Five Things: Domains, Taylor Swift, UBI, EU Expansion, LinkedIn

Your Sunday Morning starts here.

The last week again has shown why we should never ever vote for populists. They want to destroy Western democracies and they like chaos. The United States were very close to a government shutdown because of a bunch of extremists in the GOP. The outcome now is an agreement that stops aid for Ukraine, among other cuts. This is not what the world needs. And in Germany the leader of the conservative party, who promised that with his leadership he would bring the populist right-wing so called Alternative for Germany (AfD) down to half at the polls, but instead they about doubled their numbers in the polls, continues to try to appeal to the extremist voters by using their language and tactics. In a recent statement he implied that the refugees came to Germany and got their teeth fixed up here while Germans couldn’t get a dentist appointment. Which is obviously not true at all, he just tries to appeal to a xenophobic clientele. And then Elon Musk retweets some idiotic tweet from the AfD about rescuing people out of the Mediterranean Sea. We need to always confront the populists and demask them! Our Western democracies are at stake. Also, we cannot trust the Conservatives that they want to be on the good side of history.

Anyhow, welcome to the first Five Things of October. Read on, my dear!

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Whose Domain Is It?

This article by

Tianyu Fang

is a really nice dive into the weird world of domains. Like a lot of people, I have registered a bunch of domains myself, not just fivethin.gs, which I find absolutely clever, but I also registered the domain sibylle.de for my wife (then girlfriend) as an extremely romantic gift about 25 years ago (and I’m still paying for it…). Obviously I checked if the .de domains for the first names of our four kids were still available and registered them as soon as we finalized the names. Anyhow, did I mention that I find the domain name service a really interesting piece of technology? (LINK)

The right is coming for Taylor Swift. They don't stand a chance

I genuinely don’t understand why people care who a celebrity dates, but I think the author has a point: Taylor Swift is just to darn big now, which makes her untouchable. I would appreciate it if she’d get more outspoken on politics as people need rolemodels. (LINK)

What $500 Means to Zinida Moore

While I think that Universal Basic Income is an idea that we should test out more, it is not without its flaws, that’s for sure. But we need to understand that this is not just about costs and numbers, it’s about human beings who need just a bit more to have a much better quality of life. (LINK)

The Promise and Peril of EU Expansion

“To be fair, the task ahead is probably harder than these achievements—perhaps the EU’s most challenging one yet. But it is also the most consequential. Russia is threatening the peace and stability of Europe, and bringing Moldova and Ukraine into the EU is critical to strengthening the continent’s east. That, in turn, will protect Europe as a whole.” Former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt gives a good account what adding Ukraine and Moldova would entail and why we have to do it. (LINK)

It's not just you. LinkedIn has gotten really weird.

I spend more time on LinkedIn now that Twitter is becoming more and more useless. LinkedIn as a few challenges on its own, one is the algorithm that makes it difficult to reach an audience, but the far bigger challenge is the weird way people use LinkedIn nowadays. (LINK)

That’s it. Have an amazing Sunday!