chobeat

Germans are the invaders in Germany. This has been Celtic territory for millennia. Go back to your fucking steppes.

Many of my direct friends lost their job for doing it. Look up "exposing Zalando".

Here in Berlin it's a regular occurrence that any exhibition, cultural or political event criticizing Israel receives at the very list a threatening call and a visit from the police. Sometimes it escalates into vandalism or violence, sometimes with getting raided by the police, sometimes with defunding if it's a public thing.

If they silenced Albanese and banned Varoufakis, they can silence anybody.

You might have missed a lot of news about Germany. They passed a new law that suspends freedom of speech when it's against Israel. https://www.dw.com/en/germany-passes-controversial-antisemitism-resolution/a-70715643

There has been plenty of extra-judicial retaliation, i.e. against Francesca Albanese or Oyoun, and we got close to having 4 cases of extra-judicial extradictions without an accusation against pro-Palestine protesters, which a judge eventually blocked.

I live in Alexanderplatz and I work in food. The area is mostly tourist traps (bad ones at that, we are in Germany, not in Italy). If you want something very casual, Bahn Mi Stable is the closest decent thing from Alexanderplatz. If you want a proper sit-down restaurant try Trio (German), Soopoolim (Korean), or Pizzeria Standard on Torstr.

Ignore completely the reviews on Google Maps or tripadvisor, they are totally unreliable.

If you want touristic stuff, the city center is quite boring but you have a lot: museum island, branderburgertor, Gendarmenmarkt, Checkpoint charlie and all the surrounding areas. If you want something more interesting, the Soviet Memorial in Treptowerpark, Victoria Park, the various memorials in Hellensdorf. Also avoid at all costs the DDR museum, lamest waste of money you can think of. Other museums in the center are ok.

fuck underpaid workers trying to unionize? Ok, scab.

In the book for instance she says how books should be written to increase competence among the people who already agree. I think that since she's coming from an experience of writing about science (as I also do), she feels very strongly against those liberal science popularizers who think that by providing information, you change minds and educate the "public". In the book she highlights how a lot of liberals think that reactionaries choose the policies and politicians they do because they are ignorant, and therefore providing more information will solve the issue. She escapes this by clearly targeting the "converted". At least to some degree. A lot of the book is also addressing the doubts of liberals or far-Left people who are on the verge of abandoning "18th century politics" of public debate and conflict of ideas, hence making the book as something you can give to your peers to give a last push.

I'm just liking the book and I think it's a very necessary book, so I'm promoting it. I have no business or personal connection to the author, except having offered her a drink after the book presentation in Berlin. That's it. Also I copy-pasted the blurb from the editor's website: I thought putting it in quotes would make it obvious I didn't write that part.

the book is saying exactly that the public discourse is irrelevant and doesn't lead to better policies. It doesn't even influence politics at all. I'm not sure how you understood the blurb because the book, as the title implies, is very against public discourse as a political tool.

She explains in a passage the role of books in politics and how they play into the main topic of the book. Also it's what I asked the author at a meeting after the presentation of the book: "so, after all of this, why writing a book?". She gave a very compelling answer, but there were private informations so I won't share it.

datus/data means "given", as in the metaphysical sense of the word, since the word started being used for statistics in a period where measurements were considered an objective observation of material reality, which was in fact considered "given" and not interpreted.

I did in a shot. It doesn't taste like egg.