I think this piece from January was my favourite thing I wrote this year.
In which I argue that "scale" is a brain work that makes it harder for us to built a humane Internet.
RE: https://tldr.nettime.org/@tante/115725660440860485
What was your favorite thing you made or did this year? Let's make some space to share cool things we all made or experienced.
@tante moved my blog of 21 years to a new host, manually. And didn't wreck it.
@tante I got back into exercising regularly, at a slow but consistent pace.
I quit coffee.
I booted things out of my timeline and changed my social media habits.
I resurrected an old laptop and moved back to Linux after years on macOS. I now have all my photos, memories and music on my laptop, that I backup on an external hard drive.
I wrote nearly every month on my blog, and have still many drafts in the writing.
It was a good year for me.
@tante I have written prefaces to volumes of the Marx/Engels study edition before, but “The German Ideology” was a challenge, a text that does not actually exist as such and has developed a problematic life of its own as MEW 3. In addition, after almost 70 years, we have printed the volumes in paperback. Rarely has there been so much tradition, reappraisal of tradition, and breaking with tradition.
Thread (in German): https://berlin.social/@karldietzverlag/114897849400771736
@tante After a long time of procrastination with my band we finally actually recorded, produced and released two songs 😃 It's a weird and very cool feeling to have something of oneself actually "out there" for others to enjoy.
@tante. My local makerspace has a cardboard box filled with around 1,000 slightly broken solar-charging flashlights. The only thing wrong with them is the pushbutton switch that turns the 2 LED lights on. I'm printing a small case that let's you solder a toggle switch onto the switch pads, so you can hang one up in your tent for light after sunset. Good for about 4 hours of light bright enough to read by. Too very Cool.
@tante I made a hot pepper garden (replacing my annual tomato plants that were getting ruined by squirrels). I bought a few different seedlings at the local plant nursery and found a couple of varieties that I want to plant again next year.
i finished this music video for my daughter in february this year
( made in the unreal engine and after effects, including some algorithms, but without ai 👆 😊 )
@tante very proud of this Python library: sweetpareto
Plots “Pareto optimal” curves to do design space studies and tradeoffs.
Took it as a chance to try some new (to me!) things (hatch, cython) and had a blast!
@tante I finally fully acknowledged my disabilities and in doing so I'm actually doing better at managing the symptoms! Which is something I'm proud of :)
Besides that, I crochet a sweet little Hugamonster for a friend's baby and the baby loves it🥰
@tante funny you should ask 😄
For me, it was getting you to speak on our company event, and seeing how your talk resonated with so many of my colleagues.
Thank you again for being there, I think it helped a lot to bring more awareness to the pitfalls of an unfettered "AI" hype, and a lot of my silently critical colleagues suddenly found out they aren't as alone as they thought.
@janeckhoff thanks again for setting that up, had a blast
@tante I led and concluded negotiations on a new data protection law. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=OJ:L_202502518
@tante joining in the tic80 bytejam at #WHY2025 - first livecoding on stage experience!
This, plus #Synthercise, the chiptune dance fitness class i ran at the start of that camp, subjecting the field to my demented cover version of Dolly Parton's 9-to-5, with footwork
Having the opportunity to participate with @gasman in both these things :)
@tante My greatest experience must have been at Platzhirschfestival in Duisburg, especially the show by The Ex (great people doing their thing for more than 45 years and creating a beautiful moment together with the Duisburg audience). Just before them played Die Maßnahme from Hamburg, and they did not disappoint at all the expectations I had from listening to their album "Sommer kaputt" and instead made me love their songs and their approach even more.
@tante I made socks with bees and socks with foxes and a sweater with trees
@tante I found the energy to be silly this year, and it still brings me joy months later.
@tante I wrote the music to a musical, performed three times. And I discovered LoRa (long range) radio.
@tante I wrote a seminar paper about situated knowleges and universalism that I'm somewhat proud of.
@tante I got 16 points in one of my State Law Examinations which was a very happy surprise. It made me scream out loud when opening the letter (and put the 2 points in criminal law in perspective. My friends now, of course, only talk about that one. To be fair, it is quite funny in my case.)
@tante Randomly found out that there's an actual, serious pinball arcade just a 15 minute bicycle ride away from my home, next to Berlin. First took my kid, then my father-in-law there. It was awesome.
@hzulla _nothing_ beats the haptics and the sound of the pinball paddles moving. I love pinball machines so much.
@tante As a kid, I always preferred arcade video game machines over pinball tables. My kid today also enjoys playing Bubble Bobble, Donkey Kong, Pac-Man and Frogger. Batocera rocks.
Still, the actual physical experience of a pinball arcade in 2025 is so much better than the retrogame console at home and thus it's my response to your original question.
@tante I am completing my first year as platoon leader for my volunteer organisation and completed training to command up to ~17k people. This will never happen (it would constitute a fuckup in command structures of biblical proportion) but I like the general idea that I'm qualified to do so should the need arise.
Most important to me is that my platoon members have accepted me and trust me to bring them home safely again.
@Laird_Dave That is quite a big achievement. Congratulations!
@tante
Favourite thing this year? Obviously my 4th album of Very Good Music!
https://slowtiger.bandcamp.com/album/vertigo-treatment
@tante I am quite proud of this communication to the LIMITS conference last June :
@martin That's such a timely topic. Which class of devices do you think have the best path for retrofitting?
@tante I think the main characteristics that allow for a successful retrofitting are hardware and software standards (obviously), a well-established brand because it increases the long-term availability of spare parts and documentation, and a dedicated enthusiast community.
As for the type of device, single-purpose tools (camera, audio recorder, writing instrument, etc.) are the best because as long as the original use case exists, the only thing that makes them "obsolete" is usually their inability to connect to a network.
@tante
I've gone all retro and picked up on some code I last worked on 30 years ago (yes, 1995!), applying 30 years of experience to my earlier enthusiasm - it's getting a build make-over, proper tests and possibly some readable documentation - only just started this month so not done by a long way but the journey excites me 😁
https://git.sr.ht/~phlash/litetask
@phlash Wow, your own Kernel! That is so cool. Getting back to it must be a fascinating experience.
@tante You are just trying to make me feel depressed.
@MBrandtner the opposite. Even if the year wasn't great it must have had something good in it?
@tante Yes, but these threads are always full of impressive productivity and I can't compete with that. I guess the best experience for me this year was going to Denmark on vacation with my kids and a befriended family.
@MBrandtner That's awesome. Going to Denmark with the family was the first real holiday we had with our son. It was such a cool trip. Things don't have to be "impressive". Sometimes they can be just nice and one can remember how nice they were.
@MBrandtner (I write that also to remind myself of it)
@tante
My current project is a pride flag dice bag for my son. I'm pretty pleased with how it's coming along.
@silvermoon82 That looks super cool! What are those rings made of?
@tante
They're aluminum, anodised to the different colours.
@silvermoon82 oh I am almost hearing the metally noise while moving the fabric. That is super cool
@tante
It's packed away right now, but I have a whole shirt made of it! It makes a small noise when I move, it's really cool.
@silvermoon82 Awesome. That must have taken such a long time to make
@tante
I invested some weeks work to write about something I care about. https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/schockanrufe-so-funktioniert-die-rentner-abzocke-am-telefon-a-3b8fb7f1-c283-45fb-ba95-539d5fa2b4e9?giftToken=7ac807b0-45a2-4a9a-83dd-bcfd527ec632
@publictorsten Yeah I read that when it came out. Important work, thanks for putting it together
@tante my best make this year is my graphic novel on autism 😊 (second best was a zine on totalitarism 💥)
@astridpoot that looks super cool! It's almost too professional for a zine ;)
@tante this is a proper book! with a publisher and author photos, a litlle booklaunchfest and everything 🥳
@tante a Go string formatting library both much better in output and up-to 8x faster than the standard library 😜 https://codeberg.org/gruf/go-kv/src/branch/main/format
@tante i have left the toxic open source community i was working with. not the easiest decision from a business perspective but soooo good for my mental health.
