It's horrendus in Germany trying to cancel a mobile phone subscription, internet service, gym membership or the likes. You have to jump through hoops like sending a registered physical letter, 3 months before the end of the service period for it to be considered a valid cancellation ("Kündigung"). Without this, you're forced into paying for another year.
EU regulation is badly needed to cut out this anti-consumer nonsense.
This is no longer true, it is limited to a one month period (after a possible 2 year minimum contract to offer "special discounts") in advance and every contract can be cancelled online.
I’m not sure if there’s a been a study done, but it’s interesting to see some potential solutions to the intermittency problem and how close they’d get the world to a completely green grid.
Building out a “supergrid”, like what’s already happening across Europe. Balance intermittent supply across a wide geographical area. There’s always wind blowing somewhere, Iceland has massive, 24/7 geothermal that’s not yet connected to mainland Europe, Southern Europe has huge solar potential, and so on. The UK has a project to get 8% of its electric demand from a massive solar/wind/battery project built in Morocco linked via undersea cable to the UK.
Finally, batteries. Lifepo4 batteries are constantly dropping in price. We haven’t seen a huge deployment of Chinese sodium ion batteries for homes yet, but it’s coming.
And that’s not touching on some of the other possible solutions.
But I heard it gets really hot inside, which sucks if you have to study there. In my opinion, functionality should always be prioritized higher than aesthetics.
I don't really hate contemporary architecture, because postmodern architecture at least has some variety and style to it. Modernism (especially but not limited to Brutalism) is just soulless, totalitarian, oppressive, and depressing.
It's also ironic for the author to claim that a style which peaked 100-130 years after the beginning of the Industrial Revolution is somehow the fault of global capitalism, as if global capitalism hadn't been a thing for 100+ years by the 1950s.
And of course even though the author is claiming that the left has flaws in their approach to architecture, they still have to make the obligatory supplication about the right's alleged "ulterior motives."
For all the severe flaws in Modernist architecture, this article seems a bit of a hash, honestly. The author seems trapped inside their own ideological bubble.
Edit:
> It should be obvious to anyone that skyscrapers should be abolished. After all, they embody nearly every bad tendency in contemporary architecture: they are not part of nature, they are monolithic, they are boring, they have no intricacy, and they have no democracy. Besides, there is plenty of space left on earth to spread out horizontally; the only reasons to spread vertically are phallic and Freudian.
> the only reasons to spread vertically are phallic and Freudian.
Lol. I agree.
OTOH... An over the top, ideological take on art is kind of traditional in architecture. I could easily imagine a reincarnated Ayn Rand argueing for skyscrapers for these exact reasons. Phalic inspiration representing the taming of nature and challenge to God.
In 2024, a slapfight between Andy Warhol and a local dress designer about the colour orange... That was the kind of conflict avante garde artists had to have so the rest of us could benefit from a stream of new artistic ideas. A sacrifice.
These days... everyone gets dragged in.
I kind of like brutalism, personally. It took some bad turns, but I'm hoping for a comeback. Maybe we should do paint this time though.
Skyscrapers are phallic because of the engineering constraints of stacking floors upon one another. Airplanes and missiles are phallic because of the engineering constraints of rocketry and aerodynamics. Guns are phallic because of the engineering constraints of using gunpowder to propel a small metal bullet.
For crying out loud, form follows function and sometimes a cigar is just a freaking cigar.
Because claiming to care about climate change is greenwashing bullshit that sounds good in PR statements and self important fart smelling events that CEOs attend, but in the end is a box-ticking exercise.
No one measures the environmental impact of unnecessarily forcing office workers to the office, the press doesn’t ask corporate leaders about their hypocrisy, so leaders just force workers back the consequences be damned.
In Germany you can pay by card basically anywhere - with the phone or watch as well in most/many shops as far as I know. Not sure all this criticism makes sense (no I am not German).
There are also historical reasons why Germans are concerned about the possibility of being tracked, which apparently not everyone sees the dangers of.
> In Germany you can pay by card basically anywhere - with the phone or watch as well in most/many shops as far as I know.
This simply isn't true, outside of large chains or supermarkets. Many smaller businesses like pubs, "kiosks", barbers, non-chain restaurants, and so on, are cash only.
It's a combination of tax avoidance and trying to avoid the insane level of paperwork needed for bascically every aspect of life, but especially if you have a business, no matter how small.
> This simply isn't true, outside of large chains or supermarkets. Many smaller businesses like pubs, "kiosks", barbers, non-chain restaurants, and so on, are cash only.
I have a different experience. I pay by card even for < 1 eur things almost everywhere (from time to time): sometimes I just have no cash with me anymore and I am totally ok. This has changed dramatically in the last 10 years, and I wish that the mainstream theme was different than "wooooow in Germany they still accept cash-only". Until now I only experienced this "cash-only" limitation in very few places.
My recommendation, though, is to always have some cash on you, especially if you don't know where you're going. But I would do the same in any other country in the world.
Many smaller businesses like 'kiosks' acting as sort of post office for all the parcel services now, where you can get or send your packages(except letters). Meaning they have the infrastructure for cashless anyways. Like non-chain restaurants and so on, also do.
Source: lived in Germany, at the outskirts of a large metro area, still visiting every few weeks to months into my own appartment, which I didn't abandon.
Last spring, I stopped at a nice brunch place in central Hamburg. The waitress spoke English and asked where we were from, etc. Usual touristy stuff.
When it was time to pay, we were surprised to hear only local German cards were accepted. I couldn’t use Visa, Mastercard, anything. It never occurred to them to warn us. I had to walk around for 25 minutes on the hunt for an ATM to pay my due.
What was a nice lazy Sunday morning turned into an annoying time travel back into the early 90s.
This I have to say can be more common. Not entirely sure what the reason can be, but some places do not accept Visa/CC but only the EC card (which is essentially the local debit card).
Meanwhile, more and more places accept NFC payment.
but we germans also severe backwards-oriented to begin with. all kinds of esoteric garbage in daily life is shared and believed in, most things of the modern world is looked at with mistrust, and so on.
the bigger/international cities like hamburg or berlin are a stark contrast however, drive like 50 miles outside of them and not much has changed during the last 100 years, except for buildings/infrastructure in general.
I carry like 20€ with me at all times for when I have to deal with these situations in an emergency, but turns out I increasingly don't need to replenish this cash in my wallet for months.
When I visit Germany, I am astounded at how many of my German coworkers dislike fresh air in the office. A beautiful 25c sunny day with a nice breeze, and I opened the window near my desk. Within five minutes, someone has closed it and given me a dirty look (no, the air conditioning is not on.)
yeah, many people here actually believe that you get sick when you're in an air stream. Like between two open windows, or within an AC. But then go home and work in their windy garden for hours.
* drafts as you mentioned will get you a stiff neck (and absolutely it's not your crappy pillows)
* going outside with wet hair
* not wearing scarf, hat and gloves outside whenever there's slightest weather imperfection
* not wearing socks and slippers indoors, despite being heated to comfy 22.5C
* air conditioning, heat pumps, electric heating or any sort of fan blowing directly at you
* getting your feet cold and wet
* just merely breathing cold air indoors
bonus:
* treating feverish infant by wrapping them in additional layers and bedsheets
This is shared across most intellectuals. Likely more embedded than some of the human rights we cherish in west. My family screamed, nearly disowned and accused me of "killing" my kids because of above. Even many in medical field believe this, tho actual doctors will say it's horseshit when pushed. And, no, the actual words from doctors mouth has never changed their view either.
don't get me started on this bullshit :-) a shitton of people genuinly believe in the "magic" here to the point its heresy pointing it out in public at times.
That’s true, same with England, but the Scandinavian countries (and others around them) are essentially cashless now. I’ve lived in Sweden for three months and yet to see a single note (literally!).
Yeah, I'm in Sweden. Don't know when I last used cash (well, apart from when I was in Berlin).
I have cash in my wallet and some more laying around in case there'd be a failure in the payment systems, but that hasn't happened in years.
Pay cash at a restaurant in Germany and ask for a receipt (I have an expense report to fill out) and they look at you like you're a dead rat in the street.
Ask for a receipt at the hotel, and you better make sure you ask for an "non-German" receipt, otherwise you get a six page dossier.
BNB is a token issued by Binance to faciliate trading on their platform. If it dropped in value, it could indicate a lack of confidence in the platform itself (it's price could also be manipulated of course).
"BNB can be used to pay for fees when trading on Binance, and usually at a discounted rate. Due to the primary utility, BNB has seen massive growth in interest throughout the years . Several rounds of token burn events have appreciated BNB price and pushed it up as one of the top-10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization."
A lot of the bureaucracy is a badly disguised jobs program. There would be so many people out of work if there was actual work to reform some of these ossified government services.
The joke about the Merkel government was that if the French state is founded on the concept of 'Liberté, égalité, fraternité', the German state is founded on 'Stabilität, Stabilität, Stabilität' even in the face of badly needed change.
EU regulation is badly needed to cut out this anti-consumer nonsense.