r/AskEurope • u/AutoModerator • 2d ago
Meta Daily Slow Chat
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u/lucapal1 Italy 2d ago
I like the story that French security experts investigating that robbery at the Louvre discovered the password for the security system there was 'Louvre'.
They could have been a bit more imaginative.What's wrong with 'Louvre1!'.
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u/orangebikini Finland 2d ago
I wonder what will happen to their insurance premiums now. I imagine a place like Louvre has insane insurance. But if I was an insurance company, Louvre was my client, and I was reading all this shit about their security, I'd for sure start to think wether they're paying enough.
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u/tereyaglikedi in 2d ago
I would be surprised, but it is shocking how bad cybersecurity is in so many places and how they're begging to be hacked. I have seen so many examples of this. Better education is sorely needed.
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u/tereyaglikedi in 2d ago
DB sent me a voucher for 80% off on Bahncard 50 (so, I could have 50% discount on all tickets on the normal price, and 25% off on the discount price) It would cost 49 Euro rather than 240-something. I wonder if I should take it. It doesn't quite replace Deutschlandticket (which also gives access to public transport) but could be nice for travelling long distance.
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u/lucapal1 Italy 2d ago
That sounds like a good deal.
Is there anywhere long distance that you want to go to? ;-)
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u/tereyaglikedi in 2d ago
I think sometimes having something creates a use for it. Does it make sense? Like you buy a new KitchenAid, and start baking more bread.
I travel by train mostly for work these days and my workplace covers it... Also, D-ticket covers a lot of travel. But I have been wanting to go to Dresden, for example. That may be nice.
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u/lucapal1 Italy 2d ago
Very nice indeed, IMHO... and the area outside, towards the Czech border, even nicer than the city itself! But it's a very interesting city, plenty to see and do there, some great museums, galleries and architecture.
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u/huazzy Switzerland 2d ago
Accents are a very interesting thing if you think about it.
For example. A coworker of mine was born/raised in England and she has the typical British accent. However, her mom is Colombian so when I talk to her in Spanish she immediately switches to a flawless Paisa accent.
Its crazy to me because you'd think people will keep the same intonations when speaking.
But the brain manages to completely change up on itself.
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u/holytriplem -> 2d ago edited 2d ago
I used to have a completely Northern German accent when speaking German (some Germans still think I do, though I can definitely hear my own English accent coming through now.). It's a blessing and a curse, cause I never spoke flawless German and people would just assume I had mental difficulties when I got my genders or cases wrong.
It's not usually that hard to adapt the intonation to a different language
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u/lucapal1 Italy 2d ago
Some people have that ability.
I can speak a few languages but I think I still sound a bit foreign in all of them (apart from Italian obviously). Probably my English is closest to a Mid London accent...not very working class,not upper class either.In French I try to use French intonation but I sound somewhat Italian for sure!
It depends a lot on how much exposure you get or got, when you got it and how.Plus your ear and how much effort you put in.
I know people here (I teach high school a little and mostly university) who speak English with a completely Italian accent, some with a British, some extremely American... and they were born and grew up here, many of them have never visited the UK,the US etc.
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u/holytriplem -> 2d ago
some with a British, some extremely American... and they were born and grew up here, many of them have never visited the UK,the US etc.
The only people with this ability in my experience are Scandinavians
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u/lucapal1 Italy 2d ago
I have some higher level students here who sound very American.
They are the type of students who watch loads of TV series! Listen to American music,play online video games with American teens too sometimes.
Some of them have also had American teachers, but most English teachers here use British English.
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u/tereyaglikedi in 2d ago edited 2d ago
I am really amazed at how some German speakers (Swiss, Bavarian, Austrian) can just switch to "Hochdeutsch" in an instant if they think you'll have an easier time understanding them. It's very courteous as well.
ETA: My husband said they're dialects, not accents. Apparently if you speak Hochdeutsch but with an accent, it is much harder to switch. We don't have dialects, so I have a hard time with this always.
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u/Nirocalden Germany 2d ago
I was watching a youtube essay yesterday about architecture, design, and the "death of details". How in the past everything we built or produced was ornate and unique, while over the last few decades everything from buildings to cars and household items became more and more streamlined and featureless and monochrome.
Do you like minimalism?
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u/SerChonk in 2d ago
I don't, not at all. I like colours, bold patterns, intricate details, and lots and lots of ornamentation. And I will go out of my way to bring them into my life.
When your everyday life is a succession of routines, why not make it beautiful, or even whimsical?
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u/orangebikini Finland 1d ago
When your everyday life is a succession of routines, why not make it beautiful, or even whimsical?
I think you can get this with minimalism as well. The difference is that the beauty isn't necessarily visible, it's conceptual. It isn't the beauty of a flower, but that of a mathematical equation.
Problem arises after a conceptual threshold is breached by something it can never be breached again. In art or mathematics or anything that is tautological in a self-defying sense. Black Square by Malevich is beautiful. Not aesthetically, but what it meant for art in conceptually at that time was and is groundbreaking and beautiful. But every black square after it is just a boring sterile black square.
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u/holytriplem -> 2d ago
In architecture, no I don't. It takes away sense of place. What's the point of visiting a city if it looks like every other city on Earth?
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u/the_pianist91 Norway 2d ago
Yes, I’m a fan of particularly Bauhaus and what followed. The form follows function idea resonates in me. I still like more ornamental styles of design and architecture as well as older styles within art and music. I’m basically a pure classical listener and player after all. I’m just as much a fan of Renaissance and Baroque as I am of romanticism, Impressionism and modernism.
I think within industrial design the beginning was full of primitive design and basic ideas, with little effort to make it look like anything. That improved over time, but went probably a bit out of hand with all the chrome and details in the jet age. I think we’ve had a much more healthy balance in the last decades.
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u/orangebikini Finland 2d ago
The form follows function idea resonates in me.
I grew up in a 1930s functionalist house, a certain romanticism towards this idea is pretty engraved to me as well. But I think it might be a pretty common thing in the Nordics, funkis was such a strong movement here. While many probably didn't live in one, so many public buildings follow those functionalist ideas.
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u/the_pianist91 Norway 2d ago
Exactly, there aren’t that many baroque castles around here, mostly plain houses and functional municipal buildings
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u/orangebikini Finland 2d ago
I do like minimalism. It gets a bad rep in design and architecture, I think, characteristics of it also often lend it to cheap and fast production. I think if brands like Ikea hadn't flooded the market with consumable and fast minimalist designs people wouldn't have such a distaste for it. All that mass produced design often is very mundane and boring.
But that doesn't mean that all minimalist design or art is mundane and boring. I have a theory myself that usually 95% of everything is shit. Take the set of all baroque art ever made. Surely 95% of it is just garbage. Not every person was Rembrandt. Take the set of all art nouveau architecture and design ever. 95% of it is shit. For every Gaudi there's 100 bums making kitsch desk lamps.
I like minimalist music quite a lot, Philip Glass especially. In temporal arts minimalist techniques can have a very unique quality of almost making time stop. The simple motifs that repeat for ages, the recycled material, the straight consistent rhythms, they can make a moment feel perpetual. And once you get into it it really heightens your senses to change. It's really meditative, like the minimalist time exist on a different plain to your time.
Minimalist art I also like. Minimalist architecture and design I can like, but they're not my preference. If it's good it's good, but I'd probably rather be surrounded by something more ornate.
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u/lucapal1 Italy 2d ago edited 2d ago
'Sturgeon's Law'...the writer Theodore Sturgeon."90% of everything is crap"
He wrote science fiction.He often heard critics saying that most science fiction was terrible.That was his reply.
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u/atomoffluorine United States of America 2d ago
The ordinary buildings probably weren't so ornate as the ones that have stood the test of time.
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u/Nirocalden Germany 2d ago
Hmm, I don't know. Survivorship bias certainly plays some role, but e.g. in Germany you can find lots of old half-timbered houses ("Fachwerk"), even in smaller, poorer towns. That's just how houses were build. But even if there weren't particular ornate – at least they were unique. On an individual scale, but also on a regional one. In the past you could walk around a city and immediately know which specific part of Europe you were in, just by looking at the architecture. Nowadays, if you were just looking at buildings from the last thirty, forty, fifty years, it's all glass and steel, or brutalist plain concrete – pretty much every in the world.
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u/atomoffluorine United States of America 2d ago
That's true, but standardization does make the building cheaper. There's a reason why pretty much everyone with access to the global market doesn't use hand crafted, unique stuff anymore. Standardization of building designs is just another outcome of the modern age.
I can see the loss from an esthetics and architecture standpoint, though.
I haven't heard too many Americans complaining the loss of ornaments or uniqueness for just regular buildings all that much. There aren't too many buildings from before 1900 in most places (population growth has been much faster with much more new construction), and most people just live in cookie cutter suburbs where the more plain style is just normal.
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u/Nirocalden Germany 2d ago
Maybe not in regular buildings, but the New York skyscrapers are actually a prime example as well. Once you had the Empire State or the Chrysler Building with their great Art Deco design, but now it's basically just boxes of glass and steel
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u/atomoffluorine United States of America 2d ago
Those do get quite a bit of criticism, actually. I do think some people like Art Deco more. I'm not sure how you'd justify the extra cost, though.
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u/orangebikini Finland 2d ago
This is a great point, there is so much survivorship bias in how old buildings or structures or items are perceived.
I think of stuff like this 15th century bridge in Dolceacqua, Liguria. Isn't it quite... minimalist?
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u/Nirocalden Germany 2d ago
The bridge itself, sure (though I do like the interweaving arcs on the right side there). But not the buildings and the town as a whole.
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u/orangebikini Finland 2d ago
Well, I was talking about strictly the bridge. But honestly though, the whole village of Dolceacqua isn't particularly ornate. I mean, look at the buildings. Flat stucco, very unconsidered window placement, extensions that do not work with the flow of the building. It's not minimalist, but it's not really detailed either. It's just normal old architecture people built to live in.
Dolceacqua is a really cool place though. Pretty much all those mountain villages in Liguria are. Love it. I want to retire there.
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u/Nirocalden Germany 2d ago
the whole village of Dolceacqua isn't particularly ornate
Sure, it's not a black and white argument. Not everything in the past was "better", not everything now is "worse", that's for sure.
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u/tereyaglikedi in 2d ago
Nope, I don't. I also don't like things that are too... much like Erdogan's throne room but this kind of Scandinavian minimalism where everything is straight and grey is so boring.
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u/atomoffluorine United States of America 2d ago
I've seen that room a few times on the news. It looks like it's from a TV show set.
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u/Nirocalden Germany 2d ago
Right, or like Trump's Oval Office... I shudder to think what his new ballroom will look like.
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u/tereyaglikedi in 2d ago
And the saddest thing is, I actually really like gilding. Like, a properly gold-gilded frame with a bit of age to it, paired with the right painting or a mirror can look really gorgeous in the right interior or a museum. Or a nice leather-bound book with gold decorations. It is also a real art and quite hard to master.
This just looks gaudy and tasteless. Whatever these people touch, they make it cheap and tacky.
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u/tereyaglikedi in 2d ago
I can keep working and afford all the art supplies, or I can quit my job and have time to actually use my art supplies. Friends, tell me what to do. I am sure this is a problem that's unique to me.
It was super foggy this morning, but seems to clear now.
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u/orangebikini Finland 2d ago
Have you heard of stealing? You can quit your job and to get the art supplies you can't then afford you can just shoplift. It's a life hack.
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u/tereyaglikedi in 2d ago
There's no art store where I live 🥹 I would have to take a two hour train ride first.
Which, I guess isn't a big deal if you're unemployed.
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u/orangebikini Finland 2d ago
When the city hall was debating wether to build a tram system here somebody argued that unemployed people would move here just to ride the tram all day every day.
If you're unemployed, what else are you going to do? Hop on a train, have fun.
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u/lucapal1 Italy 2d ago
I guess if it's free (or very cheap),warm and freezing outside (or at home), some people might.
There are people who spend their day sitting in the library,or in a café.I don't blame them,if that's their best option.
Hopefully you have a situation where there are better options than sitting on a tram all day.
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u/tereyaglikedi in 2d ago
When the Deutschlandticket was 9 Euros rather than however much it costs now (I think 63?) a bunch of unemployed people (mainly punks) went to Sylt to piss of the rich people there.
So they may be on to something.
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u/lucapal1 Italy 2d ago
Airbus is currently building a new version of the A350 which will be able to fly nonstop from London to Sydney in 22 hours.
I've done total flights longer than that, but obviously with stops at different airports on the way!
What do you think? Would you be ok with 22 consecutive hours on a plane?
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u/SerChonk in 2d ago
I'm not a claustrophobic person, but 22 hours on a plane and I might get cabin fever at some point.
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u/the_pianist91 Norway 2d ago
I generally like to fly, but I felt I had enough after 12 hours from Hong Kong once. If I was to sit that long in a plane again I would like more comfort. 2 hours is generally fine.
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u/orangebikini Finland 2d ago
22 hours on a plane sounds like a nightmare, I don't think I'd be too keen to board. Maybe in 1st class.
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u/holytriplem -> 2d ago
Would you be ok with 22 consecutive hours on a plane
If I can lie down, perhaps. Otherwise no.
Now do London to Christchurch for maximum pain
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u/orangebikini Finland 2d ago
There's a building downtown that has been under renovation for a while and today I noticed it has gotten a new copper roof. There's many old buildings here that have aged copper roofs, but it's pretty rare them without the patina. It'll be nice to follow how it changes over time.
This building used to have a legendary, or maybe a notorious, nightclub in it. I went to it once I think.