That was so nice when I got an 8 year old indoor cat. You could see this world of wonder in her eyes, as she didn’t know where to look and where to sniff first.

With time, I could let her run free but supervised in a shared apartment building garden. She always went to the same pine trees and couldn’t get enough sniffing them. Also jumped on the window sill of neighbour cats just to hiss at them from the outside.

When I went to neighbours, for example to pick up a package or talk about something, she trotted next to me through the hallways like a well-trained dog and sat next to me when I talked to a neighbour. The whole stairway and hallways were another great adventure to her, sniffing and clawing doormats etc.

Yes, the worst was when something startled her (sting from a thistle?) and she dashed for the door full speed, into the harness, did a looping. A good fit is essential, could have cause major injury!

They really make sense; instinctively, cats trust running water more than stale water, for the same reasons I mentioned.

Often thought about it, but didn’t get a chance to try.

Hm. Maybe try putting the water away from the food. Some cats don’t like it near the food. (Presumably related to clean water sources in nature vs. dead prey.)

My last cat only ever drank from the running tab. Jumped into the bathtub and meowed until someone turned it on, day or night.

The far right doesn’t even need to win directly. Even within conservative parties, such as Germany’s CDU, the populists make it to the top. They have good people with real solutions up to a state level, maybe more than any other party, but the new chancellor and most of the ministers from his own party are populists.

Conservatives with a real vision and plan might soon suffer the same fate as McCain and Romney.

This has a whole chain of consequences. Problems are not solved and increase, the far right gains.

Also, the current government coalition of the two formerly major parties didn’t even get half of the votes, resulting in less acceptance of the democratic process and legitimacy of the government. Not a big difference to the electoral college problem in the USA.

One insanity in the following years was how they thought people still wanted their next generation diesel.

I’ve been working for them in the 2010s with the department to organise the staff car fleet. We ordered many electric vehicles years ahead from production and planned it all around electric vehicles: Charging stations, operating distance, some hybrids for long distance, software to calculate trips etc.

Then a few months before we needed them, they said: We overproduced on the latest diesel generation and can’t keep up with the demand for electric vehicles, so we have to sell the ones you ordered. You can either go with a Tesla (for official Volkswagen business trips!) or have the diesel for free.

It felt like there was a hysteria: Decision makers got it in their heads that the “hype” for electric vehicles was ideology-driven and not something people with buying power actually wanted today or in the near future. Bit like the republican administration thinking that “woke” is our main problem. Meanwhile, huge research and development departments did come up with the electric vehicles they sell today (and fully working hydrogen prototypes you won’t see in a store, just to be safe) and must have been quite frustrated that so few were produced.

Finally someone who appreciates him! I always noticed how his contribution is pretty impressive.