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You could not bath in the river Rhein in Germany in the 1970s and 1980s. That changed through the political green movement and the institutionalization of their
by wuschel 6y ago
You could not bath in the river Rhein in Germany in the 1970s and 1980s. That changed through the political green movement and the institutionalization of their ideas. Now you can bath again in those rivers, and drink water from a tap without being afraid - unfortunately, a lot of producing industries have moved on to greener, cheaper pastures, where ecologic and environmental, let alone human protection is not really at a high standard.
The approach to deal with the "Après moi, le déluge" and conspiracy people is a tricky one. Only partly in can be covered with an economic (private jet tax, rejection of clinic entry/travel to people who are not vaccinated) and educational approach - but we are far from being close to an optimum here. Democracies need educated and politically mature people in order to be stable in the long term, and strong institutions that can bring forward a healthy discourse.
- oblio 6y agoSmall nitpick: I think the verb in this context is "bathe", bath is the place. One of those "joys" of learning English as a second language.
- anotherhue 6y agoNitpick pile on: Bath (capital B) is a place. A bath is optionally an abbreviation of bath-tub, or some sort of past tense conjugation of bathe 'I had a bath' that I am insufficiently skilled in grammer to identify. "I had a bath in Bath" is ambiguous as to whether you previously owned a person sized water container, or made use of the city's famous roman bathing facilities.
- adolph 6y agoBaths can be had and also taken. Unfortunately “I took a bath in Bath.” is triply ambiguous in that it might mean that you stole plumbing, that you cleaned yourself via water immersion or that you lost a significant amount of money.
- AuthorizedCust 6y agoWithout further context, people will gravitate towards the commonly used meaning, so it would typically be interpreted as “cleaned yourself via water immersion”.
- LudwigNagasena 6y agoPast tense and past participle of bathe is bathed.
- musicale 6y agoOne of the great things about English (and other languages) is that you don't need to speak or write with perfect grammar and usage in order to be understood. I understand the irritation with errors though as they read like visual noise. I like 'nitpick' as a verb though, and also 'go over with a fine-toothed comb' - a method for both literal and figurative nit-picking.
- tenebrisalietum 6y agoThere needs to be a better way to correct a government agency that isn't doing what it's supposed to besides waiting for the next election, because that doesn't seem to work.
- Nzen 6y agoOf course there is. Write to your representatives on relevant committees and indicate, in specific ways, how the agency is not representing the interests of your community. Encourage other members of your social group to do the same. There are also meta representatives, like the administrators of political party you identify with. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mp4h-3vQafk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mp4h-3vQafk
- ryandrake 6y agoI pretty much assume that any letter I would ever write to my representative goes directly to the shredder unread if it doesn’t come with at least a $1000 check.
- supertrope 6y agoA letter writing campaign or endorsement from a powerful lobbying civil society group is more likely to get attention.