Yes these people have bought into the climate change folly hook line Nd sinker and then still wont change when confronted with the harsh realities—which is the definition of insanity
If they suddenly went on a big media campaign to convince people dragons aren't real I might reconsider my position on dragons. Pretty sold on the whole round earth thing though.
I am still open to the idea that they're a bunch of lizards. Except for their wanting to blot out the sun, it adds up.
There was news the other day of an electric airplane, bragging its half hour flight only used $5 of electricity. There are electric helicopters too. They never mention how short ranged they are from the heavy batteries. or how long it takes to turn them around due to battery charging.
Sadly, no. Airbus is full-on with electric aeroplanes, and hydrogen fuelled electric planes as well. Oddly, because they don't really work, the leccy retards are demanding authorities allow electric aircraft to only carry enough fuel for the intended trip - no spare. That is why certification is held up.
All other aircraft have to carry additional emergency fuel, calculated as part of the flight plan to cover off emergencies.
Nut Zero zealots want this to be abandoned.
So autonomous electric 'taxi' takes off, no flight plan, just a hop to the next destination without any energy back up to cover exceptional events.
The rich types are pushing this.
They'll die. So will anyone underneath their arrogant little contraption, if it runs out of power before landing.
Whatever "full on" means, they are never going to produce any electric airplanes that can carry anything any distance. They WILL take hundreds of millions of dollars of "investors'" and taxpayer subsidy and grant money, but they will just blow it on nothing except huge salaries.
Didn't they try that with Zeppelins? Which as anyone can see are not used any more for good reason. Zeppelins would be perfect for luxury cruises though, able to plop down anywhere with an open field and a willingness to accept the occasional massive, dramatic explosion orders of magnitude larger than a garage full of E.V.s.
Should entirely be taken from them, sell their house and all that is in it, their cars, boats, planes and all and have them turn burgers at McD till all is paid back. And never again let these idiots be available for any govt post. Well, maybe toilet cleaner.
Exactl so - if I can't pay a debt, eventually the Crown's Repo comes and takes my stuff to cover the accrued debt.
We know from history that when public officials are liable to re-pay the costs of stupidity and corruption out of their pocket (or with their necks on the line in olden times - always liked that arrangement) they perform better.
It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.
It was during those days Gustavus Adolphus was able to turn one of Europe's poorest nations into a local super-power during the course of the Thirty Years War: total personal accountability for his clerks and staff, combined with personal autonomy in making decisions on the spot.
Do you mean the olden days of 90 years ago? You know, the Germany of National Socialism? You do remember that this had a rather bad outcome for everyone, not just Germans. The Nuremburg trials of 1946 summed up how bad it was.
We have the King of the Clowns in Australia - supposedly the Federal Government Energy Minister is bringing down energy prices which will probably happen if ever in the year 3000
Och aye. The Party State of SNPeeee decided to lay down a design and give it to a boat builder who had never built anything that big, and the slip way was not able really to take the weight either.
Not only that.
The Party State of SNPeeee then laid down design changes to create a massively complex triple power source propulsion system.
Not only that.
The original builder went broke, so the Party State of SNPeeee decided to run the project themselves.
That's how you go from two ferries budgeted at £70 million in total to.... £550 million. Oh, 4 years late... and counting. Aye.
Meanwhile other ferries ordered by the Party State of SNPeeee from Turkey turned up on time and in budget.
"The original builder went broke, so the Party State of SNPeeee decided to run the project themselves. That's how you go from two ferries budgeted at £70 million in total to.... £550 million. Oh, 4 years late... and counting."
And that, dear friends, is how you "seize the means of production!"
How about Greenshill Capital, fake Lord Cameron, the SNPeee, a shooting estate in Scotland, a aluminum wheel manufacturing plant also in Scotland and a bankrupt? Yup. We, tax payers, paid for the whole lot. Total... anywhere from £440 million (what the SNPeee reluctantly indicate) to £1 billion, which is closer to the truth....
There are so many stories of huge spending by the SNPeee with little or no effect.
Throughout all the grand gestures there was only ever one group who were going to fund the whole lot. The public.
I can't stop laughing either. He should have got the stupid government for $200,000.
Its "government money", its going to be wasted anyway. I would HOPE that some large, stupid, blunder, if properly publisized, might enable change and get some people in there that have some sense. Its probably a forlorn hope.
A lot of people are going to need to become anonymus before too much longer in Europe. They'll have to use VPNs, then they'll make THOSE illegal and compare the TYPE of writing and see if it "matches" a previous example of that person, and they'll use the ENTIRE STATE to prove it. It only takes a FEW people to stop terrible policy decisions, they have to "shut down" independent speech to turn the world into a dystopia.
I think it was Hannah Arendt who said this about the period just prior to hitler.
And will it eventually be like "Farenheit 451" because people can STILL get "corrupted" by books with authors like Arendt?
Is Europe to the degree (yet) where they dont care about "reading, writing and 'rythmatic"?. We (the US) has FAR over 50% of HS "graduates" who cannot read and write in the Big Blue cities, and its getting WORSE. It seems obvious that to mold children into "good citizens" (in a rapidly advancing dystopia) it helps if they cant read/write and get 100% of data from MSM (Main Stream Media)
"It seems obvious that to mold children into "good citizens" (in a rapidly advancing dystopia) it helps if they cant read/write and get 100% of data from MSM (Main Stream Media)"
It worked for the plantation slaves.
Our Democrats saved the old instruction manuals for just this occasion.
While paying MORE taxes, to get into previous financial state- Id be upset too!
While gov is telling you it ONLY cares about "citizens" (subjects, really) and "fairness" and "minorities" (altho it seems the big divisions are between illegals and "citizens" now)- Some appatachek recently wanted to call the illegals NEWCOMERS! Its "kinder", you know!
Steal it from him and put him in jail for "disrespect" or "fraud" or something. Now that they appear to be "expanding" surveillance so much in Germany, "disrespect" laws like that cannot be far behind.
Actually disrespect laws are already present in Germany. However, they are not dealt with in courts of law but by government appointed tribunals. Woe betide anyone who shows disrespect towards the government in some way and doesn't have a pretty powerful constituency backing him. As numerous pensioners have found out the hard way.
They'll START with deliberately mocking the Koran- to get their "foot in the door" (maybe the "camel's nose under the tent" is a better metaphor?) and soon it will be like the UK; did you know they can ARREST you for carrying cash, because "money laundying money is bad"- a "pre-crime"
UK arrests and prosecutes over 12,000 people for "internet offenses", there are a lot of people complaining about illegal aliens now- its illegal to complain (they call it something else, but that is what it amounts to)
And I recall several arrests in Germany for merely MOCKING a official, satire "counts" too!
'Its large overhead solar panels acted like a sail in stiff winds, she had trouble handling the currents of the Schlei and she was too heavy for her guidance cables and thus had trouble mooring at the dock.'
I'm deeply curious to hear what an actual engineer might have to say about this.
I’m not an engineer, but I did spend 6 years on sea duty. The sail issue seems fairly foreseeable. I am also surprised they decided to pack the charging infrastructure onto the vessel itself instead of building the shoreside facility- not like it’s going very far.
I haven't done any sea duty but I do remember sticking my flattened hand out a car's open window and the force against my hand when changing its attitude.
The only solution is to make the ferry submersible so the solar panels skim the surface to minimize the force of the wind. A green submarine.
Yeah, a submarine with a few marine biologists on board 24/7 to keep track of the riverine enviroment, that way it would be a ongoing expense instead of a one time purchase.
Everytime you think government has finally reached the bottom (therefore they can only go UP) they come up with a great idea like dredging the river bottom to "save water", or something.
Maybe, since it has a guide cable,again I never seen it done, but has anyone tried an overhead power cable? Oh wait...got to consider electrocuting fish...but then again a selling point for the ferry....take the trip and get a fish.
Then again If the river has enough drop maybe hydropower can be tried next...
Every Rube Goldberg scheme must be tried in the attempt to reach net zero...aka a nation or a state with a net zero balance in their coffers after every tax dollar was spent.
Didn't Germans used to be renowned for their engineering?
My tiny public library branch has a ping-pong table of German manufacture. For years, we've been frustrated by the incredibly stupidly designed wheel locks. We finally amputated them last week, to great relief. No more wrestling matches putting the table away.
I had two BMW motorcycles that were awesome. The world moves on…
Yes and no. While everyone remembers the awesome big cat tanks of ww2 nobody but engineering geeks realize they were utterly unreliable and costly to manufacture
I know little about tanks and care less, other than being interesting toys I would not want to own. I even have a "I like cats" t-shirt with pictures of Tiger and Panther tanks. I do remember a discussion of what was better -- a King Tiger which took all day to replace the transmissions which were always breaking, or five Shermans for the same cost whose reliable transmissions could be replaced in two hours. Up til then, I had not realized how different those tanks were.
German stuff is always over engineered. Though it can be quite good. The Liebherr and Grove cranes are the best on the road. Just wait until it breaks and $$$$$$$$$$$
probably assembled from made-in-China parts? My 'belgian' bicycle was like that. We had to re-assemble it a few times. I recently read that the co. has gone broke.
Here in the US I do no longer bicycle, way too far to the store...
Its probably a bunch of black, gay, one legged, autistic DEI engineers that was appointed by government apparatacheks (that got a large slice of that government money in kickbacks)
This is a GREAT story to tell the next confident statist who trys to inform you that government running everything, including a centralized, command economy, is best for everyone.
It might be very interesting to get the inside "scoop" regarding the decisions made (and by WHOM) that led to this "new technology "green" ferry being commissioned
I live in Alberta, Canada. Our province has three remaining ferries still in service. All three still serve small local populations but none of them are particularly essential except for perhaps a small handful of locals. One does connect two farming communities and the province had considered a bridge but the locals actually fought to keep the ferry. Another is in the renowned Alberta Badlands region - known for being one of the richest dinosaur fossil sites in the world - and is pretty much blatantly a tourist attraction itself, so it won't be replaced. And the third also is favored by locals and is a tourist attraction as well. All three are diesel powered and no one here has ever seriously considered converting any of them to electric motor driven, too expensive and, frankly, mindless to do such a thing. All three are in areas many miles away from the epicenters of stupidity that are Alberta's two big cities, Calgary and Edmonton.
I had a thought regarding what should be done about the decommissioned Missunde III. I'm sure the plague of silly "artistic" projects that affects Edmonton and Calgary here in Alberta also impacts your urban centres over in Germany. Things like a big round blue painted steel ring or a pile of polished stainless steel balls, stuff that costs many hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars. Perhaps the Missunde III could be repressed as a quirky, one-of-a-kind statue in some park in Kiel. It should be mounted, on a platform, in the upside down position, to signify the backwards thought processes of the Schleswig-Holstein state government. It could be a wonderful tourist attraction, people would gather from far and wide to marvel at the cleverness of the artwork, the meticulous craftsmanship of German engineering sitting at counterpoint to the the ridiculous ineptitude of German politicians. I can hear the "Oooohs" and "Aaahhs" now.😯
Yes, exactly this sort of thing. Though I'd imagine that tumbleweeds exist in or around Albuquerque. At least they depicted something local. What relevance a stack of polished stainless steel balls has to Edmonton, or a big blue painted steel ring has to Calgary, I'm at a loss to explain. Of course, Edmonton's Talus Dome - almost everyone here calls them Talus balls - was designed by an American design team, Ball-Nogues Studio, out of L.A., California of course. I can see where the balls came from, with a last name Ball why would one expect otherwise. Calgary's Traveling Light - known by most locals as the big blue ring - was designed by, ironically, a German based design team, Indes Idee. These have been around for years now, and they certainly are conversation pieces, most of it not good. I suppose we're stuck with them for good, or until they collapse. The one question I have about all this, disregarding the waste of public money, is why foreign designers for both of these sculptures? Surely we have people in Alberta capable of designing public eyesores. Or if not Albertan, at least a Canadian designer. Albertan taxpayers paid for these things so the minimum expectation of our municipal governments should be all the money spent on these works should be spent in Alberta and nowhere else. That's my biggest beef with all this.
I had vaguely similar thoughts. Make the III a monument to the stupidity of environmentalists, assuming it’s around long enough to be available when sensible people return to government.
If it wasn't for the picking of the pockets of German citizens just to flush the money down the toilet on idiocies like this, I'd say this was an extremely enjoyable saga.
I'd love a little companion piece on the guy prescient enough to have bought old workhorse Missunde II and how he's enjoyed his profits.
On entirely separate note, I am firmly now an AI fan. Spent happy hours yesterday and today getting it to generate crochet patterns because although I've freehanded surprisingly well, I struggle terribly with mirror image concepts that most people who didn't fail math at every step could undoubtedly navigate. I have now learned that I can give our dear little AI friend logical instructions by which to fulfill my desires. (Well, some of those desires; others are beyond its purview.)
I've become the de facto IT department for my town government, despite it being all Windoze and my background is 40 years of Macintosh support. Thanks to AI I'm actually wrangling Windoze problems.
I think when it's used to solve practical mechanical /technical problems it's wonderful. It also pushes your own brain to better understand a problem because you need to be able to describe it to get appropriate help. I been stretching my brain all morning.
That any and all politicians and other public officials involved be made to row and/or pull, as applicable, the ferry across until such a time the €6.5mn has been recouped.
I really enjoy reading your articles. They almost always give me something to laugh at. I have come to the conclusion that German politicians possess the mental agility of a corpse that is five days brain dead. They manage to be stupid in ways that are almost impossible to comprehend.
My first impression as a non-engineer, nor boat person, is how can the ferry that was replaced (ostensibly) be sold for such a pittance before the (new, novel) replacement ferry was proof tested in service? ‘Burning bridges” is pretty much an amateur mistake in any endeavor, unless you are Cortez. It seems that what we have here are people in authority who are there for the wrong reasons, in other words—incompetent for the position.
That was boats not bridges but nonetheless I agree. This seems to be a basic error of project management and admits much as an inability to comprehend physical reality.
Oh come on. You’ve not heard the term “burning bridges” as an “idiomatic expression”, i.e. a fixed expression whose intended meaning is “eliminating the possibility of retreat” and not simply the literal meaning of its words.
Gawd, you guys are pig headed and simply beyond discussion wrt to literal and figurative language interpretation. The question is very simple, did you understand the intent of the response/comment originally made? Of course you did, but you seem hell bent on commenting/correcting where none is needed. At best the OP was along the lines of a mixed metaphor, but really…does such need comment? Is being pedantic especially important to the comment of the OP? Or is being pedantic worse? Small minds notice small things/errors. Don’t be that person.
You are still taking an idiom literally. Too literally. Commonly in English, the term used is bridges. If you want German, then perhaps “alle Brücken hinter sich abbrechen”. In short, you are being pedantic. There is nothing wrong with using Cortez as an example of such behavior. Ships—bridges—it’s the behavior described that’s the key to the point being made.
Cortez actually burned his boats. Burning boats and burning bridges are completely different metaphors. I guess you don’t understand the two expressions or the difference between them.
Ah, but I do. It’s you that don’t. I gave you a definition of the meaning of the expression, to wit: “eliminating the possibility of retreat” . Fits Cortez history exactly and is the same in concept to the description of selling the working ferry before the replacement ferry was deemed a workable/acceptable replacement. Perhaps what you don’t understand is the meaning of the word, “pedantic’. For that, I leave you to look it up.
My in-laws would say, “Good for them! At least they tried!” I say, “What retard sold the old boat before knowing the new boat would work?” Nice little metaphor for the entire climate movement.
that Ikea table made me laugh so hard I had to stop reading. Now I cannot unsee it. Just like that govt person in clown outfit, it is burnt into my brain LOL.
The stupidity of the retarded green/liberal clown show is mind-blowing.
The should be personally held responsible and fund the waste of taxpayer money.
No meteor required for extinction...
Yes these people have bought into the climate change folly hook line Nd sinker and then still wont change when confronted with the harsh realities—which is the definition of insanity
Yeah, for sure.
Times are tough for us "conspiracy theorists" we're down to Flat Earth and dragons at this point.
They've really taken all the fun out of it.
If they suddenly went on a big media campaign to convince people dragons aren't real I might reconsider my position on dragons. Pretty sold on the whole round earth thing though.
I am still open to the idea that they're a bunch of lizards. Except for their wanting to blot out the sun, it adds up.
Ya. Its so easy to figure out they truth these days, whatever they're saying on TV is the inverse of truth
Hollow Earth and phlogiston maybe still have some mileage left in them?
My one word reply to these people is "volcano", and they still don't get it.
Hunga Tonga and now Home Reef is still acting up.
Now on the bright side if the great Icelandic one goes it could be the one to lower temps by up to 1.5 degree C.
And Hunga Tonga was water vapor, not exotic gases!
I have lingering affection for SMOD. Still have that 2016 bumper sticker on my car.
Just waiting on the asteroid...smh...
Fortunately airplanes crash when the engines stop so that hopefully prevents these clowns from attempting “green” aviation
One hopes
There was news the other day of an electric airplane, bragging its half hour flight only used $5 of electricity. There are electric helicopters too. They never mention how short ranged they are from the heavy batteries. or how long it takes to turn them around due to battery charging.
Or what all carbon footprint has to be dealt with in order to excavate the stuff needed for batteries, or how rapidly and often
batteries wind up in dumps.
soon they will try using extention cords...
See the first-ever - hilarious - episode of The A-Team. “I love it when a plan comes together”
Aren't those called drones? See, see... no worries.
Sadly, no. Airbus is full-on with electric aeroplanes, and hydrogen fuelled electric planes as well. Oddly, because they don't really work, the leccy retards are demanding authorities allow electric aircraft to only carry enough fuel for the intended trip - no spare. That is why certification is held up.
All other aircraft have to carry additional emergency fuel, calculated as part of the flight plan to cover off emergencies.
Nut Zero zealots want this to be abandoned.
So autonomous electric 'taxi' takes off, no flight plan, just a hop to the next destination without any energy back up to cover exceptional events.
The rich types are pushing this.
They'll die. So will anyone underneath their arrogant little contraption, if it runs out of power before landing.
Whatever "full on" means, they are never going to produce any electric airplanes that can carry anything any distance. They WILL take hundreds of millions of dollars of "investors'" and taxpayer subsidy and grant money, but they will just blow it on nothing except huge salaries.
Full on - not a minor project.
A fully funded project.
And yes, funded in the main by tax payers.
I doubt it has a business case without free cash or cross-subsidy from other Airbus activities.
<<<<<hydrogen fuelled electric planes <<<<
Didn't they try that with Zeppelins? Which as anyone can see are not used any more for good reason. Zeppelins would be perfect for luxury cruises though, able to plop down anywhere with an open field and a willingness to accept the occasional massive, dramatic explosion orders of magnitude larger than a garage full of E.V.s.
Airplanes don't crash when their engines stop. They do become a glider, but they don't crash.
Most of the near-viable electric aircraft favoured the rich are based on VTOL drones. No power, not much flight.
There are electric aeroplanes in use which of course can glide in the event of power failure. This is not what the rich lust after.
Good sentiment, except the refund money would probably also come from the taxpayers.
Should entirely be taken from them, sell their house and all that is in it, their cars, boats, planes and all and have them turn burgers at McD till all is paid back. And never again let these idiots be available for any govt post. Well, maybe toilet cleaner.
"Well, maybe toilet cleaner"
Only if you don't ever want to actually use the toilet, Ingrid.
oh no LOLOL I had not even thought of that! But no, I will not, ever, use a govt toilet in Germany I am quite sure of that.
Albuquerque just spent $750,000 for a one hole Parisian self cleaning toilet so they will never have to clean one ever again.
😳
https://www.kunm.org/text/public-health-new-mexico/2025-12-30/downtown-abq-gets-much-needed-24-7-public-restroom-on-civic-plaza
We'll ALL be there in ten years, max.
Exactl so - if I can't pay a debt, eventually the Crown's Repo comes and takes my stuff to cover the accrued debt.
We know from history that when public officials are liable to re-pay the costs of stupidity and corruption out of their pocket (or with their necks on the line in olden times - always liked that arrangement) they perform better.
It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.
--THOMAS SOWELL
sometimes I wonder if we should bring back THOSE olden times!
Why not?
It was during those days Gustavus Adolphus was able to turn one of Europe's poorest nations into a local super-power during the course of the Thirty Years War: total personal accountability for his clerks and staff, combined with personal autonomy in making decisions on the spot.
Do you mean the olden days of 90 years ago? You know, the Germany of National Socialism? You do remember that this had a rather bad outcome for everyone, not just Germans. The Nuremburg trials of 1946 summed up how bad it was.
Sell their children to the Saudis.
Toilet cleaner usually uses harsh chemicals
So make sure the gloves are manufactured by yet another group of ex-government "leaders".
Time to build bunkers 😬😬😬
We have the King of the Clowns in Australia - supposedly the Federal Government Energy Minister is bringing down energy prices which will probably happen if ever in the year 3000
Thanks for this update, I've been wondering.
Wasn't there a similar situation with a Scottish ferry, too? Curious what's going on with that one.
These green pie-in-the-sky projects are black holes for money.
"...black holes for money."
Aannnddd... that is their purpose.
*waving*
Claiming ignorance to protect yourself from fraud and corruption charges has worked pretty well for all of them.
Do we know what the great administrators were waving?
Och aye. The Party State of SNPeeee decided to lay down a design and give it to a boat builder who had never built anything that big, and the slip way was not able really to take the weight either.
Not only that.
The Party State of SNPeeee then laid down design changes to create a massively complex triple power source propulsion system.
Not only that.
The original builder went broke, so the Party State of SNPeeee decided to run the project themselves.
That's how you go from two ferries budgeted at £70 million in total to.... £550 million. Oh, 4 years late... and counting. Aye.
Meanwhile other ferries ordered by the Party State of SNPeeee from Turkey turned up on time and in budget.
The Party State of SNPeeee.
It makes the EU Kommission look good.
"The original builder went broke, so the Party State of SNPeeee decided to run the project themselves. That's how you go from two ferries budgeted at £70 million in total to.... £550 million. Oh, 4 years late... and counting."
And that, dear friends, is how you "seize the means of production!"
Thanks for the update! This makes the German situation look like peanuts.
Oh that's the least of it.
How about Greenshill Capital, fake Lord Cameron, the SNPeee, a shooting estate in Scotland, a aluminum wheel manufacturing plant also in Scotland and a bankrupt? Yup. We, tax payers, paid for the whole lot. Total... anywhere from £440 million (what the SNPeee reluctantly indicate) to £1 billion, which is closer to the truth....
There are so many stories of huge spending by the SNPeee with little or no effect.
Throughout all the grand gestures there was only ever one group who were going to fund the whole lot. The public.
“agreed to sell the old ferry he had bought for 17,000 Euros back to them for 100,000 Euros”
I can’t stop laughing.
I hope he was an AfD supporter.
🤣
Obviously the guy eas tethered to reality, so he probably WAS AfD
I can't stop laughing either. He should have got the stupid government for $200,000.
Its "government money", its going to be wasted anyway. I would HOPE that some large, stupid, blunder, if properly publisized, might enable change and get some people in there that have some sense. Its probably a forlorn hope.
Well, actually he probably has a big consulting gig to help the babes in the woods figure which way is up on their new/old toy.
It was hilarious the first time eugy wrote about it, and it never gets old.
A lot of people are going to need to become anonymus before too much longer in Europe. They'll have to use VPNs, then they'll make THOSE illegal and compare the TYPE of writing and see if it "matches" a previous example of that person, and they'll use the ENTIRE STATE to prove it. It only takes a FEW people to stop terrible policy decisions, they have to "shut down" independent speech to turn the world into a dystopia.
I think it was Hannah Arendt who said this about the period just prior to hitler.
And will it eventually be like "Farenheit 451" because people can STILL get "corrupted" by books with authors like Arendt?
Is Europe to the degree (yet) where they dont care about "reading, writing and 'rythmatic"?. We (the US) has FAR over 50% of HS "graduates" who cannot read and write in the Big Blue cities, and its getting WORSE. It seems obvious that to mold children into "good citizens" (in a rapidly advancing dystopia) it helps if they cant read/write and get 100% of data from MSM (Main Stream Media)
I think the (un)education is DELIBERATE
"It seems obvious that to mold children into "good citizens" (in a rapidly advancing dystopia) it helps if they cant read/write and get 100% of data from MSM (Main Stream Media)"
It worked for the plantation slaves.
Our Democrats saved the old instruction manuals for just this occasion.
Wouldn't be laughing doing that detour each day.
While paying MORE taxes, to get into previous financial state- Id be upset too!
While gov is telling you it ONLY cares about "citizens" (subjects, really) and "fairness" and "minorities" (altho it seems the big divisions are between illegals and "citizens" now)- Some appatachek recently wanted to call the illegals NEWCOMERS! Its "kinder", you know!
Surprised they didn't pass a law and steal it from him.
Steal it from him and put him in jail for "disrespect" or "fraud" or something. Now that they appear to be "expanding" surveillance so much in Germany, "disrespect" laws like that cannot be far behind.
Actually disrespect laws are already present in Germany. However, they are not dealt with in courts of law but by government appointed tribunals. Woe betide anyone who shows disrespect towards the government in some way and doesn't have a pretty powerful constituency backing him. As numerous pensioners have found out the hard way.
Basically Europe isnt a democracy.
And the same type of people THERE want to do the same thing HERE, we are a LITTLE behind Europe, but not TOO far!
A LOT is "hanging on" the midterm elections in the US. If we LOSE its going to be a CIRCUS of "democrats" trying to impeach Pres. Trump.
If the midterms turn out badly, it won't be long until the moderates/independents will regret their anti-Trump vote.
They'll START with deliberately mocking the Koran- to get their "foot in the door" (maybe the "camel's nose under the tent" is a better metaphor?) and soon it will be like the UK; did you know they can ARREST you for carrying cash, because "money laundying money is bad"- a "pre-crime"
UK arrests and prosecutes over 12,000 people for "internet offenses", there are a lot of people complaining about illegal aliens now- its illegal to complain (they call it something else, but that is what it amounts to)
And I recall several arrests in Germany for merely MOCKING a official, satire "counts" too!
Do I recall he lived out of their jurisdiction?
'Its large overhead solar panels acted like a sail in stiff winds, she had trouble handling the currents of the Schlei and she was too heavy for her guidance cables and thus had trouble mooring at the dock.'
I'm deeply curious to hear what an actual engineer might have to say about this.
I’m not an engineer, but I did spend 6 years on sea duty. The sail issue seems fairly foreseeable. I am also surprised they decided to pack the charging infrastructure onto the vessel itself instead of building the shoreside facility- not like it’s going very far.
There you go - with common sense.
Not allowed, John.
Not allowed.
John never learns…
I haven't done any sea duty but I do remember sticking my flattened hand out a car's open window and the force against my hand when changing its attitude.
The only solution is to make the ferry submersible so the solar panels skim the surface to minimize the force of the wind. A green submarine.
Yeah, a submarine with a few marine biologists on board 24/7 to keep track of the riverine enviroment, that way it would be a ongoing expense instead of a one time purchase.
Everytime you think government has finally reached the bottom (therefore they can only go UP) they come up with a great idea like dredging the river bottom to "save water", or something.
Oh gawd. Lol. It's so funny because its so damn true.
Around here, you have to get a building permit to put up a solid fence over 4 feet high to ensure that it's been engineered to withstand the wind.
Maybe, since it has a guide cable,again I never seen it done, but has anyone tried an overhead power cable? Oh wait...got to consider electrocuting fish...but then again a selling point for the ferry....take the trip and get a fish.
Then again If the river has enough drop maybe hydropower can be tried next...
Every Rube Goldberg scheme must be tried in the attempt to reach net zero...aka a nation or a state with a net zero balance in their coffers after every tax dollar was spent.
Reminds me too of green hydrogen
"Showboating"
But then you'd need two, one at each end, to cover unforeseen circumstances. Why... that would be an inefficient use of taxpayer money!
Didn't Germans used to be renowned for their engineering?
My tiny public library branch has a ping-pong table of German manufacture. For years, we've been frustrated by the incredibly stupidly designed wheel locks. We finally amputated them last week, to great relief. No more wrestling matches putting the table away.
I had two BMW motorcycles that were awesome. The world moves on…
Yes and no. While everyone remembers the awesome big cat tanks of ww2 nobody but engineering geeks realize they were utterly unreliable and costly to manufacture
I know little about tanks and care less, other than being interesting toys I would not want to own. I even have a "I like cats" t-shirt with pictures of Tiger and Panther tanks. I do remember a discussion of what was better -- a King Tiger which took all day to replace the transmissions which were always breaking, or five Shermans for the same cost whose reliable transmissions could be replaced in two hours. Up til then, I had not realized how different those tanks were.
German stuff is always over engineered. Though it can be quite good. The Liebherr and Grove cranes are the best on the road. Just wait until it breaks and $$$$$$$$$$$
Flashback to a WWII film with Donald Sutherland as the tank commander. "There you go with those negative vibes man."
Make it West Germany and you're likely closer to the truth.
I have powered tools with "Made in West Germany" stamped onto the casing. They work just fine.
probably assembled from made-in-China parts? My 'belgian' bicycle was like that. We had to re-assemble it a few times. I recently read that the co. has gone broke.
Here in the US I do no longer bicycle, way too far to the store...
Make that an engineer NOT employed by the bureaucracy.
You mean, after he cleaned up the coffee that came out of his nose when you said "solar ferry?"
Its probably a bunch of black, gay, one legged, autistic DEI engineers that was appointed by government apparatacheks (that got a large slice of that government money in kickbacks)
This is a GREAT story to tell the next confident statist who trys to inform you that government running everything, including a centralized, command economy, is best for everyone.
Wait till I tell you the one about the Chinese.
"But who will build the ferries??!!1!!"
It might be very interesting to get the inside "scoop" regarding the decisions made (and by WHOM) that led to this "new technology "green" ferry being commissioned
“A solution will be found.”
But will it be a final solution?
(Apologies to my German friends.)
Sold for parts and recycling, probably.
And at a tiny fraction of the cost, no doubt.
For €6 million, they could've built a bridge.
🤣🤣🤣
👊👊👊 !!!
I live in Alberta, Canada. Our province has three remaining ferries still in service. All three still serve small local populations but none of them are particularly essential except for perhaps a small handful of locals. One does connect two farming communities and the province had considered a bridge but the locals actually fought to keep the ferry. Another is in the renowned Alberta Badlands region - known for being one of the richest dinosaur fossil sites in the world - and is pretty much blatantly a tourist attraction itself, so it won't be replaced. And the third also is favored by locals and is a tourist attraction as well. All three are diesel powered and no one here has ever seriously considered converting any of them to electric motor driven, too expensive and, frankly, mindless to do such a thing. All three are in areas many miles away from the epicenters of stupidity that are Alberta's two big cities, Calgary and Edmonton.
I had a thought regarding what should be done about the decommissioned Missunde III. I'm sure the plague of silly "artistic" projects that affects Edmonton and Calgary here in Alberta also impacts your urban centres over in Germany. Things like a big round blue painted steel ring or a pile of polished stainless steel balls, stuff that costs many hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars. Perhaps the Missunde III could be repressed as a quirky, one-of-a-kind statue in some park in Kiel. It should be mounted, on a platform, in the upside down position, to signify the backwards thought processes of the Schleswig-Holstein state government. It could be a wonderful tourist attraction, people would gather from far and wide to marvel at the cleverness of the artwork, the meticulous craftsmanship of German engineering sitting at counterpoint to the the ridiculous ineptitude of German politicians. I can hear the "Oooohs" and "Aaahhs" now.😯
Albuquerque now has a giant lit tumbleweed. Snort...coffee coming out of my nose every time ya think about it.
Yes, exactly this sort of thing. Though I'd imagine that tumbleweeds exist in or around Albuquerque. At least they depicted something local. What relevance a stack of polished stainless steel balls has to Edmonton, or a big blue painted steel ring has to Calgary, I'm at a loss to explain. Of course, Edmonton's Talus Dome - almost everyone here calls them Talus balls - was designed by an American design team, Ball-Nogues Studio, out of L.A., California of course. I can see where the balls came from, with a last name Ball why would one expect otherwise. Calgary's Traveling Light - known by most locals as the big blue ring - was designed by, ironically, a German based design team, Indes Idee. These have been around for years now, and they certainly are conversation pieces, most of it not good. I suppose we're stuck with them for good, or until they collapse. The one question I have about all this, disregarding the waste of public money, is why foreign designers for both of these sculptures? Surely we have people in Alberta capable of designing public eyesores. Or if not Albertan, at least a Canadian designer. Albertan taxpayers paid for these things so the minimum expectation of our municipal governments should be all the money spent on these works should be spent in Alberta and nowhere else. That's my biggest beef with all this.
I had vaguely similar thoughts. Make the III a monument to the stupidity of environmentalists, assuming it’s around long enough to be available when sensible people return to government.
Thank you for the humor / sarcasm. The grim tales you tell always make me laugh , not just pound my fists on the table in anger.
"...and also looks like a poorly assembled Ikea coffee table."
That's just spit-my-coffee-out hilarious! Thanks. I needed that.
If it wasn't for the picking of the pockets of German citizens just to flush the money down the toilet on idiocies like this, I'd say this was an extremely enjoyable saga.
I'd love a little companion piece on the guy prescient enough to have bought old workhorse Missunde II and how he's enjoyed his profits.
A rare instance of cheering for somebody who reaped a tax money windfall.
Indeed!
On entirely separate note, I am firmly now an AI fan. Spent happy hours yesterday and today getting it to generate crochet patterns because although I've freehanded surprisingly well, I struggle terribly with mirror image concepts that most people who didn't fail math at every step could undoubtedly navigate. I have now learned that I can give our dear little AI friend logical instructions by which to fulfill my desires. (Well, some of those desires; others are beyond its purview.)
Like any tool, it has its uses and abuses.
I've become the de facto IT department for my town government, despite it being all Windoze and my background is 40 years of Macintosh support. Thanks to AI I'm actually wrangling Windoze problems.
I think when it's used to solve practical mechanical /technical problems it's wonderful. It also pushes your own brain to better understand a problem because you need to be able to describe it to get appropriate help. I been stretching my brain all morning.
I propose:
That any and all politicians and other public officials involved be made to row and/or pull, as applicable, the ferry across until such a time the €6.5mn has been recouped.
You beat me to it.
I really enjoy reading your articles. They almost always give me something to laugh at. I have come to the conclusion that German politicians possess the mental agility of a corpse that is five days brain dead. They manage to be stupid in ways that are almost impossible to comprehend.
Still I have some difficulty to attribute only stupidity to that “shipshow”. At least someone made 83k… Just say’in…
They always tend to be ahead of other folks; in good AND bad ways ...
But the balance is shifting swiftly to the worse.
My first impression as a non-engineer, nor boat person, is how can the ferry that was replaced (ostensibly) be sold for such a pittance before the (new, novel) replacement ferry was proof tested in service? ‘Burning bridges” is pretty much an amateur mistake in any endeavor, unless you are Cortez. It seems that what we have here are people in authority who are there for the wrong reasons, in other words—incompetent for the position.
🎶 How much does it cost? I'll buy it! /
🎶 The time is all we've lost... I'll try it! /
🎶 He can't even run his own life /
🎶 I'll be damned if he'll run mine...
Shining a bright light on the fog of climate needed to be burned away.
That was boats not bridges but nonetheless I agree. This seems to be a basic error of project management and admits much as an inability to comprehend physical reality.
Oh come on. You’ve not heard the term “burning bridges” as an “idiomatic expression”, i.e. a fixed expression whose intended meaning is “eliminating the possibility of retreat” and not simply the literal meaning of its words.
Burning ships would fit better and btw that’s what Cortez did actually. To date there’s still no bridges connecting Mexico to Spain.
Gawd, you guys are pig headed and simply beyond discussion wrt to literal and figurative language interpretation. The question is very simple, did you understand the intent of the response/comment originally made? Of course you did, but you seem hell bent on commenting/correcting where none is needed. At best the OP was along the lines of a mixed metaphor, but really…does such need comment? Is being pedantic especially important to the comment of the OP? Or is being pedantic worse? Small minds notice small things/errors. Don’t be that person.
I know both expressions, they have more or less opposite meanings, and only one is attributable to Cortez.
You are still taking an idiom literally. Too literally. Commonly in English, the term used is bridges. If you want German, then perhaps “alle Brücken hinter sich abbrechen”. In short, you are being pedantic. There is nothing wrong with using Cortez as an example of such behavior. Ships—bridges—it’s the behavior described that’s the key to the point being made.
You’re totally wrong.
Cortez actually burned his boats. Burning boats and burning bridges are completely different metaphors. I guess you don’t understand the two expressions or the difference between them.
Ah, but I do. It’s you that don’t. I gave you a definition of the meaning of the expression, to wit: “eliminating the possibility of retreat” . Fits Cortez history exactly and is the same in concept to the description of selling the working ferry before the replacement ferry was deemed a workable/acceptable replacement. Perhaps what you don’t understand is the meaning of the word, “pedantic’. For that, I leave you to look it up.
like most!
faintly hydrocephalic......just beautiful, man.
... at least it supposedly contains water; many others not even hot air ...
or… forget about it
My in-laws would say, “Good for them! At least they tried!” I say, “What retard sold the old boat before knowing the new boat would work?” Nice little metaphor for the entire climate movement.
and they are worrying about the AfD taking power.
That’s understandable, they will never be able to find a job in government after AfD takes the reins.
that Ikea table made me laugh so hard I had to stop reading. Now I cannot unsee it. Just like that govt person in clown outfit, it is burnt into my brain LOL.