Crowdsourcing - the Soylent Green of Tech: It's People!

Regular readers will know that the blogster is not above exploiting a cheap trope, but some dystopian images are better and more fun than others.

Let's hope the headline of this post is one of them.

Wikipedia has a well written article about the origins or crowdsourcing, including what they call historical examples that "in retrospect" could be called crowdsourcing.  Standard definitions still emphasize the nature of the work as "a type of participative online activity". The blogster, on the other hand, sides with those who consider the internet a tool and a means of communication, hugely important and far reaching, but a tool nonetheless.

The advantage of this is that we can focus on the people engaged in this activity and are less likely to fall for the glossy PR and the paid enthusiasts promoting crowdsourcing.

The difficulties associated with crowdsourcing are well known, and the Wikipedia article describes issues with quality, finding the right contributors, sorting through completed tasks, as well as ethical implications of low pay.

Since crowdsourcing is being used in a wide variety of sectors, results are also tied to a sector, even to specific projects within a sector, making general assessments a foolish undertaking.

Therefore, the blogster limits its* observations to paid online work, the kind of work you would do mainly to make a few extra dollars, and a few of the main issues for the workers.

1. Unrealistic compensation estimates
Not a single one of the piece work compensation projections encountered did prove realistic. They all were too high, even after allowing for a learning curve and adjusting for a "less than perfect" worker. True, sometimes lower productivity is caused by a single factor, such as a website that has a habit of failing, not saving, or the like. But unless fixed, that is what you will live with.
Coming up with realistic hourly compensation based on per task work is not trivial, but the fact that not a single one out of about 20 was anywhere near accurate gave the blogster pause.

If you decide to take per task work, cut the compensation dangled in front of your eyes in half.

2. Communication
That's the aspect which justifies the "It's People!" part. Communication is hard at the best of times, but when it comes to crowdsourcing, it often becomes very painful and costly to the workers.

If you doubt that it is a daunting effort to tell workers what the goals of a project are, to describe each task in a manner that is complete and reduces human error to the minimum, and to do so using language which often accommodates non-native speakers, hey, give it a try.

Just like on social media and in other encounters lacking visual and vocal cues, communication in a crowdsourcing setting can have lots of unintended effects. It is no coincidence that supervising personnel are constantly told to be polite and helpful.

When you write instructions for an online crowdsourcing project, it is wise to look at each step from two distinct angles. The first and obvious one is whether a step or detail wis correct.
The other is less clear: try to understand how a step can fail, how a statement can be misunderstood.

One recent example the blogster saw concerned two online bug testing projects. In the first project, the instructions to the "crowd" of about 45 people said "3 bugs only, no reproductions".

The second project said: "20 bugs, no more than 2 reproductions".

You can see where the fail was, right?

The first number, 3, meant 3 bugs per tester. The second, 20, meant a combined total of 20 bugs for all testers.

Needless to say, the second project saw twice the number of bugs filed, and this despite an intervention by a supervisor when the limit was reached. Of course, you could implement a technical solution for the second case, a maximum limit after which the system locks the project and prevents additional submissions.

But such a technical hard stop did not exist in the system.

It is anybody's guess, how many frustrated participants will not come back for another project like this one.

Coming back to the Soylent Green image, crowdsourcing can feel like the movie. There is an opaque, shadowy power structure insisting everything is fine. People disappear for no apparent reason.

And even if you get on top of the garbage truck, you are not safe.

* Gender neutrality is important to us.

It is 2017, abortion is not legal in Germany, and a doctor is in court for saying she offers the procedure

All three claims in the title of this post are true.

The one that will become patently untrue in a little over a month from now is the first one. Unless the world ends before that.

The other two will continue to be true in 2018.

To the blogster, much of what constitutes the legal system in any of the countries where it* has lived, has elicited more WTF moments than the tweets of a certain president.

"Abortion is not legal in Germany" was one such moment. A few minutes of research showed that the statement is correct. The German penal code is nice enough to have kept the same number for the paragraph that has governed abortion from the times of the newly formed country to this day: paragraph 218. We quote the first part of 218 below under ** and ***.
There are minor differences, from funky spelling in 1982 to a reduction of the maximum sentence from 5 to 3 years, or a fine.
But both versions are clear: a felony it is.

Leaving aside the fact that abortion in the first 12 weeks was legal in East Germany, the basic legal view has been consistent, which leads to the question how German women do get abortions today without the sort of international outcry we see when women in other countries with a felony statute run afoul of the law.

The legal trick is in paragraph 219, which states that no prosecution according to 218 will take place if the pregnant women undergoes specialist consultation and then waits for three days before having the pregnancy terminated. This post does not detail the exact requirements and times, you can look them up elsewhere. Instead, we go to paragraph 219a, which explains the third item of the post title.

"A doctor is in court for saying on her website that she offers the procedure". On 21 November 2017, gynecologist Kristina Haenel from Giessen, Germany, was sentenced to a fine of 6000 Euros for violating § 219a of the penal code, which prohibits "advertising" of abortions. Legal experts have questioned the wide scope of the provision, which basically covers providing any sort of information on terminating a pregnancy outside of the narrow confines of prescribed consultation or medical publications. At first glance, the statute may seem reasonable because it penalizes the activity if it is performed "for financial gain". But courts have held that even doing it at a loss still constitutes "financial gain".

What did the gynecologist do to warrant a felony conviction?
On her website, she lists services offered by her office. Abortion is just a one word bullet point link to an email form where the public can request a flyer.

This outdated provision has been used for decades by self-proclaimed "pro-life" organizations to file reports against individual doctors or organizations.

Mrs. Haenel has indicated that she will fight the conviction in the hope of getting the absurd provision taken up and eliminated by the legislature.

* The blogster does gender neutrality.
**  [1. Januar 1872–8. Juni 1926]  
§ 218.

(1) Eine Schwangere, welche ihre Frucht vorsätzlich abtreibt oder im Mutterleibe tödtet, wird mit Zuchthaus bis zu fünf Jahren bestraft.

***  [16. Juni 1993]
§ 218. 

Schwangerschaftsabbruch.

(1) Wer eine Schwangerschaft abbricht, wird mit Freiheitsstrafe bis zu drei Jahren oder mit Geldstrafe bestraft.

Look ma: virtually no East Germans in the country's elite

November seems to be Germany's "Quick, let's write about East Germany Month" for a couple of great reasons:

One, the Berlin Wall/Iron Curtain came down on 9 November 1989, signalling momentous change in Europe.

Two, 9 November 1989 made it so that the Nazi pogroms of Kristallnacht of 9/10 November 1938 were pushed back in public discourse and that the end of Word War I with the armistice of 11 November 1918 lost even more of what little import it had in Germany.

Just for the sake of completeness, the 11th minute of 11th hour of the 11th month is also the traditional start of the carnival season in large parts of Germany.

Obviously, the opening of the Wall is a convenient date to publish not just the trivial but also the thoughtful about the part of the country that is home to just under 20 percent of its population.

We all know about the crimes of the Stasi, the feared apparatus of state oppression, the doping in sports, the prison industry producing cheap goods for the West. We hear little about the fact that a full one third of businesses in East Germany were privately owned. And even less about the fact that some owners found out they were millionaires because they had hoarded so much inventory in the face of supply shortages.

This became part of the past on 9 November 1989. From thereon out, everything would be wonderful.

Freedom and blooming landscapes would be the future.

Many things happened, and books have been written about that. So, yes, the autobahns in the East are a driver's wet dream, as the blogster has pointed out before. You can tell even today where the border was because, going East, the freeways widen and straighten out.

But this year's main topic goes to the heart of the matter: the almost complete absence of East Germans at the top levels of leadership in Germany more than 25 years after the Wall fell.

This fact has been obscured because Angela Merkel, the country's chancellor for over a decade and going on two decades, grew up in the East. Germany even had a president from the East.

But outside of that, the elite is thoroughly Western, and there is no improvement in sight.
For example, 105 out of 109 department chiefs in the federal government are Westerners.

Sociologists are now accepting the marginalization of the East in the 1990s as a fact, attributing that period largely to the "lack of qualified personnel" in the aftermath of the fall of the Wall and the challenges of reunification.

Today, though, claims the continued marginalization is "self marginalization" misses the point.

Complaining that East Germans don't want to put in the hard work needed to advance into the top levels of power and industry ignores what the complete dissolution of a country does to its inhabitants, it ignores the resilience of power networks once entrenched.

What's left?

The rhetorical question asked by ZEIT whether a quota for East Germans should be established.

Germany's working poor: Almost 1 in 10 Germans cannot pay their bills anymore

In the 'stream of semi consciousness' that is the reporting in German daily news on economic issues, the country's working poor drift in an and out of focus.

Mostly, they remain out.

The frequent claim that the media are giving bad news too much attention does not seem to hold up when it comes to debating the problems of those who work full time and still are over their heads in debt.

The latest short blip that tells us 1 out of 10 German adults cannot pay their bills anymore is only days old. The data are interpreted in somewhat different ways, with the more liberal ZEIT online pointing out that overall increase in the number of indebted households has slowed down.

The conservative WELT, however, sounds the alarm, calling the phenomenon "the erosion of the German middle class" because almost all of the increase over the past year has occurred in what German economists call "the backbone of society", the quasi mythical had working middle.

The main reasons for getting trapped in unmanageable debt are unemployment, family crises (separation, child support), and loans. Unlike in the US, unpaid medical bills are not a cause of major debt.

According to experts, reckless consumption is also not a factor.

Oh, and the numbers are expected to continue to rise, so expect calls to reduce the tax burden on the middle class.

Very soon, the question what to do about rising household debt will be replaced with the usual arguments, for example, blaming poor immigrants for the woes of the German middle class.

Squabbling over what to do with the surplus tax revenue is a much sexier topic than asking why the poor in this country face the same relative tax burden as the wealthy. For those of you who don't know how this is done: indirect taxes, like high sales tax, and other speciality taxes, like taxes on electricity, insurance policies, and a slew of others accomplish this, while giving those who pay high income taxes the opportunity to feel oppressed and exploited.

Trump's Twitter outage - a reminder of social rank and the dreaded loss of control

Every now and then the blogster feels like telling teens that their impression that adults mainly muddle through in life is fundamentally correct.

It is also basically true that human societies have been trying to reduce the muddling through with some degree of success.

That's why we have formal education systems, accreditation, bar and board exams, and similar structures. Yes, the blogster is aware of the fine moral and philosophical underpinnings of schooling and training, but that was apparently not why mandatory schooling was introduced on a large scale in the 1800s.

Sporadically, we are reminded that control can be lost easily, that an unremarkable, lowly individual can press a single key on a computer keyboard with worldwide ramifications.

On 11/2/2017, a Twitter employee did just that. He or she deactivated the account of "realDonaldTrump" for a few minutes.

And the former employee was offered praise, pizza, and drinks.

Ted Lieu‏Verified account @tedlieu 6h6 hours ago

Ted Lieu Retweeted Katie Couric

Dear Twitter employee who shut down Trump's Twitter: You made America feel better for 11 minutes. DM me & I will buy you a Pizza Hut pizza.

He or she was also insulted:

Blake Hounshell‏Verified account @blakehounshell 7h7 hours ago

It is shocking that some random Twitter employee could shut down the president's account. What if they instead had tweeted fake messages?

~Marietta‏ @MDavisbot 14m14 minutes ago

A disgruntled employee took Trump's twitter account down for 11 mins last night. How dare you? #TrumpDown @realDonaldTrump #MAGA

Underneath the praise and the criticism of that person's action lurk our views of the world, of how hierarchies should work, of demanding respect for a thing and the person who "owns" that thing. 

As to "random", no, that employee had the required access rights for the action he or she took. The blogster bets you its* last Susan B. dollar coin that random employees in Twitter's PR department, for example, could not do this.  Which means that the use of random signifies someone unworthy of being allowed anywhere near the sequence of data.

Whether you feel like praising or attacking the former employee, take a step back and ask yourself what your reaction says about you.

And don't forget to tell the adolescents in your life that adults largely muddle through.

* The blogster does gender neutral.

In case you wonder: The author of this shorty has worked in environments characterized by levels of control ranging from "zero" (start-up co-founder) to "yup, there are two safes you need to open in order to get a document, and I have the keys and the combo because the government knows f** all about me".

Nicknames matter - the quiet change from "Rocket Man" to "Little Rocket Man"

We know that words matter, whether spoken, written, or even the unspoken ones.

Words matter so much that humans spend countless hours debating the "correct term" for something physical or abstract. Open any paper on a random page, including the sports section recently, and you find numerous examples. In case an article or opinion piece does not explicitly define or delimit terms and their meanings, you can be sure that the reader comments section will make up for it - unless the comments function is blocked, which in turn is an unspoken statement by the publisher.

For example, did the German governing Christian Democratic Party just agree with its Bavarian appendix Christian Social Union on a ceiling for refugees to be allowed into the country?

Well, they did agree on a recommended maximum number of refugees, allowing the Bavarian hardliners to claim victory while leaving the promise of "no ceiling" made by current and future Chancellor Merkel unbroken.

Some labels are less obviously damaging and require historians or economists to tease out the underlying reality. Take the chippy "gig economy" in all its independent glory and self-determination. As it turns out, pre-industrial work was very much like today's gig economy, and today's auto rickshaw drivers in India work in the same basic gig setup as the Uber or Lyft drivers. Minus the web company that funnels customers to them.

One of the common tools of the word fighter is nicknames and derogatory labels. An older example is the label "death tax" used by American conservatives for the estate tax.

The most in our face labels, very literally when you call an American president the Orange Thing, are nicknames attached to a specific person. All it takes is swapping out one word against another, like for the death tax, or adding a loaded adjective, as was done to stigmatize a candidate as Crooked Hillary. 

The more elaborate version removes the person and highlights one or more traits of the person, for example The Orange Thing. Readers in 2017 will easily recognize the person so labeled. "Thing" is, of course, a derogatory moniker, depersonalizing a human. 

In professions where brawn and heroism are common descriptors, mainly in law enforcement and the military, nicknames associated with a certain level of aggressiveness are a standard of praise. Take the example of James "Mad Dog" Mattis, general and US defense secretary. Mad Dog would probably not be considered praise if given as a nickname to, say, a librarian or a math teacher.

Sometimes, nicknames go wrong.

What happens next is a tribute to the power of nicknames and to the importance of quietly fixing a nickname gone wrong.

That's where Rocket Man comes in.

The nickname Rocket Man for the leader of North Korea burst onto the stage when US President Trump used it in a speech at the United Nations this September.

Rocket Man - the term, not the man - posed several problems in addition to reminding the older folks among us way too much of the Elton John hit (link to the official music video here). Fans of the song lyrics might well have been wondering if the president was doing a triple-meta-slam of Kim Jong Un by alluding to the song line "high as a kite".

To the blogster, the real issue with Rocket Man was that it missed its negativity target. Rocket Man has some positive connotations, and even the context of the speech could not make the positive vibe go away.

Within a week or so, the blunder was fixed: Rocket Man was replaced with Little Rocket Man throughout the media. "Little" put the North Korean leader in his place, thus rectifying the image.

Just for the sake of completeness, calling the North Korean strongman Rocket Man goes back to at least 2006, when the British Economist magazine featured Jong Un's father on the front page under the headline Rocket Man.

More major German media sites blocking ad blockers - good riddance

Over the past few years, major German news sites have moved to denying access to folks who use ad blockers.

The principle is as simple as it is German: Unblock or pay, or we give you no access.

Nasty German tabloid rag BILD was the first of the majors, the blogster recalls. This one was a godsend. Finally, no more late night peek at the latest screaming headlines designed to rile up readers and stir anger and divisiveness.

More respectable papers followed, such as Sueddeutsche Zeitung, and more recently Spiegel Online. The funny things about Spiegel Online is that its international, i.e. English language, section is still accessible to users with active ad blockers at the time of this post.

Maybe they don't want to seem provincial, maybe they haven't gotten around to modifying the site.

In a little over a week, Frankfurter Allgemeine will be next. To their credit, they are nice enough to notify readers of the upcoming policy change.

Die Welt has a free section and a "Plus" section.  Economics weekly Handelsblatt refuses active ad blockers too.

What does this mean to the blogster?

Should it* be worried about missing insightful discourse or crucial news?

Absolutely not. There are still freely available German news sites, both general and specialized ones. To be honest, only a few authors of all these papers will be missed. Much of the news is not just predictable but also almost indistinguishable at times anyway, no matter if you read Spiegel or Frankfurter Allgemeine,
The huge German public television system has been receiving the blogster's contribution for years, paid grudgingly, but the blogster's household has neither a TV nor a radio. So, why not finally use some of the 'services'?

And then there is the small matter of not being limited to German or English. French and Spanish work just as well, and over the next few years, they will have the distinct advantage of not covering the populist right AfD excessively, while it will dominate much of the German native news.
 
Lastly, exploring other German news sources may offer the opportunity to expand the blogster's view of country and culture.

So, thanks for all the fish.

* Gender neutrality rules!

The day they stopped the press for the blogster

It will come as a surprise to readers that the blogster has a few published articles to its* name. They appeared in trade journals, the kind of slender glossy print matter that comes with membership in an organization of like-trained and like-minded individuals and entities.

One of pieces even made it into a book**, which led to arguably one of the nicest phone calls ever by a friend who enthusiastically blurted out "you got published again" before she caught her breath.

But this was not the piece for which they stopped the press.

That one happened a couple of years earlier, and it taught the blogster a several lessons. The story of the article is unremarkable up until the call by the journal's editor. One day, the blogster sat down and wrote a five or six pager about the kind of work it was doing at the time. In a fit of uncharacteristic assertiveness, the blogster sent it to The Journal***. Then it went off to some class.
Upon returning, an agitated companion said: "You had a call from the editor of The Journal about the article. She said she stopped the press and needs you to call her back today."

Oh.

What's this about?

I wrote an article and sent it to them. 

You did what?

I wrote a piece and sent it to them.

Tense, the companion handed the blogster a post-it with a name and a number.

The blogster called, the editor answered and told the blogster how much fun the piece was. And yes, she liked it so much that she intended to bump another article to a future issue and print this one instead. Hence the urgency of the call. What regional chapter are you a member of, the editor asked.

I'm not a member of the organization.

Oh, you are not, the editor hesitated. The she added: Oh, well, I'll print it anyway if you sign the contract. As a member publication we don't pay authors, though.

The lessons came in the months following publication. The first one, closest to home, was that the blogster's companion never quite recovered from the episode, because, you see, the companion was supposed to be the super smart and assertive one.

The second lesson was peer feedback, which can be summarized in the perennial you can't please them all. Some in the field loved the iconoclastic take on aspects of the profession, others said it presented the field in a detrimental light. In other words, even experts take things personal.

Lesson number three would be: if you don't try you will never know if someone will stop the press for you.

* Gender neutrality is prized at the K-Landnews.
** Yes, there is some pride here.
*** We'll call it The Journal to avoid giving you details.

Deriding industrial policy when it saves jobs

In October 2016, the Financial Times wrote about French industrial policy using this example:

You can argue, as does the FT and as do many FT readers, that this is a perfect example of misguided government policy.

High-speed trains the country does not need is clear, and the point is reinforced with maximum speed is 200km an hour at best.

The FT may be right to invoke the mental background image of industrial policy we have learned to associate with old style socialist governments and backwards regimes in general.
One big problem, as the blogster sees it, is that government controlled economic activity in these systems tends is inextricably linked to corruption, laziness, and exploitation by a nomenklatura, or ruling clique.
These aspects do not seem to be in play in the example given by the FT, unless one is willing to claim that averting the shutdown of the plant signifies laziness in the face of the need for change. So, sure, you can go there, if you feel like it.

We are not told whether France needs new regional trains, or how much they would cost if not built to the "state-of-the-art TGV".

When it comes to "needs" in general, there is sometimes surprising leeway, as anyone who had the opportunity to ride the glorious old late weekend nights "hospital train" out of San Francisco will understand. The blogster nicknamed the train hospital train because the carriages were plain white on the outside with a definitely military-ish green interior.

They were old and quiet.

Unlike the newer ones, which must have been labeled "needed" at some point in order to justify their purchase.  

Yes, government money should be spent reasonably, but as long as France, or any other country for that matter, can afford the luxury of splurging billions upon billions upon producing stuff that is not meant to ever be used, buying a few new trains and keeping workers employed a little longer is not a big deal to the simple minded blogster.

German generals get themselves a seat upgrade on government planes through sheer serendipity

Note: The news reported in Frankfurter Allgemeine today can only surprise people who have never worked in large organizations where the RIP principle (Rank has Its Privileges) applies. So, enjoy.

The facts are simple enough:
1. The German government has a fleet of aircraft that members of the government, the German president, and high ranking members of the federal parliament use for official business.
2. The fleet belongs to the German defense department.
3. General officers (generals, admirals) are not entitled to using these aircraft, except when a craft conducts a training flight and a general officer happens to need to go where the plane flies.

In other words, item 3 makes German generals mere governmental hitchhikers.

For example, one of the valiant defenders of German freedom, as well as ours as part of NATO, wakes up in the morning and finds he needs to go to Afghanistan, he calls up the fleet people to find if a government plane just happens to go there.

Or to Paris, or London, or some similar remote fighting location.

If so, he can hitch a ride.

And if not?

Well, that's where "RIP" comes in.

Of course, you have already figured out what the hitchhiking provision really achieves, right? 

Say, a German general, let's call him Alert for the sake of a cheap joke, needs to fly to New York. General Alert asks his ADC to organize the flight. The ADC will send an email to fleet management to ask if they would like to schedule a training flight to New York.

Fleet management, knowing full well that any email which starts with "the General would be happy if" is really an order, will do its best to make the improbable happen.

Oh, the general needs to leave on July 3rd at 8 AM and return on July 12th at 5 PM?*

Yes.

What a coincidence, we will have a training flight to New York on July 3rd at 8, with the return on July 12th at 5. Will that be convenient?

This is how German generals roll, or fly, for that matter.

Now, a pesky newspaper finds out that German general officers routinely arrange "training flights" to satisfy their airborne needs.

And also to overcome the feeling of being the underlings of civilians, who - let's face it - shouldn't get to fly for free on planes that really belong to the military anyway, right?

Will Germany's brave heroes have to revert to hitchhiking after being outed by the press?

Most certainly not. This news will be forgotten in 24 hours, and Germany's finest will get to enjoy the privileges that come with their rank.

* Please note that this is not a literal quote. Germans don't use AM and PM.

Data - or why birds strike military aircraft and civilian ones different ways

This is another cautionary tale about data. It is also a plea to listen to what experts say about data despite headline news that show efforts by experts to manipulate data in various areas of life.

The diesel emissions scandal that has damaged the reputation of German automaker VW is a case in point. It took experts to develop the cheat system, and it took other experts to prove the company had circumvented emissions regulations for years.

And that does not include the frequent examples that show people believing in the correctness of their data, only to be proven wrong by some new discovery or method. 

The blogster tries hard to avoid being duped, but has fallen for bad data many times - not counting the times it* has not realized having been suckered.

One aspect of events, and the data (or facts) they are based on, is whether they impact your life.

Which brings us to the exotic example of bird strikes. You may have heard of the birds that brought down a passenger aircraft in New York and made a hero of the pilot, Mr. Sullenberger.

So, birds striking a plane you are on can be life changing.

Collisions between birds and a military plane are generally considered part of the job and make few, if any, headlines.

So, it makes perfect sense that we don't know one interesting aspect of data on bird collisions with military planes.

Which is: military planes collide with birds much more frequently near the airfields than do civilian planes. The greater the distance of a fighter jet to its base, the fewer collisions are counted.

Why could that be?

There are many things that can come to mind, for example, whether military airfields are more frequently located in areas with more wildlife. Or maybe there is a correlation with the intensity of use of a base.

As the blogster learned, while this may influence the number of incidents, there was one other aspect that stood out: military pilots tended to report bird strikes close to the home base but ported fewer when they were far away.

As it turned out, protocol required pilots to find an airfield and have their bird inspected before taking to the air again. Which frequently meant the valiant fliers would not make it home for dinner.

Pilots and ground personnel felt protocols did not adequately handle bird strikes that caused no obvious serious damage to the plane. 

They found a way around it, and in the process created "incorrect" data because collection was based on the two variables "bird strike" and "plane location", ignoring a third variable "extent of damage".

When that super expensive worker costs less than the fuel for a truck

In every election cycle and with every annual report by economics think tanks, someone is bound to complain about the high cost of labor.

For German workers, this has meant various measures aimed at making the labor market more competitive and cutting costs. The traditional 50/50 split of payroll taxes and was abolished with the result of shifting costs to workers; a pre-tax regime for social security contributions was introduced concurrently with income tax on all retirement income, and companies were offered generous subsidies for hiring long term unemployed.

All of this led to a small reduction of the unemployment figures projected by economists some 40 years ago. In other words, demographics is a bitch, and automation and productivity gains are the whips.

The other day at a gas station, the blogster saw a truck driver pay just under 600 Euros for diesel.

"I use about one thousand Euros worth of fuel a week", explained one driver.

Sheepishly, the blogster said: "So, you burn more in fuel than you make in wages?"

"For sure", the driver replied.

"And your boss still complains about high labor cost?"

"No, our company owner doesn't. We have five drivers, and the government pays half of the wages for three of them."

"What?"

"Yes, the boss is an expert at finding government subsidy programs", he smiled.

As the truck driver went back to his job of supporting the booming German economy, the blogster absentmindedly paid for the four-pack of butane cartridges needed for an upcoming short camping trip.

It* will carefully look at industries and sectors next time someone complains about excessive labor costs.

* Quality gender neutral reporting.

German national elections in September - blink and you miss the campaign

So, there will be national elections in Germany in about six weeks, and the blogster almost missed the official start of the campaign season.

Exciting German campaigns tend to be extremely boring by American standards. No billion dollar extravaganzas spread out over more than a year, no competing lawn signs, no "honk for whatever".

And the current one is not even exciting by German standards.

Only orderly campaign posters in standard sizes fastened to light poles and trees with zip ties. To be recycled later.

The height off the posters off the ground varies with the height of the volunteers on the pickup trucks that slowly work their ways through towns and cities.

It also seems to depend on the attractiveness of a party to vandals.

Which means that the populist right AfD tends to go higher than the traditional mainstream Christian Democrats or Social Democrats.

None of the much dreaded Russian election interference has materialized either. Imagine that.

Even the Russians don't care.

Polls have the Christian Democrats of chancellor Merkel in an unbeatable lead, the second largest Social Democrats in the same pitiful spot somewhere below 30% that has been their home ever since the great disappointment of the turn of the century, when the supposedly social party took the chainsaw to several social security programs.

"Free market liberals", populist right, Greens, and the Left party fight over what remains of the voting share.

The populist right AfD had its day in the sun in last year's state elections and has been heading downhill when migrant numbers dropped and the country did not become Muslim within a few weeks.

The Social Democrats enjoyed a brief honeymoon with voters when they brought Mr. Schulz in from his cozy European job to tackle the seemingly immovable Ms. Merkel.

It didn't work.

The initial appeal to social justice and the aim to undo some of the "reforms" to the social system were quietly put on the back burner in favor of a half hearted attempt to copy Ms. Merkel's "We made Germany great" style non-campaign.

Calls for a quota for electric cars has replaced it.

So, yes.

Wake me when it is over.

In time for the asteroid the size of a house in October.

[Update 8/13/2017] Even the Germans are bored by this campaign and are now debating - yes - why the campaign is so boring.

And the up and coming Christian Democrat poster boy makes headlines by complaining about wait staff speaking English in Berlin cafes.

[Update 8/20/2017] The blogster was wondering if the main parties would even bother to put up campaign posters this year.

Surprise!

About four weeks before the vote, campaign posters are up.

By the side of the freeway, we saw one by the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) right next to one by the Social Democrats (SPD).

The CDU one shows a young man, safety goggles on, leaning forward over a workbench, measuring a long piece of wood he is working on.
The one word you need to remember of the bland slogan? "Arbeit" (work).

The SPD poster shows a young man sitting on a bench next to a small anthropomorphic robot. You know the type, big child like head, big eyes.
The one word you need to remember of the bland slogan? "Denker" (thinkers).

The meticulous hard working male, with protected eyes and not quite dirty hands versus the laid back thinker/tinkerer male.

No contest: Even the thinkers/tinkerers will vote for the guy with wood.

And the headshots of political leaders are dating site or LinkedIn quality, taking at least 10 to 15 years off of the faces, in the best tradition of venerating the powerful.

[Update 9/7/2017] Finally, a good vote hacking scare! A Zeit online article today says German elections can be manipulated. The article describes how a computer science student found that the software used to transmit results of the manual vote count of paper ballots to a state election board can indeed be easily hacked.

Again, this is a piece of software which simply sends vote tallies to the state commission.

The software has been around for 30 years with the flaws reported today.

Nobody has every certified the code, nor has the proprietary source code been checked by experts. A German court rejected a suit some years ago, simply saying that use of the software by a state election commission meant the software was fine.

The known issues of tampering with votes have all occurred in the manual counting after polling stations closed. Human error or, yes, outright collusion of polling workers appear to be the main threats to the integrity of the vote.

Oh, and the Russians?

They obviously either missed their 30 year long window.

Or don't care.

Maybe they achieved their ultimate goal: show German politicians their elections were not worth hacking.

[Update 9/16/2017] The German authorities knew of the reporting software flaws, ZEIT online and others reported today. Isn't it nice to have a country that uses paper ballots and keeps them for later recount?

Goodbye merit, hello inherit - how crime pays extremely well

The other day, German Zeit published a long article about the ongoing massive wealth transfer through inheritance in German society, currently standing at some 400 billion Euros annually, and growing.

The piece described how inter generational inequality has been on the rise in the country, and how politics is actively promoting this detrimental development through extremely advantageous wealth transfer rules with low or next to no taxes, if done right.

One short line in the article said some people turned to crime to keep up with the Muellers.

The authors meant "regular" crime, missing out on the the vast swath of hidden, yet extremely remunerative crime tied to the act of inheritance itself.

Over the years, the blogster has heard many stories in our picturesque neck of the woods about illicit or outright illegal inheritance schemes by close family or other people.

It* has come to the conclusion that snatching an inheritance, or part of one, is the most under reported and most profitable crime average Germans engage in.

Chances of getting caught appear pretty much zero. Probably on par with money laundering.

Even if a whole town knows.

All you need to have a shot at getting wealthy is a brief hand written note that says an estate shall be yours. Dated, and with some sort of semblance of a signature, and you are in business.

A photocopy is sufficient. So, if you collect a few hand writing samples from the dear relative and invest in Photoshop, you can earn what amounts to an hourly rate of thousands of dollars.

Contest, you said?

German law favors the piece of paper to a degree that creates hurdles most people who are defrauded can not overcome, as long as that paper is more recent than any you may have.

Their paper even beats a nice notarized one you may have been sent from the court because it was kept there.

The demographics of the country only compound the issue. Many Germans get as old as few did even a generation ago. And those old people often have few or no immediate partner left.

The spouse died decades ago, much of the rest of the family is scattered to the winds, just an enterprising middle aged couple is present a few towns over.

It is a perfect setup.

Visit a few times, make nice, get the paper, make sure potential rivals did not sneak in and pull off the same trick, and when the health of the dear, beloved relative begins to decline, get out of the way.

Actually, you don't even have to make nice. You can coax, coerce, threaten, even beat up the person if he or she is sufficiently isolated without fear of prosecution. Elder abuse is part and parcel of the problem, and - again - largely ignored.

Let the helpers swing into action and care for the frail relative until he or she finally passes.

Then pull out the will at the family and town gathering after the funeral.

You may lose a family but you earned the money.

This, by the way, is a true story from a few towns over. And they happen every day all over Germany.

A version of this, even more elaborate, is to let the heir you are going to boot handle all the work that comes with a death, and only then whip out your paper.

While the helper, or as you would call him or her, the sucker, is arranging the funeral, is dealing with government agencies, utility companies, insurance companies and others, you should take a vacation.

This way, you won't be caught letting slip you have a will. Because the law requires you to submit it as soon as you have knowledge of its existence.

Once the sucker has cleaned out the house or apartment of the deceased, you hand the paper to the court.

Done.

Okay, maybe not fully done. You may have to endure a few attempts at shaming you into sharing or stepping back from the will.

But you can avoid meeting the others, ignore phone calls, and become aggressive if that doesn't work.

If they go to a lawyer, they will be advised to let go of small inheritances, the peanuts sort of up to 100 000 dollars.

It is a win-win situation.

You win.

And then you can deploy again and win again.

Of course, the sort of thing described above is not limited to Germany, far from it. But unlike the U.S. where elder abuse and wills have been discussed and some actions taken, German governments are turning a blind eye.

[Update 8/20/2017] When people start talking, you will get an earful. The variations on the theme of close and not so close relatives getting their hands on estates big and small are fascinating to someone as trusting as the blogster.

One of the most vile stories we have heard in the past weeks is the drugging of an old lady in the last months of her life. In this case, the niece caretaker and her doctor husband allegedly added sedatives to the old lady's diet. The prescription was  not in her name, so nobody could claim diminished competence. Then the lady wrote a will, again one of those handwritten things that any investigator of a "real" crime would immediately label highly suspicious and not trustworthy.

The friend who told us that one decided to let it go.

Another local recounted how family members converged at the residence of a deceased who had valuable antiques. The obvious suggestion to make a list was shot down by several vocal relatives, and the group decided to reconvene the next day to divvy up the estate. 
The next day, of course, the apartment was empty.

Almost everyone we talked to had bad to evil experiences about inheritances to tell in their families.

* We are gender neutral at this publication.

Europe is not a continent and Twitter is not a social network

Note: Philosophers and journalists or "communication experts" may not find anything new and exciting in this post. But that is not its purpose. Its primary purpose is to give a stream of photons from a computer screen the chance to interact with the retina of human readers and see what happens. Its second purpose is to feed computers and storage devices on the internet. Everything else is a bonus.

Europe is not a continent
It is fair to claim this statement is false if it is made in response to a request to list the seven continents of the world.
It is just as fair to insist on its truth because, after all, because the regions we call continents are generally defined by convention rather than strict criteria. Europe is a concept dating back to classical antiquity, and the world was doing fine before it was invented. Nothing really stops you from messing with the definition of this convention, although there typically are drawbacks or - for example in school - active countermeasures that constitute serious punishment.

With this foundation, let's do Twitter.

Twitter is not a social network
Twitter is a company, an online news and social networking service, People, bots, companies, NGOs, agencies, plants, and non-human animals use it to network.
They create not one but a multitude of social networks.
With the exception of a few characteristics which we'll talk about below, these networks are actually very much like "in-person", real life networks. They are groups, or tribes, or communities. If you decide to call them bubbles, you are no longer looking at them from the perspective of physically restricted 'in person' communities or groups but from a perspective that uses and emphasizes technical aspects of the service:

1) A Twitter/Facebook social network is public, and so are the interactions. And a network can be huge.
Unless you set your network to private.
2) Tools can be used to easily map out the relations and interactions of public networks.
3) You can reach across the world into anybody's public network.

Before the blogster continues to chide you about using the term bubble, it* would like to say it's not all your fault because the hype around the services very much emphasized the diversity and reach of the technology, while ignoring physical and mental limitations of us humans.

So, everybody - except some philosophers and cynics - acted all surprised that humans behaved the same ways online and in real life. It is not that this is new with social media - we have seen it with email before. Older geeks have seen it with USENET, or chatrooms. But social media of the Facebook/Twitter version is much more public. Even the biggest email lists are tiny compared to a big social media platform.

Humans will behave differently in public and in private. But:
1) Different people do so to a different extent.
2) Being in your home/office in front of a screen feels private.

Much of the criticism levied against Twitter and Facebook, the most widely used platforms in the West, can be easily traced to the grand total of five enumerated issues above.

If you mix and match these aspects, you can easily pen listicles of dubious value like the Twenty Theses about Twitter, or any story about online harassment.

The debate about social media is far from over, and if the crackdown on publishers of books, flyers and other independent print material in the decades after introduction of the printing press is a precedent - and it certainly is - then we will see much greater intervention of governments and other powerful entities.

The blogster finds Twitter great. It has encountered very interesting new ideas, and met people it would otherwise never have met.


* Gender neutral the K-Landnews is, Yoda says.

The attempted ambush of police at the G20 riots in Hamburg is a myth

The debate in Germany about the protests and riots at the G20 summit in Hamburg last week just took an interesting turn:

The oft quoted ambush targeting police on the night of the riots is a myth.

But is is a very useful one for all those clamoring for more restrictions, more surveillance, and general wholesale attacks on "the Left". Today, one paper reported that some police units refused to go in and tackle the rioters because of intelligence of an ambush. Allegedly, violent extremists had taken to roofs in one city block and wanted to attack the police from above.

As a result of this, several units of riot police refused to advance, and a SWAT team from the main conference was brought in to clear the building.

At the time of this writing, on the Wednesday following the summit, all of the persons detained during this operation have been released because of insufficient evidence.

But the main media, especially the conservative ones, continue to run with the "ambush" meme.

On Social media, you can find ample documentation of the riots as well as police violence against passersby or people who were simply on their way home. The latter is hardly mentioned in the daily papers.

What else is missing?

Several owners of businesses in the area of the riots got together and wrote an open letter, published on Facebook.

We have copied it verbatim below.

The authors describe violence and looting but they tell a story about the participants and the events that is very far from the police blotter narrative in the papers.

They describe how "well organized black clad masked people helped local residents to prevent looting of the small retail shops". They describe how these same masked activists prevented youngsters from setting an apartment house on fire.

And they put a stake through the "ambush" narrative. No, there was no "black bloc riot" in our quarter, they say. The explain that the people on the scaffolding and the roof were drunk kids who seized the opportunity to act out and loot.

Please find a German speaking friend or try Mr. Google or Mrs. Bing to read the complete open letter.

One thing that is certain, though, is that the inaction by the police for several hours that night stands in utter contrast to the sustained crackdowns in the days before.

One thing the blogster would really love to find out is how much of the "refusal because of fears for their lives" was actively encouraged or at least exploited by the chain of command of the police that night.

Because there can be no doubt that this stand down made for some great disaster porn.


Here is the open letter:

Schanzen News (altona, sternschanze, st. pauli) a partagé la publication de Cantina Popular.

2 h ·

Stellungsnahme einiger Geschäfte aus der Schanze nach #G20

Cantina Popular

9 h ·

+++ STELLUNGNAHME ZU DEN EREIGNISSEN VOM WOCHENENDE +++
Wir, einige Geschäfts- und Gewerbetreibende des Hamburger Schanzenviertels, sehen uns genötigt, in Anbetracht der Berichterstattung und des öffentlichen Diskurses, unsere Sicht der Ereignisse zu den Ausschreitungen im Zuge des G20-Gipfels zu schildern.
In der Nacht vom 7. auf den 8. Juli 2017 tobte eine Menge für Stunden auf der Straße, plünderte einige Läden, bei vielen anderen gingen die Scheiben zu Bruch, es wurden brennende Barrikaden errichtet und mit der Polizei gerungen.
Uns fällt es in Anbetracht der Wahllosigkeit der Zerstörung schwer, darin die Artikulation einer politischen Überzeugung zu erkennen, noch viel weniger die Idee einer neuen, besseren Welt.
Wir beobachteten das Geschehen leicht verängstigt und skeptisch vor Ort und aus unseren Fenstern in den Straßen unseres Viertels.
Aber die Komplexität der Dynamik, die sich in dieser Nacht hier Bahn gebrochen hat, sehen wir weder in den Medien noch bei der Polizei oder im öffentlichen Diskurs angemessen reflektiert.
Ja, wir haben direkt gesehen, wie Scheiben zerbarsten, Parkautomaten herausgerissen, Bankautomaten zerschlagen, Straßenschilder abgebrochen und das Pflaster aufgerissen wurde.
Wir haben aber auch gesehen, wie viele Tage in Folge völlig unverhältnismäßig bei jeder Kleinigkeit der Wasserwerfer zum Einsatz kam. Wie Menschen von uniformierten und behelmten Beamten ohne Grund geschubst oder auch vom Fahrrad geschlagen wurden.
Tagelang.
Dies darf bei der Berücksichtigung der Ereignisse nicht unter den Teppich gekehrt werden.
Zum Höhepunkt dieser Auseinandersetzung soll in der Nacht von Freitag und Samstag nun ein „Schwarzer Block“ in unserem Stadtteil gewütet haben.
Dies können wir aus eigener Beobachtung nicht bestätigen, die außerhalb der direkten Konfrontation mit der Polizei nun von der Presse beklagten Schäden sind nur zu einem kleinen Teil auf diese Menschen zurückzuführen.
Der weit größere Teil waren erlebnishungrige Jugendliche sowie Voyeure und Partyvolk, denen wir eher auf dem Schlagermove, beim Fußballspiel oder Bushido-Konzert über den Weg laufen würden als auf einer linksradikalen Demo.
Es waren betrunkene junge Männer, die wir auf dem Baugerüst sahen, die mit Flaschen warfen – hierbei von einem geplanten „Hinterhalt“ und Bedrohung für Leib und Leben der Beamten zu sprechen, ist für uns nicht nachvollziehbar.
Überwiegend diese Leute waren es auch, die – nachdem die Scheiben eingeschlagen waren – in die Geschäfte einstiegen und beladen mit Diebesgut das Weite suchten.
Die besoffen in einem Akt sportlicher Selbstüberschätzung mit nacktem Oberkörper aus 50 Metern Entfernung Flaschen auf Wasserwerfer warfen, die zwischen anderen Menschen herniedergingen, während Herumstehende mit Bier in der Hand sie anfeuerten und Handyvideos machten.
Es war eher die Mischung aus Wut auf die Polizei, Enthemmung durch Alkohol, der Frust über die eigene Existenz und die Gier nach Spektakel – durch alle anwesenden Personengruppen hindurch –, die sich hier Bahn brach.
Das war kein linker Protest gegen den G20-Gipfel. Hier von linken AktivistInnen zu sprechen wäre verkürzt und falsch.
Wir haben neben all der Gewalt und Zerstörung gestern viele Situationen gesehen, in denen offenbar gut organisierte, schwarz gekleidete Vermummte teilweise gemeinsam mit Anwohnern eingeschritten sind, um andere davon abzuhalten, kleine, inhabergeführte Läden anzugehen. Die anderen Vermummten die Eisenstangen aus der Hand nahmen, die Nachbarn halfen, ihre Fahrräder in Sicherheit zu bringen und sinnlosen Flaschenbewurf entschieden unterbanden. Die auch ein Feuer löschten, als im verwüsteten und geplünderten „Flying Tiger Copenhagen“ Jugendliche versuchten, mit Leuchtspurmunition einen Brand zu legen, obwohl das Haus bewohnt ist.
Es liegt nicht an uns zu bestimmen, was hier falsch gelaufen ist, welche Aktion zu welcher Reaktion geführt hat.
Was wir aber sagen können: Wir leben und arbeiten hier, bekommen seit vielen Wochen mit, wie das „Schaufenster moderner Polizeiarbeit“ ein Klima der Ohnmacht, Angst und daraus resultierender Wut erzeugt.
Dass diese nachvollziehbare Wut sich am Wochenende nun wahllos, blind und stumpf auf diese Art und Weise artikulierte, bedauern wir sehr. Es lässt uns auch heute noch vollkommen erschüttert zurück.
Dennoch sehen wir den Ursprung dieser Wut in der verfehlten Politik des Rot-Grünen Senats, der sich nach Außen im Blitzlichtgewitter der internationalen Presse sonnen möchte, nach Innen aber vollkommen weggetaucht ist und einer hochmilitarisierten Polizei das komplette Management dieses Großereignisses auf allen Ebenen überlassen hat.
Dieser Senat hat der Polizei eine „Carte Blanche“ ausgestellt – aber dass die im Rahmen eines solchen Gipfels mitten in einer Millionenstadt entstehenden Probleme, Fragen und sozialen Implikationen nicht nur mit polizeitaktischen und repressiven Mitteln beantwortet werden können, scheint im besoffenen Taumel der quasi monarchischen Inszenierung von Macht und Glamour vollkommen unter den Tisch gefallen zu sein.
Dass einem dies um die Ohren fliegen muss, wäre mit einem Mindestmaß an politischem Weitblick absehbar gewesen.
Wenn Olaf Scholz jetzt von einer inakzeptablen „Verrohung“, der wir „uns alle entgegenstellen müssen“, spricht, können wir dem nur beizupflichten.
Dass die Verrohung aber auch die Konsequenz einer Gesellschaft ist, in der jeglicher abweichende politische Ausdruck pauschal kriminalisiert und mit Sondergesetzen und militarisierten Einheiten polizeilich bekämpft wird, darf dabei nicht unberücksichtigt bleiben.
Aber bei all der Erschütterung über die Ereignisse vom Wochenende muss auch gesagt werden:
Es sind zwar apokalyptische, dunkle, rußgeschwärzte Bilder aus unserem Viertel, die um die Welt gingen.
Von der Realität eines Bürgerkriegs waren wir aber weit entfernt.
Anstatt weiter an der Hysterieschraube zu drehen sollte jetzt Besonnenheit und Reflexion Einzug in die Diskussion halten.
Die Straße steht immer noch, ab Montag öffneten die meisten Geschäfte ganz regulär, der Schaden an Personen hält sich in Grenzen.
Wir hatten als Anwohner mehr Angst vor den mit Maschinengewehren auf unsere Nachbarn zielenden bewaffneten Spezialeinheiten als vor den alkoholisierten Halbstarken, die sich gestern hier ausgetobt haben.
Die sind dumm, lästig und schlagen hier Scheiben ein, erschießen dich aber im Zweifelsfall nicht.
Der für die Meisten von uns Gewerbetreibende weit größere Schaden entsteht durch die Landflucht unserer Kunden, die keine Lust auf die vielen Eingriffe und Einschränkungen durch den Gipfel hatten – durch die Lieferanten, die uns seit vergangenem Dienstag nicht mehr beliefern konnten, durch das Ausbleiben unserer Gäste.
An den damit einhergehenden Umsatzeinbußen werden wir noch sehr lange zu knapsen haben.
Wir leben seit vielen Jahren in friedlicher, oft auch freundschaftlich-solidarischer Nachbarschaft mit allen Formen des Protestes, die hier im Viertel beheimatet sind, wozu für uns selbstverständlich und nicht-verhandelbar auch die Rote Flora gehört.
Daran wird auch dieses Wochenende rein gar nichts ändern.
In dem Wissen, dass dieses überflüssige Spektakel nun vorbei ist, hoffen wir, dass die Polizei ein maßvolles Verhältnis zur Demokratie und den in ihr lebenden Menschen findet, dass wir alle nach Wochen und Monaten der Hysterie und der Einschränkungen zur Ruhe kommen und unseren Alltag mit all den großen und kleinen Widersprüchen wieder gemeinsam angehen können.
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BLUME 1000 & EINE ART
JUNGBLUTH PIERCING & TATTOO

How to overestimate your "enemy" by a factor of 10 and still fail

So, guess what, the G20 summit in Hamburg brought the usual riot porn.

Endless repeats of black clad people throwing stones and bottles, some fires, burnt cars.
Breathless tallies of injured police officers from the start. Number of injured protesters or bystanders remain unknown.

Convenient.

How many of the police were injured in what should really be called "friendly fire" incidents?

Very probably most.

Forget about the looted supermarket and fires set nicely in the middle of the street, where they don't engulf buildings and burn people to a crisp.

Let's talk about the fearmongering weeks before the summit. Government officials have been working on planning for what feels like forever at that point.
Meetings have been held, people have been yelled at more than you will ever know.

Law enforcement and the spy agencies have drawn up plans for just about everything, from mass casualty events to the mundane "porta-jails".

And - important - although everybody stresses the unique nature of the event, almost all plans are bog standard. So, if you had read this old post on "crowd control" in Frankfurt a few years ago, you would know what to expect.

The bog standard includes the same warnings by the domestic spies ahead of every major event, with a nice round figure of potential militants, or "people likely to engage in violence".

10 000, the spooks wrote.

In the end, it is always about one tenth, about 1000 to 1500.

Same old, same old.

Even before the first journalist gets kicked or beaten by police, politicians call for harsh sentences for acts of violence.

On Twitter and Facebook, the "radical center" comes out with rallying cries to support law enforcement. The Germans are still working on calls to "support our troops", not fully reestablished for historical reasons.

The very same "centrists" who stay silent on wars brought about by the states gathering to solve the world's problems foam at their mouths over looted iPhones or robbed beer.
The intellectuals among them go back penning justifications for more mass murder and "good terrorism" the next day.

Once everything is over, journalists who have not been beaten up by the police or had their equipment stolen by protesters will sit down and try to come up with a new and exciting way to describe the riots.

This time around, it is "Event", which is Denglish for what we might describe as an entertainment event. To make the newfangled meme stick, it helps if you can add that you were at Arab Spring demonstrations in Egypt and Tunisia - it gives you extra street cred.

Next up are the criminal psychologists who explain why the police tactics were a massive failure.

Next time?

The blogster has a plan that is guaranteed to work. This very post you just read is the plan.

All we need to do next time is change a few locations and we can run it as if it were brand new.

Nobody will notice.

Mama Mae of the Catholic girls home

The other day, we were talking about abused children, and we wandered back to the girls' home.

The architecture of the complex was very reminiscent of the hotel in the movie The Shining. But there were no spooky events like in the movie.

One of the girls was a Vietnamese teenager, let's call her Li. Li was about sixteen, thin, short, and very afraid of men because of abuse. Li had been placed in a training program for office work, and she would have to take the bus to get to the company.

On her very first day, she made it a few blocks down the street before the bolted from the bus at the next stop: a man had taken the seat next to her, and she panicked. She called her group at the home, and several girls went to pick her up at the McDonald's near the stop.

Li was in tears. Not only had the the simple presence of the man on the bus freaked her out, she had been verbally abused and shoved by two Hispanic girls at the McDonald's while she waited for the rescue posse.

There were some tensions in the neighborhood as the traditional Hispanic population saw an influx of Asian immigrants and the Hispanic youth gangs did not adjust well.

The teens from the girls home stuck together, they had a reputation.

You'd recognize the girls?

Yes.

Back at the home, several girls rushed to the kitchen and grabbed some knives.

Mama Mae was surprised. She had no time to stop the riled up teens.

Don't you dare! was all she could deliver as they rushed out.

The group, five or six plus Li, found the two girls near the McDonald's. Despite being angry, there was no physical altercation, and the two Hispanic teens were quick to deescalate.

Sorry, we are really sorry, we didn't know she was from the girls home.

Apologize to her.

They did, and the group returned to the home.

As this one episode illustrates, Mama Mae did not have an easy job, but her girls loved her, and she loved them.

It is just a guess - probably not the worst to make - that her emotional stability, her grounded outlook on life was precious to the girls who all came from highly volatile, frequently violent environments.

To this day, one of the former girls breaks into a big smile when she recounts the simple manner in which Mama Mae dealt with finding out the girl had lied when she said she was visiting her mother for the weekend and instead had gone to a three day rock festival.

Hi, Mama Mae, I'm back.

Oh, good, how was your weekend?

Great.

I'm sure it was. Now, next time you tell me you visit family but go to a festival instead, do yourself a favor - don't wave at the TV news helicopter.

I'm sorry.

The windows on your floor haven't been washed for a while. So, that's your job this weekend.

Mama Mae did not live to see how this last group of her girls did after they left the home on their eighteenth birthday. She died of cancer before she reached the age of 50.

The final stand against same sex marriage in Germany

National elections are coming later in 2017 in Germany, and the country has a new political hot topic: same sex marriage, or - slightly pejorative - "Homo-Ehe" (gay marriage).

The last time German proponents of "marriage for all" got their hopes up was a couple of years ago when famously christian conservative Republic of Ireland citizens overwhelmingly voted to legalize gay marriage.

Even some conservative German politicians were somewhat stung by the fact that tiny Ireland would leapfrog Europe's leading power in the social rights arena. The Berlin coalition of Christian Democrats/Christian Social Union and Social Democrats reacted in typically German fashion.

Which is: loud public proclamations of the German commitment to equal rights for all combined with action that falls well short of the lofty statements.

Germany did introduce registered partnerships for same sex partners in 2001 but left out major areas that married couples take for granted, for example adoption rights. So, it too many more changes to approach equality, but even after the Irish upheaval, German civil unions are not fully equal to marriage.

The Social Democrats, in the doldrums after having been hammered in earlier state contests, remembered their unwavering commitment to same sex marriage and called for a parliament vote before the national elections.

Conservatives were caught off guard - like when you discover the only condom you have has a big hole in it, or the single remaining battery of a vibrator goes out just as you reach "the home stretch".

Because, make no mistake about it, to conservative opponents of same sex marriage it really is all about the suspicion that gays and lesbians have more fun than they do.

Why else would they continue to oppose same sex marriage when the public is overwhelmingly in favor?

The final argument against same sex marriage it that these relationships are not equal to heterosexual marriage. Yes, the German constitution puts the institution of marriage under special protection by the state.

But successive governments have changed the treasured constitution multiple times when they felt like it.

Or ignored the constitution altogether, most famously after reunification, the event that very constitution declared as the point in time when the German people would write a new, permanent constitution that would be put to a referendum.

The conservatives now trotting out the special protection were the ones who ignored the political scripture's most important provision. By the way, that happened under chancellor Kohl, who was recently celebrated as the pinnacle of European democracy.

What else do opponents have?

A pernicious equal rights argument that goes as follows: men and women have equal rights but we don't start using the same term for them.

To the blogster, this is hilarious because any regular reader of the K-Landnews knows that the blogster goes as "it"*. And it is proud of its trail blazing role.

Yet, what stings conservatives most it the change of heart, for lack of a better term, displayed by Chancellor Merkel. In another Merkelian move, she suddenly declared the stance on same sex marriage to be a "matter of conscience" after the Social Democrat call for a vote prior to dissolution of the current parliament created an unexpected media buzz.

Will the federal parliament vote to make same sex marriage legal before the Fall election?

Summer recess is approaching fast, and after that, only a few months are left before the election.

The blogster is not sure that conservatives will bite the condom before that. They will try their best - or rather worst - to stall.

[Update] That was quick. The press reports that the German federal parliament is to vote on same sex marriage this Friday, two days from today, and that passage of the measure can be safely assumed.

[Update] The Catholic bishops still don't like the concept of same sex marriage and warn that the "procreation of life" is in danger when traditional marriage is no longer exclusive.
In a nice but only superficial twist, the current head of the German conference of bishops is a Mr. Marx.

No relation to the original Marx could be found. Although this would not be the first time that a progressive family has reactionary offspring.

[Update 6/30/2017] The deed is done.  Same sex couples in Germany will no longer "be German equal", a term the blogster just made up to describe the warped definition of equal often used in this country, where something can be equal and not have equal rights because some rights are slightly re-cast as being outside of the scope of "equal". For "equal" same sex couples, this included the tax and retirement regimes until Germany's highest court declared the practice illegal in 2013.

Chancellor Merkel took a stand today and voted "no" on same sex marriage, saying that the constitution protected marriage between a man and a woman.

The blogster has a perfectly German solution for the Merkellian problem: two asterisks and a short text footnote on marriage forms.

Use
Spouse 1 *     Spouse 2*
and add
* For the purposes of the German constitutional definition, Spouse1 shall be deemed the woman, Spouse 2 the man.

See how easy that is? It works exactly in the same manner as previous definitions of "equal", except this time in favor of same sex couples.

And so fucking German.

And while we are on so fucking German, the conservative daily Frankfurter Allgemeine ran a "guest article" today, which pulled out all the evil stereotypes, including allusions to a tendency of child abuse by the gays, yeah. Woke users like  https://twitter.com/reinboth caught the crappy piece.

* As in Gender Neutral.

Americans in exile are real but nobody knows how many there are

The "nation of immigrants" does not talk much these days about U.S. citizens who opt for a life in exile.

There are many reasons for this, for example, the fact that segments of the US population erroneously believe that the whole world wants nothing more than to become Americans. Or the fact that declaring yourself a "nation of immigrants" allows you to leave aside those who were here before you - the native Americans - and those you brought over as slaves.

It is also much easier to focus on those who come because they affirm your life, they presumably want what you have. So, you play the greatest country on earth card and, at the same time, debate endlessly about the newcomers stealing your jobs and your women.

On the other hand, those who leave are no longer competitors for jobs and women. Sorry, American males, we'll simply ignore the hundreds of thousands or millions of military brides who have been stealing American men in the seven decades since the end of World War II.

Jokes aside, who are the American exilees or refugees, how can we even start to define them?

During the Vietnam War, thousands of American young men absconded to Canada or other countries in protest of the war. Unlike to lazy draft dodgers like Dick Cheney and Donald Trump, most of these refugees did not have a nice doctor who handed out medical certificates that attested to a condition making them unfit for killing and being killed in Asia.

We do not have good numbers as to how many left the US and how many came back once the war was over, but it seems safe to assume most returned.

When George W. Bush came to power, there was again talk of people planning to go to Canada, and when Trump was elected, the Canadian immigration website went down for a short time under an overload of traffic.

These groups have one thing in common: they talked quite openly about their plans, and the media reported.

Others are less noticed, making brief headlines, then disappearing from view. A high profile example in Germany was Laura Poitras, of Snowden whistleblowing fame. While contemplating to remain in exile in Berlin, Germany, she eventually returned to spend time in the US after US border security stopped harassing her.

Another example was a US soldier who asked for asylum in Germany as a conscientious objector to the Iraq War. His request was denied despite a German court ruling stating the war was illegal.

Other US military personnel quietly opt for in country discharge and build new lives in Germany without going much into political explanations. But when a black former soldier from the South tells you he hasn't been to the US in almost a decade, there is a good chance his reasons include more than "liking Germany".

Or where on the spectrum of "temporary and for fun" to "good riddance America" do you put state department employees who have no intention to go back?

What about all the individuals who move without making waves, ostensibly for work, or live with the German grandmother?

It is a rare US citizen who will stand up during a German town hall meeting on refugee issues and begin his contribution with: I am an American refugee.

If you ever want to hear a pin drop in a German town hall meeting, we recommend using this line.

Every self respecting country has a lengthy "interview" process for newcomers, often nosing around in the most intimate life of an immigrant.

Not one country the blogster knows off bothers with an "exit interview".

How a government steals the future of its citizens: by classifying information

Health warning: There is a school of thought out there that believes, or professes to believe, in the sanctity of classified information as indispensable for the security of a nation. If you adhere to this school of thought, the principal argument of this post may anger you, cause a rise in blood pressure, or trigger increased sweating, with secondary consequences including potentially yelling at your wife, husband, children, or pets. So, be good to yourself and your loved ones, and continue to Disney.com.

Of the many time tested ways to control information, governments around the world love classifying information, declaring it secret and locking it up for many years to come.

The practice provides jobs for government officials and contractors, and a large ecosystem of pundits and more or less dubious self styled experts thrive around it. There are leaks, which contribute to the mystique of the practice, add work for lawyers and judges and provide countless hours of entertainment - from the variant called "news" to the expressly fictional TV series and movies,

Critics are vocal about over classification, lack of transparency, an ever expanding national security apparatus, extreme prison sentences or even the threat of the death penalty for unauthorized disclosure.

The blogster's simple mind finds all of it interesting, some of it necessary, much of it ludicrous, and has tried to dig as deeply into the meaning of the practice as the limitations of said mind allow.

The result is: much of the practice of classifying information amounts to theft.

What the government steals is your future.

Because you don't have the best possible information when you go to the voting booth to cast ballots for another four or five years of government.

Of course, you can rightly say that being fully informed about everything is impossible. Even sneaker and with an air of righteousness, you could turn around and ask the blogster why it refuses to give its name.

More likely, you will understand we are talking about very different matters. The blogster's name or gender are unimportant, they do not - or should not - have any impact on your life.

But when your government, for example, refuses to release information which confirms that it toppled an elected government, we are looking at potentially world wide consequences.
Just weeks ago, the US finally released information which confirmed that Western governments overthrew the government of Iran in 1953.

Go figure.

We stole not only the future of the Iranian people but also possibly our own because our citizens might well have voted differently had they known this in a timely manner. The typical duration of keeping information classified, mostly around 30 years minimum, much longer for some, or in some countries, is really all the proof you need to judge the importance of "available in a timely manner".

Media professionals are acutely aware that the timely availability of information is crucial to have a well informed public.

Regarding a more recent affair, the plan of the majority parties in the German parliamentary investigation of the NSA to classify the dissenting opinion of the opposition is simply another attempt to steal some of the country's future. The minority opinion was published by all things digital web site netzpolitik, so damage is limited.

But there are numerous other past and current instances we not being told about.***

The world is a complicated place, and the blogster struggles with its* own limitations, so make up your own mind.

* Given that every enlightened human will say it should not matter whether the author of a post is male, female, or some other version of homo sapiens, the K-Landnews decided to use the truly gender neutral form "it". 

** You have read about the dog on the editorial board of several medical publications, right?  

*** In case, you are inclined to consider this little post a baseless or stupid rant, the K-Landnews TheEditor* would like to point out that the post was written by a person** with several years of experience in and around highly classified information.