Well put. My answer would have just been, that it’s possible, but that it can be very, very expensive.

Don’t worry. Asbestos cement is not really dangerous, as long as the concrete is intact and you don’t touch it, there’s nothing to be afraid of.

It’s when it crumbles or you work on it, that you have to take care. The problem is Asbestos dust entering your lungs, where it’s very carcinogenic.

But intact walls and roof are okay.

How did you edit this?

The distribution of tonal values and the colors are very tasteful. It must have been beautiful light in the first place, but surely you had to develop this, right?

I used to like a bit of philosophizing, but then I had a philosophy professor who ruined all the fun. What a Kant.

That’s part of why that move to coin that phrase was so powerful. There are real conspiracies/intelligence agency operations (like regime changes in several countries during the 20th century), and then there are completely idiotic ideas and takes (like flat earth) and ones that were never meant to be taken serious (like birds aren’t real).

That makes it really tedious to weed out the bullshit and distinguish it from the stuff that has substance.

Not really. It doesn’t really prevent competition. You’re welcome to make your own cheese (or whatever) that competes with the protected variant. You’re just not allowed to call it the same thing.

It’s more like a measure to prevent shitty corporate cost cutting and skimpflation strategies from ruining a thing into oblivion and ensuring that you can rely on a certain level of quality that is associated with the traditional product.

The system might have it’s downsides, but I’m definitely on board with the intent.

If you want to say “it has this specific vegetable and that makes difference” then that’s another perspective I don’t agree with.

That’s not a point I’m trying to make. Although my idea of Döner Kebap includes specific vegetable/salad ingredients, to my understanding the defining step was putting it in a portable loaf of bread, instead of having kebap on a plate. And as another commenter said, that idea might have been re-imported. But neither was I around when it first appeared, nor am I a Döner Historian of any capicity, so I have to rely on the sources I read. I’m also not passionate enough about the topic to do a lot more research. But no matter it’s origins: Döner holds a very special place in Germany’s culinary environment and that’s thanks to Turkish immigration history. So it’s definitely a significant food in this country.

Nobody denies its Turkish roots though. AFAIK putting Kebap in bread isn’t really a thing in Turkey and although one might argue how big a contribution that is, it’s that step that combined a Turkish dish with German Imbiss culture and made this a huge success all over Germany.

You’re welcome to try the same thing with Schnitzel and if you attain the same level of success and cultural significance, I’d rightfully call you the “inventor”. (though I have to inform you, that “Schnitzelsemmel” is a thing already, so maybe think of a different example)

There’s just no economic incentive to do so. (yet?)

Wenn in Bayern im Woid ein Baam umfällt, macht er dann “Zäfix! Sakrament!”, auch wenn keiner da ist um es zu hören?

Wegen der Endung -ing, gell?

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I agree, there’s definitely room for improvement.

It seems rare, that the whole train station was closed (probably not one of the bigger cities) and you must have stayed rather late, while christmas markets usually already open in the afternoon (or even earlier) and the sun sets early in their season, so there’s plenty of time to enjoy them while they are most beautiful (at night) and still make it home by train in a lot of places.

That being said, in more places than you’d expect, you won’t find convenient train connections after midnight, if at all. That makes using public transit almost useless for partying. I remember living in a somewhat rural area as a young partygoer and if I wanted to go to the city for partying, the choice was to either go home before the city folk even really started going, or keep partying until the clubs closed and then hang around with the punks at the railroad station to wait for the first train in the morning. Having a designated driver and going by car was the usual option.

Found them on metal archives and am listening through youtube.

I’m only a few seconds in, and I immediately get some early Helloween vibes from the guitar tone and playing in Queen of Desire, which is entirely a good thing. Rest of the sound so far is a lot more heavy than power metal, but it’s right up my alley for a Christmas afternoon.

Thank you very much for the mention!

Am German, can confirm. Parking garages do indeed exist here. Germany is very car centric, but fortunately not as bad as the US. Our cities do also have mostly working public infrastructure that makes it possible for lots of people to get to the Christmas market and drink several mugs of mulled wine without the need for overly huge parking garages.

I once accidentaly shorted the connector cables of a battery pack with 4 AA batteries. It very quickly generated enough heat to set the insulation of the cable on fire.

Don’t underestimate short circuits!

Ok, I’ll do it again:

Here’s the thing. You can probably get away with calling such black birds “Krähe” if you’re talking to people with no further knownedge about the birdie-birds. As soon as people know a little more than that, they will find that a bit odd. If you call a Raven/Kolkrabe/Corvus corax a ‘Krähe’, that will be a bit weird. Those are considerably larger and overall more majestic creatures, so calling them crows, just doesn’t cut it. But they are also more rare and avoid human settlements more than crows. The three usual crow species in Germany on the other hand are all basically the same size, and sometimes hard to tell apart. They all carry the term ‘crow’ in their colloquial German name.

They are:

1. Aaskrähe/Carrion Crow/Corvus corone Also called Rabenkrähe, just to add to the confusion. A medium sized, all black bird with a fairly strong beak.

2. Nebelkrähe/Hooded Crow/Corvus cornix Almost identical to Corvus corone, but easily distinguished, by it’s gray coat, instead of their pure black feathers.

3. Saatkrähe/Rook/Corvus frugilegus Also completely black, except for the base of the beak and the featherless area around the beak. Younger birds don’t have that though and look almost identical to Corvus corone.

All three of those have sucessfully adapted to live close to humans and can often be found even in big cities.

(I’ll deliberately exclude the Alpenkrähe/Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax here, because it only lives in a small and remote region, though that one actually has a red/orange beak)

Then there’s the Dohle/Jackdaw/Corvus monedula. That is a bit smaller than the crows, also has some more grayish areas (though usually a darker gray than Corvus cornix). As it completely lacks the “Krähe” part in its German name, people might also find it weird to call it Krähe.

So you see, even though they all belong to the genus ‘Corvus’, not all members of that genus are typically called crows. On the other hand, the above mentioned Alpenkrähe/Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax carries the “krähe” in its name, even though it’s a whole different genus, and funnily enough there also exists the Alpendohle/Pyrrhocorax graculus (yellow beak) in the same genus but suddenly borrowing the -dohle part in its name. They are still part of the familiy of corvids (scientific name Corvidae) but that family also includes birds that are never called crows like the Elster/magpie/Pica pica or the Eichelhäher/Eurasian jay/Garrulus glandarius and also very colorful species in different parts of the world (especially tropics).

That should suffice to show, that there’s no good consistency between the colloquial naming and scientific taxonomy. Not surprising at all, considering how colloquial language has evolved way before scientific classification and doesn’t really have a need to be as precise, scientific classification has also been subject to change as new methods gave us a better understanding.

All that being said, I won’t fault you, if you consider jackdaws to be ‘basically crows’, just be prepared to be corrected by bird nerds. (Including myself, although I’m just an amateur with a particular fondness for birds that are ‘basically crows’)

Yep definitely a jackdaw.

The whole schtick about ‘counts as a raven’ is a bit whack, because those terms aren’t really hardcore defined. Those are colloquial terms and depending on where you are in the world and who you’re talking to, colloquial terms may refer to different species altogether. And when you put different languages into the mix, seemingly equivalent terms may suddenly agglomerate different species.

When you say raven, I as a European, think of the rather huge Corvus corax. But there are other big corvids in other parts of the world, that may qualify for the word. When I say the equivalent word for raven or crow in my native language (German), it very much depends on the bird knowledge of the person I’m talking to, whether they understand this to mean a specific species or just a general term for all black birds of the Corvidae family. Then some people distinguish ravens and crows, even tough there are 3 species that would qualify as a crow, one of which would be called a rook in English.

That’s why scientific names are useful. That being said: you’ve got a beautiful picture of a jackdaw there. (Corvus monedula)

Edit: Crap. I just now read the comment thread about “Here’s the thing” and feel like I just played into that. Gotta read up about that now.

Lucky you!

McCartney and Swift ‘exploit’ tons of people as well. They might flagship their music artist operation themselves and kind of ‘be’ the product (or rather the brand), but there are lots and lots of people involved to make tours and shows possible, recording, production and especially distribution of music and merch involves labour as well.

In addition to that: I don’t think they store all that money on a nice little heap in their backyard. It usually gets invested into some sorts of corporations, be it through the stock market, where it will accrue revenue, that comes as the result of more exploitation.

That being said: the term ‘exploitation’ carries a much more negative connotation than would be beneficial for the conversation. It’s concept of marxist economics, and the term ‘Ausbeutung’ = exploitation was used by Marx himself to describe how capitalists benefit from the surplus that workers produce. I like the term ‘reaping the surplus’ better because it doesn’t carry as much of a negative connotation. The criticism of capitalism shouldn’t barely rely on the fact that surplus is being taken away from the workers, but from the consequences to society and the political system that inevitably follow when that wealth is concentrated in the hands of a minority.

You’re missing the point. The risk might not be very high on average, but if they don’t want to end up on the streets, regular people still have to kind of function inside the system somehow and continuously work for regular income. The will to survive is part of what drives them to do so.

Billionaires on the other hand, wouldn’t even have to lift a finger to be able to live comfortably for the rest of their lives. On the contrary, they’d have to try really hard to get rid of all that wealth. Major fuck-ps and intentional money burning excluded, the chance that they end up having trouble getting their basic needs fulfilled is miniscule. THAT is the difference.