About cycling, walking, and photographing

Du Pham has a nice essay which she calls a declaration of love to her bicycle (in German, in case you understand that). In it, she describes the happiness she feels on her daily commute of 3 kilometers, or the visiting of her mum’s, which are 72 km – that’s more than your average Joe would cycle, so brava to her! I also love my (non-electrical) steel bike, and I should use it more often indeed.

In the same medium, Alke Wierth writes about walking, and about her difficulties of doing it. She thinks that the metaphorical meaning of someone “being gone”, either physically or mentally, might influence her and be the cause of it, but is also mentioning that she’s a smoker. I was, too, until August of 2017, and according to my doc that was the main reason of developing an atherosclerosis, my known cause of pain while walking. I didn’t have an operation, but early last year started to count my steps with one of these little fitness trackers, and I don’t want to brag about it, but that little thing does keep me motivated – and I take the time to walk, and so to care a bit of myself.

While I was still working, I used to walk with a colleague during our lunch breaks, until I became a really much slower walker than him, so I was always asking for a cigarette break, or for a short stop to take a photograph – signs of developing pAVK, or as we call it in German, “Schaufensterkrankheit”. You ask for breaks to window-shop, so to say.

A propos photographing: Mike Johnston has a nice article featuring Paloma Dooley who is photographing landscapes in and around L.A. using an 8 by 10 inch film camera. That is not a camera which you could carry around for excuses, and 50 dollars per “shot” also means that you wouldn’t take as many – she says that sometimes she takes two photographs in a month. But it’s still a nice article and video about her, and it also pays to look at her web page. I would love to see one of her contact prints, but at 100$ each, couldn’t afford it.

As always, thanks for reading.

Bunch of fools…

… who don’t even see the risks they cause, and who are constantly sawing the branch they’re sitting upon, as we say in German

Reminds me of a song of which Mitchie said it was from Homer Simpson. Something like “Look at all these idiots – what a bunch of morons!” 🙁

Edit: found it:

So it was Mr. Burns who was singing the Blues about an office full of morons, and a planet full of fools. I guess that’s us all, aren’t we?

Never trust only one source

While heise.de praises a TV from LG as the best buy ever, arstechnica tells more of the real story, namely that our TVs now also spy on us. Reminds me of what my grandma said about her parents – they believed they had to dress properly when sitting in front of a TV, because “they” could see us, too…

And while we all were chuckling with our grandma about this, it seems that times have moved on, and while we don’t (yet) have that Orwellian “Big Brother”, we now seem to have many “Little Brothers” in all of these big global tech companies – no matter where they’re from (like in the case of LG and Samsung, South Korea).

And no, switching off both LAN and WLAN from your “smart” TV is no option, since that would cut off all streaming to and from the device as wll, which would mean: no “Mediatheken“, and no more content even from your computer to the TV. So I want my TV to be as dumb as possible; thanks.

Like always, thanks for reading.

In English *and* (mostly) in German: IT News

We have to get a bit more independent from Big Tech IT – now everyone seems to agree. The German Heise Verlag, which thankfully now produce most of their content in both German *and* in English, reports about Palantir and openCode for instance, which deal with that topic. I’ve recently seen a two-hour-long discussion and expert hearing about it, which I can recommend in case you understand German and have those two hours for the topic. The Linke party even invited an expert from FSFE, the Free Software Foundation Europe (.org), who deal with that since long before someone started a topic like #UnplugTrump on Mastodon.

Another more or less important topic from IT: Google just stopped support for Android 12, see the heise topic here, so think about changing your OS which is mentioned in the comments – or better, get something like GrapheneOS on a still supported device. I’m still happy with that on my Pixel 6a as long as it will be supported; too bad that I can’t change to the now deceased DivestOS after that period…

As always, thanks for reading.

Update, same day:

Seems like the EU Commission is extra careful regarding the US by now – and maybe we all should be.

A pretty penny indeed…

Just read an enthusiastic review of the Trek Madone SLR 9 AXS Gen 8 (what a name!) racing bike, which sells for $15,999 in the US of A. By the way I still don’t know how to pronounce their line of racing bikes, is it “Madone” like in “Al Capone”? I’d rather think of these as “Mad One”s 😉

And yes, 15.999 is indeed a hefty sum for a bicycle, don’t you think? I once got a second hand Peugeot racing bike from an uncle of mine (RIP Wolfgang) for IIRC about 200DM or so (100€). Peugeot cycles was the big name during that time, even Eddy Merckx rode one, as you can see here. I know I know, apples and oranges, but I loved that old steel bike, still have a steel bike from another German manufacturer today. And to further compare prices, I think I bought my Honda NTV motorcycle used for about 2.500DM – today you won’t even get a Honda Cub for the same amount in Euros… and our used Toyota Yaris Hybrid was also less than 16k…

Why do I even mention that all here? Because of the latest trade tariffs of the US against China of course. I don’t know much about Trek, but last time I looked, pretty much all of today’s modern carbon frames were made either in Taiwan (which is the world’s number 1 bicycle maker), or in mainland China. And now imagine +145% tax for importing these into the US – that same bike could soon cost north of 30k or so – which will make it a hobby for the rich I guess. Which would be, as mentioned in the headline, a pretty penny indeed, way out of reach for mere mortals. Crazy times, aren’t these?

I’m happy with our steel bikes which 10 years ago did cost some 800€ or so each. More than enough for me, even if I can’t race with that one, but who cares?

As always, thanks for reading.

Update, from April 22nd, 2025: it had to come; everyone except a sad clown in the white house knew it (or he doesn’t care)…

Qotd for Thursday, April 3rd, 2025

And it comes from Stephen Colbert on his late show:

“Thanks to Donald Trump, America is finally free from the tyranny of being able to buy stuff from other countries,” Colbert told the studio audience. “Who’s ready to learn how to make their own iPad from scratch?”

found in The Independent. Oh, and he has a great band as well, look out for them.

Side note: our ARD/ZDF Mittagsmagazin asked people whether they’d now consider to buy fewer American products. Result: 96% yes, 4% no. Number of answers: 7,075. See here.