@itsericwoodward@itsericwoodward.com I still have the movie in my archive. It’s a “TV capture” from 20 years ago, in German, super low resolution, noisy, … 🤪

Image

Despite the shitty quality, the file is 1.1 GB large. Video codecs were really bad back then.

This cookie banner button uses “Abfall” in the German translation for probably “Reject” or “Configure”, I don’t know, simply left the site. This literally means waste, garbage, rubbish, trash. Spot on! :-D

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@aelaraji@aelaraji.com Hahaha, I don’t recall when I first stumbled across it, but I’m sure it must have been the same experience you had.

Ignoring the consistent fuck-up of the decimal point (German reverses comma and dot, we use a comma as the decimal separator and the dot as the thousands separator), they managed to print the amount correctly in most e-mails. But the “shipping is underway” e-mail is broken. For ages.

Germans love consonants – and it’s the opposite with Scandinavian languages, isn’t it? 😅 This is so crazy for me to listen to:

https://translate.google.com/?sl=auto&tl=no&text=good%20morning%2C%20how%20are%20you%20today%3F%20my%20name%20is%20katharina%20and%20I%20am%20eating%20a%20banana%20and%20hopefully%20also%20an%20apple.%20everything%20I%20say%20is%20a%20blur.&op=translate

Love me some Finnish:

https://translate.google.com/?sl=auto&tl=fi&text=good%20morning%2C%20how%20are%20you%20today%3F%20my%20name%20is%20katharina%20and%20I%20am%20eating%20a%20banana%20and%20hopefully%20also%20an%20apple.%20everything%20I%20say%20is%20crystal%20clear.&op=translate

@prologic@twtxt.net Well, 15 shows the site. On the left, I had a roll mat on a tarp. I borrowed some “NVA tarps” from the scouts for this trip. The scouts got them from the National People’s Army, the German Democratic Republic’s armed forces after Germany was reunited. They’re 1.75m x 1.75m in size and weigh 1.3kg, quite heavy, but super awesome. One tarp on the bottom, another one to cover up the clothes, shoes and sleeping bag in order to protect against the thaw. Finally, a mosquito net over all that, hung from a rope between two trees.

My mate just used a hammock with a mozzie net on the right hand side. The third tarp served as the luxurious bedside carpet. :-)

We sat on my second tarp to chill and enjoy the sunset and surroundings. It was nice to notice birds etc. die down. It took a really long time for the last light to fade away. Since we have a very high risk of forest fires, we of course couldn’t have a camp fire. But after all the exhaustion, I didn’t even miss it for one second.

Since we had dinner at home before leaving, all we brought were two lye rolls, two grain rolls, two brezels, some sausage and chocolate biscuits for breakfast. From the 2.5l of water, I ended up using 2l. It’s always good to have a little extra, despite the unnecessary weight. We had brekkie a few kilometers further on a bench in the shade. The first bench was already in direct sun.

Our camp site was maybe 30m to the side and a few meters down of a summit path hidden behind some trees and bushes. We were quite lucky, the other side of the hill got quite a bit of a breeze at night. We could hear the leaved treetops making much more noise behind us.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Yes, these kind of dogs should really be strictly forbidden!

It’s not illegal if you own the forest or ask the owner. :-)

@david@daiwei.me Yeah, no clue. But my mate said the dog is disqualified from such adventures in the future. :-)

The temps were supposed to hit 14°C just before sunrise. Since we didn’t bring a thermometer, I can’t tell for sure. I was rather hot in my sleeping bag, so I had to pull out my arms every now and then. My mate’s sleeping bag was a little lighter and, unfortunately, the zipper jammed up. Since it didn’t close all the way, it felt quite a bit cold I was told in the morning. When we got up at 6ish (we said, we don’t care about time at all), it was probably already 16°C if not more. I brought a jumper, but a t-shirt was already nice enough to wear. The jumper just served as my pillow. The mercury raised by the minute then.

Yeah, I circled the spot with a biro to keep an eye on it. Until now, there’s absolutely nothing to see. Looks like I got lucky.

@bender@twtxt.net Immediately reminded me of the German children’s song “Laurentia, liebe Laurentia mein”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q0aky9FvLc

Have a nice weekend!

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Yes, this screenshot. However, not the Dutch but rather the German version, no wonder it looks so crazy!!1!11

It’s been a hot minute or two since I last used KDE, so I don’t remember exactly. I just vaguely recall that I found myself thinking multiple times that the KDE application categories were better matching or there were more or something like that. Most of my classmates were on Windows and had one giant long list of all sort of stuff in there. You even had to scroll in the menu. Sure, they installed all kind of garbage, which didn’t exactly help. Where in KDE, they were actually grouped by Office, Internet, Graphics, Multimedia, Games, etc. In Windows, applications usually hid themselves in a sub folder named after the software vendor. At least in the later (?) days.

I only used Win 95, 98 and XP at home. For maths class with computer algebra system (Maple), we had a Cassiopeia with Win CE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_Cassiopeia At school, there was probably also Win 2000, but I don’t know anymore for sure.

A German Court Has Ruled That Google Is Liable for False Statements Generated by AI Overviews
The ruling holds that a company that designs, trains, operates, and manages an AI system must assume legal liability for any damages caused by the responses it generates. ⌘ Read more

@bender@twtxt.net Those damn foreigners shall not enjoy our German music, how dare they! Something like that.

Netanyahu Aide Charged With Endangering Israeli Security Over Document Leak
Jonatan Urich, a media adviser to the Israeli prime minister, was accused of passing classified intelligence about negotiations with Hamas to a German newspaper. ⌘ Read more

Historical vessels consistent with alchemy found at German castle
Investigations at Gnandstein Castle have revealed the discovery of evidence pointing to alchemical practices. For centuries, people have been obsessed… ⌘ Read more

German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews
Article URL: https://the-decoder.com/landmark-german-ruling-declares-googles-ai-overviews-are-googles-own-words-and-makes-it-liable-for-false-answers/

Comments URL: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48470248](https://n … ⌘ Read more

@bender@twtxt.net … boom, 5500+ hits on that blog post. 🤣 Should I start monetizing this shit?! 🤪 (Don’t worry, I won’t. German law gets super annoying if you do that kind of thing.)

@prologic@twtxt.net Ahh, I see. Okay, I’m with you there. On this high level, I can understand how the thing works.

Maybe my wording isn’t good. 🤔 Let’s take a real life example from what we do at work.

There’s this AI chatbot. It gets support requests from users, so the user says something like “I need access to a particular system”. This triggers the bot to “run” the instructions stored in a large Markdown file, like “check if the user is authorized to do this, then issue the following API requests”, and so on. This is essentially like running a little script, except it’s written in natural language (German) and there’s no “script interpreter” but just the AI.

Now, suppose that the AI doesn’t quite do what was intended. There’s some subtle bug. How do you debug this? How do you find out how the AI came to the “conclusion” to run step A instead of step B? And how do you find out how exactly you have to change your prompt so this doesn’t happen again next time?

If this was an actual script/program instead of AI, you could repeat the request and attach a debugger or throw in some printf() or whatever. How do you do that kind of thing with AI? How do you pinpoint exactly what the problem was?

(Or is this just a stupid idea? Do we have to give up that way of thinking when using AI? Is the era of debuggability over?)

I should have changed the key binding from Print to Shift+Print a long time ago to launch import and upload the screenshot to my server. I was constantly hitting that stupid key on accident when I actually wanted to press [AltGr].

If I only could map a key binding to slap these damn ThinkPad T15 keyboard layout designers at Lenovo remotely in the face. Seriously, who in their right mind puts Print (in German Druck) between AltGr and Ctrl at the bottom row to begin with?! Exactly. Nobody. What a horrible location.

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@arne@uplegger.eu (Mixing lovely fruit with bitter things like olives or cheese is something that only Germans do, right? 😅)

@movq@www.uninformativ.de LOL. Once you truly know Germans (if such thing is possible, hahahaha!), you realise the stereotype is totally uncalled for.

Germans don’t have humour? Oh, yes we do! Get this:

I was pushing my bike slowly up a hill, coming across an elderly lady.

She goes: “Go slowly!!! 😡”

“???”

“Haha! Just kidding! 😊“

@prologic@twtxt.net he didn’t. The embedded video show the speaker he was referencing to, on the German video.

@prologic@twtxt.net Sorry if I raised the wrong hope. Only the German talk is about the “why good people don’t want to work at your company” subject. Among the key points are the absolutely terrible job adverts, team leads not themselves looking for people to hire but letting other dudes do that, company cultures and communication.

A mate just recommended this German talk why people don’t wanna work at your company: https://media.ccc.de/v/froscon2025-3321-es_es_ka_em_warum_gute_leute_nicht_bei_euch_arbeiten_wollen It’s really good. I fully agree with most parts.

The speaker referenced https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xmEgtRhw7o (Mårten Mickos: Believe in Something Bigger Than Yourself) which is also very interesting, if you make it through the first bit. He talks about his CEO role at MySQL AB.

Fell into a bit of a rabbit hole and learned that it took German law until 2008 to actually allow unisex/gender-neutral first names: https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/entscheidungen/rk20081205_1bvr057607.html 🤦

I wonder if my elderly German neighbors have learned enough English by now to understand what I’m swearing about all day long. 🤔

German UFO center received record number of sighting reports last year
The UFO phenomenon is not just prevalent in the US - people across Europe have also reported their own close encounters. Known as the Central Research… ⌘ Read more

That’s a very entertaining talk about mining and analyzing radio station playlists: https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-radiomining-playlist-scraping-und-analyse It’s in German, not sure how good the English translation or subtitles are.

German nurse gets life in jail after killing 10 to reduce work ⌘ Read more

Referral to German food aid resources disappears from US Army Garrison Bavaria website ⌘ Read more

German nurse given life sentence for murdering 10 patients ⌘ Read more

The US Army is advising its soldiers in Germany to go to German food banks because of the shutdown. ⌘ Read more

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org don’t German regulations require the country in which it was made to be clearly noted on the product? These days everyone is cheapening their craft. Don’t be surprised if it is, indeed, wholly Germanium.

German government approves largest minimum wage increase in its history ⌘ Read more

A mate just sent me Microsoft’s magnificent master piece diagram regarding the end of life of Windows 10: https://support.microsoft.com/de-de/windows/windows-10-support-wurde-am-14-oktober-2025-eingestellt-2ca8b313-1946-43d3-b55c-2b95b107f281

That’s what you get for training with zalgo. :-D Of course, this isn’t even proper German.

In case they fix it, here’s a screenshot of the enlarged frontal crash:

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Der ganze Vorgang ist archetypisch für die seit Jahrzehnten völlig ohne Not stattfindende politische Selbstverzwergung Europas.

A comment on heise about the recent AWS outage.

https://www.heise.de/meinung/Kommentar-zum-Totalausfall-bei-AWS-Nichts-gelernt-in-den-letzten-30-Jahren-10794622.html?wt_mc=sm.red.ho.mastodon.mastodon.md_beitraege.md_beitraege&utm_source=mastodon

(Too bad there’s no good translation for the great word “Selbstverzwergung”.)

I’m paraphrasing: Europe (and other regions) depend on US IT services, a lot, without an actual need. We saw AWS, Google, and Microsoft build large datacenters and then we thought “welp, shit, nothing we can do about that, guess we’ll just be an AWS customer from now on.” Nobody really went ahead and built German/European alternatives. And now we completely depend on the US for lots of our stuff.

The article even claims that there’s now a shortage of sysadmins in the EU? I’m not so sure. But I’d welcome it, makes my job more secure. 🤣

Hosting services, datacenters, software, everything, it’s all US stuff. Why do we accept this, why not build alternatives …

It’s official - the major German and American brands (Porsche, Mercedes, Ford and Stellantis) are backtracking and extending the life of the internal combustion engine beyond 2035 ⌘ Read more

When I see code mixing English, German, and Spanish in variable names ⌘ Read more

Woman in Dutch beach cold case named after 21 years
An Interpol-led operation has identified German citizen Eva Maria Pommer after a police tip-off. ⌘ Read more

German mayor stabbed outside home, Chancellor Merz condemns ‘abhorrent act’
Iris Stalzer, a Social Democrat who was elected mayor of Herdecke in the Ruhr region a week ago, is reportedly suffered life-threatening injuries. ⌘ Read more

German chemical giant to release Roundup alternative in Australia
We’ve been spraying it on our farms, gardens and roadsides for 50 years, but the world’s most used weedkiller is starting to run out of steam. But after 10 years and hundreds of millions of dollars in R&D, Roundup’s owner says it has an alternative. ⌘ Read more

Sieht ganz so aus, als hätte die gute @kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz ihre Büchse mit in den Kurort Bad Gateway genommen.

Sorry, this pun only works in German, where “Bad” means spa and is used as prefix for spa towns.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Nice Jacob’s ladder. ;-) I had to look up this term, I also found Zig Zag. What do you folks call this in your languages? In German, it’s Hexentreppe (lit. Witch’s Staircase).

Woooooaaaahh, that’s bloody amazing! I wish I’d had a teacher like that.

English version: https://youtu.be/wi_q6IythMk
German version: https://youtu.be/2Lv1MMlFDBs

@bender@twtxt.net Sadly, it’s super relevant. It’s a really good sketch. I’m actually surprised you know this German series. :-)

@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz Completely off-topic, I didn’t know that the English language picked up the German word “Ersatz”. Discovering things like that always brings me joy. It has some interesting other properties, though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ersatz_good#Etymology

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Nice picture, this hot air balloon has quite a large basket.

Yes, go for it! :-)

My grandpa went ballooning ages ago and liked it. The balloonist misjudged the height a bit and landed in an open-air pool. Well, not in the water, but on the sunbathing lawn just inside the fence. :-D After the ride, everybody was given a very long personal name that they had to memorize. Decades later, my grandpa still knew his assigned name.

The most important thing to know is that – in German – you don’t fly (fliegen) a ballon, but ride (fahren) it: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballonfahren#Fahren_oder_fliegen Judging by the English wikipedia article, this is not an English thing, though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_air_ballooning

A #musiquinta é para músicas ou bandas com nome de cidade, estado ou país.

Laibach é “the Austrian German name of the Slovenian capital Ljubljana” e também p nome da banda escolhida. Tem várias músicas com nomes de países (especialmente graças ao álbum Volk) mas escolho uma música que fala sobre um continente: Eurovision.

https://youtu.be/GOffk1G6OX8

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Sorry shibboleths.org! I get a warning with my ip, even when I use lynx with a german IP from

I bought the “remastered” versions of Grim Fandango and Forsaken on GOG, because they’re super cheap at the moment. Both have native Linux versions.

And both these Linux version crap their pants. 🫤 The bundled SDL2 of Forsaken says it “can’t find a matching GLX visual” and I couldn’t figure out how to fix that. I didn’t spend a lot of time on Grim Fandango.

Both work great in Wine. 🤦

(I do have the original version of Grim Fandango from the 1990ies, but that one does not work so well in Wine. I figured, if it’s so cheap, why not. And I now get to play the english version. 😃 The german dub is pretty damn good, actually, but I always prefer the original these days.)

@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz That’s an interesting concept I never heard of before. Though, as a German, my data protection kicks in. ;-)

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Only 10% of the German population had Internet access in 1998: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Deutschland#/media/Datei:Diagramm_Internetnutzer_in_Deutschland.svg I guess I was lucky in that regard.

(If today’s tech wasn’t constantly trying to track and scam you, I might still be an early adopter.)

Europe can sustain Ukraine’s war effort without US, German general says ⌘ Read more

What police hope a new search for Madeleine McCann uncovers
The disappearance of British toddler Madeleine McCann remains unsolved after 18 years. Now Portuguese and German police have launched fresh searches to find her. ⌘ Read more

German chancellor says four countries have lifted restrictions on strikes deep inside Russia for Ukraine ⌘ Read more

Britain, France, Germany and the United States have lifted restrictions on the range of military supplies to Ukraine, German Chancellor Merz said ⌘ Read more

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul called for additional EU sanctions against Russia on May 25 following Russia’s large-scale overnight attack on Ukraine that killed 12 and injured 79. ⌘ Read more

German tech giant arms Putin’s war machine while Europe sleeps ⌘ Read more

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org @kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz There are two more shops that sell the “classic” Tuxes: https://ixsoft.de and https://www.steiner-plueschshop.de – both German shops, though. 🥴 Anyway, if you can make one yourself, that’d be extra cool. 😃

PayPal Brings Contactless Payments to German iPhones Under New EU Rules
Earlier this month, PayPal said that it would debut contactless iPhone payments in Germany, and German iPhone users now appear to be able to use the feature. According to German site _[iPhone Ticker](https://www.iphone-ticker.de/kontaktlos-zahlen-mit-paypal-nfc-funktion-erreicht-erste-nutzer-in-deutschland- … ⌘ Read more

What do you think I just learned about in this awesome Computerphile video with Matt Godbolt called “Subroutines in Low Level Code”? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1su3lAh-k4o

Here’s the plot twist, the phrase “till the cows come home”. Hahaha, I never heard this before, but I love it! It’s always interesting to me to hear English sayings. Sometimes we have the same in German, sometimes – like in this case – entirely different ones. It’s fascinating that even though one hasn’t come across proverbs, it’s typically still clear from the context what’s meant.

Yep, some unexpected language stuff. ;-)

@bender@twtxt.net Saw it this morning and I was like “say what now”. 😂 I certainly can’t beat that. 😂

(Also, cute name. The “-le” suffix is a German diminutive, so it means “little OS”. 😃)

@prologic@twtxt.net @movq@www.uninformativ.de @bmallred@staystrong.run @ionores@twtxt.net Thank you! Yeah, the yellow meadows look truly awesome.

Watching “Happy People: A Year in the Taiga” in German the evening before, this thing totally looked like a trap to us. So, we decided to sit on another, more rustic bench nearby. :-) Oh neat, it turns out, there is a much longer four part series of the documentary in English on YouTube. Highly recommended! This is part one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbhPIK-oBvA

Judging by the surroundings, I think this is actually a forest altar or something of that nature. But it looks like they started with the chappel’s reinforcement steel and then they ran out of money before completing it or even placing the concrete forms. :-P

Yeah, 78 might be photo of the month. It’s one of my favorites.

Polling shows growing number of Republicans identify with the MAGA movement
Ben Kamisar,    -  NBC News

Stephan: What you rarely hear anyone talking about is how many Germans supported Hitler for years after they voted him into office. You may find it hard to believe but that is exactly the same thing happening in the United States, Here are the facts.

![](https://www.schwartzreport.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Screenshot-2025-04-15-at-7.17.08  … ⌘ Read more

American Stasi
John B. Alexandria,  Contributing Writer  -  Daily Kos

Stephan: John Alexander, who has considerable expertise in the geopolitical world, has it exactly right. Our democracy is crumbling into authoritarianism as the Republicans in Congress sit sucking their thumbs listening to Daddy tell them what to do.

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The actions of many government organizations are more like the extinct East German Sta … ⌘ Read more

10 Genius German Words with No English Equivalent
The German language has a knack for packing complex ideas into a single word or brief phrase. From time to time, those phrases work their way into the English language. For instance, you’ve probably used the word “zeitgeist” to convey the defining mood or spirit of an era or “schadenfreude” to express the joy you […]

The post [10 Genius German Words with No English Equivalent](https://listverse.com/2025/04/02/10-genius-german-words- … ⌘ Read more

Some European countries and Canada issue advisories for travelers to the U.S.
Chandelis Duster,  Reporter  -  npr

_Stephan: Over the past three weeks, I have received five emails from SR readers who live in other countries telling me that they are cancelling their plans to come to the United States for vacations or business. A sixth reader, a German medical researcher, told me that she had been offered a research grant that would have required her … ⌘ Read more

It’s extremely surprising to me that younger non-technical people just type in their full name (properly cased first and last name with a space in between) for a technical username in account registration or login forms. I’ve seen that happening several times in the past few years. The field name is “Benutzername” in German, literally “username”. Even adding a placeholder text to signal that they could simply use their nickname in lowercase did not change anything at all. Well, one person used at least an e-mail address.

This wasn’t the case six, seven years ago, everybody had some “real” username. Even non-techies. It looks like some “common knowledge” is getting lost. Strange. Very weird. It trips me every time I see it.

Have you experienced something similar?

Komoot alternative: Outdooractive
I’ve found a potential alternative to Komoot: Outdooractive, another German app that offers many similar features. I’m surprised it flew under my radar for so long. ⌘ Read more

Trump pushes annexation of Greenland during meeting with NATO secretary
Brett Samuels,  Staff Writer  -  The Hill

_Stephan: Authoritarian psychopath Trump is modeling himself on Vladimir Putin and aggressively threatening the takeover of Greenland, territory belonging to another country, Denmark, just as Putin invaded Ukraine.  Just as happened in Germany, when the Nazis were voted into office and dismantled German democracy in less than two months, exa … ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de That’s cool! I just can’t justify the amount of space it permanently takes. But it fits nicely with the other gauges you have. And with that in mind, it actually is super tiny.

@eapl.me@eapl.me Interesting, I wasn’t aware that other parts of the world consider them to be a German thing :-)

ah! those german calendars. Somehow I was thinking of something like mine, with spaces to write inside each day.

I worked for a german company and they gave away these calendars to our clients and team every year, but the model you can hang on the wall. Memory unlocked!

My February ‘25 in Review
Now February is also over – another eventful month. While world politics had some lows with the German federal election and events in the USA, there were at least some highs in my private life. ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de You are right. Like I said in my (german only post) to the election results: “It saddens me and makes me think.” …

Trump admin to use military sites for immigrant detention, starting with Fort Bliss
Renne Estrada,  Staff Writer  -  KFOX14

_Stephan: In a further mirroring of Hitler’s takeover of German democracy and his creation of concentration camps, Trump’s takeover of American democracy is now planning to create American concentration camps at military bases both within the United States and outside the country at Guantanamo, Cuba. Tens of thousands of … ⌘ Read more

@arne@uplegger.eu Here are the results of the german jury:

Known salt (B64): Tb9oj07UhwU= (8)
Known key (B64): MII0yj+MC0mHNx254Voar80bi9P7jmocs0+x+inaxBE=
Known iv (B64): l/PvkDjOKMFZe73KptrvWw== (16)
Shared Key (B64): ql8zvN03p6kroSwNrcKbxk4zSBQFkgQZEumvqVIDMAE=
** DECRYPT **
Encrypted Message: ...
Decoded Salt (B64): Tb9oj07UhwU= (8)
PBKDF2 KEY (B64): MII0yj+MC0mHNx254Voar80bi9P7jmocs0+x+inaxBE=
iv (B64): JanbU1jI30lb6yfjq/adjA== (16)
Decrypted Message: 

😭

Apple Intelligence Support for Eight Additional Languages Arriving April
Apple CEO Tim Cook announced during the company’s Q4 2024 earnings call that Apple Intelligence will soon support eight additional languages, including French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, and simplified Chinese.

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An update coming in Apri … ⌘ Read more

Policing White Supremacy: The Enemy Within
Mike German,  Contributing Writer  -  Brennan Center for Justice

_Stephan: I can remember walking down to the Lincoln Memorial with a Black friend to listen to Martin Luther King deliver his I Have a Dream speech, and looking over and seeing two highly conservative attorney lobbyists walking with us and thinking, “Maybe this is really going to be the end of White racism.” Sadly it wasn’t, and part of the reason for White Supremacy’s continu … ⌘ Read more

I finally pulled the trigger and moved all my Fediverse followers from j7s@j7s.me to en@jlelse.blog, I only used the former account to share my blog links anyway. If you were following me for my German posts, please take a look at de@jlelse.blog. Have a nice day! 😊 ⌘ Read more

Ten Mythical German Beasts Guaranteed to Give You Nightmares
Pretty much every country and culture around the world has a set of creepy mythical beasts as part of their ancient folklore. All over the globe, our ancestors have passed down oral traditions and tall tales about strange things that go “bump” in the night. Just as much as anywhere else on earth, Germany has […]

The post [Ten Mythical German Beasts Guaranteed to Give You Nightmares](https://listverse.com/2024/12/ … ⌘ Read more

Today’s date, 24.12.24 (using the German date format, DD.MM.YY), is special in a quirky mathematical way! Notice how 12 (the month) is exactly half of 24 (the day and the year). This symmetry adds an extra layer of charm to an already magical time of the year. It’s a rare alignment that makes this Christmas Eve uniquely memorable. ⌘ Read more

It seems like every app is offering a “Spotify Wrapped”-style yearly review these days. One app where I genuinely find the results fascinating is Träwelldroid, which I use to log my public transport journeys on Träwelling. While the average German drives roughly 10k kilometers per year by car, I traveled approximately 9600 kilometers using public transport, spending a total of 4 days and 8 hours in transit. This is particularly noteworthy since I commuted less frequently this year and didn’t do any interrailing. Sad … ⌘ Read more

My German word of the week: der Einfallsreichtum

Read the Bible in German. t1p.de/d0r0x

Apple Podcasts App Rolling Out Transcriptions in These 8 Additional Languages Starting Today
Apple has announced that transcriptions in the Apple Podcasts app will be available in eight additional languages starting today, according to Dutch website iCulture.nl. The transcripts were previously only available for podcasts spoken in English, French, German, and Spanish since the feature [launched as part of iOS 17.4](https://www.mac … ⌘ Read more

Lowlands bike tour
On Thursday, I made another bike tour. Not in the low mountains, but in the south of the North German Plain. With more distance compared to the last time, I had way less incline and that makes a big difference. ⌘ Read more

The German indie sci-fi movie “Das letzte Land” was an interesting watch.

Actually funny that Germans wish each other a good slide into the new year every year, as if the rest of the year is too high a target to grasp within that wish.

One of these tricky things of the German language I haven’t really gotten the hang of is the difference between: “Ich weiss.” and “Ich weiß.”

There is a lot of Black Friday promotion happening in Germany these days - I wonder however how many Germans really know where it comes from? Happy Thanksgiving to whoever is celebrating today - as it is one of the few US / Canadian festive days where families - really - try to enjoy their time together.

I quickly played with OpenAI’s new Text-To-Speech model to check if it’s an alternative to Google’s API. And wow! English is fantastic and even German is not bad. Just some syllables in German have a weird English accent. But even then, it’s still good. But sadly, it’s also a bit costly. Let’s wait a few months until it gets cheaper and better, and you can enjoy my blog’s “Read aloud” feature even more. 😉 ⌘ Read more

Good german news: gopher://taz. de

No hello
Thanks to Tim Hårek Andreassen, I finally have a link I can send my coworkers whenever they send me a “Hi”, “Do you have some time?”, “Can I call you?” instead of asking their question right away or even just mentioning the topic. And there’s also a German version, great! ⌘ Read more

Yes, I still keep some old domains to redirect to sections of this blog: appydroid.eu to redirect to the app and smartphone related section and ein-geek.de to redirect to the German part of my blog. Even though I merged them about four years ago. 😄 ⌘ Read more

**RT by @mind_booster: 4/8 Joachim Türk of the German Child Protection Association, said that #ChatControl is “a deep intrusion into the fundamental right of freedom of communication” also of children.

🚨No one can be protected by making the internet less secure. Read more at https://stopscanningme.eu/en/**
4/8 Joachim Türk of the German Child Protection Association, said that #ChatControl is “a deep intrusion into the fundamental right of freedom of communication” also of … ⌘ Read more

How I archive my favorite TV show to get rid of Amazon Prime
I’m a fan of the German TV series “Notruf Hafenkante”, which is shown on the public broadcaster ZDF and is also available on their website. New episodes are released weekly, and older episodes are also made available on a regular basis. After a few months, however, they are no longer available for free. At the moment I have to buy an extra subscription for a Prime Video Channel to be able to watch all the old episodes. But that makes me dependent on Amazon, and I d … ⌘ Read more

And 50% of the people in the USA have german blood.

We Germans are up to 50% christians and not anymore running around with our sax to kill the romans, thanks to the christian kelts from Ireland and Scotland and the christian anglosaxons from England like St. Bonifatius.

Achtung! The Germans have invaded! At least they seem a bit nicer, even if they type like bots.

German News at gopher://taz.de

If you like to learn good german, read the Bible at gopher://sdf.org/1/users/scn/Bibel

Forgejo
A few weeks ago, it came to light that Gitea has been owned by a for-profit Gitea Ltd. for several months. The lack of transparency has disturbed the trust of many contributors and users. That’s why Codeberg (a German based non-profit association - disclaimer: I am a member of the association) has now started a soft fork: Forgejo. ⌘ Read more

DeepL Write
I’m a big fan of DeepL for translations. Before trying to write more blog posts directly in English to improve my skills, I wrote many blog posts in German and then translated them. The texts were probably better than my non-native English. ⌘ Read more