things

interesting things

The Library of Babel: every page that could ever be written is in there somewhere, mostly as noise. I've lost whole evenings to it.
Numbers stations: shortwave stations that read out long strings of digits, for spies. Some still broadcast. Nobody official will tell you why.
Benford's law: in real-world data, about 30% of numbers start with a 1. Tax offices use it to catch fraud.
Paternoster lifts: an elevator with no doors that never stops. There are still a few in Berlin. Ride one while you can.
Pi: about 40 digits are enough to measure the whole observable universe. People have calculated trillions anyway. Respect.

The Code Book, Simon Singh: the best introduction to cryptography I know. Read it twice.
Stasiland, Anna Funder: ordinary people and the Stasi. After reading it I looked at every building in Lichtenberg differently.
Solaris, Stanisław Lem: a planet that shows you what you think about the most. Better the second time.
Flatland, Edwin Abbott: short, strange, Victorian, about dimensions. Took me one train ride.

Wings of Desire (1987): angels in the Stabi, listening to people think. Slow. Perfect.
The Lives of Others (2006): watch it before you visit the Stasi Museum, not after.
Pi (1998): a mathematician looks for a pattern in the numbers and it goes badly for him. Great film. Black and white, very loud.
Run Lola Run (1998): Berlin, three times in a row. The soundtrack still works.
Good Bye, Lenin! (2003): a son keeps the GDR alive in one flat so his mother won't find out it's gone. Funny until it isn't.

Kraftwerk, Computer Love: from 1981, about finding someone through a machine. Holds up too well.
Kraftwerk, Taschenrechner: a song about a pocket calculator, sung in German. I'm not apologizing.
David Bowie, "Heroes": recorded a few hundred metres from the Wall. Everyone knows it. Still gets me.

Helene Fischer, Atemlos durch die Nacht: played at every wedding, office party and Späti in Germany since 2013. Two notes in and I need to leave.
Los del Río, Macarena: no.
Crazy Frog, Axel F: I was 22 when this came out. I'm still angry.

Nena, 99 Luftballons: overplayed for forty years. Still great.
Bella Ciao: specifically the slow version a man plays on the U8, with the wrong note.
ELO, Mr. Blue Sky: much too happy. I play it in January, when the sun disappears for weeks.
Modern Talking, You're My Heart, You're My Soul: German pop at its absolute worst. I know every word.

Ulysses, James Joyce: bought it in 2009. The bookmark is still on page 31.
The Art of Computer Programming, Donald Knuth: every programmer owns volume one. Knuth is still writing the rest, so I have time.
Gödel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter: everyone at university said it would change my life. It's on the shelf, changing nothing.
The Man Without Qualities, Robert Musil: over a thousand pages, and the author died before finishing it. I'm not starting that.
A Million Random Digits, RAND Corporation: I already know how it ends.

Teufelsberg: an old listening station on a hill made of war rubble, forty minutes from my flat. Everyone goes. I keep not going.
Svalbard Global Seed Vault: you can't go inside anyway. I just like knowing it's there.
Point Nemo: the spot in the ocean furthest from any land. Often the nearest people are the astronauts flying over it.
Berghain: Berlin since 2015. I've walked past the queue four times. That's enough.
Australia: too far, too many spiders. Although I hear the beaches near Adelaide are very quiet in December.
The Moon: I'm fine looking at it from here.