Truly an xkcd #1172 situation.

The depth of the reduction and all the built-in escape valves show that this was an extremely tough compromise, but hopefully we can use this landmark deal to boost the fight for the 4-day work week as the new norm. I think that’s something IGM made a priority, but many sectors represented by ver.di are also ideal sectors for this.

I think the idea is that the funding might come with conditions to reach a significant % of the audience. E.g. often public broadcasters have a remit of 99% of population coverage with their broadcast technology, while private stations have much lower or no legally obligatory reception target.

I don’t think that’s a big obstacle in this case though.

Es liegt an einer Mischung aus wenigen Kassensitzen sowie hohen Aufnahmehürden.

Ich helfe grade einem Freund mit dem ganzen Prozess - hier ist meine bestmögliche Strategie.

We are back, baby.

I’d say for me it would depend what the monument stands for.

The problem with this is that there’s often multiple interpretations. Is it a monument to the celebrate the defeat of Nazism, or to glorify the paternalist role of the Soviet Union over the Warsaw Pact countries? You can’t really say it’s only one or the other - you can only decide which one matters more to the society at a given point in time.

I think that when there’s no consensus about an interpretation in a society, a good place to start is with contextualisation. A high-profile but contentious monument should come with a small open-air museum that provides the context of what the monument was intended to stand for, what where the motivations of those who built it, and how it came to be seen as the time passed.

Then, time will tell if the society decides to interpret it one way or the other. At some point it will be clear if it should stay or go.

This kind of makes me feel that the problem starts one layer before: this are is so spread out. It really doesn’t look like there’s any visible reason for buildings to be so far apart.

There’s so few buildings that yeah, I think one bus stop is enough to serve them as far as amount of users is concerned. But the green could have been around the built up area, not between the buildings. Parking could also be compacted, maybe multi-floor or underground to reduce the surface area.

One can hope that the store operators will also be heavily fined for their apparent failure to protect their customers’ information from infosec threats. Show them teeth, GDPR.

Germany: shock

Cyprus: anger

None had any discourse around what the PISA scores measure and if there’s any problematisation warranted around the methodology etc. So, in the end, it just serves as a regular outrage topic for the news cycle, but because no-one understands what the scores mean, no-one can do anything about them.

Massive parking lots at the edge of the city. At least this was the recommendation of the Berlin Autofrei initiative.

Extensive summary also here

income-proportional fee structure for government services?

This is income tax.

And if the strike spreads to Germany, which it very well could, it could mean the cease of operation of the Model Y factory in Berlin, which would be devastating to them.

A big problem is that Germany’s labour laws do not allow sympathy or political strikes. A strike can only be legally called in association with a collective bargaining agreement negotiation/dispute.

Germany will be the weak link in this cross-country wave of strikes.

For clarity, I’m in favour of changing the terminology to highlight the historical injustice.

I just thought it’s important to admit that it’s a recent change of linguistic preferences even in the most official Greek publications. Indeed, up to the last couple of years, the adjectival “Elgin” was used in Greek as an accusation of theft, not a recognition of ownership.

I wouldn’t focus too much on that. I studied in a Greek-medium public school, and the sculptures were always referred to as “Elgin Marbles” in history textbooks produced by the Greek Ministry of Education. Same for journalism and public discourse in Greek.

Diligently correcting the term to “Parthenon sculptures” is a recent cause.

Yes, but in the absence of other factors, “cold tolerance” is something that can change by habituation.

I’m not sure how a personal budget app can help you keep track of a Heizkostenverteiler/heating cost allocator. There’s many unknowns during the operation time and even the landlord is given a year to crunch the numbers before they bill the tenants.

What is progress is that people on district heating now get their kWh consumption readings every few months.

There’s a rather considerable current of leftism that is libertarian. Over-regulation of what a person can do, especially with something as, well, personal as appearance, is at odds with left-libertarian values.

Left-authoritarianism is of course compatible with such regulations.

Okay, that explains the crowds.

Where German rental contracts say “any alterations need to be reverted for handover”, rental contracts where I originally come from say “any alternations are forbidden without the express permission of the lessor”.