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·1 min

Die zähen Gespräche haben ein Ende

The tough discussions have an end.

Yann Sommer is joining Bayern for EUR 8 million plus bonus payments. The Swiss keeper will sign a contract until 2025.

Thank goodness. Really couldn’t see Bayern winning anything this season without signing a top class keeper.

Will certainly make things interesting when Neuer gets back to full fitness. Of course, that should read if as there is no guarantee he can return to his previous exceptionally high standard.

·3 mins

The title translates as “Climate terrorists, but that’s all of us”.

Some background. The article is about the “Unword of the Year” award for 2022. This annual award is ran by a language-critical campaign group originally launched in 1991. Klimaterrorist - climate terrorist in English - was selected as the “Unword” for 2022.

The newspaper Die Zeit had this to say:

Man muss sich den echten Klimaterroristen als recht normalen Europäer vorstellen. Morgens wacht er in einem aus Plastik und Furnier zusammengelatteten Möbelhausbett auf, dann duscht er 20 Minuten sehr warm, holt noch etwas Wäsche aus dem Trockner, verspeist ein paar Wurstbrote für die Freiheit und steigt sodann in sein Kraftfahrzeug. Mit dem gerät er irgendwo in einen Stau, den er so lange als schicksalsgegeben hinnimmt, bis er davon Wind kriegt, dass am Staubeginn ein paar Aktivistinnen auf der Straße hocken.

Dann wird er wütend und gebraucht böse Wörter, von denen eins nun von der sprachkritischen Aktion Unwort des Jahres zum Unwort des Jahres 2022 gewählt wurde. Dass es in diesem Fall nicht die boulevardesken Klimakleber sind, sondern die diskursiv etwas herausfordernderen Klimaterroristen, ermöglicht diesen Texteinstieg. Wie schon Klimahysterie für das Jahr 2019 lässt sich die Sache recht einfach umdrehen und gegen die richten, die das Wort eigentlich im Munde führen. Die Kopplung ist schließlich maximal unklar und allein das qualifiziert das Unwort als solches: Es ist sprachlich schlecht gemacht. Denn wer terrorisiert hier nun eigentlich wen oder was und in wessen Namen?

My translation:

You have to imagine the real climate terrorist as a fairly normal European. In the morning he wakes up in a plastic and veneer furniture store bed, takes a very warm shower for 20 minutes, gets some clothes out of the dryer, eats a few ham sandwiches in the name of freedom and then gets into his car. He gets into a traffic jam somewhere, which he accepts as fated until he gets wind of the fact that a few activists are squatting on the road at the beginning of the jam.

Then he gets angry and uses nasty words, one of which has now been chosen by the language-critical campaign ‘Unwort des Jahres’ as the Unword of the Year 2022. The fact that in this case it is not the tabloid climate stickers, but the discursively somewhat more challenging climate terrorists, makes it possible for this to be an Unword contender. Like ‘climate hysteria’ in 2019, the matter can be quite easily turned around and directed against those who actually utter the word. The linking of the words (climate and terrorist) is after all maximally unclear and that alone qualifies the Unwort as such: it is linguistically badly made. For who is actually terrorising whom or what and in whose name?

And this really is the clincher:

For who is actually terrorising whom or what and in whose name?

·1 min

With Broadhead and Hirst signing, I’m genuinely excited at the additional firepower that Town have upfront now. It’s a strong squad. Here’s to us maintaining our promotion push this season.

·1 min

I’ve always decided against getting an iPad because I want a machine I can develop on. There are good options in this post to make an iPad enough of a dev machine to fix minor emergencies if you are on the road. One of the options is using Gitpod.io. I’ve experimented with it before and was impressed.

Although if I had to choose between a MacBook or an iPad, I would still choose a MacBook.

·1 min

The biggest reason personal blogs need to make a comeback is a simple one: we should all be in control of our own platforms.

Amen. This was my motivation to revamp my blog this year.