Five Things: Putin, Personal Tech, Balkonkraftwerk, Migrants, Ghost Artists
Your Sunday Morning starts here. Really.
Hello and welcome back to Five Things!
It’s the last Sunday before Christmas and we went to a packed Christmas market in Hamburg yesterday to see Santa Claus ride up to the sky in his sleigh (and back again, because the rope ended and the actor needed to get off from his sleigh after a while).
On Friday a man rode his car into the crowd of a Christmas market in Magdeburg and killed five people while maiming hundreds before he could be stopped. As soon as the news broke that he is a doctor who works as a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy at a hospital and came here from Saudi-Arabia almost two decades ago, social media erupted with anti-muslim slurs and comments about sending immigrants home. When journalists researched that the man had been outspoken against islam and had shown sympathies for the German right-wing party AfD, the reactions changed.
Still, people are shocked that an attack like this could happen, especially on the same day an attack happened at a Christmas market in Berlin eight years ago. And we see lots of xenophobia again, because this man is an immigrant. This sickens me. We cannot and should not counter hatred with even more hatred. My thoughts are with the families in Magdeburg who have to endure this trauma now.
I hope you have done all the Christmas shopping by now and find the time to get into the right mood. I’m working on it myself.
Enjoy these Five Things now!
Putin’s Point of No Return
“Russian ambitions may not stop at Ukraine, and in the absence of Western action today, the costs of resisting Russian aggression will only rise. Russia is a declining power, but its potential to stir conflict remains significant. Thus, the burden of deterrence and defense against it is not going to lighten in the near term.” - and yet, in Germany many people are wary of American influence and want to engage in peace talks with Russia and get cheap natural gas again. Russian propaganda works.
Never Forgive Them
“Things are being made linearly worse in the pursuit of growth in every aspect of our digital lives, and it’s because everything must grow, at all costs, at all times, unrelentingly, even if it makes the technology we use every day consistently harmful.” - it’s called stickyness, I guess.
‘If a million Germans have them there must be something in it’: how balcony solar is taking off
I think the idea of a Balkonkraftwerk is just wonderful. People save on energy costs and generate enough energy for the appliances in the home. And to my surprise, the building codes allow this and the regulation around solar on your balcony is also improving quickly. Basically it is just plug & play now and as more and more people re using this, the energy mix is shifting.
There Is No “Migrant Crisis”
“Without romanticizing or generalizing the politics of those on the move, we must recognize the sheer will and productive power they represent. In their determination for a different life, migrants and refugees subvert the multibillion-dollar global industry of barbed wire walls, drone surveillance, militarized checkpoints, and bureaucratic violence aimed at fatally deterring them. Revolutions bring no guarantees, but they do call on us to dream, listen, commune, act, struggle, dismantle, rematriate, create, to move and make anew.”- migration will only increase in the next few years due to climate change, so we need to address this.
The Ghosts in the Machine
I have heard of ghost kitchens. But ghost artists on Spotify? What a time to be alive.
That’s it. Have a great Sunday! If you missed last Sunday’s edition of Five Things, have a look here:
— Nico