Why I write
"Recently, I wrote about how I write daily. In this post, I want to take a step back: Why write in the first place?"
"Recently, I wrote about how I write daily. In this post, I want to take a step back: Why write in the first place?"
How to have Mastodon on your own domain without hosting a server. Kind of.
Switching this newsletter to WordPress, improving my personal website and listening to a thrilling podcast episode.
A note about rediscovering a song I haven’t heard in a long time and feeling nostalgic about the memories.
A fun fact
The human species will 100% not go extinct during your lifetime. Never thought about it this way.
A handy CLI trick
sudo !! reruns the previous command with sudo.
Source: https://youtu.be/mLznVlBAtcg
Bamboo & Glass Ceiling
These are metaphors for invisible barriers certain demographic groups experience when placed in a hierarchy. Feminists coined the term “Glass Ceiling”, while East Asian and East Asian Americans did the same for the “Bamboo Ceiling”.
Lil Peep’s first face tattoo
He got it at the age of 17 as “a sign of his commitment to avoiding the straight life. ‘A tattoo on your face,' he explained later, ‘is gonna stop you from getting a lot of jobs.'”
Source: https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/lil-peep-tragedy-torment-804686/
The Economics of Superstars
This term describes the phenomenon, where a small group of people gets almost all the attention and rewards in a certain space.
Source: https://pdodds.w3.uvm.edu/files/papers/others/1981/rosen1981a.pdf
My thoughts after watching a movie about a war, where the story isn’t really important.
Or: How a simple rule change can help you create more consistently.
A list of interesting links from my recent trip into the Fediverse rabbit hole.
Tiny Saturday
Wednesday is called “Tiny Saturday" (“lillördag”) in Sweden.
Preparing for uni, trying out a new tech gadget and learning how Social Media is pretty bad at accurately reporting on real life events.
Hi Hidden Person, I discovered your blogpost via a reply by Robert. It popped up in my RSS feed and sounded interesting. I read through his post and thought, “let’s check out this new blog, and who the person behind it is.”
The kickers always win
Kickers are athletes that still have the ability to sprint at the end of an endurance race.
Source: https://www.eddiedale.com/blog/the-kickers-always-win
"My quest for learning all the countries in the world continues. On today's episode: Asia."
Or: To Write or Not to Write…
The album that was 30 years in the making
This debut (and only) album by German actress and singer-songwriter Sibylle Baier was released in 2006 but recorded over 30 years prior in her own home. Here's the album on Spotify: Colour Green – Sibylle Baier
Goededag and welcome to the third issue of the Tiny Sparks newsletter!
Want to write better copy?
3 questions to ask yourself when writing copy (by Harry Dry, creator of Marketing Examples):
Source: https://youtu.be/TUMjnmfsPeM
Some reflections on documenting my life and FOMO.
Emotional Labour
Emotional labour is a form of labour that represents the effort required to manage and control one’s emotions in order to fulfill the emotional requirements of a job. Think about a waitress that pretends that your joke was funny. It is a concept that was first introduced by sociologist Arlie Hochschild.
Source: https://youtu.be/XiwUDzyACWY
Bonjour and welcome to the second issue of the Tiny Sparks newsletter!
Blue Zones
“Blue Zones” are regions of the world where people live significantly longer than the average. The common denominator for the lifestyle of the people living there is a natural diet (low-processed food), a lot of physical activity (walking, gardening, etc.), and generally a pre-modern way of living without the problems of the modern world (like stress). Some places in the Blue Zone are Okinawa (Japan), Sardinia (Italy), Nicoya (Costa Rica), Ikaria (Greece), and Loma Linda (California).
Source: https://www.srf.ch/news/gesellschaft/hohe-lebenserwartung-blue-zones-der-schluessel-zum-langen-leben
Exophony
I now finally have a word for what I do on this website: Exophony – writing in a language that is not my mother tongue. Wikipedia also has a list of exophonic writers (that are way more famous than I am).
Inspired by my girlfriend and my brother, who are both somewhat huge geography buffs, I’ve decided to challenge myself to learn all the countries in the world.
Rivers of Babylon
The famous song by is based on psalms (19 & 137) from the Hebrew Bible.
Source: https://pca.st/8ypfdts9
You have a Jennifer Aniston neuron
This hypothetical neuron is officially called a “grandmother cell”, but I like the other name more. Research has shown, that when presented with a concept you already know, the same very specific set of neurons fires in your brain (no matter if you see Jennifer Aniston in an Episode of Friends or on a gala photo). It’s like a little detector in your brain.
Memories are essentially replays of neural firing patterns
That’s also how déjà vus work. Your brain plays a similar pattern to one it’s played earlier, and you feel like you’ve experienced it before (I’m not sure though if that’s really based on the newest scientific findings, so don’t quote me on it).
Source: https://pca.st/episode/d8d186e1-afef-4080-8c5f-0e896b59163d
Switzerland is the second oldest democracy in the world
It's been one since 1848. The United States is the oldest democracy in the world (1789), third place goes to New Zealand (1857).
Source: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/08/countries-are-the-worlds-oldest-democracies/
This morning, I read this post by Yordi, and I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels that way.
What it is and why I’m building it.
My thoughts on the newest book by Julia Ebner.
Landlocked countries
A landlocked country is a country that does not have a coastline. Worldwide, there are 44 of them. Kazakhstan is the world’s largest, while Ethiopia is the most populous one.
A double-landlocked country, on the other hand, is a landlocked country that is entirely surrounded by other landlocked countries. There are only two double-landlocked countries in the world (Liechtenstein and Uzbekistan).
It’s fascinating, how much this small shift in your thinking can influence your behaviour.
Let’s connect more over blog posts. It’s #JulyReply2024!
Congratulations! You are part of a very, very small circle of people who receive this first Issue of Tiny Sparks! Thank you very much for reading this 🥳
After finishing a Laravel course, I need some help deciding on what I should build as my next project.
What3Words Algorithm
There is a geocoding system that divides the world into 3×3m squares and assigns three words to each of them. Need an example? The best place to get pizza in Bern is at this location: ///cuts.deserved.cave.
Source: https://cybergibbons.com/security-2/what3words-the-algorithm/
The why’s, what’s and how’s behind the creation of this website. After reading this post, you’ll want to create your own – I hope.
A key principle of test-driven development…
…is making the error message change. That sounds so simple yet so effective.
Source: https://laracasts.com/series/30-days-to-learn-laravel-11/episodes/29
Time Billionaire
If you are in your 20s, you are a Time Billionaire – twice. A Time Billionaire is someone who has (statistically speaking) more than one billion seconds left to live.
Source: https://www.sahilbloom.com/newsletter/the-time-billionaire-a-concept-that-changed-my-life