barsoap

What if I told you that Germany is a federation. NRW would be the fifth largest US state, Bremen the third smallest (actually, almost identical population to DC), most of all the US has more states. They can do stuff in parallel that's no excuse to not have quick election results. And now don't come with "but there's so much space in between" you're not sending the results via horse buggy are you.

And, no, of course the federation doesn't legislate on state elections. It gets to say how federal (and EU) elections are run. State's rights my ass in Germany the federation has no tax office, it's all collected by the states, and their police can't put boots on the ground outside of international borders (incl. airports) and the train system (cf Amtrak cops). Certainly can't just decide to invade a city like is happening in LA. They also don't have anything like ICE, that's all state responsibility.

You mean cause a chargeback or something? You'd have to find a sufficiently shady seller, the key might get revoked, also you're supporting another ilk of scumbags.

Du ich hab' eine und die passt. Die Firma hier, mehr oder weniger per Zufall ausgewaehlt. Das Premium-Ding wäre das hier, verstellbare Augenmuscheln hören sich Sinnvoll an, die alte funktioniert aber ausreichend und ist nicht abgenutzt also is es mir das Geld nicht wert. Bin aber auch ein ruhiger Schläfer.

Ansonsten -- Gewöhnungssache? Wichtig ist halt wirklich kein Druck auf den Augen. Evtl. beim Musikhören oder so dran gewöhnen.

Wenn alles nicht hift gibt's natürlich immer noch Rolladen und du kannst auf LED-Jagd gehen.

Covid was a completely different situation, also, here in the north people took it very well (Wat mut, dat mut).

Importantly: Fighting Covid largely meant sitting on your arse. In isolation, bored, for months and months on end. Fighting a war is, psychologically, more like getting together and sewing masks and that worked effortlessly, organically.

Germany, with 100% paper ballots, has preliminary results in by the end of the night. That's preliminary as in "everything has been counted, but we haven't double-checked anything yet". The final result comes later and has never differed in even close to significant ways from the preliminary one. Most of the time delay is not due to voting but to give people and courts time to deal with any challenge there might be.

The German constitutional court declared voting machines unconstitutional for the simple reason that they don't allow people with just an ordinary education, no specialist knowledge, to ascertain for themselves that the vote is kosher.

The CCC actually tried to get them outlawed based on technical grounds, including that it's impossible to have electronic voting that is both secure and private ("can't prove to the Mafia boss how you voted" type of private), the judges listened intendedly and asked many smart questions, just to then turn around and say "yeah we barely understood that and we're practically all professors and it's our job, can't expect J. Random Citizen to do that between shifts".

Abgesehen von medizinischem Zeug (Schlafapnoe usw) ist der wichtigste Faktor Licht.

Nix da "kein blaues Licht" oder "schluck Melatonin", das bewirkt alles nur Minuten, das wichtige sind Lichtsensoren die unter der Bewusstseinsschwelle das Gehirn auf den Schlaf vorbereiten. Summa Sumarum: Kauf' dir ne Schlafmaske. Eine die richtig abschließt ohne dass du die Augen zu machen musst, absolut dunkel, noch nicht mal das Standby-Licht vom Wecker oder sonstwas. Gibt's für 10 Euro in anständig, 30 oder 40 in Premium.

You should totally play the game, but make sure that you pirate it so your money doesn't go to the thief who stole the rights from the creators.

That's what the conventional army is for. With ET.

The nuclear deterrent stops Russia from using nukes, that's all.

Let just say i have not a good opinion of the resilience of many of my fellow german countrymen (and women, and others).

You mean you don't have a good grasp on mass psychology.

Let me throw a disgusted upvote in your general direction.

Anything that happens in LA is being attributed to protestors,

"The tactic that we're not employing in LA has no effect in LA".

I don’t actually disagree, but I think our hyper-connected social media makes it practically impossible to avoid the kind of cross-contamination that soils the optics of even a well-organized protest here

On the live feeds I watched I spotted exactly one protester who might have had training. She was good at leading a chant, that's it. Noone had an understanding of the larger situation, everyone was driving by the seat of their pants.

Now, of course, it's too late to build those structures, build professionalism, but in the civil rights era you had it. Rosa Parks didn't just decide one morning to sit in the front of the bus, the thing had been prepared for months and months. Everything was gamed out, people trained to have the right reaction in every circumstance, the whole shebang.

Fun fact: I actually played "Greenpeace and police" on the primary school schoolyard. About ten people sit down, hook into each other's arms, four or five "cops" try to separate them. That's the kind of cultural diffusion you want, enough dissemination of tactics through workshops that primary school kids pick up random fun exercises as a game.

I think I’ll just leave you with a MLK quote I think is relevant.

Indeed, it is relevant: Because you still haven't learned how to make yourself heard.

And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity.

That's not a call to violence. It's a call to get out of a comfortable rut and fight for justice, equality, and humanity. Show me an MLK quote where he says "Yo dudes, just riot, man". Especially the black civil rights movement was vulnerable to being portrayed as violent (racist stereotypes and everything). How did they get around that? Did Rosa Parks spit in the face of the cop who arrested her?

Maybe it’s different overseas, but from what I’ve seen written about it in our media you have the same problem.

"Protests were overwhelmingly peaceful with riots at the fringes". The social media sphere is its own battleground, the AfD basically employs the same fake news outrage tactics as the MAGA sphere does in the US. No, you won't get Fox News to change its narrative and to stop just making things up, but that's not the only news network you have. Achieving anything on the social media front requires consistency and reach, honestly not my speciality. Ask someone who has never used a dial-up modem. Centrist-compatible edgy meme accounts with the occasional leap into the radical when the opportunity is right? Broad outreach is crucial otherwise the important stuff will stay in your bubble.

Also never forget that Antifa action can look like this. People do love to laugh at fascists, also liberals, even plenty of conservatives, give them plenty of opportunity to do so. Nick their clothes while they're bathing, the whole republic was snickering. Those things are click magnets as you can see them being picked up even by US media.