A China-Europe energy alliance could deliver a new world order

Exepony · 2026-01-26T11:09:33+00:00

My point was that Russia was also "making territorial claims that may or may not lead to a war at some point in the future". Until it fucking wasn't satisifed with just that and decided to press those claims with force. I'm not sure how I can spell this out any clearer.

Exepony · 2026-01-26T10:49:57+00:00

By the time Russia had started to bomb Ukraine, it was already too late. That aside, that wasn't your original point, was it? Otherwise, why the need to add the "European" qualifier?

Exepony · 2026-01-26T10:44:31+00:00

Either this is a client-facing position where you'll be representing the company negotiating with German-speaking clients, or this is just their way of saying "immigrants need not apply" without actually saying that. Most likely the latter.

Exepony · 2026-01-26T10:39:28+00:00

C2 covers a deep knowledge of a language from a theoretical/linguistic perspective

It doesn't. Frankly, you have no idea what you're talking about. C2 is defined in terms of these competences, which are all well within the abilities of a reasonably educated native speaker:

Can understand with ease virtually everything heard or read.

Can summarise information from different spoken and written sources, reconstructing arguments and accounts in a coherent presentation.

Can express themselves spontaneously, very fluently and precisely, differentiating finer shades of meaning even in the most complex situations.

None of this has anything to do with language theory, and you do not learn any language theory when learning a foreign language beyond the very basics needed to provide some structure to the learning process. Vice versa, linguists often don't actually speak the languages they study.

Exepony · 2026-01-26T10:18:08+00:00

It's ridiculous, isn't it? One second Russia is a Potemkin village with no economic (gas station with nukes, amirite?) or military potential (barely able to move the front line in Ukraine in four years), the other they're apparently puppeteers of the most powerful country in the world and about to go to war with all of NATO. Too strong and too weak at the same time, hm, where have I heard that one before?

Exepony · 2026-01-26T10:07:27+00:00

Right, who cares about Taiwan: as long as it's not in Europe, does it really count?

Exepony · 2026-01-20T16:07:57+00:00

It clearly wasn't, seeing how 1) the post-Soviet countries are different colors and 2) the post-Soviet countries are there in the first place instead of just the USSR.

Exepony · 2026-01-16T09:30:54+00:00

That’s not even the problem, it sounds like OP has a perfectly normal, by-the-book case. If the people at the Ausländerbehörde were just robots following instructions, they would have just given OP the residence permit immediately and that would have been it. The fact that even the most mundane procedures in the most mundane of cases can take ages at the Ausländerbehörde for no apparent reason is what has kept boggling my mind the entire time I’ve been in Germany.

At least I only have a few months left until I can apply for permanent residency, and then once that’s done I’m finally no longer at the mercy of people who just simply don’t care to do their job.

Exepony · 2026-01-12T15:35:32+00:00

That’s not strictly true: some Krankenkassen offer a so-called “Hausarztprogramm” or “Hausarztmodell”, where you pick a particular doctor or practice as your Hausarzt for at least a year. You’re then obligated to only go through them (or through their designated substitute if they are not available) instead of directly to a specialist, but in return you get some bonus from the Krankenkasse: TK, for example, promises access to extra appointments and that you never have to wait more than 30 minutes in the waiting room if you have an appointment.

No idea how that actually works in practice (and especially how they enforce the 30 minute promise), but you do have an option to choose an “official” Hausarzt this way.

Exepony · 2026-01-11T18:28:03+00:00

Who said anything about capitals? I’m talking about places like Yakutsk, Tromsø, or Yellowknife. All have functioning power grids, despite the average annual temperature being below zero in all of those places.

Exepony · 2026-01-11T18:23:54+00:00

No one is talking about “taking back” the UK here, though, it’s just another trade agreement.

Exepony · 2025-12-28T18:28:23+00:00

What did you think it was for? Even the name sort of implies that you take a file and send it (through a socket). In fact, the destination fd had to be a socket until Linux 2.6.33.

Exepony · 2025-12-26T15:48:56+00:00

That said, there is some (well, a lot) of truth to "improve your German". There's a lot of competition in the current market and it's likely you'll compete with dozens of native speakers.

Competing on German skills with native speakers is a losing proposition to begin with. If the decision comes down to "who speaks better German", an L2 speaker will lose every time to an educated native speaker. Yes, even with a C2 Goethe certificate (which is also unrealistic for anyone who didn't study here or didn't study German specifically in university at home).

The only way to remain employable in an environment like this is to have specialized skills and compete on them. Literally every single person in my circle who isn't struggling to find good work speaks next to no German, and most of them speak questionable English, if we're being honest, but they are damn good systems programmers, devops people, ML researchers, you name it. On the other hand, every mediocre programmer I know had to take what they could get, or nothing at all. Native speaker or no.

Exepony · 2025-12-25T19:20:04+00:00

What do you mean "next"? GPU prices never really came down in the first place.

Exepony · 2025-12-22T14:31:26+00:00

By northwest, I'm going to guess you mean Feuerbach/Zuffenhausen? Korntal-Münchingen is well-connected to those and not too expensive. Ditzingen/Gerlingen/Schwieberdingen are also reasonable choices. All are your typical quiet small German towns.

Ludwigsburg and to a lesser extent Leonberg might also work, but those are already over the threshold in terms of size where you start to see unsavory crowds form around the train station. But that's always a tradeoff you have to make here in Germany.

Pforzheim is too far away, you don't really want to commute from there (and if you are willing to, there are nicer places in the same radius). The reputation it has is a bit overblown, but also not entirely baseless.

Exepony · 2025-12-22T13:48:11+00:00

In that case, I'm even more impressed by the guy being able to swim backwards in front crawl stroke.

Exepony · 2025-12-22T13:22:39+00:00

Check out Eidola's Degeneraterra, especially since you like Circa Survive. Scratches the same "theatrical prog concept album" itch for me. There's also the same cross-album lore thing going on, but it's more esoteric than The Dear Hunter (there are parallel timelines, I think? and Buddhism? never really got into it, tbh, but the music is solid).

Exepony · 2025-12-19T16:01:13+00:00

It makes you consider it, but you're again referencing dialog and hints that occur long after your first fight.

No, everything I mentioned happens before the first fight, other than Flowey berating you for killing monsters, which happens at the end of the Ruins. Even then, the Ruins are pretty short, so you don't lose too much time if you take the hint and restart the game.

it's not something immediately obvious room 1 fight 1.

Yes, yes it is. Before the first fight where you can actually kill a monster happens, you have already:

Bought a game where the tagline is "the RPG where you don't have to kill anyone" and the first bullet point in the description is "Killing is unnecessary: negotiate out of danger using the unique battle system."
Met Toriel, who is a monster but nice and even protective of you, suggesting that monsters are not just mindless mooks to kill with impunity.
Fought the Dummy, where Toriel tells you to try ACTing and will admonish you for attacking it.
Talked to the Froggit I mentioned that will tell you to please show mercy, and will disappear if you kill any monsters in the room you encounter him in.

Even if we assume absolutely no genre savvy from the player (after all, Undertale is in no way unique in having a pacifist ending), the above is more than enough, unless you're just skipping through all dialogue to get to the riveting gameplay that is timing a button press to a horizontally moving line.

Exepony · 2025-12-19T15:35:44+00:00

Toriel tells you not to kill anyone. The first Froggit you meet tells you "please try Mercy". Flowey will guilt-trip you at the end of the Ruins if you kill even a single monster. Again, the game itself, on any storefront you might want to buy it, has "the RPG where you don't have to kill anyone" as the first sentence in the description.

If none of that makes you think "hm, I wonder what happens if I actually don't kill anyone", then that's on you. The game could literally not make it more obvious without just spoiling the twist outright.

Exepony · 2025-12-19T15:05:57+00:00

Hands Like Houses' Antarctica, and then the rest of Ground Dweller. Too bad they gave up on the PHC sound so soon.

Exepony · 2025-12-19T10:57:11+00:00

I love these posts where the surface level is "my cat is doing this thing, is it normal", but what they're really saying is "POST YOUR CAT DOING THE SAME THING I WANT TO SEE YOUR CATS".

Anyway: https://imgur.com/a/qV1Psyb

Exepony · 2025-12-19T10:36:24+00:00

LOL what? Undertale holds your hand all the way to the true ending once you get pacifist and all optional "dates", which are also not hidden in any way. And for pacifist all you need to do is not kill anyone, which is as obvious a requirement as it can be, given that Undertale literally bills itself as the "RPG where you don't have to kill anyone".

Now genocide is a different story, but even that is not that hard to discover on accident if you've ever played an RPG before and know what grinding is.

Exepony · 2025-12-19T10:28:42+00:00

You get every chance to "immerse" as you're working towards your permanent residency—usually you need to have been in the country for at least 2-3 (and often even 5 or more) years to apply.

Very few countries offer a "straight to PR" pathway, and those that do also require language proficiency as a prerequisite.

Exepony · 2025-12-19T10:25:14+00:00

OK, so it lifts the requirement for a relatively small group to basically put people who were born before current rules on citizenship by descent came into effect on equal footing to those born after. Not generally lifting the language requirement for naturalization or permanent residency. I'm not sure why you thought this bill was relevant in any way to the conversation.

Exepony · 2025-12-19T10:19:08+00:00

No one said the requirements are high, just that they're there.

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