Clay and I took the train to Versailles on a sunny day. I hadn’t planned on doing the tourist attractions in Paris. I spent most of the time walking around listening to NPR, all the news from back home. I would stop in a café or at a park and write or just watch people
Mission Impossible: Solving Argentina’s Economic Chaos
When I moved to Argentina in 2010, 1 Argentine Peso was worth roughly 25 cents of USD. The bills from the times when 1 Argentine Peso equalled 1 USD, before the socioeconomic crisis in 2001, were still in use. Although the largest bill, the 100 Pesos note, had lost a significant part of its value since 2001, in 2010, it would still get you a 35 km taxi ride from Buenos Aires city center to the international airport or a three course dinner in a nice restaurant. Today, you won’t get much more than a pack of chewing gum for the same 100 Pesos note and its value is going downwards.
The Effective Altruism Community
Did you know that the average person spends around 80,000 hours of their life dedicated to their career? How to make these 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, for 40 years as productive, impactful and rewarding as possible is what Benjamin Todd and the 80,000 Hours team address in their career guide, also named 80,000 Hours.
The End of the Affair
This was when I was never sure what I was doing. I had decided that the way for me to be happiest was to not think too hard about anything as long as it felt right. It was a time when I was a heathen and I was happy with how I had justified it.
From the Archives: On an Excursion
Each fall break, BCB students disperse from leafy Pankow into the city of Berlin and beyond. While some students travel home, others take trips around Europe, and some use this valuable week to rest after midterms and explore Berlin. In this edition of “From the Archives,” we take a look at various excursions and adventures
An Interview with Boris Vormann (part 2)
Professor Vormann’s balanced and insightful answers to questions like ‘what is the future of work’, ‘should the welfare state be reinstated’, ‘what is the role of academia’, and others, shed light on these most basic but essential questions while also clarifying why they are important — why he cares for this subject matter and why we should, too.
How to Go to the Movies in Berlin
A film belongs to the dark and can only be fully absorbed in the isolation of and submerged submission to sitting in a black room in front of a large bright screen. And so I search out these dark rooms. It involves a little fieldwork, scrutinizing some pamphlets, saturating my search history with movie theater websites…
On How We’d Be Doomed Without the Housekeeping Staff (and our Campus Therapy Dog, Ginto!)
During my first year at Bard College Berlin, I lived in the Waldrasse 16 dorm, or as we BCBers affectionately call it, W16. There I experienced for the first time sharing five bathrooms and one kitchen with around eighteen other students. I remember arriving at the building and thinking: this is going to be a mess.