Oh wow, thanks for the tips! I’ll check them out.

It was “The Avatar” in a German translation. I read it twice or so at that time - and it’s many years since, so I have only a dim recollection of all the details, but a lot of politics, and (if I don’t mix it up now) questionable physics regarding light speed and mass, a lot of sex and some weird gaelic inspired poetry.

Maybe I’ll find a copy one day again, to have a new look with my now old eyes and different woldview.

From what I’ve seen on goodreads or so I had a bit of misfortune as The Avatar isn’t known as his best work. But beggars can’t be choosers, at that time I got my sci fi fix by browsing the one bookstand with scifi in the central station’s bookstore next to my bus stop home after school… they threw me out once or twice “This is for buying books, not for reading”

I have just read one Poul Anderson (when I was a teenager) and the most important thing I remember was people fucking each other all the time.

Level 3 is a big part of the storyline in “The Memory Police” by Yoko Ogawa

Of the erogenous zones, breasts are the ones you can see most often. It may be different in the US, but where I grew up, topless sunbathing is quite a thing and I even saw a lot of boobs in shower soap commercials at 6pm on public TV as a kid. When my kids were babies, my (now ex-) wife would also just nurse them on a park bench - which also I isn’t unusual.

I was not breastfed as well (as couldn’t even digest my mother’s milk), still I like boobs very much. I find them very beautiful - and also like different forms and sizes.

I only don’t like boobs with silicone implants, they’re not soft and cuddly.

I switched over to have water delivered to my home in glass bottles (fortunately multi-use glass bottles are still a thing here in Germany). It tastes so much better than the same brand from PET bottles.

(Why don’t I drink tap water? Because I want my water sparkling with CO2 bubbles, and I don’t like the simple carbonaton appliance)

The greatest - I don’t know. The most recent I used: I have this box of instant dark cocoa powder I bought around 5 years ago or so and it’s best before Sep 2023. I had a nice cup of hot cocoa with whiskey last night.

So Germany didn’t have dictator oppression in the 30s and 40s? You think we didn’t have propaganda and we didn’t just kill people for another opinion? And we had access to outside information?

I’m talking about a moral duty to oppose, to inform yourself in spite of all that. And I know it is not easy. We Germans failed that miserably.

The plabook Putin is playing, we’ve been through it and it is was what lead to WW2.

No, not all Russians are evil and deserve to die. But closing your eyes and playing oblivious to what’s happening out there, just believing the state propaganda and living in a position “oh it’s just the bad leader” is not a morally OK position.

If there is a dictator in your country you have some moral duty to find out at least a bit about the truth.

How do I know?

I’m German.

My grandparent’s generation was the one that actively closed their eyes, that actively looked away, that everything that happend was someone else’s problem. They were the Generation that arranged themselves, that did good business as long as it wasn’t them that were deported, killed or fought at in the war.

This is not a position that is morally OK, but this is what I see of a lot of Russians. Not all, but a lot.