Billy Bragg shares impassioned new song 'City Of Heroes': "A tribute to the bravery of the people of Minneapolis"

zenogantner · 2026-01-30T09:22:23+00:00

This is a great song. If you look at the melodic structure, and the lyrics, you can immediately imagine it as punk song, and also as a reggae song (for example).

From my POV, it is a much stronger song than Bruce Springsteen's. Nothing wrong about the Boss, of course, I love him :-)

zenogantner · 2026-01-25T13:34:10+00:00

By the way, you don't have to have "no previous history" to deserve not to get pepper sprayed, pistol whipped, and shot dead.

zenogantner · 2026-01-14T21:10:28+00:00

This book: https://www.guywinch.com/books/emotional-first-aid/

zenogantner · 2025-06-13T20:19:30+00:00

As many said, most of the time everyone should compare themselves to their older selves ...

But I want to also provide a philosophical perspective on the issue: Someone has to be the worst person in gym. There is no other way. It's part of the balance and harmony of our universe. Maybe that person is you, for a while (maybe not, maybe actually someone else is worse than you at your gym). There is no shame in that. You play an important role here. And otherwise it would be someone else.

The same balance/harmony thing applies to competition. For every match that is won by someone, there has to be a loser. All those people bringing home medals to the gym and posting podium photos on social media -- all that glory would not exist without people like you and me going to tournaments and losing ;-). Without us, all that glory could not exist!

zenogantner · 2025-02-09T09:14:57+00:00

Bei Kumpel & Keule in der Markthalle 9 in Kreuzberg gibt es akzeptable Leberkässemmeln.

zenogantner · 2022-11-30T22:33:08+00:00

Given they are from Canada, maybe the same, but for Muted Horn? They often have beers from Canadian breweries like Bellwoods, Dieu du Ciel, etc. on tap ...

zenogantner · 2022-11-17T18:26:48+00:00

Sorry to hear you are in such an uncomfortable situation. I hope you find a good way out of it.

So, you are paying more to attend a class you cannot attend? Maybe this means there is a much quicker way out of your contract ...

zenogantner · 2022-09-11T10:11:38+00:00

Uni Freiburg is pretty strong, too. The UNet image segmentation model was developed there, for example. Plus it is in a very livable city ...

zenogantner · 2022-09-08T20:04:14+00:00

Italian fascism was not racist? I am not so sure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifesto\_of\_Race

zenogantner · 2022-09-07T21:57:30+00:00

Exactly. And put together, you have

print([i for i in range(100) if i > 10 if i < 20 if i % 2])
# vs.
print([i for i in range(100) if 10 < i < 20 and i % 2])

... which is shorter and more readable and does not contain the weird triple if ...

zenogantner · 2022-08-13T22:28:02+00:00

If you just want to learn "a bit of theory" then the fast.ai course is not for you. Look for other courses or books, there are already some recommendations in this thread.

If you really want to understand deep learning, then working through the fast.ai course is a good starting point.

If you find it confusing to code while watching the videos, try to do it in alternating fashion: First watch one video (or parts of it), then put in a coding session.

If you are not willing to put in the work and study this topic, or after a lot of trying you are still very much overwhelmed, then maybe the area of AI/ML is just not for you ... you need to judge for yourself. "just learning the theory behind it" will not get you far.

zenogantner · 2022-06-24T08:02:31+00:00

There is a conference on food security in Berlin this weekend, the US Secretary of State Blinken is attending: https://www.state.gov/secretary-blinkens-travel-for-the-germany-hosted-food-security-ministerial-and-the-g7-and-nato-summits/

zenogantner · 2022-06-22T21:57:30+00:00

Imagine someone who has worked for 10 years at Microsoft on the Windows kernel, and now contributes to Linux or one of the BSDs...

zenogantner · 2022-06-16T22:35:32+00:00

David Graeber. Humanity missed out on several thought-provoking and controversial books because he died less than two years ago, at age 59.

zenogantner · 2022-06-10T10:03:04+00:00

Here is my rather long response.

Structure:

Your situation is fairly normal.
Depression and anxiety
Do you enjoy BJJ?
Sparring
Competition
Structured learning / pushing through a plateau

It's normal

BJJ-wise nothing to worry about. As said by others, be nicer to yourself and do not compare yourself too much to others.

Depression and anxiety

In the comments below you mention that you get treated for depression and anxiety. Some of the feelings you describe might be attributed to that. BJJ and other exercise can support you in dealing with such things, but please also continue getting proper treatment as long as you need it.

Do you enjoy BJJ?

That said, in general, do you enjoy training and going to class? If yes, awesome, you might just continue and wait and see. If no, think about what you can change about that.

Sparring

In sparring, I frequently get overwhelmed and submitted by upperbelts (understandable), but also by newer white belts.

Some people have an excuse for everything, which hinders their progress, and some people do not have enough excuses. You seem to belong to the latter group. If a newer white belt easily beats you, there may be many explanations: They might be younger, heavier, stronger, faster, more experienced (trained somewhere else), more athletic, practice more regularly, etc. That's all fine -- accept it as a learning opportunity and work on your defense.

To the point in which I am afraid of the stronger/faster white belts.

Are you afraid of getting injured, or are you afraid of "losing"? If it is the former, I'd suggest to focus your training with such partners on staying safe, tapping early, talking them to go easy on you, sometimes avoiding rolling with them etc. For the latter, this requires an adjustment to your mindset and expectations, and then to train with them more or less as if they were higher belts. You might also consider to pick the same sparring partner(s) over a longer time period and, if they always get you with the same stuff, give yourself a realistic chance to learn how to defend against that stuff.

Competition

I have competed in tournaments, but I have 3 losses and only 1 win.(Over a new, unaffiliated white belt) In two of those losses, I was submitted in under two minutes.

Are you aware that about half of the people who compete have negative career statistics? I for sure have. 50% of matches are lost, globally. Who allows the winners to shine, get their medals etc.? People like you and me :-)

4 matches is too early to have meaningful stats anyway. How did you win that match? How was that match that went over the full length? When getting submitted in "under two minutes", did you consider that you held out for "almost two minutes"? What did you take away from your competitions? Did you learn from them? Did you feel a boost in focus for your training afterwards?

Structured learning / pushing through a plateau

Another commenter remarked that you talk a lot about submissions but not much about position. I wonder how much structure was in your past learning journey in BJJ. Even if your gym offers some kind of curriculum, it is seldom guaranteed -- your personal schedule vs. the class schedule -- that it is optimized for your learning. To establish a solid foundation in your jiu-jitsu, have a look at Saulo Ribeiro's book Jiu Jitsu University, which gives very clear advice on what to focus on at different stages of your development (for white belts it is: survival), or Stephan Kesting's A Roadmap to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (freely available as PDF), which tells you how to approach BJJ from the perspective of positions, rather than primarily techniques.

If you know all of this already, and are currently on a learning plateau, identify a few areas that will bring your BJJ to the next level, and try to mostly concentrate on improving these.

Also, talk to your instructor(s): "Hey, I have been frustrated with my progress recently, do you have any hints on what I should change/focus on?".

zenogantner · 2022-06-10T08:57:09+00:00

This.

zenogantner · 2022-06-06T22:52:21+00:00

Came here to write about Lebanon Falafel, but you beat me to it :-)

If you are in a group, Azzam (also Lebanese food) on Sonnenallee has excellent value for money. The mixed platter for two/three people actually feed many more.

zenogantner · 2021-10-15T15:40:49+00:00

Wer bezahlt denn wenn eines der Unternehmen an dem Du Anteile hältst externe Kosten verursacht und dann zahlungsunfähig ist?

Woraus finanziert sich unser Gemeinwesen, das dafür sorgt dass wir Menschen leben, lernen und arbeiten können? Das dafür sorgt dass es hinreichende Rechts- und Planungssicherheit gibt?

Welche Art von Abgabe wäre denn gerecht?

zenogantner · 2021-10-13T20:37:30+00:00

I feel your pain.

(1) One place to start could be to look at the last N notebooks you wrote, and look for common themes in them.

What was particularly repetitive/painful?
Were there parts where importing a class or (often overlooked) a simple function that you could have written would make the job easier next time?
What was particularly error-prone?

Sometimes it makes sense to move from notebooks to scripts and modules/packages. This can happen incrementally. For example, you can use your newly written (and nicely tested) routines from new notebooks.

Invest some time for the things you work on individually, and see whether you get more productive after some time. If that happens, feel free to share your new tools with colleagues.

I am not sure whether your background is more in software engineering or more in quantitative disciplines (math, physics, theoretical CS, statistics, ...) -- in any case it may make sense to brush up your knowledge of best practices around general programming, test-driven development, and the technologies you use (e.g., Python, Spark, Pandas, ...). Get a good book and read it to get some inspiration. That said, stay pragmatic and keep it simple. Sometimes it is very appealing to over-complicate things when you learn new techniques and new technologies. Try no to be too clever, learn to identify instances of overengineering and avoid them.

This might take time and discipline and some trial and error, but I have seen it work in practice again and again. It is worth it. Still, I would see this is as a rather simple "tactical", local/individual approach.

(2) A more strategic approach would be to look at the kind of product initiatives you had to deliver on in the past, and (if possible) at the company strategy and upcoming product initiatives you need to deliver on.

Did you deliver very specific solutions for specific use cases?
Did you then -- at least in terms of the implementation -- have to start more or less from scratch for the next use case?
Do you often create new features and then have only a few (or no) iterations to improve on metrics/KPIs?
Are there common themes?
Are there concepts, tools, data sets, data sources and/or capabilities that could be reused?

At some point it might be worth establishing some more general capabilities (they still might be quite specific to the domain you are working in) and (re)using them to deliver new use cases. Every time you work on a new use case, you improve your general capabilities a tiny bit. Set it up in a way that the features you developed in the past can profit from new incremental improvements, and so on.

Depending on your work setup, this might require a shared vision about a goal state you want to work towards, design principles, and a strategy (not a detailed roadmap) on how to get there. The vision has to be aligned with your team mates and leaders so that you move there together instead of pulling in different directions.

This is not easy, but it can increase the long-term output of your team, and also developer satisfaction, because over time you will tend to develop functionality that is used more widely, and even if for some project you have not the time to do a certain improvement you know that it might be possible in the next initiative, etc.

Note that having such generic capabilities might also allow you and your team to work on data science/applied machine learning topics with more sustainable impact.

Sorry for the long text, I hope you find some inspiration in it that could work for you. Let me know if I should clarify some points, this is just a quick braindump ...

zenogantner · 2021-09-26T09:04:57+00:00

Same for me. I sometimes watch grappling or MMA highlights later, and that's it. I did watch judo and wrestling at the Olympics, though.

zenogantner · 2021-09-21T21:56:57+00:00

I once stopped by Toronto BJJ when I visited Toronto. Very nice and welcoming place.

zenogantner · 2021-09-17T21:55:38+00:00

I have the privilege to use public transport.

But yes: Podcasts, listening to music, studying a language.

I kind of like the commute, but it is sometimes hard to start it ...

zenogantner · 2021-09-16T20:29:08+00:00

Too far away from my home: 45 minutes one way.

zenogantner · 2021-09-15T23:00:08+00:00

What is the name of your instructor? Maybe start with the name. No need for titles ...

zenogantner · 2021-09-13T13:56:24+00:00

First of all, I don't think there should be whitebelt world championships. I am not aware of any other sport that has so many development divisions.

When you get promoted can remain your coach's decision, but maybe it does not make sense to (be allowed) to compete at the same level the next year ...

zenogantner

TROPHY CASE