2025-10-23 14:29:03
‘Quiet as a whisper’: German firm launches campaign after lift was used in Louvre heist https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/23/german-firm-campaign-lift-louvre-heist-bocker
‘Quiet as a whisper’: German firm launches campaign after lift was used in Louvre heist https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/23/german-firm-campaign-lift-louvre-heist-bocker
Auch wir vom Team Troet.Cafe sprechen unsere ungebrochene Solidarität mit @… aus, dessen Leitung momentan von der U.S. Regierung mit Sanktionen angegriffen wird.
Der Präsident des Internationalen Strafgerichtshof erhielt auch eine Sanktion dieser Art, für ihn hieß das: Einreiseverbot, Schließung seiner Bankkonten, Schließu…
Den Atomkrieg üben https://www.german-foreign-policy.com/news/detail/10170
Capitalism is just one witty ad campaign after another until we suddenly find ourselves extinct due to self-inflicted habitat loss. https://mastodon.online/@pluszysta/115428982968522861
I just read RFC 2119 which defines those uppercase words (MUST, SHOULD) that are used in Internet standards. The interesting thing about translating these, at least when translating to German, is this: must = muss (like in "this is a law you must follow") but "must not" ≠ "muss nicht". What is a prohibition in English turns into a lax "you don't need to do this, this doesn't have to happen" in German when both words are translated literally.
Apple may turn off App Tracking Transparency in Europe due to "intense lobbying efforts" in Germany and other countries over alleged anticompetitive conduct (Marcus Mendes/9to5Mac)
https://9to5mac.com/2025/10/23/apple-d
wiki_link_dyn: Wikipedia link dynamics (2011)
Six networks of the evolving hyperlink structure among wikipedia articles, for simple English (en), German (de), Dutch (nl), Polish (pl), Italian (it), French (fr), taken in August 2011. Each edge is timestamped, and an edge (i,j) indicates that article i hyperlinks to j. The edge sign indicates the addition ( 1) or deletion (-1) of that link at the specified time.
This network has 100312 nodes and 1627472 edges.
Tags: Informati…
Odd etymological question: I was interested today in whether the Soviet word for a labour camp, Gulag, was related to the Nazi-era German word for a prisoner of war camp, Stalag. Gulag is apparently a contraction of 'Гла́вное управле́ние исправи́тельно-трудовы́х лагере́й', where the last word transliterates as 'lageréy', while Stalag is a contraction of 'Kriegsgefangenen-Mannschaftsstammlager'. So: what is the root of 'lager', and how does it end up in both Ru…
The article that highlighted a powerful greenhouse gas in Nike shoes in 1992 🌍👟
I recently wrote about high SF6 emissions from a factory in Germany. SF6 is the most powerful known greenhouse gas, and I also dug a bit into its history.
Until 2006, Nike used SF6 in its shoes. I found sources mentioning that this was brought to Nike's attention by a German environmental magazine in 1992. I initially couldn't find out which magazine it was, so I asked my newsletter readers.
RE: https://mastodon.social/@Nietzsxhe/115600337055717985
My disgust knows no boundaries ... this stock market website has used the expression "fear of peace" - regarding losses for German weapons dealers should the Russia-Ukraine war end ... prematurely? - already for the second time: https://www.boerse-express.com/news/articles/hensoldt-aktie-friedensangst-nur-ein-strohfeuer-788203 and https://www.boerse-express.com/news/articles/rheinmetall-aktie-friedensangst-schockt-anleger-842841
“Openness to technology is not industrial policy” – interview with MAN CEO Alexander Vlaskamp
https://www.electrive.com/2025/10/23/openness-to-technology-is-not-industrial-policy-interviw-with-man-ceo-alexander-vl…
Heute feiert unser #Partnerverband #DeutschesCompetitiveIntelligenceForum (#dcif) sein 20-jähriges Bestehen – zwei Jahrzehnte voller Wissen, Austausch, Engagement…
"German City Wins European Green Capital Title With Bold Environmental Vision"
#Germany #Environment
https://hap…
Markus Frohnmaier was among some 20 state, federal and EU lawmakers from the far-right Alternative for Germany party to attend the annual black-tie gala hosted by the New York Young Republican Club.
Buoyed by the new U.S. security strategy that praises Europe's far-right parties,
the senior German lawmaker called for an alliance between U.S. and German nationalist parties
#FunFact about Whitehorse - Germans love the town. Germans are the 2nd largest group of tourists, after the U.S., to visit the Yukon capital. There are German speaking tours and excursions and, during peak travel periods, direct tour flights from Frankfurt to Whitehorse.
#Tourism #Whitehorse
https://www.rubyrange.com/yukons-charisma-the-german-connection/
🔊 #NowPlaying on #BBCRadio3:
#ThroughTheNight
- Kent Nagano conducts works by Ustvolskaja, Mozart and Beethoven
The German Symphony Orchestra, Berlin performs Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, Mozart's Piano Concerto no 23 and Galina Ustvolskaya's Composition no 1 for piccolo, tuba and piano.
Relisten now 👇
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002mcmb
Last weekend, Yale University had a “viral German-style pudding event” where students gathered to eat pudding with a fork
https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2025/10/09/viral-german-style-pudding-event-set-for-saturday-w…
Redaktionspause https://www.german-foreign-policy.com/news/detail/10247
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/18/german-far-right-setting-agenda-as-opponents-amplify-its-ideas-study-finds
Now that proper researchers say what we've been repeating for at least a decade, wi…
I recently researched the etymology of two interesting German words:
- "nonchalant" (informal, relaxed, casual, carefree, easy-going): I found that interesting because it's obviously a negation and I never read the non-negated form "chalant". Turns out that the non-negated form goes back to latin "calēre" (warm, to be hot, to be alarmed, to be fired up)
- "verschollen" (lost, missing, nothing has been known about the whereabouts of sth. or sb. for a long time). I found it weird because I couldn't make any sense of "schollen". This might be related to "verschallen" (stop making noise) and might go back to old high German "skellan" (which is also related to German "Schelle", a small bell). So, "verschollen" can be seen as a euphemistic expression because stop making noise is used to refer to being lost (and maybe dead).
#etymology #linguistics #German
wiki_link_dyn: Wikipedia link dynamics (2011)
Six networks of the evolving hyperlink structure among wikipedia articles, for simple English (en), German (de), Dutch (nl), Polish (pl), Italian (it), French (fr), taken in August 2011. Each edge is timestamped, and an edge (i,j) indicates that article i hyperlinks to j. The edge sign indicates the addition ( 1) or deletion (-1) of that link at the specified time.
This network has 100312 nodes and 1627472 edges.
Tags: Informati…
Dutch online grocery store Picnic raised €430M from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Trust and others, after raising €355M in January 2024 (John Reynolds/Tech.eu)
https://tech.eu/2025/11/21/dutch-online-grocery-store-picnic-raises-430m/
Accidentally misgendered an Austrian yesterday by asking him if he was German, oops.
"This tragedy could have been prevented": Russia kills 25 Ukrainian civilians with missile produced with US, German, Dutch parts (VIDEO) - Euromaidan Press
https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/11/19/this-tragedy-could-have-been-prevented-russia-kills-25-ukrainian-civilians-with-missile-produced-with-us-german-dutch-parts/
It's not unusual to run into people who live in Berlin but speak no German. Even when they work in bars, restaurants, at reception desks.
Just came across a person running an event including welcoming participants who replied "Not my preferred language though" when asked whether she speaks German.
Maybe not the best place to be then?
"German far right setting agenda as opponents amplify its ideas, study finds
Normalisation of far-right stances likely to affect success of such parties at ballot boxes across Europe, say researchers"
https://www.theguardian.com/world…
German has a unique problem: the default noun for any job is male. Every effort to include the female or neutral form is fought tooth and nail by conservative parties. So when a mayor was forced to remove the mention of both genders in the statute for firefighters.... he kept just the female form of every job title 😈
"That's not what we meant!" the city council is now crying. "Not every person is female, after all!" they lament without noticing the irony.
…
Merz Says German Troops Could Counter Russian Attacks in Ukraine (Arne Delfs/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-17/merz-says-german-troops-could-counter-russian-attacks-in-ukraine
http://www.memeorandum.com/251217/p13#a251217p13
We just had so much fun at home reading the most recent and some older german"#Jugendwort des Jahres" (words of the youth) - sorry, article in german:
German chancellor warns Putin won’t stop at Ukraine, urges united European response: https://benborges.xyz/2025/12/14/german-chancellor-warns-putin-wont.html
German parliamentarian urges officials to investigate Hungary for spyware abuse https://therecord.media/german-parliament-hungary-spyware
Pretty useful summary of European train delays in 2025. Grim reading for German trains, but chuu chuu looks like useful for finding more reliable routes https://chuuchuu.com/2025wrapped
ChatGPT violated copyright laws, German court rules.
Are we surprised?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/nov/11/chatgpt-violated-copyright-laws-german-court-rules
This article is gold!
https://hyperallergic.com/1050197/what-i-wish-i-had-known-about-germany-earlier/
I left Germany in 1997 partially because of quite a few of these criticisms Ai Weiwei raises in this article. Returning (due to Brexit) in …
found the website of a dog-obsessed german couple, then the page where they memorialize their dead dogs
http://www.cmf-dogs.at/index.php/in-memoriam
If you've been wondering how the poltiical situation in DE & across the EU is developing, some new research shows how the normalisation of the far-right . both by parties & the media has enabled their successes across the EU:
«The research highlighted the need for mainstream political parties to carve out their own discourses, said Saldivia Gonzatti, particularly when it came to topics such as migration and integration, rather than constantly trail after the far right»
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/18/german-far-right-setting-agenda-as-opponents-amplify-its-ideas-study-finds
Von der Ost- an die Nordflanke https://www.german-foreign-policy.com/news/detail/10168
ProSiebenSat.1 appoints MFE-MediaForEurope CFO Marco Giordani as its new CEO, succeeding Bert Habets, as MFE integrates the German TV group into its business (Nick Vivarelli/Variety)
https://variety.com/2025/tv/global/prosiebensat-sha…
@… you should check out #7IdeenUm7 where @… posts a lot of pirate ideas. It's all in german language though
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Cybersecurity news is not slowing down ahead of the holidays, so don't miss today's Metacurity for the critical infosec developments you should know, including
--Russia switches up tactics in cyberattacks on energy companies, Amazon,
--ShinyHunters stole search and watch history of PornHub's premium members,
--Contributor to DraftKings breach and data theft pleads guilty,
--Email outage at German Bundestag was not a cyberattack but doubts linger,
--Ha…
I'm running a German-speaking Mastodon instance with half-open registration. So when I receive an account application in English, it's almost always from a bot or click-worker/slave trying to create sleeper accounts for use in spam campaigns. Here is a rather disingenious, very generic application that came in today:
I would like to register on this site to explore its features, connect with the community, and contribute valuable insights. I’m genuinely interested in engagi…
"Lottery before peer review is associated with increased female representation and reduced estimated economic cost in a German funding line" https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-65660-9
[via @…
"A US Army website for its bases in Bavaria, Germany published a list of food banks in the area that could help soldiers and staff as part of its “Shutdown Guidance,” the subtext being that soldiers and base employees might need to obtain free food from German government services during the government shutdown."
30 years ago... wouldn't it be nostalgic to play Commodore 64 games on your PC, asks this German article from PC Player 12/1995.
I love meta-retrocomputing.
#retrocomputing
« Des ponctions sur les richesses » https://www.german-foreign-policy.com/news/detail/10164
De Nederlandse overheid zou van Schleswig-Holstein kunnen leren.
https://itsfoss.com/news/german-state-ditch-microsoft/
Amazing.
> US Army Tells Soldiers to Go to German Food Bank, Then Deletes It
https://www.404media.co/army-tells-soldiers-to-go-to-german-food-bank-then-deletes-it/
Wir freuen uns auch ganz besonders auf möglichst viele Mitglieder der German Mascots am Samstag hier in Dresden beim #AmericanFootball Endspiel der #ErimaGFL - #royals vs
I think I've found my favourite german hosting company, a vps for €1/m a .nl domain for €7/y
#vps
18 October is an auspicious day to strike against authoritarianism
#nokings #nofacists
@…
@…
Interesting , They Droned Back.
Young journalists expose Russian-linked vessels circling off the Dutch and German coast
#drones #germany #netherlands
Folgen der Hochrüstung https://www.german-foreign-policy.com/news/detail/10165
Online Lecture Series “Interdisciplinary Thanatology” (German) https://networks.h-net.org/group/announcements/20131233/online-lecture-series-interdisciplinary-thanatology-german
Interesting documentary about the 1960s TV show #TimeTunnel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upqYnU5kJWo - I was blown away by it as a child when it ran on German TV in the 1970s ...
German defense giant Rheinmetall to supply Ukraine with Skyranger 35 air-defense systems: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/10/german-defense-giant-rheinmetall-to.html
wiki_link_dyn: Wikipedia link dynamics (2011)
Six networks of the evolving hyperlink structure among wikipedia articles, for simple English (en), German (de), Dutch (nl), Polish (pl), Italian (it), French (fr), taken in August 2011. Each edge is timestamped, and an edge (i,j) indicates that article i hyperlinks to j. The edge sign indicates the addition ( 1) or deletion (-1) of that link at the specified time.
This network has 100312 nodes and 1627472 edges.
Tags: Informati…
Some German car enthusiasts no longer want to go along with the sedate, conservative, middle-aged male German taste for a dark grey diesel car.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRPZdKLAYxc
"German startup installs industrial heat pump producing 139 C steam"
#Germany #HeatPumps #Energy
German extremist arrested over operating alleged darknet assassination marketplace https://therecord.media/german-extremist-arrested-darknet-assassination-market
Rüstungsmilliarden, Sabotage und Meinungsfreiheit https://www.german-foreign-policy.com/news/detail/10246
By chance I've just discovered my 2021 keynote at the GNDCon 2.0 (not as usual at the German National Library in Frankfurt, but online due to COVID19) entitled "Die Welt ist klein und man trifft sich immer zweimal..." (It's a small world and you always meet twice...)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkj1GxoLT9g
🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on BBCRadio3's #EssentialClassics
Astor Piazzolla, Ksenija Sidorova, North German Radio Symphony Orchestra & Thomas Henglebrock:
🎵 Bandoneon Concerto 'Aconcagua': II - moderato
#AstorPiazzolla
https://open.spotify.com/track/2gPQCmQSyBAo6iHeQEywSY
German finance minister 'sure' that EU will find more ways to use Russia's frozen assets: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/10/german-finance-minister-sure-that.html
Und hier wieder unser kleiner #Kulturtip zum Wochenende:
Lieben Sie #Jazz? Eben, wir auch.
#3sat übernimmt eine Zeitreise in die Geschichte des deutschen Jazz - „
Michaela (Michi) Benthaus after her suborbital flight - the other German on board, Hans Königsmann, had assisted her egress. #NewShepard
Love someone like Germany loves genocide.
https://www.bundeswirtschaftsministerium.de/Redaktion/DE/Pressemitteilungen/2025/09/202…
The majority of Americans object to Donald Trump’s politicization of justice,
his militarization of ICE,
and his usurpation of congressional power.
Eventually some of those presidential supporters and enablers might,
like Jäger, the East-German border guard, be persuaded to side with the majority
and help bring this assault on the rule of law to an end.
The people in the White House know this too,
and they reacted accordingly.
Trump, the suc…
A Berlin court rules that Google must pay €465M and €107M to German price comparison sites Idealo and Producto, in damages for market abuse; Google will appeal (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/g
"Supermarket EV chargers in Berlin could improve efficiency by over 250%"
#Berlin #EV #ElectricVehicles
wiki_talk: Wikipedia talk networks
Interactions among users of 10 language-specific Wikipedias: Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Nodes are registered wiki editors, and an edge represents a user i having written a message on user j's talk page. Edges are timestamped. The precise dates of the snapshots are uncertain.
This network has 103068 nodes and 312837 edges.
Tags: Social, Communication, Unweighted, Multigrap…
Die Tribute von Big Agro https://www.german-foreign-policy.com/news/detail/10162
Very interesting: German energy regulator @… is contemplating granular (locational, 15-minute basis) dynamic network fees. Prices can work both ways, to guide charging & discharging e.g. from batteries (first target group).
„Wages not Weapons“ https://www.german-foreign-policy.com/news/detail/10243
German airlines call to shoot down drones threatening airports: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/11/german-airlines-call-to-shoot.html
Vom Drohnen- zum Weltraumkrieg https://www.german-foreign-policy.com/news/detail/10160
Russian drone strikes German newspaper Die Welt team in eastern Ukraine, 3 wounded: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/28/russian-drone-strikes-german-newspaper.html
Rezension: Alternative Defence Review https://www.german-foreign-policy.com/news/detail/10245
VW plans to end vehicle production at its Dresden plant, which opened in 2001, and convert it into a research hub focused on AI, robotics, and chip design (Gregory Schmidt/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/16/business/volkswagen-dresden-factor…
Auf dem Weg in den Krieg https://www.german-foreign-policy.com/news/detail/10241
Auf dem Weg zur Wehrpflicht https://www.german-foreign-policy.com/news/detail/10158
Zwischen den USA, Russland und China https://www.german-foreign-policy.com/news/detail/10239
Der Kampf um Nexperia https://www.german-foreign-policy.com/news/detail/10157
„Eine neue Ära der Führung“ https://www.german-foreign-policy.com/news/detail/10238
Kabul im Fokus https://www.german-foreign-policy.com/news/detail/10156
Der Notstandsparagraph der EU https://www.german-foreign-policy.com/news/detail/10236
Der Spannungsfall https://www.german-foreign-policy.com/news/detail/10198
Chinas neue Exportkontrollen https://www.german-foreign-policy.com/news/detail/10153
Der Umsturznobelpreis https://www.german-foreign-policy.com/news/detail/10151
Neuer EU-Geheimdienst in Planung https://www.german-foreign-policy.com/news/detail/10197