Open Thread: Also Two Recent Interviews
On the one hand, the German speech prosecutions I’ve been chronicling are not without their humorous side, and I think it is important to laugh at these things. A judicial system up-in arms against people who tweet the poop emoji at cabinet ministers should not be taken too seriously, above all because it makes itself ridiculous.
On the other hand, a few friends have convinced me that I should take basic steps to prepare for the (highly unlikely) event that the police ring my doorbell at six in the morning and confiscate all of my electronic devices. I have, after all, likened our Minister of the Interior to a marshmallow and pondered that our Minister of Health is eccentrically toothed. I’ve therefore spent much of the day taking a variety of elementary precautions. The longer post I had planned will have to come out tomorrow instead.
The pause is in any case a good opportunity to draw attention to two interviews I’ve given on recent events in Germany – the briefer of them for the Sceptic podcast (the whole episode is good, but I come on at 50:20) …
… and a longer discussion with my friend J. Burden:
I'm glad you're taking some precautions. And don't forget, you will get a lot of support from your readers here.
You ought to buy a small lakeside cottage in the more sensible areas of the mostly-sensible small state I live in and then you can invite me for tea and picnics and I'll bring you some of those blondies. Your time in America was all spent in the wrong place. From the photos you post you'd feel quite comfy here. And then you can exert your needed influence to help keep intelligent but sometimes too credulous people from tipping all the way over to the moron side.