In the last years my life has been marked by some profound changes. After studying to become a robotics engineer and earning a master’s degree, I pivoted towards medical informatics with my first job. Roughly two years ago, I finally decided to change my career entirely. Now I am back at university and studying Medicine to eventually become a doctor in a few years (hopefully). Writing down these sentences sounds like a matter-of fact statement. But it has been a rocky path – filled with doubts, hesitation, and also grief. When people learn about my career change, they often promptly ask me why. Usually, my answer goes something along the line of “I didn’t want to work in an office anymore.” This is not a false statement. But it conveys only a very limited fraction of my true motivation and feelings. The honest answer goes way deeper. ...

Ich bin aufgewachsen in einer Welt, in der politischer Einsatz oftmals belächelt wurde – wer wirklich etwas ändern will, wird Ingenieur oder gründet ein Technologie-Start-Up! Heute denke ich darüber anders, denn die wirklich wichtigen Fragen unserer Zeit sind politische oder gesellschaftliche. Was ist ungerecht, was gerecht? Wie wollen wir zusammenleben? Was sind die Werte, die wir in unserem Bildungssystem vermitteln wollen? Wollen wir überhaupt Werte vermitteln? Wie ermöglichen wir eine gute Mobilität für alle? Wie sieht ein gutes Gesundheitssystem aus? ...

Enna viewed from the south in central Sicily. It is a steep 240 meters ascent to the top of the hill where the old city is located. In January and February, I cycled around Southern Italy for three weeks. I completely relied on the power of my body to move me and fifteen kilograms of luggage around. One day, while dragging myself up the steep ascent to Enna, a famous hilltop city in central Sicily, I was overtaken by several trucks. They would rush by with roaring engines, carrying roughly 500 times the amount of luggage that I had on my bicycle. But still, they easily climbed all the way up, dropping out of sight after the next turn. What a stark contrast. To carry that amount of cargo I would need 500 round-trips on my bike. It would take me a month with around sixteen daily trips to do the same thing the truck achieves within ten minutes. That’s insane. Energy is so cheap and abundant that we don’t even think about it. And such energy use is not an exception. Every day trucks go up to Enna to deliver such mundane things as bottled water. ...

If we don’t run and constantly change, we are left behind, loose contact, are outdated. Our friends have moved on and life passed by us. The automatic staircase has pushed us into the closet. – Hartmut Rosa in this article Recently, the news are full again of concerned articles about the state of the German economy. Apparently, we live in a world where the slightest signs of economic stagnation cause collective anxiety. Why is that? It is even more astounding as economic growth measured as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has a deep connection with the climate crisis. Looking at the chart below the correlation is hard to deny. ...

Before taking up a new job, I wanted to get out of the daily grind for some time. As I like cycling and have done memorable trips in the past, I decided to go for a longer (roughly one month) cycling trip again. My destination was southern Italy because this is well connected to Germany via trains, offers relatively mild weather in winter and seemed like a diverse and beautiful place. ...

This text was written from a German viewpoint. Even if our daily lives are not yet gravely impacted, we as humanity are standing in front of an existential threat. Our climate is warming rapidly. Technical progress combined with our standard of living have put us on a path to climate breakdown. When I was twenty, my take on the climate crisis was “we will figure it out along the way”. I had the belief that with some kind of invention we would be able to pull around. Furthermore, the scenario did not sound so serious to me yet. ...

Auch wenn unser Alltag in Deutschland noch nicht lebensbedrohlich betroffen ist, stehen wir als Menschheit vor einer existentiellen Herausforderung. Unser Klima verändert sich schneller als je zuvor, maßgeblich verursacht durch technische Errungenschaften und unseren Lebensstil. Mit Anfang zwanzig habe ich das Thema mit “wird schon irgendwie” abgetan. Ich war der festen Überzeugung, dass wir mit einer technischen Innovation schon noch die Kurve kriegen. Außerdem könne es doch gar nicht so schlimm sein, dachte mein damaliges Ich. ...

Cooking is one of my favorite activities. It combines creativity, technique and it is a social event. On top of that, there is a tangible outcome which hopefully fills your belly. I regularly invite friends over to cook and eat together. I have strong opinions on the right cookware. A centerpiece of each kitchen is a good pan. This means for me that the pan is durable. I want to buy a pan once and use it a lifetime. is easy to use. Cooking is an everyday activity and therefore all tools involved should not require doing extra rounds. heats up evenly. The entire pan surface gets hot and not only certain parts. is able to brown the ingredients. When I put stuff in a pan I usually want to achieve some kind of browning. A high heat capacity helps here. has non-stick properties. When you are looking for a new pan, those are usually the options in order of popularity: ...

You like to cook. At some point your knives are becoming dull. If you don’t want to continue working with dull knives, you need a sharping tool. There exist thousands of sharpening tools out there with two of them being: Grinding Stone Electric Knife Sharpener Let’s compare those two in a couple of categories. Grinding Stone Simplicity: It’s a stone. I don’t think it gets any simpler than that. I think the word repair does not even make sense. ...

This post gives a quick overview about the software I run on my PCs. In general, I am looking for keyboard centric tools which follow the UNIX philosophy (doing one thing right). Ideally, the tool integrates well into the terminal because that is where I spend a lot of my computer time - besides the browser maybe. Operating System Arch Linux. I was an Ubuntu user before but switched to Arch Linux since some years now. The rolling release models gives me access to the latest software and I only rarely have any stability issues. Arch also allows me to run my own customized desktop experience without any pre-installed other packages. Additionally, the AUR is a great resource for additional packages. ...