I dread the elections in France in 2027. France is one of the last bastions of Freedom that is capable of standing up to the authoritarian states if push comes to shove. The last few presidential elections have moved France closer and closer to having a Kremlin sock puppet in charge. While they have managed to pull back from the brink a few times, it only needs to go wrong once.
Thanks for sharing! Concerning logistics when travelling I can also share my experience.
I travel on a Dutch passport and my children, while also having Dutch citizenship, travel on German passports because that is where we live and where my wife is from. They also use my wife’s German last name. Therefore, when travelling, my kids and I have different names and nationalities. For some reason nobody ever questioned any of that. I keep a copy of the birth certificate just in case though.
I don’t want to excuse Netanyahu here. He certainly belongs behind bars in my opinion. However, he only holds a part of the world hostage rather than all of it. I see him on par with folks like Kim Jon Un or Mohamed bin Salman rather than Trump or Putin.
The answer will likely depend on the place in the world and even on the cultural background of individuals getting married. I’ll just share my experience.
We got married out of convenience. While it’s technically possible to arrange the bulk of the legal stuff with various contracts, it is just easier to use the “default contract” that already covers the most common use case. Some legal arrangements, for example cuts to inheritance tax or the right to remain silent when asked about your spouse in legal proceedings, are only available for “real” marriages.
Once we decided to have children we looked into the various arrangements needed to make that work and quickly found out that marriage is the easiest way to sort everything out. In our day to day life nothing really changed. In legal terms quite a lot is now different.
By the way, as others have mentioned, getting married isn’t expensive. All we paid was the administrative fee which was something like 50 Euros.
For me it boils down to trust in the service provider (in this case Proton) and the risk of anyone accessing your information. While your proposed solution is elegant and super accessible, it’s not without risk.
Relevant risks could include your device being screen- or keylogged or even the TSA randomly selecting you and forcing you to open up your phone under the implied threat of a free vacation to El Salvador.
For super sensitive data that can be memorised, I recommend memorisation. You can keep a backup hard copy in a safe place, even if that’s not immediately accessible. This should also be accessible for your relatives in case of death. Such a safe place can be a safety deposit box or even just a trusty old envelope stashed away behind a specific drawer.
For sensitive but not super sensitive data that you need on the go I recommend using an encrypted hard copy, which you can keep in your purse or wallet. Use any publicly available (long enough) document as your cypher, such as the Magna Charta or the Declaration of Independence (although I recommend more obscure texts, obviously). You can even use the cypher method for digital sensitive data if you prefer that. As long as you don’t tell anyone about your cypher you should be fine. It can still be brute forced, but should be really difficult if you use the right cypher.
I remember visiting Mohenjo-Daro in the mid 1990s and being impressed by the sheer scale of time between these remnants of civilization and myself. It’s sad that the site isn’t as developed as it deserves to be, since it is among the oldest proofs of civilisation still around.
I hope it was screwed tightly.
Ich bin alt genug, um der Stolze Besitzer eines ADAC-Straßenatlasses zu sein; mittlerweile leider hoffnungslos veraltet :-)
Anscheinend funktioniert “Bücherei” als Suchbegriff, “Bibliothek” nur, wenn das im Namen vorkommt.
Leider ein Beispiel, warum der Ansatz von OSM zwar gut ist, aber das derzeitige Produkt leider nicht auf dem Niveau des Platzhirsches ist.
OSM-Daten sind genau so gut, wie Freiwillige sie gemacht haben.
Ist bei Google Maps grundsätzlich an vielen Stellen genauso, aber die User-Basis ist vielfach größer.
Dafür, dass sie “on-demand” heruntergeladen werden wie bei Google Maps, haben sie wohl nicht die Ressourcen.
Leider noch ein Beispiel, wie die Funktionalität leidet. Für eine anstehende, längere Fahrt in den Urlaub müsste ich also das Kartenmaterial quer durch Europe runterladen. Das ist leider für mich nicht praktikabel und wieder ein Punkt, der den etablierten Marktführer weiter auf dieser Position verweilen lässt.
Bitte nicht falsch verstehen; ich würde gerne weniger auf Google-Dienste zurückgreifen und tue das an vielen Stellen (Mail, Cloud-Storage, Kalender, Browser) auch erfolgreich. Gerade Maps hat aber einfach keine ansatzweise gleichwertige Alternative, die nicht gleich zum Hobby wird.
There’s more with an agreement. Some also have a partial agreement, where only a written test is necessary. Here’s the full list, if you’re interested: https://www.german-way.com/for-expats/living-in-germany/german-drivers-license-reciprocity/
Can you tell/show me how/where I can use OSM as a replacement for Google Maps. I’ve given OsmAnd a try and found it lacking.
I ran a few tests such as searching for my local library. Unfortunately I had to use the exact wording (“Stadtbibliothek”) rather than simpler, more common wording (“Bibliothek”). The Google map found it immediately. Similarly I searched for a local Café, which I easily found in Google Maps (despite not capitalising anything). Meanwhile the business is not present in OSM, despite being the most popular Café in my town.
Additionally navigation doesn’t work for me for regions I haven’t downloaded. How would I go about getting it to work for navigation to places further afield that I haven’t downloaded?
Unfortunately this seems all to plausible. Despite Firefox and ad blocking in general, there’s very few services that rival Google’s Android and (in my opinion) none that can honestly rival Maps at present.
So, it’s basically a loss leader in this scenario to feed other sevices like the ad network?
driving license was another one mentioned. Having it not expire before you can transfer it is preferable
This is a giant, often overlooked issue. My home country of the Netherlands for example doesn’t allow a simple transef and makes you take a test (because road safety is important to Dutch people!). In Germany it’s even worse. There it depends on the state you obtained your US license in, since Germany has agreements with some states but not all…
Can confirm. I’ve lived in the Netherlands, France and Germany for basically all my life and I don’t recall ever actively saying thank you to a bus driver. I don’t even remember when last I exchanged any words with one thanks to modern fare systems.
On the contrary I say thank you to cashiers at the supermarket or staff at the bakery several times per week.
This is such an annoyance. As someone who regularly reads and watches media in several times different languages, the scourge of auto translate has only become worse. With the advent of more capable translation tools this will probably only get worse. I’ve already switched my OS language to English on all of my devices and found that it helped a little.
Perhaps they will be able to meet up in the afterlife soon, since I believe both of them are likely heading in the same direction there.