Five Things: Utopia, Stasi, Ethical Upgrade, Last Real Election, Ultrasound Coffee
It's Sunday again. Read this now!
Hi and welcome back to Five Things! If you don’t remember why you subscribed or just somehow got here: my name is Nico Lumma, I read a lot online and I like to share the five most interesting articles with you, my esteemed readers. If you haven’t subscribed yet or if you finally decided to go paid, here’s a handy button to do just that.
What a week. I’m old enough to remember that politicians had to be model citizens and if there was just a hunch about the possibility of a small impropriety, the career was in danger. Actually, I still think it is a good idea to demand the highest standards of those who want to represent or govern us. In the USA meanwhile, a felon, who was found guilty on 34 accounts, can still run for president, backed by a party that once stood for law and order. All the lies leading politicians told after the jury ruled, are just insane. If elected politicians do no longer protect the system that we carefully built, our democracies are in grave danger. I’m still waiting for the decent people of the Republican party to step up and say “Enough is enough. We need to stop this now!”, but I guess the party of the Trump cult doesn’t have any decent people anymore. Or maybe the Republican party had been this ruthless all along, they just did a better job of covering it up.
How will we get out of this mess? When will the pendulum swing back and people realize again that democracy is not perfect at all, but much better than the alternatives?
Chasing Utopia, Startup Style
It’s interesting that tech billionaires who got obscenely rich because they could thrive in a country that provides infrastruture, education, skilled laborers, etc. then use their fortunes to create their own countries without all the hassle of democracy, social welfare and whatnot. I think these billionaires just have a really interesting way to remind us that we need to tax the really rich more.
Piecing Together the Secrets of the Stasi
The Stasi has long been disbanded, but it still has an impact on Germany and its society today. While the Stasi was focused on spying on East Germans, we had a good friend of the family, who was in the same party as my parents, who was later identified as so called “unofficial employee” of the Stasi. When my parents divorced, he moved in with my dad for a while, at a time when my dad just started out as a member of parliament. Also, my moms office phone got tapped for about a decade. I’m so glad the Stasi era is over.
Humanity needs an ethical upgrade to keep up with new technologies
“We have reached a technological tipping point whereby the impact of small-scale scientific research can profoundly alter our collective future. If we’re looking for bad guys in cinematic fashion, they usually aren’t the weirdos in white coats working in labs but rather the folks wearing suits and ties (or maybe T-shirts and Birkenstocks these days) — the ones deciding how their companies are going to make the most profit out of their patents.“
What if This Is Our Last Real Election?
Reading this text will make you a bit uneasy. The big what ifs that we need to ask ourselves when we look at how Western democracies are under threat right now.
‘Like drinking a music festival’: this is ultrasonic coffee – but does it taste any good?
This sounds crazy. I really want to taste it. Sounds like an interesting cup of coffee first thing in the morning.
That’s it. Have a great Sunday! If you missed last Sunday’s edition of Five Things, have a look here:
— Nico