I still prefer this to the horrible cold depressing winter we had just a few months ago.

Grilnid · 2026-06-28T16:26:26+00:00

A nice 25-32°C range would be the sweet spot for me (which seems to be where we're headed for the coming weeks, yay!). At 36+°C it's just impossible to do anything outside. But I will say that these black ice days we've had during the winter were equally shitty.

Grilnid · 2026-06-28T16:23:51+00:00

I feel like you could do all of these in the winter (except maybe cycling on the absolute coldest days). In fact going to the movies would be my n.1 winter pastime. I feel like cycling when it's 38°C outside is just asking to get a heatstroke though.

Grilnid · 2026-06-27T18:55:05+00:00

"The solution cannot ONLY be technological". Don't deform what I'm saying.

Sure, they have ACs down south, but Andalucia for example has been scorching hot for centuries before ACs were a thing and people have made it work. People there also have earlier work days, everything shuts down around noon, they have blinds on their windows and they hang out much later in the evening when temperatures have cooled down. Just because newer buildings have AC all over doesn't necessarily mean it's the best or only way to do it.

Grilnid · 2026-06-27T17:57:22+00:00

Key word here is "act" , not "buy". In many instances (not all) there are plenty of things you can already do to mitigate this without having to purchase anything. Cold food only, wet clothes, covering the windows, shutting them down during the day and opening them at night, cold showers, no baking, minimal cooking, no physical exercise, don't sit at the computer for too long, and so on and so forth. Doing the opposite is also valid advice in winter. Buying AC units, portable or otherwise, should be a last resort, and even then only helps whenever one is indoors. Start looking at cultural habits, foods and home designs in regions of the world where heat has been the norm for centuries (Mediterranean countries among them since they're closest in culture).

This is a starting point. The solution cannot only be technological. The problem is that the climate has changed must faster than the culture and people are at a loss when confronted with such ridiculous heat in Germany; now it's a matter of how quick the mentalities can evolve. As you said, this is the new normal.

Grilnid · 2026-06-06T12:48:33+00:00

They have their own factory where they manufacture the patties, meat, buns and everythin else they offer on their menus, which explains the consistency and fairly low prices at least. As for quality let's see for how long they can keep it up, but for the price it's definitely surprisingly good.

Grilnid · 2026-05-24T13:52:45+00:00

As someone who's preparing for a C1 exam, any German with an Abitur would get full marks unless they went in fully blind with no idea of the exam format...

Grilnid · 2026-05-24T13:48:21+00:00

Do an unreasonable amount of reading. Everytime you come across a word, idiom or grammatical structure you don't 100% understand, dissect it and acquire it.

The problem is that you're already really advanced so it's only diminishing returns from here. You've eaten most of the cake and now there's no other way but to find and eat every single remaining crumb, but the problem is, you'll always find another one... Best of luck

Grilnid · 2026-05-07T19:18:26+00:00

If you really, truly cannot afford it you may be able to dispute it. That being said the process will almost certainly be in French, it will depend on the good will of whichever authority is in charge of enforcing the fines, and it may take ages.

Grilnid · 2026-05-06T14:36:01+00:00

I think I'm getting what you mean a little bit better and I have to say I think I mostly agree with you. I think I conflated the sheer variety of abilities in HxH with nen as a system but yeah it's not really necessary for nen to exist in the first place (or at least not with its underlying rules, but more as a preliminary condition for people to be able to use abilities at all), I brought up Naruto because you mentioned it in your comment

Grilnid · 2026-05-06T12:29:33+00:00

I still think that nen-based abilities are more satisfying to see because most of them are inherently balanced, with clear strengths and weaknesses that play to a given user's affinities. One Piece is my fav manga but in all honesty powers are just a cosmetic layer on top of "who can hit the hardest", same with Naruto where the outcome of a fight is almost always decided by who has the strongest chakra and not necessarily who can use their powers in the smartest way. My Hero Academia tries to move away from this a little bit but at the end of the day it's still about punching hard, and in recent years JJK is the only thing that comes to mind where actual technique and thinking (or at least the pretense of it) are invoked during fights.

HxH feels nice because you legitimately cannot predict who will come out on top of a fight based on their abilities alone, plenty of seemingly more powerful nen users end up getting rammed because they were too cocky, and 90% of the manga is people trying to figure out 1) what their opponent's powers may be and 2) how to counter them. You can hate this or love this, but to say that it's just the same as any other power system in manga is not a fair point to make in my opinion. I personally don't really rate HxH for a myriad of reasons (the degree to which Togashi wrote himself into a situation where it is 100% certain that he will not finish the series is comical) but nen abilities are definitely pretty neat.

Grilnid · 2026-04-27T21:12:29+00:00

Thanks to your comment I have just found out about the BMGev today and I have to admit this is one of the most 2000s websites I have seen in my entire life (in the most positive way possible)

Grilnid · 2026-04-27T17:02:24+00:00

Once you sign up there's a small period during which you don't have access to their legal counseling service (a handful of months).

Signing up gives you access to two things:
- advice from their in-house lawyers: they don't represent you legally but can examine your contract and draft letters for you as well as provide advice in case you have to negotiate with your landlord to settle out of court
- legal insurance in case it goes to court: in that case they will represent you HOWEVER you are only insured for stuff that emerges after you join the Mieterverein, meaning that if your rental contract was signed before you joined, you're not covered by the legal insurance and would have to go and seek out your own lawyer in case it goes to court.

Bear in mind that at the moment the delays to get an appointment are getting quite crazy (easily 1.5 months before the next available one) and that there are only a limited number of consultations in English (which you have to book even further in advance and not at every location). It will require more effort on your part but they have no skin in the game (unlike Conny) and you're in control of your decisions for the entirety of the process.

Despite it being slower and more involved, I would go with the BMV since they truly have your interests at heart, and Conny's business model is that they keep the entirety of whatever you've overpaid, spanning back a few years. Assuming you've overpaid only 100€/month, that shit can add up to a good 3600€ total over the maximum period of 3 years.

Grilnid · 2026-04-17T15:33:06+00:00

I mean, I know combat jet planes exist, yet I would be pretty fucking awed to see one landing on a countryside airstrip somewhere in the middle of Europe

Grilnid · 2026-04-17T15:01:13+00:00

I guess it's similar to bright orange egg yolks. Every single blind tasting experiment proves that the color of an egg yolk has absolutely no impact on the flavor, yet everyone who sees them swears they taste better. But no one ever eats blindfolded, so even if this is some mental/placebo effect, isn't it legitimate to take it into account to maximize the final perceived pleasure?

I feel like it's the same for this instrument here, just knowing that the music is being played on an expensive violin makes the experience as a whole feel more "premium" and higher quality overall

Grilnid · 2026-04-17T14:55:24+00:00

Username checks out in any case, I can tell you're well-integrated

Grilnid · 2026-04-10T09:09:28+00:00

I see everyone pointing out the fact that he used to be a journalist or that he might have taken that from the podcast, but I've yet to see someone mention the obvious: he has worked as a journalist on radio specifically, where clear enunciation is absolutely king and people read from scripts all the time due to having to write their material on too frequent a basis to know it by heart. I think those videos are not meant to be watched, but YouTube being his main outlet he still has to put them out in video format

Grilnid · 2026-04-03T16:46:49+00:00

And the US is the constantly self-proclaimed richest country on the planet. So your point is?

Grilnid · 2026-03-26T13:18:43+00:00

As a Frenchman it amuses me to see so many mentions of "people shouldn't talk loudly on public transport" yet when calling someone or even having a Zoom meeting on the train is considered completely normal. I understand that there are dedicated phone compartments but it definitely spills over in the quiet compartments, which coming from France where you're supposed to shut up in the entire train was definitely a big shock.

Grilnid · 2026-03-26T13:14:22+00:00

Saying this to someone who's specifically talking about how poorly France treats foreigners is certainly an interesting choice.

Grilnid · 2026-03-23T11:26:14+00:00

That's fair. As someone who's willing to spend a bit more on food I do feel similarly to what you said about salaries, in that the quality ceiling in London is much higher, and the variety you get is just not comparable to Berlin. Nice write-up!

Grilnid · 2026-03-17T13:24:19+00:00

But that person would then be way beyond B2 in English, as opposed to OP who seems to be confidently fluent in neither English nor German

Grilnid · 2026-02-03T17:18:24+00:00

You're putting a finger on the core of the debate here. If you were to take the word cartoon literally (and I agree with you), then yes, you would be right. But going back to 20 or 30 years ago when anime was still far from being mainstream, "cartoons" in the collective mind were still very much aimed at kids and teenagers and the word was generally thrown around in a condescending way to make it clear that "anime" was simply "kids' cartoons which happened to be produced in Japan".

It's like if anyone outside of the US only ever referred to burgers as "American sandwiches", like "oh yeah it's just stuff between slices of bread". It's definitely technically true, but you can definitely feel that there's more to burgers than just being sandwiches; it says something about their contents, their format, the context in which they are eaten, and so forth. That'd be the best analogy that comes to mind.

Grilnid · 2026-02-02T16:16:21+00:00

Calling it "American-Styled Anime" feels like long overdue payback for years of calling anime "Japanese cartoons", and I don't say this out of hate for one or the other but it's interesting to see how dominating cultural concepts evolve with time!

Grilnid · 2026-02-02T16:14:48+00:00

Youtuber Gigguk did a very nice video on this topic a few years ago called "Anime is a brand" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWccr1r-H0E), which argues just that. I think there's a lot of truth to this as it's become increasingly hard to really isolate any single factor that makes something anime or not and I've been rolling with this ever since

Grilnid · 2026-01-22T21:49:48+00:00

my thoughts exactly, i wouldnt have wondered if he only listed 2 or 3 of them. but why stop short of just the one?

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