Who does an ultramarathon in the desert and calls it a vacation? Who's building a new free public swimming pool at the center of Berlin? What's the latest in Trump's agenda vs anything that ever made sense in the world, and why Anthropic is calling for a pause in AI development?

These and more. Come we can laugh and cry together.

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Leave a comment if you're not AI

Cheers.

I propose modern public holidays, starting with a yearly “check your backups” day (USB sticks, external drives, photo chaos) and I campaign for using exclamation marks again.

Then I rant about workplaces adopting Claude so heavily that company chat starts reading like AI-on-AI communication: people use AI to generate overly long polite messages and recipients use AI to compress them back into one sentence, creating extra cognitive load and raising the question of how harsh we’re training ourselves (and AIs) to be.

I share personal updates on brutal Berlin pollen, the threatened shutdown of multicultural RBB Cosmo (where I also make a Greek show), my coding side projects (a 2D anti-AI platformer, a Google reviews “fair ratings” extension, and an encrypted no-notifications messaging app), surreal Trump/IRS corruption news, and a lake trip where my kid ignores nature for inflatable plastic toys.

Follow my stuff on:

https://ennui92.github.io/ermis-dev/

00:00 Welcome From Berlin00:40 Modern Public Holidays01:07 Backup Day Proposal03:28 Exclamation Mark Revival04:20 AI Written Workplace Talk05:53 Full Circle Communication09:05 Being Nice To AI11:13 Proper Episode Intro11:35 Berlin Allergy Season14:39 Cosmo Radio Shutdown19:02 Coding Side Projects21:53 No Rush Messaging App24:46 Trump And IRS Corruption27:28 Lake Day In Berlin30:15 Plastic Toys In Nature31:26 Wrap Up And Goodbye

Links at the bottom. Greece won. Three years in a row. The title of the most complex country in the world to do business in. I open by complaining about it, then quietly admit I still keep an accountant there even though I left, because the complexity is also why I cannot leave.

(Before you read further... You know who writes these descriptions... right? Right. Ermis out)Then a small thing about the €230 question I once paid a lawyer to answer, that I'd now ask ChatGPT for free. Which is great. Except for the part where the same machine is firing people I know.Some parenting at 1.5 years. He sleeps through the night now. He wants to wear one red boot. Just the one. We are walking, slowly, into the part of toddlerhood where he figures out he can lie down in the middle of the pavement and there is nothing I can do about it.And then the long stretch. I am building a 2D platformer called Pull the Plug. I cannot code. I am making it anyway, with Claude. I'll tell you about the shortcuts I built this week that finally made the thing move faster. Fly cam. God mode. A one-button checkpoint. A screenshot batcher. Petty victories. They felt enormous.The game is ugly. Shipping anyway.We can pull the plug together, kill the AI, then go grow tomatoes. That was always the plan.—

• Play the ugly in-progress version: https://pull-the-plug.feepok.workers.dev
• Game landing + waitlist: https://ennui92.github.io/pull-the-plug-site/
• Daily devlog: https://ermis.dev
• Newsletter: https://ermis1.substack.com

Zoo Animals as Influencers, a Shoe-Hoarding Alligator, and Greece’s “Rebrain” PR

Yo I'm too tired so got an LLM to summarise this episode below, sorry. No need to read ittttt

Ermis records episode 94 from Berlin, reflecting on modern zoos and their conservation narrative, comparing captive animals to “trapped influencers” funding protection of wildlife, and noting the northern white rhino is functionally extinct with only two females left, relying on IVF. He shares a news story about an alligator lifted by helicopter after a flood, found to have eaten a missing businessman and to contain six pairs of shoes, suggesting it may have preyed on others near a frequently flooding bridge. He comments on the Trump administration releasing UFO files in curated batches while dumping Epstein files as unorganized raw data. He critiques Greece’s “Rebrain Greece” campaign amid brain drain statistics and misleading “reversal” language, praises Korea’s mixed-ripeness “one a day” banana packs, covers Berlin’s e-scooter hub parking plan extending to 2035, and updates that he’s building a six-level

2D platformer game playable in a browser: here

https://pull-the-plug.feepok.workers.dev/

more projects at:

https://ennui92.github.io/ermis-dev/.00:00 Welcome to Episode 9400:46 Zoos and Conservation Guilt04:41 Rhino Extinction Reality06:09 Alligator Eats Businessman10:01 UFO Files vs Epstein Files13:14 Rebrain Greece PR Spin19:31 Bananas One a Day Pack21:26 Berlin E Scooter Parking Ban24:05 Building a 2D Platformer Game25:34 Final Wrap and Callbacks

Click me! What a chaos. Freshly converted by the city’s May 1st mass awakening, moving through the people-rivers. Listen as we try to hold a family-friendly corner in a park while DIY DJs multiply, and I attempt to sleep a baby in a stroller like a Game Boy game, and a million things to avoid.

He’s good. Charming strangers, cautiously worshipping dogs, and steadily evolving in unpredictable directions. We’re also flirting with the dreaded “pasta period,” which may already be too far gone.

Plus:

• An Amsterdam church experiments with going offline,
• Anguilla keeps cashing in on the AI boom, and
• I ship a new Chrome extension, Tab Noodle, after last week’s “fair German Google reviews” tool.

Thanks for tuning in.

If you're interested in the stuff I make, like Tab Noodle or the Fair Google Review calculator for Germany, you can find everything here: https://ennui92.github.io/ermis-dev/

Fair Google Ratings, Remote Cashiers, Polymarket Scams, and Ryanair Leaves Berlin

This episode covers a new Google Maps change in Germany that shows how many reviews were removed under defamation-law claims, and my free, open-source Claude love built Chrome extension called “Fair Rating for German Reviews"

Extension here

The episode then looks at ethical gray zones in tech capitalism: New York restaurants using remote on-screen cashiers paid $3/hour from the Philippines, and Polymarket manipulation, including the Coinbase CEO trolling “mention” bets, a Super Bowl anthem-length bettor timing rehearsals, and someone allegedly heating a single Paris airport sensor to spike temperature bets.

Also Ryanair closing its Berlin base amid rising costs and taxes, and ends with a personal plan to shave my head. Sunday Intro Germany Review Loophole Fair Rating Extension Claude Coding Freedom Remote Cashier Wage Hack Polymarket Mention Games Super Bowl Rehearsal Edge Weather Sensor Manipulation Ryanair Leaves Berlin Shaving My Head Wrap Up and Thanks

I praise dried mangos, while the orange man is fighting the pope, and AI fakes are ruling the world. Some nostalgia for old times, a story about my date with an old man to see ballet, and a few thoughts on the Artemis mission splashdown

Thanks for tuning in

Timestamps
00:00 Mango Delusion
00:55 Apps Became Casinos
02:33 Episode 92
04:00 Trump vs Pope
07:40 AI Is Fooling Everyone
10:24 China’s “Show Your Diploma” Rule
12:08 Accidental Ballet Date
20:40 Artemis Splashdown
21:36 NASA’s Potato Stream
26:25 Moon Won’t Turn Around
27:00 Wrap-Up

I got one extra hour of sun and one surprisingly decent espresso, which is weird because I usually drink instant dirt and pretend it’s a personality. I spiral a bit about Nestlé, then I put on Placebo and immediately time-travel back to being an embarrassing teenager. So yeah: music, memory, and how to hack your brain without buying another app. Then I peek at the news: Greece doing Greece things—corruption, surveillance, and a luxury hotel near the Acropolis making money off being illegally tall. I also talk about ads that feel psychic (they’re not), a stupid “white messiah” meme, a Germany rule about leaving the country, and Voyager 1 just quietly escaping all of us. Berlin blossom festival, breathing, jump around, don’t die. See you next week.00:00 Morning Hello00:26 Coffee Standards Clash01:20 Ditching Nestle Guilt02:22 Placebo Nostalgia Trip04:46 Music Memory Hack06:23 Greece Corruption Snapshot08:40 Acropolis Hotel Scandal11:48 Ads That Read You14:30 Cobain Hawk Messiah Meme15:41 Germany Travel Permit Rule18:12 Voyager 1 Deep Space Update20:42 Wrap Up And Wellness Tips