holgerschurig

Well, I'm from Germany and it doesn't sound wrong to me. And in Germany we don't even have anglo-saxon law, but napoleonic laws (sample cases matter less, written law text matters more, for one big difference). We also don't have "copyright" at all. We have a "Urheberrecht", which is very similar, but also very different in details.

One of the things is: if a person creates something with a certain creativity level (I'm sure "hello world" programs don't count) then the work has automatically "Urheberrecht". There never was the need to register it, not even in history (like in the US, the origin of the "(C) xxxx by yyyy" markers). You also don't need to write any sentence at all into your works. What exactly is "certain creativity level" isn't in the law, that's on a judge in case of dispute. Also data bases and things generated by machines aren't covered.

And you automatically have "Urheberrecht" of it. And so automatically others aren't allowed to copy your work! https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/urhg/__2.html

(There are more ways you can get protection, e.g. if something is a computer program, or if something is art.)

And while this this can be seen draconian, then non-draconianess comes from exceptions. Generally private people are allowed to make one copy for their personal usage.

IANAL and the usual jadda jadda --- this is another difference between anglo-saxon and napoleonic right: in napoleonic right one doesn't have to state the obvious for fear of damages rulings ... oh, and technically we don't have napoleonic right in Germany either, as usual it's more complicated ... https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rechtskreis

And yet, UK and DE were together with many other countries in the EU. And so a lot of laws in the agricultural and trade realms are similar. Copying (and selling) stuff is IMHO trade related. So it doesn't wonder me at all that in practice the have a similar outcome despite being in totally different law systems.

You didn't define "we", so from my POV it's therefore wrong. If I set "we" to "the world" than your statement doesn't apply. Same when I set it to "the western world" or even just to tiny "Germany" --- because it's country I know best.

"We" have Helmholtz, Fraunhofer, Leibniz, Max-Planck. They all do long-term institutionalized research. Sometimes on their own, sometimes for industry. They employ 45000, 22000, 24000 or 32000 people respectively, a good chunk of them researchers.

But if I make the "we" wider, then I see a whole lot of scientific "academies", most of them having several members in turn. See https://allea.org/members/

I can't judge if "most research now is product centric" is correct or not. But I guess that research ending in a concrete product you can buy boosts the publicity of the research manifold.

If e.g. Fraunhofer optimizes wind rotors for turbines ... who will know it? But if they create the MP3 compression ... then it's much wider known. But already the airbag or white LEDs? Both are inventions of Fraunhofer, too. Used world-wide. And yet few know them to be coming out of a public funded research agency.

If I extrapolate this assumption of mine then I guess that inventions by other research institutions like Batelle or Smithsonian aren't equally well-known. If they aren't concrete products. If my guess is valid is on your judgement.

> Chinese EVs are dominating every market outside the US.

Well, that is factual false. In Germany for example, the market share of chinese car vendors (EV or not) is 6.1%. And the market share of "pure" EVs is 37.0%, the one of plug-in-hybrides is 11.2%.

So there is no way that chinese vendors dominate the german car market. Not the whole one, not the EV submarket.

I think you US guys should stop declaring victory of china. It's entirely in your head and makes you non-competitive. For example, Germany as a export-import surplus since the 50s, every single year. While the USA has an export-import deficit since the 70s, again every single year. And because of your deficit you now collectively think "Oh, we are de-industrialized and China is leading worldwide, we can never compete". I can't say if the first thing is true. But the 2nd is false: China is not leading worldwide. Otherwise Germany could not have a surplus. And if the small Germany can compete, then so could you.

Actually, the question for proof is valid. The poster claimed

> where "everybody" resisted their yoke was to kill off everybody

and okay, the everybody is in quotation marks. Which indicates that this doesn't mean 100%. But how much is "everybody"? If he doesn't owe us a proof for that claim, he owes us a clarification.

In some soviet satellite states, the soviet occupation zones killed way less than 100% who resisted. There are studies that in East Germany about those early opponents to the socialist systems (e.g. to the seizing of capital, farmers land, the cleansing of the universities and schools etc). They took 100% of the opponents in custody. And a good amount of non-opponents, there was no real proof of guilty needed. About 30% of the people of the inmates died in those 4 years of soviet occupation.

To me, this is certainly not "where EVERYBODY resisted their yoke was to KILL off everybody". But it was still cruel, still a stalinist forced occupation, a theft of an extremely large scale.

And so, if someone states such a general stand ... he would have to go forward with proofs. And that's a question of science, logical reasoning. Not if your political stance is extremist left or not.

Well, if I relax "killed" to be "oppressed" then we have tons of proof on this. Before the east german GDR was errected, it was 4 years a soviet occupied zone. It was during this time that e.g. all the farmers land was seized, the the SMAD errected a system of "pre-censorship", that they "washed" the teachers, that they demontaged most of the companies, that they seized the money from banks and companies and so on.

And don't you think that there was no opposition. Many farmers, living on and from the land of their parents grandparents (etc, lasting generations back) were really tied to their land. So they were repressed, often with made-up claims, a political process and than jail. But sometimes with death (death penalty existed under soviet occupation). But not only farmers were persecuted on opposition, also company owners and managers.

122671 germans were "captured" --- and I mean it. Often relatives weren't told about the accusation or where they were injailed. Some came to normal jails, but 42889 died while in custody. That's such a high percentage that one cannot assume normal die reasons. Studies estimate that 1% of the population was arrested and 30% of the arresed died due to "circumstances".

And we know that even after the soviet occupation turned into the founding of east germany (GDR) that the east-german secret police, Stasi, occassionally killed political opponents by firing squads.

So, for the oppressed population it was known that anyone who opposes would be taken away with unknown destination. And that a good amount of them never returned.

And keep in mind that this was just after the Nazi time. Non-german people always focus on how the Nazis killed Jews. And they are totally right ... but they ALSO tortured and killed political opponents. So for a german in 1949 it was not unknown to some political police arriving at 4 o clock in the morning and taking you to some torture camp. You didn't need to be a jew, gypsi or Jehova's Witness. Just the rumor that you opposed the system was enough.

It was a climate of feat. And the soviets and later the leading east germans continued that.

Same in East Germany. They made a government agency on 3. October 1990. This agency collected all the files related to people from the Stasi that weren't shredded.

And then any person (east or west) could file a request "Tell me anything the Stasi knew about me". "Stasi" being the abbrev of the political secret police of east germany.

But truth be told: no one kicked the russians out. Sure, economically the FRG was "kaputt". But with a stalinist USSR they could have continued to keep the status quo. Maybe even without help: North-Korea is way more "kaputt" than east germany was. And they keep up the system since decades without soviet help. And also without much chinese help. NK is pretty isolationist, with few bridges going over the border river to China. So it's entirely possible that socialist states 1) stay in their self-selected prison due to internal forces.

It was to a good part the goodwill of the then-USSR (lead by Gorbatchev) that made the USSR troops return. I think west-german money also helped --- they asked west-germany to build housing areas in USSR for the soviet soldiers.

1) And here I mean real socialism, centered around the ideas that the "means of production" not in private hand. Uneducated US people often confuse a simple unemployment insurance with "socialism". And call countries like Denmark, Sweden or France "socialist". This only tells all of us that the general education in some countries leaves to be desired ...

First thing: I've been born in West Germany and never thought that communism or real socialism (i.E. not what many right-wing US americans now call "socialism") is a good system. A part of this came probably because both of my parents fleed the east german socialist system when "the wall" hasn't yet fully hermetically closed.

So I know that the east german socialistic system would have NEVER been erected wouldn't the area have not been occupied by socialist troops. USSR first trained the political cadres. And later controlled them. It was their presence that backed their might. At the 17. June of 1953 it were russian tanks that squelched the uprising. Similar use happened e.g. in the "czech spring" and at other occurrences.

And still we all know that it was german people that executed this as well. From high profile ones like Ulbricht or Honecker or Mielke down to the polical commissars in the combinats. Germans.

And then we know that the east-german "Stasi" (secret political police) was blown out of proportion: they had 91015 members. Germans.

And we also know that the Stasi had lots of informations, IM "Informelle Mitarbeiter". 189000 in total. Germans.

So yes, my guess is that about 10% of the east german population was actively supporting the system. And this is not a singular meaning here, we all know that a good amount of germans suppressed germans. No one here is trying to shift it solely on the USSR. Not even members of the former SED (socialist union party).

I don't know where you've got the information about "always quick to blame", but I can say that for the FRG/GDR situation it is not really true.

As for your term "millions": that is actually true. Above I wrote about 198000 polical informations. But the SED (the socialist "union" party) had 2.1 million members. And then there were people members in the socialist "union" but not in the party. And so on... so yes, the support basis was quite high. This is why I assume that 10% actively supported the system (and, more or less, oppressed others). The GDR had 18.8 (1945) to 16.4 (1989) million people.

> Bikes don't belong on the road

I beg to differ. And I used a bike daily for commute (okay, when it wasn't raining) and a car otherwise.

The roads are for everybody. Bikes, cars, lorries, farmers. We should (and can) learn to live next to each other.

If you aren't a kid or aren't driving a bike for leisure on the weekend, then "separate from the street" bike ways have several drawbacks. Especially if you want to go speedy from A to B.

- often they aren't cleaned like the normal streets. So expect weeds growing into the lane, dog poop, farmers mud remnants, glass shards. Things a car driver sometimes see, but to a much lesser degree.

- kids play there, making the biker need to speed down

- dog owners walk there dogs there. Especially the long telescope lines are bad as bikers aren't usually not that good with rope jumping

- people walk there and if a bike rings the bell, they usually first turn around "What in gods own world could ring on a way dedicated to bikes?" seems to be an important question to be answered. Way more important than just going to the side.

- if a parking lot separates the bike way from the street, then the passengers in the cars just open the doors, not looking if some bike comes

- every street crossing is usually not level with the bike lane. So as a biker you always go 1-3 cm up/down twice for every crossing street. Some bikes have very narrow tires, that's not fun

- at the street crossings the car drivers are used to check for other cars. But they are less likely to check for bikes. This improves currently in Germany, but it's still not at the same level

So if I want to go fast from A to B by bike, I actually prefer to use the normal street. And if I go by car and see a bike then I can understand this. Except if the bike drives intentionally in the middle of the street. Don't do that, drive on the right side (except in UK or so ...)

Fun fact: in the USA, each year the various police forces KILL more people than in Germany the various police forces shoot. Where the german police shoots include warning shoots, or killing a dangerous boar. And this "way higher" even holds if we normalize the numbers by population count.

Incarceration rate in the USA is also way higher than in Germany.

I'd wager people to come up with verifiable statistics where "breaking law" is more dangerous than in USA. They probably exist, in niche areas. Would still be fun to learn.

Wasn't the context here in Germany, where the executive finally made a zebra crossing?

* We don't have "college students". We have however real students, e.g. in University.

* Over here it's not custom to go with micro-management problems to an elected person, e.g. to the member of parliament of your area. Whenever I see the (partially propaganda) shows where russians ask the dictator Putin about day-to-day things and they even air this yearly in the TV I cringe. Or when I see in US movies that people go with low things to their congressman... that simple isn't custom in Germany. And thus the elected people are much LESS likely looking if people wanting something would elect them or not.

* Normally it is the executive, not the legislative, that decides over these matters. In Germany, the executive isn't elected by the public.

* In Germany we have the idea of "main point of living" (Hauptwohnsitz) and "secondary point of living" (Zweitwohnsitz). And in quite a few towns you have to pay an extra-tax on the Zweitwohnsitz. There are ways to mitigate this, but the easiest solution as a student is just to take your Hauptwohnsitz at your university town. And there you can then vote (you can't vote at your Zweitwohnsitz). And so it happens that the town magistrates of student towns are usually a bit different than of "normal" towns, e.g. the town mayors from the green party. All these young students voting more for this party than e.g. the german liberals.

So, all in all, from the POV of the story in Berlin ... little of what you wrote made sense. Except your first sentence. Infrastructure building is a slow, a tremendously slow process in Germany (however, once we have it, it's usual very nice. We germans call shit on our railway ... but it's lightyears better than e.g. the US railways system!). And even a zebra crossing falls under the infrastructure categorization.

No, actually it's less dangerous to break the law in Germany than in the USA.

In USA, the fines are often higher. And damages to be paid are WAY WAY HIGHER. If you do a criminal offense, then you get way more years in prison in the USA than in Germany. The police treats you even worse in the USA than in Germany.

So if you break the law ... then better do it in Germany.

Also, go around in Germany and ask germans "Did you ever get a fine for walking just over the read? Or by walking over the road when the pedestrian light was red?". I'll wage 50€ that it will take you more than a day until you find the first occurrence. Ask around "Have you ever got speed ticket in a car" will get you however instant answers.

You guys blow some imaginative danger out of proportion. And I really wonder if there is ONE country with laws that written but no one looks after? Isn't that usual? We even have german saying on this: "Papier ist geduldig".

That law isn't about jaywalking. The concept of the US-english word "jay" doesn't exist ). There is no german language equivalent.

Also, this is one of the paragraphs that is just there. It's not enforced. Do you know any German that ever get fined for it? Is the police out with cameras looking for slow pedestrians? Naa, they are out with cameras looking for too speedy cars instead!

) maybe "Landei" ? But it's never used in traffic context. We simply had a car-lobby creating vile words to modify law-makers behavior like it happened in the USA at ca. 1910.

No, it doesn't. I live in Germany since forever (born here), in many different regions. Never ever got a fine, never ever saw or heard people that got a fine. At most the police gives a warning, if they even notice.

For me a pedestrian traffic sign is a hint that I can now go. But it certainly isn't a requisite. If the street is empty of traffic AND if there are no little kids around, then I'll just go.

Why not little kids? We know from science that they can't judge the speed and distance of cars. When I can see "The car is far away and slow", they don't really know. So I don't want a bad example to them. And that makes you able to observe me at a red traffic light with a completely free street --- kids might be around!

Except the kid is not YOUR OWN child, in the meaning of possession. You are the custodian to the child, not the owner. The child basically is owned by itself and you are (usually) allowed to take care of it and lead it on that way.

And there are tons of laws that forbid abusing childs. Like you can't hit them, shake them. In the USA they perhaps have a law that you can't put them in a microwave, I dunno.

And the laws in the european countries that forbid silly names are usually not restrict your "owners rights", but to protect the kid. In Germany, I mean, over here they forbid that people called their kid "Rumpelstilzchen", the name of an imp/goblin in a very well know fairy tale. If the parents would have come through I expect that the kid would have ridiculed in school and outside quite a lot. Other kids can be cruel ... and even the odd mindless adult.

Actual names that german parents wanted for their kids, but that weren't granted: Bierstübl, Borussia, Crazy Horse, Gastritis, Grammophon, Januar, Joghurt, Kirsche, Liebknecht, McDonald, Millenium, Möhre, Pfefferminze, Pilulla, Porsche, Rosenherz, Rumpelstilzchen, Satan, Schmitz, Schnucki, Schröder, Seerose, Sputnik, Störenfried, Rasputin, Verleihnix, Waldmeister, Whisky, Woodstock

Some have outright negative connotation (Satan, Störenfried, Rumpelstilzchen), others are just extremely uncommon and thus standing out. For example, in Germany we don't name girls about other things like Melody, Crystal, Daisy, Faith, Grace, Haven, Hazel, Amber, etc. So if you name your kid after a product or a thing, e.g. Porsche, Kirsche or Joghurt, then it will draw the wrath of the other kids onto itself.

And THAT is the reason the authorities don't allow a name. It's not about unusualness alone. A lot of unusual first names were the parents could show "Esenosarumensemwonken is a first name in Nigeria" go through.

Actually, leaking secrets by air gapped computers is really, really old.

I know that e.g. in 1985 the (west) german army had tempest rules e.g. for mobile elint systems. You couldn't use a normal computer for e.g. triangulation, or to look up things in databases. The reason was that even back then video of a normal computers could be monitored from more than 100 m away.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_(codename)

It might be --- if we change the tax system.

So far mostly human work is taxed, then value-adding, a bit property, and a less bit capital.

If we want a system where there is some universal income, then we need to tax property and capital more and also tax some non-human work.

It might be that just your knowledge of history is lacking.

Look for example to America (i mean the continent, there is no country named that). Civilisation brought extinction to various indigenous tribes, but in norther and central america. It brought slavery. In a way, we are over that now, aren't we?

Look for example to Europe (I'm so glad that no european country is so full of it and call itself just "Europe"). They had hundreds of wars in a 10 year period. Some small ... but some like the 30 year long war more devastating than even the 2nd world war.Sure, some people there (look into ex-jugoslavia or look into Russia) still think that mass-killing people is good. Oh, did I mention 2nd world war? Then look there, too. And how one society thought they have the right to extinguish Jews, Gypsies, Jehovas Witnesses, mental ill people and basically any political opponent. I still think we can say that we are over such a thing.

Look for example to Asia. There was a country that waged war on China because China was not buying enough Opium. Or look like the asian golden horde devastated with utter cruelty whole (at the time) mega-cities. And they brough the bubonic plague on top of it ...

Or look at Africa. I mentioned the slaver for America ... but actually african tribes captured people from other tribes and sold them. We can't say that slavery is totally abolished in Africa (I heard the Boko Haram does it) --- but certainly not at the scale it used to be.

If you think that society develops backwards, then just looking at how things used to be 100, 200 or 500 years.

Well, no.

Semites are also e.g. Arabs. It comes from linguistic science and denotes people speaking Hebraic, Arabic or new-Aramaic languages. Look up the philologist August Ludwig von Schlözer who coined the term if that is new to you.

Also, criticizing a country is something very normal.

When one criticizes the Japan of 1930 to 1945 ... was this anti-zen? Or anti-nipponic? Or was it about their government?

When one criticizes the Syria of 1971-1924 ... what this anti-islamistic? Or anti-arabic? Or was it about their government, specifically their dictator?

When one criticizes the Israel of recent times ... is this anti-jewish? Or anti-semitic? Or is it about their government and various movements in said country?

It's only when we criticize the Israel government that suddenly people intermix politics with religion. And also with belonging to long extinct tribe groups. Or that they blame e.g. a synagogue congregation in Denmark with human-right violations of Israel settlers. Suddenly people stop being able to differentiate.

I see that there are countries that are anti-jewish (like Iran). And Persians aren't Semites, so maybe they are also anti-semitic, I can't judge this. But neither Iran nor Yemen or other puppet-organizations like the Hezbollah rule the UN. I'm quite sure that they can't even nudge the UN.

So claiming that the UN is anti-semitic is un-factional. I have seen zero evidence, and the people claiming this haven't brought up any evidence. The most they can bring up is that some UN sub-organization doesn't do the exact bidding of the current Israel government. Or that some UN sub-organization has the occasional mole or spy amongst them ... but hey, I don't want to know how many organizations have the odd moles or spy from the Mossad in them. That doesn't make them wholly israel-controlled.

Well, they can do things that normally US americans never do: look at what other countries do.

High tides aren't new, and there are areas in the world that battle them since decades. E.g. at the north sea in Germany.

The the governments gave money to their universities and they made studies: how would a high tide impact the area? Some of the impact was obvious, since there have been disastrous floods. But some are not, e.g. of the economical impact. And then they again put money into universities, to let them study hydrology and water-related civil engineering to a much higher degree.

And so we got more modern versions of dams, the harbours and naval bases were protected. Even the rivers were protected, since a high tide travels upwards the river. See for example the https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidersperrwerk (sorry, didn't find an english version -> look at the pictures, learn a foreign language, use LLM translation)

But ... all of this is weak compared what the Dutch did regarding hydrology. They not only made protection buildings, but they also made buildings to convert ex-ocean into arable and livable lands. One large example is e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Works

So if you look for people that are good at studying the impact of floods (civil and economically) and that are good at doing anything against ... there are possibilities.

You must however tame your ICE. No dutch engineer is willing to work in the USA if the ICE puts him randomly in deportation camps, like they even did for a Swiss journalist of a conservative (!) outlet.

Solar can definitely make it through a couple of cloudy days.

This is because people that bring that argument act like every house is it's own electric island. But that's far from the truth. In developed countries the electric grid is HIGHLY interconnected. Look at this beautiful map: https://www.entsoe.eu/data/map/

So, how likely is it that it's cloudy in Bulgaria and Spain and Germany and UK and Hungary and and and ...

(It's only the US that decided to mis-design their grid. Instead of one united, where each one can help the others, they have 4 different grid. That is also one of the reason why the SAIDI --- duration of power interruptions per customer and year --- is so terribly bad).

Also, if you buy your solar cells to work with ambient light, put them into east-west (instead of south) and use an inverter that doesn't use 50W just for itself --- then you can also get power WHEN it it cloudy. Enough to sustain e.g. your router, fridge etc. Not enough to charge an EV.

But... for a day-night-cycle we have local batteries. They got cheap in the last 5 years. I mean, the cheaper ones arrive at 100 €/ kWh.

And finally: no one every proposed that "a single solution is all we need". We don't need just Ford passenger cars. We also need vans. And trucks. And buses.

By limiting your thinking artificially to "How can I oppose a situation where ONLY solar panels provide power" you're doing your own reasoning power no favor. The starting premises is already faulty, almost like a strawman attack (invent some bogus scenario, attack that scenario, hope that others that can't think sharp fail for this bad reasoning).

The fun thing is that people like you post this again and again, in every discussion. Since years. As if you're unable to learn that the world isn't only "one solar island next to another solar island". Why is it so hard to understand that a grid is inherently connected? And that we have a multitude of ways to generate electric power?

Weird.

In an ideal world no one would bother where power comes from. From "the grid" or "from local". Why should "the grid" get some benefit? Over local production? IMHO such a thinking artificially limits competition.

What should still bother the law makers is the impact "grid power" vs. "local power". E.g. if AI computing centers build gas turbines for local power, but that creates noise and air pollution.

"Balcony solar"'s idea is to get solar into the hand of people without almost no extra cost. By design, you can plug it in into a normal socket. So you don't even need to call an electrician. No new power cable needs to be installed. And the basic idea of this ("make it so simple that even 85 year old Aunt Mary can do it") is IMHO worthwhile.

For a regular solar, you need to check if your roof can withstand the weight and wind forces. You need to install electric lines, circuit breakers etc etc. All of this costs several factors more than the pure voltaic panels.

Well, no. This one is one thousands of studies on it. And they narrowed things down (e.g. only looking at Denmark) and setting their projected numbers exactly so that the desired outcome arrived.

And usually (I did not read into detail here) the total cost of energy is never calculated.

In Europe, nuclear power plants usually don't have an insurance. It's the state that pays of the cleanup after an aftermath. So total cost is socialized.

Few countries have final deposits. With current technology, you need to operate them for thousands of years (e.g. guard them, so that no terrorists can get the material for "dirty bombs"). None of these total-cost studies calculates this in.

Many countries don't have their own source of uranium or the fabs to bring it up for usage in power plants. So it happens that by betting on solar, you bet on the goodwill of some external country. Did you know that most nuclear related companies worldwide used to be owned by the russian RosAtom? I have no idea if that is still true now after 5 years of war against Ukraine, so maybe the odd country seized mines or enrichment plants. But RosAtom owned stuff abroad, like Canada or Australia. Finding new ways if some terrorist country like russia suddenly ceases to supply you (like they did with gas) has a very high oppertunity cost. These studies usually don't plan in "second source" economic calculations.

In Germany, the four big electric power companies (e.g. Vattenfall, EON etc) say since decades that they don't want to open new nuclear power plants. Since it is not economically feasible. If the TCO would really be spectacular, then they would say differently. In those places, where they still open nuclear plants, like France, even a single block costs billions. I mean, one block estimated to cost 3 billion euro was costing 27 billion. Do these fabricated studies calculate in this grave error of factor 12? In France, EDF only works because it is state backed. If the TCO would be any good, they would swim in money like the senior Uncle Duck.

Well, actually not. At least not in my country.

Governments have conflicting goals. You think "raise taxes" is the most important goal. But, believe it or not, some governments -- even conservative ones -- also have goals like "protect the envirnment".

In Germany for example, you are nominally required to register your balcony solar. Online, no fee. So it's easy. But .. there are no fines attached if you don't do it. And they don't ask for any taxes.

They are HAPPY that you do your local electricity power after Putin turned off gas export and it turned out that LPG import is way more costly (due to cooling and pressure, a lot of the stored energy is used for that during the transport/processing on that).

In Germany, there was even a process where the politics told the electrical engineers to not be so anal about electric security to make plug in of these devices into normal sockets a possibility. The VDE only wanted special sockets to be used. The politics said "Nope, too expensive for the normal people".

The idea that legislative and executive is only working AGAINST the people is invalid.

It happens that people need in planning things want to have numbers.

So for example a high voltage power line is planned to be installed between point A and B. Now, probably some land has to be bought. But maybe not everyone sells land. So maybe land is seized, for the good of all. But ... is it really for the good of alL? The government MUST know beyond a doubt it that line is really worthwhile for the entirety. They need hard planning numbers.

There are numerous scenarios available where a government --- or even private companies --- need dependable statistical numbers to do planning.

And that is e.g. the reason why in Germany businesses have to wire lots of data to a government statistical bureau. We all can then get the relevant statistics out of the 16 state and the one federal offices of statistics. Or (e.g in Germany) the "Bundesnetzagentur" uses it base decisions about the grid on it.

Or private people need to register (cost free, via web, at least in Germany) their balcony solar. Compared to what the businesses have to tell this is almost negligible. It only makes sense due to the sheer number of balcony solar installations.

Nah, the OP just posted some false facts.

And Germany is #4 regarding grid stability (measured in SAIDI) in Europe. There are only some tiny and small countries better than the german grid, and no large industrial country. And, btw, Europe has a WAY higher grid stability than the Americas.

Why is that important? Years ago, I had weekly telcos with a customer in Tucson, Arizona. And more often than not we didn't had one: they had no power over there. So the shabby quality of the public grid influenced in a bad way their economy. Businesses simply couldn't talk and plan during that period. Probably also not produce.

Having a top-notch grid is IMHO a basis for a successful economy.

(And fun thing: the german grid is so good ALSO because of our neighbors. We're all interconnected. In Germany, we don't really have the landscape for massive water pump storage power plants. But when we have excess electricity, the ones in Austria and Switzerland are using "our" power. And we need the power, we get "their" power back. Or France ... in the summer, they now routinely have to power down their nuclear plants due to cooling issues. But in France ... no one notices. We all help each other. In year 53% of the french atomic power was "out" due to climate change and regular maintenance. And it all worked nethertheless. As it should be!)

> you still affect it by using less, which might cause issues with grid stability

That is weird and IMHO totally wrong. And I'm living in Germany. Anyone here can e.g. create an isolated network, without any permission. The local electricity provider etc doesn't care. All they care however that they remove the counter and the main circuit breaker at their end, to really isolate your house from the rest.

This is one of the problems with what the Celts did: they didn't write. And they used a lot of biological material (like leather, wood) which is all gone by now. AFAIK the celts were already "gone" (assimilated / diversified into local tribes) when the Romans (which were writers) arrived. So we don't even have roman writing about the celtic customs.

For example, there is are excavations around https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keltenwelt_am_Glauberg and AFAIK it's still not clear if that area is mostly a castle, or if it was mostly some cultic thing -> nothing written, not even in clay or chiseled into stone.

Similarly, in this article https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallstatt_(Arch%C3%A4ologie) that describes the salt mining in Hallstadt since the bronze age there is only so much that they know.

So, did they use torches? They have decayed over this time.

We know however that they had some kind of meat industry at Hallstein. They had plenty of salt, and so they used that to make meat durable. Animal skulls survived the times ...

No, it means nothing. You shall not needlessly anglicize.

The name Hallstadt (not the two l letters) means Salt Town.

Or, actually "place". In a lot of location names of germanic origin "stadt" doesn't the current semantics, of being a town with > 10.000. More often than not it just means "place".

And "Hall" is an old term for salt. Many towns related to salt have it in their names, in many places of Germany and Austria. "Halle an der Saale" in Thüringen, Bad Reichenhall (Bayern), Hall im Tirol (Österreich), Schwäbisch-Hall (Baden-Württemberg) etc.

"Hall" is believed to be of celtic origin.

And the double l is important. German is a language where in the written form you look at the letters and you immediately see how it is spoken. A double vocal makes the speed slower, and a double consonant makes the speech faster. So "Halstadt" would be slow Hal (so more emphasize on the "a" instead), and "Hallstadt" would be a fast "Hall", similar in speed like the english "hell": little emphasize on the "a".

> Europe is economically uncompetitive

Really? The last time I checked, Germany was sitting well in the middle of Europe

* contrary to many countries it has had export/import surplus since decades. Not a single year with a deficit since 1952. Compare this e.g. with the USA, which had the last surplus in 1975.

* it's tiny, look at it on a globe. And yet it's number 3 worldwide on economic power. Two years surpassed Japan that is larger by size and has double the people

* in June it had the highest exports ever in it's history

And that is just ONE of the European countries. Others, like Switzerland and Netherlands aren't shabby either, especially normalized to inhabitants or country size.

> are harder to held accountable

Well, that is not an issue. The US companies that hacked other seem to not be prosecuted at all.

Also, no state attorney doesn't seem to prosecute them on the large scale intellectual theft. Instead content creators like movie companies or the kids book author that made the Grüffelo need to start one-after-the-other civil claims onto them.

So US companies in the LLM area can be ruthlessly criminal. No one holds them accountable.

There are rumors that they stole chat logs from mathemiticians running problems through them for their own math findings. Again, no one holds them accountable.

The "hold accountable" is IMHO just CEO speach: fluff and empty air, but nothing behind it. If my opinion is true, then it doesn't matter if I can NOT hold an european company, a US company, or a chinese company accountable.

Also, currently the US is more and more aggresive towards other countries. Haven't heard of China raising tariffs for no reason at all, but random amounts. Or bullying e.g. european companies if they want to control the the market might (and abuse of it, see e.g. their uncontractual price raises or what they did to Ukraine --- with Starlink terminals payed for by european countries!).

China is no one friends ... don't get me wrong. But it isn't as vile as the USA currently is.