I have two very personal tips: I've been going to The Delta Campus to work and it’s been great; I really like the feeling of being in the office after a while (if you'd like to join me for a day or more, drop me an email). Another tip is my local cafe, the unpretentious Blinis EspressoLounge where you will always find locals sitting around and sipping on something without a worry in this world. Perfect for people watching.

Digitalisation means collecting data and then using it. The Berlin Senate plans a rental register (Mietenkataster) to map the city's rental housing and catch landlords charging illegal rents. But it will take years to implement. Why? Because there's still no software or platform at all — funding has to be budgeted, plus the system procured through a tender and THIS alone takes months. And also because the Senate can't even estimate when the database will be complete enough to actually check for violations. I am not surprised, because sometimes speed isn't really what politicians want. They want to demonstrate the willingness to do something without actually doing it.

Where can you earn over €100k (paywall) without being a manager? Well, finance is the way (11.4% of non-managers earning more), closely followed by pharma and insurance.

Does 9.5% empty commercial real estate in Berlin sound a lot? Somehow. But then you compare it with Düsseldorf (11.4%), Frankfurt (12.8%) and Munich (10.2%) and it seems "normal". The most expensive rents are also the third highest (€50.9/m2) after Munich (€62) and Frankfurt (€56). Berlin also has the most capacity, with more coming in the next few years. More on slide 3.

I am still thinking about the terrible attack last weekend. It happened where I usually run, and I am somehow dreading passing by. DW has a piece on why car ramming attacks keep happening. And it made me wonder: if cars weren't a priority in urban planning, would that help? Probably.

You probably are on PayPal. But guess what, we have a European up-and-coming alternative, Wero. It's now also available as a payment service at Decathlon. The number of banks and places where you can use it is growing, and it’s run by a consortium of EU banks. After seeing it in the news again, I connected it to my bank as I was typing this. It took a minute, and I will use it from now on. Here is the link to the App store and Google Play. The more the merrier plus the merchants will keep more of their money.

Imagine all the cookie banners disappearing forever. Imagine all the people surfing without being tracked. Imagine and send a letter. (They could have vibecoded a pre-filled email!)

China shock v2.0 could also be an opportunity, if we could make a successful shift into (AI) robotics, deep tech, renewables: Germany lost 15k industrial jobs per month and 174k over the past year and industrial employment is at a 10-year low. After they took over, I hoped Merz & the grand coalition could come up with something concrete, but it feels like we are just a cabinet reshuffle away from the inevitable — Merz stepping down.

I am leaving you with worrying news. This year we will have the strongest El Niño ever. Which could mean that "most of this event's warming will land in 2027, which is now shaping up to be a genuinely alarming year and the warmest on record by a sizable margin." If you are thinking of an AC, it probably makes sense to buy it this winter. Heat is a silent killer, especially in cultures not used to heat (for example, during the last heatwave in Berlin there were 3000 more emergency responses than usual).

Rail-network renewal - U6 refurbishment in northern Berlin delayed until summer 2027 [more, €]

Despite Islamist attack on CSD, Berlin techno parade "Rave The Planet" will go ahead [more, €]

World Liberty Congress opens European headquarters in Berlin [more]

Hitler salute and death threat: Jewish man antisemitically abused on a Berlin street – rabbi films the incident [more, €]

Don't allow people to take your em dashes away: they are fucking amazing by Sasha Putilin.

I read this — "Writing by hand is good for your brain" by Neal Stephenson — and immediately changed from printing to cursive in my daily journal. It was fun to read childish handwriting about AI workshops, shit tempo runs, "one more prompt", and ramblings about not doing outbound sales. It's already getting more doctor-like, which is bad, because I won't be able to read it in two months.

Regular readers (of this newsletter) will now be rolling their eyes...but, let's read more, folks. I always love a good how-to-read-more type of an essay, this time from Elia Scotto. Carrying a book at all times works like magic; I still need to improve my quitting rate, because I feel sort of stupidly committed to a book.

Outside interests #1: Situational Awareness (Silicon Valley, AI hedge fund) is unwinding its public stock positions after losses on AI infrastructure bets; the fund, which peaked at $45B in early July, sold its listed assets to Ken Griffin's Citadel. Founder Leopold Aschenbrenner (24, German, ex-OpenAI) launched it in 2024 and became one of Silicon Valley's most-watched AI investors. [more] OMR's Tech-Update podcast profiled him this week as a German AI wunderkind. [more] It didn't age well.

Outside interests #2: An interactive map of Trump's crypto empire, tracing family-linked businesses, SPVs, PACs and holdings.

Outside interests #3: Essay arguing the arguments against open-source AI are very bad, triggered by the Kimi K3 release and OpenAI's Dean Ball warning of "full AI communism".

Outside interests #4: cheap H96 Android TV streaming sticks are running an ad-fraud operation, spoofing themselves as Samsung/Vivo/Huawei/Xiaomi phones.

Outside interests #5: EU Court of Justice ruled that VPNs are "lawful technical tools"; publishers using state-of-the-art geo-blocking aren't liable if users bypass via VPN.

Outside interests #6: Austria will require ID verification for social networks and video platforms from 2027; under-14s banned outright. [more]

Pliant (Berlin, corporate payment cards) reached $100M ARR following its US expansion.

Enpal (Berlin, solar) is closing its Hamburg office and cutting 83–85 sales roles focused on solar and heat-pump sales.

BMW (Munich, autos) Q2 net profit dropped 35% to €1.2B on China weakness; new CEO Milan Nedeljković plans to cut 8k jobs by 2027. [more]

Mercedes (Stuttgart, autos) cut its revenue outlook; H1 revenue fell 4.1% to €63.7B, with China deliveries down 28%. [more, €]

Porsche (Stuttgart, autos) H1 net profit +49% to €1.07B despite 16.5% fewer deliveries; another 5k German jobs to go (about 8.9k total, more than one in three at Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen). [more, €]

Deutsche Bahn (Berlin, rail) posted its first profit since 2019 under new CEO Evelyn Palla — €147M net; full-year operating profit target of €600M held. [more]

Deutsche Bank (Frankfurt, banking) pretax profit hit €2.68B in Q2, matching 2007 record levels.

Siemens (Munich, industrials) delivered strong Q2 results, with high industrial demand and a growing order backlog in digitalisation and infrastructure. [more]

TeamViewer (Göppingen, remote-support software) lost about 46k customers YoY but ARR held near flat at €736.8M. [more]

SAP (Walldorf, enterprise software) was cleared by the Bundeskartellamt in the Celonis antitrust dispute. [more]

EU opened bidding for up to 7 AI Gigafactories — €10B public plus a targeted €20B private, aiming to reduce dependence on AWS/Microsoft/Google. Contenders include Deutsche Telekom and Schwarz Digits. [more]

ifo Business Climate Index rose in July 2026 to 86.6 (from 85.7). [more]

Female share of DAX board seats fell for the first time in years, from 19.9% to 19.1%. [more]

Rhine water levels are near their eight-year low; freight from Rotterdam to Karlsruhe has tripled to €120–125/tonne as ships load at only 15–20% capacity in ongoing drought and heat.

Reddit: Which is the best supermarket open on Sundays? Redditors rave about Rewe Ostbahnhof. More in the thread.

Reddit: Someone recommended seeing the Brancusi exhibition in Neue Nationalgalerie. It's closing on the 9th of August.

Instagram: you can dumb down your iPhone out of the box without paying for apps with Assistive Access. I enabled it, but turned it on exactly 3 times in 3 weeks. But it definitely works. The only weird quirk I found was that it always disabled my Siri on locked screens after I exited it (mostly used to ask what's the time and set timers).

Instagram: just put a fee on it. (Chris Kohler on delivery service fees.)

Reddit: Did you know that an Australian settler released European rabbits in the wild back in 1859, which caused a population explosion that reached an estimated 10 billion in 1920?

Really cool to see! Last week I asked you if you'd work in Berlin's public administration to help improve the city (assuming language wasn't the issue): 41% yes for sure, 39% yes but only if the pay was right, 8% never ever, 7% probably not, and 5% not really sure.