tfourb

24 ms·

271.
by tfourb 3y ago
I went to school with children of Italian, Portuguese, Turkish and Greek backgrounds (mostly the parent generation migrated) and none of them were distinguishable in terms of "broad" culture from those whose grandparents were born
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by tfourb 3y ago
Just to share some insights from our local rural primary school (where I am the head of the parent's association and have regular conversations with the school principal about personnel) and from a primary school in Berlin Kreutzberg (
273.
by tfourb 3y ago
Maybe important to point out that schools with 70-90% migrant children is the exception, not the norm and limited to very specific contexts in a handful of major cities. Those major cities, especially Berlin and some in the mid-west also te
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by tfourb 3y ago
It is also the unwillingness to spend the money required for the necessary number of teachers to have a differentiated curriculum. If 1 teacher = 25 students, everyone of course has to learn the same stuff. Edited to add: this also has noth
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by tfourb 3y ago
I’d actually argue that the increasing centralization of power in the U.S. is due to the increasing nationalization of political issues and the requirement for nation-wide resolutions to problems. The way it has expressed itself (strong pre
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by tfourb 3y ago
Turns out messing with the composition of the atmosphere has some unexpected consequences …
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by tfourb 3y ago
This kind of stuff is usually set out in constitutions or basic laws which in turn can be enforced by courts – the usual division of power stuff. You could also introduce some sort of check on the power of a global government. In Germany, p
278.
by tfourb 3y ago
Not a lawyer, but shutting down a subsidiary to avoid overwhelming fines is de facto messing with the insolvency laws, isn't it? At least in Germany that is a criminal offense for which the executives of the (parent) company are ultima
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by tfourb 3y ago
It's not, but not paying a fine can quickly become a criminal offense.
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by tfourb 3y ago
Meta has plenty of EU-based assets which are not liquid enough to just pull out in a matter of months. The EU and national governments would also likely have options under insolvency laws and criminal statutes to freeze some of Meta's
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by tfourb 3y ago
The magic word is "subsidiarity": the principle that political decisions should always be made on the most local level that still enables their resolution. Under that principle, a (democratically legitimized) world government woul
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by tfourb 3y ago
How about you stay and work towards changing the government? This is literally how every democracy has developed. It is also the reality for several Billion people today. Most can't just up and leave if they disagree with their governm
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by tfourb 3y ago
Corporate lawyering is basically about finding ways to break the spirit or letter of the law without being punished for it. Or to limit the punishment so that it is exceeded by the likely profit of breaking the law. So yes, Meta's thou
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by tfourb 3y ago
Global government is only the extension of local, national and regional government. The E.U. already is a kind of "international" government in that it creates de facto laws, rules and regulations that supersede the laws of its me
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by tfourb 3y ago
Much of our current bird population (at least in central Europe) has co-evolved with agriculture over thousands of years. The problem is not so much that there is agriculture happening, it is the scale and destructiveness of the industriali
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by tfourb 3y ago
Easy mode: If you are in the US, try looking up the Savannah Institute. They do some fantastic work to develop and research regenerative agricultural practices and they can use your money :-) Medium mode: Find a motivated young people that
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by tfourb 3y ago
There are some interesting approaches to regenerative agriculture that somewhat sidestep the problem of labour cost. I.e. Mark Shepard runs a 46ha farm in US mid west that he says has been profitable basically from year one. Very small degr
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by tfourb 3y ago
There is certainly more space available than is currently being filled. I.e. I have lived in more than a dozen places around the EU and Africa and have never had access to one of these types of farmers, despite being heavily inclined to buy
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by tfourb 3y ago
If the only way that agriculture can sustain itself in i.e. Germany is by subsidies covering 50% of farmers' incomes and all of their profits, then the way we do agriculture/food is fundamentally wrong. Also, how self-sufficient a
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by tfourb 3y ago
There are also quite convincing studies that show even worse declines for insect populations, again mostly due to industrialized farming techniques and the widespread use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The standard approach in the
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Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe(pnas.org)
296 points by tfourb 3y ago|254 comments
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by tfourb 3y ago
From the abstract: "We find that agricultural intensification, in particular pesticides and fertiliser use, is the main pressure for most bird population declines, especially for invertebrate feeders. Responses to changes in forest cov
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by tfourb 3y ago
It is only insofar inconsistent as most spiritual/social norms are. This seems to me to be very similar to the gratefulness expressed i.e. by Christians and other religious people towards a higher power (which often explicitly is &quot
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by tfourb 3y ago
And if I may expand on this, if someone conflates thanking and apologizing and/or associates both with weakness, it has profound implications for how that person will behave within a society. It may (at least partly) explain why there
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by tfourb 3y ago
Berlin used to be very cheap, because after reunification, there was a lot of housing stock available of quite low standard and at least initially, there weren't actually a lot of people that wanted to move there. At that time the ci
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by tfourb 3y ago
That’sa possible alternative but the experience here in Germany shows that landlords will use every loophole available to get back to profit maximizing = just rent to upper middle class. Or alternatively they’ll just let low cost units rot
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by tfourb 3y ago
private landlords maximize profits or personal utility (if they live in the property themselves). Usually that means creating middle-income detached housing or large apartments with very high rental values or conformant to some idealized mi
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by tfourb 3y ago
Why can't they? Municipality-owned housing is a thing in many places around the world and is generally cost-covering even when rented out to low-income housesholds. In many places (i.e. Germany and Austria), even some of the most desir
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by tfourb 3y ago
Technically, you can probably opt out of taxes in return for opting out of using tax-funded services and infrastructure, especially in the U.S. and other countries with vast tracts of wilderness: just hike a few days into the woods/mou
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by tfourb 3y ago
Usually, these programs achieve the best results if people are actually integrated into "normal" neighborhoods and not clustered with other people with pre-existing problems. But of course this should depend on a social and psycho

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