Warm temperatures flutter like spring through the North German Plain. It is difficult to become thoughtful and deliberate, especially since no one has asked for a long time: “What are you doing on New Year’s Eve?” and the youngsters didn’t throw their detonations into the streets on New Year’s Eve.
The “Tageszeitung” sees the fireworks ban on New Year’s Eve as a left-wing cultural war, while the left-wing newspaper suspects “that the urban eco-milieu wants to use the corona crisis to get rid of a custom that it rejects culturally anyway “. Böllern is a bastion of proletarian celebration culture. What the taz not received: On Corona New Year’s Eve 2020, around a third of the usual amount of New Year’s waste was generated in the five major cities of Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Düsseldorf and Frankfurt / Main alone, which should be the same this year.
Let us then look ahead, largely free of bangs and garbage, perhaps accompanied here and there by privately hoarded or imported pyrotechnics. It is not difficult to predict that we will encounter reports about the pandemic in the coming year as well, new record temperatures from Ant and Arctic regions, something from China, certain unpredictable things and certainly more people will come on February 2nd than on other days to say yes – possibly largely peacefully. In North Rhine-Westphalia, for weddings, the police had to move out 41 times from January to October, 64 percent fewer than in 2020 and 90 percent fewer than in 2019.
On top of that, the Federal Statistical Office plans to survey 10.2 million people next May. The census is about precise population and housing figures as a basis for planning, not about our state of mind. If it were up to the colors of the new cars bought in 2021, everyday life would look gray to a third of customers. However, this category also includes those cars whose paintwork is kept on the horizon, like the Streif.
That is not very meaningful, so we assume: Of the 437 readers who took part in the survey a year ago, 64 percent were optimistic about the year 2021, 17 percent did not and 19 percent had no answer . How do you see the coming year now?
Optimism or skepticism alone is not enough, have you made plans for 2022 to underpin or challenge them? Do more sport, get vaccinated, take new risks, maybe switch from Linux to Windows? the time made a few suggestions these days, all of which seem plausible. Quitting smoking is not one of them, and certainly not a few want to smoke away two or three boxes today so that they can finally breathe deeply from tomorrow.
Of course, this is not in the interests of British American Tobacco (BAT), which is in the resolution today Süddeutsche Zeitung an ad called “The Future of Nicotine” [sic!] switched. Smoking is harmful, mainly because tobacco is burned, not by the nicotine. However, that makes you dependent and is not free from risks, writes BAT at least. So we should push ourselves like the Swedes snus in the cheeks or administer PRRP (Potentially Risk Reduced Products) with hip names like vype or glo electrically. A rogue, who thinks badly, for example that the tobacco lobby follows the printer manufacturers and coffee multinationals and throws the necessary equipment at bargain prices among the people and lives mainly from expensive consumables.
Anyway, or as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote:
In the new year happiness and salvation,
Good ointment for ailments and wounds!
A rough wedge on a rough block!
To a rascal one and a half!
We, the entire heise online team and the editors of heise +, c’t, iX, Technology Review, Mac & i, c’t Digitale Fotografie, Make :, Techstage and Telepolis as well as heise Security, heise Developer and heise Autos wish you a peaceful and joyful year 2022. We wish you that you do not hope in vain and that your resolutions will be fulfilled, so that you and your loved ones stay healthy or recover.
We will continue to monitor world events in information and communication technology and beyond and report back to you. Come over to the new year unscathed and please keep us interested and critical. All the best!
(anw)