Somebody took shots from the air of her home. She tried to get them removed from the public sphere. That caused headlines and as a result more people saw them attached to these news stories than ever would have if she hadn’t made an issue out of it.

Didn’t google, didn’t read the other comments.

I can see dead people.

While I think of all non-animated Trek shows, DS9 had the best first season, it still contains a lot of dogs. Move along home, anyone? My point is first seasons are rough. Discovery gets better in S2. I would watch it that far before you start SNW because it’s basically the backdoor pilot for that show.

I don’t think a mutinous commander is that outrageous a plot line in a universe where Riker once had Q powers, Janeway had warp 10 lizard babies with her pilot, Sisko poisoning a planet’s atmosphere on purpose, or where a man like Jonathan Archer was made captain of anything.

Is Disco the best Trek show? I don’t think so. I think overall it’s better than PIC though. So if you have suffered through that, you stand a good chance of being more delighted by Disco.

I don’t think it would be weird. It’s up to them if they accept or not. I would just suggest you make parallel plans as well to meet new people. A hobby group, a book club, etc.

I think there are two general (human) media preferences at work: “if it bleeds, it ledes” superceded by which deaths are more extraordinary. So soldiers murdered in peacetime is noteworthy. They could’ve become accountants but chose a career where there is a real and high risk of death. Btw I fear it’s that death math that made medical professionals drop out of noteworthiness post-pandy, i.e. the threat is real but the risk has gone down again. I think children dying generally of tragic circumstances will be noteworthy. Nurses contracting AIDS or non-famous people dying of natural causes become less noteworthy. And I use noteworthy here as what they chose to cover in their newsrooms. They have financial interests to consider as well, which brings us back to “if it bleeds.”

The American filter generally erases many “mundane” gun deaths from visibility. Either people are so numb it doesn’t register as the tragedy that it is or it doesn’t get covered. There are plenty of places on earth where a single gunshot fired in anger that would make headlines.

There is a worldwide blindness to traffic deaths. We have just accepted that this is how many people die. So if something more interesting happens elsewhere, the t-boned accountant on the way to Walmart just gets dropped.

So there are a number of factors that influence what makes the news or not. The list goes on.

I would also say that media coverage is not prescriptive for who you should feel empathy for. We cannot all feel all the tragedies on this planet at once. We’d go mad. You pick and choose as a defense mechanism. So if you don’t feel that much empathy for these national guardsmen, I kind of get it. If you don’t like how much media coverage it’s getting, I can definitely understand that. The problem is just that when you say this out loud you open yourself up to criticism, like: you don’t feel for the people who died while sworn to defend your freedom! What about children and nurses? That’s just whataboutism! Etc. So I would suggest you follow your own heart and change your media consumption when it bothers you. Or you’ll end up in a culture war debate about whose lives matter more.

I understand that within the confines of your life you feel car ownership, even of a vehicle that contains an internal combustion engine, is a necessity. I get that and really don’t judge you got that.

What I think you didn’t pick up on is the sheer decadence in your post. Your within-the-confines-of-your-life-necessary car is still bad for the environment. SUVs are big and heavy. If you ride it with an empty trunk by yourself half the time or more you bought too big a car. SUVs really are bad for smaller, more vulnerable participants in traffic. And you were praising that the middle console is perfectly designed for the future landfill fill you got your sodas served in. That’s a bit like the frog sitting in the pot of water as the temperature increases praising the craft of the pot maker. I found that remarkable enough to comment upon, cynically, with a warning up front and without name calling.

If you feel judged here, consider that there are reasons for it that bother you as well. And you don’t have to agree with everything I write here. I’m guessing though honestly you don’t disagree with all of it.

Do you put gasoline in it?

With apologies for the cynicism: it’s great that your unnecessarily oversized, gas burning SUV tank, a type of vehicle which is particularly bad for pedestrians and bicyclists alike in an accident situation, has a space designed for this entirely avoidable single-use plastic-and-cardboard combo.

You don’t show him the stupidity of his ways by sleeping with that lady. You either find a way to confront him about that. Or you unattach yourself from this toxic person by finding other, better friends. Frankly, I would give him a piece of my mind and then find other friends anyway.

Nein. In den Vornamen der Politikerin bitte kurz an sich bietender Stelle mental ein Leerzeichen einfügen und nochmal von vorne. Oder von hinten. Da steck ich nicht drin.

SPRICH

Ihr Gatte ist auch Christ.

I suspect this is a problem of fragmentation on Android. I’ve had issues when I tried other Clock apps than the Google one. Alarms would not be triggered for various inexplicable reasons. Or they reset if the launcher crashed for whatever reason. I don’t have the time and energy to test this simple function that I rely on quite heavily. And that’s why I stick with the stock Google app because it has never failed me personally no matter whose manufacturer’s version of Android it ran on.

I see your point. I was thinking about fining just the assholes who obstruct sidewalks beyond the tolerated minimum. I think there is a middle way to make that work and maybe even turn a profit. But that’s not a great additional argument from me. It might need a federal regulation change. They could introduce a hefty fine for parking in such a manner that a wheelchair user could not safely use the sidewalk as a result. One can dream.

I don’t follow your relaxed law logic. The law was not enforced before and would be more tightly enforced under this plan.

I would argue the space on the sidewalk has already been reduced and this plan would just limit punishment to those who truly deserve it. And if this is policy it should include the staff hours for parking inspectors. They could take note of areas where sidewalk parking often reduces space to below 1.6m and then have bollards or other barriers installed in these hotspots.

And, as I’ve also already mentioned, there should be more policies to encourage giving up on car ownership. I suggested free public transport for former car owners. New developments should include the need to build its own parking faculties on the property. Parking fees should be raised slowly but steadily. Resident parking only schemes could maybe push visitors to the area into public transport. There are more tools in that toolbox.

BTW I’m not a fan of this plan. My sense of what is possible, i.e. politics, just forces me to grudgingly accept this as a compromise. If you reduce the space for parking, say, by planting trees or other physical obstacles (which will probably cost more than this), you’ll be voted out. Politicians are more pragmatists than idealists. Nobody will stay in office long with radical anti car policies - as much as I would personally support that.

In the context of small Munich alleys where space is scarce, where exactly should they build additional bicycle lanes that can be used by fire trucks? The shining examples of fuck cars infrastructure like Amsterdam and Copenhagen tend to be on flat land or the great infrastructure doesn’t actually extend into the narrow capillary alleys that have been around since the middle ages. They also took decades to implement policies in increments to get to where they are. Munich is in my estimation probably at least a decade behind that.

I don’t think I’m leaning too far out this window when I say: no, there isn’t an optimal size. It depends on so many factors. How many people? Is this urban or rural? What’s there neighborhood like? Facilities, public transport, doctors, grocery stores, etc.? What’s the crime rate like? How long is the commute to work? People have different priorities and make different choices as a result.

In principle, I agree with you. And do you know why hardly any city government can put this rigorous approach into practice? Because they will be voted out in the next election. Because car ownership is still high. Realpolitik applies here.

Germans love a rule, love pea counting, and they will measure.

Your insane argument doesn’t quite work for me when the mutual benefit of the practice was to provide ample space for fire trucks and ambulances on the roads. This is not a matter of the city just not giving a shit. They weighed their options.

Another aspect that wasn’t touched upon in the article will also play into this: parking fines are a great way to get money into the city coffers. So it will probably pay off to get members of the Ordnungsamt - or the office of public order - who handle these things out in force armed with a tape measure and a camera and chi-ching for Munich’s revenue.

It’s not that clear really. His official titles would’ve been president and chancellor and he only got one of those in a manner the Weimar constitution legally envisioned. So the system, by which we would decide what an official title is today, was abused and then suspended all together. The title “der Führer” was basically a google translate from “il duce” in Italy and is not entirely honorific because he was leader of the Nazi party first. And he continues to be referred to by this semi-unofficial, semi-honorific title even in history books today and they don’t always bother to disambiguate or add that they mean it sarcastically. So while Grok should be shot into space. And Nazi saluting Melon Usk deserves to be under this much scrutiny and more and can otherwise go eff himself as far as I’m concerned. The Ockham’s razor for this gaff tells me the LLM just regurgitated book knowledge and nobody bothered to filter this with 2025 sensibilities. Not great but also more of a storm in a teacup. This won’t make the top ten of atrocious things coming from the Melon.

I was also looking for a word other than ‘honorific.’ I find it has a positive connotation and should not apply to the titles of such infamous individuals as Hitler or Mussolini. But I could not come up with anything snappy.

Two things: this is an accepted practice all over the country and the traffic code has its own traffic sign for it when it is permitted. And the suggested amendment would only make it legal in situations where there would remain 1.6m of space for pedestrians, wheelchair users, and strollers. So the car parked in the image would remain illegally parked.

Munich has made a mistake of tacitly allowing this parking practice in areas where there isn’t enough space, motivated by keeping roads accessible to first responders, which is not nothing. They have clearly made a mistake if everybody still owns a car when there s above average public transport. And people will still park like assholes. Under these plans (they haven’t been approved yet according to the article), the assholes could be punished though. It would just not give fines out to everybody. This is a compromise solution in a bad situation.

I would amend the plans in two areas: the grumpy people of Munich should be allowed to smear dogshit legally on every car that doesn’t leave 1.6m of space on the sidewalk (the article mentions a similar occurrence). And giving up car ownership should be rewarded with free public transport for a suitable amount of time.