Lese gerade den Steppenwolf. Nach anfänglichen Schwierigkeiten mit Hermann Hesses Art, Sätze zu schreiben die drei Seiten dauern, gefällt es mir jetzt sehr gut. Das Thema über das hadern mit dem eigenen Platz in der Welt passt gerade gar nicht schlecht zu meinem eigenen Lebensabschnitt.

Außerdem habe ich mir mit meiner Freundin diese Woche “the penguin lessons” Im Kino angeschaut. Nach dem Verlassen des Kinos dachte ich mir noch “hmm der war ganz nett aber ziemlich durchschnittlich…” Aber je länger ich darüber nachdenke umso schlechter hat er mir dann doch gefallen. Eine Reihe austauschbarer Klischees wurden hier aneinander gepappt um einen langatmigen unpersönlichen und oberflächlichen Film zu machen. RogerEbert.com drückt es gut aus: Der Film will gut sein, hat aber Angst davor großartig zu sein.

Not Jewish and I’ve only been to Israel once, so take my anecdotal experiences with the appropriate amount of salt…

So as with any religion, there are a lot of different sects in Judaism. Some are more radical and traditional than others. The most fundamental Jewish communities in Isreal sometimes have a pretty negative outlook on outsiders and foreigners in general and stick to strict fundamental religious principles. So there are stories of them messing with tourists, like throwing rocks at their cars and spitting at them. I didn’t experience anything like that myself, but was warned about it happening in certain areas.

My theory is that the American group wandered into one of those areas and got roughed up a bit.

This is a frequently repeated quote attributed to the late philosopher Frederic Jameson. On its own it doesn’t make a statement about capitalism or what it is at all. (If you wanna know more about Jamesons theories on capitalism you can read about it in his books)

Jameson’s quote points out that people often find it easier to picture possible world ending doomsday scenarios, than it is for them to think about alternatives to living in a capitalist world to try to avoid these scenarios.

You can even test this yourself. Ask people around you about the end of the world and many will point out reasons like climate change, demographic changes, environmental destruction, pollution, world wars, nuclear holocaust, asteroid impacts (shoutout Roland Emmerich) and even biblical scenarios for an eventual end of the world as we know it.

But ask them if they think there are other ways to live, so that those things won’t happen and usually they will just give you a version of “this is just how things are, not much you can do about it” or “the world could be different, but there is no use in trying because this is just a utopia and I have no idea how to change stuff anyways”.

Regarding your last paragraph, imo this kinda misses the point. I agree, there are structures that exist parallel to what most people consider capitalism, but ask people in most self described capitalist societies and they will not really recognise the difference and will just see it as an anomaly at best.

Btw, this is all coming from a European perspective, albeit heavily informed by US media.

Ich bin da auch immer etwas hin und hergerissen wenn ich mal wieder auf Amazon die neueste Kapitalismuskritik sehe, aber am Ende sind das nun mal die reichweitenstärksten Plattformen, wenn man sowas selber finanzieren und veröffentlichen würde würde es niemand sehen…

Man merkt aber schon, dass Serien wie the Boys zwar fleißig gegen Fox/Disney/etc schiessen, aber zufällig vergessen wer uns unsere ganzen billigen Produkte bringt die dort beworben werden.

Ich schaue gerade die neue Staffel White Lotus und finde sie mal wieder überragend. Habe durch mein Umfeld leider häufig Kontakt zu ähnlichen Leuten und bin immer wieder schockiert wie perfekt diese Serie deren Verhalten abbildet, kritisiert und persifliert. Trotzdem geht man aus der Serie raus und denkt sich: das sind ja alles irgendwie furchtbare Menschen, aber am Ende sind sie doch eben Menschlich und ihr Versagen verständlich, auch wenn ihr Verhalten deshalb natürlich nicht weniger verwerflich ist.

Außerdem lese ich gerade Noli Me Tangere von José Rizal. Ist in den Philippinen wohl ein Klassiker, den jedes Kind gelesen haben muss. Bis jetzt kann ich sagen, aus gutem Grund. Packend geschriebene Sozial- und Kolonialismuskritik aus einem Teil der Welt, über den ich bisher kaum etwas wusste. Besonders die spanischen Kolonialherren und ihre katholischen Priester werden heftig kritisiert. Die Handlung erinnert mich ein wenig a den Graf von Monte Christo, auch hier ist der Hauptcharakter ein Verlorener Sohn der heimkehrt, veränderte Zustände vorfindet und Rache üben muss. Trotzdem schafft es Noli Me Tangere sein eigenes Ding zu sein, besonders durch sein fantastisches Setting.

BONUS: Da das Buch so alt ist, gibt es es auf Project Gutenberg kostenfrei als ebook: Noli Me Tangere

Auch spanned: José Rizal ist durch seine Werke mitverantwortlich für die Philippinische Revolution gegen die Spanier und wurde deshalb von den Spaniern hingerichtet. Ein faszinierender Mann… José Rizal

Another company Microsoft bought and ran into the ground. It’s really incredible that they managed to get their lunch stolen. They had basically a monopoly and gave it away without a fight. Hell, the colloquialism for video calling someone was to Skype them for a looong time.

And then one small competitor comes along and it’s all gone. How can you fuck up this bad? Especially during the pandemic, in which they should have further entrenched their monopoly…

That is the German name for flea markets. It’s when people sell old stuff they don’t want or need anymore in their garden/some square/the street.

Guess the creators are Germans…

Fuck Banksy he’s a sellout and not a graffiti artist. There is no deeper meaning behind his wannabe deep, wannabe social critic shit, just pretentious bullshit for instagram aesthetics. The only things he’s good at are marketing and selling himself to rich twats with questionable taste. Even my 80 yr old grandma, who is as much a part of the establishment as it gets, is a big fan.

He also could be considered a plagiarist. Check out blek le rat, he did his style and a lot of his images before banksy was even a thing.

R.I.P King Robbo, he knew all along.

So basically what they are saying is that Europe is quite innovative, they just don’t have a capitalist enough culture and enough money in venture capital to exploit that innovation as much as the US?

Seems like a win for Europe to me, most shit venture capitalists touch turns into toxic garbage and most unicorns fucking suck.

Don’t forget about all the Nazis with their robot dogs that make up the police force over there.

There just isn’t another way to keep the place nice and safe without them.

Wow, thanks for the in depth reply! Probably will do as you suggested and just buy the most expensive one I can afford.

The reason I was a little scared of temperature issues is that my MacBook right now turns into a room heater as soon as I do something more complicated than using notes. To the point where it damaged the screen when I worked on an external display with the internal display closed. I’m very glad to hear that that doesn’t seem to be an issue anymore with apple silicone. It’ll be so nice to be able to use my laptop on my lap again!

That definitely calms some of my concerns I had. Thanks for the input. What kind of tasks do you use it for at work? Are thy similar to my area of work?

Thanks for the feedback, it definitely helps! What specs do you have on your MacBook at the moment, if you don’t mind me asking? Right now I’m managing the storage with external disks, but having some more internal storage will definitely be a good upgrade.

Ok, that makes sense. Thanks for the input, definitely makes the choice a little easier!

Thanks for the feedback! Tbh, I’d also prefer the max, but I’m not sure if I can justify spending the extra money. The ones I picked are already stretching the budget.

Is the better GPU really worth spending 1K more? Or do you think the ones I selected will do fine with the jobs I need it to do?

I agree with your comment, even though I have no idea on the technical aspects. What I can weigh in on is crisis management, especially communication.

Boeing needs to take control of the situation and actively start communicating and showing that they are working on fixing this thing. In Situational Crisis Communication Theory you would call it a rebuild approach. They tried denial, they tried downplaying, it’s not working. A rebuild strategy is usually the last resort, as things like admitting your mistakes and fixing them are rarely appreciated by investors. Furthermore it’s usually a huuuuge cost to do a recall on that scale. But Boeing need to show the public that they are actively working on improving the situation, to earn back their trust. So at least a partial recall should be considered.

You’re exactly right in your first paragraph about the news. The media and the public are very sensitive to Boeing quality issues rn. These articles won’t stop unless one of three things happen. Either Boeing gets their shit together and gets some effective crisis management and communication done, the company goes bust, or something else turns up in the news that replaces this. The third option will be the most likely, but it will also haunt them forever. It’s like that exploding galaxy note 7 situation. There were articles about that for every new generation of Galaxy Note, despite Samsung doing pretty well in investigating the issues. And while the following Note phones sold alright, the whole thing was a significant loss of trust and money for Samsung and enabled competitors like Huawai to catch up.

What they do right is having a duopoly with Airbus, and great military contracts. So investors know that even if things are shit rn, they will probably get better again.

Furthermore, while I agree that Boeing probably will not go bankrupt over this, the valuation sometimes is not a great indicator of what’s going on internally. Enron was worth over 60 billion. Half a year later they were at zero. Now I’m not saying Boeing is nearly that bad, but they are in some trouble for sure.

Working for Boeings PR department must be absolute madness right now… imagine having to somehow excuse all those fuck ups and every week there is a new one

I know the general gist of the situation. Low spending from domestic households, real estate bubble, excessive government influence on industry scaring investors, and so on.

My problem with it is that most headlines make it sound like it’s all gonna implode spectacularly tomorrow. The articles themselves usually paint a more reasonable picture of the situation, similar to your comment. But most people don’t read the article. They just see the headline over and over.

Feels like I’ve been reading headlines like this for at least 3 years now. If it all finally comes crashing down, it’s gonna be a big one I guess.