German Of The Day: Hubraum

That means engine displacement or capacity. Or horsepower, if you prefer. You know, like Fridays for Horsepower?

Hubraum

The German Motorists Who Oppose Greta Thunberg – Motorists in Germany are banding together to oppose climate activists’ calls to limit the use of cars. Politicians are taking them seriously because, unlike the Fridays for Future movement and its leader Greta Thunberg, most members of the Fridays for Horsepower group can vote.

“Fridays for Horsepower is a logical and reasonable reaction to the ideological madness of the environmental activists.”

“Nothing Gold Can Stay”

It can’t even stay parked in Germany.

Gold

Damn. A car like this doesn’t honk. It blings.

A golden car was pulled over by police on Sunday as it was “too bright.” Police were concerned that the car would dazzle other drivers in the western German city of Düsseldorf.

A police spokesman said the potentially dangerous “dazzling effect” was why the car had been pulled over.

A Walk Down Memory Lane

Or Stalinallee, if your prefer.

Egon Krenz

Inexplicably, East Germany’s last communist boss thinks that the night the Berlin Wall came down (almost thirty years ago) “was the worst night of my life.

Happily for him, it is also something that he “wouldn’t want to experience ever again” because, well, he won’t.

Germany Has Some Of The Strictest Gun Control Laws In The World

And they are designed to keep the crazy criminal types here from harming the unarmed innocents around them.

Halle

Streaming live from a camera mounted on his helmet, a gunman pushed on the doors of a synagogue, fired several shots at a lock on the door, stuck an explosive in a door jam and lit it.

But he couldn’t get in.

The fact that the door held likely spared the lives of the dozens of people inside the synagogue on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.

Police say the gunman killed two people Wednesday in the eastern German town of Halle — one directly outside the synagogue, and one at a nearby kebab shop. Police have arrested the suspected gunman.

Let’s Pretend It’s Not

Let’s pretend it’s not what everyone else immediately knows it is. Until we’re forced to admit what it is a few days later, officially. It’s some bizarre new game of hide and seek government officials are playing all across Europe these days.

Terror

Similar to the way French officials behaved after last week’s knifing “incident” in Paris, German officials too now bend over backwards seeking any explanation they can find to explain Monday’s truck “incident” in Limburg – other than the most obvious one. Why is it so hard to admit that you have just witnessed yet another terror attack from someone Angela Merkel inexplicably invited to the country in 2015? Could it be that these authorities have a guilty conscience? Better late than never, I guess.

German authorities are investigating a man who drove a stolen lorry into a line of cars in Limburg in the western state of Hesse, injuring eight people.

The 32-year-old had pulled the driver of the vehicle from his cabin at a red light before using the lorry to plough into eight cars waiting at a light near the town’s central railway station at about 5.20pm (1620 BST) on Monday.

The man, a Syrian national named as Omar AI by the national broadcaster ARD, was arrested at the scene.

“My thoughts are with the injured victims of the accident and their families.”

Berlin’s Extinction Rebellion Already Extinct After About Forty Minutes

They were just dying to die-in, I guess.

Extinction

Literally dozens of members of the interplanetary environmentalist movement Extinction Rebellion beamed down to Berlin today to “swarm public squares only to collapse to the ground, symbolizing the death humanity faces if politicians don’t act against climate change” before being beamed back up to the mother ship again (or moth-er ship for that guy up there, maybe). Their message: If nobody “fixes” the climate pronto-like like yesterday already we may come back again before we all die anyway. And you don’t want that.

We’re showing that it’s not just about schoolchildren taking to the streets,” said Jojo, 29, a climate activist who ditched work to attend today’s rally.

Brewing Has Always Been Big In Germany

An Industrial Crisis Is Brewing in Germany – The country’s position as the “engine of Europe” is under genuine threat.

Germany’s industrial sector contributes more than one-fifth of GDP and is usually a huge asset. Right now this export engine is pulling the economy down. Signs of distress are everywhere. German manufacturing activity is at a decade low, according to IHS Markit’s purchasing manager’s index. The Ifo Institute estimates that more than 5% of manufacturing companies have cut working hours and about 12% expect to do so during the next three months. German machinery orders declined 9% in the first six months of the year, according to the VDMA association, which represents the country’s engineers. In chemicals and pharmaceuticals, domestic production fell 6.5% in the first half of the year, while domestic car output has fallen 12% this year. Auto exports have dropped 14%.

It’s Called Paranoia

Why is Germany a blank spot on Google’s Street View? See above.

Paranoia

There are good historical reasons why Germans are suspicious of surveillance — but is Google as bad as Gestapo or Stasi?

It’s to do with Germans’ curious sense of privacy: they’d rather flaunt their private parts than their personal data…

While public nudity is a big no-no in the United States for example, Germany has a long tradition with what is known as FKK – short for Freikörperkultur, or “Free Body Culture.” Certain beaches and areas of city parks are dedicated to nude sunbathing, and even Nacktwanderung (“nude rambling”) is a thing.

On the other hand, Germans are extremely possessive of their personal data — and are shocked by the readiness with which Americans (and others) share their names, addresses, friends’ lists, and purchase histories online.

According to research presented in the Harvard Business Review, the average German is willing to pay as much as $184 to protect their personal health data. For the average Brit, the privacy of that information is only worth $59. For Americans and Chinese, that value declines to single-digit figures.

Save Planet Earth’s Climate?

Hell yes! Count me in.

Climate 1

Climate 2

Clean up my own neighborhood? Nah, I think I’ll pass on that one.

A “Fridays for Future” demonstration will get 40,000 German environmental activists out on the street in no time. A call to clean up the local neighborhood on “World Cleanup Day” might get about 100 to 150 out of bed (here Frankfurt).

These World Cleanup Folks clearly don’t get the deal. Abstract heroics is were the money is – I mean, people are.

Nur rund 1000 kamen zum großen Aufräumen, sammelten vier Tonnen Müll. Am Main, in Sichtweite des Camps der „Fridays for Future“-Macher, verschlug es gerade mal 150 Freiwillige.