Lukas Rosenstock

Writing a review about one’s past year when it’s already September seems crazy. The new year is already more than two-thirds through; why would you be stuck in the past? Still, it’s what I’m about to do. Before I get started,... https://lukasrosenstock.net/2026/09/26/writing-a-review-about-ones.html

It’s the second morning of my third TREEWEEK. I have gone on this retreat, happening at the end of September, for the past two years as well. Both times I wrote a recap post after the event. Last night I felt inspired to write ... https://lukasrosenstock.net/2026/09/24/its-the-second-morning-of.html

If we treat everything below 4.5 as "to be avoided", 5 star reviews make no sense.

When prompting an LLM I always say "please". It's certainly not necessary but I like being polite and it's very hard to be impolite even when talking to a non-sentient machine.

I have difficulties feeling negative emotions about others, not even mildy negative let alone something like disgust. I think on one hand this can be a gift but on the other hand it makes my life harder and some things less understandable.

Maybe hot take, but I think it's a bit annoying when people in their mid-thirties to mid-fourties write social media posts that are mostly some variation of "haha, look at me, I'm sooo old".

I have a new friend and I just realized a lot about her is what conservatives and the manosphere say is wrong with women today.

Fun fact about me is that my height is closer to the average German woman than it is to the average German man.

Judging from social media commentary on the new Euro banknotes I would be highly surprised if we don't end up getting the birds.

Advocates for a SAHM or tradwife lifestyle often talk about how a 9-5 job is "soul-sucking" while relying on their husband having such a job to fund their family. Which means they must either believe men are so different that a job isn't "soul-sucking" to them, or they don't care about men at all.

After a long time I've written another blog post; this time about social dancing in non-traditional gender roles - sharing the link manually as my blog's Bluesky integration expired (probably due to inactivity):

There's a type of person who complains about entitlement, which is a fair point, but at the same point acts very entitled themselves.

There are many people who have good, rational and nuanced takes on basically everything, but then they have that one pet issue where they have such a strong opinion that they will repost the most insane takes that support it.

A fake version of newspaper X claims that celebrity Y was arrested after leaking a secret that the government doesn't want you to know on TV show Z. I have seen a multitude of clickbait ads following this playbook, but only in German. Is the same scam used in other countries and languages as well?

If a woman used heavier weights than me at the gym I'd tell her she's doing great and I'd want to push myself harder. At no point would it occur to me that I should propagate the idea that strong women are unattractive or "manly".

Hot take: if you took every social media post with a theory on how Gen Z and Millenials (or any other two generations) are fundamentally different, you would end up with many incompatible and contradicting statements.

In "Make AI boring again", @charity.wtf makes the point that, even when you see ethical problems with AI, a purity perspective of avoiding AI use entirely, isn't helpful; AI isn't going away and people in tech need to know what they're dealing with: charitydotwtf.substack.com/p/make-ai-bo...

If you find only AI enthusiasts and AI haters on your engineering team, read this article from @charity.wtf who's arguing for the middle-ground; key takeaway for me was to see AI as amplifier instead of a replacement for good engineering discipline: charitydotwtf.substack.com/p/ai-enthusi...

Not something I expected in 2026 outside of April 1st.

German carmakers and suppliers are struggling and there are two primary theories floating around on social media. Theory 1: they missed the market move to EV and stuck to ICE cars for too long Theory 2: they unnecessarily invested into EVs instead of doing what they've always done (ICEs)

"Peter Pan Syndrome" is about not wanting to grow up as a person, but I saw a take that said it's mostly not about getting older, maturing or responsibility, but avoiding decisions. It's about keeping options open and not making a choice. And that hits a bit too close to home.

Place with a 0.01% chance of being a victim of homicide: safest place on Earth, never have to worry about walking alone at night Place with a 0.05% chance of being a victim of homicide: crime-ridden hellhole that must be avoided at all cost (Not actualnumbers, just meant for illustration.)

As the USA seems to make gatekeeping AI models to foreigners their policy, I just bought a yearly Mistral Pro subscription to support the European AI and tech ecosystem. Now I'm really curious to see how Mistral and Claude compare in their capabilities.

My playlist may contain a few songs where the male singer objectifies women, so to keep the balance, I have some ultra-feminist songs on the playlist as well.

I may have said this before, but one funny thing about being in your 30s/40s is when you see 21-year olds thinking that being 25 is basically ancient.

Hot take: many situations are awkward not because they are, but because people assume they'd be awkward; so they act weirdly to reduce awkwardness, which produces it in the first place.

You cannot think that a certain job needs to exist and simultaneously look down on a person for doing that job.

I could have more hot takes but my brain immediately comes up with counterarguments to balance it.

One of the least relatable common feelings for me is being happy when plans are cancelled.

Employees complain about bosses. Bosses complain about employees. Tenants complain about landlords. Landlords complain about tenants. Men complain about women. Women complain about men. Old people complain about the youth. The youth complains about old people. Who else?!

Explain to me why airplane wifi is slower despite being closer to the cloud

A local radio station doesn't ask people to call in anymore but does audience participation via WhatsApp voice messages. Most of the time, on my radio alarm clock, I cannot hear a difference between the person who recorded on their phone and the host at their expensive studio microphone.

This is a message to the guy next to me at the signal yesterday blasting this melodic tropical house music for the whole intersection to hear: You drive a Harley Davidson! Act like it! Play some rock or metal!

I think it's a problem for the discourse about economic inequality and fairness of taxation that people talk about "the rich" without clarifying whether they mean the likes of Gates and Musk or salaried employees making 200 000 € a year.

PSA: The fact that the IPCC no longer considers the worst case scenario of global warming, doesn't mean that the scenario was wrong. We're no longer heading there due to the action we took against climate change. If we took even more action, we could probably get rid of the second worst case etc.

When you have different preferences compared to most people, how do you know whether that's a genuine lifestyle choice or an indicator that something underlying might be wrong with you?!

A world with no gender pay gap and a world where every husband earns more than his wife cannot coexist. Pick one.

It’s funny how so many of the people now criticizing the water use of data centers never previously went around criticizing the water consumed by say textile manufacturing or paper mills.

Opened the terms and conditions on a website and it said: "Wow! Only 0,12% of people made it to this page. Congrats!" 😂😂😂

A new EU-based social network called "W Social" has been announced. Some people make fun of initiative and say it's doomed to fail, especially since it requires user verification with a real ID. But interestingly, it's built on AT Protocol, meaning it will be compatible with Bluesky (and Eurosky).

Guy came on the train and asked me for €8 for a ticket. If he had asked for €1 or €2 I would have given it, but the sum and the way he asked made me say "No". I still feel bad about it. But the weirdest part of the interaction is when he moved on he asked me to "promise not to vote for leftists".

Something I noticed is that when I refer to "a friend" or "a conversation with a friend" there's a 80-90% chance it's a woman I'm referring to. Am I really having so many more insightful conversations with women than with men?

Taxing the ultra rich is not primarily a revenue raiser, because there are so few of them. The purpose of taxing them is to curb their anti-democratic power. Contributing to the maintenance of the public sphere that you share & enjoy with other people is good, actually.

I'm not a vegetarian myself either, but I find it strange when a society of meat eaters that kills millions of animals for food cares so much about a single whale that the life of this one animal becomes part of major news reporting.

A place having more non-white people and a place having deteriorated (real or imagined) is just a correlation. Assuming causation without proof is racism.

I wonder what it says about me, but the only plastic surgery before-and-after photos I've seen from a woman where I truly think the after is more attractive than the before are breast reduction surgeries.

A friend who works at the university says she has to look up at least 10% of the first names of the students to find out whether to address them as “Mr.” or “Ms.” in email responses, so she's happy when people have a bio with pronouns and thinks this practice should be adopted more broadly.

Hungarian President Orban admitted defeat after losing the election instead of talking about fraudulent and stolen elections like Trump and others he's been compared to would have, thereby giving all his supporters the gift of being able to say, “See, he wasn't a dictator; you lied about him.”