#508: Unprepared for next blackout, rent registry, bike lane delay, vacation downsizing, podcast
AI companies are buying up old books in Berlin
Dear 20 Percent,
Whoever said Berlin wasn’t milking the AI revolution? Second-hand bookstores here and elsewhere in Germany have been getting huge orders from a company in Canada, apparently a subcontractor working for AI giant Anthropic. According to the Washington Post, the goal of Anthropic’s Project Panama is to scan every book in the world. Its models have been trained on everything available online so now they're hoovering up obscure works of literary criticism and all other secondary literature sitting around in dusty shop windows.
The books get broken down into individual pages, scanned and fed into the training data of Anthropic’s language models — then shredded.
I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, it's nice that bookstores are earning good money for a change. Some shops have reported 5-figure amounts or a year’s worth of revenue in a few weeks. On the other hand, it makes me quite sad that the customers are just giant computers. Strange times.
News below.
Maurice
🪶 Thanks to today’s sponsor, Feather! More from them below.
👂Episode #36 of the 20% Berlin Podcast has dropped!
Commission: “We’re unprepared”
On Monday an independent commission presented its report about the January attack on Berlin’s power grid. Experts say the German capital is woefully unprepared for this caliber of crisis. Suspected left-wing extremists set fire to a cable near a power plant, triggering a blackout. For several days in the middle of winter, 100,000 people in southwestern Berlin were without electricity. The report identifies problems like poor communication and a failure to provide sufficient emergency power. It recommends hiring a Chief Resilience Officer and setting up a crisis management centre. I don’t think it mentioned Mayor Kai Wegner’s (CDU) tennis game on the day of the blackout. Wegner wants Berlin to become a “model city of crisis resilience” by 2029, with all critical services capable of operating for at least 10 days during emergencies.
Rent registry coming soon
Berlin’s parliament has approved Germany’s first comprehensive rent registry (paywall), requiring data from all 1.7 million rental contracts to be centrally collected and searchable via AI. The system aims to identify violations of the rent cap (Mietpreisbremse) and increase transparency. Experts estimate up to 80% of Berlin rental contracts may violate price controls. 🫠 Landlords are reportedly considering preemptive rent reductions before the system goes live. My take: This is the best use of AI yet but the real estate lobby will fight this tooth and nail. And enforcement will be a nightmare.
Bike lane slowdown
Berlin’s parliament has approved changes to the city’s Mobility Law suggested by Mayor Wegner and Co. Now, the city’s 2,370 km cycle network won’t be finished till 2035, pushed back from 2030. Only the 865 km Radvorrangnetz (“priority cycling network” aka “the most important routes”) will be finished by 2030. They’re also watering down bike lane requirements. Lanes wide enough for safe overtaking (2.5m) are no longer mandatory. And if there’s no space, the authorities can now omit bike paths entirely from main roads and divert cyclists to side streets. As we point out in our podcast, the September elections will produce a new left-of-centre government which will likely speed up investment in bike infrastructure, so this is just a bit of pro-car election campaigning by Wegner.
Tour de Berlin
Speaking of bikes, things are looking up for Berlin and three eastern German states’ bid to host the Grand Départ of the Tour de France in 2029. The event would mark the 40th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme called the Fall of the Wall “a very strong symbol for Europe” and seems open to the idea. The plan includes a 10km time trial at Brandenburg Gate, followed by three stages through Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, and Saxony. IMHO, this is cooler and less hassle than hosting the Olympics. Good vibes for a few days, then it’s done. Chancellor Merz is keen on the idea and wrote a letter to French President Macron promoting the idea.
Events this week, curated by The Next Day Berlin
🎹 Heroines of Sound Festival 2026
Thu-Sat · Radialsystem, Holzmarktstraße 33 · €16-54 per day, festival pass available Twelve editions in, 2026 leans hard into Japan. Kyoka brings the broken, hypnotic electronics she built inside the raster-noton world; Midori Hirano moves between modular synths and piano; Miki Yui works in quadraphonic minimalism that asks for total attention, not background listening. Tomoko Sauvage closes Friday with porcelain bowls filled with water, amplified through hydrophones so the pitch shifts as the water itself moves.
🧠 After Memory
Friday · Opening 5 - Reception from 7 pm · Kunstraum Kreuzberg / Bethanien, Mariannenplatz 2 · free · runs to 11.10
Group show on memory as contested territory, with reactionary movements, corporations, and algorithms writing over it at the same time. Noor Abuarafeh, Taysir Batniji, Maria Thereza Alves, Aline Motta, Rabih Mroué, Heba Y. Amin, Aram Bartholl, Zach Blas, Giselle Beiguelman, and others. Palestinian voices, Brazilian decolonial practice and AI critique in one room. The whole zeitgeist on a single free ticket.
🍷 Wine Tasting with Núria Aviñó × Alicia Serres
Saturday · Wine Tasting 3:30-5 pm (€40, 20 seats) then open from 5 pm · free · Material · Schönhauser Allee 156, Prenzlauer Berg
Two women running two Catalan natural wine houses from opposite ends of the region, Núria Aviñó of Clos Lentiscus on the coast, Alicia Serres of Celler Mendall inland. Six wines and bites by Pondji and Material during the tasting, everyone is welcome from 5 pm.
🪩 KOFFÄIN with Folamour, All Day Long
Sunday · 2 pm to 4 am · Else, An den Treptowers 10, Treptow · €28
Folamour's annual Berlin Sunday, this year behind Movement Therapy, is his 2025 return to hand-played soul-house. He plays a long set, disco into Detroit warmth, Meriem S opens the garden, Tour-Maubourg, Leroy Rey, Ana Molina and DimSum inside as the sun drops
🍺 🥨 Germany-wide news 🥨 🍺
🚔 German riot police clash with protesters hoping to block far-right AfD conference
⚡ AfD threatens eastern Germany’s energy transition
⚽ The great German own goal: In economics, as in football, they’ve lost their edge
🏭 Go-ahead for drone factory near Munich
🌡️ Germany: Heat wave is over, political fallout has just begun
Factoid
Nearly one in four Berliners (23%) are cutting back on their vacation plans due to higher prices this summer, according to the latest BerlinTrend survey. People under 50 are most affected (32%), while only 13% of those over 65 are cutting back. Women are more likely than men to make cost-related adjustments (27% vs 20%). Thank god summer in Berlin is awesome!
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🎙️The 20% Berlin Podcast on Spotify
I recently got a letter from the Finanzamt, demanding that I pay my landlord's back taxes. I have an appointment at the Mieterschutzbund on Friday morning; but I'm expecting a fight when I dock the sum from my next rent payment. Who knows what will happen when the registry becomes a thing. My landlord is definitely over charging for rent; but I never tried to really fight it. Good times.
Over here on the southeast side of Berlin (Wendenschloss) cell phone service gets disrupted whenever there is a power failure.
There's a cell phone tower just around the corner from my apartment, but apparently no one thought it was necessary for it to have any type of battery/generator backup.
If something catastrophic happened, we wouldn't be able to call for help.