Five Things: Eating, Guns, Palestine, J. Peterman, Dumb Phones
Sunday Morning is here and I suggest that you grab a coffee for some light reading!
On Friday our youngest kid turned 9 - it’s so amazing to watch her grow up and learn new things and develop plenty of character. And as the youngest of four kids, she has an amazing set of vocabulary, ranging from interesting insults to words people would only use in academic writing. She’s wonderful and I love her very much!
The German Minister of Transportation wants to get a law changed so that the emissions-reduction law allows climate goals to be assessed for compliance by looking at all sectors and across all Ministries together instead of individually. The reason is simple: Transportation in Germany is nowhere near reaching the climate goals, because the Minister is not doing enough. So now he is threatening the Germans with the only thing they really fear: taking away their cars! Well, not quite, but in order to reduce emissions, Volker Wissing proposed a ban for driving on weekends, which we last had in the 70s during the oil crisis and which I remember fondly. So instead of finally doing what every other country is doing and which will curb enough emissions to meet the climate goals, Wissing refuses to instate a speed limit, but instead comes up with this idiotic idea of Fahrverbot, which is the opposite of Fahrvergnügen. The old slogan “free ride for free citizens” still counts in Germany.
I live in a weird country where people get all emotional about an internal combustion engine and fear that they will not reach their destination in an EV, because charging is different than getting gas. There’s even a word for that: Reichweitenangst - range anxiety. Everywhere in Germany people fear change, from cars to AI to education to days without meat in cafeterias, and so on. In Hamburg people express their fear of change by being against rebuilding bridges that have reached their end of life. So we have public debates about bridges, small ones, big ones, you name it. After years of debate they will now build a new bridge in the harbour and tear down the old one. The project is supposed to be finished by 2040. Why the rush? We have only been talking about this for 10 years now. I ran across the bridge last year during a race and I had a great view from up there and the Köhlbrandbrücke is a landmark, but hey, why can’t landmarks change every couple of decades? I think Germans like to conserve too much of the past instead of developing the future. That’s a clear sign of a society that is growing too old.
I’m 51 and driving a Polestar 2 EV - anything is possible if you want to! 🤠
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Why don’t rich people eat anymore?
I don’t think this is a particularly healthy trend. Aside from Ozempic, we’ll see that people who can afford good food will stay healthy longer and everybody will risk being obese with all sorts of health issues attached to it.
The US today has extraordinary levels of gun ownership. But to see this as a venerable tradition is to misread history
“In a country in which tens of millions of people own guns, public safety becomes a personal responsibility, and so individuals often decide that it is in their best interest to protect themselves by buying a gun. This desire to be protected against those who have guns by getting a gun, multiplied across millions of people, has resulted in an arms race that makes everyone less safe.” - the American stance toward guns is about as insane as the German discussion about a speedlimit.
The Impossible Promise of Building a New Palestinian City
While October 7 changed everything, we should not forget that a peace process has to possible at some time in the future and that there are possibilities to create new chances for peaceful living in the West Bank and in Gaza.
The J. Peterman Edition
On
they seem to tackle the really hard questions. To my astonishment, I had to find out that the J. Peterman Company really does exist and you can order their stuff online. For decades I had thought this was just a crazy idea on Seinfeld, but no, somebody is actually making money with this.The Dumbphone Boom Is Real
This is a fundamentally dumb idea. Why would anyone get a phone to be able to just call people? I assume that iOS and Android will offer more “do not disturb” or “do not get distracted” options in the future, so that people can decide when they want to watch less reels.
That’s it. Have a great Sunday! If you missed last Sunday’s edition of Five Things, have a look here:
— Nico