cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/33162798

Germany wants to boost relations with Africa. During his trip, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul has promoted cooperation on energy, infrastructure and the economy. He also criticized US treatment of South Africa.

This choice aged like milk for Germany, the AH64, UH-1Y and AH-1Z hit the ground running as counter drone/air defense platforms and are already highly effective at it.

The H145 can be used as a trainer for the AH64 at least, but these choices have likely fenced in Germany from having a truly effective solution here for several more years.

I'm quite interested to see how this improves the farebox for Fernverkehr. D-Ticket is so ridiculously good for last minute travel that I will change my destination based on where I can get to from my home, even with the time penalty being on a slower train (looking at you Teppich RE Berlin - Dresden). This might tempt me back to Fernverkehr for extra trips especially if it can match or even beat Flix prices.

As some of you may know, Germany has one of the shittiest “defamation” code that allows any business owner to simply delete the reviews they don’t like. For a long time this had made Google Maps ranking useless: a rating of 4.9 could mean the store is really good, or it’s deleting all the bad reviews.

Not anymore.

Now if you click through all the way to the Reviews tab, Maps will tell you how many reviews the business owner has deleted in the past year.

So when choosing where to have lunch, don’t forget to check this tab. Also check the places you usually go: restaurants, stores, car mechanics. Chances are if they’re doing this you should look somewhere else.