Heat

 It's supposed to hit 93 F (34 C) tomorrow in my region of Germany.  Hottest day of the year so far.  Same temp predicted for Sunday, and then it'll chill off a couple of degrees.

I'll make ten observations over heat and Germany:

1.  Generally....folks can handle 30 C (86 F) without any extra measures.  After that point.....each evening is a long whine session about global warming, or extra measures they had to take to 'survive'.

2.  AC units are becoming very popular....but mostly the small units for a room or two.  In my village....I'd take a guess that 50-percent have either a house AC unit or a room unit.  

3.  The breaking point?  When you have a weather pattern that lingers....say for ten days (30 C or more)....that's usually where people boil over or things get messy.  A typical German summer is five or six periods of 30 C mixed with six periods of 25-to 28 C.  

4.  The typical method of 'cooling' a house?  You close all windows after the cooled-off evening, and shut the shutters around 10 AM.  Once things cool off at 10 PM....windows get open and the house 'cools' to some degree.

5.  Yes, people drink more beer in a hot summer period.  

6.  There's just not an average summer in Germany.  There are three 'cycles'....the harsh heat year, the cool summer year, or the average up and down year.  2003 for example....was the most extreme heat year of the past forty-odd years.

7.  Dehydration events?  They occur occasionally.

Beer

 

While in France this week, I picked up a 8-pack of Heineken 'little' beers (.17 liter).

For reference, the German beer to the left is a half-liter.

Sips?  Well...I'd say you get about six good sips out of the bottle.  

It's not something marketed in Germany (Germans would just laugh and say it's for 10-year old kids).

If you ask me....it's probably a perfect size beverage for a lunch situation for a guy at work.  

2024?

 

I sat for 10 minutes this morning....looking at this WaPo projection of candidates for 2024's Presidential election.

Joe listed?  Presently, yes.  If you asked me the odds....pretty close to zero that he'll run again.

Anyone here to get excited about?  ONLY 1....Governor Newsom of California.  

The problem with Newsom....if you pulled up the resume accomplishments and you wanted a 20-line achievements list....it's awful weak.

AOC?  Maybe on college campuses, and around NY City.....she'd draw crowds.  But nationally?  She's got a 7-line resume that is awful weak.

I'd say presently....it's Newsom from Iowa on, and a fair number of Democrats shaking their heads because they don't see much to get excited about.  

On Asian Americans

 The WaPo wrote up a piece entitled: 'The Real Secret to Asian American Success'.  I won't go into detail over it but the writer came to suggest that it's NOT education that details the success rate of Asian Americans.  

I should note....if you do try to find the data....it does suggest that Asian Americans do better in school.....achieve success in college, and education plays some role.

But I've worked with a couple of Taiwanese Americans (2nd generation) while in the Air Force.  I came to four realizations about this ethnic group:

1.  They all had structure in their life (both parents, rules within the family, curfew hours, etc).  If they were married....their spouse was Taiwanese American and structure rules followed them as a married couple.

2. They rarely made life-mistakes.  They weren't likely to get a DWI, or go bankrupt, or develop credit card issues.  If you listed the top twenty screw-ups that regular people make....this group does everything possible to avoid the mistakes.

3.  They were extreme capitalists at heart.  If you had a 400-page book on money-management....they'd have read every page and memorized it.  Zero intention of buying a $40,000 car, or spending a wild amount of money at some Vegas casino.

4.  Finally, you just felt they were motivated.  I know....most all of us are motivated to some degree....but in the majority of Taiwanese people I bumped into....they had this motivation to succeed in life.  They wanted your respect.  

Then I'll say this....whatever education goals were accomplished....it was layered to fit their path ahead.  They weren't the type to get a degree in French literature, or modern dance.  

Why all this concern over Asian Americans matters now?  Well....a fair number of black Americans see this success business as not having any sense to it.  If one were to go past the education chatter and just look at the life-mistakes angle....you'd figure out the whole reason for their success in life.

Biased News

 

I saw this today and spent a good ten minutes gazing over the biased nature of the news.  

Frankly, all of those listed in the 'center' ranking....with the exception of the Hill and WSJ....ought to be moved to left-lite.

It's funny....in the 1980s....you just didn't think at this level or face biased reporting.  It's probably after Bush II came into the picture.....that you felt this as a daily problem.

How many people recognize the biased nature?  Unknown, and I doubt if poll companies really want to open this 'can of worms'.  

My question.....as bad as it is today....what happens after the 2024 election?  

What Kind of Guy is Elon Musk?

As a kid growing up in rural Alabama....we had these characters.  The best way to describe them.....they'd hear that Maytag had a new 'silent' washer, and they'd go and spend $600 to buy one....taking it to the garage, and tearing it apart...to find the silence thing, and how it worked.  Then they'd sit there with a Pall Mall cigarette hanging out of the side of their mouth....sipping a PBR....devising the same thing, but making even more silent than what Maytag could manufacture.

These were the people asking how you could charge the Air Force $800 for a special hammer....trying to understand what made it different.

The thing about these characters....they weren't engineers, or dedicated to one single area of 'science'.

If you told Elon there's too much fat content in Pop-Tarts or we need a way to crank a car without a battery being involved....he'd put his passion into resolving the issue.  

This Twitter discussion?  Lets be honest....more than half the content-writers of Twitter are fussy over how it works,  and the Twitter-heads, Twitter-mob and Twitter-hoards are unable to comprehend or resolve this issue.  So Elon figures....he can fix this....make it profitable (since day one, it's not been profitable), and make everyone but the Twitter staff happy.

Here's the thing....Elon can be anything.  Bill Gates, all of Apple, the pro-woke crowd.....they can't be Elon.  They have limits.

My gut-feeling on Elon?  Rocket science really isn't rocket science, with Elon around.  

The Democracy Story

 So this poll was done....Yahoo News-YouGov ran it.  Question was....might the US cease to be a democracy in the future?

Results?  Around 53-percent of Republicans said 'it was likely', and 55-percent of Democrats said this.

So the reality of this question, and the answer?

Over the past two-hundred years....if you done polls....even in 1812, 1866, or 1935....I would imagine that the numbers suggesting the 'cease' might have come to a minimum of one-third of society....to the 50-percent level.

If you were trying to see the landscape....we've always been on the edge of 'zero-confidence'.  Part of the blame goes to politics being a daily affair....us-versus-them, and some blame goes toward a desire by people to have some authority to guide them.  

Lets also be honest....if someone laid out the evidence that most of the House and Senate big-wigs were getting rich off the democracy (which they are)....we'd question their ability to lead.

Lets also be honest....if someone laid out that maybe five-million votes were manufactured from thin-air in 2020.....our confidence would be shaken.

I'd call this reality something like the 9th season of the TV show 'Dallas'.  If you remember....this was the season without 'Bobby', and it wandered around in a daze....never making a lot of sense and it should have been 'done' at the end of season 8.  But then, we came to the beginning of season 10....where Pam 'wakes' up and just says the whole script for all of season 9....was a dream.  

That's kinda the reality of life in America today.....we don't have a Bobby-JFK-Reagan character....so we are trudging along with Joe Biden-Kam Harris characters....wishing the 'season' could just end.  At some point, some 'Pam' gal will announce that 2020 to 2024....was just a dream.  

This is when you pour 2nd and 3rd shot of gin in the glass.