If you have followed German news, you will know already that the AfD has gotten their highest results ever in the elections yesterday, making them the strongest party in Sachsen-Anhalt for the next years. This is going to make things... interesting, to say the least.

In the best case, the other parties will realise that it's getting really hairy now, get their shit together, team up and run the show at least in a mediocre-but-acceptable way. In the best case, some other politicians will also get their shit together and finally go for the Verbotsverfahren (to ban the whole party because it is, at least in large parts, confirmed right-wing-extremist and against the German constitution). In a not as good scenario, people will realise that they are enabling a shitshow here, and make better choices next time. In any case, even in the best ones, we'll have plenty of fallout.

The Worst Chancellor of All Times (at least according to surveys about how much he is appreciated, or not) is probably going to find some way to get the shit to the fan quicker, and the fan sped up. Well, well, well.

On a different but also not happy note, there's also discussion to make self-employed people here pay into the state pension. If you are a regular employee, you have to do that no matter what; the big difference being that as a regularly employed person, you are also getting a regular income in a known, fixed height, which is not the case for self-employed people. 

The idea behind this is, or so some of the reports tell us, to avoid solo entrepreneurs or other self-employed people running into monetary trouble in their pension age. At the moment, you have to care for your future yourself, so either you get rich enough just like so, or you pay into some private insurance. Or, as sadly happens quite a bit it seems, you ignore this and just, well, do nothing to prepare when you're old and cranky and maybe not able to work anymore.

So the basic idea is, if not noble, then at least understandable, and not superduperbad. The problem, though, is that the plan is to apply a fixed sum to pay monthly... and I am rather doubting that it will be a small sum. That comes on top of the obligatory health insurance, where you also pay a fixed sum in full each month. 

I am looking at this with more than a little doubt. It's already quite a stretch to go self-employed in Germany, this will add to the burden. At least it seems that it is to only apply to new startups, so I will probably not have to deal with this. (It would also be only of limited use, since the system means that you pay, and paying a certain amount per year gives you points, which in turn decide about how much you get as pension, with some more factors coming in. But the TL;DR is - if I'd start to pay in there now, I am a little late to the party, so I'd basically get very little back. Which means that that money would need to go on top of what I do as private insurance now. 

The thing is... I'm not sure that there'd be a different country where it would be significantly easier and so much nicer that moving there would be a really good decision. I have come to the conclusion that it's always easiest to see the shitty things and those going wrong in one's own country (well, except those that one is blind to, but that's another topic), and usually you're just not getting the nitty gritty from other places.

So. We will see. And hope. Because hope... well, it rarely hurts, right?

A friend messaged me this morning with sad news: Harm Paulsen died yesterday.

If you've been involved in German experimental archaeology, you'll know the name. Harm Paulsen was one of the very, very first experimental archaeologists, back when it was snuffed at and discounted by the "real scientists". He was an expert in Stone Age techniques, and one of the first flintknapping specialists, if not the first one.

I have never had the joy to meet him, but friends of mine have, and they were all full of wonderful stories about this wonderful man. He was a trailblazer for the experimental approach in archaeological science, so I am in his debt as well. He will be sorely missed.

There is a beautiful article about him in English, from an interview that one of his friends did, published in EXARC. 

Rest in peace, Harm, and thank you for all you did.

A few days ago, I was ordering stamps for my postage needs (or, to be more concise, for the company's postage needs). Among those was a bunch of 1.80 € stamps showing a submarine in the Mariana Trench. Okay, well, the topic was "human as explorers", there was nothing appropriately historical (first choice) or blatantly green and liberal political (second choice), so I went for those.

Without, unfortunately, reading the full description first. Said description tells you who designed the stamp, who made the artwork, and where it was printed - details I usually don't need to know. In this case, though, the artwork was by DALL-E... which is a generative AI.

Have I ranted about the rampant use of AI here already? I think not. Well, imagine a long rant about the incessant use of AI by what seems like everybody these days, from answering simple question a normal search engine could have easily answered, to photo transformation into art in the style of an artist who never consented to their work being used as training material, to having it write up shopping lists and simple emails and whatnot, all the while using gigantic amounts of energy and water. The TL;DR: I can see the uses of machine learning, and I have very much benefitted from using LLMs as translation aids for reading papers in languages I do not read well on my own, but I am very, very suspicious regarding almost all other uses, and especially generative things. (Yes, I also am aware that I might be overdoing it a tad, but at least when it comes to using generative AI for one's own personal amusement, I am out.)

Consequently, when the stamps arrived and I read the small print on them which goes something something interpreted by an AI, I was not amused. At all.

Stamps were always something where some designer got to have a really nice exposure (and hopefully also a really nice wad of cash). They were a glimpse into current design trends, and into interpretations of history, or nice photography. They were a means to highlight activists, scientist, explorers, politicians, architects; of historical events larger and smaller, of places both built and natural.

I am still rather livid about this. I am curating the stamps I use, and now it seems I also have to pay attention not to end up with AI slop. Gaaah. Seems like it's time for an enraged (yet still polite) letter to the post.

(I sent the offending stamps back and ordered others at the same value, by the way. With an honest photograph of a politician who was strongly engaged for social stuff.)

Well, mess is a rather tame word for this, to be honest, but... we'll leave it at that for now.

I have promised you more about the shipping issues that many small vendors currently face, so here you go.

First of all, because most German social media posts about these problems currently are full of comments bashing the EU. (Notice that I write comments - it's not the posts themselves.) Personally, I do stand very firmly behind the idea of the EU. We are stronger together, and many, many of the things the EU does are really wonderful. I am also old enough to still remember the hassle of border controls, and the constant maths in your head of trying to do currency exchange calculations while shopping for coffee or food or souvenirs, and the problems of ordering something from a small shop outside your own country, with different currency and all. Joining up under an umbrella that helps us to negotiate better with other large nations like China and the US, and making things within the EU simpler and more harmonised - that's a great idea. Unfortunately all great ideas struggle with small-mindedness, and may also struggle with egoism, and that is surely part of why some things, intended for the very best, go horribly pear-shaped and suddenly find themselves rather brown in colour and on a rapid trajectory towards the next fan.

I am also all, all for the reduction of waste and environmental impact. If you've been hanging out on this blog for a while, you will know that sustainability and reducing unneccessary waste are quite high up on my personal list. We have numbers for the EU (well, for the whole world, but anyways), and packaging waste (especially single-use plastics) are a huge portion of general waste, so it is important to act in this respect. Whcich means... in general, the EU idea of unifying waste and packaging material treatments across all countries, and sequentially introducing more rules for better sustainability - it's great, and very, very necessary.

So where did things go wrong? Previously, we had different rules for each of the EU countries, with different thresholds for import, different costs for package waste licensing, different minimum amounts for that. Quite a few countries had a de minimis threshold, so you'd not need to bother registering for a handful of packages each year. We are talking literal handfuls here; like many other small sole traders, I am not sending more than at super-duper-most five packages per year to any one single other EU country*.

All these countries had established their own systems, and they are vastly different from nation to nation. Obviously, all countries were somehow convinced that their system is the bees' knees, and did not want to change it or adopt anyone else's instead. So, consequently, there was no agreement on new, EU-wide regulations. The only thing that happened was that there are the same labels in all of the EU now, and each country now works on the same baseline: They still have their national waste licensing system, and you are still required to enter it if you ship to that country, but there are no more thresholds with the intention to offer the same terms everywhere and to everyone. That, unfortunately, means that you have to register via a licensed, notary-confirmed authorised representative in each single of the 26 countries if you intend to offer selling into that country, and this starts at the very first package. And with this harmonised, they have not even agreed on the same fee structure or waste amount tiers, which means that one country you might have to register and it's a minimum amount of 100 kg of paper you pay for, and in another one it might be 30 kg.

If I could be sure to have a shipping volume of around 250 packages per year into any single country, I could add around 3 Euro to the cost in every shipping tier, and it would work out approximately (if the licensing fees are not too high in that country, that is). With less shipping volume, it's not even worth doing the maths for that country. 

The EU has planned some exemptions for small vendors, but their definition of a "small company" is one with less than ten employees and less than two million Euro turnover per year. They have been told, time and again and not just within the last few days, that these rules are way, way too much bureaucracy and way too much expenses for small traders. However, nothing has happened. Which means that the really small vendors, the solo entrepreneurs and similar tiny ones (in German you'd say we are a fly's shit), we're getting grouped in with companies just below two million turnover per year. This, dear reader, cannot work well, as anyone knowing and doing a little bit of simple maths will be easily able to understand.

Unfortunately, and this is where I do get a bit grudgy now, the EU representatives were not even able to agree among them all on a really ridiculously low de minimis threshold.  There's always be going to be malcontent people where they are just above a minimum line, but really, if we're talking about amounts that an ambitious granny could post to her family each year - even if it's only ten parcels free to other countries each year, that would already help the really small ones.

Because, and here's the next bit of irony: Many of the small traders whose statements I've read do say that they are happy and support the general idea of waste control and waste management. They are also trying to comply with the rules as best they can** - so consequently they are stopping shipping. Some are already very frustrated about all the rules and regs that, for instance, make it harder to re-use packaging materials on top of all the other stuff that you have to keep up-to-date with. Quite a few of them are holding a grudge, but I have not seen any of them state we need to leave the EU. That is done in the comments by some readers, mostly of the right-leaning-maybe-already-brownish tinged fraction that really have no understanding of how shitty that would be overall, and have obviously also not paid attention to what Brexit has turned out to be. (Spoiler alert: It has turned out to not have been a good idea.)

So where am I going with this text, apart from getting it all off my chest? One, hopefully you can understand a little better now why so many shops have stopped EU shipping. We fly-shit traders really want to have nice, fair rules that we can adhere to, and can't use more insecurities because of grey zones. Two, if you are unhappy about the situation (which I very much hope you will be), you have some options: Write to your EU representative(s), or call them up if you like phone calls better. Write to the EU commissioner Jessika Roswall. Leave a statement in the official feedback page (it has opened August 6 and will be open until September 10). Sign the (new) petition about this mishap. Tell your friends. And then... please do something that makes you happy, to balance out all this shit.

I can tell you that I have spent much, much more of my time and energy on this whole kerfuffle than was good for me. I have hoped against hope that I'd get heard along with all the other tiny shops. I have read the texts of the regulations, in English and in German, trying to find the exemption for the small ones. I have cried with frustration of having so, so many things that it is really hard to conform to, and you know that you are in a grey zone here, and there, and there, and there, and at some point it adds up and you lose the energy to keep up when the next one comes up where there's just no way around. There's also the little issue that many of the people I work with, and am getting goods from - both for the shop stock and for my museum work - are in some other EU country, and most probably they, now, are also stopping shipment within the EU. Something like the Alpirsbach hose project? The fabric came from Sweden - so nope (or add another c 500 € to the cost of the fabric). My dyeing expert? Lives in France. Some of my spindle whorls? From Belgium. If I have a regional source, I'll go for that, but many things are so niche that I'm over the moon if I can find anyone at all willing to do these things, and chances that they're outside Germany are very, very high. 

I am not sure what is to blame for this all going so utterly and senselessly wrong, but I am sure that it's something profoundly human (but maybe not very good-human) that is part of all this.

Having to stop shipping to UK because of Brexit, and to the US because of taxes and tariffs was frustrating already. Having to stop on what I had considered, more or less, the home turf hits much harder, and differently. So for now, I will let this thing rest, and hope that it will resolve itself in some way. If it doesn't do it quickly and you need something shipped from me, or from any other small vendor in a different country, your best bet will probably be to find a friend who lives in that country, and do the ordering and shipping via them.

Good luck, to all of us.

* At this volume, shipping abroad is basically customer service, and if calculated properly, I guess the work time invested overall in keeping up to date with shipping cost changes and shipping rule changes, plus the extra filling out of import forms probably more than eats up the revenue gained with these shipments - but I enjoy having my stuff travel the world, and I know the pain of not being able to get something just because you're too far away, so I have never done the maths on that correctly, on purpose. 

** It is, in fact, no small feat to even just keep up with the developments so you know what you have to change, or check, or amend, or look out for. There is no official channel that will give the stuff to you in somewhat digestible form - so you can either spend a lot of time trawling the EU and national rules pages, or hope that you're lucky and will hear about it in time, or sign up to some "vendor help" newsletters that will give you most of the news at some point, but always in a way to make you feel like buying some programme or service from them is your only sensible way to deal with the new shit. If you're a 200 employees company, you'll have someone dealing with all the law stuff and compliance shenanigans. If you're just one person... every hour that this research and the consequent adaptations for compliance eat up is time that you can't spend on your core business. And believe me, it's not done with one hour per change usually.

I'm torn, these days, between keeping caught up on the news and finding a nice big rock to live under. Preferably with some nice, warm sands (because the German idiom is to stick one's head into the sand). But it's not helpful, and I know that, so I try to stay up to date at least more or less - on that fine line between knowing too little and knowing too much, or between blissful ignorance and total despair. Because, well, I probably don't need to tell you, it doesn't look so good in many corners of this world. 

In case you have red yarn and a few dollars left over, and would like to do some political knitting, you could knit yourself a Melt the ICE hat. The pattern is available in that wonderful time sink for knitters called Ravelry, and - in case you don't do Ravelry - also via payhip. All proceeds from sales of the hat go to immigrant aid organisations, and will benefit the victims of ICE.

And let me join in, even though I'm pretty far away from the happenings: Fuck ICE. Fuck the political climate that allows this to happen. Fuck the general human incompetence to learn from history in order to avoid repeat performances of shit (brown, obviously) hitting the proverbial fan.

Wherever you are, I hope that you are as safe as can be, and that you are doing your part to keep this world a sane and livable one. Because we need every little bit of that right now.

If we're looking for the current pig being chased through the (global) village (and please excuse my crude translation of "die neuste Sau durchs Dorf treiben", a German phrase to point out the current big thing that's being made the Biggest Thing Ever and gets mixed in everywhere) - I'd say it's certainly AI.

Personally, I'm very, very torn on that topic. Yes, it can be a great help, and very useful in specific instances. But then there's so many not-so-good things about it. 

For once, I look with a shudder on the immense amounts of energy that go into generating, running, and using AI. It's slowly approaching a whole percent of global energy consumption, at a time where we'd all profit from dialling down a bit and trying to reduce what we use, so that we can stay within sustainable limits.

Then, a lot of it is just... bad. It already starts with the high-handed decisions of the AI trainers to just use anything that is there to train their models, regardless of copyright. Books, images, music, you name it. I have had issues with piracy of the book I wrote together with Gillian Polack (The Middle Ages Unlocked), which did cost both of us a good chunk of potential royalties income. This AI training - it''s piracy on a whole new level.

Artists complain as they are getting pushed out of their jobs, understandably so. A lot of people seem to think that AI will solve all their problems in the future, and make things, and better plus quicker than people. We will not be able to turn back time and go without AI, so my personal opinion is that it's smart to keep an eye on the developments and not reject all of it in every case, across the bank (even if personally, I'm a little tempted to do that, and please don't ask me why). In some cases, I have used AI to assist me, and I have found that it can be very helpful in some very specific situations. Like when I have a text in a language that I don't really read fluently, and I get translation assistance. (Quality differs between models, and it's always necessary to stay alert to possible hallucinations and mis-translations.) Like when I have a small, very well-defined programming issue where the language and (best case) the problem are rather well-known and have been handled and solved on the Internet somewhere, in some obscure corner, before, and I can describe in detail and very exactly what I need to have done, but am not able to just write out the code. Basically, another translation/language problem with a large pool of knowledge accessible in general. Or when I have a large, multi-page website and I need to find one specific bit of information on it (the case was a search for a VAT number that was not in the imprint). 

In these cases, it has served me really well to use AI. Regarding the translation, it's a really helpful tool for me that aids me a lot, and makes reading texts that I'd stumble on and spend a long while leafing through dictionaries (or typing words into online dictionaries) much quicker and much more painless. In other cases that were close to my successful use-cases, but not quite as specific and well-documented, well, I tried, and it tanked spectacularly. Which means that now I am very motivated to be very specific, and think hard about whether it is an AI-solvable problem, or probably not.

If I could wish for something, it would be people using AI like ChatGPT less for everything. You really don't need it to generate you a recipe for Butter Chicken, there's plenty of them on the web already, written by humans, just use one of those. You can just, well, use a search engine (preferably one with the search function turned off). And while I can somehow understand the temptation of having AI render a photo of you into an action figure, or a cartoon character, or whatever else... I'd wish people would not just use it so freely. It has a high hidden cost, and at some point, the price will have to be paid.

Ebay sent me an email a while ago about changes in their Terms and Conditions, ending with the sentence "You do not need to do anything". They are valid from yesterday - and apparently if you don't do anything (like I did), it grants ebay permission to use your data for training of KI.

Aaargh. And have I mentioned aargh? Thankfully I have the Most Patient Husband of Them All, who sent me info about this today, including on how to deny this. (Obviously if they already used your data, that's done, but at least you can disallow anything new to be used.)

If you want to read a bit more in German about this, here's a Spiegel article. And if you only care for the "f* off and leave my data alone"-link, here you go. You will have to log in, then move the slider from the "yes" to "no" side.

And just in case you have not guessed yet: I am very much not amused.