This seems less dangerous than rugby, but it’s hard to say. I was searching for rollerblading groups in Freiburg this morning in bed and came across this event. The page was a little sketchy looking but I figured I’d check it out on the way to pick up my unicycle off Kleinanzeigen (German Craigslist). What a cool sport. We’ll see where that goes.

The rollerblading was an event in and of itself. After eating shit on my way out of Freiburg, I was a little bit more cautious. That didn’t stop me from stumbling across many dirt trails and after a quick trip over the Rhine to France, to the top of a step hill on a windy road.

Evidently, what goes up must come down. After making a truck run out style exit into a dirt trailhead, I took off my skates and walked down the rest of the hill. I usually like downhills, but not on rollerblades, and especially with barely any rubber left on the brake (yeah I use the footbrake, sorry).

I finished another book! Idk if anybody is reading my book reviews, but here goes.

Enshittification is a book that does a great job explaining how big companies have been making worse and worse products for consumers and what we can do about it. I really did enjoy learning about creative commons licensing and it’s ability to be used as bait to ensnare innocent people who make a minute error in displaying the license. Generally, the legal related arguments in the book seemed quite interesting to me. However, I had a hard time getting past the misleading usage of technical terms. For instance, a large claim in the book is that Uber drivers and other gig economy workers are employed by an “app”. However, despite the app being an important feature of the companies interactions with the contractor, they are still working with (though technically not employed by) a company through the app. Apps have lots of problems, but the app is not the problem there, it’s the company. There were a few other examples of these misleading claims, possibly inspired by the goal of simplification.

Additionally, the term enshittification (spoiler alert) doesn’t actually mean anything specific! But they wait until the end to claim (effectively) that they want the term to go viral, so they’re letting people figure it out. They used it so frequently and just used shit so much with no real purpose. If you’re gonna swear, make it mean something.

More book suggestions always welcome!

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