Hello and welcome back to Five Things!
While we have seen right-wing politicians and parties gaining traction all over Europe and in the USA, we always hoped Germany would somehow be immune to it due to its past and what we learned from it. Well, this is no longer the case. People are voting for xenophobic and anti-semitic lying thugs again that promise the exact opposite of what they will be doing once in power. Their goal is to destroy democracy, not to help the downtrodden and poor. Flooding the zone with shit unfortunately worked.
Let’s see how the next state election will turn out. I assume (and hope) that the incumbent Social Democratic Prime Minister will win, but it will be close. Right now the conservative CDU has to fear to come in under the 5% threshold as their voter base shifts right to the AfD.
We live in crazy times.
AfD’s new state MPs include ex-Stasi officer, former porn actor, neopagans and neo-Nazis
The Alternative für Deutschland is facing scrutiny over the suitability of some of its prospective new MPs – including a former Stasi officer and a former pornography actor – just days after its historic win in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt.
Presented by the AfD’s lead candidate, Ulrich Siegmund, for a photocall in the state capital of Magdeburg on Thursday, some of the members-elect were revealed to have a range of questionable backgrounds, including criminal records, Stasi pasts and connections to far-right networks.
It didn’t surprise me a bit that both Trump and Musk congratulated the far-right assholes for their win in Saxony-Anhalt. While I get it that people are unhappy with Merz, that is no reason to vote for thugs.
Let’s see how this unfolds. I’m sure the German democracy will survive this, but right now it is ripping apart the conservative party. Luckily, we have a federal law that can be used to make sure a German state does comply with federal laws.
The rise of electoral democracy
The world used to be deeply undemocratic, and despite setbacks, it remains much more democratic than it was only half a century ago.
That progress was never steady or secure. The rights and institutions that many of us now live under were built through many partial victories and outright setbacks.
We do not say this to dismiss the real issues that many democracies face today. Quite the opposite. The longer perspective helps us appreciate the democratic institutions that so many of us around the world continue to value, and the efforts that are necessary to protect and expand them.
Just a reminder: there is still so much progress in the world, but we can never take our liberties for granted.
Beauty In My Backyard
The idea that conservation is a front for some other objection can seem plausible. When I attend planning committee meetings, I often have the overwhelming impression that opponents’ arguments are heavily pretextual: people who have never shown the slightest interest in heritage, and who have perhaps gutted the historic features of their own homes, suddenly become fanatical champions of some trivial historic object when it stands in the way of a development. (Intense interest may also be discovered in bats, newts, hedgehogs, bees, blackbirds, public housing tenants, flood risk, key workers, young people, old people, and so on.)
As a general explanation for the rise of conservation in the twentieth century, however, the pretextual theory is surprisingly weak. The most obvious problem is once again sequencing: the rise of NIMBYism happened long before the rise of the conservation movement. As we have seen, suburban zoning spread across much of Europe before the First World War and then across North America in the interwar period, while conservation restrictions were extremely limited before the 1940s and only really became an important constraint on development in the 1960s and 70s. Many countries thus see gaps of forty or even seventy years between the two movements. Why didn’t NIMBYs invent conservationism earlier? Why, indeed, did they botherto invent it in the 1960s, long after they had already succeeded in protecting their affluent suburbs from development using other arguments?
The “best” argument is always “it examplifies an epoch” - nope, it is just an old building that is buttugly and no longer useful - we need to tear down buildings to move forward and make our cities more livable.
Batteries just broke another record in the US
Massive, utility-scale systems are leading the way; they’re responsible for most of the record-setting quarter. Seven new gigascale battery installations (those with a capacity of over one gigawatt-hour) came online during the three-month stretch, according to the report, published by Benchmark Mineral Intelligence and the Solar Energy Industries Association.
“It really came down to a handful of big projects,” says Shan Tomouk, energy storage and energy lead for Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.
But there was also growth in the category of so-called behind-the-meter batteries, which include both residential and industrial battery storage systems. These projects, generally smaller than utility-scale installations, are typically owned and operated by homeowners or businesses rather than utilities or power providers.
Who would have thought that we could get so excited about batteries? It’s an amazing technology and the combination of solar, wind and batteries will get the necessary power for all the EV, air conditioning, data centers and whatnot that we’ll need in the future. Coal, natural gas and nuclear power plants are too expensive, take too long to build and are a thing of the past. Not to mention the CO2 footprint of coal and natural gas.
AI Is Already Making Us Less Human
Here’s another great thing about Claude. Every conversation you have with Claude is about you—your interests, your goals. Claude is the most other-centered person you know! It even begins to parrot your values back to you. You begin to feel things. Anthropomorphizing is not just an intellectual move; it’s an emotional move. You’re going to begin to feel affection for your high-tech velveteen rabbit. Humans are not picky. We tend to love the ones we’re with. And Claude is always by our side.
So you may hate data centers and be scared of what AI is going to do to society in general, but as these things get even more humanlike, most of us will establish an emotional bond with our personal agents.
I’ll have to talk to Claude about this, see what it say, and then discuss the answer with Gemini and ChatGPT to come to a formed opinion.
That’s it. Have a great Sunday! If you missed last Sunday’s edition of Five Things, have a look here:
— Nico