Revisioning

Thu, 30 Oct 2014 00:00:00 GMT

This is the 13th part of my series, Introduction to Gulp.js. Today I will write the task to revise my static assets.

Copy Vector Fonts for Production

Before I can work on the fun part of revisioning my asset files, I first have to write another boring and short task, which is doing one simple thing: Copying the fonts to the production assets folder.

gulp/config.js

copyfonts: {
  development: {
    ...
  },
  production: {
    src:  developmentAssets + '/fonts/*',
    dest: productionAssets + '/fonts'
  }
}

gulp/tasks/production/copy-fonts.js

var gulp = require("gulp");
var config = require("../../config").copyfonts.production;

/**
 * Copy fonts to folder
 */
gulp.task("copy:fonts:production", function () {
  return gulp.src(config.src).pipe(gulp.dest(config.dest));
});

Revisioning

Optimizing my assets is done. But one important thing is missing: Revisioning.

For better performance, one should always cache the assets for a long time. Hard drives are huge these days, but the speed for requesting assets isn’t that wonderful (on mobile devices). But one problem occurs if you cache the assets on a hard drive of a visitor. If you update a file, the browser will serve the old file. And if you cache it for 10 years, the user will never get the new asset, unless s/he deletes the browser cache manually. Yet what user does this?

That’s why we need to rename every file that has been changed to invalidate the cache. I remember the days when we had to add a number manually to our assets, like image_r1.png, or image_r2.png. This sucks. Today, reading the content of a file and generating a checksum can achieve this easier. This checksum will always be the same unless something gets changed.

My next task will rename all assets. This way, the application.css will become application-f084d03b.css. If I change one tiny thing in this file, it will get a new filename.

I install gulp-rev, which will handle this renaming of assets:

$ npm install --save-dev gulp-rev@2.0.1

gulp/config.js

revision: {
  src: {
    assets: [
      productionAssets + '/css/*.css',
      productionAssets + '/js/*.js',
      productionAssets + '/images/**/*'
    ],
    base: production
  },
  dest: {
    assets: production,
    manifest: {
      name: 'manifest.json',
      path: productionAssets
    }
  }
}

This task will rename all assets and create a JSON file containing all files, which were renamed and their old and new file names.

gulp/tasks/production/revision.js

var gulp = require("gulp");
var rev = require("gulp-rev");
var config = require("../../config").revision;

/**
 * Revision of all asset files and
 * write a manifest file
 */
gulp.task("revision", function () {
  return gulp
    .src(config.src.assets, { base: config.src.base })
    .pipe(gulp.dest(config.dest.assets))
    .pipe(rev())
    .pipe(gulp.dest(config.dest.assets))
    .pipe(rev.manifest({ path: config.dest.manifest.name }))
    .pipe(gulp.dest(config.dest.manifest.path));
});

Replacing Paths to Assets

The last step of my production build is to replace all occurrences of assets with a revised file name in all files.

This task will need gulp-rev-collector to replace the paths names to assets:

$ npm install --save-dev gulp-rev-collector@0.1.1

gulp/config.js

collect: {
  src: [
    productionAssets + '/manifest.json',
    production + '/**/*.{html,xml,txt,json,css,js}',
    '!' + production + '/feed.xml'
  ],
  dest: production
}

I replace these paths in files I know could contain paths to assets. Don’t include any images or binary files. The revision collector will try to open them and destroy binary files.

gulp/tasks/production/rev-collector.js

var gulp = require("gulp");
var collect = require("gulp-rev-collector");
var config = require("../../config").collect;

/**
 * Replace all links to assets in files
 * from a manifest file
 */
gulp.task("rev:collect", function () {
  return gulp.src(config.src).pipe(collect()).pipe(gulp.dest(config.dest));
});

This task will look into the manifest.json file and replace every path to one of the assets in every HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Text.

The production build is finished! Only one thing is missing to complete this series of tutorials about Gulp.js: Deploying the Website to my server.

Conclusion

This concludes the 13th part of my series, Introduction to Gulp.js. Today we learned how to revise the asset files and replace links to these files.

View Source on GitHub →

Introduction to Gulp.js 12: Optimize CSS, JavaScript, Images, and HTML

Wed, 29 Oct 2014 00:00:00 GMT

This is the 12th part of my series, Introduction to Gulp.js. Today I will write tasks to optimize the assets of my website: CSS, JavaScript, Images, and HTML.

Every Kilobyte, which has to be loaded, will slow down the loading of my website. That’s why I will minimize all my CSS and JavaScript and run my images through an optimizer, to remove as many bytes as possible. I will also add a task for minimizing HTML, but I don’t use this task because the reduction is minimal.

CSS

First, I will write a task, which will optimize the CSS. Compass can minimize the CSS for production, but this Gulp.js task squeezed another 6 KB out of my files.

I install the needed Gulp.js plugins:

$ npm install --save-dev gulp-csso@2.0.0 gulp-size@2.0.0

gulp/config.js

optimize: {
  css: {
    src:  developmentAssets + '/css/*.css',
    dest: productionAssets + '/css/',
    options: {}
  }
}

gulp/tasks/production/optimize-css.js

var gulp = require("gulp");
var csso = require("gulp-csso");
var size = require("gulp-size");
var config = require("../../config").optimize.css;

/**
 * Copy and minimize CSS files
 */
gulp.task("optimize:css", function () {
  return gulp.src(config.src).pipe(csso(config.options)).pipe(gulp.dest(config.dest)).pipe(size());
});

This task will copy the CSS files from the assets folder, minimize them, remove comments, output the size of the file, and copy them to the production assets folder.

JavaScript

Now the CSS is minimized, and the same has to be done to the JavaScript files. I use UglifyJS for this task. If you don’t like it, go ahead and use a Google Closure or YUI compressor Gulp.js task.

$ npm install --save-dev gulp-uglify@1.0.1

gulp/config.js

optimize: {
  css: {
    ...
  },
  js: {
    src:  developmentAssets + '/js/*.js',
    dest: productionAssets + '/js/',
    options: {}
  }
}

gulp/tasks/production/optimize-js.js

var gulp = require("gulp");
var uglify = require("gulp-uglify");
var size = require("gulp-size");
var config = require("../../config").optimize.js;

/**
 * Copy and minimize JS files
 */
gulp.task("optimize:js", function () {
  return gulp
    .src(config.src)
    .pipe(uglify(config.options))
    .pipe(gulp.dest(config.dest))
    .pipe(size());
});

This task will take the JavaScript files, minimize and optimize them, put them in my production assets folder, and output the size.

Images

Next, I will work on the images. They need to be copied to the production assets folder and crunched (reduce the size). This may take a while, depending on the size and amount of your images, that’s why I optimize the images for production.

I’ll need gulp-imagemin for my task, which can minify PNG, JPG, GIF, and SVG images:

$ npm install --save-dev gulp-imagemin@2.3.0

gulp/config.js

optimize: {
  css: {
    ...
  },
  js: {
    ...
  },
  images: {
    src:  developmentAssets + '/images/**/*.{jpg,jpeg,png,gif}',
    dest: productionAssets + '/images/',
    options: {
      optimizationLevel: 3,
      progressive: true,
      interlaced: true
    }
  }
}

gulp/tasks/production/optimize-images.js

var gulp = require("gulp");
var imagemin = require("gulp-imagemin");
var size = require("gulp-size");
var config = require("../../config").optimize.images;

/**
 * Copy and minimize image files
 */
gulp.task("optimize:images", function () {
  return gulp
    .src(config.src)
    .pipe(imagemin(config.options))
    .pipe(gulp.dest(config.dest))
    .pipe(size());
});

This task will take my images, optimize them, copy them to the assets folder, and output the size.

HTML

As said before, I wrote this task, and you can see how to do it, but I don’t use it because the reduction is minimal and not worth the messy markup. I like to keep it readable, so other people can learn from it.

$ npm install --save-dev gulp-htmlmin@1.2.0

gulp/config.js

optimize: {
  css: {
    ...
  },
  js: {
    ...
  },
  images: {
    ...
  },
  html: {
    src: production + '/**/*.html',
    dest: production,
    options: {
      collapseWhitespace: true
    }
  }
}

gulp/tasks/production/optimize-html.js

var gulp = require("gulp");
var htmlmin = require("gulp-htmlmin");
var config = require("../../config").optimize.html;

/**
 * Minimize HTML
 */
gulp.task("optimize:html", function () {
  return gulp.src(config.src).pipe(htmlmin(config.options)).pipe(gulp.dest(config.dest));
});

Conclusion

This concludes the 12th part of my series Introduction to Gulp.js. Today we learned how to minimize CSS and JavaScript files and reduce the size of images.

View Source on GitHub →

Introduction to Gulp.js 11: Production Build, Server, and Jekyll

Tue, 28 Oct 2014 00:00:00 GMT

This is the 11th part of my series, Introduction to Gulp.js. Today I will start writing the production build task, set up a server to view the production code and build the production site with Jekyll.

In development, I used the default Gulp.js tasks to run the development server, build the assets, and watch for changes. For production, I will need another entry point.

I decided to name my task publish. Later I can get a production build with the command gulp publish.

gulp/tasks/publish.js

var gulp = require("gulp");

/**
 * Run task browsersync:production
 */
gulp.task("publish", ["browsersync:production"]);

I put this file on the same level as the default.js file. This task is short: It does one thing. Start a BrowserSync task for production. This way I can have a look at the production site before deploying it to my server.

BrowserSync for Production

All production tasks will live in a folder production/ inside gulp/tasks/. I name the tasks of development and production the same but put them in different folders.

gulp/config.js

browsersync: {
  development: {
    ...
  },
  production: {
    server: {
      baseDir: [production]
    },
    port: 9998
  }
}

The only differences to the browsersync of development are these: I serve the production folder and use a different port for the server. This way, I can run development and production in parallel.

gulp/tasks/production/browser-sync.js

var gulp = require("gulp");
var browsersync = require("browser-sync");
var config = require("../../config").browsersync.production;

/**
 * Start a server and watch changes with BrowserSync
 */
gulp.task("browsersync:production", ["build:production"], function () {
  browsersync(config);
});

This task is boring. It starts the production build.

Build Task for Production

gulp/tasks/production/build.js

var gulp = require("gulp");
var runSequence = require("run-sequence");

/**
 * Run all tasks needed for a build in the defined order
 */
gulp.task("build:production", function (callback) {
  runSequence(
    "delete",
    "jekyll:production",
    ["sass", "scripts", "images", "copy:fonts"],
    "base64",
    ["optimize:css", "optimize:js", "optimize:images", "optimize:html", "copy:fonts:production"],
    "revision",
    "rev:collect",
    callback
  );
});

A lot is going on in this task: I run tasks in a specific order with run-sequence. First, I delete the assets folder for fresh creation. Then I run the Jekyll build for production, and create the development assets as I did in development. And after this is finished, I start with optimizing my assets and revisioning the files.

Jekyll for Production

The Jekyll task is similar except for two things: I create my site to the production folder and I add another config file _config.build.yml as an option (be careful, add no space between two files).

My Jekyll production config overwrites values as the url, hide future posts (future: false), or hides drafts (show_drafts: false).

gulp/config.js

jekyll: {
  development: {
    ...
  },
  production: {
    src:    src,
    dest:   production,
    config: '_config.yml,_config.build.yml'
  }
}

gulp/tasks/production/jekyll.js

var gulp = require("gulp");
var cp = require("child_process");
var browsersync = require("browser-sync");
var config = require("../../config").jekyll.production;

/**
 * Build the Jekyll Site
 */
gulp.task("jekyll:production", function (done) {
  browsersync.notify("Compiling Jekyll (Production)");

  return cp
    .spawn(
      "bundle",
      [
        "exec",
        "jekyll",
        "build",
        "-q",
        "--source=" + config.src,
        "--destination=" + config.dest,
        "--config=" + config.config,
      ],
      { stdio: "inherit" }
    )
    .on("close", done);
});

Conclusion

This concludes the 11th part of my series Introduction to Gulp.js. Today, I started to work on the production part of my website, including a server to view the production site and generate a production build of my Jekyll site.

View Source on GitHub →

Introduction to Gulp.js 10: Generating CSS Image Sprites

Mon, 27 Oct 2014 00:00:00 GMT

This is the 10th part of my series, Introduction to Gulp.js. Today, I will use Gulp.js to create CSS image sprites.

Just to be sure everybody knows what I’m talking about: A CSS image sprite is a collection of images put into a single image. This way, fewer requests are needed, and the website will load faster. The CSS file will move the image for each sprite to the correct position.

CSS image sprites are not used often anymore, because of SVG or vector fonts. But I use them as a fallback for browsers incapable of displaying vector fonts.

I will need a Spritesmith plugin for Gulp.js:

$ npm install --save-dev gulp.spritesmith@4.1.1

gulp/config.js

sprites: {
  src: srcAssets + '/images/sprites/icon/*.png',
  dest: {
    css: srcAssets + '/scss/base/',
    image: srcAssets + '/images/sprites/'
  },
  options: {
    cssName: '_sprites.scss',
    cssFormat: 'css',
    cssOpts: {
      cssClass: function (item) {
        // If this is a hover sprite, name it as a hover one (e.g. 'home-hover' -> 'home:hover')
        if (item.name.indexOf('-hover') !== -1) {
          return '.icon-' + item.name.replace('-hover', ':hover');
          // Otherwise, use the name as the selector (e.g. 'home' -> 'home')
        } else {
          return '.icon-' + item.name;
        }
      }
    },
    imgName: 'icon-sprite.png',
    imgPath: '/images/sprites/icon-sprite.png'
  }
}

I split my config into three subsections: The source files (individual icons for the sprite), the destination for the sprite, and the CSS partial and the options for the image sprite. I use a custom cssClass which will generate :hover states by naming the hover sprites with -hover.

gulp/tasks/development/sprites.js

var gulp = require("gulp");
var spritesmith = require("gulp.spritesmith");
var config = require("../../config").sprites;

/**
 * Generate sprite and CSS files from PNGs
 */
gulp.task("sprites", function () {
  var spriteData = gulp.src(config.src).pipe(spritesmith(config.options));

  spriteData.img.pipe(gulp.dest(config.dest.image));

  spriteData.css.pipe(gulp.dest(config.dest.css));
});

In the end, I get two files: a partial _sprites.scss containing the class attributes and a sprite icon-sprite.png containing all images.

All development tasks are done now. We have got a running development server, tasks to create the Jekyll site, and all assets and tasks for linting, sprite, and vector font creation.

Next, I will write the tasks needed to get a production-ready code.

Conclusion

This concludes the 10th part of my series, Introduction to Gulp.js. Today, we learned how to create CSS image sprites with Gulp.js and Spritesmith.

View Source on GitHub →

Introduction to Gulp.js 9: Syntax-Check of SCSS and JavaScript

Sun, 26 Oct 2014 00:00:00 GMT

This is the 9th part of my series, Introduction to Gulp.js. Today, I will use Gulp.js to automatically check my SCSS and JavaScript files for syntax errors and warnings.

I decided to lint my SCSS files and not the CSS files because it’s pointless to lint generated CSS. But you can do this with gulp-csslint.

$ npm install --save-dev gulp-scss-lint@0.3.6 gulp-jshint@1.8.5 jshint-stylish@2.0.1

Additionally, you’ll need to install the scss-lint Gem and run bundle install:

Gemfile

source "https://rubygems.org"

gem 'jekyll', '~> 2.5.2'
gem 'sass', '>= 3.3'
gem 'scss-lint', '~> 0.31.0'
gem 'fontcustom', '~> 1.3.7'

Add the options for jshint and scss-lint:

gulp/config.js

scsslint: {
  src: [
    srcAssets + '/scss/**/*.{sass,scss}',
    '!' + srcAssets + '/scss/base/_sprites.scss',
    '!' + srcAssets + '/scss/helpers/_meyer-reset.scss'
    ],
    options: {
      bundleExec: true
    }
},
jshint: {
  src: srcAssets + '/javascripts/*.js'
}

I ignore files from checking (by adding a ! in front of the path) because I didn’t write them or don’t have control over the syntax.

gulp/tasks/development/scss-lint.js

var gulp = require("gulp");
var scsslint = require("gulp-scss-lint");
var config = require("../../config").scsslint;

/**
 * Lint SCSS files
 * `gem install scss-lint` needed
 */
gulp.task("scsslint", function () {
  return gulp.src(config.src).pipe(scsslint(config.options));
});

gulp/tasks/development/jshint.js

var gulp = require("gulp");
var jshint = require("gulp-jshint");
var stylish = require("jshint-stylish");
var config = require("../../config").jshint;

/**
 * Check JavaScript syntax with JSHint
 */
gulp.task("jshint", function () {
  return gulp.src(config.src).pipe(jshint()).pipe(jshint.reporter(stylish));
});

Conclusion

This concludes the 9th part of my series, Introduction to Gulp.js. Today, we learned how to use Gulp.js to check the syntax of SCSS and JavaScript files. This task will run continuously while I write my files and print out errors to my console the moment I created them.

View Source on GitHub →

Introduction to Gulp.js 8: Watch for Changes

Sat, 25 Oct 2014 00:00:00 GMT

This is the 8th part of my series, Introduction to Gulp.js. Today, I will set up watch tasks for many files with Gulp.js.

Do you remember the watch task from the beginning? It started BrowserSync and the development server until now, but didn’t watch for anything. I will write these watch tasks now.

Watch is part of the API of gulp. It will watch files for changes, addition or deletion, and trigger tasks.

gulp/config.js

watch: {
  jekyll: [
    '_config.yml',
    '_config.build.yml',
    src + '/_data/**/*.{json,yml,csv}',
    src + '/_includes/**/*.{html,xml}',
    src + '/_layouts/*.html',
    src + '/_plugins/*.rb',
    src + '/_posts/*.{markdown,md}',
    src + '/**/*.{html,markdown,md,yml,json,txt,xml}',
    src + '/*'
  ],
  sass:    srcAssets + '/scss/**/*.{sass,scss}',
  scripts: srcAssets + '/javascripts/**/*.js',
  images:  srcAssets + '/images/**/*',
  sprites: srcAssets + '/images/**/*.png',
  svg:     'vectors/*.svg'
}

I watch countless different file types for Jekyll. Changes in configuration files, data files, layouts, including plugins, and posts.

The Sass task will watch for changes in files with the suffix sass or scss. JavaScript gets triggered if I change JavaScript files. You get the point.

gulp/tasks/development/watch.js

var gulp = require("gulp");
var config = require("../../config").watch;

/**
 * Start browsersync task and then watch files for changes
 */
gulp.task("watch", ["browsersync"], function () {
  gulp.watch(config.jekyll, ["jekyll-rebuild"]);
  gulp.watch(config.sass, ["sass", "scsslint"]);
  gulp.watch(config.scripts, ["scripts", "jshint"]);
  gulp.watch(config.images, ["images"]);
  gulp.watch(config.svg, ["copy:fonts"]);
  gulp.watch(config.sprites, ["sprites"]);
});

I set up six watch tasks. When a file of the Jekyll watch gets changed, deleted, or added, the jekyll-rebuild task gets executed. This task will run the Jekyll build, and after it’s finished reload the page.

For SCSS files, I run the sass tasks, and additionally, I run a scsslint task, which will check my files for syntax errors.

Changes in JavaScript files trigger the scripts tasks and a jshint task, which will check my files for syntax errors.

If I add, modify or delete an SVG file, my vector fonts get recreated. And as a fallback for browsers without vector font support, I create a PNG sprite map when I change an image of the sprite. It would be possible to auto-create the PNG files of the SVG files with gulp-svg2png, but I have an additional design on the sprite images, that’s why I don’t use it.

I miss now three tasks: scsslint, jshint, and sprites.

Conclusion

This concludes the 8th part of my series, Introduction to Gulp.js. We learned how to use Gulp.js to watch for changes, deletion, or creation of files and how to trigger tasks. And the best part is: This is part of the Gulp.js API. We don’t need any plugins.

View Source on GitHub →

Introduction to Gulp.js 7: Base64 Encoded Images

Fri, 24 Oct 2014 00:00:00 GMT

This is the 7th part of my series, Introduction to Gulp.js. Today, I will use Gulp.js to replace a lot of my URLs with small images with Base64 encoded images.

The last task executed by my build task is one, which replaces the URLs of small images in my CSS files with Base64 encoded images. This way, the images get embedded into the CSS file and don’t need an additional server request. If the images are not too large, this will speed up the loading of my website a lot.

I use plenty of small patterns on my website because I don’t like the Flat Design approach a lot. The physical world isn’t flat. Nowhere. There is always structure, pattern, shade, and light. The patterns I use are from the fantastic website Subtle Pattern. They have a few hundred nice subtle patterns.

To load the background pattern, I use SCSS like this:

%pattern-light-grey {
  background-color: $background-color;
  background-image: url(/images/patterns/light_grey.png);
  background-size: 301px 621px;
}

body {
  @extend %pattern-light-grey;
}

The generated CSS looks like this:

body {
  background-color: #fdfdfd;
  background-image: url(/images/patterns/light_grey.png);
  background-size: 301px 621px;
}

After the task ran, the CSS will look like this:

body {
  background-color: #fdfdfd;
  background-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAloAAATaBAMAAAB4FdU7AAAA…);
  background-size: 301px 621px;
}

For this task, I will need another Gulp.js plugin:

$ npm install --save-dev gulp-base64@0.1.2

I add a new configuration entry and create the task:

gulp/config.js

base64: {
  src: developmentAssets + '/css/*.css',
  dest: developmentAssets + '/css',
  options: {
    baseDir: build,
    extensions: ['png'],
    maxImageSize: 20 * 1024, // bytes
    debug: false
  }
}

I replace images with the ending PNG and if they have a maximum of 20 KB of size. This way, my high-resolution images don’t get embedded into the CSS file.

gulp/tasks/development/base64.js

var gulp = require("gulp");
var base64 = require("gulp-base64");
var config = require("../../config").base64;

/**
 * Replace urls in CSS files with base64 encoded data
 */
gulp.task("base64", ["sass"], function () {
  return gulp.src(config.src).pipe(base64(config.options)).pipe(gulp.dest(config.dest));
});

We are now finished with the development build task.

Conclusion

This concludes the 7th part of my series, Introduction to Gulp.js. We learned how to replace URLs to PNGs with Base64 encoded images. And we are now finished with our build task.

View Source on GitHub →

Introduction to Gulp.js 6: Images and Vector Fonts

Thu, 23 Oct 2014 00:00:00 GMT

This is the 6th part of my series, Introduction to Gulp.js. The last post was long and complicated. This time it’s an easier one: I will show how I move my images and generate vector fonts.

Images

The image task is a simple one again. All it does for now is copy the images to the asset directory. I will optimize my images later during the production build.

gulp/config.js

images: {
  src:  srcAssets + '/images/**/*',
  dest: developmentAssets + '/images'
}

gulp/tasks/development/images.js

var gulp = require("gulp");
var changed = require("gulp-changed");
var config = require("../../config").images;

/**
 * Copy images to build folder
 * if not changed
 */
gulp.task("images", function () {
  return gulp
    .src(config.src)
    .pipe(changed(config.dest)) // Ignore unchanged files
    .pipe(gulp.dest(config.dest));
});

Vector Fonts

I use vector fonts for my website. Vector fonts are one option to include high-quality icons on a website. Another option is using SVG directly or to use high-resolution images.

I am using Font Custom to generate my vector fonts. There is a gulp plugin for this, but I couldn’t get it running. But I’m fine with running this task with a shell command (via Gulp.js). I will use Gulp.js later to watch the folder containing the SVG files and recreate the vector fonts if needed.

First, I need to install Font Custom (with Homebrew, you can find more installation methods on the Font Custom website):

$ brew install fontforge --with-python
$ brew install eot-utils

Next, I run the command bundle exec fontcustom config inside my main projects’ directory, which will create a file fontcustom.yml. I adjust my file until it looks like this:

fontcustom.yml

# --------------------------------------------------------------------------- #
# Project Info
#   Default values shown. Learn more about these options by running
#   `fontcustom help` or visiting <http://fontcustom.com>.
# --------------------------------------------------------------------------- #

font_name: fontcustom
css_selector: .icon-{{glyph}}
css_prefix: icon-
preprocessor_path: "/assets/fonts"
autowidth: false
no_hash: false
force: false
debug: false
quiet: false

# --------------------------------------------------------------------------- #
# Project Paths
#   Relative paths are expanded from PROJECT_ROOT (defaults to the directory
#   where the fontcustom command is run). INPUT and OUTPUT can be strings or
#   hashes or file types/names.
# --------------------------------------------------------------------------- #

#project_root: some/other/place
#manifest: tmp/fontcustom

input:
  vectors: vectors # required
#  templates: app/assets/fonts/fontcustom/templates

output:
  fonts: app/_assets/fonts # required
  css: app/_assets/scss
  preview: docs
#  my-custom-template.yml: config

# --------------------------------------------------------------------------- #
# Templates
#   Included in Font Custom:
#     preview, css, scss, scss-rails, bootstrap, bootstrap-scss, bootstrap-ie7,
#     bootstrap-ie7-scss
#   Custom templates should be saved in the INPUT[:templates] directory and
#   referenced by their base file name.
# --------------------------------------------------------------------------- #

templates: [scss, preview]

Next, I add configuration and the task to copy the fonts to their location:

gulp/config.js

copyfonts: {
  development: {
    src:  srcAssets + '/fonts/*',
    dest: developmentAssets + '/fonts'
  }
}

gulp/tasks/development/copy-fonts.js

var gulp = require("gulp");
var config = require("../../config").copyfonts.development;

/**
 * Copy fonts to folder
 */
gulp.task("copy:fonts", ["fontcustom"], function () {
  return gulp.src(config.src).pipe(gulp.dest(config.dest));
});

As you may have seen, before copying the fonts to the asset folder, another task gets executed: fontcustom.

Font Custom checks the files for changes and doesn’t generate anything if the files are the same.

To execute a shell command, I use the Gulp.js plugin gulp-shell:

$ npm install --save-dev gulp-shell@0.5.0

gulp/tasks/development/fontcustom.js

var gulp = require("gulp");
var shell = require("gulp-shell");

/**
 * Generate fonts with Fontcustom
 * `brew install fontforge --with-python`
 * `brew install eot-utils`
 */
gulp.task("fontcustom", shell.task(["bundle exec fontcustom compile"]));

Fontcustom is a Ruby Gem, and you’ll need to install the Gem either globally or in your Gemfile (if you install it globally, you have to drop the bundle exec from your command). I choose to install it with my Gemfile:

Gemfile

source "https://rubygems.org"

gem 'jekyll', '~> 2.5.2'
gem 'sass', '>= 3.3'
gem 'fontcustom', '~> 1.3.7'

After you add the line for fontcustom you will have to run bundle install again.

Conclusion

This concludes the 6th part of my series, Introduction to Gulp.js. We learned how to move files with Gulp.js (and don’t even need a plugin for that), and how I create my vector fonts. Nothing special, but the next part will be more interesting again.

View Source on GitHub →

Introduction to Gulp.js 5: Bundling JavaScript with Browserify

Wed, 22 Oct 2014 00:00:00 GMT

This is the 5th part of my series, Introduction to Gulp.js. Today I will show how to use Browserify to bundle your JavaScript and use CommonJS modules to run node modules in the Browser.

Browserify

This task is more complex because I use Browserify to bundle my JavaScript. If this is too complex for your needs, you may use gulp-concat to concatenate all your JavaScript files into one file.

Browserify is a wonderful tool, which allows you to use node modules in your browser. Over 70% of the node modules will run! And it will bundle up all of your dependencies. If you want to find out more about writing CommonJS modules for Browserify, have a look at the documentation.

This task I saw in the gulp-starter blendid. It’s long but clever. It allows the creation of multiple files with Browserify. I create two files. One file is loaded in the head of my website containing Modernizr and one file with the rest of my JavaScript at the bottom.

Creating JavaScript files with Browserify

Install the node modules needed for this task:

$ npm install --save-dev browserify@11.2.0 vinyl-source-stream@1.0.0 watchify@3.4.0 gulp-util@3.0.1 pretty-hrtime@1.0.1 gulp-notify@2.0.0

Create the entry in the config.js file:

gulp/config.js

browserify: {
  // Enable source maps
  debug: true,
  // Additional file extensions to make optional
  extensions: ['.coffee', '.hbs'],
  // A separate bundle will be generated for each
  // bundle config in the list below
  bundleConfigs: [{
    entries:    './' + srcAssets + '/javascripts/application.js',
    dest:       developmentAssets + '/js',
    outputName: 'application.js'
  }, {
    entries:    './' + srcAssets + '/javascripts/head.js',
    dest:       developmentAssets + '/js',
    outputName: 'head.js'
  }]
}

gulp/tasks/development/scripts.js

var gulp = require("gulp");
var browsersync = require("browser-sync");
var browserify = require("browserify");
var source = require("vinyl-source-stream");
var watchify = require("watchify");
var bundleLogger = require("../../util/bundleLogger");
var handleErrors = require("../../util/handleErrors");
var config = require("../../config").browserify;

/**
 * Run JavaScript through Browserify
 */
gulp.task("scripts", function (callback) {
  browsersync.notify("Compiling JavaScript");

  var bundleQueue = config.bundleConfigs.length;

  var browserifyThis = function (bundleConfig) {
    var bundler = browserify({
      // Required watchify args
      cache: {},
      packageCache: {},
      fullPaths: false,
      // Specify the entry point of your app
      entries: bundleConfig.entries,
      // Add file extensions to make optional in your requires
      extensions: config.extensions,
      // Enable source maps!
      debug: config.debug,
    });

    var bundle = function () {
      // Log when bundling starts
      bundleLogger.start(bundleConfig.outputName);

      return (
        bundler
          .bundle()
          // Report compile errors
          .on("error", handleErrors)
          // Use vinyl-source-stream to make the
          // stream gulp compatible. Specify the
          // desired output filename here.
          .pipe(source(bundleConfig.outputName))
          // Specify the output destination
          .pipe(gulp.dest(bundleConfig.dest))
          .on("end", reportFinished)
      );
    };

    if (global.isWatching) {
      // Wrap with watchify and rebundle on changes
      bundler = watchify(bundler);
      // Rebundle on update
      bundler.on("update", bundle);
    }

    var reportFinished = function () {
      // Log when bundling completes
      bundleLogger.end(bundleConfig.outputName);

      if (bundleQueue) {
        bundleQueue--;
        if (bundleQueue === 0) {
          // If queue is empty, tell gulp the task is complete.
          // https://github.com/gulpjs/gulp/blob/master/docs/API.md#accept-a-callback
          callback();
        }
      }
    };

    return bundle();
  };

  // Start bundling with Browserify for each bundleConfig specified
  config.bundleConfigs.forEach(browserifyThis);
});

This task has additional utilities for handling errors and logging the bundling process. Put these into a util folder in your gulp folder:

gulp/util/bundleLogger.js

/* bundleLogger
   ------------
   Provides gulp style logs to the bundle method in browserify.js
*/

var gutil = require("gulp-util");
var prettyHrtime = require("pretty-hrtime");
var startTime;

module.exports = {
  start: function (filepath) {
    startTime = process.hrtime();
    gutil.log("Bundling", gutil.colors.green(filepath));
  },

  end: function (filepath) {
    var taskTime = process.hrtime(startTime);
    var prettyTime = prettyHrtime(taskTime);
    gutil.log("Bundled", gutil.colors.green(filepath), "in", gutil.colors.magenta(prettyTime));
  },
};

gulp/util/handleErrors.js

var notify = require("gulp-notify");

module.exports = function () {
  var args = Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments);

  // Send error to notification center with gulp-notify
  notify
    .onError({
      title: "Compile Error",
      message: "<%= error.message %>",
    })
    .apply(this, args);

  // Keep gulp from hanging on to this task
  this.emit("end");
};

Using CommonJS Modules

Writing CommonJS modules is nice. You export your function, object, string, or integer, you like to export as a module or individually:

math.js

exports.add = function() {
  var sum = 0, i = 0, args = arguments, 1 = args.length;
  while (i < 1) {
    sum += args[i++];
  }
  return sum;
};

navigation.js

module.exports = {
  toggleNavigation: function() {
    ...
  }
};

Later, you import your modules and use them:

increment.js

var add = require("./math").add;

exports.increment = function (val) {
  return add(val, 1);
};

application.js

var navigation = require("./navigation");
var triggerNavigation = document.querySelector(".toggle-navigation");

document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function () {
  triggerNavigation.addEventListener("click", navigation.toggleNavigation);
});

Loading non-CommonJS files

But one problem remains: How do I use JavaScript files, which aren’t written in CommonJS syntax? Like Modernizr or jQuery?

I need to install browserify-shim:

$ npm install --save-dev browserify-shim@3.8.0

I open my package.json file and need to add a few lines:

package.json

{
  "...": "...",
  "browser": {
    "modernizr": "./app/_bower_components/modernizr/modernizr.js",
    "jquery": "./app/_bower_components/jquery/dist/jquery.js"
  },
  "browserify-shim": {
    "modernizr": "Modernizr",
    "jquery": "$"
  },
  "browserify": {
    "transform": ["browserify-shim"]
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "...": "..."
  }
}

In the section "browser" you point browserify-shim to the asset you want to shim. I use Bower and have installed my packages into app/_bower_components/. The name you choose is the name you have to require later in your JavaScript.

Within "browerify-shim" you decide where to map this require to. To include jQuery or Modernizr later you would write:

app/assets/javascripts/head.js

require("modernizr");

app/_assets/javascripts/application.js

require("jquery");

$(function () {
  console.log("jQuery and Modernizr loaded");
});

You have to run npm install once you added a new entry to your package.json file.

Conclusion

This concludes the 5th part of my series, Introduction to Gulp.js. We learned how to use Browserify to bundle JavaScript files, how to use CommonJS modules to run Node in your Browser, and how to use non-CommonJS JavaScript files.

View Source on GitHub →

Introduction to Gulp.js 4: Creating CSS and Source Maps with Sass and Compass

Tue, 21 Oct 2014 00:00:00 GMT

This is the 4th part of my series, Introduction to Gulp.js. Today I will show how to use Sass (and Compass if you want) to create CSS files. Furthermore, I will add vendor prefixes with Autoprefixer and create Source Maps for easier debugging of the Sass files.

Sass and Autoprefixer

I use Sass as a preprocessor for my CSS files. If you like to use Compass, you have to set an option for this task.

Go ahead and install the npm modules needed:

$ npm install --save-dev gulp-plumber@1.0.1 gulp-ruby-sass@2.0.4 gulp-filter@3.0.1 gulp-changed@1.0.0 gulp-autoprefixer@3.0.2 gulp-sourcemaps@1.6.0

That’s a lot, but this task will do a lot.

gulp/config.js

sass: {
  src:  srcAssets + '/scss/**/*.{sass,scss}',
  dest: developmentAssets + '/css',
  options: {
    noCache: true,
    compass: false,
    bundleExec: true,
    sourcemap: true
  }
},
autoprefixer: {
  browsers: [
    'last 2 versions',
    'safari 5',
    'ie 8',
    'ie 9',
    'opera 12.1',
    'ios 6',
    'android 4'
  ],
  cascade: true
}

gulp/task/development/sass.js

var gulp = require("gulp");
var plumber = require("gulp-plumber");
var browsersync = require("browser-sync");
var sass = require("gulp-ruby-sass");
var gulpFilter = require("gulp-filter");
var autoprefixer = require("gulp-autoprefixer");
var sourcemaps = require("gulp-sourcemaps");
var config = require("../../config");

/**
 * Generate CSS from SCSS
 * Build sourcemaps
 */
gulp.task("sass", function () {
  var sassConfig = config.sass.options;

  sassConfig.onError = browsersync.notify;

  // Don’t write sourcemaps of sourcemaps
  var filter = gulpFilter(["*.css", "!*.map"], { restore: true });

  browsersync.notify("Compiling Sass");

  return sass(config.sass.src, sassConfig)
    .pipe(plumber())
    .pipe(sourcemaps.init())
    .pipe(autoprefixer(config.autoprefixer))
    .pipe(filter) // Don’t write sourcemaps of sourcemaps
    .pipe(
      sourcemaps.write(".", {
        includeContent: false,
        sourceRoot: "app/_assets/scss",
      })
    )
    .pipe(filter.restore) // Restore original files
    .pipe(gulp.dest(config.sass.dest));
});

I load all my files with the suffix of *.sass or *.scss. First, I pipe the files through Plumber. It will keep Gulp.js running if I create a syntax error in one of my files. It would normally crash with an error. The next step creates the CSS files, running the sass command. I create source maps and finally put the CSS files to their destination.

And I run the CSS files through Autoprefixer, which will add vendor prefixes. I used the Mixins of Compass a long time, but stopped now and write pure CSS. All vendor prefixes are added later for the browsers I want to support.

You might have guessed: If you wish to use Compass, set the option compass to true.

Conclusion

This concludes the 4th part of my series, Introduction to Gulp.js. We learned how to keep Gulp.js running, even when we produce errors, how to preprocess SCSS files with Sass, create Source Maps, and add vendor prefixes to the CSS files.

View Source on GitHub →

Introduction to Gulp.js 3: Build, Clean and Jekyll

Mon, 20 Oct 2014 00:00:00 GMT

This is the 3rd part of my series, Introduction to Gulp.js. Today I will write the build task, which will execute all other tasks needed for a build, the task to delete assets for a fresh start, and the task to create my Jekyll site.

Build

Now I create a build task. This task will run all other tasks, which are needed to create the site. By default, Gulp.js runs all tasks in parallel. That’s why I will get a problem if a specific order is needed. I will need a node module that runs tasks in a sequence:

$ npm install --save-dev run-sequence@1.1.4

Next, I create the task:

gulp/tasks/development/build.js

var gulp = require("gulp");
var runSequence = require("run-sequence");

/**
 * Run all tasks needed for a build in a defined order
 */
gulp.task("build", function (callback) {
  runSequence("delete", ["jekyll", "sass", "scripts", "images", "copy:fonts"], "base64", callback);
});

This task will first delete the assets’ folder (Jekyll is deleted by default), then create in parallel the Jekyll site, CSS files from SASS files, bundle the JavaScript files, copy images to the assets folder and copy vector fonts. After the sass task is finished, I replace links to small PNG files with Base64 encoding to inline them in my CSS files.

You should comment out tasks, we haven’t written until now, or Gulp cannot run. I just included them, so we don’t need to come back for each task we write and add a line.

Delete Assets

To wipe out all files in the asset folder, I use the node module del.

$ npm install --save-dev del@0.1.3

I need to add a config for deleting:

gulp/config.js

browsersync: {
...
},
delete: {
  src: [developmentAssets]
}

I will shorten all configuration options from now on. Every task will have its option section. These are JavaScript objects, please remember the trailing comma if you add a new configuration option.

The task will look like this:

gulp/tasks/development/delete.js

var gulp = require("gulp");
var del = require("del");
var config = require("../../config").delete;

/**
 * Delete folders and files
 */
gulp.task("delete", function (callback) {
  del(config.src, callback);
});

If you use a newer version of del or run into trouble because del doesn’t finish, try deleting the callback from the function.

Jekyll

Next, I will write the configuration and the task to create the Jekyll site:

gulp/config.js

jekyll: {
  development: {
    src:    src,
    dest:   development,
    config: '_config.yml'
  }
}

gulp/config/development/jekyll.js

var gulp = require("gulp");
var cp = require("child_process");
var browsersync = require("browser-sync");
var config = require("../../config").jekyll.development;

/**
 * Build the Jekyll Site
 */
gulp.task("jekyll", function (done) {
  browsersync.notify("Compiling Jekyll");

  return cp
    .spawn(
      "bundle",
      [
        "exec",
        "jekyll",
        "build",
        "-q",
        "--source=" + config.src,
        "--destination=" + config.dest,
        "--config=" + config.config,
      ],
      { stdio: "inherit" }
    )
    .on("close", done);
});

gulp.task("jekyll-rebuild", ["jekyll"], function () {
  browsersync.reload();
});

There is a gulp plugin for Jekyll, but it’s alpha and was blacklisted because it’s not needed, as you can run shell tasks with a node. But I have to send the done status when the task is finished.

All this task is doing is running jekyll build with some options. I use app as the source folder, build/development as the target, and point to my _config.yml.

I put my _config.yml and other configuration files always at the root of my project. If you don’t like that, you need to update the configuration to point to the location of your _config.yml.

I have a second Jekyll build task jekyll-rebuild, which is only a wrapper for a rebuild. All it does is reload the Browser when the build is completed.

Conclusion

This concludes the 3rd part of my series, Introduction to Gulp.js. We learned how to run files in specified order with run-sequence, how to delete files and folders, and how to execute a shell task like Jekyll.

View Source on GitHub →

Introduction to Gulp.js 2: Setting up a Development Server with BrowserSync

Sun, 19 Oct 2014 00:00:00 GMT

This is the 2nd part of my series, Introduction to Gulp.js. Today I will write the first few Gulp.js tasks and set up a development server with BrowserSync. And I will start to write a configuration file.

Installing Gulp.js

To run my gulpfile.js I need to install gulp:

$ npm install --save-dev gulp@3.9.0

If I run the command gulp on my command line, I get an error message Task 'default' is not in your gulpfile. This is because I haven’t written a gulp task until now.

I create inside the gulp/tasks folder a file default.js and write this code:

gulp/tasks/default.js

var gulp = require("gulp");

gulp.task("default", function () {
  console.log("Hello Gulp.js!");
});

I know … I said I’m sick of Hello World tutorials, but this won’t last very long. I’ll soon replace it with valuable code. Stay with me.

If you execute the command gulp, this Gulp.js task will output Hello Gulp.js! to the console.

I will speed up the pace from now on.

Watch

Instead of calling a function and outputting text to the console, I can execute tasks. I decided to execute the watch task when running gulp. This task will later watch for changes in files and update my files.

gulp/tasks/default.js

var gulp = require("gulp");

gulp.task("default", ["watch"]);

It’s possible to run multiple tasks at once, which is why I write my watch task in an Array. Be careful: These tasks will run in parallel, not in sequential order. Later I will show how to run tasks in a predefined order.

I will create another folder within my tasks folder with the name development and put all tasks needed for development in this folder. This is not necessary, but I did so:

gulp/tasks/development/watch.js

var gulp = require("gulp");

/**
 * Start browser-sync task and then watch files for changes
 */
gulp.task("watch", ["browsersync"], function () {});

I will come back later to write the watch task. For now, the function will be empty, and run another task before running the watch task: browser-sync. All tasks within the Array will be executed before the task is executed.

BrowserSync

You might have heard of LiveReload, a tool that is watching for changes in your files and automatically reloads the server. With Stylesheets, even reloading is not needed. The page refreshes with the changes instantly.

But BrowserSync is even better: It does all LiveReload does, but you don’t need a browser plugin, and it syncs your actions like a scroll, click, refresh, or filling out forms to all browsers connected. This works even with mobile devices. And BrowserSync even has support for a development server. That’s why I will need nothing more than BrowserSync to get a development server with live reloading.

But first, I install BrowserSync:

$ npm install --save-dev browser-sync@2.9.11

I create a new file browser-sync.js in gulp/tasks/development/. This file will start BrowserSync and the development server.

gulp/tasks/development/browser-sync.js

var gulp = require("gulp");
var browsersync = require("browser-sync");
var config = require("../../config").browsersync.development;

/**
 * Run the build task and start a server with BrowserSync
 */
gulp.task("browsersync", ["build"], function () {
  browsersync(config);
});

This code does need explanation: First, I load Gulp.js and BrowserSync, which are needed in this task. Then I load the configuration for BrowserSync. I will create this configuration file shortly. Keeping all configurations out of the tasks will make them more usable, and they can be shared between different projects.

The second thing worth mentioning is ['build']. This does mean before starting BrowserSync it first will run the build Gulp.js task (which I will write later). Every Gulp.js task needs a name. As a second parameter, you can either add a JavaScript callback or tasks, or both.

Configuration

I create a new file config.js in the main Gulp.js folder:

gulp/config.js

var src = "app";
var build = "build";
var development = "build/development";
var production = "build/production";
var srcAssets = "app/_assets";
var developmentAssets = "build/assets";
var productionAssets = "build/production/assets";

module.exports = {
  browsersync: {
    development: {
      server: {
        baseDir: [development, build, src],
      },
      port: 9999,
      files: [
        developmentAssets + "/css/*.css",
        developmentAssets + "/js/*.js",
        developmentAssets + "/assets/images/**",
        developmentAssets + "/fonts/*",
      ],
    },
  },
};

First I extract paths needed over and over again later to variables, and then I create a CommonJS module and add an entry for BrowserSync. BrowserSync runs with default options, but I want to override the port and I tell BrowserSync which folders should be served.

Jekyll wipes out all files on recreation and to speed up development I have to be creative because I don’t want to recreate all assets on every Jekyll build. That’s why I serve more than one folder. I serve the folder build/development, which will hold the files created by Jekyll. The assets I will generate into a different folder, build/assets that Jekyll doesn’t wipe out. And additionally, the folder app/_assets to link source maps later.

BrowserSync watches my asset files, in order that my browser won’t reload like hell, every time Jekyll creates one file. I will later write one task, which reloads the Browser one time after the Jekyll build is complete.

Conclusion

This concludes the 2nd part of my series Introduction to Gulp.js. We learned how to install Gulp.js, write a Gulp.js task, run other tasks, and set up a development server with BrowserSync.

View Source on GitHub →

Introduction to Gulp.js 1: Setting up Gulp.js and Jekyll

Sat, 18 Oct 2014 00:00:00 GMT

My website is running Jekyll now since the beginning of 2014. But I wasn’t happy with my build and development process. I started with Rake tasks and chose later Grunt.js as my build system, but parts of the process were left in Ruby. I used Compass a lot, and Jekyll Assets was handling my versioning. But Grunt.js and the Jekyll Asset Pipeline didn’t play well together. Then a new solution came along: Gulp.js.

What to expect from this Tutorial

This is the first part in a series of posts where I describe my whole development and build process step-by-step from start to finish. I am sick of all these Hello World tutorials spreading around the Internet, describing the basics and don’t show a whole process, going deeper, or sharing things learned during the process.

I’ll describe everything step-by-step and provide specific version numbers for modules, to make sure they will run on your computer. If you have problems, feel free to compare your code to the finished GitHub repository. Each tutorial builds on the things done before. If you need a specific thing, better look at the final codebase. You’ll learn how I created my complete development and build process, which I use on this website and my Ninja & Ninjutsu website. The source of both websites can be found on my GitHub account.

When I started with Gulp.js, I fortunately stumbled upon a GitHub project called gulp-starter blendid, that helped me a lot to structure my code and understand Gulp.js. My process is partly derived from this fantastic project.

What is Gulp.js?

Gulp.js is the streaming build system and its main focus is speed, efficiency, and simplicity. Where Grunt.js uses a lot of configuration with the process hidden in plugins, Gulp.js uses a simple and minimal API. You code your build process by yourself and use JavaScript as the language. You don’t have to program everything by yourself, there are nearly 800 plugins ready for Gulp.js. But even more, Node.js modules can be used to build the perfect build and development process for your needs.

Why do I want this at all?

As a front-end developer or web designer you will likely need plenty of things to build a modern website: a development server, a preprocessor for your Sass, Less or Stylus files, automation to bundle your JavaScript, tools to optimize your code, to compress, compile or move things around. And if you change something, you want your files to update automatically, or refresh the browser. You don’t want to do this manually, do you?

It’s 2014, and we don’t copy our files per drag-and-drop to a server via an FTP program, reload our browser by hitting continuously F5 or crunch our images for a smaller file size manually.

Node.js

Gulp and all plugins are written in JavaScript and use the Node.js® platform. You don’t have to know Node.js (but it will help a lot), but basic JavaScript skills are required to follow along. For this tutorial, you need to install Node.js on your computer. This can be done by installing the package on the Node.js website. Advanced users may install Node.js with their favorite package installer (Homebrew, nvm, or similar).

Gulpfile

As with Grunt.js, all you need to start is the main file. In Gulp.js, this file is called gulpfile.js. The first thing I learned from gulp-starter was to write my project in small parts and don’t use a large monolithic file with everything in it. This way I can share my Gulp.js files with other projects or pass individual tasks around.

My base gulpfile.js is short:

gulpfile.js

var requireDir = require("require-dir");

// Require all tasks in gulp/tasks, including subfolders
requireDir("./gulp/tasks", { recurse: true });

All this task is doing is loading all tasks that live in ./gulp/tasks or in any subfolder.

First Things First

The first thing to do is to install the required Node module require-dir. To reinstall all my node modules later, I will need to have a file where this information is saved.

You may use the installation helper by typing the command npm init. But I find it faster to create a new file package.json and fill it with these values:

package.json

{
  "name": "gulp-build",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "description": "The build process of my website with Gulp.js",
  "private": true
}

Now I can install Node modules and save them to this file for later reinstallation. Go ahead and install require-dir:

$ npm install --save-dev require-dir@0.3.0

This will install our first Node module and place it into a folder with the name node_modules. Don’t delete this folder, or you will have to reinstall all modules again. This can be done later with npm install. The command will install all modules in the package.json file.

My Jekyll website lives in a folder called app. All my tasks will be placed in a folder with the name gulp. Go ahead and create a folder, and within a subfolder with the name tasks. After installing the first module, the structure of our project will look like this:

.
├── app
│   ├── _assets
│   ├── _data
│   ├── _drafts
│   ├── _includes
│   ├── _layouts
│   ├── _plugins
│   ├── _posts
│   └── index.html
├── gulp
│   └── tasks
├── gulpfile.js
├── node_modules
│   └── require-dir
└── package.json

Jekyll

This tutorial uses Jekyll to build the HTML of the website. Creating a new Jekyll website is fast and easy:

$ gem install jekyll
$ jekyll new app
$ cd app
$ jekyll serve

I don’t install Jekyll globally, but with Bundler. This way, all my Gems will be installed with my project and I don’t have to be concerned about the correct version.

I install Bundler globally:

$ gem install bundler

Now I create an empty file in my projects folder with the name Gemfile and add these lines:

source "https://rubygems.org"

gem 'jekyll', '~> 2.5.2'
gem 'sass', '>= 3.3'

Now I install the Gems by typing:

$ bundle install

If you installed Jekyll with Bundler, run inside your project directory:

$ bundle exec jekyll new app

Did you install it globally? Then drop the bundle exec from the command.

Conclusion

This concludes the 1st part of my series Introduction to Gulp.js. We learned what Gulp.js is used for and created the basic folder structure for the project.

View Source on GitHub →

John Seymour’s Books on Self-Sufficiency: Self-sufficiency, beautifully explained

Sun, 03 Aug 2014 00:00:00 GMT

My earliest memories of books are that I lie on my parents’ soft carpet on my stomach in the living room and read the Atlas of World History or the books of John Seymour. Who was John Seymour, and why did his books remain in my memory?

John Seymour

Born in England in 1914, he went to boarding school in Switzerland and later began studying agricultural sciences. He went to Africa at the age of 20 to work as a farmer. After serving in World War II in North Africa and Asia, he returned to England and moved to an old remote farm with his family in 1957 and started living solely on home-grown produce. After moving to a farm in Wales in the 1970s, he wrote his world-famous books The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency (Das große Buch vom Leben auf dem Lande) and The Self-Sufficient Gardener (Selbstversorgung aus dem Garten).

English

German

The Books

In his books, he writes comprehensible for laymen, enriched by beautiful, detailed drawings and illustrations. Whether you run a small garden or a large farm, his books describe well what needs to be done to create a closed and healthy cycle.

In The New Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency he explains the food chain, soil types, and the seasons. He describes various types of gardens, addresses all kinds of fruits and vegetables, tells how to keep animals, cultivate and utilize land, grow long-lasting food, and a huge number of things. His second book, The New Self-Sufficient Gardener, goes into more detail and shows how to work with a garden.

Part of my Survival Kit

I sometimes joke that if the zombie apocalypse arrives or civilization collapsed for other reasons, I first get my Kukri, my bow with arrows, and the books of John Seymour. Because all the knowledge that we use every day, be it programming, design, management, spreadsheets, or any other activity of the modern age is then worth nothing. However, the knowledge in his books is almost timeless and will be up-to-date even in the distant future.

John Seymour wrote many more books during his life, for example, the commendable book The National Trust Book of Forgotten Household Crafts. It displays various arts well-illustrated, such as woodcraft, construction, workshop or chores, the tools used, and the products they create.

Conclusion

Even if you live in the city presently or do not have a garden or a plot of land, it is always a pleasure to page through the books. Therefore, his books should not be missing in any good library.

John Seymour would have turned 100 last month. His books contain valuable knowledge about self-sufficiency and have been expanded over the years. The current version of his bestseller The New Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency has information on wind energy and solar energy. And you will learn how beer is brewed or wine is pressed.

Typography of My Website: Type first, everything else follows

Thu, 19 Jun 2014 00:00:00 GMT

I’m a typophile. But this is nothing for a self-help group because it means to love typography. It was clear to me from the start that I would start with typography for my new website.

Normally, designers pay attention to typography, to the rest of the people typography is unimportant. But typography influences each of us, consciously and subconsciously.

Readability or contrast decides whether the message of a text reaches the reader at all. And since words have incredible power, typography is underestimated.

The right choice of font, font size, weight, layout, sentence width, lead, letter spacing, or many other things unconsciously affects the reader and thus transports the statement. Proper typography can support and reinforce a message that makes the wrong message even meaningless or ridiculous.

I’ve always found typography fascinating, but after reading the book The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst I studied the matter more deeply. There is a Web-adapted version of his book on the website The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web.

Typography

Selecting good typography does not only mean selecting a scripture but is an art form that I am far from mastering.

It is important to choose the right page layout, the right sentence width, the correct lead, the right combination of fonts, the right scale, the correct font size, and a variety of other guidelines.

Scale

Several years ago, I stumbled on two interesting lectures by Tim Brown on typography. Tim Brown works as Type Manager for Adobe Typekit, a platform that offers Web font hosting. In his lectures, he offers a fascinating insight into the history of typography and how to achieve good typography.

I started with the selection of a scale. A typographic scale is the selection of harmonic proportions, which are then applied to font size, sentence width, and other parts.

The most famous proportion is the Golden Ratio, which has a ratio of 1:1.618. But many other proportions have their origins in geometry, music, nature, or history. Tim Brown has even created the website Modular Scale, on which a scale can be calculated.

However, this was not necessary for my project because Team-Sass offers a SASS extension.

So, I add the gem to my Gemfile first:

Gemfile

source "https://rubygems.org"

group :development do
  gem 'modular-scale'
end

Then I load the Compass plugin in config.rb:

config.rb

# Require any additional compass plugins here.
require 'modular-scale'

Afterward, the module of Compass has to be loaded in a partial:

helpers/_imports.scss

@import "compass";
@import "compass/reset";
@import "modular-scale";

I've decided to use the golden ratio and then select the ideal text size and an important number:

$ms-base: 16px 18px;
$ms-ratio: $golden;

Now the helpers of Gems can be used everywhere in the SCSS. Instead of writing somewhere manually 42px (41.887px) or 2.618em, I write modular-scale(4) to choose the fourth value of the scale:

$font-scale-h1: modular-scale(4);

Sentence Width

I could have started to choose the sentence width (line length), and then choose the grid appropriately. However, now that a scale has been selected, you can use it for the correct sentence width.

A responsive website with fluid line length is not an optimal prerequisite for a fixed sentence width. All sorts of values are circulating on the Internet, which is an optimal line length. All sorts of truisms such as no less than 45 characters, no more than 85 characters, or similar values can be found there. But nothing is scientifically proven, and one should measure in words rather than in characters because we see word images and not letters.

If the line is too long, the eyes are tired and the readers may lose the connection to the next line, if the line is too short, the constant interruption of the reading flow will be equally severe. There is one thing to say: The correct line length does not exist, it depends on the font, typesetting, and line spacing.

I tried to determine the optimal line length of my website with about 66 characters or about 10 words. Depending on the browser size, the line length then shrinks up to a threshold that I have selected. If this falls below, I select a different number of columns of the grid.

But I make sure that the line length is not wider than I determined to be optimal because as soon as the head has to be moved, the line is too long.

Vertical Rhythm

Next, I set the line spacing and decided in addition to the technique of vertical rhythm. In the case of fonts of different sizes, the line spacing is mathematically changed in such a way that two different-sized fonts would be visually adjacent to each other.

Convenient is that the annoying mathematics behind the formula (which spits out crooked values with many decimal places) does not have to be calculated by yourself. Compass comes with a module for it.

There are some variables to be set:

$base-font-size: modular-scale(1); // 18px
$base-line-height-count: 1.5;
$base-line-height: $base-font-size * $base-line-height-count; // 27px
$relative-font-sizing: true; // use em and not px
$round-to-nearest-half-line: true; // prevent too big gaps between lines

A simple call to this mixin activates the vertical rhythm:

@include establish-baseline();

To adjust the font size, you do not use absolute values anymore, but a mixin. This can be used with the Mixin of Modular Scale:

h1 {
  @include adjust-font-size-to(modular-scale(6));
  @include trailer(1, modular-scale(6), margin);
}

You no longer directly define the distances above or below an element, but use mixins, as in the example trailer.

Fonts

I had the most problems choosing the font, as this is a difficult task. There are tons of fonts, but finding the right one for the occasion is a big hassle. To make matters worse, there are far more bad fonts on the Internet than good fonts.

Creating a font is an immense effort and therefore a license for a font step also costs a lot of money. But to use web typography, the designer of a font must release it for embedding in a website. Beautiful, free fonts are available, for example on The League of Movable Type.

In addition to owning the font, there is the possibility to integrate the font of a web service. There are for example pay-as-you-go solutions such as Adobe Typekit, which offer many professional fonts. Anyone unwilling to regularly pay to use a font can still choose from many fonts that have been freely made available by nice designers.

I first looked at Typekit, but then chose two free fonts that I integrate into my website via Google Fonts:

Gentium Basic for long-running texts
Yanone Kaffeesatz for headlines and shorter texts, as on the homepage

Gentian Basic is an appealing typeface with serifs and an italic typeface, while Yanone Kaffeesatz is a sans serif typeface. Both fonts in combination offer a harmonious picture.

On November 17, 2006, Oliver Reichenstein wrote on the Blog of Information Architects about the 100% Easy-2-Read Standard, this concept was new to me. At that time, the font on websites was consistently set too small. The browser standard has always been 16px. But many pages use values between 10 and 12 pixels.

After this blog post, designers started to increase the base font size. I even use 18px for my floating text font.

Font Weight

I load Gentium Basic in 400 and 700 and Yanone Kaffeesatz in 200 and 400. I can put bold parts of the body text in 700 and the rest in 400. On the homepage, I use Yanone Kaffeesatz. For high-resolution displays (Retina) I use a font width of 200, for all other displays 400.

Tracking, Widows and Orphans

Tracking, the inserting of spaces between individual letters, I use on my website in a few places and Kerning, reducing the spacing between individual letters, not at all. Manual kerning on the Internet is a time-consuming task. There are JavaScript solutions, but the whole thing is not worth the effort or load size on the web.

To prevent a single word from being alone on a new line, I have been using JavaScript for a while. Since this jQuery plugin did not work reliably in cases and had a large file size, I removed it after a few weeks.

Other Typographic Formatting

I use more typographic formatting, such as centered verse blocks, and correct quotation marks for inline citations depending on the language. I’ve written myself a Jekyll plugin that ensures that e.g., 1000 €, or 5 + 3 are provided with invisible spaces so that everything slips as a block in a new line and not character by character.

Interesting Links About Typography

For those who have become curious about typography, I have put together a small list of recommended links to this topic:

Design of My New Logo: From sketches to seal

Fri, 18 Apr 2014 00:00:00 GMT

Since a logo is one of the essential elements that recognize a website, I wanted from the beginning to design a logo that fits the theme of the rest of the design of the site.

Although I think that a private person does not need a logo. But without a logo is a nice visual element missing that can be used later in all sorts of places, for example as the favicon.

It was clear to me early that I wanted to use a Rakkan instead of a modern logo.

Rakkan

A Rakkan (or Hanko) is called in Japan a seal, which is carved in stone, representing the signature of an artist and is stamped under the artwork, and thus works as a signature.

Imprint of my Rakkan below a symbol for 忍 (Shinobi) written by me.

Even with my martial arts portal, I use a seal as a logo.

Research

Before I could start designing my new seal, I first had to conduct research. For this, I have looked at historical stamps in numerous works and studied their style and characteristics.

Stamps use multiple characters, four or even more. They exist in all forms, with the angular shape seeming to be the most common.

The next step was to choose the right font. As a typeface, many artists pick the small seal script, which was introduced by the Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang about 2200 years ago.

Tour in Chinese Writing Styles

The first Chinese characters were scratched on potsherds 6000 years ago. The oracle bone script was developed 3400 years ago during the Shang Dynasty and was used for prophecy with animal bone oracles.

As the bronze casting technique around the 11th century BC the bronze inscriptions were developed, which were used to write texts for politics, trade, military, administration, and oracles.

At the time of the Seven Kingdoms (475-221 BC), brush and ink were invented and written on bamboo, wood, and silk.

However, there were many spellings of the characters, which was not conducive to exchange and trading. King Zhou Xuanwang tried to solve this problem through the large seal script, but he did not succeed. As Emperor Qin Shin Huang unified the empire in 221 BC, he ordered a uniform font. Chancellor Li Si eliminated characters and reduced strokes, thus founding the small seal script.

The small seal is indeed beautiful by its curved lines, but was cumbersome to write in everyday use. At the beginning of the Han Dynasty, the clerical script, had much straighter lines and was easier and faster to write. This font further abstracted many characters.

At the same time, the cursive script was invented, which is called grass font. It was used for private correspondence, but written by the common people. In this font, the strokes are connected. It looks like the brush has not been lifted off the paper.

In the 2nd century AD, scribes who disliked the concept of chancery script developed the regular script.

At the end of the Han Dynasty, there was another style for private use besides the grass script: the semi-cursive script.

The next significant change took place in 1956 when the government simplified the text. More than 1000 characters were deleted and with 2200 characters, the number of lines was reduced. This should lead to a better literacy of the population.

The Meaning of the Characters on My Rakkan

For my new Rakkan, I have taken over the characters of my old Rakkan and then added two more characters. The old character contains the characters 木隠 (kogakure), which is not only the name of my martial arts portal, but my pseudonym on the Internet for many years. Translated, it means hidden behind trees and leaves.

The two new characters to the left of it mean 草 (grass) and 刀 (blade) in the small seal script. The signs allow numerous possibilities of interpretation, which I will not go into here to get anyone bored.

A seal can be created in two different variants: Yin or Yang (☯). In the Yin variant (as I have it on kogakure.de), the letters are carved out of the stone, and the surface remains. This time, I wanted to create a rakkan in the yang variant where everything is cut away except for the letters (and an edge).

The Creation of the Rakkan

First, I made numerous pencil drawings, first of individual characters that I liked, and later of combinations. I wondered how an artist would carve a traditional stamp, how the letters touch and support to give the seal the necessary stability.

Moleskine with pencil drawings of characters

After I had developed my final variant, I drew the pencil lines with a thick highlighter (not without almost ruining my bamboo table, since I omitted out of laziness to use a pad). The texture that emerges when ink spreads through the paper looks much like a stone-carved edge.

In the next step, I then digitized the Rakkan and corrected it in Adobe Photoshop to remove unsightly parts or improve the lines.

To create a vector shape from this pixel image, I imported the image into Adobe Illustrator and converted it to a vector shape, then reduced the number of vector points and exported it as an SVG file.

To use my logo as a vector font on the page, I used Font Custom to convert SVGs into web fonts. Thus, several vector graphics are combined as a single character in a font file. Once the font is loaded, the icons can then be displayed in any size and styled with CSS.

The Font

Now the Rakkan can be used as a character and can be generated by a CSS class attribute on any element. Then, the character can be colored at will and get the desired font size or text effects (such as a shadow edge).

Decodeunicode: All the world’s characters, one remarkable book

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 00:00:00 GMT

A Book with All Unicode Characters

By chance, I recently came across a book that is a buy recommendation for anyone interested in typography and characters. The book is 656 pages thick, contains all the current 109,242 digital characters of the Unicode character set, and weighs almost 2 kilograms.

I came into contact with Unicode early on because I love the Japanese language a lot. When I redesigned my martial arts website kogakure.de for the second time in 2000, I introduced a lexicon of Japanese martial arts terms with a set of graphics for Japanese characters. But this was hard to maintain, and I decided to publish a new version of my lexicon with Unicode in 2002. At that time, the spread of Unicode was somewhere between 0 and 1%, but I’ve been defying my visitors’ protests. Anyone who wanted to see the characters were forced to install the optional character set from the Windows CD. Today, an evaluation by Google estimates almost 50% of all websites are encoded in Unicode.

The current Unicode version 2.0 supports theoretical 1,114,112 characters, of which 109,242 are currently included. The current thick book offers for those interested a fantastic insight into the writings of this world. The first chapter deals with Unicode, its creation, structure, code tables, the recording method for new characters. There are chapters about different types of words and sounds, typography in politics, keyboard layouts, minority fonts, and modern input e.g., via the iPhone.

On the following hundreds of pages, all characters are listed, each with their code, language name, and font used. The appendix contains detailed statistics on the genesis, sources, period of creation, status, region, languages, type of writing, typeface, and the number of people who use them. Not all languages are yet included but have preserved space, e.g., the Aztec pictograms, various African languages, previously undeciphered languages, and the historical language Cirth by J. R. R. Tolkien. The book is equipped with two colored bookmarks (blue/green) that allow switching between the characters and the detailed explanation in the appendix.

I love that about every 5-10 pages a colored double page is inserted, on which the authors introduce beautiful or interesting characters. This book shows the creativity and beauty of the writings of many, diverse peoples, and is wonderfully suited to leafing through them again and again.

The Website

On the official website you can find a digital version in the English language, which allows searching, browsing, and exploring the world of Unicode. There is a 2½-hour-long movie showing all characters.

The Book

decodeunicode: Die Schriftzeichen der Welt
656 pages
Publisher: Schmidt (Hermann), Mainz; Edition: 1 (15. Mai 2011)
Language: German
Price: €68.00

Vim: Make text bend to your will

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 00:00:00 GMT

By the Power of Vim … I Have the Power

Something similar was said by the superhero He-Man from the 80s TV show Masters of the Universe before he got his superpowers. And Vim exists about as long as the TV show: 22 years. And the older Vi, on which Vim is based, has been around even longer than I live. If a simple text editor exists for a long time and gives these powers, it has to be something special about it.

Vim - cleanser and polisher. Brightens the home and the age.

The first time I stumbled upon Vim (or Vi) a couple of years ago, was when I first had to edit any file on a server and none of my fancy editors worked there. The first time I worked with Vi(m) was my natural reaction: WTF, I cannot tap until I press i? Who invented this crap?

But because I, as a web worker, inevitably have to work on the server, again and again, I could not avoid learning either Vim or Nano. For years, I coped well with four or five Vim key combinations. But I was wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Really wrong.

Three years ago, I had tried to learn Vim and had failed miserably. Why?

Vim is Incredible, Incredibly Complex (but Equally Powerful)

Some developers have been working with Vim for 20 years and do not think that they have mastered Vim.

That I failed then was sole because I had not started properly. With Vim, it is necessary to start slowly and gradually. As with almost any other art form, the basics must first be learned and mastered before moving on to the next level. I copied a Vim configuration file and was overwhelmed.

If you want to learn Vim, it’s important to first unlearn what all other editors have taught you wrong. With a text editor—whether Word, Notepad, TextMate, or another editor—you want to edit text. Even if you may think the most essential part is typing, that’s not true, not even with a book author, let alone a programmer.

Therefore, the whole philosophy of Vim is different from that of any other competitors. You cannot even compare the other editors with Vim.

When you use Vim, you feel as if you master the text, as a doctor can dissect the text with a scalpel. You navigate and edit your text in the best and most efficient way I’ve ever seen.

This is Not a Tutorial

I will not write a beginner’s tutorial here, it would be a waste of work, as there are countless sources on the Internet, and Vim Help is one of the best. And you can type vimtutor on your terminal to start an interactive Vim tutorial. Instead, I want to describe how I got the first steps right.

The First Steps

First, be sure to put all your Vim files and plugins under version control to be able to restore the same workspace to any computer in seconds. Incidentally, it’s a good idea to version all Bash files and Unix configuration files.

I have created a repository dotfile with Git, which contains subfolders for bash, bin, git, vim, and other programs. My Vim subfolder contains a file vimrc.vim and gvimrc.vim and various other Vim folders. This simple bash installation script installs my environment on a computer if desired:

#!/bin/bash

cd vim
export VIM_SRC=`pwd`
cd
ln -nfs $VIM_SRC .vim
ln -nfs $VIM_SRC/vimrc.vim .vimrc
ln -nfs $VIM_SRC/gvimrc.vim .gvimrc

This script links my configuration files as a symbolic link to the home directory where Vim expects them.

The Second and Most Important Step

Vim has the nasty feature of scattering files across folders taken from the Unix philosophy and does not facilitate the overview of what has been installed.

Tim Pope has programmed a fantastic plugin that is the last plugin to be installed traditionally: Pathogen.

Pathogen makes it possible to store plugins as bundles, individually, and bundled together as a nice package. All you have to do is download pathogen.vim and place it in the Vim folder in a subfolder autoload. The next step is to create a bundle folder in the Vim folder and open your .vimrc file. There you write at the beginning:

.vimrc

silent! call pathogen#runtime_append_all_bundles()
silent! call pathogen#helptags()

Plugins are from now on not put into the correct subfolders but put per plugin in a separate folder under bundle. For Vim, there are unfortunately various ways to install extensions. Simple scripts, automatic installer, and, thank God, Git checkouts.

Update: A few years ago, I switched to vim-plug, a minimalist Vim Plugin Manager. It has many pleasant features.

My recommendation is to switch to git checkouts. This has recently become easy because somebody created a mirror of many vim scripts under vim-scripts on GitHub, and thus allows the automatic update of the plugins via Git.

Another option is to clone the plugins as submodules, I use a small Ruby script from Tammer Saleh, to update my git repositories:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

git_bundles = [
  "git://github.com/scrooloose/nerdtree.git",
  "git://github.com/kogakure/snipmate.vim.git",
  "git://github.com/vim-scripts/vim-surround.git"
  # …
]

require 'fileutils'

bundle_dir = File.expand_path('../bundle/', __FILE__)

git_bundles.each do |url|
  dirname = File.basename(url)
  puts "* Extract #{url} → #{dirname}"
  dir = File.join(bundle_dir, dirname)
  cd #{dir} 2>/dev/null && git pull || git clone #{url} #{dir}
end

This great script clones my bundles or updates them from different places (GitHub, my server). The advantage is that in my repository I always have everything with me and I have not gotten it with a submodule command.

Basic Configuration

Next, you should open the .vimrc and enter basic settings. To find out which ones are the best, you can have a look at the blogs and screencasts mentioned below. I recommend that you always write comments next to each command that explains what it does.

My file is divided into several areas: First, the basic settings are line width, wrapping, colors, backups, and line numbering. Then follows an area for abbreviations, then the area for the mappings, then file-type settings, and at the end functions.

Keyboard Shortcuts

My biggest problem was that my keyboard had no keys left, about all the function keys and almost all the other keys were used. The consequence of this was that I constantly had to find out which function, which plugin or mapping now creates a conflict. But thank God, the ominous Leader, is a key that you can press and then press any key combination. By default, this key is located on the \ and is therefore difficult to reach, which is why you can remap it to another key, such as the space key or a comma:

let mapleader=','

By pressing the comma in NORMAL mode followed by my keyboard shortcuts, I can execute arbitrary commands.

Get Back Cherished Functions Through Plugins

If you switch from TextMate (or another editor) to Vim, you’re bound to miss your editor’s favorite features. If the missing feature does not work in Vim by itself, it will likely work with one of the thousands of plugins.

A sidebar, in which all files are to be seen in the tree structure, can for example added with NERD tree. At first, I thought, I’ll need this functionality undoubtedly, but since I know the buffers and splits of Vim, I use the NERD tree rarely.

Wincent Colaiuta has written Command-T an ingenious plugin that reproduces TextMate’s ability to open any file in the project with a few keystrokes.

Another essential plugin is surround. vim. It lets you manipulate, add or delete enclosures such as parentheses, tags, and single quotes.

TextMate was the first program that introduced snippets on a large scale. I’ve has been working with TextMate for years and could not work properly without snippets. Vim even offers several implementations for snippets. I use snipmate even though there is a more powerful (but more complicated plugin) for Power users. Snipmate offers almost all the functions that TextMate had, the snippets can almost be copied and modified with a few changes.

Peteris Krumin introduces it on his blog Vim Plugins You Should Know About.

Omnicomplete Power

Vim offers an unbeatable tool since version 7 with Omnicomplete. Omnicomplete completes everything: simple words, dictionaries, functions, classes, and file names. This is a genius. I’ve hooked up a 7 MB dictionary with German spelling, and now Vim completes any word that complicated.

There Will Be Color

No matter if you like it bright, or dark, for Vim there are almost countless color schemes that can be downloaded and changed in seconds. There is even the possibility to convert TextMate themes into Vim color schemes. The color files can be adjusted until the last one is satisfied.

And Where Do I Start Now?

If you have an hour and a half, take a look at the video from Google Tech Talk, in which the developer of Vim, the Dutchman Bram Moolenaar, shows in 7 Habits For Effective Text Editing 2.0 which is impressive on Vim.

There are two fantastic articles I can recommend: Coming Home to Vim by Steve Losh and How I boosted my vim by Vincent Driessen.

The Best Comes Last

But the best way to get started is with two incredible screencast series. Derek Wyatt’s Vim Tutorial Videos and the Screencasts at vimcasts.org. If you have little time to read through the blogs, take the time to watch his screencasts. They are between 5 and 30 minutes long, and he has made a number of them. I’ve rarely laughed that way because Derek not only shows how a professional developer works with Vim but has a remarkable sense of humor. It’s best to watch the beginner videos first. You should start with the introductory video Welcome to Vim. The screencasts on vimcasts.org are recommended.

Do not try too much at once, learn the basics, especially the motion commands, search commands, and string manipulations. And use them, even if you think the old way would go faster! In the beginning, you will be slow and feel that you are less productive with Vim. But that’s misleading since you’ll get better quickly and then depend on every other editor. The transition is not easy, I’ve been trying it for a month, and it’s difficult to get rid of all those awful habits: the constant grasp of the mouse or the nonsensical arrow keys to operate.

If you use Vim, you will have to type far less, and you will be able to edit your text much faster. But above all, you will be constantly excited again when you have discovered a new way to write better, faster, and more efficiently.

Django Article: Apparently they still print things and I’m in one of them

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Webstandards-Magazine, Issue 07/2010

There it lay in my mailbox: My voucher copy of the current issue 07/2010 of the Webstandards-Magazin. This is a premiere for me because I wrote my first article for the Webstandards-Magazin.

It should be three pages long, now it has almost become five. It was not possible to put all the fascination for Django, code samples, and graphics into that little space. But the editors-in-chief of Webstandards-Magazine Ansgar Hein and Jörg Morsbach were accommodating and gave me more space. Thank you again for that! I would like to thank the diligent helpers who have checked my article for content or spelling errors.

The article is not a tutorial with step-by-step instructions. But there are plenty of other good places on the internet for that. I wanted to clarify with my article, why I like Django and have stayed true to this web framework for more than four years, which is not self-evident because I am hard to please. I have used TextPattern, WordPress, CodeIgniter, ExpressionEngine, ModX, Symphony and other web frameworks and CMS, but since I use Django, I have the feeling that I control and understand everything on my website.

Django gives me a clean, easy-to-read Python code that even full-fledged beginner programmers can read. Since I changed my martial arts magazine kogakure.de to Django in May 2008, I am Djangonaut. I would like to implement many more projects with Django, but unfortunately, the distribution of Django is not as big as Ruby on Rails or various Java frameworks.

Unfortunately, I did not manage to publish the article at the same time as switching to Django, because of missing time … But I work without pressure. Meanwhile, ExpressionEngine is doing its job. I hope you like my article and bring more to the Django community.

The Webstandards-Magazin, Issue 07/2010 with the topic Tools will be published on 24/09/2010 in the station and airport bookstores for the price of €7.80 or by subscription for four issues per year for €28. You can find my article on pages 83-87: Einstieg in Django. Vielseitig und leistungsstark: Vorstellung des Python-Frameworks für anspruchsvolle Webanwendungen.

Rework: A sharp, illustrated manifesto for working smarter, not bigger

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Change the Way You Work Forever

Today, I recommend a book that I finished recently and read a second time: Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson.

I have long been a great believer in the philosophy of simplicity which is cultivated by 37signals successfully. Their first (free) book Getting Real (as paperback version) I read with great interest.

But with Rework they have achieved a true masterpiece. Not without reason, it is a bestseller in the US and the UK. Critics and CEOs praise the book in the highest terms (Seth Godin, John Maeda, Chris Anderson, and others).

And unlike the simple Getting Real, there’s Rework as a hardcover version, in an attractive binding and with fantastic drawings by Mike Rohde.

The official website of the book offers a sample excerpt, three funny promotional videos, tons of words of praise and quotes, photos of enthusiastic readers, and a full chapter overview.

Getting Real was created for programmers who want to complete a project. Rework, on the other hand, is suitable for every employee and employer, from the managing director to the administrator.

With 21,000 words, the book offers valuable tips for getting a productive and fulfilling working day. Much of this is not new (similar topics can be found in Getting Real), and none of this has been invented by 37signals, but I’ve read nowhere as many good tips in brevity and conciseness.

And for the lazy people, there is even an audiobook version.

HOME: A love letter to the planet

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Stunning Documentary About Our Earth

On June 5, 2009, Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s documentary film HOME started simultaneously and free of charge in all countries, on the internet, on television, and in cinemas, where the film was even made available to the cinemas for free. In addition, the film is available on DVD, and part of the sale price will be donated to the organization Good Planet.

With a budget of approximately $10-15 million, sponsored by EuropaCorp and PPR, the director wanted to create a moving film about our planet, in which he consistently succeeded.

No time for pessimism.

The film has a playing time of 1 hour and 33 minutes and is roughly divided into three parts:

The origin of the earth, life, and species
The destruction and traces of Homo Sapiens
Hope and ways out

The shots are shot in stunning (or terrifying) landscapes throughout the air and are commented on by a narrator. In addition, beautiful music was composed by Armand Amar. The composer has used many musicians from different nations, including the wonderful singer Gombodorj Byambajarga, the Mongolian singer Enkhajargal Dandarvaanchig, drummers from Shanghai, and the Budapest Symphony Orchestra from Hungary.

Dubai has endless sun, but no solar panels.

The film is designed to get viewers to write about it, make their governments turn around, and raise awareness of the topic. Even compared to other films on this topic, HOME is the most impressive documentary I’ve seen.

The film provides facts and frightening images that will scare even educated and well-informed people. It has on the other side images of stunning beauty, which give reason to preserve our earth.

You can watch the movie in HD on YouTube.

GitWeb Theme: Because the default GitWeb theme hurt my eyes

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

GitHub Style for GitWeb

The standard theme of GitWeb is not appealing and was designed for functionality.

I could not stand it anymore. I have created an alternative, which I based on the design of GitHub.

The exact installation instructions are included in the package on GitHub.

Screenshots

Project View

Summary

Commit DIFF

Log

GitWeb Theme on GitHub →

Git: Your Git learning playlist

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Introduction to Git

I have been using the Git version control system for almost one and a half years and am thrilled every day. Even at my employer, switching from Subversion to Git will soon happen.

At home, everything is Git repositories on my hard drive, and I cannot imagine working without Git anymore. Git has improved a lot over the last year and a lot of additional software, documentation, and films have been released for Git.

I replace the now obsolete post of 2007 with a large list of helpful links to Git:

Official Website

Git – Fast Version Control System

Tutorials and Documentations

The Git Community Book – The community book, available online and as a PDF

Short Instructions

tryGit – Learn Git interactive in the browser
Git Immersion – Beautifully designed Guided Tour through the basics of Git
git – the simple guide – Git in a nutshell (on a long page)
Official Git Tutorial
SVN Crash Course – A crash course for people who already know SVN
Effectively Using Git With Subversion – A good introduction to how to use Subversion (SVN) with Git
Git Ready – Short git tips for beginners, advanced, and professionals
Sei (k)ein Blödmann und nimm Git: Einführung in Versionskontrolle mit Git – my German presentation about Git

Instructions with More Detail

Intro to Distributed Version Control (Illustrated) – Detailed, illustrated explanation of distributive version control
Git for Computer Scientists – A brief introduction to the technical details in Git
Git User’s Manual – The Official User Guide
Git Magic – An alternative book
The GitHub Guides – GitHub tips and tutorials
An Illustrated Guide to Git on Windows – Step-by-step guide for Windows users
Vss2git – A Windows GUI That Exports an Existing Microsoft Visual Sourcesafe 6.0 (VSS) Repository to a New Git Repository.

References

Reference Manual – Detailed reference of all commands
Git Cheat Sheet – A useful cheat sheet

Videos and Screencasts

Official Git Screencasts
Google Tech Talk: Linus Torvalds on git – Linus Torvalds presents Git at Google
Google Tech Talk: Git – Randal Schwartz introduces Git for an hour
Git the basics – Bart Trojanowski introduces Git (2 parts)

Git Hosting

Software

MacOS

Gity – Git-GUI with many features in the Snow Leopard style (now under Open Source!)
GitX – Chic Git GUI for Mac OS X.
ProjectPlus – TextMate plug-in, the Git, Mercurial, Bazaar, and SVN status flags supported
Git TextMate bundle – TextMate bundle

Windows

Git for Windows – A Windows Git GUI
Git Extensions – A sleek Windows Git GUI, with 5 screencasts to use
TortoiseGit – Git as a Windows Explorer shell extension
SmartGit – Commercial solution for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux

Conclusion

There’s no reason now not switch to Git, and any ridiculous argument against Git can be casually refuted. Although there are a lot of subversion repositories, even this can be cloned without problems thanks to git-svn (which is installed with Git).

Subversion and Git (Mercurial, Bazaar, …) cannot be compared because their approach is different. With Git, you can work in the same way (central repository) as with Subversion. But you can work distributed and use the many fantastic possibilities of Git (local branches, offline work, nearly no server load, small file size, …).

If Subversion is used in your company, and it does not work to introduce Git (despite Git’s clear, business benefits), then use git-svn for a transitional period (people will not even know). Although not all options are available from Git, the work is at least easier.

Colors of Japan: Historic hues from kimono to samurai armor, packaged for modern design

Sat, 08 Dec 2007 00:00:00 GMT

During a visit to the art exhibition Japan and the West in the Art Museum Wolfsburg, I was able to get my hands on a wonderful book about the traditional, Japanese colors.

In the museum shop, I bought the book The Traditional Colors of Japan which is in Japanese. In addition to a full-color palette of 250 colors, it contains an exact indication of RGB, CMYK, and other information.

Each page of the book shows three colors that are always juxtaposed with one or more stunning photos. The photos show the traditional use of colors in kimonos, samurai armor, monk clothing, or nature.

In 2011 the second book, Traditional Japanese Color Palette was released which showcases a huge amount of Japanese color palattes with examples from culture, tradition, and art.

Color Palette for Graphic Software

I took the time to create the RGB palette with the correct color names as an Adobe Exchange file (ASE). This color palette can be used in Photoshop or Illustrator.

See Traditional Colors of Japan →

GTD: Getting Things Done

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 00:00:00 GMT

One and a Half Years With GTD

For one and a half years I use now the principles of GTD (Getting Things Done®), from the book by David Allen, to organize my tasks.

In his book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, David Allen introduces an interesting system that allows you to do your tasks efficiently.

In any case, I think that one gets the everyday madness governed by Allen’s system.

The GTD Basics

This is what the inbox looked like before I sorted all loose ends

GTD uses the concept of contexts, which are certain situations/places to which a task is assigned (telephone, home, care, or similar). Besides, there can be an allocation to a project.

Tasks are done within a context, which means you do several calls at once if you’re on the phone.

In GTD, everything unsorted that comes on the table is moved to an Inbox. These can be a variety of things, consisting of e-mails, mail, voice memos, notes, or scribbles. The Inbox will be emptied at a picked time—for example, Friday afternoon or every day at 18:00—with each task being processed, leaving nothing unprocessed in the Inbox.

Depending on the estimated effort, the tasks are either completed immediately (if the duration is about 2 minutes) or moved to another location. If the task is part of a multipart process, a project is created to which you assign the task.

Things can additionally be moved as reference material for later (like a brochure).

You might not do a task currently because you have no time or no active interest in it. It might be interesting enough to keep it. You move these types of tasks to a Someday list. It can be reviewed now and then. Thus, the ideas are not lost but do not burden the head.

Tasks can be delegated to other people or planned for certain times. If you have to wait for someone else to do a task, you assign it to the context of Waiting.

GTD in Everyday Life

This is what the inbox looked like after sorting all loose ends

GTD may look complicated or awkward, but it helps immensely to prevent keeping pondering.

After a short time of adjustment, I got used to this way of working. I quickly took over the habit of writing every thought and classifying them by the GTD principles. I never forget important things again, and even small ideas do not disappear from my head.

Ideally, you have certain work tools that can vary depending on the person and circumstances. I use a combination of web applications, text files, Moleskine® notebook, and post-its® in different places (on the bedside table).

For computer professionals, numerous systems and programs allow GTD digital. Thus, the right work tool should be found for everyone. Whole sites and weblogs deal with GTD (for example lifehack.org, Lifehacker or 43 Folders).

The Right GTD Solution?

Since I met GTD for the first time, I’m looking for and testing alternative solutions for Allen’s system.

The perfect system in the daily implementation doesn’t exist for me, with all solutions you have to compromise. When a neural interface has been developed, in which one can feed their thoughts instantly in text form and can retrieve them directly and anywhere on the retina, I will be satisfied.

The GTD solutions I’ve seen have been either too simple or too complex for me.

Simple systems, such as pure text, did not work for me. Certain things always remained outside. I’ve been testing an interesting candidate with TaskPaper over the last few weeks, which did not allow me to schedule appointments and so was not good enough for the long-term test. Let's see how the software evolves.

The complex systems, which allowed various lists, keywords, various data, and mappings, were too time-consuming.

Key features for me are:

Location independence, since I am an employee, I want to capture my thoughts from different places.
System independence is not relevant for me, but I aim to avoid depending on certain operating systems.
Assigning Appointments is for me a separation between a diary and Next Actions and is out of the question.
Fast and easy is important, ideally to create tasks without a mouse.

At the same time, I've sometimes gone double-tracked to test a new system, but I use my primary tool.

Update

After its release in 2009, I started using Things by Cultured Code. After using it for a few years, updates became scarce, and the next version was late for years. I tried meanwhile alternative solutions, but some months after the release of Things 3 I switched back, because of its easy-to-use interface and instant synchronization speed.

Koi Design: Translating traditional tattoo art into UI

Sat, 02 Jun 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Inspiration and Idea For My Header

The idea for the design of a previous version of this website has been buzzing around in my head for a while. As an inspiration, I used the art of Japanese tattoo – Irezumi.

Irezumi – The Japanese Tattoo

Tattoos are an art that is transient in the truest sense of the word since with the wearer the artwork disappears as soon as they die. But this fits in well with the concept of the flowing world, a concept of transience in Buddhism. In the symbol of the samurai, the cherry blossom, one can see the transience of being after a short duration of a perfect life.

These works of art are painful (dozens of bamboo needles are stung several times a second), tedious (from a few months to several years), and expensive (starting at €20,000). That is the reason I like to look at them, but will never wear one myself.

One of the best living artists of the Irezumi is Horiyoshi III, whose works can be seen in many illustrated books: Tattoos from the Floating World: Ukiyo-e Motif’s in Japanese Tattoo and Bushido: Legacies of the Japanese Tattoo.

Irezumi does not at random tattoo things on the body, the images have a profound meaning to the wearer and require expertise in religion, history, and myths from China and Japan. That is the reason bad copies and pseudo-Japanese tattoos are offered in Western tattoo studios. These tattooists lack this background knowledge.

Yakuza

The Japanese tattoo got famous through their most significant carriers – the members of the Japanese criminal organization Yakuza – but today Irezumi is worn by businessmen and even Housewives.

The links to the Japanese art of ukiyo-e (woodcut) are fluid and the motives are the same.

Motives

In addition to gods, mythical creatures, and demons, the most important source of motifs is the ancient Chinese novella Shuǐhǔ Zhuàn (Water Margin), known in Japan as Suikoden. It belongs to one of the four classical books of Chinese literature. The German translation of this entertaining book is called Die Räuber vom Liang Schan Moor.

Water Margin

Motif from Suikoden by Kuniyoshi: Captain Lu-Ta, the flowery monk, smashes a tree with a blow to impress a gang of good-for-nothings.

In short, it is about a band of robbers of 108 heroic men and women. Each of whom is forced into lawless life by adverse circumstances, and entrenching themselves on a fortified island in Liang-Shan marsh, where they go on a rampant raid for years. They fight against corrupt officials of the emperor and numerous villains. The story is true in parts and should have taken place in the Song Dynasty.

The adventure is available in paperback format and entertaining – even for children – although one or the other side is more violent than the regular children’s book.

Meaning of the Motif

The motif I chose for my design shows a koi (carp) trying to swim up the heavy rapids of Longmen Falls.

Legend has it that a koi, who manages to swim up the magical waterfalls, transforms into a dragon. After another 500 years, he turns into a horned dragon and after 1000 years into a winged dragon. Thus, the next design should show a dragon.

Koi floating up the Longmen Waterfalls. It contains typical elements such as leaves, flowers, and wave crests (AI upscaled from a pixel image).

The hardest part of my design was how much tattooing to see on the page. While the Japanese tattoo lives on the surface, leaving nothing to feet, hands, and a small front area, a large area would have made the page restless and distracted from the content. To make matters worse, there is no end to a body tattoo. But on the internet, your space is limited by the edges of the browser.

Nevertheless, I hope that I have managed to capture the appearance of an Irezumi digitally.