Your comments do land on the xenophobic side though.
E.g."Indians with German passports": You need to pass a naturalization and language tests before applying for citizenship. Until recently you couldn't even apply without living in the country for 6+ years - now reduced to 4+. So how do you or potential Swiss know they are Indians? The first thing that comes to mind is that you're assuming it by the way they look.
Eh, my PM has been in Switzerland for 8 years and it's still very obvious he's Indian from his accent, from his restaurant preferences and from his choice of holiday destinations... Just like I've been here 10 and it's still obvious I'm an Aussie. You can legally naturalize, but you will never truly be like a kid who grew up there in their formative years.
To be pedantic, what is and isn’t German qua German (versus Deutsch) is a bit of a shitshow [1] to the point that one could correctly argue that Germans pee se are more Frankish than Germanic.
Probably not. I work at a generally generous company that doesn’t pay too much attention to expensive pens etc. they would order anything you wanted though but most devs are happy with a biro and spiral notebook.
Don't put words in my mouth. Pens don't have to be expensive, just not cheap garbage. Same with notebooks and so on. It's about having the most basic tools to do your job.
Also, the "utterly intoxicating" sound is often forced onto others without their consent. Like playing your music through a loudspeaker in a public place.
Some of them have a sound so that pedestrians can hear them coming. It isn't ridiculously loud - and if you wanted to silence it, you could easily make some modifications. I doubt silencing an EV would be legal though.
When you're hard of hearing like me, traffic noise makes conversation impossible just about everywhere inside a city. Electric vehicles might have fixed this, if the solution were not being banned. That is intensely annoying.
(If not outside, you can try chatting inside. But public meeting places inside are almost all noisy too: if not crowded enough to be noisy, most will add music or TV to compensate.)
Have you heard the EV noise though? In France there are a lot of Renault Zoe around, and the noise is much softer, narrower band (which might help not mask vocal frequency band) than a gas engine. To be honest, I’m grateful, otherwise I’d cross in front of one as a pedestrian or cyclist. I’d even like to see the front of city buses with some noise since, with the engine in the back, you just hear them whoosh past when they barely miss you.
It is good that safety is not being overlooked. My problem with it is in expecting us to get locked in to this particular answer to the problem, when cars are going to drive themselves more and more, with better awareness, etc. Maybe I should trust more that we'll also solve the coordination problem of switching to really quiet cars in the future.
I’m all for quiet cars. As a cyclist though I rely on at least tire noise to judge proximity of cars around. I’d guess that’s the noise floor for cars.
Re-reading my comment, I see how this can come across. I'm actually fully in favor of having these speakers. Even if they would be annoying, then we should just switch to mainly using public transport especially in areas where people live or want to enjoy the outdoors. But yeah presumably it's just a low volume, enough for the person behind the car to realize it's on and rolling but not carry further. I haven't heard one myself yet.
It's been a very important myth for a very long time as it helps (to some degree) reduce the impetus to decapitate the aristocracy. Hundreds of years old in the west, thousands in China.
Such a privilege to have no idea how the Government can execute millions of its citizens having no doubt that they are paving the way to a Better Tomorrow.
You're right: our only two options are (A) extreme libertarianism where the Government exists only to protect the interests of the rich, and (B) the government literally exterminating its own citizens. We better be careful not to increase taxes on the rich or we risk immediately turning into (B)!
Also, didn't I just say that eugenics was a horrible thing that was in-vogue in the early 20th century? Isn't that exactly what you're saying?
Are you referring to your GP comment about how I must be ignorant about governments killing their own citizens because I dared suggest that governments can help the poor? If so, I agree: a straw man and lots of other fallacies to boot.
