Jason Lefkowitz

German reunification has been more successful than almost anyone in 1990 would have predicted. 35 years later, Germany is free and democratic, economically strong and stable. And its strength has not led it down the path of aggression again, as so many back then feared it would.

But there are limits to how successful the reunification project has been. And you can see them starkly in the map of last weekend's election results.

https://www.reuters.com/graphics/GERMANY-ELECTION/RESULTS/movaynkgova/

(Medien: 1)

"What makes the desert beautiful," said the little prince, "is that somewhere it hides a well."

-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, "Le Petit Prince" (1943)

(Medien: 1)

For the life of me, I will never understand the purpose of maintaining sanctions on Cuba in the 21st century.

The argument is over, we lost. Let them live in peace.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/rubio-says-approved-creation-cuba-235645391.html

Trump Administration people are now telling the Washington Post that Elon Musk didn't talk to them before blasting out that "Fork in the Road" buyout email to millions of federal employees, which gives you a sense for how well that particular idea is going over

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/01/29/elon-musk-opm-federal-workers-buyout-trump/

#USPol

This is what kissing the boot buys you: nothing. Nothing at all

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-mark-zuckerberg-facebook-meta-right-wing-1235245769/

#USPol

(Medien: 1)

"It’s like, what would Herblock do? I'm 64 years old. People my age, we all knew Herb, we admired Herb. He had stuck it to the man since 1929. He'd been at the Post since 1947. He literally was the guy [taking on] Joseph McCarthy. And now we're in a new McCarthy era.”

https://www.tcj.com/political-cartoonists-on-facing-donald-trump-again-there-is-no-consensus-reality-anymore/

"The original document is 68,608 bytes and file on my Mac says it's a Microsoft Word for Macintosh 4.0 file. That matches with TBL's note on the W3C page saying: 'A hand conversion to HTML of the original MacWord (or Word for Mac?) document written in March 1989 and later redistributed unchanged apart from the date added in May 1990.'

Microsoft Office for Mac came out in 1989. That was Microsoft Word 4.0 so we're looking for compatibility with Microsoft Word for Macintosh 4.0. Let's see what modern software can open this."

https://blog.jgc.org/2024/02/the-original-www-proposal-is-word-for.html

Gonna be awesome when your Tesla starts refusing to let passengers sit in it until they buy a blue checkmark on X