Last night, I released The Private Citizen episode 107 with my take on the Neil Young / Joe Rogan / Spotify story. I’m planning to release an additional episode tonight before taking February off from the podcast. But first, here’s episode 107:

→ The Private Citizen 107: Neil Young is Being a Dick

Neil Young has had his record label pull his music from Spotify because he doesn’t like that Joe Rogan interviews people who have a different opinion than Neil Young. The story of a counterculture rebel turned censorship advocate.

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On episode 106 of The Private Citizen, I once again try to wind down my coverage of the pandemic. Will I be able to manage it this time? Only time will tell…

→ The Private Citizen 106: Concluding the Coronavirus Coverage, Part 2

Taking stock of the civil liberty and privacy nightmare we have built for ourselves in the pandemic and explaining why I don’t think reporting on it accomplishes much at this point.

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For years, I tried to explain to Dave on Geek News Radio why me caring about the fictional integrity of a story wasn’t simply me being old, inflexible and resenting change. It is important for the suspension of disbelief. For you giving a shit about what you are watching.

The Critical Drinker explains this better than I ever could in the following video. He also explains why this is one of the major problems with Hollywood today.

This week’s episode of The Private Citizen was delayed, but yesterday, I finally managed to release it. It’s a bit of a companion piece to episodes 104 and 94. It is also unusually philosophical.

→ The Private Citizen 105: Law vs. Justice

The law is not the same as justice. There can be unjust laws and illegal actions can beget justice. So why is it that many people can’t tell the difference between these two concepts? And how can we reconcile them in our society?

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Yesterday, the great Michael Koschel finished the first part of my new ink. Which is why I can’t use my right arm properly for a few days now.

This snake is a blue pit viper (Trimeresurus insularis). And yes, the colour is accurate. What a beautiful animal! They have a special IR sensing organ that enables them to pinpoint and attack prey in absolute darkness by sensing heat differences as small as a 0.2°C deviation from the background temperature. I also love the look it gives you. Totally my kind of character!

A few days ago, I received the first fanart for my novel project Grim Deep. I thought that was extremely cool and it made me very happy.

This week’s Private Citizen episode is about a Constitutional Court decision in Germany that has tasked the government with passing a law that regulates triage during the pandemic. This is an exceptionally bad idea, I think.

→ The Private Citizen 104: Triage is Too Logical for Germans

When who to save in case of a medical emergency becomes a moral, or even worse, a legal decision instead of a medical one, we all lose. This will soon be the reality in Germany, though, as the Constitutional Court has just passed a very unfortunate ruling in this regard.

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I’ve just discovered Hildegard von Blingin'. Her stuff is amazing! It starts with the name, but it’s the complete package. Her singing is great and the lyrics are probably the best part. Her pseudo-Medieval style makes even the most boring pop songs interesting.

Check it out!

Do you need high quality news articles on highly technical topics written quickly in English or German? If you do, you can now hire me on Fiverr:

→ I will write easily understandable news stories on complex technical topics

Strava has just alerted me to my running totals for 2021 and I’m pretty happy with how the year went. I managed to run 861 kilometres in total last year, which is up from 792 kilometres in 2020. I’ve also been running my 20 kilometres a week with 8 kilograms of ballast for several months. But I’m probably most proud of how regularly I went running – in the dark, in the cold, in the rain and even in snow. The only times my streak got broken was during two holidays and the 12 days that the three SARS-CoV-2 vaccinations knocked me out for. Other than that, I went running incredibly regularly.

I’ve just released the last episode of The Private Citizen for the year. In this episode I recap the 52 other episodes I’ve recorded during 2021. It’s a very good episode to figure out what episodes you’d be interested in going back to if you haven’t listened to them for whatever reason.

I’m very glad that I’ve once again hit my goal of releasing an episode a week of the show on average over the year.

→ The Private Citizen 103: The Year 2021 in Review

A look back at the second year of the show, through the lens of the topics covered and the things discussed.

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Last night, I released the 100^th episode of my privacy and politics podcast The Private Citizen. This was a very special occasion for me as it marks only the second time one of my podcasts reached that mark (I’m discounting c’t Uplink here as I was only one of team of people who created that show).

To celebrate, I recorded a different kind of episode where I tell listeners a little bit about my life and the things in my past that made me what I am today.

→ The Private Citizen 100: Let Me Tell You a Bit about Myself

For the one-hundredths episode of this show, I’m telling the story of who I am, where I was born and how I was brought up, in the hope that it will help you understand my place in the world and my biases as a basis for further episodes.

If you want to get notified automatically when new episodes of The Private Citizen are released, you can subscribe to the show via a number of methods:

Holy shit! Space Marine II is coming! The first game was one of my favourite console games and the only video game ever that actually made you feel like you are an Astartes. If Skyrim hadn’t come out in the same year, it would’ve probably been my game of the year in 2011. I’ve always wanted a sequel and I’m very glad we’re getting it. I’m a bit worried it isn’t made by Relic, but at least Saber seems to understand how integral visceral chainswords were to the first game.