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Cake day: July 15th, 2023

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  • It was announced that they all committed “schwere Verbrechen”. That means it’s all felonies and capital crimes. I do characterize people who commit capital crimes as scum, because those are by definition never small misconducts or accidents. Felony convictions for capital crimes need proof of malicious intent. So there really is incredibly little room left to feel bad for the criminals.


  • Why do people fall for these stupid populistic statements?

    We in Germany value human rights. We have some of the most pro-asylum laws and culture in the world. Which is part of the reason right wing parties like the AfD get popular.

    The problem is, not every human is a saint, not even asylum seekers. Some come here without having a valid reason for asylum, because they are not actually persecuted. Others come here with the express intent to criminally exploit our welfare system. There’s lots of reasons to come here, but not all of them warrant asylum. These people should seek to immigrate properly like anybody else and not exploit our hospitality offered to people in need.

    Now, under our previous Merkel government, we welcomed hundreds of thousands of refugees in an unusually short timeframe. Our chronically overworked and slow bureaucracy became even easier to exploit, many could simply wait out time limits on their asylum requests, making them automatically accepted without any check for validity.

    I was an active volunteer helping arriving refugees get accommodated in their assigned first quarters (often old empty barracks, I helped with trips to all kinds of bureaucratic necessities, but also got a central free Wi-Fi set up for everyone to use and stuff like that), and funnily enough the most vivid calls for stricter handling of asylum requests and punishments for rule-breakers came from all the legitimate refugees: those were some of the most decent people, and they hated being associated by their status with any criminal refugees. The assigned building security and police quickly learned that they actually had to be swift in picking up fresh offenders, before street justice would be applied by their “fellow” refugees.

    In short: We have laws and we try to follow, them. It’s not always easy.

    Also, asylum is different from immigration, I feel many people forget that. If conditions in your place of origin have improved, you are expected to leave. Asylum is inherently temporary, contrary to migration. And if you violate the trust and resources your host nation has given you, you should suffer legal consequences, just like any regular citizen. Committing hard felony crimes is obviously not a nice way to repay that trust, and as consequence we ask you to leave. If you refuse to do so in a (very) sufficient timeframe, we can use it executive power (police) to force you.

    Last but not least… Each of these criminals even got 1000€ cash upon exiting the plane in their home country, just to ensure they have zero risk of having to live in inhuman conditions while they get reacquainted in their home society ( e.g. get an apartment and a job). Because that risk alone would be reason enough to make even the worst terrorist ineligible for deportation. Because it’s a basic human right to not have to live in extreme poverty and/or hunger.

    I think that’s pretty much the opposite of “shitting on human rights” and definitely not what I expect many other nations would do with such foreign felons.


  • I find it amusing that you believe German bureaucracy to be versatile and efficient enough to be able to be steered so quickly by spontaneous political will.

    No, deportations are rare because we take asylum rights as a basic human right extremely seriously and there are an unbelievable amount of reasons a deportation can be called off. Each of these deportations takes months, if not years of preparation by the interior ministry ( executive), leading to lots of legal consultations and usually legal battles in court due to appeals, intense diplomatic talks with the recipient country ( especially in this case, because Germany refuses direct diplomatic ties with the Taliban and Qatar had to play middle -man) and only then the actual forced deportation itself can be tactically planned and organized. And there’s tons of very specific rules, even for how and when police may or may not pick up a deportee during the night and if/what charter flights can be used.

    So definitely no spontaneous politicking. The change in policy to start enforcing existing extradition orders more rigorously started years ago when the current government got elected. It’s a very slow and arduous process still.


  • Just a small correction: the involved German states did not “make it a point to hide” the individual crimes from being published. Instead this happens because we in Germany place a comparably very high value on privacy. And yes, even criminal scum gets theirs protected by neither naming them nor their crimes. Even convicted criminals’ names are never published on principle unless they have become public figures through other means anyway.

    And the crimes were not detailed because knowing the specific combinations of crimes and sentences would make it too easy to identify them, given there’s only 28 of them.

    The idea of protecting privacy so much is that by having completed their sentences, they should have the same opportunity as anyone else in life and not be “tarnished” forever.


  • You actually have gotten a bad explanation. There’s no such thing as being “a little too fast” which would cause this effect, and there definitely is no “spiraling out” due to inherent speed/momentum.

    An object in orbit of another remains in orbit as long as its horizontal velocity is high enough to not be pulled into a collision with the parent, but low enough to not escape the gravitational pull altogether. The closer to the parent, the stronger gravity affects the object, so you have to go faster horizontally to keep “missing” the parent, making gravity only pull you into a circle around it instead. That’s why it’s also called orbital speed: the object is not going straight in a line, it travels at speed in an orbit.

    If you want to change an orbit, you need to accelerate or decelerate. This energy has to come from somewhere. And obviously, the direction you accelerate in matters. If you speed up horizontally, increasing your orbital speed, you’ll get further away from the parent, but by moving further away, your orbital speed will decrease and be lowest at your furthest point. Then, if you don’t keep accelerating, you’ll start to get closer to the parent again, which makes you go faster. This is an elliptic orbit.

    If you go fast enough horizontally, you eventually can get so far away that the parent’s gravity influence becomes negligible, and the gravitational influence of another parent matters more. This is called reaching escape velocity. If you leave earth orbit, this is usually the sun.

    If you were to simply slow down the object in its orbital speed, the object would get closer to its parent until it collides.

    If instead of accelerating the object “forward”/horizontal to human observer on earth, you’d accelerate “up”/away from the earth, you interestingly would not cause the object to get further away from its parent. Yes, you’d move higher up, but that would also mean that you equally slow down along the “forward” axis. So as explained before, if you stop accelerating, the object will start being pulled by gravity again until it reaches its now even closer than before proximity to its parent, half an orbit later on the other side. Because it’s now closer to the parent, it has sped up and will then start moving away again, another elliptic orbit has been achieved.

    And if you accelerate “sideways”, so neither away from the surface nor forward along the orbital path, you actually change very little: you only affect the inclination of the orbit. Usually we think of objects going around the equator, but they don’t have to. An orbit can go any which angle, even rotating around the poles, going South to North or vice versa.

    So long story short, how does the moon speed up? It doesn’t have and rocket engines or similar. The reason is the vast difference the earth and the moon rotate around themselves. The earth takes 24h to rotate. The moon takes roughly 27.3 days to rotate a single time. This causes the Earth to “push” the global tidal waves around its oceans much faster than the Moon gets pushed. This actually causes the moon to get “dragged along” a tiny little bit on every tidal rotation. This not only speeds up the rotation of the moon itself: the moon is so slow that it doesn’t have time to transfer all that rotational energy before the tidal wave on Earth has moved on the surface to be a bit on front of the Moon. This is the moment where the Earth’s center of gravity is a tiny bit “forward” of the middle of the Earth. This in turn pulls the moon forward along its orbital path, speeding it up horizontally. Obviously, this also means that Earth’s rotation gets actually slowed down by the same amount.

    All these effects are incredibly tiny! The moon moves “away” at 3.8 cm per year, whereas it will take 50 years for an earth day to be a single millisecond longer.


  • A mesh surface is not automatically longer lasting. Quite the contrary, actually:

    Mesh is “less material per surface”. This means more stress is put on the strands than for a full cover upholstery.

    Mesh is open, which over time means that dirt and grime will start gathering in the cushion beneath the mesh. This can end up pretty nasty over the years of heavy usage.

    In the end, it’s always about proper materials: good quality foam exists and are used by some, but obviously it’s usually more expensive. Same for the surface material: there’s super cheap PVC leather that will start flaking off in weeks, and there’s high quality PVC leather that will last a decade. Or just go for real leather if you got the money. All of the closed surfaces have the advantage of being incredibly easy to clean and maintain: simply wipe them with a wet towel. For real leather, only a tiny bit of extra care is needed ( waxing ).


  • Technically true, but I think everybody knows exactly what kind of dlc is meant, and because they still make up the majority of dlc content and addon-sized dlcs are so rare, it’s fair to call them that.

    Moneygrab empty dlcs ( shiny horse armor! ) are stupid, and history has shown that people are not fiscally responsible enough to not be lured into spending absurd amounts of money for very shallow or plain empty content. “Vote with your wallet” doesn’t really work in the face of more and more insidious marketing efforts.



  • It’s is important to understand what law is used for these rulings.

    Germany limits free speech by putting penalties on speech that calls for others to commit crimes. This is rarely actually enforced by police or judges when it is about minor things or clearly satirical/parody usage. On the other hand, when it’s clearly malicious intent and for severe crimes, there’s little tolerance.

    Most commonly this happens when people publicly call for violent regime changes (attacking democratic/republican or feudal constitutional principles) or calling for violence against basic human rights, e.g. supporting genocide, deportations of specific groups, etc…

    This actually serves as a strong base which is mostly used to combat domestic terrorism and unconstitutional organizations such as far right parties ( see dissolution of NPD).

    Calling for support of an officially recognized terrorist organization is a surefire way to get into trouble. Hamas is, as in many countries, recognized as such by Germany. The judge now based their ruling on the belief that the chant is “clearly and obviously used to support Hamas” and as such supports terrorism.

    What the article above does not tell: This ruling is incredibly controversial in Germany, and it is actually very likely to be overturned in a higher court. There even are precedent rulings of the same chant with entirely different ruling outcomes.

    It really saddens me to see so many clearly well-meaning left-oriented people on Lemmy get outraged so easily without being informed. If you lack info, I feel such news should be approached with cautious neutrality until more info is gathered and an opinion is formed and voiced.

    Yes, it’s fine to dislike this ruling and voice such an opinion. But calling Germany fascist or “freedom of speech is dead in Germany” based on such an individual event is just comically far from the truth.

    We have checks and balances in Germany. Our system is not perfect, but whose is, and I firmly believe it’s still better than most out there.

    Germany has no infinite freedom of speech, but I also firmly believe that being intolerant of intolerance is absolutely vital for a robust liberal society. So I’m fine with deeply disruptive and simply vile inciting speech being treated as criminal.



  • Senshi@lemmy.worldtoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldDid it hurt?
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    3 months ago

    If you have to say it often, it might indicate you have trouble formulating your initial advice in a way that is acceptable to people.

    Nobody likes to be told they’re wrong, so it helps to be empathetic about it. Packing your advice or instructions into a tactful and diplomatic approach doesn’t cost you much, but makes it much more likely for your advice to be accepted and implemented. And the recipient will usually end up being grateful for having avoided a mistake. They might even start to look for your and ask advice in the future. And if you keep doing that, he might even consider you a nice person or even a friend.

    An arrogant and condescending approach will only do harm, even if you are factually right.



  • Everyone wants cheap cars, but that’s not what this is about. This is about fair and competitive markets and products.

    China heavily subsidizes their car industry. Actually everyone had been doing that, but currently China is doing it more.

    Subsidies become a problem when they don’t serve to make necessities affordable in-country, but are used to boost sales in foreign countries, while hurting their local industry.

    Now you might conclude that “why don’t we just subsidize or own manufacturers more as well so cars get as cheap as China’s?”

    Well, where do you think the money for subsidies comes from? Taxes. So in the end, it’s just another scheme to make the general public pay for things that only part of the population needs, and it reduces pressure on manufacturers to innovate, leading to stale products. Which is a big reason why Western car companies are not competitive: the West has done exactly what China is doing now. We have subsidized the car industry massively in order to push or products into the global market. Those subsidies were considered worth it, because it created a trade surplus, effectively meaning wealth is transferred from the global market to mostly the car industry leaders, and a bit of it trickling down to workers as well.

    After a while, the subsidies lead to corruption, inefficiency and lack of innovation, and the bubble bursts. That’s how you get histories like Detroit. Equivalents exist in almost any Western country.

    A means to protect against subsidized products ruining the local markets is to impose tarrifs. The US has many of those, not only against China, but also against EU companies, especially in the car market. See chicken tax. American car manufacturers were so far behind after decades of heavy subsidies they couldn’t even compete with European cars ( and apparently still can’t, given that the chicken tax and similar tariffs still exist). In the end, tariffs run the same risk as subsidies: over time, a protected market means the industry can get lazy and keep selling the same, because competition is forced out of the market. Tariffs and subsidies are never a viable long term solution. Both can only serve strategic purposes: either providing actual essentials to ones population or nurture change ( eg subsidized regenerative energy build up) that only exist for a limited time. Tarrifs can be used to protect strategically important industry: e.g. military or technological cutting edge tech where you don’t mind paying extra for the privilege of maintaining in-country know how and manufacturing abilities.


  • What’s your source on the reverify thing? I use matrix a lot, and this hasn’t been an issue I ever experienced anymore since they introduced cross-signing a couple years ago.

    Same goes for the common clients such as element. It has been clunky in the past, but after the past major overhauls ( also years ago now) everything has been silky smooth for me, if not better than others. The one thing left I prefer from Signal is the one-time photo share.

    Matrix is great, clients are great too, only the server part still is annoyingly complicated and messy. Would only recommend that for tinkerers, on that case it’s a great path to learning about the complexity of addressing lots of security concerns that others gloss over.

    Edit: to add - there’s a reason why the French government and the German military decided to build their secure internal IM infrastructure on Matrix. Obviously they are hosting their own private network, but if the concept is good enough for European government and military, it is an indicator for quality especially in terms of security and privacy.





  • You are swapping correlation and causation to some degree. A country does not become industrialized by people starting to have kids at a later age. Rather, people start getting kids when their circumstances allow it: in industrialized countries, you rely less on children to provide for you when old, as there hopefully are social systems in place or you can save up on your own. Downside is, without social systems you also have to provide for yourself at old age, meaning people need to build up more savings before they feel ready for the financial burden a child is for around 20 years.

    In developing countries, children often get little support above bare necessities and start contributing to the household income at a much earlier age, even before hitting their teens.


  • I’ll still use the opportunity to voice my opinion clearly on this: Yes, forced circumcision on infants is only a very small step above the also still common practice of female genetic mutilations at birth/infancy. It does not matter what reasons you claim, only medical necessity should matter. Society should protect its infants from any religion or tradition demanding body modifications of infants.

    Leave people’s bodies alone until they can decide on their own what to do when there is zero proven medical benefit to doing it before without their informed consent.

    The common “improved hygiene” argument is nonsensical. You know what improves hygiene? Washing, and teaching kids how to wash themselves.

    Otherwise you could cut off ears using the same logic. No ears, no need to wash behind the ears.