You know what you could do on this amazing day? Read Five Things and then become a paid subscriber! Awesome idea, right? ✌🏻 Oh, by the way, if you do not want to subscribe to Five Things, Five Things Tech and Five Things Running, you can select which one of the newsletters you want to read in your account settings. Hello and welcome back to Five Things! It’s the middle of January and many people switched from dry to try already. I actually did a dry January last year and that somehow lasted until May or so. It changed my relationship with alcohol profoundly. I very rarely drink alcohol now and whenever I have some, I really like it, until I wake up in the morning and miss the mental clarity I usually have in the mornings. The downside to not drinking alcohol is that I now drink fruit and herbal tea during the day and in the evening. I got rid of one habit and quickly found another one. Speaking about mental clarity, I still cannot come to grips with the fact that a convicted felon will now be President of the United States, again. The hypocracy of the Republican Party is unbelievable and now Donald Trump and his croonies will establish a broligarchy now that will drain the middle class even further and make the billionaires even richer. What a shitshow. I hope people in Western democracies wake up before the spread of anti-democratic populism has gone too far. In this Sunday edition of Five Things we’ll have a look at the fires in LA and you’ll learn a lot about helicopters and strong winds. Then we’ll take a good look at the good old days and why we remember them so fondly. Then we’ll revisit the last days of the Weimar Republic and understand how quickly Hitler dismantled the democratic institutions by using the constitution. Finally, we will read about generosity in the middle of nowhere in Texas. Enjoy. Urban ‘firestorms’: the science behind their ferocious spread
When the fires in Los Angeles started, everybody on the internet came up with explanations for it. Here are the real reasons why the fires were so hard to put out and why they created so much damage. The Terrifying Ride of Copter 17
“The Los Angeles County Fire Department is recognized across the country as a pioneer in using aircraft to fight fires. The department was the first county to adapt the military’s Black Hawk helicopter into a firefighting copter known as the Firehawk, which carries a water tank of 1,000 gallons. The department was also the first in the United States to use night-vision equipment to fight fires in the dark. Yet the pilots who flew that night speak of weather conditions that humbled them, a ferocity of sustained, 90-mile-an-hour winds that overpowered their equipment and brought them to the edge of an airborne catastrophe. It was a night, they say, that underlined the futility of trying to confront an inferno driven by hurricane-force winds.” Your Brain Is Lying to You About the “Good Old Days”
“Humans have memories that are both short and bad, which leads us to forget just how bad many things used to be in even the recent past, and take for granted the improvements that have been made.” - so this is ideal for populist parties who constantly talk about how good it was back then, yet it never really was that good to begin with. How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days
I sure hope the American democracy has enough safeguards in place to withstand the threats for the next four years. We’ve seen in Hungary and Poland how fast it can go to dismantle the democratic institutions. In Germany we just had to amend our basic law to make sure that the anti-democratic parties won’t be able to mess with the Supreme Court. Amarillo by Morning
I once drove through the Texas panhandle and almost 30 years later I still remember what it looked like there. Next time I’ll make sure to swing by Lazbuddie. That’s it. Have a great Sunday! If you missed last Sunday’s edition of Five Things, have a look here: — Nico You're currently a free subscriber to Five Things. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
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