Hello and welcome back to Five Things!

Oh, what a week. I don’t even know where to start. I was really hopeful that the Orange menace would be gone forever and now he’s back with a vengence. I’m really worried about my American family and about my American friends, who now have to resist a fascist leader who wants to destroy the democratic institutions that shaped the nation. I’m also worried about European security and more specifically about Ukraine. But mostly, I just don’t want to see or hear this dangerous idiot all the time, it pains me to have to listen to the words that make it out of his senile rotten brain.

Later that Wednesday, the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (Socialdemocratic Party of Germany, SPD) probably thought that Trump doesn’t deserve all the attention in German media and did something everybody had been expecting and/or hoping for for quite a while. He fired the Finance Minister after telling him that he lost complete trust in him after the Finance Minister too often reversed his opinions and decisions. And when he was done with him, he said: “So. Doof.”, which can be interpreted as “So. This is unfortunate.” or “So. Stupid.” - but of course kicking out the Finance Minister, who is also Vice-Chancellor and the head of the Free Democrats (FDP) now means that the government coalition doesn’t have the majority of votes in parliament anymore, which is not so good. Germany will have its next elections in spring now and not in September, but right now there’s a fierce debate about the right timing for the Chancellor to ask for a vote of confidence which can then lead to new elections. He could also just stay Chancellor and wouldn’t get anything passed at all, but this is not how things work in Germany. Interestingly enough, the opposition right now cannot oust him, because the German constitution only allows a for constructive vote of no confidence, which means that the opposition has to present a candidate that can get elected from parliament. As none of the parties want to vote with the right-wing extremist AfD or wants their votes, they cannot produce a majority in parliament. So we will get elections in spring. With the prospect of two populist parties that are on the rise right now and that are pro-Russia, elections could very well destabilize the German democratic institutions dramatically. I hope that despite a head start into the campaign, the democratic parties can agree on measurements to protect our Supreme Court and other institutions.

And then yesterday was November 9, the fateful day in German history. On that day in 1918 the German Republic was declared by Philipp Scheidemann (SPD), then on that day in 1938 the Reich’s Pogrom Night happened (Kristallnacht is a term we do no longer use, as a crystal is something shiny and beautiful and this is not how the atrocities of that day and what followed could be adequately described), and in 1989 the wall between East and West Germany came down. In my part of town there are many “Stolpersteine” (stepping stones) in front of residential buildings and these small placards have the names and life dates of people who used to live there and got deported and killed between 1933-1945. On November 9, many neighbors polish the placards and put candles and oftentimes flowers next to the Stolpersteine. This regularly restores my faith in humanity. Average people get down on their knees to polish placards to make sure that we remember their former neighbors who lived there some 80 years ago. I took our youngest daughter (9) to a rally at the place where the biggest synagogue in Northern Germany used to be, until it got burned down by the Nazis and was converted into some sort of parking lot. There are now very concrete plans to rebuild the synagogue at that exact place, which will be a great sign of jewish life right in the middle of Hamburg. This, and the conversation with my daughter about antisemitism, left me hopeful. Never again is now!

Now, let’s have a look at the five articles I picked for you. And sorry, you need to read about Trump.

This Place Is All Fucked Up

“Even this morning's bleary eyes can't not see it clearly: This was a mandate for a nasty, venal person to keep being his nasty, venal self. You can't blame third-party voters, or hesitant lefties, or anyone but the many, many people who voted for him. He ran on a platform of punishing his enemies, and his voters' imagined enemies, and they turned out in droves to give him that power even at the expense of making their own lives worse. One cannot say broadly of Americans We're better than this, because we're not. A plurality of Americans hate women or people of color or immigrants or trans people enough for this to be the result.”

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A Brief History of the Most Famous Swear Word in the World

“The word fuck is of Germanic origin.” - we’re so proud and now I know why my kids like to say “fuck” so often.

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Why Does No One Understand the Real Reason Trump Won?

I don’t think people don’t understand the impact of the media on the election results of populists all over the West. We have discussed and dissected misinformation, desinformation and false balancing now for quite a while and we do understand how that works to influence people. We just haven’t found any way to mitigate or counter right wing media. And this the real problem.

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Plastic pollution is changing entire Earth system, scientists find

Now for some lighter news. Good thing Trump want’s to get out of the Paris Agreement, again. Let’s blame scientists for figuring all this stuff out, shall we?

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German firms tested 4-day workweek — here's the outcome

I think the 4-day workweek is long overdue. We have all these productivity gains and we by now are used to asynchronous work across teams, yet we still think that the world will fall apart when we don’t work on Friday or Monday. And then there’s the rolling vacation schedule in Germany, which sometimes is also the case for religious holidays, where you cannot reach somebody and get lots of ooo-replies and still the work gets done somehow. I think we’ve grown to accustomed to the five-day workweek and we’re afraid of change.

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That’s it. Have a great Sunday! If you missed last Sunday’s edition of Five Things, have a look here:

Five Things: Trump, Republicans, Normalization, Wargames, Recommendations Nov 3 Read full story

— Nico