That sounds like the right amount to me.

As you pretty much confirmed in your own reply, it’s both an inherently political and legal process. While this isn’t technically a mandatory step, it’s effectively a necessary one.

This is an important step in the long and arduous process to disallow a party, though.

Germany, like most countries, does have issues with law enforcement. But, as you noticed, so far our checks and balances hold - at least when it comes to fatal violence.

I don’t think you can extrapolate any trend from the extremely low annual numbers. 2024 was indeed an unusually violent year (even though official stats haven’t been finalized afaik), but looking at 2025s numbers so far, this does not appear to indicate any trend.

No, it really doesn’t. German shoots and kills, on average, fewer than 10 people per year. The total amount of bullets discharged at people hovers around 50 to 60.

In a country of 83 million.

The US population is four times larger and the number of victims of police shootings is literally 100 times higher. An estimated 1173 in 2024 and the US internationally doesn’t even properly track this number.

Heck, even France’s police kill significantly more people than Germany’s “trigger happy nazi cops”.

I mean, technically one would still be “yeeted into the stratosphere” just extremely briefly.

“It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people”

~Good Omens, Terry Pratchett

The same is true for almost any open world game with vehicles. Casually driving a car in GTA while obeying the traffic rules has been a thing from the very beginning.

This still feels different somehow, though.

I liked them better when they still contained horse meat.

Mullvad no longer supports port forwarding.

And that sample size is pretty small. I wouldn’t count on the US losing a war.

Programmers who maintain code get laid off, programmers who create new code get promoted.

These kind of lay-offs always result in more bugs and more fucking up shit for no reason.

Small Gods is indeed a great choice. I never thought of it as a “book for atheists” and it’s quite unlikely to turn someone religious into a non-believer - but it’s clever, funny and one of my personal favorite Terry Patches books. So, worst case scenario: you’ve read a highly entertaining book.

“The Bible” is the book that ultimately turned me into a convinced atheist. If you actually read it, without having it filtered and read to you by religious people with agendas, it’s hard to continue believing in any of its insane ramblings. But it’s a really tough, slow and often immoral and revolting read. Mostly, it’s just really stupid.

“The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster” is the opposite. It’s a funny, light and often silly read. It’s not exactly deep, but neither are the books it’s parodizing. As a satire of other religious text it works reasonably well in putting the finger in the wound.

“The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever” is just that: a collection of texts and letters on the subject by some brilliant minds: Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, Lucrecius, Charles Darwin, Richard Dawkins and many more … collected and edited by Christopher Hitchens. As an anthology it allows you to dip your toes in and read the texts you are interested in. Maybe my first choice as serious “atheism for beginners” literature.

It sounds too much like those frozen Rocky Mountain oysters on a stick. You know, Testsicles.

🎵 Pop a Poppler in your mouth

When you come to Fishy Joe’s

What they’re made of is a mystery

Where they come from, no one knows

You can pick 'em, you can lick 'em

You can chew 'em, you can stick 'em

And if you promise not to sue us

You can shove one up your nose 🎵

I was going to add stupidity, but they usually go hand in hand.

Of course. But on the other hand: Who else would?

It’s not like Bob from Des Moines is going to find $100 billion behind the sofa cushions to buy it. There aren’t that many companies with much higher valuations.

It’s an old British Idiom far preceding Pink Floyd.

Isn’t that the plan, though? Crash the economy, let the billionaires buy what’s left of America in a fire sale.