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East Germany balloon escape

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Re: East Germany balloon escape

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Germany's strict privacy laws Not anymore.

No, on the contrary. Germany is a big proponent of chatcontrol.

These are two very different things. Significant parts of the German government and many German members of the European Parliament are proponents of Chat Control. The general population, however, still has a strong desire for privacy and a deep fear of surveillance and data collection, shaped by historical experiences with two dictatorships (the Nazi era and the GDR).

That said, there is a substantial disconnect between the substantive preferences of the voting population and the actual policies and decisions of the parties they elect. This is partly because promises like “internal security” gain much more traction in times of growing uncertainty and global instability, while only a relatively small portion of the population fully thinks through, or is willing to think through, the consequences and concrete legislative changes behind those promises.

Nevertheless, looking at both public attitudes and court rulings, it is still fair to say that data protection in Germany, even compared to other EU countries, currently enjoys a particularly high status.

Re: East Germany balloon escape

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

So turn back the clock to when Hildegard von Bingen was only one of many extremely powerful and influential abbesses that were polymaths and prolific artists and writers and educators of women in Europe? I’ve never understood this mentality that people who read and watched handmaids tale, caused some done kind of weird obsession built on a literal fiction story, a made up story… especially since the reality is not on…

[dead]

Re: East Germany balloon escape

#163
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “Are we here in the West??” Only this one question is asked by Peter Strelzyk and Günter Wetzel when they were in the early morning of the 16th. The "Handmaid's Tale" TV series has a great variation on that moment, which chokes me up every single time. (spoilers in video title) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oKZgXvpm0c

[flagged]

> a thousand years...

less than a hundred?

Re: East Germany balloon escape

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Democracy = elect whoever the people actually want to elect, even if you don't like their choice. That rather rules out what happens in, say, the USofA, where entrenched party politics limits the choice of the wider population to those few candidates that are backed. > Some people reapply that definition to the word "populism". No, it's real democracy to elect the people's choice. Populism isn't democracy, democrac…

> > Democracy = elect whoever the people actually want to elect, even if you don't like their choice. That rather rules out what happens in, say, the USofA, where entrenched party politics limits the choice of the wider population to those few candidates that are backed. It’s also weird in that the candidate with the most votes might not win. The electoral system is weird.

Sure .. but 'less' so.

In the EU, European Union, member countries are voting on EU positions .. whether it's weighted or unweighted, it's a collection of N countries voting, not a collection of N millions of people voting.

Similarly in the USofA, formed as a union of states to have a common government for those things that are agreed to superseded individual state interests.

I live in a country with mandatory voting - everybody (of age, save for those convicted of _serious_ crime) votes, and ranked proportional voting.

Compulsory voting offends the sensibilities of a number of USofA citizens, but there is a strong case to be made for it, ranked voting does a lot to avoid two party Hotelling's law quagmires where major parties barely represent anybody and yet MySportingTeam divisions dominate.

Re: East Germany balloon escape

#165

It is interesting how dictatorships for resourceless countries needed to keep the people in like east germany or czechoslovakia. But current dictatorships with natural resources like Venezuela or Iran let dissent go. It makes them more stable sadly.

Since West Germany considered East Germany to be occupied territory, East Germans had automatic citizenship in the west. This made it uniquely easy to emigrate into the much wealthier country.

Re: East Germany balloon escape

#166
post #9

Disney made a movie about this called Night Crossing in the early 1980s. More recently, there's a 2018 German movie about it called Balloon. [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082810/ [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7125774

The 2018 film is a really good movie, I would highly recommend checking it out!

+2, very nice movie. Might be very eye-opening for any some about what it was like under USSR umbrella...

Re: East Germany balloon escape

#167
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “Are we here in the West??” Only this one question is asked by Peter Strelzyk and Günter Wetzel when they were in the early morning of the 16th. The "Handmaid's Tale" TV series has a great variation on that moment, which chokes me up every single time. (spoilers in video title) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oKZgXvpm0c

[flagged]

They want to undo the protestant reformation?

Re: East Germany balloon escape

#168
post #5

The photo of the balloon here really helps put the story into perspective. https://web.archive.org/web/20190408181736/https://www.museu...

>Ballonfahrt in die Freiheit Gotta love the way German sounds to English ears. Always good for a chuckle. This guy is a hacker hero - do the engineering needed, get the proof of concept built, move fast, break things, start over and go big, then scores a victory over the commies and saves his family.

You can only move so 'fast and break things', when failure can land you and your family in jail or get you killed.

That being said, the timeline is remarkably short for such a hardware project.

Re: East Germany balloon escape

#169

Was curious to know the calculations involved. Found them to be pretty simple. Vibe-coded an online calculator for future escapists: https://balloon-lift-calculator.pagey.site

Now calculate the necessary rate of fuel burn and fuel requirement for a given trip; tensile and tear strength needed for the balloon material and seams.

Tbf they probably didn't do all these calculations, but should have. They risked their lives by getting some of these things wrong.

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