Five Things: Imperial Presidency, Digital Minimalist Family, Europe's Fate, Hot Earth, MetaFilter
It's Sunday. We're en route to the Adriatic coast of Croatia!
Heya, thanks for reading Five Things this Sunday Morning! My intro is a bit shorter this time as I’m writing this from a hotel room in the Austrian town of Wels where we are spending a night on our way down to Split in Croatia. This has been a long day behind the wheel and every time I have been doing a long trip like this, I come to the same conclusion: the German Autobahn without speed-limits is a truly stupid idea. In Austria, the speed-limit is 130 km/h and this makes driving so much more relaxing. Somehow all countries in Europe have a speed-limit, but only in Germany enforcing a speed-limit on the Autobahn is seen as taking away all personal liberties and reducing tax-paying citizens to serfdom. The debate is as insane as the gun-debate in the USA. Driving with a speed-limit is so much more relaxing. Also, I recently discovered that my car has a cruise-control thingy where it slows down and accelerates based on the distance to the car in front of me. How cool. I’m pretty good at steering and I let the car do the rest…
Maybe I write a bit more. I’m tired, but there’s a wedding reception in the hotel we’re staying at and the DJ is ripping through all the dancefloor classics of the last 30 years and that keeps me from sleeping…
80 years ago on July 1944, the assassination attempt failed and Adolf Hitler survived. This is one event that occurred during the Third Reich that obviously provokes lots of “what if?”-thinking. What if Claus von Stauffenberg had placed the bomb just a bit better? What if Georg Elser where more successful with his bomb in 1939? What if more Germans had tried to stand up to the Nazis?
Suddenly, those “what if?”-questions get asked again and the American voters should focus more on what unites them and what makes their democracy truly great, before it is too late.
The Imperial Presidency Unleashed
Haven’t we learned anything from the history of the 20th century? When democratically elected leaders or appointed judges assist those who want to tear down democracy, they will do exactly that. You cannot fence them in by giving them a hand, you have to fight them every day. If Trump gets elected again, he can quickly seize major parts of government and turn into a neo-fascist leader. For every American who is still interested in keeping a democracy based on personal liberties and freedom, this means that they have to make sure nobody in their right mind is voting for the MAGA GOP. Never again.
Modern Luddites: On Being a Digital Minimalist Family in a Tech-Saturated World
This is an interesting and thoughtfully argues essay on bringing up kids with very little exposure to digital tools. Fascinating. We’re doing exactly the opposite, letting our kids grow up with plenty of access to digital tools and lots of urban stimulus.
Europe's fate is in Germany's hands now
As a German, I would very much welcome if we could use our power and influence to make the world a better place. But I don’t think most Germans are ready for that. We’re still trying to be a good neighbor and are happy if we get invited to parties from time and then pay for most of it. Germany is the third biggest economy and has some sort of identity crisis, as we don’t want to realize how important this country is on a global scale. We’re still looking to the USA for guidance and we always hope that France and Poland like us. But we are really bad at defining what we want.
Out-of-control heat is making Earth more "weird" — and more deadly
“Ultimately, the human species is nowhere close to solving the problem of global heating.” - sorry for being so negative on a Sunday morning, but we really have to work harder on keeping the world from overheating!
At 25, Metafilter Feels Like a Time Capsule From Another Internet
MetaFilter is a great place on the web. I remember when it started and became this internet phenomenon where the cool kids hung out. Back then, developers would advertise their own versions of the MetaFilter software so people could setup up MeFi clones themselves. Somehow, this site survived all these years and I rediscovered it a couple of times in the last decade or so.
That’s it. Have a great Sunday! If you missed last Sunday’s edition of Five Things, have a look here:
— Nico