Things going on here? 
The cat is asleep on the bed - and today there were no complaints before she snuggled down (I had remembered to make the bed after she'd gotten up in the morning...)

The test knit that I have on the needles is almost finished. I'm mending the knee area of my bouldering trousers. We've started pruning the willow fence. I have eaten too much chocolate today.

I'm also wondering for how long my current computer will hold out - apparently it's not Windows-11-compatible due to some security chip being too old. And no, I am not planning to repace a perfectly fine, working computer right now. Grr.

What else is happening? While we are in political limbo right now (negotiations will happen, but of course they are not public), there's an initiative sending cups to Friedrich Merz as a kind of creative protest. Why? Because in his speech on the evening before election day, he lost it and insulted the people out on the streets demonstrating against fascism... using the German saying that "die haben nicht alle Tassen im Schrank" (they don't have all the cups in the cupboard). Because a lot of people felt offended by this, and are also quite firmly of the opinion that if there is a lack of cups in any cabinet, it's not in the protester's cupboards, but more probably in somebody else's... he's getting cups in the post now.

You can find some more about that if you go on Instagram and look for #merztasse - here's a random example: 

Well. Hopefully it will help. And we also happen to have a few cups more that we don't use... so they will make their way to Berlin soon, too.

So. Elections are over, and they went more or less like expected - the only surprise was that the left party got about 8% of the votes. The next four years, CxU will probably steer the ship, and they are currently looking at possibilities for a coalition. Anything can happen here, because, well, Merz has not proven to be the most trustworthy guy.

I'm not surprised (well, a little about the still 20% of AfD, but who knows what would have happened if there had been less demos and so on happening beforehand), but I am very, very disappointed. Which means I will spend a few days in the post-election blues and then see what I can do.

Meanwhile so much is happening in the US that it's hard to keep track, and if I get the picture right, protests are forming here and there, but have no visible effect yet. If you're over there: Keep going! You will need to hold steady for a while before it has an impact. 

So. First things first: If you are in Germany, please go vote for democracy on Sunday. If you're still wondering whether that is necessary or not, take a look over into the US, where people are fired from government and democracy is getting gutted and thrown away. 

If you're still unsure on who to vote for, you still have some time left. I would advise to pick Green, Linke, or maybe SPD to make sure we stay a democratic country. If you're wondering what to do with your Erststimme, and whether to use it tactically, take a look at zweitstimme.org and see what canditates have the most chance of winning. (And thus who to vote for if you would like to not have a black or blue guy win - though fortunately it will not mean that they all get in anymore. No more Überhangmandate.)

Seriously. Go vote. Also have a look at stuff going on in the US anyways. That is a shit thing happening there. 

More PSA: If you own a Kindle and would like to have copies of your books, you know, just in case - you have a few more days to download them to your computer before Amazon changes its policies and prevents downloading for good. If you're unsure what that means, Geeky Gadgets explains it to you. If you'd like instructions on how to download your stuff, you can find them for instance here.

And finally, for those of you in the US: Don't give up! You have not lost everything yet. Protests are rising. Things are being planned - see here:

I hope that after the elections, things will turn towards some more sanity here. I'd really like to return to something more like normal afterwards. Part of me, though, is already sort of expecting that we'll have some more protesting to do afterwards, to avoid certain brownish stuff happening. We will see. 

There's elections in Germany on Sunday. Prognoses still give CDU/CSU as the party with the majority of votes, followed by AfD. That, friends, does not bode well for our future. (You can look at dawum.org for the current results from surveys.)

Meanwhile, I'm spending too much time on social media trying to reach, hopefully, a few people and make them realise that we'll be up for deep shit if we get a right-wing dominated Bundestag. And with one eye, I'm looking towards the US in some kind of disbelief (this feels so much like a bad movie, it must be a bad movie, right?) and concern (it's obviously rather easy to deconstruct a democracy once you're in position, and who knows if we're not next in line?).

The weak, those without defenses, the ones easily silenced and erased get taken out of the equation first. And then it spreads. You can see for yourself how that works, just go visit https://orwh.od.nih.gov/career-development-education, the US National Institute of Health's pages for the Office of Research for Women's Health, scroll down, and click either "Women Scientists in Action" or "Local Legends". 

So. For those of you protesting things in the US: Thank you. Please keep going. We do see you, and every protest counts. 

For those of you unsure of what you can do: Connect with others. Go out and join protests. You can find out more, for example, at indivisible.org. If you're in Germany, protests can be found on the pages of demokrateam.org. 

Don't give up on human rights. Don't give up on democracy.

One of the interesting topics that come up again and again is the diversity of German dialects - which, I once read somewhere, can be so far apart linguistically that they are actually different languages. 

I grew up in Franconia, and thus know the Franconian dialect.  Which sounds very, very different from what you can hear here, which is the Cologne dialect.

(And a really wonderful project, by the way! It's a song to get people to vote. There's original subtitles in German and Kölsch - and yes, they are quite necessary for some bits for Germans, too - but the automatic English translation is, unfortunately, quite shitty...)

If you would like to have a look at some very old needles, here's an (also slightly older) article about them: "Sewing Needles Reveal the Roots of Fashion".  

And if you are in Germany and would like to join the protests against the extreme Right, you can find out if there's something happening in your area on the website of the Demokrateam.

... especially friends in the US, how are you doing? I'm reading snippets here and there of finances cut, people fired, and websites taken offline. Have you been hit by any of this? How are things going for you, while your vice president hops around in Germany telling us who to vote for (spoiler alert: not good advice)?