Ralf Ekrowski

Donald Trump to chair new Olympic taskforce in bid to allay international visitor concerns ahead of 2028 Los Angeles Games Donald Trump has set up a new body to oversee security at the Olympics, with new powers.

LA 2028 should be a celebration for the world — not a political show of immigration raids and “security flexing.” A task force can’t hide that walls don’t welcome guests. And the Paralympics? Are all truly welcome in the US? 1936 Berlin must not be repeated.
theconversation.com/donald-trump...

Opinion | The Paris Métro Smell That Transports Me A whiff of the Paris Métro flings me back to a summer I spent in France.

The Paris Metro is part of the city’s soul — along with the bike. Don’t believe the social media posts that paint it as dangerous. We were there this summer: everyone was polite and friendly, in a way we hardly experience in Germany anymore.
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

‘The ocean is spitting our rubbish back’: Italy’s museum of plastic pollution Faded items dating back to 1950s have been found on Italian beaches, underscoring plastic’s problematic longevity

The ocean forgets nothing: from 1950s bottles to Italia ’90 tubs, it’s spitting our plastic back at us. Archeoplastica shows how long “single-use” really lasts — and that we haven’t paid the bill, just dumped it in the sea.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

A Sidelined Europe Seeks a Voice as Trump and Putin Prepare to Meet

An aggressor and a liar can’t make peace. For Trump, it’s PR, not a mission. Lasting peace needs Ukraine — and Europe.
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A Sidelined Europe Seeks a Voice as Trump and Putin Prepare to Meet www.nytimes.com/2025/08/09/w...

Trump Is a Degrowther What else do you call a strategy designed to raise prices and lower productivity?

In Europe, no one would mistake Trump’s economic course for a strategy. Tariffs on essentials, cuts to science and clean energy, fewer workers, higher prices — it’s called “degrowth” here, but without the climate goals. From this side of the Atlantic, it’s simply baffling.

What Even Is Instagram Now? Long after shifting your feed away from friends and toward influencers, Instagram is adding new features intended to make the app more personal. The turnabout exposes the platform’s identity crisis.

The best thing about Instagram? Realizing I don’t need it. It stays where it belongs—in the Meta universe. For me, it’s just a parallel universe. From an AI perspective, it’s practically invisible—if you use ChatGPT or Gemini, you can almost live right past it.
www.wired.com/story/what-e...

The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to Netflix in August

"Wednesday isn’t just mystery and teen drama – it also calls out colonial violence and shreds the patriotic founding myth. By MAGA standards, that’s downright ‘un-American.’ Can’t wait for Season 2."
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The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to Netflix in August www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/a...

Trump Says He Will Meet With Putin in Alaska Next Week

Putin’s already won: a U.S. president talking about “land swaps” in Ukraine like it’s a real estate deal. For Putin, that’s a victory before the first handshake – for Ukraine, a breaking point. History shows: trade land for “peace,” and you invite the next war.

Polarstern-Expedition #CONTRASTS:
Im Juli 2025 driftete einjähriges #Arktis -Meereis innerhalb von zwei Wochen 220 km und verlor 30-40 cm an Dicke – vor allem durch Schmelzen an der Unterseite.
#Klimawandel

www.meereisportal.de/newsliste/de...
(Aufnahme: Alfred-Wegener-Institut / Thomas Krumpen)

Trump moves to shut down NASA missions that measure carbon dioxide and plant health The Trump administration wants to end two NASA missions that monitor a potent greenhouse gas and plant health.

The Trump admin wants to end NASA climate missions, erasing decades of CO₂ data. In Fahrenheit 451, burning books was just the start—erasing knowledge comes next. The Data Rescue movement, born in 2017, may once again step in. In Germany, we know where that road leads.
apnews.com/article/trum...

Experience - German Emigration Center Historical location and new perspectives

The German Emigration Center in #bremerhaven turns 20 – a reminder of how migration has shaped people and nations. Even Trump’s ancestors left for the U.S. from here. The museum shows how deeply Germany and America are connected – a history we should never forget.

Things Aren’t Going Donald Trump’s Way He hasn’t ended the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. His economy looks shaky. And then there’s Jeffrey Epstein.

#TACO in Trump’s twilight. The myth may fade, but Trumpism spreads — in Germany, the AfD rides its wave, making the unsayable normal and history negotiable. Can it outlive the man?

The Emperor’s New Trade Deal Tariffs are bad. A deluded president is worse.

Trump thinks he’s holding the world hostage with tariffs.
Krugman shows the truth:
The higher he goes, the less leverage he has.
Turns out you can't bully a market that’s already moved on.
open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...

Federal agents use Penske rental truck as 'Trojan Horse' to raid Los Angeles Home Depot Border Patrol agents reportedly arrested 16 people at a Home Depot in Westlake on Wednesday. They utilized Penske trucks to carry out the arrests.

What the world sees isn’t law enforcement. It’s a manhunt.
Disguised trucks. Masked agents. Day laborers chased in broad daylight.
Germany remembers what happens when states start rounding people up in public.

The Quest to Make a Bot That Can Smell as Well as a Dog Scientists are trying to crack the code of how smell works—and create robots that can sniff out the world's secrets like a dog.

Why build robots that sniff like dogs – when dogs already do? They've lived with us for thousands of years, loyal, hard to manipulate – and they sense what we can't see. I trust a dog more than any algorithm.

The nefarious message behind the DHS ‘manifest destiny’ painting: ‘four pillars of propaganda’ Amid sweeping immigration raids, the Department of Homeland Security posted art captioned: ‘Protect the Homeland.’ Experts say it perpetuates an American fantasy

Saw it first in the FAZ: While we’re stuck on Eppstein, Trump’s Homeland Security posts settler paintings with blonde angels, fleeing Natives, and Bibles in wagons.
It’s not nostalgia.
It’s propaganda.
And it points straight into darker times.

China Turns to A.I. in Information Warfare

After reading the NYT piece on China’s AI-driven propaganda:
The EU’s cautious approach to AI isn't bureaucratic overreach — it’s a firewall for democracy.
Meanwhile, Silicon Valley’s blind optimism may be helping dig democracy’s grave.
-gift article

On Gaza, Germany’s Government Faces Pressure from All Sides

Germany’s historic bond with Israel must not blind it to the suffering in Gaza.
If “Never again” means anything, it must include all civilians.
Peace needs more than politics – it needs new cultural language.
Old terms can’t carry the hope this region deserves.
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gift article

Rockets of the future take a step closer: German scientists create a basis for environmentally friendly rocket fuel | NEWS.am TECH - Innovations and science Hexanitrogen (N₆) is a molecule consisting exclusively of six nitrogen atoms bonded in a stable configuration... .

Germany’s working on N6—a rocket fuel made of pure nitrogen. No CO₂, no flame, just thrust. Science like this needs funding and trust. In Trump’s anti-science America? Not a chance. In a lab in Giessen? Closer than you think.

The National-Park Tours of Trump’s Dreams The rule: Only mention the good parts of American history.

The Atlantic’s satire on Trump’s national parks hits hard.
Wednesday might be next.
She brings up stolen land and racism—
Things that no longer count as “beautiful parts of American history.”
(Gift.)

After WWII, the U.S. helped feed a defeated Germany even with Nazis still around. My mother was a teen. A Black GI gave her chocolate. She’d been told, it was poisoned.
It wasn’t. It changed her life and sparked a lifelong love for America.
Gaza needs that kind of mercy.
That’s how peace begins.

Finding the right pressing with the right mastering is a science in itself. Just grabbing a copy off Amazon usually isn’t the best idea — better to trust your local record shop. Then again, that’s part of the magic: every record comes with its own story.

Opinion | You Are Contaminated

The world is inside us now,” writes Wallace-Wells. My hometown Bremerhaven hosts top plastic research—but makes little effort to reduce waste. No levies, no strategy. SAIL goes on, the trash piles up. Knowledge without policy is just performance.

gift article www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/o...

Bought a turntable.
Came full circle: cassette, CD, MP3, streaming...
Turns out, the perfect format was in my hands all along.
Digital cuts corners — vinyl keeps the soul.

It’s been raining endlessly here in Germany — but honestly, what’s the problem? The air is fresh, the lush greenery soothes the soul, and everything feels alive. Just step outside and enjoy it!

The Enchantment of the Arab Mind Today’s Islamism promises authenticity but is postmodern in form, postcolonial in posture, and pretends to retrieve the sacred through the techniques of the profane.

Hussein Aboubakr shows how Islamism grew from failed ideologies, not faith.
A future for Palestine may depend on shifting from religious symbolism to shared cultural identity across the region.
ideas.tikvah.org/mosaic/essay...

Trump, Claiming Weak Jobs Numbers Were ‘Rigged,’ Fires Labor Official

Autocrats don’t argue with data—they erase the messenger.
Firing a career statistician for inconvenient numbers isn’t reform.
It’s a warning sign.
Healthy democracies don’t fear facts.

So wichtig: korrekte Kommasetzung.

Not With a Bang, but With a Truth Social Post The president is rattling a nuclear saber as a distraction.

Good thing hardly anyone takes Trump seriously anymore. Bad thing he knows it — and like a sulking toddler, he cranks up the drama to get attention. In our attention economy, that means louder, riskier stunts. Nuclear subs as clickbait? That won't end well.

Palantir is a digital kraken. Even in Germany, with strict privacy laws, police start using it. Safety talk drowns out the real risk: total surveillance. The more "protected" we are, the closer we get to living in a panopticon.