Nothing, absolutely nothing do we have to adjust to America, neither up or downwards.

That being said, and as much as I think Mamdani is an Ideologue, taxing second, unoccupied homes sounds absolutely reasonable (at least if they aren't rented out). Expect all kinds of shenanigans to circumvent this, but still.

I'm sure many of those tokens are gone by now. While the Poles I've worked with are on average very capable and driven, there is also the bigger picture: That they have a national ambition.

Can only guess, but it seems they know that Poland must outperform its biggest two neighbours (DE & RUS) in order to retain their freedom. Given the current state of these neighbours this fear may seem to be blown out of propotions, but history is the better guide here.

Given that ambition I would guess the population is less devided on economic and trade issues, specifically with regards to Europe/International. The need to join the Euro is certainly less present there and in hindsight might be another part of Poland's success.

Poland tries to be a serious nation at least. Which can't be said about Germany and its self-inflicted demise on almost every measruable front, ie the woke mind virus.

Fun fact: German IT magazine Heise in light of the sluggish German job market recently published an article about moving abroad for jobs, ie. to Poland https://www.heise.de/ratgeber/Auswandern-nach-Polen-Was-ITle...

Don’t know why but this has so many upvotes, so I want to be clear: by „social sciences“ I‘ve meant the toxic „science“ disseminating from US social sciences departments colloquially referred to as „Wokeness“ which intra-US might be shrugged off as coping mechanism for mentally ill Ivy League members, but outside the US just comes down to outright cultural imperialism.

Furthermore at current projections, the speed at which MAGA is imploding, those who still make the migration won’t be the ones fleeing „persecution“ but rather „market forces“

This is in part to blame on that book, but also on the socioeconomic class that is omnipresent in our publisher‘s editing boards. As study after study has shown German journalists are 4 times as likely to vote for the Greens as the normal population.

> We decide something, then put it in the room and wait some time to see what happens. If there is no big shouting and no uprisings, because most do not understand what it is about, then we continue - step by step until there is no turning back. – Jean Claude Juncker, then President of the EU Commission

They will try this again. And again. And again. They will never stop.

They are not your friends.

And I would argue also that this scarcity of ability was already a problem for the last 100 years. The whole iterative process of ideation (ie. designing, sketching) gets so much less intuitive, if one has to pull out a ruler first, or boot up his machine.

While I can't say whether Bauhaus and subsequent modern styles are to blame, with their reductionist philosophies, or rather the lack of ability of the professionals driving "style" into that direction, it surely does rhyme with the general population's perception of modern architecture being faceless, and indistinguishable, boxes.

After all, none of our modern building's first designs consist of strokes that came from the rich muscle memory of a human arm. At best they came from arms with almost none.

The state of affairs is so bitter, often the buildings perceived to be the most creative ones of this era are most often results of letting some `Math.random()` on a PC do the drawing.

If I had to count one positive thing about being a graffiti "artist" since youth it's that you constantly practicing shapes and the perceived emotional impacts of even tiniest adjustments all embedded in your muscle memory. Once you gained that skill, no design tool can beat that ideation process. Not with a stylus, not with ai. Even the ms between a stylus's input until it appears on-screen are blocking you, the misalignment of the stylus's tip to where the drawn line appears, let alone the seconds++ an AI takes to turn your prompt into an image.

In dev-speak, removing hand-drawing from the skill set of architects entirely is as if you were deliberately removing HMR from your local web dev-setup.

I would thus argue the opposite: Architects badly need to draw more!

So like instead of hiring by merit doing it via DEI?

It seems like you haven't, why else would you deny the facts?

The EU tried to bully the Brits multiple times into staying [1] while its politicians made many thinly veiled threats [2], hoping they were veiled enough so that Bremain could make use of them. Luckily they overstepped with their arrogance.

The Brits noticed and the results were clear:

- The Torys won the UK parliament in a historic landslide in 2019, they broke "red wall" with their main campaign slogan being "Get Brexit done"

- in the European Parliament election in the United Kingdom prior to that the Brexit Party won almost half of all seats, >30% of the vote, the highest percentage of any party for the last 20 years

The EU could have handled this differently, but their behavior made Bremain so toxic that even Labour essentially gave up on it. As indicated by the breach of the "red wall"

Get over it

------

[1] The EU threats:

- The EU insisted on a strict sequencing of talks: citizens' rights, financial settlement ("divorce bill"), and the Irish border before any discussion of a future trade relationship. This was a deliberate pressure tactic

- The "Divorce Bill" – The EU demanded roughly €39-100 billion (estimates varied wildly) as a financial settlement – "leaving has a price." Michel Barnier (EU Chief Negotiator) insisted that this was non-negotiable.

- Irish Border / Backstop – designed to be a near-inescapable commitment if no trade deal was reached. This killed Theresa May's deal in Parliament three times.

- Granting Article 50 Extensions: Each extension (April 2019, October 2019) came with conditions and public EU reluctance — framed as a favor to the UK. This had a soft public opinion effect domestically in the UK

- No "Cherry Picking" Doctrine: Designed to make voters understand that a "soft Brexit" was not actually on offer, pressuring the Remain camp's argument.

[2] Key EU officials made pointed public statements:

- Jean-Claude Juncker (Commission President): Repeatedly warned the UK was underestimating the complexity. Said the negotiations would be "very, very, very difficult." Also warned in 2016 that there would be no informal negotiations before Article 50 was triggered — a rebuff to UK hopes for a soft start.

- Guy Verhofstadt (EU Parliament Brexit coordinator): Was openly confrontational, frequently stating the UK was living in "a fantasy world" regarding what Brexit could deliver.

- Donald Tusk (European Council President): Made the famous 2019 comment about a "special place in hell" for those who promoted Brexit without a plan — widely seen as a deliberate provocation to harden British public debate.

- Emmanuel Macron: Repeatedly said the UK could reverse Brexit at any time, keeping "Remain" psychologically alive as an option.

- Michel Barnier: "I am not hearing any whistling, just the clock ticking." July 2017 — A sharp comeback after Boris Johnson told the EU to "go whistle" over the divorce bill.

After the referendum, the EU and Bremainers made the 2 following nation-wide elections into single-issue elections. And they burned themselves justifiably from it.

You know that is the problem with the pro EU camp, they tout their opposition as science deniers and worse, yet conveniently pretend hard numbers (ie. election results) don't exist or didn't happen - if it hurts their feelings. It's just intellectual dishonesty through and through.

> The objective is to enable innovative companies to operate under a single, harmonised set of EU-wide rules, covering relevant aspects of corporate, insolvency, labour and tax law.

Especially the last two topics are the nitty gritty details, subject to day-to-day populism by local politicians. It’s why „relevant aspects“ dampens my hopes.

Sometimes I wonder if we should just reduce the EU to a non-geographical sovereign state with which EU countries have a shared agreement. I‘d the incorporate within this state, have it taxed and regulated there. Sort of like a mixture of the City of London and the Holy See.

Apart from that: How is that de-facto locking in of individuals compatible with the EU‘s foundational freedom of movement?