Tim > Recent Status Updates

„For every half degree of warming, researchers say, societies will see between a 10 and 20 percent increase in the likelihood of armed conflict. Reaching the best-case scenario of the Paris Agreement would mean at least 40 and perhaps as much as 80 percent more war.“

„Wo ist Grösse noch zu finden, wenn die Möglichkeiten unbegrenzt sind?“

„Im Grunde ergeht es der Vielfalt nicht anders als der Transparenz und der Freiheit: Wo sie besonders vehement beschworen wird, verflüchtigt sie sich.“

Oh, this is absolutely horrifying..

The meritocratic ideal is not a remedy for inequality; it is a justification of inequality.

I preach ever Sunday at four oclock rain or shine. Just straight preachin. No cures, no predictions. Folks ask me about the second comin. Most aint heard if the first one yet. You be here?
Suttree looked down at the preacher. Well, he said. If I‘m not, just go ahead and start without me.

High over the downriver land lightning quaked soundlessly and ceased. Far clouds rimlit. A brimstone light. Are there dragons in the wings of the world?

How would history have been different if America‘s response to 9/11 had not been framed as a global war?

These forces [the internet and social media] had been unleashed on Russsia in the 1990s, only to be repurposed and fired back into America with a far more destructive result than any Soviet weapon ever achieved.

Geblähte Bäuche, schwappendes Fruchtwasser, darin die Zukunft des Landes, Garanten seines Rentensystems, er durfte sie nicht über den Haufen fahren.

«Ich erlärte ihr, dass in Europa ein Schnauzbart eher das Gehenteil von Seriosität vermittelt, Gauner trugen einen Schnauz oder Männer bei der Bundeswehr.»
- Vietnam, 1992

«Ärgerlich, dass Asien und Regen, unverständliche Neonschriften und Dunkelheit unweigerlich den Film ‚Blade Runner‘ suggerieren müssen.»
- Hong Kong, 1996

2003: „Dissolving the Iraqi army and putting the Ministry of the Interior employees out of work in a radical de-Baathification process, abruptly terminated the livelihoods of these men and created a vast pool of roughly 700‘000 humiliated, antagonized, and politizied men.“
- How could the US have made
this mistake?

2003: "The Congress didn't do it, because the Republicans weren't going to confront their own president, and the Democrats were enfeebled. The media didn't stand up because they had no-one to quote."

Sing now, ye people!

„The west has failed.“
- Spot on, Tolkien..

If ever beyond hope you shall return to the land of the living and we re-tell our tales, sitting by a wall in the sun, laughing at old grief, you shall tell me then. Until that time, farewell.
- Faramir

Aimed with skill, or guided by fate.

Speak, friend, and enter.

He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.

Have you seen „Baggins“?

Reading about the initial reactions amd fears concerning the West African Ebola epidemic back in 2014 now seems like a bad joke...

«If the UN had been around in 1939, we‘d all be speaking German»
- Fred Cuny, during the Siege of Sarajevo, 1993

On Syria: «For eight years, Republicans had defended Bush‘s ability to do whatever he pleased as commander in chief; now they were suddenly devoted to constitutional limits.» - Right wing hypocrisy at it‘s best.

«If the country‘s politics couldn‘t even allow us to enjoy this [Bin Laden‘s assassination, May 2011], then literally nothing would bring the country together.»

A professional speech-writer and foreign policy advisor writes a book about the Obama years: Pretty much my cup of coffee.