It is of interest because these palms only bloom once in their entire lifetime and then they perish. This has relevance to us all, because it’s literally a once in a lifetime event, and a beautiful one at that. Imagine spending your entire life storing energy for your one and only act of reproduction, and then dying.
Plants are beautiful systems, and for those of us who pay attention there are is lots of beauty in the way they work.
Very common crops do this, like wheat, corn, barley, and all other cereal crops. The special thing here is much more the huge timespan, and the human connection to those that planted these and never had a hope of seeing their most spectacular moment.
I have a multi-purpose kettle that I can use to boil water, heat the room, cook a small amount of food, or use as a sand battery for when its cold in the desert, where the kettle is designed to operate as long as there is a handful of material to burn.
It is fair to observe a separation methodology, but I also have to say, in some cases multi-purpose devices have their place.
If, say, the self-heating mug involved solar harvesting, I'd put a couple in my kettle bag, for sure.
I moved to Germany from Southern California in 2002 and as a conscientious objector to gridlock and indeed any grid whatsoever, I experienced very distinct happiness at the change of transportation paces between those two worlds, and the very first thing I did was get myself a DB (Deutsche Bahn) membership, which gave me so many nice memories.
I'm very fond of those years of easy train rides all over that part of Europe, and indeed internally within Germany, too. The overnight trains to Munich and Hamburg, Berlin and Vienna (ÖBB membership too), the easy rides between towns all over the Rührgebiet and NRW, the delightful weekend trips to Wuppertal and Bonn and so on. The sleeper cabins, the disco car, the wonderful cold beers served during a summer sojourn to The Hague, and so on. Yes, German trains could get you around, and connected, and after all - the rail systems of Europe are a reason to live there.
So I'm kind of saddened to hear of the demise of things, having left Germany for another land with well-laid rail (Austria), which I use with little sense of a lack of quality. But I do remember days of being very impressed with Germanys' transportation services .. it seems the nation of unlimited speed limits on the autobahn did, in those days, have superlative rail as well.
(Still, that was ±20 years ago. I suppose I shouldn't be that shocked to see time take its toll.)
I remember 20 years ago where you could just impromptu hop onto a train to Paris, party for the weekend and come back Sunday evening.
I just checked online with the Dutch Railways:
- Train that leaves in one hour (18:00), arrives at 21:40 just in time to party. 148 euro!
- Train that leaves 21:00, arrives at 10:35 the next morning. You'll miss the party plus you can't even book the train online for some reason. Multiple transfers and you need to sleep on a bench in Brussels between 00:15 and 07:30
Then for the train back:
- Train that leaves at 17:50, arrives at 22:30, decent times, 185 euro!
- Train that leaves at 20:50, arrives at 08:20 the next morning, right in time for work. Can't book it online. This time your are sleeping on a bench at Antwerpen between 00:25 and 05:50
If you are with four people, just drive the five hours to Paris instead. Have one person be sober. So much better than the train. I'm sure the fuel and tire wear are less than the €1332 in train tickets you would have with the four of you.
My theory for your downvotes - even though you are directly over the target - is that folks in Europe would rather blame Russia than address the very real dysfunction in their own societies. In fact, I tend to think that the degree to which an individual blames Russia is directly related to their failure to take responsibility for the crimes and misdeeds of their own state.
I mean, look at Brexit. Almost every single Briton was told that it's a terrible deal for Briton's, that it would raise prices and decrease the availability of goods and services in exchange for a smidge more autonomy in the global economy.
But then somebody said "them damn foreigners" and they went for it head first.
In my opinion its: Village life. Germany is a state of small villages/towns/cities/city-states, interconnected with fairly productive lines of communication - but it is very easy to live ones entire life in a German village and never leave.
At village scales, authoritarianism is given more credence by the individual because ones life boundaries are reduced to the immediate environment, which is not really sustainable without structured hierarchy.
Incidentally, this is also a factor in why American’s adopt authoritarianism so rapidly as well - spending 3 hours of ones life in a bubble, on the freeway, commuting, is extremely damaging to ones psyche. Road-rage and neighbor hatred abound in such circumstances.
The solution to authoritarianism is travel beyond ones bounds. The roots of totalitarian-authoritarianism grow deeply in the desire to be free of the ‘filth of others’ - once you expand your horizons to embrace that ‘filth of others’, through travel and cultural interaction, that ‘filth of others’ becomes ‘the flavor of others’ instead.
This is easily demonstrated: talk to a German who has never left their home town/talk to a German who regularly visits vastly different parts of the world. You will see the authoritarian in the former, but the libertarian in the latter.
The “filth of others” can be described in as many ways as a human might use to justify their elevation of one tribe over the degradation of another.
Look at it critically - whenever you encounter a totalitarian-authoritarian personality bloviating about “those people over there” (others), its usually based on the totalitarian mechanism of ‘avoiding affinity with attributes considered unsavoury’ (filth).
This concept has other applications. If you have two villages, separated perhaps by a near-insurmountable mountain or lake, or if one of those villages raises cows while the other raises goats - this is usually the basis of the formation of a new dialect, accent, or indeed entirely new language. However, when civilization occurs and those two villages merge into a broader community, that language changes to become a unity.
This is observable at an individual level, too. Any unacknowledged or under-recognized similarities/identities/differences between two or more entities will inevitably be used to justify segregation of those entities. The solution, as always, is to identify similarities/identities/differences in a cohesive manner - this is anathema to the totalitarian-authoritarian personality, who is usually pretty stubborn about enforcing, in totality, those under-acknowledged facets.
The underlying reason is a lack of cultural fluidity, or in other words, an over-abundance of cultural rigidity, which manifests as a desire to be free of other cultures.
The most effective antidote to totalitarian-authoritarianism is a one-way ticket to somewhere distant.
German villages, as comfortable as they are, don’t really promote this antidote.
Libertarian is not always better. A Goldilocks position is the best. Change is okay but you must first understand why boundaries and norms were created (Chesterton's fence). Extremely tolerant people also allow authoritarian cultures to settle, create enclaves and outnumber their own culture which is a bit of an own goal.
Interesting to frame this as a bad thing. As a parent, I would take that as a feature, not a bug. To me this is very suspicious why there seem to be so many people here, who I am assuming are mostly adults, advocating so strongly strongly for <16 olds told be on social media, as if it was something they need.
The “social media version of war crimes” is just .. war crimes.
15 - 16 year olds will grow up to inherit the war crimes of their state. The liabilities of the state are the responsibility of every single citizen.
And, let us not forget, that a government is always and only ever held accountable to its citizens if those citizens are well informed.
“Protecting children” is one thing. But a state that feels the need to defend itself from children - by mass murdering them at scale - is another thing entirely. Let us also not forget that the Australian government is a wholesale violator of human rights, and has committed genocide and participated in heinous war crimes with impunity, pretty much since its inception. This is a nation which was still practicing forced sterilization of cultures its ruling classes deemed inferior, well into the 1980’s. This is a nation that literally got away with the modern worlds’ first genocide.
That state of affairs is never going to change if there are a generation of bootlickers, raised by the state, to never question the state.
There will be a generation of Australians, in 3 or 4 years time, who will either strongly resist the totalitarian-authoritarian actions of their state - or they’ll participate in them.
I'm completely fine with there being a microphone in the thing. It's literally a remote eyes/hands interface, so it being an eyes/ears/hands interface is perfectly acceptable.
I felt the same, of moving to Los Angeles in the 80's and seeing the AIDS crisis take its toll on the street life. It was harsh, man. But then, the 90's happened.
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