@cdarwin@c.im2026-06-26 18:54:56
Wolfgang Porsche, the Austrian-German automotive magnate,
appears to have abandoned plans to build a private 500-metre tunnel for his cars through the Salzburg hills
after a public uproar over the “tunnel for one”.
In 2020, Porsche bought a storied 17th-century villa on the outskirts of Salzburg for €8.4m (£7.2m),
and last autumn he secured permission from the city authorities for an estimated €10m private access road through the rugged limestone hill.
The 83-ye…
@heiseonline@social.heise.de2026-05-22 06:04:01
@mgorny@social.treehouse.systems2026-05-25 15:18:11
I've finished reading Simon Winder's "#Germania" a while ago, but I've been slacking with the review. This is a book about the history of #Germany, in the wide meaning of word. However, it's not your boring detailed history book. The author takes us on a deeply personal journey across German landscape, across tiny towns and great forests, Schlosses, churches and monuments, and uses that as a context to bring the country's surprisingly interesting history to light. And honestly, it works — it is deeply enjoyable, to the point of making me wonder if one day I should actually move to Germany, get a Bahncard 100 and start exploring myself.
I didn't quote the book here, but if I were to choose one quote that really resonated with me, it would be:
"""
Solitary tourism is something that everybody should indulge in. Of course it is a fraudulent solitude because its enjoyment comes from its limited duration and having a cheerful, only very temporarily abandoned main base area. […] And then, suddenly, I am in Vienna, standing in the shadow of a monstrous, derelict flak tower, and completely alone. The virtue of solitary tourism is its infinite ability to absorb boredom. I often find myself almost crippled with anxiety that the companion or companions on a journey might be finding everything wholly without interest, would rather be eating somewhere else, are secretly angry that we have wound up walking down this street rather than that, are contemptuous of my own interests. Solitary tourism cauterizes all this: if a museum is boring beyond all measure there is no pressure to feign interest, you just leave. I am perfectly happy, in a zoned-out way, to crisscross a town, walking for hours, just for the off-chance something curious might be round the next corner – indeed in the confidence that there will always be something curious (there always is). But for each street, each bar, each folklore museum to be converted into an inter-human negotiation creates an entirely different dynamic.
[…]
Quite possibly the pleasure of this way of life would be much reduced in some other countries, particularly more insistently gregarious places such as Italy. German culture puts a high value on temporary solitude of a stagey kind. Perhaps this is its great gift. In some moods I think there is no need to do anything other than read German writers from the first half of the nineteenth century – a sort of inexhaustible storehouse of attitudes flattering to those who just like sometimes to be left alone. Everyone must have at least a part of them that wants to live in a stairless, doorless tower as a sort of intellectual Rapunzel, setting aside, at least in part, the complicated sexual frisson laid out by such an idea. Germany really is thick with ivy-covered turrets and the promise of solitude (Kepler staring at the planets above Prague, Faust conjuring demons) – the great majority presumably built in the nineteenth century in response to the whole literature devoted to the subject. There is one turret in Lübeck, built onto a city guard tower of just outrageous fakeness, which would do me for life.
"""
(Simon Winder, Germania)
And if you follow me, you have evidence that the part about crisscrossing towns is so true: the best things I've posted here I found by complete accident, especially the murals.
#books #bookstodon
@pixelcode@social.tchncs.de2026-06-24 19:51:07
During the past 5 months, the armed forces have sent questionnaires about the voluntary military service to 300k 18-year-old Germans.
90% of the men (who are required to fill out the form) answered immediately, further 6% after being reminded (the others are facing fines). ¼ of the replying men were initially interested, and ½ of them remained so after being called.
1500 of them were examined for their fitness for service, and 80% passed. ~530 were finally recruited.
🇩🇪
@Techmeme@techhub.social2026-06-10 13:05:59
A German court rules that Google is directly liable for what AI Overviews say after AI Overviews falsely tied two publishers to shady business practices (Matthias Bastian/The Decoder)
https://the-decoder.com/landmark-germa
@Mediagazer@mstdn.social2026-06-10 15:45:47
A German court rules that Google is directly liable for what AI Overviews say after AI Overviews falsely tied two publishers to shady business practices (Matthias Bastian/The Decoder)
https://the-decoder.com/landmark-germa
@BBC3MusicBot@mastodonapp.uk2026-06-25 04:46:36
🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on BBCRadio3's #ThroughTheNight
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart & Anna German:
🎵 Piano Sonata in F major, K 533
#WolfgangAmadeusMozart #AnnaGerman
@floheinstein@chaos.social2026-04-08 02:24:26
"I took the German or Autistic diagnostic. Results: probably autistic. Wittgenstein would have gotten the same result."
Also I'm fucking angry that the test said it would take 2 minutes, when it took me 12!
https://german.millermanschool.com/
@tydalforce@mastodon.world2026-06-10 15:29:04
I expect this is the first of many such rulings across the globe...
https://the-decoder.com/landmark-german-ruling-declares-googles-ai-overviews-are-googles-own-words-and-makes-it-liable-for-false-answ…
@cdarwin@c.im2026-06-18 02:26:39
Republicans in the Georgia State Legislature, facing mounting anger from Black leaders,
scuttled plans to take up redistricting on Wednesday during a special session that had been called expressly to erase U.S. House seats in majority-Black districts.
Gov. Brian Kemp called the session to draw legislative maps before the 2028 election with the aim of creating boundaries more favorable to Republicans.
Georgia was to be the latest Southern state to consider redistricting afte…
