Austrian here - 1st question: no idea. 2nd question: no Same here, US imperialism was never discussed as such in my history lessons during the late 80ies and 90ies. Would read about these atrocities only mich later, maybe in more “official” sources only if you’re a student of history or politics and such.

At the first three panels I thought this was a conversation with a stochastic parrot

In Vienna, we actually import Australian species because of their strong resistance to heat. The very commonly used native buckeye trees have been eaten away at by pests for decades now, and I’m surprised they do not actually seem to die off, but they just stand there with brown leaves for most of the year.

For real though?

I guess the “problem” with trees is obvious: it takes decades for them to produce the desired cooling effect in urban areas. You plant a dozen young trees today, you can begin to reap the cooldown 10 years later at best. Also, they need a lot if water, and many of them just don’t make it - urban surroundings are just much hotter and more stressful (smog, salt…) then standing with other trees in a forest. I fail to see though how these artificial “trees” provide any kind of benefit at all.

In Vienna, Austria, Europe, every tree removed has to be replaced with a new as per regulation

I don’t think animals are ever okay getting CT scanned

Ah, you must be one of the people who say “guns don’t kill people”

Ah, got it. You had to watch Clockwork Orange to get it. Thanks for explanation!

The metaphor, as described in the caption, eludes me completely. Is it some sort of pun with the “carrying”? Why is the outlier carrying the control, and who benefits from it, how? Insider joke with just 1 insider?

What Kind of animal is this?

Source please or I’ll stick to my previously unchallenged image of ugly blobfish

Also, no caffeine for breakfast. It causes the afternoon crash to come extra hard. To mitigate it even more, have your lunch extra light (small portion, easy to digest)

Yeah, and I’ve never understood why that is. How come you have to build a custom hardware abstraction layer for each device separately on ARM chips?

Like the Nokia N900 did back in 2004 - except it was a real mobile OS (but fully yours)

I don’t get the meme though

But this isn’t really a meme. Just a screenshot of madness.

Various XMPP clients are an inconsistent and hard to use ** mess, compared to the likes of Signal and Whatsapp

Element and Element X (curenntly using) are indeed buggy and I can xo firm that much. The sign-up and verification is, tbh anti-user, it’s an intransparent process with too many steps, too many pitfalls, and the ecosystem is never gonna gain traction with this as a flagship experience. Element X is sadly not doing better overall. The constant red or black or grey shield over each message, which one can never get to green somehow? Three kinds of verification codes/mechanisms to understand and manage? That is for nerds, as much as it pains me to say. Signal is not “for nerds”. The signup-process is not complicated. It’s not dead simple, but easy enough. But it’s a centralised service, all in the hands of a single entity. Enough said. Migrating to a new device is hell. It now also has account names, in addition to phone numbers. But please show me where it says you can officially create an account and use it without restriction, while never providing a phone number. An incredibly simple, one-step signon like here in Arcanechat? It’s the kind of stuff that the vast majority of users love. Nothing to think about, nothing to understand, just use. Secure, as in bot-proof? No idea, probably not.

What’s that greyed-out US flag - does it stand for anything specific?