Back to Cool, Fractals, Second Hand September and is it still Summer?

Summer ain't over yet! ☀️😎

Summer holidays are over, but every September will make way for more sun again. Although temperatures got colder and sometimes rainy and stormy, I've spent a September day swimming, chilling and reading at Berlin Weissensee lake beach recently, and my calendar states that autumn won’t start before 22 September. So there’s hope for some more late summer days to enjoy!

In August, Open Mind Culture featured five bittersweet summer reading recommendations, including The Tiny Things are Heavier, Summer in Odessa, and Love on Bad Days - books that you can read on the beach, in the subway or on your sofa to reminisce about coming of age and summertime's mixed feelings.

Back at my desktop, I learned about alternative apps for using external microphones and noise reduction strategies when recording video with a smartphone, and how to code web apps with React 19 and Astro in a more elegant and efficient fashion.

Meanwhile, in fashion, there’s Second Hand September and a cool campaign by Oxfam Germany featuring models of three different generations wearing nothing but second hand clothing, while Impact Hub Berlin campaigned with an stylish “back to cool” photo series. So, it’s a “cool” September not only in the second-hand fashion scene, while the weather is luckily “not cool” every day, but shining its light and sending warm rays of light onto the city of Berlin again.

As a member of the Impact Hub community, I can recommend you check ‘em out!
They’re back to cool!

Inspired by optimistic creativity and my light-hearted spring newsletter with its beautiful books and optimistic event experience several months ago, let’s counter negative news and bring back some good vibes with the diverse and colorful, but almost forgotten world of fractal geometry and philosophy!

Fractals grew, somewhat similar to electronic pop music, out of their academic niche when computers for the masses empowered people to produce computer graphics that influenced psychedelic party aesthetics and architecture, but we can also find fractal shapes in nature and disover images that nobody has ever seen before, as detailed in my blog post about fractal fascination, aesthetics, and applied science.

Last, but not least, people have been mocking and discussing follower count cult behavior on social media.

I see that I still don’t have many followers here, but I don’t mind. Like my blog, Open-Mind-Culture.org, I write first and foremost for myself, and for whom it may concern. I don’t care much about quantitative metrics either, or at least I shouldn’t. Maybe I’ll write a post about how to balance effort, creativitiy, and possible outcome without losing one’s originality to mainstream advice and algorithmic adaption.

I’ll see you in the next edition in October. Until then, have a great time!