Thank You for Reading!

I cracked the 100 RSS feed subscribers mark! If you'd like to know what that might be, check out last year's articles on RSS feeds in English or German. Personally, I still use Google's Reader to stay on top of what's happening in the blogosphere. Currently I've subscribed to more than one hundred different blogs from all around the world; and besides the usual Blogspot and Wordpress stuff, I've been getting into tumblr, too - have I mentioned this here before? I like the platform for its easy to use approach and visual simplicity, and of course couldn't resist starting my own: yogannina, an image-only collection of Yoga shots I liked. (Just in case you'd like to subscribe to another one of my outlets, I figured. ;) ) Every now and then, I even add photos of myself doing poses... like that rather crooked looking eagle pose I attempted on Erfurt's cathedral steps last month.

Congratulations, Smilla!

Smilla Dankert's blog anders-anziehen turned two a couple of days ago and she wrote a wonderful birthday speech!

For German Readers: Vulva verzweifelt gesucht

Photo: Mädchenmannschaft

Die Mädchenmannschaft erklärt, was an der Aussage “Mädchen kommen mit einer Scheide zur Welt, Jungen mit einem Penis. Bei Jungen ist der Penis außen am Körper. Bei Mädchen sieht man nur einen Schlitz.” nicht ok ist: Vulva verzweifelt gesucht. Zum Thema passend habe ich im Juni die Dokumentation The Perfect Vagina gepostet. Absolut sehenswert!

Why Won't Women Win Literature Awards?

Rare female winner: Orientalist Annemarie Schimmel

- an ever-interesting question pondered once more in two recent German articles: Novelist Zoë Beck wonders about a lack of female award winners in crime writing in her article Sei wie das Veilchen im Moose... and Jessica of recently founded group-litblog lesErleben asks why the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade has only ever been awarded to six women in its sixty-one-year history (I counted 6 1/2, because in 1970 it was awarded to the Myrdal couple - but what difference would that make?): Schreiben nur Männer engagierte Literatur?! If you've been a reader of GCB for a while, you might also remember poet Katharina Schultens' January 2011 article on the role of female lyricists in German publishing.

GCB Tests: My First Homemade Juice!

Immediately after unpacking my KitchenAid Artisan Blender, I needed to try it out. So without further ado, I threw together a couple of ingredients I happened to have at home: A pear, a small apple, half a honeydew melon, a carrott (not pictured), 1 cm of ginger, 2 tablespoons of maple syrup (I got mine at Alnatura), and a little fresh lemon juice. To see how it went, how much juice I produced and whether it tasted well (I can give away that it did!), please follow the jump for a first German Erfahrungsbericht.

GCB Archives: July 2010

In July 2010 I introduced to you Angela, who was diagnosed with Huntington's disease, famous Austrian litblogger Christiane Zintzen, entrepreneur Miriam Paulsen, digital life-lover Kathrin Ganz, and transsexual blogger Svenja (pictured). My favorite clip of the month would have to be the one of J.K. Rowling's Speech at Harvard. For a full list of last July's posts, please click here.

On Fighting Depression

Image: Postsecret

For German Readers: Mutterseelenalleinerziehend

DSDS-Casting: Querkopf Meike Büttner
© Deutschland sucht den Superstar

Noch neu am Bloggerinnenhimmel leuchtet der Stern von Maike Büttner, ihres Zeichens Autorin des Blogs Mutterseelenalleinerziehend. Nach anfänglicher Skepsis bin ich mittlerweile mehr als überzeugt von ihren Beiträgen. In ihnen erzählt sie nicht nur aus dem nicht immer einfachen Leben mit Kind, sondern postet gelegentlich auch schöne eigene Songs wie diesen hier. Als ehemalige DSDS-Chef-Kandidatin ihre leichteste Übung - saucool!

What is a Creative Commons License?

Via.

More info on Creative Commons licenses at Wikpedia in English or German.

Anna Guest-Jelley of Curvy Yoga

Anna Guest-Jelley is a yogini who likes to share her experiences not only in her teaching, but also on her blog Curvy Yoga. With lots of empathy and great intuition, she focuses on issues like self-esteem, weight, and body image. Anna had to force herself through more than 65 (!) diets before she could accept that living a joyful life is not down to body size.

To find out more about Anna, her blog, and her work, just follow the jump below.

o2 Can do - if Pressured Hard Enough!

Yesterday, I had a phone fight with my mobile provider o2. Despite of my status as "premium customer", they refused to downgrade my super-expensive and outdated contract to one that would suit my current needs much better - and save me around 50€ a month. That is, they refused service until I threatened to write about their attitude on this blog. I had never previously used GCB as a leverage, and was very surprised when my problem - which had been deemed as a lost cause before - was solved immediately. To me, this is a scandal itself. What about all those poor non-blogging souls? Aren't they entitled to fair conditions, too?

On popular demand (again, on Facebook), I put together what I remember of my conversation with o2's customer service in German. The transcript is probably shorter than the actual call was, but it should be fairly accurate. Oh, and did I mention that speaking to o2's customer service costs 0,30€ cents per call of late?

GCB Tests: KitchenAid!

As hinted at in yesterday's post, I'm the lucky new owner of a KitchenAid Artisan Blender. Hooray! Even after just two days of usage, I'm delighted. For more pictures, to see what colour machine I got and how the unpacking and first installation went, follow the jump for an extensive Testbericht in German...

New: GCB Tests!

In an informal survey recently conducted on Facebook, I asked how you guys would like it if I - aside from interviewing female bloggers every now and then - tested products. To my surprise, many of you were very fond of the idea. You even agreed that it wouldn't matter whether these products had anything to do with social media at all, as long as they were not clothing or make-up. Being a person whose wish lists were always way too short ("But there must be SOMETHING you want?!"), only one thing came to mind... And now guess what's in that parcel? ;) Stay put to find out!

MYM - Hold Me Down

Save a few glorious exceptions, I'm not a big fan of intros in songs. Not even in R&B and hip hop, where some considerate producers have kindly started to export them into whole separate tracks in the early 1990s already. However, only yesterday Starrene Rhett introduced new British artist MYM (short for her first name Maryam). At 23, she managed to become the first female her producers Double AK featured, so hooray for that! If you like the clip below, listen to more of Maryam's story in this video, where she also performs her first single Hold Me Down unplugged. 

To skip the intro here, just fast forward to around a minute - shortly thereafter, the beat sets in.  

Clara Heissler of Vegane Freude

One of the blogs I really enjoy reading has been Clara Heissler's Vegane Freude - probably, because it revolves around topics I'm personally interested in: Food, Yoga, all sorts of ethical issues surrounding the treatment of animals and mindful living in general.

Follow the jump to find out about Clara's understanding of a good blog, how to write the perfect recipe post, and her offline interests.

Self-Deception

Via.

Graphite drawing by British artist Gillian Lambert.

If you Women aren't Feminists, what else Might you be?

Reading a couple of recently published statements on German blogs, I have come to wonder - if you women aren't feminists, what else might you be?

Source

Simply put, feminism is a movement to end sexism, exploitation and oppression. 

- bell hooks -

Ich bin keine Feministin, aber dass Frauen, egal ob im Beruf oder zuhause, selbst in westlichen Ländern immer noch weniger wert sind als Männer, das ist verkehrt.

Ich bin weder eine Feministin, noch bin ich politisch korrekt. (...) [Aber] Ich weiß um die Ungerechtigkeiten unserer Gesellschaft und ich kenne das große Ungleichgewicht zwischen Männern und Frauen.

In all diesen Situationen habe ich „Feminismus“ gesagt, aber es ist dafür einfach ein doofes Wort.

A Brief Set of GCB Shares

Photo: Ninia LaGrande

With around a thousand fresh blog posts waiting to be read, I am still trawling through my RSS reader in search of interesting news to share with you. Here's a bunch of first noteworthy finds: 

Tasya van Ree, photographer and eponym of one of my GCB bags, has been interviewed by French Tetu Magazine. A transcript is available on her own blog. 

Fashion blogger Anna Wegelin aka Lachsbroetchen has been featured in the current German GLAMOUR magazine.

Franziska Schmid, green lifestyle blogger, is now part of a new high-profile blog team: Berlin is[s]t vegan.

And on a less professional note: Ninia La Grande travelled the Baltic states and has been sharing her holiday experiences (see photo above).

Let's Take Back the Internet!

Activist Rebecca McKinnon asks in this TED talk: How do we design the next phase of the Internet with accountability and freedom at its core, rather than control? The New York Times has a summary: A Call to Take Back the Internet From Corporations.

Via.

Bachmannpreis @ Wörthersee

In case you've been wondering where I was all last week: I spent my holiday in Klagenfurt, Austria, where one of the most important prizes in German literature was awarded after a three-day reading competition. Sounds good? Don't worry if you missed it - all submissions are freely available and translated into eight languages at bachmannpreis.eu. And while my favorite text by Linus Reichlin didn't win anything, I had a bunch of nice sunny days at the Wörthersee nevertheless. For a longer personal commentary on the competition in German, check out my other blog words on a watch.

Almost Back!

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** This is the last in a series of holiday posts. I'll be back any minute now. **

So You're Telling me There's a Chance?

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** This is part of a series of holiday posts. Even bloggers need a break sometime. **

This is What Oprah Winfrey Looked like in 1998

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** This is part of a series of holiday posts. Even bloggers need a break sometime. **

I am a Thousand Winds that Blow

Poem by Mary Elizabeth Fry. Via: Lisa Rank

** This is part of a series of holiday posts. Even bloggers need a break sometime. **

25 Ways to Wear a Scarf

For some reason I can't seem to embed the clip here, so we'll have to make due with its link:  

25 Ways to Wear a Scarf in Under 5 Minutes.

** This is part of a series of holiday posts. Even bloggers need a break sometime. **

Eating Animals

Photo: Aaron Ruell

If you're looking for a new read, try Eating Animals. 

That book is just waiting to be read by you.
German blogger Julia of besserlesen has recently written a review.

** This is part of a series of holiday posts. Even bloggers need a break sometime. **

Stress Release

Source

Click to enlarge.

** This is part of a series of holiday posts. Even bloggers need a break sometime. **

Even Bloggers Need a Break Once in a While...

But thanks to automated posting there'll be lots of interim entertainment on here until I'm back next week. ;)

For German readers I can also recommend the brand new EMMA issue - it contains an extensive feature on women on the web or "Frauen im Netz" - and I'm in it! At around 10€ the magazine is quite pricey, but the dossier and other interesting articles like that interview with German national team goalie Nadine Angerer will compensate for your loss.

9 Months

Source

GCB Shares: Bavarian Beats, Gender Roles in Yoga, Slutwalks and Facebook-Marketing

Patience Steltzer ponders gender roles in Yoga: Does marketing Yoga to men reinforce gender stereotypes? She comes to the conclusion that despite differences in our physical bodies, there is an understanding that we all ultimately share the exact same energetic potential.

Katharina Brunner discovered the Beat Conducta Bavaria, an attempt by famous German hip hop DJ Sepalot of Blumentopf to mix Bavarian music with beats. While in theory, this sounded interesting, in practice it drove me up the wall!

Source: Design*Sponge

Design*Sponge shares a recipe for grilled vegetarian Portobello burgers that just look to good to be true.

Die Klappentexterin hat es tatsächlich geschafft: Simone Finkenwirth ist Online-Autorin des Jahres 2011 geworden! Kein Wunder bei so charmanten und originellen Berichten wie diesem hier über Kurzsichtigkeit, wie ich finde. Ich platze vor Stolz auf meine Re:publica-Kollegin!

Leonie vom Mädchenblog stellt sich eine Frage, die mir auch schon kam: Sind Slutwalks wirklich sinnvoll? Wir kommen zum selben Ergebnis - mitlaufen ja, aber nicht mit dem besten Gefühl. 

Elke Brüns stellt den Kunstband Armut in der Kunst der Moderne vor.

Franziska Schmid hat Patrick Bolk interviewt, Macher des bekannten Öko-Blogs Berlin is(s)t Bio.

Boy's Corner

Source

Absolutely crazy story about a homeless man stealing (and returning!) a $100 bill from a bank who was sentenced to 15 years and an ex-mortgage CEO who stole around $3 billion dollars from people and only got 40 months prison time.

Stefan Laurin sprach mit Philip Ostrop, dem Lokalchef der Ruhr-Nachrichten. Diese verlinkt nämlich seit wenigen Tagen in ihren Berichten direkt auf Blogs und Twitter. Ostrop, der privat auf Ostroplog bloggt, fordert: Mehr beta für den Journalismus!

Falls Ihr schon immer mal auf Facebook werben wolltet, aber Euch die Vorgänge zu kompliziert erschienen: Jens Wiese weist darauf hin, dass es die offiziellen Whitepaper zu Marketing und gesponserten Meldungen auf Facebook jetzt auch auf Deutsch gibt.

Annina @ Ruhrbarone.de

Berlin City Parliament elections are coming up in September this year, and Stefan Laurin kindly invited me to comment on all things related on his team blog Ruhrbarone. Not that I wouldn't enjoy social media-related topics anymore, but... here's my first guest post: Gestatten, Bezirksverordnetenversammlung!