Five Things: Merz, Federal Employees, Trump, Sourdough, In-Flight Entertainment

Hello and welcome back to Five Things!

Germany is moving quickly into the direction of a new coalition between the Conservatives (CDU and the Bavarian CSU) and the Social Democrats (SPD). This used to be called a Grand Coalition, but since the SPD didn’t do too well in the last election, this will be a rather small coalition. Interestingly enough. the leader of the Conservatives did a complete flip-flop right after the election and reversed his opinion on the debt ceiling, arguing that we now need much more money than before due to Trump’s irrational behavior. Obviously, this was known well before the election and the progressive coalition feel apart precisely because Merz was against raising more debt and took the government before the German Supreme Court and won, which led to the end of the coalition. And now he didn’t just reverse his position, he also needs the Greens, which his party brutally attacked in the last year with insane claims, to vote for his new credit facility. I assume that the Greens will get some concessions regarding climate-friendly measures and then they will say that they always put the country first and then the party, which is the complete opposite with the Conservatives in Germany, who always want to govern and then don’t do anything productive but still get high approval ratings because German voters hate change more than anything else. As for the SPD, they will work hard the next four years and nobody will be thankful for that and then vote for the Conservatives who will argue that they saved Germany and Europe and everyone else by kickstarting the economy when they poured hundreds of billions of Euros into the economy, defense and infrastructure, without raising the taxes for the rich, of course. Ain’t politics fun?

Anyhow, here are my Five Things for this Sunday!

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Germany Needs to Get Its Act Together. Under Him, It Won’t.

“Today, Germany is in urgent need of change. Instead it’s getting Mr. Merz: yesterday’s man, with yesterday’s ideas.” - this is a not so nice profile of Friedrich Merz. He lacks any government experience and his so called ideas are oftentimes just measures that look good on paper and don’t have much impact otherwise. But: he is very pro-European and also has been focused on trans-atlantic relations. So that’s a good thing. Other than that, he’s flexible on issues as long as he gets to be chancellor.

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After Elon Musk Fired Her, She Kept Showing Up to Work—for Free

“Sicich struck me as the opposite of the stereotype of the entitled, lazy federal employee: a hard worker who performed tireless public service in exchange for a modest salary. Without human intervention, the Attwater’s prairie chicken would likely go extinct, Sicich said. Its habitat is almost completely decimated, and what’s left must be sustained through prescribed burning, control of invasive species, and even intervention in the sex lives of the fickle birds. Apart from the value of the species, the refuge is also important to people in Colorado County—the once vast coastal prairie has been almost completely turned into farms and, increasingly, housing developments and strip malls. The refuge is a living symbol and repository of what’s left amid relentless growth.” - this is just one example of what is happening right now while Musk poses with the chainsaw and uses DOGE to terrorize federal employees.

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This Is the Biggest Trump-Musk Scandal That No One’s Talking About

“But Trump was already going after bigger prizes, pursuing potentially huge paydays while his donors and advisers developed plans to eliminate any legal, regulatory, and judicial obstacles still standing in the way of the ascendant American oligarchy. The new Trump administration wouldn’t just be open for business. With the aid of Musk’s DOGE wrecking ball, the administration would create the perfect environment for graft, self-dealing, and lucrative influence-peddling. And it would be legal, at least some of it. For now.” - this is exactly what Trump wants to happen: there is so much insane stuff going on that people get overwhelmed by it.

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Life, Death, and Sourdough

“We walked into the narrow, galley-style kitchen. The putty-colored slurry sat on the middle shelf of a nearly empty fridge. I lifted the lid and saw a thin layer of clear liquid, the hooch, on the surface. This is the buildup of alcohol, the product of fermentation that appears when a starter hasn’t been fed for a while. But it smelled sweetly vinegared. A snap of carbon dioxide flicked at my nose. This was a piece of Joe that could live on. I carried it carefully downtown on the subway.”

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From Fawlty Towers to ‘rawdogging’ – the bizarre history of in-flight entertainment

Do you watch movies on a plane? I usually don’t, mostly because I cannot decided what I feel like watching, especially during the day. I just listen to music, read a book on my kindle and mostly sleep. I didn’t know that movies get adapted to the plane environments, which kind of makes me want to watch them even less.

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That’s it. Have a great Sunday!

— Nico