FailForward @FailForward@social.cleverlibre.org

Come on! That is again a bit too gloomy outlook. I always saw Germany as a tanker. It moves slowly, but once it changes direction (which takes a lot of energy!), it's hard to stop.

It took a war for Germany to recognise that something needs to change with its military, now it did (I only hope it will be able to stop one day before that historically frightening overcompensation kicks in).

It took a while for Germany to even start the Energiewende and then it went on. Is it as fast as we wish? No. Is it done already? No. I have some hopes there.

And I see many such small things Germany gets right. Maybe not on the first attempt, but eventually.

In my view, Germany has one big power: it's hesitant, but once it commits to something, for better, or worse, it follows through.

So we'll fix it now. Why to shed tears over stuff we already screwed up?

We are at a point of history where every single decision will have negative consequences. That on the one hand feel constraining. I rather see that as we recognise and _accept_ that pain of the magnitude X is inevitable (and maybe that was impossible before), it suddenly opens new avenues for solutions. But again we need to kill the holy cow of Wohlstand first.

The thing is, I personally think, that cow is already dead, most people just don't realise it yet. It died with Russian boots entering Ukrainian soil and the first sanctions we imposed. We are now in a period of coming to terms with it. Methinks.

Well, yes. Half of EU is now with the back against the wall about the gas. At the same time, though, we see credbible points of view (to me - I am no energy expert and don't want to be, I try to trust those who are) which claim, we can survive the cutt-off. Will it hurt? Sure, like hell. Will it be quick? Unfortunately not, it will take us a couple of years. Will we manage? I am convinced we can make it and so seem to be others. The only obstacle we need to overcome is the holy cow of Wohlstand.

@jwildeboer Bah, what an apocalyptic point of view there. Now, I am far from saying everything is rosy, but, unlike you, I personally recognise plenty of positive signals towards the future. I know, many of these things have to do with interpretation of weak signals and the specific information bubbles we live in, but generally speaking, I invite you to try to recognise also the potentially less gloomy outlooks than you present. To provide some material, I'll try to react to your individual messages, of course I am not attempting to convince, or argue.

@jwildeboer

> Open hate against Germany and Germans is popping up everywhere.

You are apparently looking at the world through lenses I don't even recognise.

> _If a nation ever stops to think about what has happened to it, and what has been done with its consent, it will find thousands of ways to justify it._

## How Silent Assent Made Bucha Possible

https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/04/06/how-silent-assent-made-bucha-possible-pub-86822

> _But in the end, I decided that for me, it was not a question of what good it would do, but of my personal responsibility._
>
> -- Larisa Bogoraz, 1968

@academicalnerd Another good way to read paywalled or otherwise inaccessible newspaper articles is via archive.is. See, e.g., here: https://archive.ph/7CfnO (just a random Economist article from this morning).

I'd be interested to know whether these work from Russia.

@academicalnerd Sometimes easier than VPN is simply to use proxy services. nitter.net is a transparent proxy for Twitter. piped.kavin.rocks is a proxy for Youtube.

@academicalnerd I am quite interested in exploring the extent and mechanics of the "Digital Iron Curtain". If you don't mind, could you tel me whether you can see these?
* https://piped.kavin.rocks/watch?v=saEpkcVi1d4
* https://nitter.net/IAPonomarenko

Pink Floyd got together and together with Andriy Khlyvnyuk released this in support of Ukrainian resistance just minutes ago. Powerful images. Powerful music. Powerful message.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saEpkcVi1d4


@piggo @pony I see. What I meant more was something like this (just a random google image search for "livable street"). Nothing fancy, just stuff making people naturally slow down and stay a bit. Instead of leaving. Even a nice park behind a corner exactly does not make it.

But none of these are fixed and can be fixed later after the thing is built. So let's hope for good.

@pony I see the two you have never enough of this fun 😄

@piggo
Of course I know these places, lived in the city for some years. Sometimes it really is a pity that such districts were built with a very utilitarian mindset - this is what **we** need. Instead of thinking from people's perspective - this is what the future inhabitants of this district would need.
@pony

@pony
I don't think it is only about building residential areas. Nobody wants to move to a gray concrete blocks neighborhood. What is actually missing in that photo of yours are **trees** and **grass** and rest areas. That's what attracts people to spend time in a neighborhood. And it's not too expensive either.

@pony Sorry, off-topic comment: that scene looks so odd. Only after few seconds it struck me how few people there are.

Scenes of void modern urban architecture...

@piggo ad the "first" special operation conversation we had a couple of days ago. This is very good reading on the list of "special operations": https://nitter.net/MaximEristavi/status/1495323069539405826

Just counting from WWII, even 1956 wasn't the first one (I didn't know that), if we count the violent pacification of East Germans in 1953: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_German_uprising_of_1953