Okay, this one is a bit hard to explain to people who aren't from Germany. Long story short: There was a beached whale, people somehow thought it could be saved even though experts said there was no point, and the poor animal was going to die anyway. This went on for weeks, with one rescue mission after another, and at some point the whale was freed, only to be found dead a couple of days later.
All of this was accompanied by people on social media talking about how they could spiritually communicate with the whale, creating AI-generated songs, and going through some kind of collective psychosis.
A theater here in Hamburg made a whole play about that short but intense chapter of 2026, and Anna and I went to see it and had a great time. There was even a live performance of the most famous AI whale song. "Er hat sich das nicht ausgesucht" roughly translates to "He didn't choose this" and has been stuck in our heads for months.
