I once met a guy who had a old Portuguese tractor. I joked 'you probably can run it on sunflower oil easily, right?' - he looked at me and said 'I could throw in a piece of butter and that thing would burn it.'

A friend recently said to me "you're at least a village 8.5". I'm still not sure if that's a compliment or an insult.

Bei Zuwiderhandlung droht der Schusswaffengebrauch.

Tja, dat kummt, as dat kummt.

Jo, dor maakst wat mit, ne.

According to Marxist theory the individual soldier usually is working class since class is not defined by the function or moral evaluation but by their position within the economical and power structures.

A regular soldier does not own land, a factory or any other means of extracting profit, they are selling their own labour, they do not exercise power over their own labour other than providing it in exchange for a wage and they are usually recruited from lower/middle class.

With Marx class does not equal a political function, a soldier can be objectively working class and still be used by their employer (state) against the interest of their own class. In Marx's theory that is not a contradiction but a feature of the state as a class instrument.

You didn't read the article, huh? It's all laid out there, from the challenges of those deep dives to the possible CIA involvement to the shaky cover story.

specialized gear, and advanced certification—far beyond normal recreational scuba capabilities.

In the article, they even go in to detail that even Navy divers rarely dive that deep so:

To assemble the Diameter team, however, the men had to reach outside their usual battle-hardened ranks, and recruit specialist, civilian deep-sea divers – the only people capable of going down to Nord Stream’s 80-metre depth. Luckily, Ukraine has a large and patriotic Black Sea diving fraternity, from which volunteers were picked amid great secrecy.

This entire article reeks of cia

So much so they hint at their own involvement? Classic cover story. "We distract from our involvement by hinting that we might've been involved!"

Pancevski hints that the CIA might have given the Ukrainians tacit encouragement. “Not all senior CIA officials who got wind of Operation Diameter were outraged,” he writes. “They weren’t necessarily averse to someone putting the pipeline permanently out of commission.”

Shooting porn at deeper than 40meters is no cover story anyone would believe.

That was an idea that was floated earlier in the planning phase of the operation.

They then travelled to Germany, where they hired a boat from a marina on the coast and posed as leisure divers exploring shipwrecks. (The Colonel’s suggested porn-film alibi had, at this late stage, been abandoned.)

I agree but the term 'class traitor' does not appear in Marx or Engels texts because they do not discuss individual 'guilt' or any form of individual morality, they discuss the overall econimcal and societal relations to each other.

Class traitors as a term appears later in revolutionary rhetoric and it usually describes a conscious effort against the interest of the own class. Soldiers act within the power structure of the state, not as free actors representing their class. Their role is institutionally dictated, not a individual ideological 'betrayal' like for example union busters.

With the term lumpen Proletarier Marx himself describes something similar but different. The Lumpenproletariat according to Marx does not live within the structures of typical class, they do not own means of production, but they are also not giving their labor for a wage. Through that they can not have a unified class consciousness and act largely indivualisticly. He means economic minorities like beggars, vagabonds, criminals, grifters and the like. According to Marx they are 'politically unreliable ' and usually reactionary in nature.

It's worth noting that this kind of classification was criticized widely, the term itself is seen as problematic even within Marxist circles.

There is no paradox. Tolerance is a social contract, if one party breaks that contract, they're excluded from it's protection, to protect the ones honoring the contract.

Ride it to work every day, taking the best parking spots. Good luck trying to tow ab elephant.

On Voyager you can give tags to users, anyone I might want to steer clear of gets a red tag with a short description why I don't want to engage with them, for example ' Religious asshole', 'Tankie', 'Miserable prick'.

You got the first green Tag - 'No, not that one'

Great, now you got the genocide still going AND a fascist takeover of your country, with even less possibility to change anything and plenty of distractions to the Palestinians cause because your country is falling apart around you.

and all of you are complicit

How elegantly she absolves herself of any complicity.

To imagine the huge difference between a billion and a million I always liked the example - a million seconds is roughly 11.7 days, a billion seconds is around 31.7 YEARS.

Worst aviation disaster in history. Basically the pilot initiated the take off during poor visibility and without proper take off clearance despite his cabin crew repeatedly voicing doubts about the runway being clear. The plane taking off crashed into another plane that hasn't cleared the runway yet, killing 583 people.

This accident lead to several changes in aviation procedures, including Crew resource management. The captain overruled legitimate concerns of his crew by pulling rank - now the procedures call for every cabin crew member having equal voice in concern to flight procedures. Also :

The word "takeoff" is now spoken only when the actual takeoff clearance is given, or when cancelling that same clearance (i.e., "cleared for takeoff" or "cancel takeoff clearance"). Until that point, aircrew and controllers should use the word "departure" in its place (e.g., "ready for departure").

That was also a point of confusion due to garbled radio calls.

Oliver Welke had a great bit about the FIFA, at the time they had an ethics commission over the corruption scandals and his comment was 'Ethics commission of the FIFA is like marriage counseling in a brothel'

Well to be fair the X7 can seat 7 passengers while the Pz. II has only 3 seats.

There's the German saying, that the shoemaker always has the worst shoes.

From the official website:

Admission to the grounds of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial is free of charge. The entry cards should be reserved on visit.auschwitz.org. For better understanding the history of Auschwitz we suggest a visit with a guide-educator

I went there last month, you have to register online, then you can book a tour (which cost about 45€) there are tours free of charge but you have to book them way in advance. Upon arrival you have your personalized ticket and they do ID and security checks not unlike at an airport.

I suppose the need to register is for security reasons and to not overcrowd the place since tickets are limited.

I highly recommend a visit, I am well educated on the topic but being there, realizing that 1.1 million is not just a number is unreal.

Walking the same route from the loading ramps to the gas chambers, a group of people just like us, with the same hopes and dreams, the same fears and worries was just a harrowing experience.

Gul Dukat was the better villain in my eyes. At least he was way more interesting than Kai Winn.