Unsere neue Ausgabe mit dem Titel ,,(Un-)Sichtbarkeiten'' ist erschienen. Diese Ausgabe ist eine besondere, denn es ist ein Doppelheft mit einer großen Vielfalt an Themen soziologieblog.hypotheses.org/soziologiema...

Not gonna lie: the left hand driving in the UK messes with some hard wired connections in my brain more than I’m willing to admit.

London calling! Time to dedust my old British classics.

It was so hot today that I had to actively cool my watch with a frozen stone for it to actually charge.

+++ NEW ARTICLE +++ Exploring solid use cases for LLMs is hard because most treat their “prompts” either as a trade secret or as not important. Both stances are bad. In this article, I change this by sharing useful academic “prompts” with you. www.hendrik-erz.de/post/how-i-u...

I'm currently saving for a new MBP. Appears I will have to add three more months of saving before I'll be able to afford this. AI companies are garbage and need to be bankrupted.

The modern day book-burnings. It's ironic how Google Books now looks so benign because they cared enough for books not to destroy them. Unlike Anthropic. I'm all in for digitizing books and good LLMs. But not like this.

Short update: I made it … at 5am and after an entire 22 hours on the train. Just to give you a comparison: A plane from Europe to the East Coast of the U.S. takes ca. 9hrs and makes about 10,000 km. I was stuck on the final train for the same amount of time but only made 300 km.

It’s Reddit, so not at all authoritative, but allegedly the first engine operators are able to register in the radio network again. We’re grasping for straws here

Something new that I didn’t have before: apparently the train radio ACROSS THE ENTIRETY OF GERMANY has just failed, meaning that for the first time in my life (ever?) there is NOT A SINGLE TRAIN in the entirety of Germany going because they … just can’t. Jesus.

Sommerhit 2026 just dropped www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2BQ...

+++ NEW ARTICLE +++ Slopware is going to become a big problem in the coming years: aesthetically pleasing apps that have very odd bugs and a bad user experience. Because vibe coding is not maintenance. Are you ready to be annoyed by your software tools? hendrik-erz.de/post/the-ris...

I am starting to use LLMs a bit more prominently in my work. Not to write anything for me or do any substantial work. But two cases where I am realizing that GPT models are actually extremely helpful is parsing content and providing some insight.

One of the oddest pieces of Swedish culture that I will never understand is why even self-service coffee machines have a summer break here.

+++ NEW RELEASE +++ We are pleased to announce the Zettlr 4.6.0 update, which has just been released to the public. Read more on what's changed on our blog, linked below! All update channels should pick up the update within the coming days. zettlr.com/post/zettlr-...

+++ NEW ARTICLE +++ It’s only a matter of time until the AI bubble pops. But after that, it won’t go back to normal. Many of the trends that have started to form will stay. I reflect on some of them here. hendrik-erz.de/post/four-un...

"Linux UX is like selling someone a hammer head and telling them to bring their own handle." Amen. Linux is cool, but it also is a proof of what happens if you let your sysadmin write the user interface. www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDKh...

Today's a first: A website I'm partially responsible for was hacked. And, against my expectations, I found and fixed the malware quickly! But boy, MAKE SURE PASSWORDS SECURE! Do NOT use easily guessable passwords so that this does not happen to you 😵‍💫

#3b1b has a new video out, and I love it. @bildoperationen.bsky.social I remember you calling LLMs/diffusion models as "big archives" — this puts a few hard numbers to that intuition. Still a big fan of that comparison. www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6DK...

+++ NEW ARTICLE +++ Educational opportunities are declining, and it is getting harder for working class children to visit university. Recently, the German education minister argued that declining funds are not a problem. I outline why this is wrong. www.hendrik-erz.de/post/the-end...

Varsågod. www.hendrik-erz.de/grant-o-meter

For no particular reason at all, I decided to figure out how long I'd have to apply for grants until it would be quite probable to receive at least one (assuming independent review and solid applications, that is). The result is not confidence inspiring.

We truly live in the best of all timelines. Guy Debord was always right

I’m a big fan of John Gruber’s new term for full page popovers (“Sign up to our newsletter!”) that you didn’t ask for: Dickovers. daringfireball.net/linked/2026/...

All Microslop apps at work that I have to use now have received extremely overly big copilot buttons in rainbow colors with animations that are insanely distracting. Naturally, none of these updates included any meaningful bug fixes.

Satisfying interactions at work.

Honey, NPM is on fire again thecybersecguru.com/news/red-hat...

Dear crowd, What research blogs from people can you recommend to follow? Im looking for new sources of inspiration!

Good morning! The week is starting well.

Ich hab 6 Jahre BAföG Höchstsatz bekommen und habe grundsätzlich zusätzlich 10-20h die Woche gearbeitet, damit es reicht. Leisten konnte ich mir trotzdem nicht viel. Und das war noch zu Zeiten, wo der Wohnungsmarkt in den Unistädten noch nicht komplett überhitzt war.

Yesterday, my doctoral journey was finally completed with receiving my official diploma and crown from Linköping University in the traditional ceremony.

I kept saying this for years, but quite a lot of people still won’t make the distinction between non-MAGA and MAGA Republicans. This is an important distinction, because without conservatism, no democracy can function. Demonizing them all is not going to end well. daringfireball.net/linked/2026/...

+++ GRANT ANNOUNCEMENT +++ As a last-minute news of the week, I am proud to announce that I just received my first grant of my life! IEI has decided to sponsor my upcoming INAS-trip with a grant of 21 000 SEK! It still feels a bit unreal!

+++ NEW ARTICLE +++ Maybe I'm getting old, maybe my Germanness just asserts itself more, but these days I tend to complain a lot. Today about apps that should've been a website, but which aren't because then they couldn't upsell me a 10% interest credit card. www.hendrik-erz.de/post/this-ap...

I'm tired, boss.

The Barbecue my friend has started looks like a critique of society.

Also: The INAS 2026 program is finally out 🎉

I can’t remember asking you whether I want any of your slop, Microsoft. Shut up. The only reason I use Outlook is because your proprietary stuff doesn’t work with normal email clients.

I am now part of the highest status level in one, and the second/highest in another EU country’s rail system. What a life.

Quick Monday puzzle for y’all: I’m on a train and 2 train minutes away from my stop. I have a bit over 1hr to catch my connecting train. However, I am not sure if I can actually make it. Which country am I in?

+++ NEW ARTICLE +++ I have a NAS now, and an unexpected finding is that I finally enjoy listening to music again. No more Spotify! www.hendrik-erz.de/post/truenas...

The front fell off.

Come join a cool team of awesome people!

Dear Deutsche Bahn — are you ill? Do you need help? Why are you ten minutes EARLY?

It never ceases to amaze me how absolutely garbage Python's XML parsing is.

Currently attempting to try out "agentic coding" for coding. And OpenCode is such an odd project. It's a terminal app that also has some "debug info". Now, what should it contain? Well, for example settings. What does it ACTUALLY show? Frames per second. In a terminal.

God is dead.

We’re currently running a study, testing whether a bunch of sociologists can fix the inherent UX problems of our office door. Currently trialing version 3.0, results pending

Websites that initiate force-downloads and completely prevent my browser asking me WHERE I would like to save files are the bane of my existence. I hate little more than having to manually drag and drop files out of my downloads folder into the correct target. Just let me use the damn file picker

The first R&R is almost done and, wow, all the changes to that paper have turned my project folder into a mess. I sincerely hope that the reviewers are happy with my changes so that I can finally clean that up 🧹