A few hasty iPhone snaps from the amazing Fischerspooner performance at the Avant/Garde Diaries Transmission1, in bcc. Unfortunately, some dangerous douchebaggery on the crowd’s behalf shut down the show halfway through – if you want to read what happened, and aren’t offended by foul language (I was pretty pissed off when I wrote it), click here.
Author: James
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Music Montag: Miniblackhole
Category: Music
Miniblackhole is Berlin-based David Meyer, a musician when he gets a free moment from being a technology journalist. The former frontman for rock band Guns To Caviar, Meyer hails from South Africa and moved to Berlin last year after 13 years in the UK. Miniblackhole has existed as a side-project for the last five years, but is now taking the fore as an attempt to create a new breed of electrogrungepop, or something like that. An EP should be out later this year, but David is currently looking for a collaborator to bolster the beats and synths behind his songs – the Chris Lowe to his Neil Tennant, as it were. Skip to the Miniblackhole SoundCloud page to offer your skillz!
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Daily Deutsch Doodle: Licht
Category: Art & Culture
by Lily Mae Martin
Daily Deutsch Doodles are a series of illustrations based on contributions to the #dailydeutsch Twitter hashtag, aimed at helping people trying to learn German.
“Du brauchst dein Licht nicht unter den Scheffel stellen” = “you need not hide your light under a bushel”. Licht by Lily Mae Martin, whose exhibition “Brutally Beautiful” opens this Saturday (May 5th) at Neonchocolate.
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Learn German with Duolingo
Category: Expat Life
As you already know, we’re really trying to learn German. What started as a vague desire not to be the expats with the shittiest Deutsch became one of our New Year’s Resolutions… and along with our new puppy, came a new goal: to be able to speak to six year olds in their own language about how “klein” and “süss” she is. But even with the Daily Deutsches and the weekly tutorials, we still find it hard to get regular practice. That’s where Duolingo, language learning software with a difference, is helping:
If you want to find out more about the story behind Duolingo, scroll down for founder Luis von Ahn’s presentation at TEDxCMU. Aside from his unique mission – using language learning to get 100m people to translate the web into every major language for free – I’ve already been impressed by the private beta version of Duolingo’s German program.
It’s simple, social (connecting to both Facebook and Twitter), works all your passive and active language skills – listening, reading, speaking and writing – and allows you to learn in manageable chunks, marked by a real sense of achievement. Plus, it pulls in real online content which is inherently more interesting than the usual textbook scenarios – so far, I’ve translated texts about Jeff Bridges, Ghostbusters and Nazis! Best of all, it’s totally free!
Duolingo are still gradually inviting new users – sign up over here.
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Live Stream of Kreuzberg’s May Day Celebrations
Just found this via Finding Berlin’s Facebook Page: VICE’s live stream from Kreuzberg, the epicentre of this year’s May Day celebrations / demonstrations / riot:
The district is slowly waking up, but it should all kick off later this afternoon. If you can’t make it down to witness the action first-hand, stay tuned to watch it unfold live. If you’re unlucky enough to live outside of Germany, or freelance for foreign companies, and have to spend today *yawn* working, then you should at least be able to hear what the day sounded like, by checking out the audio uploaded to our SoundCloud group, Berlin Sound.
But now it’s Partei time. Bis später!
Tags: May Day