If it wasn’t clear from my post yesterday, I usually don’t go to Starbucks. It’s further away than my go-to café and it feels kind of icky to support a major chain like this.

But today I was in the city (Fasnachtsdienstag! Why??) and decided to stop by. Coffee wasn’t great, as expected, but I did appreciate the meticulously crafted color palette of the interior. “Nude” color walls and sea green accents, with white tiles. Feels simple, but I noticed and appreciated it today.

A fun realization was that the walls in my home are also, white, nude and … petrol, which is kind of like a dark sea green (?)

Like in the meme

me: can we go to Starbucks? also me: we have Starbucks at home

When Agata Café opened at their Mafinex Location in Mannheim Lindenhof, the team did what many hip cafés did at the time and put up two tip jars instead of one and had a weekly motto for deciding between the two. This way, guests and customers had something to think about while the barista prepared their order.

The team published the results of their little surveys on their Instagram feeds at the end of the week.

Sadly, after a few weeks, they ran out of ideas for surveys and put up some they had already run in the past, which I found extremely sad. So sad in fact, that I kept thinking about new mottos and pondering them in my head. I was too shy to suggest them at that point, but one week I figured I had something. Something worthy.

At the time, there was a new Guardians of the Galaxy movie coming out, but the Mandalorian was on TV (Disney+?) as well. So I got two small pieces of paper and drew two crude doodles: “Baby Yoda” vs. “Baby Groot” and gave it to the head barista. The rest is history.

I have been drawing (almost) weekly doodles for Agata ever since that time. Some more elaborate, some simple, but I try to always make them a true dilemma, that has customers stop and think about where to put their tip.

I especially love when it’s very hard to decide, or very surprising or dumb, of course. Stop by any time to see my latest works of art :)

A while back, somebody emailed me asking for permission to publish one of my early paintings in his upcoming book. I was inclined to allow it, felt a little excited even. But I didn’t remember having done the painting at all.

Anyway, I forgot to reply to the email (as I like to do) and went on with my life. Today that same person emailed me again, with the same inquiry.

As it turns out, he had been looking at a painting by Gerhard Richter the entire time, which regrettably is not me. So I won’t be published after all, and can’t give permission to publish a Gerhard Richter painting either. At least, he got his reply this time.

For people confused about this, my work can be viewed under https://richter.studio

I used to be a huge fan of Diablo II and have played quite a bit. Some D2R even. But with Blizzard going to shit, and me being a Mac user (and Mac support long gone from the D2 codebase), I had kind of given up on it ever becoming a desirable franchise again.

When the initial hype around Diablo II Resurrected died down and seasonal changes kind of fizzled out, I figured that was it.

I have to hand it to them though: didn’t have a huge (paid, ofc) update, complete with a new player class, on my bingo card for 2026!

PS: I play sorc and amazon, and the warlock looks kinda dumb, so I guess I’ll pass on the new class. Also, Mac support in Crossover broke some time ago. Until it comes back, I can’t even launch the game.

The biggest improvement for me is Steam support! Finally got rid of the awful Battle.Net launcher! Huge get!

With the Discord age verification debacle in full force, I am inclined to just delete my account, as many others are choosing to do right now.

The only thing holding me back is a small community of MtG proxy printers (shout-out to LiberProxies!) in Germany. Hope they jump ship as well and set up shop somewhere else.