Filed two lawsuits with the help of another model (airline, insurance) in Europe. One took several visits to the library and a lot of secondary literature reading.
Won both instances - against corporate legal departments.
Compared these to lawsuits humans filed for me for money previously. Riddled with errors and inconsistencies they were.
N=2 but I doubt I will ever hire a lawyer for “small claims” again
I suppose honey bees are not native in North America pretty much the same way as the human species?
I don’t quite understand why there seems to be a pretty persistent thread around “honey bees are invasive and harm the ecosystem by stealing all the food from the native bees and doing all their pollination; that’s why they decline” - when at the same time the use of pesticides is so rampant that insects are literally gone entirely.
Honey bees are not great and reliable pollinators btw.
So the solution is: more genetically modified crops? More pesticides?
Unless “we need to stop our use of pesticides and we should also acknowledge that honey bees are an invasive species and consider making changes to the way we do monocultures” are in the same sentence this entire “honey bees are invasive” argument just feels super weird. Pesticides kill native pollinators. It’s not the honey bees.
Edit: and just to be clear - honey bees do not survive in the wild by themselves anymore due to varroa mites. They essentially depend on humans to protect them. That’s what the entire purpose of this article is about. So, if humans stopped keeping honey bees - they’d have a pretty hard time surviving in the wild on their own.
By ‘standard valuation techniques’ you mean: regular companies produce value and wealth and represent what a society can create whereas crypto is like ‘a shiny object sitting there with people trying to gauge how much someone is willing to pay in the future on the premise it will be worth more’ ? :-D
I’m not very deep in the art or collectible business.
I’m far more concerned about a government led by people who have no formal education beyond high school, have never worked outside of politics, lack subject-matter expertise in the fields they oversee, and can’t even speak a foreign language — yet are sent abroad to represent the country — than I am about a self-made millionaire serving as chancellor.
Germany’s economy feels like a freight train rolling downhill — momentum without direction, and no one in the cabin who knows how to steer.
And no, the health care system is not “working.” It suffers from systemic distortion and ideological decision-making. Doctors face strict budget caps and fixed, low reimbursement rates for treating regular patients, but those limits don’t apply when treating certain publicly funded cases — where compensation is higher. That incentive structure inevitably leads to unequal treatment. I’ve experienced it firsthand with my own child and couldn’t believe it. As in: they denied taking my kid in but took in two “publicly funded cases” while I was there.
It’s worth remembering who actually made the strategic choices that strengthened Russia’s hand and left Germany dependent and militarily weak. Those weren’t the AfD’s doing — they came from the CDU–SPD coalition governments, the same lineup that’s currently in power again.
• 2011: Under Angela Merkel (CDU) and the SPD coalition, Germany decided to abolish nuclear power after Fukushima, dismantling one of the few sources of domestic energy independence.
• 2011–2015: The same governments backed and defended Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2, tying Germany’s critical infrastructure even closer to Russian gas — despite repeated warnings from Eastern European neighbors.
• 2011: The abolition of compulsory military service further weakened Germany’s defense capacity and NATO readiness.
These weren’t minor policy missteps — they systematically made Germany more vulnerable to Russian influence.
And it’s also worth noting a historical irony: Angela Merkel’s family moved from West Germany to East Germany in 1954, one of the very few families to go in that direction. Between 1949 and 1961, roughly 2.7 to 3 million East Germans fled the communist East for the capitalist West — virtually nobody went the other way.
Germany’s constitution (the Basic Law) does protect freedom of opinion and expression, but it explicitly allows restrictions via “general laws” to protect personal honor, youth, and human dignity.
Recent enforcement shows how this plays out: police raids have targeted individuals posting “hate speech” or “extremist” content online. What constitutes hate speech or extremist content is “conveniently” interpreted at times.
I accept Fraunhofer’s technical modeling: they explicitly size ~500–750 GW of PV+wind by 2050 (≈6–9× average load) and still keep ~100–150 GW of flexible gas turbines plus sizable batteries for reliability (pp. 5–7). They target ≥95% cuts in energy-related CO₂ vs. 1990, but that still leaves a non-zero footprint—nowhere near France’s nuclear-heavy intensity (p. 11). Where I part ways is economics: today’s ~40 ct/kWh retail reality makes their rosy cost outlook look detached from how this overbuild-plus-backup approach plays out on the ground. I can appreciate Fraunhofer’s technical simulations—they’re excellent at that—but I’m street-smart enough to separate modeling optimism from economic reality, and that’s a distinction worth keeping in mind.
Maybe some street smart and “nuanced” thinking is something to consider? :-)
Yes, they mention hydrogen caverns and thermal storage on pp. 5–6 — but those are more theoretical potentials than real, scalable solutions today. That’s why even in Fraunhofer’s own scenarios we still see 500–750 GW of wind + PV (6–9× average load) and 100–150 GW gas backup on top. In practice, it’s the massive renewable overcapacity that smooths supply, with storage playing only a limited supporting role.
Fraunhofer’s own math says 2050 electricity demand is ~700–750 TWh (≈80 GW average load), yet they assume 500–750 GW PV + wind — that’s 6–9× average demand and 5–7× today’s installed base (p. 15). On top of that, they still need 100–150 GW gas turbine backup plus major battery storage (p. 17), i.e. almost the whole peak load duplicated in flexible backup. In their model this cuts CO₂ by >95 % vs. 1990 (p. 11), which I accept technically. But given we already see close-call outages in Germany during “Dunkelflauten,” and given that today’s reality is ~40 ct/kWh for households instead of the 7–9 ct/kWh Fraunhofer projects (p. 65 ff.), I find their economic modeling divorced from the trajectory we’re actually on.
Well, 5 years later past publication and with “the highest electricity prices, a high carbon footprint compared to neighboring countries, challenges with network stability and 3 years in a recession with major mass layoffs in the news every week” I can reassure you that the math of cost efficiency was certainly off and the population has serious concerns about the feasibility.
I do trust their math on carbon emissions and capacity calculations wrt to renewable energy and gas power plants though.
I’m not saying “no gas”. I’ saying: no more PV or wind because we already stress our grid with too much electricity on some days and we have periods of days or week where we need to essentially generate 100% without any PV or wind.
I’d rather build nuclear plants and not keep them entirely idle but forego the investment into additional PV and wind. Don’t get me wrong: when the sun shines and the wind blows we cover 100% of our need essentially. That’s great. But we can stop now.
Because we produce too much on some days and put our grid at risk and we produce too little to often on others and put our grid at risk
Won both instances - against corporate legal departments.
Compared these to lawsuits humans filed for me for money previously. Riddled with errors and inconsistencies they were.
N=2 but I doubt I will ever hire a lawyer for “small claims” again