Hey, Hey, Hey! It’s time to make some crazy money. Are y’all ready? Here we gooo!

I just (I mean an hour ago) gave up on learning japanese via Duo Lingo. On and off for years but didn’t make considerable progress. I know about 20 hiragana symbols and a bit of vocabulary but I think I won’t ever grasp order of words or how they communicate without plurals or genders. It’s so different from germanic languages. I love the japanese culture but I just don’t have the time anymore.

I instead started spanish. After a few lessons Duo Lingo rated me as a super learner. Don’t know if it’s because they want to sell me a subscription but I really flew through the lessons (even when I had to type out the sentences). I’ll stay with it and will add dutch soon.

Nur unter Harris hätte es noch eine Chance gegeben das Electoral College und das Winner-Takes-All System zu reformieren. Die nächste Wahl wird vermutlich keine sein, wenn man Project 25 (was selbst den ungebildeten MAGAs eine Heidenangst machen würde, wenn sie es denn kennen würden) ernst nimmt. Dann werden die Proud Boys Wahlbeobachter sein.

The one on the left will probably become the next german chancellor as this party CDU (Christian Democratic Union) will nominate him at the next federal parliament elections. A popular magazine (IIRC it was Financial Times) called him the german Trump years ago. He was a long-time chairman of the supervisory board of BlackRock.

He is famous for stating that he and the CDU will be the firewall against the far-right (and often straight-up nazi) AfD party who recently won german elections in the state of Thuringia and were 2nd place in Saxony and Brandenburg (all 3 are ex-GDR states). Recently Merz denied his firewall statement (as in “We never said that”) and that it was imposed on them from other parties.

He’s also famous for voting against the criminalization of rape within marriages, not wanting to raise taxes for rich people and flooding the zone with shit against the Green Party (part of the currently ruling coalition) who had a big influencr on the facts that Germany is not dependent on russian gas anymore, the energy prices are currently at pre-Ukrainian war level, Germany has one of the most stable energy systems in Europe, inflation is on pre-war level, renewables were ramped up immensively and the internet is finally getting modernized thanks to their broadband initiative.

Nevertheless the current government is often titulated as the worst in a long time. Mind you we had 16 years of standstill with the CDU before that, apart from the Merkel initiatives: federal-wide exit of nuclear energy after Fukushima and the abolition of mandatory Military Service and the “Wir schaffen das” refugee politics because of the War in Syria. The latter was the beginning of the radicalization of previously non-radical parts of the population as far-right parties and other groups painted a grim picture because of the refugee situation.

The bad rep of our current traffic light coalition (red labour SPD, the Greens and the yellow neoliberal and corrupt outlier FDP) is the work of a the biggest newspaper publisher Springer with it’s magazines Bild (Germans The Sun), Welt (The Sun for intellectuals) and other mags like Politico. They’re pushing aggressive propaganda against The Greens. Specifically against Robert Habeck our economy minister, an ex children book author, the architect of the green revolution here and responsible for cutting of the gas supply chain from russia. Bild basically published multiple articles against the Greens over more than 2 years every day, especially against their heat pump initiative for private homes and the exit for combustion car engines after 2035 which are both EU regulations and will come anyway.

Back to Merz. He is one of many politicians from nearly all parties in Germany whose main job in the opposition is to do the same as Bild. He doesn’t diffamate the main party SPD and surely not his buddies from the soon Niedrigverdiener of the FDP (who fucked up the political processes over the whole 3 years of the gov which even angered the EU heavily) but his target ofc was nearly solely the Greens. The main reason: Ties to the fossil industry and probably ties to The Heritage Foundation who want to take over the US.

There recently was held a conference in Berlin organised by The Republic who was the main think tank behind the Bild campaigns against the traffic-light government. The Heritage Foundation took part in it and it was a meet and greet for CDU politicians with MAGA folks. Merz is said to have a good connection with Mr. Petschner-Multari the CEO of The Republic, which he denies. After open CDU-party intern critical voices from the liberal wing he cancelled his visit to the conference.

https://www.rnd.de/politik/berlin-trumps-maga-republikaner-konferieren-mit-der-cdu-QLQTLIJQBZB2BLA2CMHBSAPJFA.html

Adding to all this Merz is repeating AfD talking points e.g. with his famous “Refugees are the reason why germans don’t get dentist appointments anymore because they all come here to get their teeth fixed”. Another recurring beast of a topic regarding Merz is the similarity to Fritz Von Papen who basically enabled Hitler in 1933.

The guy on the right is Merz’s 18 year old grandson Phillip who was an intern for him at BlackRock. Merz gave him the nickname Smithers…No not really that’s Phillip Amthor, another possibly corrupt CDU politician.

Now your up to date about the FUBAR situation in Germany.

I just yesterday tried Wayland under Arch with a 1070 after a long time. Single WQHD monitor though. Although X11 is really performant, Wayland was more smooth regarding KDE desktop effects. Witcher 3 (via Heroic) showed fewer microstutters and I will try some more proton games and other applications over the weekend.

I recently had to downgrade nvidia drivers from 560 to 550 because wakeup from sleep and hibernate would coredump. I read that this is fixed with 560 but only under Wayland. The developers definitely progressed on the nvidia front.

https://programming.dev/comment/12049449

I’m not sure if I understood your deduction. The literal translation of “Zange” would be “tongs”, “pliers” or “pincer”. Hinges are the things that make doors swing and hold to a wall right?

Multiple source say the origin of the word isn’t documented but the best explanation they come up with is that pliers can be used to bend something into a different form.

My guess was it has its origin in the proverb “Das würde ich nicht mal mit der Kneifzange anfassen” which translates to “I wouldn’t even touch that with pliers” as in stuff you detest that much that you rather would stay away from it.

Thanks for the source. So yeah “Potato Chip Technology That Destroys Your Hearing” doesn’t sound reassuring. Nonetheless I’d take those packaging everyday over conventional knowing I did my thing while getting fat.

Eating out of conventional chips packaging in cinemas or libraries should be punishable either way. I think in reality those customers problem was the “open the bag at night without waking up everyone” problem which should be preventable with a bit of planning.

They were louder than the aluminium/plastic bags? What material did they use? Also what a lazy argument by the producer for giving up environmental actions. Bet it just cost them more.

Easy fix if nothing works. Find the specific pipewire-version that causes the webcam bug, compile and install it, possibly render your sound settings partially defunct on the way and hook up a webcam. Thank me later.

Have you looked into the “Activity” settings within system settings already? When you click on the default activity there you should see the option “Automatically shutting down or sleeping”. I’m sure you already tinkered with the energy system-settings.

If you want a nice introduction to why a proper plant based diet is in most cases better for longevity listen to this interview. The 2½ hours are really rewarding and you’ll get some very important (live-prolonging) information:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5B0rlNvhog

This 7 min excerpt from the interview briefly touches why changing our diets is imperative for the survivability of future generations:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8rtyomVu88

The podcast of Simon Hill is called “The Proof”.

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Diamond Age is my all time favourite (although I read it just one time as I do with all books). In the current age of AI it is very relevant. If nano technology and AI will progress we’ll maybe head into the depicted scenario and I hope I’m still alive then.

Cryptonomicon, Anathem, The Baroque Cycle are wild rides and masterpieces too. Anathem was a bit hard to get into but it got really exciting after the first 300 pages (of ~1000) or so.

I did not read that book of Calvino (nor have I heard his name) but there exists a free game on steam called “If on a winter’s night four travelers” with very positive reviews which seems to be inspired by the book.

I only read “The Left Hand of Darkness”. That novell was fire (no pun intended). Excellent world building and super captivating and immersive writing.

The only innovative thing CDU/CSU has done was inventing a time machine which can travel back to the 60s.

Of all Bundesländers they got at the helm in Berlin. And wreaking havoc as always that corrupt industry obedient creeps under whose regimen the most farms died and who now present themselves as the only party (besides the horse farmer Christian Lindner) who wants to save small farms by posting 3 year old pictures of photo-op’s (Plöß) in a farm or putting on rubber boots and hugging farmers (Klöckner).

They constantly don’t stand with their past opinions (Söder regarding cannabis legalization) are anti-semites (Aiwanger) and climate change deniers. They are against renewables, animal welfare, modern organic farming, abolishing of fossil fuels and alternative transportation methods and everything that’s necessary to save the asses of the future generations.

They’d definitely coalition with AfD if that would be the only measure to get into power again and working into the hands of fossil fuel and alcohol lobbyists again.

Everything that’s going bad in this country is not the fault of their 16 years of corrupt reign but of the Greens who are merely in power for 3 years, who made record low GHGs, record high renewables and the breaking up with Putins gas in germany possible (Habeck for chancelor).

Look at this especially dumb conspiracy theorist specimen here who’s allowed to regularily write pieces for Springer-Press telling us it’s an imperative to save the combustion engine in favour of a dying german industry:

https://twitter.com/schroeder_k/status/1769640790395887638

I hate them with a passion.

Accompanied drinking of beer and wine at the age of 14.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_laws_in_Germany

Wir leben im 21. Jahrhundert. Geh mal mit der Zeit und nutze die Technologie, die uns zur Verfügung steht.

https://www.minitube.com/catalog/en/henryetta-artificial-cow-ai-training-model-p2353/

Aber ja du hast Recht. Fuck dairy.

I read somewhere (sorry no sauce but it seemed informed) that it’s a deliberate choice by him to appeal to working class boomers or something. Did you all know that a medium channeled his deceased dog which in turn told him to run for president?