deus62.com

| 2025 | one thought at a time |

"Too Old to Rock 'n' Roll: Too Young to Die!”
(Jethro Tull)

02 | February

21 | I was at a lot of concerts in my lifetime. The "Casual Archivist" had a great post on February 4, showcasing what concert tickets used to look like.In retrospect, the biggest mistake I made in my life was to not keep the many concert tickets after purchase. I usually bought myself a "Guld Tuborg" (or other beverages in other countries), stuffed the ticket into my pocket in case anyone might ask for it and then threw it out at some point.Stupid.

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20 | I've been reading "Culture Critic" on and off for a while now and just yesterday, they posted something over on "X" that has been on my mind for quite a while. Here's a quick summary of the somewhat meandering (first) thoughts on a broad subject:"Every aspect of life is being stripped of color.Look at car colors since 1990. Paint suppliers are seeing huge shifts toward black, gray, silver and white color preferences. 80% of new cars are now grayscale. Ridley Scott's "Napoleon" made sets and costumes that are vibrant in reality, but look utterly lifeless on screen. Muted color grades (that blue/gray wash over everything) are the new normal in cinema. Recently, we were told HBO is rebranding Max - again. The big change? It will go from using blues to a duller combination of black and white. In fact, colors in all objects have been steadily neutralized since 1800, per a study of photos of 7000 objects in the UK Science Museum.What is behind the relentless shift to neutrality?It's partly materials. Moving from wood to metals and plastics led to more neutral color schemes.But David Batchelor's book 'Chromophobia' argues that it goes back to very birth of Western thinking. Plato, Aristotle, and thinkers that followed saw color as opposed to the higher workings of the mind. Plato famously saw the world of sight as a deceptive 'prison-house'. Color is a sensory experience, and humans should look beyond the sensory world to uncover truth (using reason). Aristotle thought lines, not color, contain the soul and meaning of an image. The essence of a thing is its form - what makes a chair a chair, not just a pile of wood. Later, thinkers like Rousseau and Kant agreed, stating that the drawing of forms is what gives life to color. Color can only add charm to art, but has no bearing on aesthetic judgement because it is purely sensory. So, color in the Western mind represents chaos and form represents order and rationality.Maybe that's why brands that want to be taken "seriously" choose muted storefronts, unlike a colorful book shop with no such ambitions.But minimalism takes this further. When the modernists stripped all detail from architectural design, it was a kind of extreme rationalism that distilled everything to its basic form. As Adolf Loos raved: 'we have gone beyond ornament, we have achieved plain, undecorated simplicity.' Color was primitive and must be purged along with everything else. Only form mattered. The result was copy-paste, colorless architecture that comes from nowhere and yet exists everywhere.There's no single explanation for the achromatic shift across industries. But commercial incentives is a big one: appeal to the broadest possible tastes and offend no one. Appeasing homogenous, mass consumer markets improves profits in all sorts of things. There's a related shift in music, where complexity is being stripped out to appeal to worldwide streaming audiences. [...]"

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19 | Adrien Brody is great in "The Brutalist". Finally, an excellent film.

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18 | We've got elections here this upcoming Sunday and for the first time in my life, I still don't have the slightest idea whom/which party I should vote for. It really comes down to deciding on the least destructive force for the next few years.

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17 | The town we live in isn't really on anyone's map and I regularly have to explain where it is we actually live. All that changed last night when a house blew up near here (but far enough away to not have any effect on us) and that explosion made the national news. Suddenly, everyone wanted to know if we were alright. We are.

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16 | I don't really buy CDs anymore. But, once in a while I do, like today. A shop in Bruchsal, a city just around the corner from here, had two shelves filled with special, deluxe and limited digipak releases on sale for a few Euro each, so I bought some to add to the collection:Van Morrison's "What's It Gonna Take" (2022, Exile), Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' "Live at the Fillmore 1997" (Warner, 2022, double CD), Chris Rea's "The Best" (contains two new tracks), Keith Richards' "Main Offender" (BMG 2021, remastered deluxe edition), Max Richter's double CD collection "Voyager: Essential Max Richter" (Deutsche Grammophon, 2019), two recent Michael Schenker Group releases, "Universal" (2022) and "Immortal" (2021, incl. BluRay), a Wham "The Singles" compilation, just for the hell of it, plus Nils Wülker's "Decade: Live" (Warner, 2018).A good haul for the price of a Whopper meal or two.

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15 | I had high hopes for "The Gorge", but, alas, it was just another major dud with two great actors in it who were totally wasted on this trash."A prime example of Hollywood at its most uninspired—cheesy, cliché-filled rubbish that feels like it was written by an AI trained exclusively on predictable action-romance tropes. From start to finish, the film leans on tired dialogue, over-the-top set pieces, and forced emotional beats that never land.Instead of delivering a fresh take, it rehashes every familiar plot device imaginable, leaving little room for originality or genuine engagement. The action is excessive but meaningless, and the romance feels more like a box-ticking exercise than an organic connection. If you’re looking for something with depth, wit, or even just basic storytelling competence, The Gorge isn’t it."

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14 | Just a few minutes ago, I read "Commentary: What is going on in Germany?" by Constanze Stelzenmüller and Sophie Roehse, published on February 6, 2025. This was written before the Munich Security Conference and concisely summarizes Germany's problems before the upcoming elections.Incidentally, Constanze Stelzenmüller, who has racked up a more than impressive CV, lived just across from us and we knew each other as children way back when.

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13 | I'm not the fast food type at all, although I do appreciate a good burger every few weeks or so, but "Menu price increases at McDonald’s, Taco Bell, and other chains are sparking consumer revolt" outlines a development that might very well eventually eradicate a lot of franchises if they don't find a way to counteract rising prices and consumer dissatisfaction.

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12 | If you are at all interested in politics beyond the usual social network fare, have a look at the following in-depth (and free) article to understand what is happening at this very moment (and, as I predict, will be happening across other western democracies eventually): "The Path to American Authoritarianism - What Comes After Democratic Breakdown", written by Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way and published on foreignaffairs.com on February 11, 2025.

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11 | "Make Analog Great Again!" Best quote so far this year.Edit: I took the quote from one of the comments on this wonderful thread over on "X", which decries SaaS ("Software as a Service"), something that has spread like a destructive wildfire and is nothing but a full-blown attack on our sanity (and wallet).I head over to "X" once a week to visit my "reading" feed on a protected account which is exclusively limited to web development and technology discussions. Everything else, and I really do mean everything else, is blocked out.

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10 | When I watched Kendrick Lamar at the halftime show at the Super Bowl, I caught myself thinking I'd rather have been at the Copa Sudamericana Final in 2019.See, one band that showed up (for the pre-game show) came from the same city (Santa Fe, Argentina) as one of the teams, a team which had never been in a continental final. Once the first note sounds ("Bombón"), the stadium explodes and when they segue into the second song after a mere minute, "Soy Sabalero" (the nickname of the team), it pushes things into the stratosphere for everyone in attendance.That's a show for the many fans!Have a look : "Los Palmeras | 2019 Copa Sudamericana Final".

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09 | Jason Kottke has announced that he has "[...] pivoted to posting almost exclusively about the coup happening in the United States right now. My focus will be on this crisis for the foreseeable future."Sorry, but I think it's a pity and in the tsunami of similar activities across websites I read regularly, I also think it will ultimately prove to have been a waste of time. So far, I haven't seen him link to or expand upon things that I haven't read elsewhere countless times already. I think there is a danger of getting lost in just too much (unfocussed) noise.

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08 | Today, it was time to once again visit our favorite vineyard not too far from here, "Weingut Klein", just to stock up on mostly white wines until June when we intend to to a "grand tour" sampling the new vintage across many different vineyards in that area.

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07 | "Paradise", a Hulu TV series streaming at the moment, is just up my alley. Check it out.

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06 | I received "The Fantastic Gustav Doré" yesterday (see my entry below, Feb. 02) and it's a fabulous book! Highly recommended!I bought the book from Amazon (Germany) and although it used to be their core business, today ordering a book from them is closer to engaging in a game of roulette than anything else. This time around, only one corner of this (comparatively expensive) book was slightly bent, so I'm keeping it, but the way they treat books, without any respect, by shipping them in the most flimsy carboard envelopes, is a real shame.And, to top it all off, the person delivering it arrived here around 8 o'clock in the evening, after having started work early in the morning. Slave labour seems to be the most important cornerstone of Amazon's business nowadays.

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05 | I've always enjoyed Bruce Hornsby's work, simply because he has been a musician who couldn't care less about what other people think he should or should not do. For five decades he's been all over the map musically and, currently, I'm really enjoying the album he recorded with Ricky Scaggs, way back in 2007."Although Ricky Skaggs gets top billing, it's 1980s adult contemporary star Bruce Hornsby who does most of the work on their bluegrass-themed duet album, 'Ricky Scaggs and Bruce Hornsby'. Hornsby wrote five of the album's eleven songs, including a remake of his early hit 'Mandolin Rain,' and his jazz-influenced piano playing is at the heart of these largely acoustic tunes. The duo shines, though, on the handful of traditional folk and bluegrass songs, such as 'Hills of Mexico' and 'Across the Rocky Mountain,' but it's a giggly reworking of Rick James's 'Super Freak' that reveals the casual looseness and good humor of the session as a whole. (AllMusic)"

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04 | One of the most ridiculous developments across all social media is the rise of what some people like to call "citizen journalism". In the demented universe many people choose to reside in nowadays, filled with "lies", with "system" and "corporate" media supposedly feeding everyone a skewed version of reality, these (usually half-literate) knights in rusty armour pepper the internet with their constant "revelations".Each and every "news item" prefaced by "BREAKING!", "JUST IN!" and "EXCLUSIVE" is, in 99.99% of the cases, hogwash and utterly dimwitted word salad of the absolutely worst kind, written by idiots for idiots.What we would need instead is a lot more media literacy, but that would require the largest segment of the population living in their various bubbles to re-enter preschool as soon as possible. Of course, we all know it's far too late for that.

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03 | I'm just about to add a new section to this website, entitled "conversations".The first conversation will be between myself and an old friend from way back when.It's not going to be a finished product when published, but an ongoing one, residing on a single page that will grow as we go along, much akin to a blank canvas that we are going to add lots of colour to, with broad or fine strokes, hoping to give a glimpse into our lives since we met more than four decades ago.I'll let you know once the first snippet arrives.

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02 | Although I absolutely hate Amazon, I just bought a copy of the following book, hoping it will arrive here without any blemishes whatsoever. If it does, I'll return it:

"If you were a consumer of literature in the nineteenth century, chances are the volumes in your library featured the illustrations of Gustave Doré. From the Bible to Shakespeare, Balzac to Milton, Cervantes to Poe, Doré’s intricate, romantic, and exuberant drawings brought great works to life, and were as treasured as the stories and poetry they depicted. [...]This book spans Doré’s entire career, with chapters dedicated to specific works such as The Divine Comedy, Don Quixote, Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, and medieval fairy tales―each featuring exquisite full-page reproductions that allow Doré’s genius for line, shading, and texture to shine through.The authors also provide a background on the techniques that Doré employed to achieve his exquisite works.Fans of Doré will appreciate this volume’s spectacular production, which features quarter binding, gold foil stamping, embossing on the cover and spine, a belly band, and silkscreen printing on three edges. Filled with incisive analysis and expert historical perspectives, this book is the consummate collector’s item―a volume as expansive and sensational as the artist himself".

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01 | Just in case you noticed: this year I'm going to change the layout a bit and use a separate white container for each month, which I didn't use for any of the previous micro diaries since I started in 2019. Hence the slightly different look.

01 | January

31 | Listening to: "Classic Vanguard Small Group Swing Sessions" (Limited Edition Box Set, Mosaic Records #280, 7 CDs). Great stuff!"We’ve worked years for the opportunity to re-visit the earliest jazz recordings on the Vanguard label, and we’re thrilled to finally present the first of what will be two Mosaic sets devoted to this important archive. A future set will focus on pianists in a variety of settings, but this first set showcases small groups in a 7-CD collection — “Classic Vanguard Small Group Swing Sessions. [...] The set includes highlights from the six-year effort, 1953-1958, that was originally labeled the Vanguard Jazz Showcase series. This collection of 85 tracks represents Vanguard’s first forays into jazz and brings fresh life to the original LPs that were released some 70 years ago."

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30 | Everyone is talking about Germany today. As I predicted and wrote about here for years now, the shift to the political right is becoming ever more prominent: "Olaf Scholz attacks rival’s ‘unforgivable mistake’ as AfD backs migration plan".But, what the foaming-at-the-mouth and ideologically entrenched parties and press from each and every side of the political spectrum continue to willfully ignore is that many people, rightfully so, are beginning to be seriously tired of successive governments seemingly ignoring their main job completely: government by the people for the people.Too many serious problems (economy, education, infrastructure, etc.) have not been adequately addressed and, by the looks of it, will remain shelved while ideological skirmishes continue to be the "plat du jour."Governments have consciously manoeuvred themselves into a "do or die" corner that they seem to be unable to get out of.That is not how you run a country.

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29 | After having been a member of various music forums for more than two decades, I've begun to notice a development that doesn't surprise me in the least. Several prominent members who were verbally aggressive know-it-alls in every conceivable way, have all turned into depressed, whiny know-it-all (usually single) seniors, constantly lamenting that peer recognition (and life in general) has passed them by.Really?
I wonder why.

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28 | Although I'm ready to set up two password-protected sections (consisting of several pages each) on my website, one software-related problem has stopped me from doing so.Because this website is very different from other "out-of-the-box" setups, every single page resides on a subdomain. That's not very SEO-friendly, but it's OK with me.The problem is then that if I set up, say, a new section with five pages, which all use the same password, the password needs to be entered each and every time on every single page because, from a security perspective, each page is a different website.There doesn't seem to be a way around that. So, I'm still contemplating how to go about it.

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27 | After yesterday's post, I headed over to Reddit, where I usually read more than actively participate, and posted this question: "How many smartphone generations do you, the average (!) user, skip?" I expected a few answers, 10 or 20 at the most, but, as I'm writing this we're at 594 ... and counting.Have a look. The answers are fascinating. Most people have been all over the map in regard to smartphones and have the most unique upgrade paths, many, like me, skip several generations and, as just one of the countless points that that were raised regularly, the new Samsung S25 range seems to be a mostly disappointing upgrade that many users are not planning to throw money at.Update: The post has reached 650 681 comments.

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26 | As I watch people scramble for the new Samsung S25 series, I'm still sitting here with my S10 5G, bought in 2020, one year after it appeared on the market. As far as I recall, it stopped receiving updates sometime in 2023. The phone is fine, the battery still works well, there isn't a single app that is "slow", animations are smooth, screen is as new ... in short: perfectly fine.Besides the fact that I would never buy a smartphone that needs a headphone dongle, which all modern Samsung smartphones do, I simply don't understand people who practically park in front of shops to get the latest model of ... anything. If I read the reviews of the new Samsung flagship correctly, the S25 is only a minor update (some people have actually called it a "downgrade") to the S24 and costs an arm and a leg.I wonder if anyone has recently calculated how many eggs one could buy in the US for the price of a brand spanking new Samsung S25 Ultra.Ah, well ...The average cost of a dozen Grade A large eggs was $4.15 in December (1). The price of a 512GB S25 Ultra is $1419.99 (2). So, that comes out to around 4106 eggs and a bonus yolk, just in case you wanted to know.

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25 | When I saw the Academy Award nominations a while ago, I almost fell over backwards. "Emilia Pérez", really? I hated the film and I would agree with many people who stated that the reason it has garnered so many (13) nominations is ideology, not a love for well-constructed films. I couldn't care less about the whole trans angle. This is just not a good film.The New Yorker put it best: "'Emilia Pérez' is an incurious musical about a trans drug lord. The performances of Karla Sofía Gascón and Zoe Saldaña bring energy and emotion, but the movie never gets beyond its splashy surfaces. [...] [Jacques Audiard's] work represents an inversion of the relationship between subject matter and narrative: instead of relying on the formal devices of storytelling to elucidate the stories’ characters and milieus, he squeezes the life out of characters and subjects in order to fit the procrustean limits of an efficient story. 'Emilia Pérez' presents twists and turns that exhaust themselves in the strain to stoke excitement; the movie is a wild ride to nowhere."And then I read this, nodding vigorously: "‘Stick-it-to-the-man sentiment’: Oscar-nominated films compete to bait Donald Trump - Almost all the shortlisted movies this year can be seen as a critique of the incoming president. Accident or design?""[...] Hollywood has therefore opted to vote with its Academy ballots, giving a leg-up to films that conspicuously critique the Maga worldview. Hence, perhaps, such an extravagant embrace for Emilia Pérez, a French musical about a trans Mexican gangster that has been criticised as “offensive” by both Mexican and trans communities, and met with a mixed reception from critics and audiences (with Rotten Tomatoes scores of 76% and 30% respectively).Nonetheless, the film has smashed the record set by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Roma for the most nominations for a film not in the English language, scoring 13 to their 10, putting it just one behind the all-time record earned by All About Eve, Titanic and La La Land.[...] Writing in the New Yorker after this year’s nominations, the critic Richard Brody said the “members of the Academy have, in effect, responded to the natural and political disasters of the moment in the name of solidarity”"It used to be a tradition for me to stay up late and watch the ceremony live.Used to be.

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24 | I thought I had really seen it all, but then "Star Trek: Section 31" rolls around, the most unbearably bad, ridiculously cringeworthy and dreadfully juvenile piece of dogshit to ever grace any of my various screens and TVs.This isn't even 0/100, it's a hundred below.God, how I absolutely despise the people who keep on churning out this absolutely braindead stuff.P.S.: No links to this steaming turd, not even the horrible reviews it has collected in absolute record time.

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23 | As usual, I handed in my tax return forms for 2020 in the very last second, a few days before Christmas 2024. In Germany, while I was working as a civil servant, I was not required to do so, but I always did, knowing that I would be entitled to some sort of tax returns. For 2020, I received a tax return of around $4000 plus an interest fee of around $400. So, spending a couple of hours filling out a few forms netted me enough money for extensive holidays this summer. Cool that!

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22 | I re-watched "The Lighthorsemen" the other day, a film from 1987 that was once touted to be an epic akin to "Lawrence of Arabia". It is not. It is a mediocre film with a lot of renowned actors wasted on a film that has cinematography to show for itself and absolutely nothing else, especially no coherence. Once again, a waste of time.

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21 | For those who wrote to me regarding my thoughts on Trump in office: No, I don't have a publishable opinion yet. I don't like the guy, his demeanor and many of his off-the-wall policies, but, just like with Javier Mileil in Argentina, I'm just going to wait and see. Democracy is a wonderful construct that often doesn't work for those who have dug in ideologically, but there is a definite reason for its existence.

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20 | Well, today I decided to simply let go of my three Instagram accounts and started deleting all my posts. When they also decided to change the feed from squares to whatever new size, all my old posts - which were designed for that old format - suddenly looked like shit, which is and was appropriate for the shit show Instagram (and everything else that curly-haired numbskull touches) has become.I'm going to keep the dead accounts because people have been trying to get to two of my account names for ages now, but for all intents and purposes, I'm gone from anything that has the Meta name attached to it.P.S.: So far, I have only been able to delete the contents (my own posts) of two accounts (not the "likes", because Instagram blocks me from doing so) because Instagram's totally f*cked-up AI bots noticed and locked me out of my third account altogether. Those are apparently the new ways of the world, so I'll just wait a few weeks or months and watch all these billionaires run the entire US into the ground first before I'll give it another try.

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19 | Here's just one example, world-renowned jazz bassist John Clayton, to illustrate how families were absolutely devasted by the LA fires.He is lucky enough to have very good friends and trusted fans and, after Jeff Hamilton, one of my absolutely favorite drummers, started a fundraiser for John and his family, was able to quickly get together quite a hefty sum of donations, but what about the people who aren't as lucky and don't have that kind of support?And the winds are picking up again ...,

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18 | On Monday I had dental surgery that threw me a solid curveball, simply because one part of my jaw became infected. Nevertheless, I'm almost done (step four will roll around in a week or two from now and be completed three weeks later), but getting implants on a larger scale (in my case 8 separate ones) is something I certainly wouldn't recommend to anyone who doesn't need them.

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17 | One more time, because these things are important: "How Google and AI are Killing Travel Blogs Like Mine." In a long and detailed article,Amanda Williams outlines those things that really should alarm everyone, although, presently, not many people seem to care. AI is on the rise and it won't take long until it will be forced down everyone's throat on a global and grand scale, no matter if consent was given or not!AI will have negative consequences, also hefty environmental ones, and it's time to at least inform yourselves!

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16 | I had encountered Simon Oslender before in various constellations but didn't really take notice until this (Steely-Dan-tinged) video, "Along the Coast", featuring Steve Gadd, Will Lee and Bruno Müller, popped up on my YouTube feed. Then I did some googling around and came across the three solo albums that all appear to be just my cup of tea. I think I'm just going to start with the newest release the above song is featured on and work my way back, also to financially support the musicians involved.

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15 | In bed after dental surgery, I was trying to catch up on a stupid series I watched last year, "The Rig". It's not even good, but just the right thing if you sleep half the time because of pain and swelling.But, I had to give up after two episodes because of one single reason: Botox. Two of the female lead roles have these botoxed, fish-mouthed and completely expressionless faces that are just unbearable to watch. They take me out of the plot and action immediately when they pop up, which they frequently do. Especially Alice Krige is painful to look at (and really does look like the Borg Queen today she so effectfully played in Star Trek many years ago).It didn't take me longer than scrolling through three or four reviews before I found similar sentiments over on IMDB: "More botox-faced women: The old lady that owns the company [...] has so much Botox, she has that fish mouth and she has no expression. The main girl also has a Botox face [...] she's so wooden and expressionless. [...]"

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14 | I've had plenty of time to read around these past two days and noticed the increasing numbers of articles, tweets and social network posts taking tech/Internet companies to task for - consciously - trying to make things worse for users and focussing on monetary gain exclusively. This is what they focussed on:(01) "The World Travel Guy", like so many other small and/or independent publishers, fires a salvo into Google's face over on Twitter, saying (and proving): "Google's ranking algorithm is so bad now I have to constantly file copyright reports to keep spam sites from outranking me with stolen content. As soon as these are nuked, more will take their place. This is an algorithm that shadowbans creators and rewards spam."(02) Most of the people I have been following are severely criticising the UK's government for wanting to make it legal for AI companies to train their AI on people's copyrighted material without a licence.(03) Finally, and to my utmost satisfaction, the entire WordPress ecosphere (meaning everyone who isn't on his payroll) is laughing about Matt Mullenweg, who overstepped the line one too many times. Although he refuses to accept that he is the aggressor, the fight against, for example, WPEngine, is beginning to capsize the nest he so nicely built for himself. Although he maintains his innocence despite years of abusive behaviour, also in this case, he now has to acknowldege that "Lawsuits Could End WordPress". In a nutshell, this is where we are at: "Those looking for a sign that the conflict that Mullenweg initiated could come to an end sooner than later were disappointed. Mullenweg appears to be suggesting that only WP Engine can end the conflict by dropping their defensive lawsuit and allowing Mullenweg to resume his attacks designed to drive them out of business. A federal judge ruled against Matt Mullenweg by granting WP Engine’s request for a preliminary injunction to block his attacks against WP Engine."I'll repeat it again: people like Matt Mullenweg ("WordPress"), Elon Musk ("X"), Mark Zuckerberg ("Meta") and Sundar Pichai ("Google"), plus a whole bunch of others, should be tarred and feathered and hunted out of the global village ... rather sooner than later, because:(04) "There’s a reason why it feels like the internet has gone bad."

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13 | Had major dental surgery again today and spent the rest of the day in bed, catching up on a TV series or two.

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12 | Brian Keene linked to an excellent article on Wired, "[t]he inside story of the teenager whose 'swatting' calls sent armed police racing into hundreds of schools nationwide - and the private detective who tracked him down". Written by Dhruv Mehrotra and Andy Greenberg, it's one of those articles that reads like a thriller in many parts.

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11 | I don't know if "enjoy" is the right word for an extremely violent TV series like "American Primeval", but I thought it was a very good series with a solid script, very good acting, but also very bleak tone and some misfires.

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10 | As the fires continue to ravage parts of LA, I heard from an old acquaintance who lost everything in the Palisades Fire. Today, you can also read about lots of other people who barely had enough time to get out and save themselves and their families, losing everything in the process.I simply cannot and do not want to imagine what that's like. Even if you do have a good enough insurance, which many people in LA didn't have, you can never replace those many items and memories that a house or apartment can hold.

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09 | The photos of the fires in Los Angeles have an absolutely surreal quality to them, as do statements by many, which, in most cases, immediately politicized this tragedy and are lashing out at everyone and everything, just because it is those people's modus vivendi.I'm just glad there are still tons of people willing to help those affected instead of sitting in their musty basements, furiously attacking their keyboards, with spittle flying from their mouths amidst clouds of Dorito dust, and blasting their utterly inane bullshit across the globe.

08 | Here's a book I'm going to preorder (publication in August of 2025) : "The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King's The Stand"."[...] Now for the first time, Stephen King has fully authorized a return to the harrowing world of The Stand through this original short story anthology as presented by award-winning authors and editors Christopher Golden and Brian Keene. [...] The End of the World As We Know It features unforgettable, all-new stories set during and after (and some perhaps long after) the events of The Stand [...] as an essential companion to the classic, bestselling novel [...]Contributors include Wayne Brady and Maurice Broaddus, Poppy Z. Brite, Somer Canon, C. Robert Cargill, Nat Cassidy, V. Castro, Richard Chizmar, S. A. Cosby, Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes, Meg Gardiner, Gabino Iglesias, Jonathan Janz, Alma Katsu, Caroline Kepnes, Michael Koryta, Sarah Langan, Joe R. Lansdale, Tim Lebbon, Josh Malerman, Ronald Malfi, Usman T. Malik, Premee Mohamed, Cynthia Pelayo, Hailey Piper, David J. Schow, Alex Segura, Bryan Smith, Paul Tremblay, Catherynne M. Valente, Bev Vincent, Catriona Ward, Chuck Wendig, Wrath James White, and Rio Youers.

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07 | I rewatched a favorite TV series of mine recently, "Southland". It ran for five seasons from 2009-2013. I think it stood the test of time and I remembered it as a series that started strong and became stronger as it progressed. Checking from today's vantage point, it rose from a solid 69% approval rating to one of 85% and above for its third, fourth and fifth seasons. It had a "bold, contemporary tone" and laid the groundwork for series like "The Shield", another one which I gobbled up way back when (*). If you can find "Southland" somewhere, it comes highly recommended by me after this second viewing.(*) Note: Oops. David K. (thanks!) alerted me to the fact that "The Shield" (2002-2008) ran before "Southland". Maybe I shouldn't rely on my memory too often anymore. Apparently, it ain't what it used to be. Nevertheless, both series had similarities in regard to shaky cam and other contemporary style elements.

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06 | I never really thought about what it is that I really do around here, but after I posted a link to my website over on Reddit as an example of what you can do with Carrd, user "chrcnsl" alerted me to a term I had never consciously heard before, "digital garden"."A digital garden is basically a combination of an online notebook and a personal wikipedia. It’s your personal collection of ideas. [...] You likely consume a ton of content: blogs, newsletters, masterclasses, video series, podcasts, tweets, TikTok, longform articles, books, audiobooks, etc — the list goes on forever. But passively consuming it means risking it being forgotten [...] A digital garden is your corner of the internet — a place for you to explore and write about what interests you, just because it interests you. Without worrying about if it’s in your niche. Without worrying whether or not your audience will like it. Without the pressure of having all the answers wrapped up in one neat post. [...] Digital gardens are, in a way, a return to the early days of the internet — before chronological blogs and social media streams took over."I especially like the quote referenced at the end of the article, taken from Maggie Appleton's "A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden":“Digital gardening is the Domestic Cozy version of the personal blog. It's less performative than a blog, but more intentional and thoughtful than our Twitter feed. It wants to build personal knowledge over time, rather than engage in banter and quippy conversations.”Yep, that's actually what I have been doing here since 2019 and, looking at the pages and parts finished and ready to be "planted" here in the next few months, the garden has been growing nicely.Let's hope for uninterrupted good weather.

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05 | Michael J. Fox, a truly worthy recipient.

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04 | Drumeo finally published its "Phil Collins: Drummer First" video that had been in the works for quite some time.Since my childhood and the time I listened to "Genesis" for the first time ("Trespass, 1970), Phil Collins has been one of my favorite artists, no matter how much flak he received for having been literally everywhere as a solo artist in the 1980s and 1990s. As Chad Smith (and many other drummers and musicians) state in the video: "He always played what was right for the music and that's the sign to me of a real musician that knows how to play for the song." Jordan Rudess (Dream Theater) adds: "It's always super musical. There's always shape and dynamics and breath." Yep.He is also one of the few drummers whose sound and style remain instantly recognizable while his technical chops were frightening to those drummers who, like me, tried to copy some of the more intricate "Genesis" material. He was a natural at his instrument and, as he states himself in the video, "I’m not a singer that plays a bit of drums; I’m more of a drummer that sings a bit”."It is terribly depressing to see how fragile the man has become. He can't play anymore. He can't walk properly anymore. His hands are shaking. Decades of touring and hard work have taken their toll on his hands and legs, as most drummers (and other touring musicians that always gave 100+ percent) know they will/would.Still, the man is a legend and left a huge body of work that is exemplary. I have tons of respect for him and still today hardly a week goes by without me listening to something he poured his lifeblood into.

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03 | Just before Christmas, I watched in horror as Google's most recent updates to their algorithms ruined the visibility of many independent websites by practically de-ranking them. Livelihoods were lost and, yes, lives ruined.This move again shows how a few big players seem to be increasingly gravitating towards AI-sourced search results that simply do not offer anything of value to the customer while profiting hugely themselves. I hope these moves will bite them in the ass one day, but with the common Internet user being as passive as he or she is, I don't see that happening any time soon.So, I have added a Links page to my website (via the homepage) which lists and briefly introduces websites I read on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. It also includes some tips on how to find more good blogs, websites and forums, all of which are often all but invisible on Google, unfortunately still the search engine of choice for most people.The page will be updated with more worthwhile links as I come across them.

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02 | Well, 2025 wasn't off to a good start. My wife caught a case of the flu, I feel like that same one is knocking on my door and the weather is horrible (and about to get even worse).Still, we had a cosy evening last night eating leftovers and enjoying the warmth of our apartment (plus a viewing of "Juror #2", which we liked).Today, I added some entries to the memorial website for my much-missed best friend of three decades, Dominique Imbert. As it turns out, a stupid programming error I made hid a few entries for that site from my view and I only stumbled across them today.All of this reminded me that I'm still sitting on a 10-page text detailing my relationship with Dominique that I sat down and wrote the day he passed away. I wonder if that will ever see the light of day, but if it does, then it will be around these stomping grounds here.

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Recent Updates:

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01 | Happy New Year everyone & All the best for 2025!Last night we had the feeling that a lot more money than usual was launched into space and blown to smithereens. For some reason, Germany has seen a surge of imbeciles who think that fireworks are their route to some perceived "Freedom!" that only exists in those heads that were confused by the earth not being flat, the corona virus not having been designed by Bill Gates and baby blood not having been the ingredient in everything the hated "elite" eats or drinks.So, as we head into 2025, let's keep an eye on those braindead morons that are multiplying around the globe, although it's actually easy to ditch them all in one fell swoop: just delete - as I did in 2024 - your social media accounts and / or leave them by the roadside.Then, occasionally, check how much further the populace has regressed into the middle ages.Once a month should suffice.P.S.: We had a wonderful three-course dinner (shortened by one course to come down to two) last night and enjoyed a quiet evening, also, in-between, adding some pieces to this wonderful puzzle: "The World of Hercule Poirot: A 1000-piece Jigsaw Puzzle".

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