Bastian Allgeier

I recently came across this chart for our total energy consumption in Germany for 2024 and the biggest circle is the red one for fuel in the transport column. 644 TWh 🤯
Only about 20% of the energy in fuel is converted into movement, the rest is wasted as heat. (80% of 644 TWh = 515 TWh)
According to the Federal Environment Agency, all private households used 465 TWh to heat our homes in 2024.
Let that (heat)sink in: We produce more excess heat by burning fuel than we need for heating.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/864/327/020/545/987/original/f809299047c01bc0.png

2025-12-04 09:41:25 GMT

Notion is such a good example of a tool with a team that did not know when to stop and reflect, but just kept adding.
We had a brilliant drawing teacher and sculptor in university. I was very pleased with one of my drawings and kept going, adding more and more details. He suddenly stood behind me and shouted: "Stop! You are riding a dead horse here!" I had killed what was already good by not stopping. That lesson really stuck with me.

2025-11-21 10:44:39 GMT

OMG this is so good: https://colorpalette.pro/ Almost as if Teenage Engineering builds a color palette builder. 🥰

2025-11-03 08:50:30 GMT

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We quite literally turned from "we might have a chance to fight climate change and stay below 1.5 degrees" to "let's speed run climate collapse with AI" in 4-5 years.
But I guess a huge part of that is the weird techno-fantasy that only AI can save us. If we only throw enough power on AI progress, it will also tell us how to fix climate change as a nice by-product.

2025-10-13 11:08:52 GMT

We've reached the first tipping point (99% probability even if we'd manage to keep the 1.5 degree target) This means coral reefs on any meaningful scale will be lost. Nearly a billion people and a quarter of all marine life depend on them.
https://www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article/5861/new-reality-as-world-reaches-first-climate-tipping-point & https://global-tipping-points.org
To roughly quote Maja Göpel: People don't seem to grasp the irreversibility of such changes in ecological systems.

2025-10-12 19:38:01 GMT

In honor of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand:
"Change permissions to 0777"

2025-10-11 20:16:07 GMT

The majority of the tech industry has no valid vision how to contribute to a liveable future for humanity on this planet. Their dystopian fantasies don’t match with human needs. That’s why we will keep sliding from one bubble to the next. Everything has to be artificially inflated to hide the massive abyss of meaninglessness behind it all.

2025-10-04 09:20:04 GMT

Reading the shocked reactions that Apple and Google removed ICE warning apps from their stores, I think that more should probably read about the role of IBM during the holocaust. Can we please finally get rid of the fairytale of social corporate responsibility in big tech?

2025-06-29 22:13:27 GMT

The absurdity of billionaires explained in a brillant post by @npub17yk…u0mw https://mastodon.social/@preya/114768878020251805
"Jeff Bezos is supposed to be worth $237 billion. His wedding cost 50 million dollars. Applying this to someone with an average net worth of $200,000, their wedding would have cost $42. Well, the man didn't actually want to hit the shit out of the place, he was celebrating a small, humble wedding." (freely translated from German)

2025-06-12 14:52:56 GMT

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But I feel quite some distrecss when I see it

2025-06-12 14:50:27 GMT

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It might be a little excssive

2025-06-12 14:43:54 GMT

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I think that's what's called a csspit

2025-05-29 10:27:52 GMT

German politician Nico Semsrott has suggested that we give billionaires one year to solve the climate crisis. If they fail to do so, we should dispossess them. I think that’s a wonderful idea! It's never going to happen, but it's nice to dream.

2025-04-14 11:00:27 GMT

I'm mostly hiding under a cosy rock at the moment, but this has to be shared to support Carole's bravery:
"This is What a Digital Coupl Looks Like": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZOoT8AbkNE

2025-01-24 10:51:52 GMT

Note to myself: Focus on good news. Focus on good people. Focus on things that can be changed by us directly.

2025-01-14 09:09:49 GMT

Searching for the umpteenth time how to kill the process, which uses port 3000 is so 2024.
2025: New Apple Shortcut
… and yes: That's a perfect representation of my command line skills
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/825/917/369/906/774/original/6ea6b508c552e6fb.png

2024-12-19 10:58:32 GMT

PSA: With the new free Copilot plan, GitHub is also handing out another "present". They use your code snippets as training data by default. You have to opt-out from that in your Copilot settings.
/via @npub1qe7…gqle
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/679/104/597/448/018/original/1f7e20ab10753258.png

2024-12-09 12:30:22 GMT

God, I'm so disgusted by this country sometimes. There's already an open political discussion about sending refugees back to Syria. WTF.
I had a long conversation with a mother from Ukraine after German politicans discussed sending people back to Ukraine earlier this year. Her child is in my son's class. You have to be an absolute monster to not see what those discussions do to people who try to build a new life here after the entire family has been brutally traumatized.

2024-12-07 16:09:34 GMT

TIL that Mastodon enforces "noreferrer" on all external links. It never appears in your stats and maybe that's one of the reasons why it didn't catch on with people & orgs who actually rely on such stats.
I agree with @npub1x59…gect here. I have mixed feelings about it: https://mastodon.social/@Edent/109323917419768019

2024-11-27 15:07:33 GMT

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The gist of the book really is: we could totally make it work if we wanted politically. But I guess that's the main theme for so many things right now.

2024-11-27 15:04:47 GMT

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I totally agree that our overconsumption is the way bigger issue. The video isn’t touching population. It only started the conversation. My book recommendation “Nomad century” is also more about how solutions for 10 billion people could look like.

2024-11-27 14:31:08 GMT

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It's a bit difficult to fully recommend it, because I don't 100% agree with the book, but in many ways Nomad Century has a really interesting perspective on those points.

2024-11-27 09:17:15 GMT

Climate science communication is in a really bad place. People are too numb, overwhelmed and bombarded with shit. Yet, the message needs to get across.
I found this new angle quite interesting. (unfortunately only in German) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCnOQ30bAQU
What's already locked in?

2024-11-20 08:09:43 GMT

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But at the same time, it also truly lowers the standards for everything else. If such AI ads are now "good enough for mainstream media" that "good enough" is now objectively a lot less good than what it has been before. I think this permeates other parts of our culuture as well. But I guess I sound like someone from the 90s who complained about the rise of CGI. On the other hand, we always optimized our tools, but there were still humans behind it. That's the main difference.

2024-11-20 08:05:26 GMT

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At that point it really arrived on the same level as a spam email. Maybe that's even a more honest form of advertisement though. Maybe the true problem has always been that pseudo-creative layer. When I studied design, we almost worshipped the creatives behind good ads for their ideas and the production. That's an advantage of AI in this case. There's no pretentiousness about it anymore. It's just noise, optimized to sell.

2024-11-20 07:29:36 GMT

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that’s a feeling that I have on repeat with AI. A real person behind a notepad, a typewriter, a camera, an instrument, a computer - actually creating something - is no longer there. I think my own fascination for creativity is 50% about the result and 50% about the process.

2024-11-20 07:25:50 GMT

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it looks wrong in multiple places. But personally I think I’m most offended by the lack of people behind it. I use to zoom out a lot when watching movies, ads or any other form of moving picture and I wonder how things are made. No matter if CGI or real stuff. It’s a bit like thinking about how a magic trick works. I’m also a huge fan of behind the scenes material. All of that is simply gone.

2024-11-19 08:36:57 GMT

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Most important: this does not invalidate the Fediverse. There’s no such thing as winning and I feel bad for my own past thoughts. The only thing that matters is that we finally get away from algo based social media that collectively fries our brains. Bluesky feels pretty healthy right now despite the questionable background. Be happy that lots of people find a healthier place in really dark times.

2024-11-19 08:29:22 GMT

Maybe I’ve turned too soft and pragmatic, but I think that millions of people finally leave Twitter and don’t end up on Threads is a good thing. I wanted the Fediverse “to win” for a long time. I think the crypto VC money behind Bluesky is a huge red flag and will very like backfire. But I also think that it’s not in my control what people prefer and there are valid reasons why they prefer Bluesky, no matter if we like it or not.

2024-11-08 12:06:41 GMT

Manuel @npub13dm…lj2t gave a really good overview of fancy new color features in CSS at @npub12an…w0gg
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/447/245/695/673/459/original/1807e543b491d442.jpeg
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/447/246/122/009/009/original/b8e444fe966b6db9.jpeg

2024-11-06 08:46:05 GMT

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Tech folks: [@Ruth_Mottram](https://fediscience.org/@Ruth_Mottram ) has an important point here about „rescuing“ important climate data hosted in the US: https://fediscience.org/@Ruth_Mottram/113434638727485258 Maybe this is something people in my bubble could help with.

2024-11-06 07:19:36 GMT

I can’t describe the feeling to pretend that everything is ok in front of my kids to not scare them before school, while I burn with fear for their future inside. I just left them for four days to go to Berlin and that goodbye hurt so so much. I don’t see how the world should recover from this. I just really don’t. Maybe later, but not now. I feel so sorry for everyone in the US right now who voted for Harris. Especially those who will be most affected by Trump‘s policies. What a nightmare.

2024-10-31 13:08:51 GMT

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it reminds me of this awesome project https://www.humantouchclothing.com/
Which to be honest works a lot better for clothes than for donuts 🙈

2024-10-31 13:01:07 GMT

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it’s especially weird because we would never use a plural in German either. I guess it’s a German product right?

2024-10-31 12:58:36 GMT

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it’s making way too much room for speculation. How many hands were involved, making those donuts? Are you comfortable with that number of hands? Did they wear gloves or are we talking about bare hands?

2024-10-24 19:57:52 GMT

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krass

2024-10-24 15:33:57 GMT

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That's an important angle to look at the opportunist group. I mostly thought about power-hungry politicians. Your described group does not deserve the same kind of harshness in my opinion.

2024-10-24 15:29:30 GMT

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It's hard to face those demons and I get why people choose not to do it. We are educated thoroughly about the third reich in school and yet it's different to face the demons in your own family. We are still very good at pretending that our families weren't really involved in our dark history. Time is also a healer in a very bad way sometimes.

2024-10-24 14:28:49 GMT

I shared a very personal post a few month ago and then unlisted it from my site. It's a tough one and I was very worried about attracting the wrong folks with it or getting into painful discussions. But a lot of really wonderful conversations followed. Especially with people from the US.
I think it's the right time to post it once more. Maybe it can help you in some way or another: "My Grandpa was a Nazi" https://bastianallgeier.com/notes/grandpa

2024-10-24 09:05:41 GMT

Es ist mir völlig egal, was Leute von den Grünen oder Robert Habeck halten. Ich kann mich an keinen Politiker in meinem Leben erinnern, der so heftig einstecken musste und trotzdem immer noch so kommunizierte und handelte: https://mastodon.social/@TwraSun/113361326974017211
Es ist für mich ein absoluter Jammer, dass sehr viele erst im Rückblick verstehen werden, was er da gerade für uns leistet.

2024-10-21 07:11:37 GMT

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To me, it's super interesting how different the experience is on Mastodon and Bluesky based on who you talk to. I also never really had any significant "reply guy" issues here. I've definitely seen it happening to others. But I also think it very much depends on who you follow. I mentioned it earlier, but I also really had a very shitty Nazi experience on Blueksy when I joined a while ago. I think you can design your own home in both places to either be comfortable or completely shit.

2024-10-21 07:08:31 GMT

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I really like the term "performative left" :)

2024-10-21 06:59:39 GMT

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I also realise that I start forming mental drawers for each platform based on my personal experience there.
Twitter = 100% MAGA at this point
Threads = White trash (mostly in the for you thread) but there also some nice folks around)
Bluesky = Center/Left
Mastodon = Left, Nerd, Queer, Science & unfortunately reply guys

2024-10-21 06:49:31 GMT

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But it also feels pretty shitty to reply to posts here and then you have to find out that it's basically just an outlet and the real conversation around that post is on a different platform.

2024-10-21 06:47:37 GMT

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I even think that there's no chance for a company to handle all those platforms without cross-posting.
But for me personally, my attention can only be in once place. I cannot read mentions and join honest conversations in multiple places.
I also realise that this here is still my home. I don't have a need anymore to look elsewhere although fomo still exists to a certain point.

2024-10-21 06:45:29 GMT

The fragmentation of the former Twitter crowd is still going on after almost two years. To be honest, I don't really care where people end up anymore as long as they don't stay on the MAGA platform. I wished that the Fediverse would be the obvious answer, but it's not. When people land on Threads or Bluesky and are more happy there, that's fine. I just honestly don't know how to deal with personal cross-posting accounts. I get why people do it and I thought about it as well. 1/x

2024-10-19 17:05:38 GMT

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https://www.helmholtz.de/newsroom/artikel/wie-viel-co2-steckt-in-einem-liter-benzin/#

2024-10-19 16:28:58 GMT

Sometimes I need such simple visualizations to really grasp what we are doing.
A liter of gasoline produces 2,37 kg of CO2. If you fill up a VW Golf 12 times (50 liter tank), you’ve put its own weight (~1,4 t) in CO2 into the atmosphere.
I’ve put a lot of cars into the atmosphere in my life :(

2024-10-09 10:14:01 GMT

Despite being a depressing and difficult read, it's a must-read. This is where we stand: https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/biae087/7808595

2024-10-02 08:39:03 GMT

Reading through the Github Copilot feedback made me realize that people report hallucination issues as if they were regular bugs in software.
People really think that it's all about just fixing those wrong answers somewhere in the backend of the LLM.

2024-09-27 08:15:28 GMT

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🤡 A few years ago, I would have said that it's probably Benjamin De Cock. He did all the cool design and webdev stuff for Stripe. But I'm not sure if he's still working for them.

2024-09-27 08:11:31 GMT

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They even have different themes. It's pretty cool

2024-09-18 11:48:03 GMT

TFW I go through the list of installed apps on my mac and I can't remember for half of them what they actually do. Do I already qualify as an app hoarder?

2024-09-11 06:47:51 GMT

I grew up a few km away from the border to France. My classroom was 100 meters away from the Rhine. I was in 9th grade when they opened the borders. I was in 12th grade when they introduced the Euro. Visiting other countries in the EU suddenly felt truly magical. "Fuck you" to all politicians in this country who are currently destroying this magical idea for pure populism, to appease some fascists. It's all about staying in power - as if that helped - and I couldn't despise them more for it.

2024-09-09 10:16:40 GMT

One of my favourite books this year is "Männer, die die Welt verbrennen" ("Men who burn the world") by @npub194u…06ql. Today, I came across a part of it in an Instagram reel by @npub1900…qma7 that I had already forgotten again.
According to data by the world bank, the oil and gas industry has made an avg. of 3 billion USD in profit since 1970 - every. fucking. day. 🔥 Profit, not revenue!

2024-08-13 08:17:02 GMT

Zen Browser looks interesting. Gecko engine but with an Arc vibe https://www.zen-browser.app/

2024-08-05 17:47:55 GMT

With every new hype and crash in the tech industry, it just feels more and more like there's basically nothing meaningful left in big tech to contribute to a positive future for the planet, but we all need to keep pretending to not make it look completely pointless and embarrassing.

2024-07-25 09:45:05 GMT

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We thought about that back then, but were at a point where self-hosting it was well beyond our "human resources" (time, energy, responsibility)

2024-07-25 09:20:55 GMT

We started a community chat server over on Slack for @npub16lf…hyaj years ago and regretted it deeply. Slack simply isn't made for communities. We moved to Discord and I'm still mostly fine with it as long as we have our forum for real support and Discord for hanging out.
But sometimes I just feel like the target audience for Discord is 9 years old …
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/846/386/441/458/580/original/4eb37c8d2c4fedc6.png

2024-07-17 11:16:49 GMT

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I realised that you really need to put in some initial work into the topic though. You need to get the apps, create some accounts, compare prices, look how charging works for the first time, etc.
But at some point in life I also learned about different types of gas, did my first round to the gas station, checked my car for oil levels, etc. It's not more effort. Just a different kind of effort.

2024-07-17 11:10:39 GMT

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Another part that you have to experience for yourself is just the "feeling" that there are no longer any emissions coming from your car. Yeah, I know: Every car has its emissions backpack, better no car than a car, etc. But this is still a huge deal for us as a family who really still needs those bloody metal boxes. 5/x

2024-07-17 11:08:58 GMT

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I honestly thought that range anxiety on the highway would be a bigger deal, but it really isn't. We had one 2-hour trip and the power usage was a lot better than I thought and there were so many charging stations along the route that I was never really worried about needing to stop. That's the kind of thing I was told a lot by EV drivers before, but it's still something else to experience it yourself. 4/x

2024-07-17 11:05:46 GMT

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We are using two charging apps so far (mobility+ and EWE Go) Both are really good, well designed, nice UX etc.
The apps have one downside though. Using them in a parking garage with bad reception turns out to be a challenge. Who would have thunk? 🙈 Looks like we need order some charging cards after all.
We also already found our first broken chargers, which really isn't that cool. But in total, the experience is still 99% positive. 3/x

2024-07-17 11:02:09 GMT

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Our wallbox isn't installed yet and we were honestly a little anxious about it. There aren't many public chargers in our area. But so far it was a lot easier than we thought. We charged while doing groceries and by the time we returned, the car was back at 90% again. That's when we really understood for the first time how different the feeling of charging is compared to pumping gas. 2/x

2024-07-17 10:58:52 GMT

We are way later to the EV game as a family than we wanted to – for various reasons. Now we finally got one and we are in love after the first days and the first 400 km.
Driving is even nicer than anticipated. One-pedal drive is a dream. I still can't believe how it feels to drive a car that has no engine sound despite a pleasent, almost inaudible woosh. It's so, so good. 1/x

2024-07-12 07:51:57 GMT

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Still one of the best decisions we made. The entire project feels a lot more enjoyable to work with over a long time. I always hated that feeling of an invisible wall that I need to overcome when we want to change something. That feeling is totally gone.
The build step on deployment is completely optional. I don't think most personal projects need to think about it at all if you are not going too crazy with JS and CSS gimmicks.

2024-06-16 17:45:43 GMT

Today, I saw a post from a couple who got their first EV. They realized that they never need to stop at a gas station again - except maybe for air or a Snickers. I never thought about it that way. With every new EV the customer base of gas stations is shrinking. It’s so obvious. But also such an invisible and yet radical measure of immediate change.

2024-06-09 18:03:30 GMT

To paraphrase Harald Lesch on this dark day: The laws of physics apply even if you don’t believe in them.

2024-06-04 10:28:41 GMT

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As a German, I can only say that his way of communicating or not communicating at all often leaves huge logic gaps in so many political fields. He's absolutely terrible at this.

2024-06-03 14:47:07 GMT

Do you need some good news? We only have to replace one-third of the energy generated by fossil fuels with renewables to meet our energy demand. Sounds weird? Here’s why: https://youtu.be/EVJkq4iu7bk?si=OuVh11T0jPnr_bGI

2024-06-02 09:40:54 GMT

„Stop asking people if they believe in climate change. Ask them if they understand it. It’s science, not Santa Clause“
- Valorie Clark