Es ist lächerlich, wie die Linkspartei sich von einer einzigen Person zur Geisel machen lässt. Mach endlich Schluss, dann kann die Linke ja im nächsten Jahr anfangen, Politik zu machen.

Something that I mentioned to a Ukrainian colleague who asked for my take as someone who is coming from Cyprus is also the effect of time on a conflict.

A politician can make passionate speeches about how faits accomplis will never be accepted and that justice cannot be anything other but the return to the previous condition and so on, but at the end of the day most Greek Cypriots understand that almost a century later, you cannot start kicking people out of the houses they lived for three generations without becoming the bad guy, even if the grandfather stole that house in the aftermath of an illegal war. You can't punish the grandchild for the sins of the grandfather, you need to find a way to work with them.

So, for Ukraine, the moral of the story is that if it becomes a frozen conflict, every next attempt to settle it will require more compromises on humanitarian grounds. And so far, I think they get it, since they do not consider a ceasefire. But if they end up having to agree to a ceasefire, they should be very suspicious of politicians who tell them at there's no need to rush to pursue a settlement because "in the future we can negotiate something better". With every passing decade, fewer and fewer aspects will be up for negotiation at all.

How is it breaking new legal ground, if toll roads already exist and are legal and overnight stay tax (aka tourist tax) is too?

„Mir steht es als Politikerin nicht zu, zu urteilen: Diese Autos stehen hier zu viel im Straßenraum herum“

Trotzdem bist du die Verkehrssenatorin. Wer keine Lust auf den Job hat, kann kündigen.

One can hope that the store operators will also be heavily fined for their apparent failure to protect their customers' information from infosec threats. Show them teeth, GDPR.

Not to mention that

a) going under the plaintiff's outer clothing very clearly moves the onus of demonstrating that it was accidental back on the accused's side, because no reasonable third-party can accept that you can accidentally slip and fall into someone's pants

and

b) the accused admitted that the action was intentionally non-consensual, but their defence was that the motive was non-malicious

Even before we look at the duration, there are other factors that make the case way more clear-cut than this judge thinks it is.

I'm not sure how a personal budget app can help you keep track of a Heizkostenverteiler/heating cost allocator. There's many unknowns during the operation time and even the landlord is given a year to crunch the numbers before they bill the tenants.

What is progress is that people on district heating now get their kWh consumption readings every few months.

It's an exceptionally bad idea to get the state involved in picking which interpretations of a religion are going to be defended.

Cyprus pretty much has this kind of law, and the Chruch loves tormenting even dissenting Christian theologians or prominent people of faith who disagree with the Church with it, let alone critics who aren't part of the religion at all.

Extensive summary also here

First, I need to confirm if it's true or just a television trope.

Do North Americans really keep their shoes on while lounging on their beds, or is it something directors do for whatever technical reason?

If true, then I can't get over it - and I come from a outside-shoes-indoors culture.

Gut. Je schneller die Partei spaltet, desto besser. Derzeit Die Linke ist nicht in der Lage, eine effektive Opposition zu sein, wenn sie innerlich so tief uneins ist.

The article is written in such an inflammatory way that I don't think there's anything valuable to take out of it.

Let's not overstate Duolingo's effectiveness for language learning.

The technological challenge to adopting a self-taught language learning method into an app is rather small. You just need the content. Either you develop the course under a Free Culture license, or you purchase the rights for an existing method and you port it. Plus maybe some volunteers to handle user-interaction.

A good example is the VHS Lernportal which implements three levels of German class in a way that actually has some pedagogical merit. It's killer-feature is nothing technological, but that they have some teachers in the backoffice that will read your occasional text-production exercises and offer corrections (no, language tool wouldn't be able to replace humans in that case, because language tool doesn't know what you are trying to say and therefore gives you multiple guesses but no way to know which one you actually need).

The cyberpunk future is here

The term "boring dystopia" is a very apt description.

Cost or supply are one thing, but Germany definitely has strong tenancy rights.

Cyprus likes to pride itself as having strong tenancy rights too, but it's not even half of what I enjoy in Germany. I didn't even have to get permission to hang a picture on the wall.

Netherlands made such a mess out of their higher education system, so they might as well do it.

They basically tried to set up a system where universities were financially incentivised to bring as many third-country national students in as possible, milk them with tuition fees, but not give a damn about where those people are going to live.

They could remove the incentive on the side of the university admin, but they aren't, for whatever reason. So the government is instead trying to raise the bar for the prospective students, which is just a roundabout way to achieve the same policy.

Germany: shock

Cyprus: anger

None had any discourse around what the PISA scores measure and if there's any problematisation warranted around the methodology etc. So, in the end, it just serves as a regular outrage topic for the news cycle, but because no-one understands what the scores mean, no-one can do anything about them.

Der entschied für die gesamte EU

Sehr gut zu wissen. Nächstes Jahr hole ich meine Patientenakte von meinem Herkunftsland ab. Für eine Kopie wollen sie 22 Euro.

No, not really. They aren't moot.

Es liegt an einer Mischung aus wenigen Kassensitzen sowie hohen Aufnahmehürden.

Ich helfe grade einem Freund mit dem ganzen Prozess - hier ist meine bestmögliche Strategie.