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Joined 8 months ago
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Cake day: November 10th, 2024

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  • The problem is the basic idea, what an insurance is.

    In the anglophone world, insurance companies developed from brokers who offered bets on whatever you wanted to insure.

    In my country, many insurance companies develeoped out of historical mutual aid societies – everybody contributes to the insurance’s fond, and get’s the (reas/in)surance to receive help when needed. That’s especially true for all kind of social insurance or fire insurance companies.

    US health insurance seems to be of the betting kind and no mutual aid society. That’s a problem with deep roots.





  • Most “tenses” in English are not about tense, but about aspects like perfective, progressive, intentive or stative.

    In German we use modal particles and auxillary words to express aspects and modality. The “classic” tenses we learn at school are an artificial grammar modelled after latin, not the grammar we use in everyday life. The grammar of actual spoken German is far richer than the school grammar.

    Especially modality is a nemesis for German learners, as most languages to not implement modality. Modal particles are these tiny words like aber, auch, bloß, denn, dann, noch, doch, eben, eigentlich, etwa, halt, ja, mal, nur, schon, vielleicht, wohl, and more, that are strewn around almost every sentence

    Just try to translate ich mach’ das aber|auch|doch|eben|halt|ja|mal|nur noch|schon|dann wohl into English or explain the difference in meaning.






  • The article said till 1961. Concerning neonatal and infant care, the 1960s was the time when infant mortality started to drop. The article stated that the infant mortality in these homes was double the avarage infant mortality. If you take into account that the babies were separated from their mothers after birth, this is a pretty good result. If the infants had been neglected, you’d exspect a much higher mortality rate.

    Regarding disposing of dead babies in septic tanks – that depends. Stillborn babies were not considered human remains until very recently, and disposed of as biological waste all over the world.



  • That’s a terrible ineffective method, and a waste of water.

    Fill one sink with hot water + soup, put as much dishes in it as possible to soak them, and fill the other sink with fresh hot water. Clean one dish after another, preferably with a brush (you’ll burn your hands using a sponge), rinse them in the clean water, and put them on the dryer.

    If you do not have a second sink, use a tub for either purpose.

    And yes, the water will get dirty and cool over time, and you’ll have to switch if you’ve got too much dishes.

    Of course, if you’re only cleaning a plate and a knife and perhaos a glas, using just the tap is far more efficient.



  • The motivation was to protect women, who became pregnant outside of marriage, from becoming outcasts, and giving their children a chance of survival.

    A woman who became pregnant outside of marriage in these times had three choices:

    • illegal abortion, with a high risk of death, infertility and imprisonment
    • giving birth and face a life as social outcast for herself and her child
    • “repent”, go to a nunnery, give birth there, give up the child who would be raised in an orphanage, and return to society. As a bonus they often got some education in these “homes for fallen maidens”, at least in my country.

    By the way – a 15 % infant mortality rate sounds terrible to us moderners, but according to the article this was only double the normal infant mortality! This is a very good survival rate for new borns and infants who lost their mothers — this was the age before baby formula diet and antibiotics. We should honour these nuns for saving 85 % of the children rather than bashing them for only having the knowledge and tools of their age.