pm3003

Good ol' European statism at work.

Welsch along the Franco-German border (derogatory).

Didn't they elect the Kaiser until 1806?

France in German is Frankreich, the Frankish Reich. But no Kaiser here, though we had an imperator at some point.

Talking about Vlachs, Welsch is a derogatory noun for Romance language speakers around the French-German border.

Pissaladière (classic dish from southeastern France) is sometimes said to come from old garum-like recipes (the Roman functional equivalent to Asian soy sauces).

Research on this topic has been very active since the late 2000s (before that scholars on the topic had been very few). It seems that the scale of the migrations are much better understood now (100k-300k people over 3 centuries).

But as you say, the rapid transformation of the societies of the groups that migrated at the time is very hard to comprehend, but also the changes of those where they migrated, in cases where it was more of a fusion than an invasion / displacement.

I think it is a very interesting point to offer to those in Europe minimizing the current migration waves (often for noble reasons of reducing racism and countering far right ideologies). It's no use denying that welcoming tens of millions of people from other cultures over a few decades has and will have very deep social and political effects.

There are Germans from Slavic / protoslavic descent in North-Eastern Germany aside from the small Slavuc speaking minorities. Some location names and family names (Wend, Wenden, etc) are very telling in this regard. I like this direct link to ancient history.

It’s like how peasants used to say that the King is a divine representative of God, because that was the king and the system’s con job back then, to make the dumb peasants obedient through religion.

Well no one really knows because most of this comes from the writing ruling classes. If we're talking Middle Ages and the Modern Age, France offers an interesting example : absolute monarchy by divine right came very late (17th cent) and was almost never fully accepted. The system relied greatly on religion (which kept one's standing within a social class), weak origin stories (the Franks came and conquered the Gallo-Romans/ my ancestor fought in the crusades, which is why you're a serf), and a very strong system of local rights and privileges (I'm a legitimate ruler because I keep your right to hold poultry markets on Sundays, which the next village doesn't have).

The divine dimension you refer to was a constant effort in France and England (where the king was not a religious ruler) well described in "The Royal Touch" by Marc Bloch.

Probably Georgia as a political entity, Armenia, Cambodia and Vietnam as nations probably.

I know other examples of relative ethnic stability: most of Northern Europe broadly has the same ethnic geographic boundaries as 1500 years ago (excepting the slavic / proto slavic things), the Basque, the Sardinians, Bretons and Bearnese, Tirolians, Kabyles, Laz "Greeks" (vanishing since WWII).

By some measures also Egypt (coastal cities excepted) and Iran.

English, Welsh and probably some kind of Scottish ethnicity are probably a thing. DNA + history + cultural habits including language.

But on this topic the concept of German ethnogenesis is very interesting. The formation of Gothic identity and communities even more, though sources are extremely scarce and it's more of a mystery.

Half of Italy was ethnically Greek / Hellenized (Kai tu teknon!).

Well we've got to define something ... I'd opt for something like Latium natives of 750-300 BCE, adding Etruscans. My point is to exclude Magna Graecia, because it would make it harder to make an ethnocultural statement or conclusion.

Not even counting Sharepoint syncs...

Just like every operator promises 95%+ national LTE/5G coverage (they have legal obligations in this regard), but somehow your particular village or town in the lower Alps or in Brittany has shitty data rates for some reason, despite the main street being coloured green on the official covergae map.

Some people in my family got a "zone blanche" subscription from SFR, i.e. LTE with a big antenna, possibly a higher Cat. than regular LTE, because they live too far from any DSL/fiber option.

I've been looking for this. Tcl apps are hard to run today when you're not a dev. Like the wonderful Grimm dictionary compiled into a TCL app ages ago by a German Uni.

They are. A related example is criminal gangs tageting gun owners in France after the dataleak at the sport shooting federation. This one has been well covered. There have been a few hundred targeted robberies (on old people mostly) and one or two deaths (predictably).

In Western Europe there are also foreign burglar gangs that go on sprees for a few weeks. They're well organised but don't have time to do the stalking. They use publicly available data as much as they can.

Adding to PlunderBunny, the Romans also used urine collected from public toilets to make detergents to whiten clothes.

The Economist was recently citing hydrogen as "deep tech" [1] (meaning long R&D cycles, sometimes unproven techniology no short term profitability, heavy investment, industry-wide transformative power).

Most of your sources have plans focused on hydrogen production, but I'd be interested to see specific targets or plans regarding specific uses like fertilizers. There are some in the Hydrogen Roadmap Europe, but it seems focused on transportation [2].

[1] https://www.economist.com/business/2026/03/01/at-last-reason... [2] - https://www.clean-hydrogen.europa.eu/media/publications/hydr...

Federation can feel like "just a feature" but the E2E encryption (also in group chats) is a reason for Matrix to exist and a big reason why it's so slow.

Well there's always Matterbridge. If you don't have complicated workflows to replicate (and even then) you can just replicate to XMPP, Nextcloud or whatever.

Germany (government and armed forces) and NATO also use it.

The problem was not only in KDE but also in NVIDIA drivers iiuc. For my setting HDR has been stably working on KDE since early 2025.

In Europe I see a lot of companies with open space workrooms with some cubicles, maybe 30-40% of workers at those companies seem to work in them.

I travel mostly by high speed train over very long distances and I fail to see it making more economical sense than air travel, even with taxed kerosene.

The costs of a high speed line are on the scale of 30 millions euros per km, with maintenance of 300,000 €/km/year. A TGV with 740 seats costs around 25 millions euros and has maintenance too. Most of the operating costs are per trip, a TGV typically does 2 to 3 500km trips per day.

A mid-range plane like the A320neo costs around 100 millions euros for 190 passengers and typical operating costs of 5 millions for a 2 flights per day average. A lot of these costs are hourly costs (fuel and maintenance) and airport costs. Fuel is 10%.

In France, trains and especially high-speed trains are heavily subsidised with a lot of tickets paid under various incentivized and subsidized schemes. SNCF (trains and railways) receives between 10 and 20 billions euros per year from various government entities (depending on what you include), i.e. 20% to 35% of revenue. There are also indirect subsidies through corporate tax schemes like commuting exemptions. Finally, long haul buses have long been forbidden and considered a threat to the train monopoly, and after a short golden age of EU-led monopoly breaking, they have been again heavily regulated so they can hardly compete. Similarly, short-haul flights have been almost banned.

The train is more practical but when I hear it is on par with air travel economically and more environment friendly I fail to make sense of the numbers.

The EU law applies, but companies get out of it by:

- encouraging you to take multiple tickets (so you can't claim compensation on the whole trip and becaise of missed transfers).

- saying it's not their doing (DB specialty).

- in some cases accepting an "alternate schedule" (typically by changing your ticket at the company's suggestion) will void any claims.

In some cases you have better chances hiring a taxi for 2000km and forcing the company to pay.

On the opposite, on (very expensive) French TGVs you get compensation starting at 30 minutes delay (connections counted) whatever the reason and SNCF will do their utmost to bring you to destination or ensure you get accomodation.

Same, I was luckily just above the 1500 km threshold and got 400€, 3 hotel nights reimbursed (3 stars but 4 stars might have been ok), restaurants bills paid (beer included), a free replacement ticket , made new friends and visited museums. Lovely!

My boss and colleagues weren't delighted though...

Agree. Cologne/NRW is the worst. Anything going to or through Neumünster also used to be an almost-guaranteed nightmare, but I've heard it's better now.

That said, last time I was there DB was on strike and I lost hours.

I used to complain about the French SNCF, then I discovered DB and stopped complaining. I've been a Bahncard 1. Klasse holder for a few years.

Last time I took the train in Germany I was 30h late and had to spend a sunday between Cologne and Karlsruhe (not that I was really surprised).

The punctuality is a joke, ICEs are unpractical, train management comically incompetent (remember when the ICEs cars would never come in the announced order and there was luggage room for maybe 15% of passengers?).

The cars are very dirty, especially in 1st class where eating a full meal at your seat is encouraged but the cars are cleaned once every two days.

However, the train attendants are usually very arranging for every aspect of the trip on board.

Cheap tickets are cool, but have been there for so long (the regional ones) Germans take them for granted.

Almost had this somewhere in Northern Germany in early december.

The train stopped at "Kuhdorf", as the author says, at 10:30pm. The driver told us he couldn't continue because "the track was wet" (in Northern Germany in december, how unlucky!) and to wait for "replacement circulation" (usually buses or trains).

The driver then left the train. In fact he had reached his hometown and exceeded his work quota because of the delays.

Like the fabled German roadworker and the (more frequently observed) Krampus, the DB replacement bus is a fairy tale creature.

The passengers got out and forced the driver back into the train and he drove us to the terminus then took a taxi back to said Kuhdorf.

On the nightbus home a class of French highschool girls elected me the best-looking man in the bus (they thought I didn't understand) so I went back home with a smile.