So that was my year, music-wise. My @petteralexis streak continues — his “Petter 9818” and “Dö sen” were damn solid. ♪

Two sick children and a $1.5 million bill: One family’s race for a gene therapy cure

Both exciting and depressing AF. But to be honest, these days that rings true for many a topic, doesn’t it?

One day, gene therapy may help with the rarest of diseases. Some parents aren’t waiting. […]

I asked [neurologist Christopher Janson] if he thought it was fair that the Landsmans’ kids could end up getting treated while some other family without a surprise GoFundMe success would not be. “Unfortunately, there are a lot of things in society that are not fair,” he said. “There are parents who want to see me in my neurology clinic and can’t because they don’t have insurance. We have a problem in society.”

Yes, we absolutely do. It’s not as prevalent here in Germany as it is in the US, but still.

Ganz heisser Tipp für alle deutschen Startups und Gründer:

Hände weg von Fastbill.

Meine Firma wartet seit ungefähr einem Jahr darauf, dass Fastbill einen Mechanismus implementiert, der die doppelte, dreifache oder teils auch vierfache (!!) Vergabe der gleichen Rechnungsnummer verhindert. Der derzeit noch aktuelle Workaround-Vorschlag von Fastbill ist “sprecht unsere API halt nicht so schnell an”. (Fürs Protokoll, wir reden hier über ca. 5 API-Calls in 10 sek.)

👎🏻

In Exponential View #187 reader Andrew Edgecliffe Johnson suggests “Nowstalgia” as term describing the feeling that…

[…] things—the institutions, the business models, the media mix—are just right as they are, better than they were before and better than they will be in the future.

That is a great word. So far I’ve only came across the somewhat common “everything’s going downhill from here” but “nowstalgia” is so much funnier (even though it is less self-explanatory).

Actors are digitally preserving themselves to continue their careers beyond the grave

Being a dead actor/singer doesn’t mean anymore you have to stop working:

Some actors and movie studios are buckling down and preparing for an inevitable future when using scanning technology to preserve 3-D digital replicas of performers is routine. Just because your star is inconveniently dead doesn’t mean your generation-spanning blockbuster franchise can’t continue to rake in the dough. Get the tech right and you can cash in on superstars and iconic characters forever.

I’ll be honest: I’ve no idea how to feel about this. I can see the reasoning behind scanning and preserving actors for legitimate purposes¹ but I won’t be surprised when (not if) some of those scans are leaked to seedy underground porn producers. If you think Rule 34 is bad now, you just wait.

The Pentagon’s Push to Program Soldiers’ Brains

Within decades, neurotechnology could cause social disruption on a scale that would make smartphones and the internet look like gentle ripples on the pond of history.

Most unsettling, neurotechnology confounds age-old answers to this question: What is a human being?

A lengthy read giving a short history of DARPA with a focus on their (published) neurotechnology research and its challenges. While I don’t think the agency’s goals are quite as benign as it makes them out to be, I find the entire field utterly fascinating and am well in favor of what they are trying to accomplish.

My revamped blog is now live at this here new domain, czm.io.

Moved to a shorter domain, switched to a Hugo + Gitlab + Forestry + Netlify setup. It’s still a static site, it’s still super-fast, it’s still devoid of any tracking and analytics. (I just don’t care about those numbers.)

The heart of the site is a Gitlab repo. Netlify runs Hugo & serves the site every time changes are pushed to the repo. Forestry (CMS) is committing to the repo. Convenient AF.

This warrants a longer post …later. Until then, a few quick take-aways:

1. Netlify: ★★★★★ It’s just made for building & hosting static sites. Aside from setting up their free custom SSL certificates you can pretty much configure everything via a config file in your repo. Ace.
2. Forestry: ★★★★★ CMS for a static sites (Hugo- or jekyll-based). Slick, super-easy to set up once you got Hugo and Netlify going. Having that thing is game-changing.
3. Hugo: ★★★★ Crazy fast static site generator, it’s made a solid impression on me so far. The templating syntax takes a bit getting-used-to, though.
4. Bulma: ★★★★ CSS framework. Me no designer but Bulma nice

Why You’re Probably Getting a Microchip Implant Someday

Interesting article in the The Atlantic about subdermal microchips, discussing a few health-focussed implants and related research.

I got myself chipped a few years back because my phone didn’t have a fingerprint reader but NFC capabilities. I used the chip in my hand to unlock the phone all the time for a year or so.

These days, my RFID tag carries some emergency data but nothing else (name, birthdate, blood type, city of residence). I wish it could do more, tho.

The Moon Is Open for Business

There’s a commercial soft landing planned for early 2019! 🌖

The Moon Is Open for Business: Commercial companies are proposing lunar missions at a pace the world hasn’t seen since the Apollo program.

Plan fürs Wochenende: Blog-Relaunch von carlo.zottmann.org mit Unterstützung von Kategorien (Posts, Micro Posts, Link Posts), damit ich endlich mal wieder einen Platz habe, wo ich Links etc. posten kann, die ich früher in meinen Newsletter gekippt habe.

Stack: Hugo (Static Site Generator) + Forestry (CMS für SSG) + vermutlich Netlify (Hosting).

Mal schauen, ob ich es an diesem Wochenende endlich schaffe.

Update: Erledigt.

Come find me. We’re having fun there, away from the ads, the brands and the Nazis. I’ve ditched Twitter, I’ve deleted my Facebook account and I’m taking a long hard look at Instagram too at the moment.

This is acceptable

This works for me, yeah

Schee. :)

As a wise man once said: “Sometimes you gotta stop and smell the roses, Morty, little word of wisdom”

And by “smelling the roses” I mean “stealing all the berries”.

One of my favorite spots in Munich’s east side. A tiny restaurant with great food, good coffee, tasty sweets, and no clocks to be seen anywhere. Lively little place. (Disclaimer: my wife works there a few days a week.)

Platzregen bei Sonnenschein auf dem Marienplatz ♥️

Well, good evening, little fellow 🌙

Some days, I like it; some days, not so much; today, I was really looking forward to it somehow.

This too shall pass.

Massiv gutes Beef Stew. Meine Frau ist nicht nur toll, sie kann auch echt gut kochen. ♥️

Big fan of IKEA’s contemporary art exhibition. This piece is called “Screw that steak” and points its finger at the grim reality of THE CUSTOMER stealing plastic showroom replica of meat products from MOM AND POP RETAIL FURNITURE STORES.

Haunting.

Longboard lifestyle etc. Hilarious follow up: the only disinfectant at hand was Italian Grappa. I’m not kidding

Truth