E96 - Rants, Lakes, AI and Pollen Attacks

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