Tom Scocca writes: “Here is a piece of writing that has attained a certain length. Share it, this quantity of reading.” He’s talking about Longread culture. He’s talking about many things in his essay “On Smarm“, published by Gawker and puzzled over these last few days like a [more]
I’m an unabashed driving enthusiast. Not only do I find the act of driving extremely calming. Contrary to conventional wisdom, it’s also a good use of my time. Proponents of public transport (of which there are many in Switzerland who extol its virtues with messianic zeal) often augment [more]
Today four fellow residents and I busted out of VCCA to attend the local Lynchburg Christmas Craft Fair. We meandered from stall to stall, lingering over pottery and bound leather journals, but for me the standout was a bow-tie stand. The vendor, who was also the designer, was [more]
Biking past Sara Delano Roosevelt Park at the confluence of the Lower East Side and Chinatown in New York City this early Saturday morning I was reminded of many a weekend early lunch break I spent listening to the caged birds sing. I heard them there today again. [more]
Maryam (Zaree), Hi! You tied me to a movie I haven’t seen. But after I read your text and saw the trailer I feel a need to catch up. Not just because I fell for some of Fellinis movies, also because the topic you speak of – the [more]
Gerade las ich einen Bericht darüber, welcher Typ Mensch bevorzugt Opfer von Soziopathen wird: der empathische Typ. Offensichtlich bin ich nicht empathisch. Jedenfalls hatte ich es noch nie mit einem Soziopathen zu tun. Mit Intriganten, Schizophrenen oder einfach nur Blödmännern schon, aber Soziopathen scheinen ein anderes Kaliber zu [more]
Dear fuenfnullzwei.de/60pages Editor, I haven’t been in the country very long, and I ask you to clarify a certain matter for me. I was brought here by my brother-in-law, with whom I get along very well, but we have a difference of opinion on one thing. I think [more]
We’d already had a few, even one with the girl behind the bar who was mixing the drinks, she was in such a bad mood we felt we had to invite her, but she said that she wasn’t allowed to, so we said, c’mon and learned she was [more]
The interesting roof situation on top of the Schering-building seems to be under construction and is probably changing. I found the former situation on google maps and posted it some pages ago. When I returned to Müllerstraße for further research I was very surprised to find out, that [more]
Margret Boveri, so umstritten wie sie war, trifft mit diesen Zeilen doch ziemlich zeitlos ein Gefühl dieser Tage: «Ich fühle mich fähig, entgegengesetzte Elemente in mir zu beherbergen und jedem zu seinem Recht zu verhelfen. Der Preis dafür ist, daß ich auf die Frage, ob ich links oder [more]
I haven’t left the house for a long time. I’m sick and that’s how I justify my abstinence from the outside world. Feeling tiny bit guilty but not really because I think it’s actually the best. If you are sick you are eligible to be in opposition to [more]
Cinema is the liberating application in the margins in search of the proper world.
There is a very nasty and very sad book by Otto Weininger called “Geschlecht und Charakter”, Sex and Character. It’s a nasty book because it blames women – or “the Feminine“ or just “the Woman“ – and Jews (the feminine being par excellence) for many of the world’s ills. [more]
Two days ago I went to see a show by American artist B. Wurtz at Galerija Gregor Podnar. The show really put me at work, so to say, displaying a wide variety of works and ideas that seemed fresh yet old fashioned, retro-futuristic maybe? I was reminded of [more]
Dresden, Germany. Inauguration day: pictures of people happily walking over a newly constructed bridge in their city. No cars on the road yet, but from on the next day this new piece of urban infrastructure would make life in the city easier. No more detours to cross the river, [more]
Es werde schon seit längerem verwendet, mir aber ist es erst heute aufgefallen; das neue Logo der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin. Ein Logo soll mittels einer Assoziationskette die schlüssige Umsetzung eines Namens oder einer Tätigkeit oder einer Institution sein. Was ist da grafisch Umgesetzt und welche [more]
Ang Mo Kio, Singapore. Before branding became an issue in design practices in the noughties, and every project had to be charged with themes, there were still some places to be found, which were untouched by design intentions. Places of pragmatism. Underdetermined, open, neutral. Without doubt, Singapore can be [more]
Gleisdreieck, Germany. What a name for a place. Couldn’t be more generic. Probably thought out by an engineer. Without bad intentions, of course, like always. “Gleisdreieck”, the name means “traintracks” and “triangle”, how innocent. But in Berlin, nothing is innocent, historically. “Gleis” and “Dreieck” – these two words [more]
Dear Editor, I am the grandmother of a twenty-one-year-old boy, a Berlin-born boy with all the finest qualities, and I am writing to you about our problem with him. Our grandson met a boy about six months ago, a boy a few years older than he. They fell [more]
This morning, I stepped out into Florida. The air was warm and moist. Ambling along the street, peeling off my layers, I stopped and sniffed: the rising temperatures had unlocked the smells of the woods and pasture to either side. I was still in Virginia, but it was [more]
Yes I didn’t post anything throughout the last days. But I just couldn’t help it. Time is precious and time is short… which doesn’t mean that I want to dedicate my time to you for you. But like said time is also short…had been extremely short. So that’s [more]
I once read a graffiti in the subway of Barcelona: «Ni un dia sin poesia» Not a day without poetry, it says. And it is so true: Some lines of Emily Dickinson, Nicanor Parra, Mascha Kaleko or Walt Whitman can save my day. No more words needed. Zum [more]
Dass jedes Jahr Weihnachten ist, und zwar jedes Jahr zum selben Datum, ändert nichts daran, dass ziemlich viele Menschen jedes Jahr aufs Neue von Weihnachten überrascht werden und auf den letzten Drücker irgendwelche Geschenke besorgen, deren Auswahl zeitmangelbedingt entweder banal, lieblos oder unpassend ausfällt. Auch ich werde zu [more]
Before you bury someone you need to dig up some earth – some dirt, as it were. In the case of Nelson Mandela it’s other people who get dirty. And some fabulous dirt it is too. There’s a poster going around made in the 80s by the FCS, [more]
Mit Schrecken stelle ich fest, dass ich unter Ermüdungserscheinungen leide. Vorgestern wurde die neueste „Enthüllung“ im „NSA-Skandal“ bekannt. Ich setze diese Worte in Anführungsstriche, weil mich schon das Vokabular der Berichterstattung ermüdet. Was ist bloß passiert? Noch im Sommer habe ich jedes neu veröffentlichte Dokument gewissenhaft durchgelesen. Ich [more]
After a long televised battle, Nelson Mandela is finally released on December 5th 2013. In less than a month, Long Walk to Freedom (“It is an ideal for which I am prepared to die”) will open in cinemas across the United Kingdom. The director, Justin Chadwick, starred as [more]
Der Waffenmarkt steht vor einer Revolution – behauptet zumindest die Münchner Firma Armatix. Die Seite des Herstellers sieht nicht anders aus als erwartet – phallische Grafik, schnittiges Design auf schwarzem Grund, „Perfektion aus Prinzip“. Im Video spricht Generalleutnant a.D. Jörg Schöhnböhm, der neben seinem Bundeswehr-Inspekteurs-Job auch CDU-Politiker ist [more]
Vor lauter Musik weiß ich in diesem Jahr gar nicht mehr, wo mir der Kopf steht, mein Jahrtausendwerk, meine Welt-Errettungsnovelle „Wie der deutsche Jude Siggi Morgensonne die Menschheit korrigierte“ habe ich immer noch nicht zu Ende gebracht, bin ich doch weder Clown, noch Musiker, lediglich ewiger Student, verhinderter [more]
I just finished reading Sheri Fink’s gut-wrenching book ‘Five Days at Memorial’, which delves into the agonizing decisions some medical professionals were forced to make at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina disrupted the power supply to that facility. Generators provided only spurts of electricity, [more]
I need to take back what I said the other day – about never wanting to live in smoggy Beijing. For a change, this week I would need go to the capital to breath properly. Right now air pollution in Shanghai has gone off the charts, for the [more]