Rehabilitieren wir den Optimismus
01. January 2022 | link this post
Wir haben in den letzten Jahren auf eine Menge an Krisen geschaut: COVID-19, die Klimakrise, das Scheitern unserer Bemühungen in Afghanistan. Bedeutet das Hoffnungslosigkeit? Scheitert alles was wir anfassen? Nein! Wir müssen dem entschieden und mit aller Kraft und allem Optimismus entgegen treten. Menschen brauchen eine positive Vision dessen was vor ihnen liegt, sie brauchen Mut. Unsere Antworten auf die Krisen unserer Zeit sollten genau diesen Mut und diese Zuversicht geben. Konzentrieren wir uns darauf wie die Transformation unserer Wirtschaft im Rahmen der Klimakrise eine bessere Welt mit höherer Lebensqualität schafft, abseits von maßlosem Konsum. Konzentrieren wir uns darauf was uns verbindet, statt alles Fremde als Bedrohung zu begr…
The issue (an issue?) with YouTube (and others)
03. January 2021 | link this post
This observation is certainly not limited to YouTube but has been driven home for me recently on that platform: with my old computer getting a bit slow and also being big and power-hungry I was looking into the new M1 Macs and, as you do, went to YouTube to look for some people sharing their impressions to get something beyond just the technical data. What I found however was a lot of "why I bought XYZ and YOU SHOULD TOO", " the BIG ISSUE with XYZ", "NO BIG ISSUES with XYZ" and things of that sort. Now this is of course not new. Essentially everyone actually making a living from something like YouTube (or a part of their living) is in a race for what boils down to eyeball-minutes. Every person interested in…
Just a thought
31. December 2020 | link this post
https://www.notion.so/Consumerism-Resources-e35fe87cc6094ecb82a8ee83072b69c3 This link came form a YouTube-Video I'll link here once I've looked it up again. Reading through some of the links here there is one train of thought I feel to be rather important: we do need to actually consider what things are actually "basic normal things" we feel we "must have" and what is luxury. I am fairly certain we may have gotten overly used to getting a lot of this wrong and changing course will feel like loosing something at the start.
Ups and downs of minimalism
27. November 2020 | link this post
video on YouTube Aesthetic minimalism: might be „good“, or it might not. Inherently it is neither. This is one of those pieces where I want to agree and disagree at the same time. Let’s dissect the topic a bit: I think we have three subtopics here: Minimalist aesthetics: A certain look preferred by a number of people and described in the video es being often limited to an affluent population for a number of reasons. Probably neutral from an environmental standpoint: there seems to be no reason an item has a different impact based on aesthetics. Buying „better things“: This has an economic dimension since often the „better things“ are expensive. This still may be environmentally neutral, a high-quality thing may well have the same impact on the…
Old fashioned, heavy handed and power hungry
26. January 2020 | link this post
That’s me according to my latest power bill, nothing like this to take a good long look at what you‘re doing wrong. Especially after I thought about myself as doing quite ok in this regard. Stuff I run I‘ll forego the normal things like the fridge here but focus on some tech-stuff that caught my eye when I looked a little closer. A HP Microserver running FreeNAS A Synology box Switches and other networking things For these there we’re always interesting and more or less rational reasons when I bought them. This got me thinking if they are still needed though. Let’s take a tour. Storage Why are there two file-servers? This actually has some validity as one is my personal system and the other work-related. However: do I still need the personal …
The empire of things
09. January 2020 | link this post
The title is stolen, or at least borrowed, but the issue is nevertheless real and important. As I look around my home I find that I have accumulated far too much stuff. There are of course things worth owning and that is not limited to purely necessary items: there are things we enjoy and like to own. But far too often there are things where we have long since forgotten why we got them in the first place. There are also things that do fill a specific purpose but are of low quality and that thus will need regular replacement - low quality being a special bane of our time. All of this strikes me as more and more of a problem. In the end the way out of this is simple: buy what you need, buy things where using them gives you enjoyment end…
Less stuff, better things II
30. December 2019 | link this post
I was reminded of this post I had written on having less but better thinks since we just had the Christmas season and a lot of people obviously bought a lot of things. A lot of it will probably be used for a while (moste importantly it will be used whenever the person who gave the gift sees it) and then be discarded or simply forgotten in one corner. In stark contrast to my youth or earlier adulthood I am really happy about one special gift: not having gotten a lot of stuff. The most beautiful "thing" I think was my family investing money not in a gift but rather donating to have a while bunch of plastic removed from the ocean. A thing to keep in mind though: this value of less I think is something you will only fully see after…
Long time no See - back in the Apple world
21. October 2019 | link this post
It's been a while since I've written about my views on Apple these days and what I'm missing with Microsoft by comparison. In the meantime I've somewhat rejoined the world of Apple based computing with the iPad Pro and so far the experience has been great. To be fair I don't use a lot if the power of the device yet as it is largely used for editing text (waiting on my Bluetooth keyboard from amazon as typing on screen is not really my thing) and using tools like things or OmniFocus. The system feels much more appropriate to the device with iPad OS now then back in the days on my iPad 2 - back then it really was treated a lot like a big phone. Things have changed Back when I used to have an iPad it used to be mostly a device for consuming…
HyperCard and the bicycle of the mind
14. October 2019 | link this post
youtu.be/8i60_REoeIY This weekend I listened to this quite fascinating talk on HyperCard and was surprised how current a lot of the things you could do with it still feel. There is more to come on this as I’ve got a few thoughts on it. But so long there is some food for thought.
Less stuff, better things
16. May 2019 | link this post
This may seem a little out of context but lately it's been bugging a bit that I've accumolated a lot of "stuff". There are also a few great things that have over the years found their way to me, but sadly a lot of less great things as well. So this my reminder to myself to gravitate more towards fewer, yet better things.