F**k War.

We're living in a crazy world, and it seems like it is getting crazier by the day. There's not just the climate crisis, there's not just a pandemic, still ongoing, on top of that - no, now we also have war in Europe. Friends, Romans, Countrypeople - I cannot believe it. It wasn't so long ago that I thought the one Big Historical Thing in my lifetime would be the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the Iron Curtain, but no, apparently I am to live in interesting times, as are you.

I still cannot believe this is happening, and it makes me a little sad and a little despaired. It also makes me feel that the life I lead is sort of unreal in some way - that I am sitting here in comfort and safety, as much as there can be, and suddenly that safety feels really fragile. There's food on the table every day. There's friends and there's a working phone. There's running water and electricity, and all the comforts of home that we tend to take for granted. Not so far away from here, all those things were normal until a few days ago, and now they are not.

If someone decides to go to war, what can the other party do? Once things get aggressive and escalate, there will be fighting. You do not stop someone intent on hitting you with friendly words. Or words in general, including unfriendly ones, as it seems.

It's not only the war that makes me sad, though. It's also the fact that suddenly, Germany has a lot of money to spend for the army. It's a shitload of money, folks. A metric f**kton of money. Or, to give you the actual number: One hundred billion Euro. Or, in numbers: 1.000.000.000 Euro.

That's a number so large that my brain has a hard time processing it. That is so many zeros that my maths division is zeroing out.

Now... don't get me wrong - I can see that there has to be some investment into military, because humans will be humans, and there will always be some party that gets the bright idea it would be a fine thing to bash somebody else's face in. It would be a much nicer world if that were not so, but that's like wishing that yellow would be pink. I can also understand that Putin's starting a war put the fear into politicians everywhere, including here in Germany, and a sudden spike of fear will make people do things. Fear is a really strong motivator, as we probably all know from our own personal experience. But I'm still really sad that there's been discussions about better pay for service workers and care workers for more than one year, and a paltry bonus was finally agreed upon; there's been nothing done to stop the climate change because there's no money for it... and now we have a metric f**ton to spend on the army.

I sincerely hope that the war will be over soon, with as low a number of deaths as can be. I also hope that our world will get its shit together afterwards and emerge a better place. I won't hold my breath, though.

(I was debating with myself, by the way, on whether to use the nice little asterisks or not... and decided in their favour. Germans use the f-word and though it is considered pretty strong, it's not horrifyingly bad, at least not to my knowledge.)