kugel7c @ kugel7c @feddit.de

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2 yr. ago

I somewhat harshly disagree with this sentiment, sure most of the problems you mention are real, although I always feel like criminal danger in central/western Europe is just not really something anyone should let impact their live decisions, as it's generally so rare --

Punctuality is very much a mixed bag regional and S trains are usually pretty good here in Köln, there are delays of course but half of them seem to be idiots walking on the tracks which I don't really attribute to DB.

Long distance is a bit worse than that, you could definitely say delays are common and sometimes very long delays occur as well.

And communication is usually pretty atrocious. Although this usually can be sidestepped somewhat by just reading the app carefully and at least occasionally reading the upcoming construction notices.

But and this is the actually important thing that makes it all worth it, they run a ton of service, to a just insane number of stations. You can legitimately use it for all your travel if you just impose a time buffer about as long as the initial trip. From everywhere to everywhere in this country, usually for under 50€ if you just plan the slightest bit, or with the Deutschlandticket travel regio.

The amount of stations we have in towns of under 50k people might be among the highest in the world. The amount of people within x km of a station with regular (usually at worst hourly) service is enormous. The amount of track per person both in the country as well as company is staggering.

It's nice and easy to call DB a joke but I think it's far from it, public transit especially in urban areas, where as we all know most people live, is nearly world class in terms of coverage. You don't need a car anywhere in Germany if you don't want to and that's a great thing, sure if you are impatient or get stressed when things outside of your control have impact on you, you might want a car but it's very much not a requirement. Unless you almost pretty specifically have your home or work as far away from civilization as you can get.

DB has much more potential and probably should be much better than it is but it's far from bad even. Some of the arguments brought against it also in your comment will just read like old anti transit propaganda for the car companies, wether rehashed out of habit or ignorance. Please at least get your mostly valid criticism and don't aim it at DB but the car lobby, and 20+ years of neolib transit policy that's responsible for this situation.

I knew 14 year old girls who would use the trains in the middle of the night and I have used them for all my transport that's not on a bike for the last 6 years. And I like the system. Your comment reads like pure anti transit propaganda to me. Even though some of it I'd say myself as a jokey complaint.

To end on a lighthearted note, at some point in time I borded a train (45mins delayed although for me it was essentially 15 mins early in a hourly schedule)heading for Aachen from Köln Deutz. After heading successfully through Hbf and Ehrenfeld we found ourselves on the track heading onto the südbrücke back to the eastern side of the rhine, with our train conductor being about as confused that we were now rolling through the same station i borded the train at, as everyone else on the train. All in all we ended up almost another hour behind.

So if one group is large and the other small maybe it's worth it, especially if we keep the firing squads in the closet.

In this same reality it's also still more expensive, logistically difficult and just again inhumane. If the afd is getting close to taking charge entirely, I'll take my bike to France to learn how to make the polices job a living hell. Just resigning to stupid outdated thinking doesn't seem particularly appealing to me.

Sure some might cheer when they start to push that hard against immigration. Others will riot and burn the streets even worse than they do already. Because for example we believe having such a thing as universal human rights is a good idea.

Because completely counter to whatever you think about defending borders countries have for literal time immemorial tried and failed to gain advantage or prevent each other from doing so by military force. It's been catastrophic every single time. Or are the Greeks Romans, Chinese kingdoms, Nazis, Soviets, still here with us today, did they have a graceful and good end to their reign.

The choice you present is false both options will inevitably end in the decline of the West, one just might be faster than the other. But there is in theory at least better alternatives, they just require Europeans to stop being US lapdogs. And letting go of the thousands of years old doctrine of military and economic domination, that creates most of its own problems to begin with.

From my perspective it's sorta crazy. How does one even have the space for several weeks of perishable groceries, or move them effectively from the store home. It all seems like so much wasted space.

Also how does one plan buying all you potential cravings for two weeks. I sorta don't get it, emotionally I don't.

I encourage you to try living a <10min walk from a grocery store if you ever get the chance. Right now I'm at< 3min to walking to the grocery store. It's the best. Especially if it's open till midnight or god forbid 24/7.

Yes it doesn't work if you make it impossible or very hard for it to work. I'm obviously not perfectly sure but for the amount of refugees we have both in Germany and likely Denmark, especially now with Ukraine we spend way to little money on the process of integration, if there's not enough (language) schools, shitty temporary housing and unhelpful and uncooperative Ausländerbehörden, we shouldn't turn to blaming the people who come here for the problems we in the "West" largely created.

Blaming and viliviying Somali and Syrian migrants just gets us increasingly deeper into this rabbit hole, until at the end of the day you have fundamentalist or ethnic riots, or firing squads at the outside borders. Both is completely unworkable, incredibly more expensive and frankly inhumane.

The conservatives that think human rights are a good thing should get their head out of fantasy land, the crusty socdems should ask themselves how they let this shit happen, and yeah the afd isn't gonna fix it but closing the borders as they demand is the most stupid non solution ever, just letting the thing heat up there on the outskirts until it blows up in all of our faces. Which it will continue to as long as no one takes it seriously enough to actually make a good solution. But relying on the publics generosity and frankly Kafkaesque government regulation and support isn't gonna get you well integrated migrants in a generation, it takes 3 maybe 5 in that case. Which is what we've been doing.

Ah yes because 2M people without any ~15cm diameter metal pipes sugar and fertilizer makes a lot of sense.

Which is a stupid thing to say knowing full well that the IDF doesn't give a shit about Palestinians, or anything said by them. The IDF and the Israeli police and public regularly take Palestinian land, harrass their people, as well as jail and kill them. How would any Palestinians suffering from that situation even begin to trust the IDF for anything.

Only if you see no alternative does treating them as the same actually benefit the crappier, if you realise resonably well that they are two sides of the same coin, and realise that this coin doesn't create much good, it just exploits people. You can vote so that the less crappy ones survive as long as the really crappy ones are a threat, but also fight against the liberals as well if they are currently keeping you down.

Sure it might be hard to imagine a socialist US but if that's not the goal then you might be missunderstanding the meme quite frankly.

Contrary to some of the other comments here I think what you are saying is pretentious, but also that it's good, It's Good to be pretentious, at least sometimes.

I try to think about it like this sometimes: "Don't be a gatekeeper, but also try to hit the in joke when appropriate.

2016 Brexit referendum -> Turkish coup-> trump presidential win

It reinforced all my feelings about what was important in this world and simultaneously made very clear we are actually living in an age of sliding back, not of Progress. I was already very interested in politics by that point but with just about the knowledge to grab the weight but no proper explanation this summer half of 2016 felt like falling into chaos and uncertainty 3 times. In retrospect the outer two likely had much more influence on my life thereafter, but the middle one was the more jarring to watch unfold at the time.

Layers in paint is huge tbf

Not accepting Wikipedia as some reasonable baseline for truthful or commonly accepted definitions is the sort of hill I wouldn't want to die on but sure. Especially for content that is so politically contentious Wikipedia usually settles on a reasonably holistic description where other outlets will leave out downplay or politically color certain parts of definitions, obviously this happens there too, but it's more likely to be corrected especially on divisive Issues. I mean you can go ahead and read the discussion page related to a topic and find out why and how sections came to be.

I'm not trying to lecture you I simply think that having any discussion is impossible if there is no shared understanding. Which is why I deferred to Wikipedia simply the most common database of knowledge in the world. The articles there might show me to be ignorant, but unlike you I've at least read parts of them with the intent to understand the information provided. Which I do to some extent not to completely accept what is said there but just to effectively communicate with other people, because Wikipedia gets close to a common definition for anything you might be talking about.

It's not about a completely factual definition because the topic is way to complex and nuanced to have one that isn't at least several long books, everyone lacks understanding of the topic because it's impossible in many ways to have a complete understanding of it. That's why it's a philosophical topic and not a natural science, the topic is currently completely impenetrable for the scientific method alone.

It is interesting and important to discuss precisely because it's so hard to grasp, so multifaceted and so central to all of our lives at the same time. And as I said before if we can't agree on baseline definitions all that potentially interesting discussion is lost on us.

Sozialwissenschaften (social sciences/ politics and economics), compared to everything else was non trivial and not tedious content. Math and physics and CS are nice and all but talking about current Events and interpreting them using certain models was always the most fun for me. With the slight downside of having to remember all the nomenclature.

I never would have written a 20+ page homework for any other subject, but for this sowi course I dug myself through the Israeli Arab conflict in as much depth as you need to get a good general overview, and I was having fun doing it.

It helped a lot that I picked the course because I knew which teacher it was going to be held by, and that the teacher was genuinely very good.

I don't even really know where to start. First is probably that you don't get to define words on a whim and that your definition of both capitalism and socialism lacks understanding. Just read the Wikipedia entry for both and you'll find them better defined within the first sentence of their respective entry.
And honestly I'm too tired to properly explain all the traps you fell into after that so good luck with your Libertarian socialist dream or something idk

I'm not sure why large scale decision making has to be deferred to a single person instead of a large group. Tbh that's one of the main problems with current large companies. Why not conduct a fucking vote, not about who should make the decision, but about what decision is made.

This might be true in some sense of talking about this topic but putting economic freedom as the marker for capitalist/socialist tendencyes of a country is a strange choice. No normal person will go yeah these two social democracies are actually more capitalist, than the 5 companies that make up the US government.

Idk in my world Denmark and Slovenia aren't as capitalist as the US while being significantly more democratic.

The German Grundgesetz if that makes any sense.

I try to find guidance on how to interact with the system, and how to interpret others actions from a very neutral but very comprehensive, guide to practical morality which is the GG for me.

Also I just love Art1 " Die würde des Menschen ist unantastbar"

Obviously it has some flaws, but if you interpret it enough it gives a good baseline for interpersonal stuff. Also it is the base law in Germany so practical value can also exist.

This is a pointless way to think about it, as long as signal can block conversations, or as long as you can just not respond, noone can gather your data. Only if you reply they might get some of your data, the message that you sent fully knowing that the one you were sending it to could leak it just as well as Facebook. So what does it matter if they can send you messages.

But only for the 4 weeks a year you spend in unusually cold weather, the other 48 it's more efficient.

It's not like truly arctic places are a reasonable application but the overwhelming majority of our population lives south of Quebec and north of Wellington. So it's not a relevant point, everyone in the Arctic can just use resistive heating or burn fuel, and if we get everything else on heat pumps we reduce our enegy use by a factor of 2-3 regardles.