Now

Where I am right now #

Probably on the road. For March I am planning to visit Norway for a few days, and travel to Sylt in Germany (the northernmost island) and Selfkant (Germany’s westernmost point). You can try following me on Polarsteps.

Thinking #

I am spending a lot of time right now thinking about the implications of a general knowledge shift away from libraries and towards just in time retrieval. In Medicine, this poses a greater question of medical training and if the months used to push useless (and soon forgotten) arcana into malleable heads would not be better spent teaching clinical reasoning, data lookup, manual skills, teamwork, and more.

I am working on a rewrite of The Detective and The Virtuoso - lessons about being a good physician. It’ll probably be available late 2025.

Oh, yeah, and I am working on this site. Making it even more POSSE-able.

Traveling #

I have to take train rides on long distance and high speed trains totaling 3000€ in ticket costs to justify owning a general admission (BahnCard 100) card which allows me to ride all trains in Germany without additional cost. So this year I’ll be working in, from, and between trainrides a lot. You might find my current trip on Träwelling.

Basics #

My name is Mikka. Just Mikka. Last names, just as languages with honorific appellations (“Du” and “Sie” in German, for example), are bullshit and just in the way of judging people by their actions rather than their heritage or standing.

I live in a small town just north of Munich, in the best part of Germany and, dare I say, the best place in the world to drop an anchor into life’s rocky sea. I have a one hour drive to climb mountains, 30 minutes to surf, an hour to sail, and about as long to parachute, dive, or hike far away from other people.

I am far enough from the “big city” (Munich is more an assembly of small villages, connected by subway and tram lines than a big city) to have calm evenings, enjoy the alpine thunderstorms and the golden red sunrises and sunsets. At the same time, I am close to every bar, club, restaurant, and event I could wish for. There’s truly no better place on earth than this. Oh, and I hate Berlin with a passion.

I am a rabid, some may say radical, hiker. Meaning I don’t like cars very much and really hate mountainbikers and bikers in general occupying hiking trails. Hiking is my Zen, my mental health therapy, my mindfulness, and nothing fucks that up more than a bunch of spandex warriors on their carbon steel penis extensions ringing bells, squeaking brakes, and screaming to get out of their way.

New (and constant) Tech #

I am still working exclusively on a MacBook Pro M1 Pro. No desktop ever grazed my desk since 2008, when I purchased my first MacBook and installed Linux on it.

My code and text editor of choice is neovim however (since this is the Now page) I recently switched to Zed as a bit of an experiment. This page will probably read me going back to nvim with next month’s update.