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Uncle Duke

google employee:*taking bong rip* whatever, let ‘em go to the fucking library if that’s not good enough

24 comments
Reticent Turnip

@UncleDuke1969 Polling their coworkers to figure out if #fensterfreitag is a province

young ullrich

@UncleDuke1969 some of the other states count bavaria as kingdom, so a point has been made here

nex

@young_ullrich What? I've been learning German for a long time, regularly watch German TV, and never heard that. I feel like there's a joke I need explained here?

Usually it's “Freistaat”: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_sta

Even though some are freistaaten, calling the länder “states” in English sounds like a US-centric mistranslation.

Bruno Ranieri

@nex It is just naming based on long gone historic details.

nex

@yrrsinn Which “it”? (Freistaat? Kingdom? State?)

Bruno Ranieri

@nex 'Freistaat' or 'Freie und Hansestadt' is history naming only.
In legal terms all Bundesländern and Stadtstaaten (Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen) are equal states of the federal republic. Sometimes 'normal' states are also called Flächenländer to make a verbal distinction to the city states, but this also has no legal relevance.

nex

@yrrsinn Oh, yeah, that's what I've always assumed.

However, I just realised that I've heard “Flächenländer” before and didn't know the exact meaning; so you taught me something new after all, awesome! 😁

AdeptVeritatis

@nex @young_ullrich

They are states. 16 states with a constitution (Länderverfassung) and a parliament each.
Germany doesn't have a constitution because it would be in conflict with the 16 other ones. That's why the Grundgesetz is not a constitution and Germany is a federal state.

Some of these states just have different ways of defining themselves and their role within the federation.

nex

@AdeptVeritatis @young_ullrich Makes sense, thanks! I said it sounds like a mistranslation because I was reminded of some misconceptions about Bundesland vs. US state. So I prefer “land”, but it's easy to confirm that you're right and I need to be more careful with the terminology.

Btw. Switzerland has Kantonsverfassungen and Austria has Landesverfassungungen and there doesn't seem to be a conflict. I don't see why the Grundgesetz wouldn't or couldn't be a constitution: bmi.bund.de/EN/topics/constitu

@AdeptVeritatis @young_ullrich Makes sense, thanks! I said it sounds like a mistranslation because I was reminded of some misconceptions about Bundesland vs. US state. So I prefer “land”, but it's easy to confirm that you're right and I need to be more careful with the terminology.

Btw. Switzerland has Kantonsverfassungen and Austria has Landesverfassungungen and there doesn't seem to be a conflict. I don't see why the Grundgesetz wouldn't or couldn't be a constitution: bmi.bund.de/EN/topics/constitu

StreetDogg

@AdeptVeritatis @nex @young_ullrich The Grundgesetz absolutely is a constitution.

It's only called Grundgesetz, because it was supposed to be a temporary constitution for West Germany only, until a united Germany could replace it with a constitution made by all germans. The name was supposed to reflect that preliminary nature.

That replacement never happened, so that name stuck around, but it is and always was a constitution.

Acmeworks

@UncleDuke1969 There are one or two I'd like to get rid of actually.

nex

@UncleDuke1969 It really does depend! And obviously Google don't take a political stance if they can avoid sacrificing profits.

I just asked it how many Chinas there are and all I got was a link to Wikipedia; they could have just as well put no info box and make that the first search result. (The link is very relevant, though. It's doing a decent job at being a search engine; no complaints there.)

Ed Freyfogle

@UncleDuke1969 in fairness, can't blame them for not wanting to have the Mallorca debate

Mark Ingalls

@UncleDuke1969 I've never heard of the German state of MORE.

kit 🌃👶☕

@UncleDuke1969 @mhoye “all the world’s information” I guess includes all the really low-grade stuff too or something.

Marc Etienne

@UncleDuke1969 and people wonder why I call all LLM's bullshit generators.

Atanas

@UncleDuke1969 FTR, this answer is technically correct.

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