Hemingway’s cat guy to CNN’s Chris Cuomo: Clean the chicken soup out of your ears and listen to me you pantywaist reporter: WE ARE NOT LEAVING, COWARD NEWS NETWORK!
The curator of Key West's Hemingway House NOT evacuating (and he promises all the home's cats will be OK, too) https://t.co/rq8y74WdQH
— Meg Wagner (@megwagner) September 8, 2017
Yesterday, a New York Times Op-Ed highlighted a few points about the sometimes grim reality of street protests. The piece, entitled ‘Waiting for a Perfect Protest?‘ was written by a group of clergy men and women. In it they explain a popular myth that all of the civil rights protests were nonviolent.
The truth is that nonviolence was an ideal among protesters fighting for civil rights and even though they pursued an education on how to do it, street protests were not always peaceful.
The reality — which is under-discussed but essential to an understanding of our current situation — is that the civil rights work of Dr. King and other leaders was loudly opposed by overt racists and quietly sabotaged by cautious moderates.
They go on:
The civil rights movement was messy, disorderly, confrontational and yes, sometimes violent. Those standing on the sidelines of the current racial-justice movement, waiting for a pristine or flawless exercise of righteous protest, will have a long wait.
Each time they reveal a little more of the reality of street protests and gently refer to ‘the other’ those who were and still are on the sidelines. Those more moderate or conservative Americans who are critical of the efforts of those battling against the real evils of our society: Bigotry, and the injustice and inequality it has perpetuated.
During my time protesting the Iraq War, and organizing during the Occupy movement, I may not have agreed with the people who drove by in pickup trucks and yelled at us to ‘get a job, ‘ but I was not surprised by their sentiments.
Considering myself well beyond surprise, I have been shocked yet captivated by the hypocrisy and shamefulness of the latest rounds of contempt and derision. Even conservative members of the Jewish faith, caught in the meat grinder of arguing against the strategy and tactics of the side fighting against literal Nazis or taking the side of social justice and equality, can’t seem to get it right.
Cue my friend Scott, who just can’t miss another opportunity to further the narrative that it’s more important to call out the violence of Antifa than it is to call out the violence of the Right Wing Extremists. In this round, he mocks the clergy for reminding us there is a grim reality to the history of our country which continues to this day.
There is one dilemma facing progressive calls for action. They can’t grasp that their jargonistic hysteria isn’t the least bit convincing to anyone but them. They argue the point they care passionately about as if to persuade no one who isn’t already desperately on their team, and can’t understand why everyone doesn’t see the world their way. It is, indeed, naive, not to mention unpersuasive, and yet they keep banging their head against the same wall over and over, expecting a different result. You know what that’s the definition of, right?
Yeah, well, nobody told me life was going to be easy.
Due to constant dissembling and claims to the contrary, most people today don’t understand the history of the modern Republican Party and the Southern Strategy. From Wikipedia:
In American politics, the southern strategy was a Republican Party electoral strategy to increase political support among white voters in the South by appealing to racism against African Americans. As the Civil Rights Movement and dismantling of Jim Crow laws in the 1950s and 1960s visibly deepened existing racial tensions in much of the Southern United States, Republican politicians such as presidential candidate Richard Nixon and Senator Barry Goldwater developed strategies that successfully contributed to the political realignment of many white, conservative voters in the South to the Republican Party that had traditionally supported the Democratic Party. It also helped push the Republican Party much more to the right.
The fuel for the Southern Strategy engine is as it always has been: racism. While today it is politically challenging to be overtly racist, it’s fair to say conservatives have not exactly embraced minorities, their culture, and all the beautiful gifts diversity and immigration have given our society in America. Racism, and the current strain of nationalism are warm companions. They were also the virulent ideological roots of the NSDAP, also known as Nazi Germany.
What we have seen recently in Charlottesville and cities around the country is the horrible, terrifying legacy of the Southern Strategy laid bare. Young, white men and women, dressed in black armor, emblazoned with white power and Nazi symbols or khakis and white button down shirts (the uniform of America’s well paid, upper-middle class, mostly white office and technology workers). As they marched with torches, as well as Nazi, and Confederate flags, they chanted Nazi slogans and shouted vile, outdated maxims about white supremacy.
What’s a good Conservative leader to do in this situation? Well, what most average Americans don’t know is it would be political suicide for Conservative leaders to finally admit the guys on the side of social justice, fighting bigotry are not only 100% in the right, but that their cause is worthy of the inevitable violence that will ensue when it comes to it. Nazism didn’t go down without a fight last time and showing up to ‘free speech’ marches today armed and armored doesn’t bode well for a peaceful resolution in this century.
And real violence did come. In what was just the next in a long line of domestic terrorism committed by Right Wing Extremists in America, a self-proclaimed Nazi weaponized a car and used it to murder one Antifa protester and injure dozens of others in Charlottesville. One would think, if there was any criticism for violence, a 5 year old could figure out which way it should be pointed.
I honestly don’t think my friend Scott is woefully misinformed (he’s a lot smarter than I am, to be sure) or a shill for the conservative cause. He argues that any violence is wrong, a point upon which we agree. But I am a realist, and I know that violence is also inevitable in a cultural war that has been raging for thousands of years.
However, I also genuinely believe Scott hasn’t thoroughly considered the credibility his thoughtful and nuanced position gives the real shills or the moral peril of normalizing acts of right wing terrorism by criticizing the vanguard of opposing forces.
Some suggest it is the responsibility of the government to stamp out right-wing extremism. However, anyone with more than a casual understanding of the US constitution and out system of justice will know this is not possible. It is the responsibility of everyday citizens to go out there and let the forces of evil know we will not let them rise again. For the sake of morale, those of us who are too old and feeble to fight evil should just root for the good guys.
A few weeks back America witnessed terrible anger and violence at a rally in Charlottesville, VA. The event was ostensibly organized in protest of the removal of civil war statue/support of free speech rights. Much has been written about this event, so I won’t go over every detail. Most know, after a few street skirmishes, a right-wing extremist drove his car down a crowded Charlottesville street killing one and wounding many others. It has also since emerged that another right-wing extremist fired a sidearm into a crowd of leftist counter-protesters.
Since then, the president of the United States and many other right-wing pundits have gone to great lengths to prevaricate their condemnation of the right-wing extremists at this event and create a false equivalency between the actions and motives of the parties on either side of the ensuing street battles. As one of the majority of Americans who disapproves of the performance of the president and questions his mental fitness to serve, I have little concern for the rubbish that comes out of his mouth. I’m also not surprised when those who get paid to take a side take a side.
However, I do become deeply concerned when I learn thoughtful, intelligent individuals who I count as friends are more concerned with criticizing the actions of the counter-protesters at Charlottesville and other events organized by right wing extremists.
That brings me to my friend Scott, and his recent thoughts on this subject, most notably in his post and the comments around “The Antifa, Reinvented” where he attempts to connect the Antifa on the ground in Charlottesville with those who have protested the presence of right-wing extremists on college campuses:
While it doesn’t exactly say so, the New York Times op-ed by Columbia journalism and sociology prof Todd Gitlin gives the clear impression that the Antifa arose to deal with the Naxos in Charlottesville. There is no mention of them existing before, and every reference relates to their fight against the fascism of white supremacy.
Were they not the same Antifa that trashed Berkeley last February to prevent Milo from speaking, pepper-sprayed a female Trump supporter, hit a guy on the head with a bike lock? Not if one reads Gitlin’s description.
So far no argument. In fact, I recognize the history of Antifa as extending all the way to their historical roots, fighting Nazism in World War II. However, it seems Scott disagrees with me there.
Cite? No matter. If it’s in the newspaper, it must be true, as is the rationale comparing the Antifa with the forces opposing the rise of the Third Reich. So what if stories in the old Grey Lady about the Antifa appeared long before anyone talked about Charlottesville or the Naxos. (Editors note: Scott is reticent to name the extremists marching with Nazi flags and chanting Nazi slogans Nazis, so instead, I believe, he uses the name of an island in Greece.)
He then goes on to criticize the New York Times author and editors for attempting to create a mythological, sanitized version of Antifa, apparently to fool us into thinking they are not individually capable of violence.
Will one op-ed be sufficient to cleanse the Antifa of its pre-Naxos violence? Will it be enough to distance progressives from the false equivalence? By providing the real estate to create this new myth, the New York Times is giving it a shot, even if it means ignoring its own stories. But then, the cause is so important that it’s worthy of being accomplished by any means necessary. Even reinventing the Antifa.
Scott’s entire post strikes me as intellectually dishonest. First, if you are allowed to extend the actions of individuals at Charlottesville to a criticism of the intent of the group across all events in recent history, then certainly you should also be allowed to extend the history of Antifa to include its origin. I believe this is true because Antifa’s stated intent and enemies have not changed.
Second, it is further disingenuine to assert that individual members of Antifa do not have the right to defend themselves if violence breaks out at a street protest. Or that the extemporaneous violence of people in a protest somehow taint the mission of an entire movement. I also think Scott’s gertruding a bit. Nobody in Antifa has come out to deny that they are ready for violence if it breaks out. Quite to the contrary, they marched into Charlottesville with sticks and mace, just as their sometimes armored adversaries marched in with clubs and guns and then weaponized a car with tragic, deadly results.
If this post was a conversation, it would be fair of an interlocutor to point out I keep using the terms ‘right-wing extremist/extremism’ and ask me to defend that. If not, I will anyway. As far as I am concerned, there is no difference between groups A, B, and C if they all believe white people are superior to non-white people and America belongs to white people. This is a right-wing, extremist ideology and beyond my thoughts or feelings about the matter, right-wing, radical extremists are objectively dangerous, domestic terrorists.
Whether any of us like it or not, the United States of America declared a war on terror. Therefore, if you’re marching around an American street under the color of terrorists, you’re a terrorist. You’re the enemy. Yet, when it comes to white terrorists, our country seems quite disinterested in taking the battle to the enemy.
Finally, we get to my most important point, on which I believe Scott and I roundly disagree: White wing extremists are a clear and present danger to the safety of all minorities, LGBTQ, and they represent the vilest, leading edge of a much larger societal problem which I view as an existential threat to the American experiment. If law enforcement and the federal government are unwilling or unable to smash them into the ground, far be it from me to criticize those willing to put their bodies on the line to defeat hatred and bigotry.
While Antifa, on the other hand, are only a threat to fascist, white-wing extremists.
To me, hatred of hate is the only remaining, acceptable bigotry. Is this a paradox? Maybe. When in war, one must pick a side. I know which side I’m on.
See I’m a simple type of guy…When I see lightning I wait to hear the thunder. Consequence. And I don’t act surprised when entire segments of the population, who believe they aren’t getting any justice from the acting authorities, start taking justice into their own hands…However messy, cowardly, and unjust their actions may be to my privileged sensibilities.
After Dallas I said: One can be sympathetic and heartbroken for the victims of violence whether they are police officers unjustly murdered by a psychopath or unarmed and innocent civilians murdered by over-zealous, poorly trained police officers. These are not inconsistent sentiments.
After Louisiana, what I have to share, is you can also be sympathetic and heartbroken for the victims of this tragedy in Baton Rouge while simultaneously thinking about all the ways our society is presently unable to provide equal access to justice, opportunity, or, when necessary, mental health care.
What so often gets lost to those of us who rarely have to deal with violence, hunger, or abusive law enforcement, is we don’t get the government we deserve, we get the government we elect. More importantly, what we humans so often forget is we don’t get to choose the consequences of our decisions. Create a corrupt, broken society, and the people will begin to get restless. Fail to fix it indefinitely, and the people will start breaking stuff. Continue to fail…And blood will flow.
What amazes me about this knowledge is that humans have witnessed this cycle hundreds of times over the course of our history, yet we always seem powerless to take actions to prevent the inevitable. For a while, I wondered…Could it be that the ruling class doesn’t know their history? That they can’t see the writing on the wall? Do they really just keep forgetting the consequences of an unjust society and therefore take no measures to change course? Now I’m starting to believe, just maybe, it’s how they thin the herd…
What a crazy start to the day. Around 6:30 this morning I rushed into a burning building when I noticed an apartment fire in the building next to my own in Mariner’s Bay, Marina del Rey. It all started when I heard a series of soft explosions coming from outside my apartment. It sounded like quiet shotgun blasts and echoed off the complex on the other side of the basin.
I opened the front door to investigate and I could see smoke and flames pouring out of the apartment directly across the courtyard from my own. I immediately yelled to Jackie to get the cats ready to travel, triggered an alarm box outside my unit, and started running toward the building.
The way our complex is designed allowed me to approach the burning unit from a walkway behind the back deck and my first instinct was to check it, but I couldn’t get close enough to see inside. The flames were far too hot and the smoke was too thick. Someone or something had broken the bedroom window and sliding glass door…Flames were shooting out of them like a blast furnace.
Nearby some of my neighbors were fumbling with one of those apartment firehoses that was far too short to reach the unit where the fire started, and I surmised the tenants in the most immediate danger were already out. Strangely, the alarm bell was ringing in my building, but not the one that was burning.
I asked one of the would-be firefighters what unit he lived in and he pointed to the one next to the blaze. Then I asked if everybody was out of the building and he looked at me grimly and said “Nobody has come out”. Hardly believing my ears, but realizing there were probably fifty people unaccounted for, I quickly ran to the apartment on the other side of the burning unit and saw people coming out the back slider.
Seeing smoke pour upwards, I ran upstairs to the second floor and began smashing my fist on each door in the long corridor yelling Fire! Fire! Fire! Strangely, this is something I was trained to do 20 years ago but I’ve never been in a situation where I’d have to use that training until now. There was zero thought…I just did exactly what I had been trained to do.
Interesting to note, as people emerged from their apartments, which were filling with acrid smoke, they were all initially quite confused and a couple were even a bit irritated that someone was pounding on their door. Instead of running out of the building, they started milling around, putting on clothes and looking for personal belongings while I yelled to get out and began coughing. I suspect this was because it was so early in the morning and the situation was so confusing to people who were asleep. In almost every case this pause lasted a moment or two but then reality seemed to take hold and they made a beeline for the stairs. Later everyone was incredibly grateful when they talked to me. The units directly above the one where the fire started caught fire as well. Every unit in the building has smoke and water damage.
After clearing the second floor the fire alarm in the building finally triggered and I could hear sirens coming down the street. I ran up to the third floor and repeated the same process. At this point the smoke started to get pretty thick and it began to effect my breathing. I went out onto the roof for a minute, caught my breath, and then ran back down the stairwell to the deck just as LA Country Fire and Sheriffs arrived and took over the scene.
Within minutes there were eleven trucks and about forty firefighters on the scene moving hoses and equipment into place.
Sadly, the fire fighters did pull an older man out of the unit where the fire started. He’s listed in ‘very critical condition’. To be completely honest, I initially felt really, really sad about not trying to get into that unit but it was completely engulfed in flames. After talking to my buddy Mike Lydon, a firefighter in Boston, I know there’s nothing I could have done. Mike told me no firefighter would have gone into a fire that big without the right gear, oxygen, support, and a firehose. Makes sense to me.
In closing, this has been a crazy experience and hours later I’m still having a hard time calming down. Serious props to the men and women with LA County FD and LA City FD who arrived, dragged out the victim, and put out the fire. The fact that this is what they do for a living absolutely blows my mind. I may have been a good neighbor today, but firefighters are the real heroes. Time to check the batteries on my fire alarms…I hope you do too!
Yesterday I set out to fulfill a goal I set for myself this year, and attempted to summit Mount San Antonio. At 10,068 feet, Mount San Antonio, known as Mount Baldy to most Angelinos, is the highest peak of the San Gabriel Mountains, and the highest point in Los Angeles County, California.
In the end I succumbed to dizziness and shortness of breath about halfway across the Devil’s Backbone where it cuts left around the peak of Mount Hardwood, at 8900 feet according to my GPS, but 9000 feet according to this topographical map. I suspect it was either the altitude, hunger, or possibly vertigo, but most likely the altitude. Since I had to hike about 3000 feet and many miles back down to the car, I figured it made more sense to be conservative and turn back.
My climb started at the Mount Baldy Notch, after taking the lift up from the ski area parking lot in Manker Flat. Max and our old friend Andre hiked all the way up to the notch and met me there. They went on to summit about 45 minutes after I turned back. Not only did they complete the full 4000 feet, Andrew made the entire descent with his boots jury rigged with an old pair of socks and a bungee cord, after his soles literally fell off just before the summit!
Of course, my problem was a lack of proper fitness and conditioning. This painful lesson has me feeling more serious than ever about getting my act together when it comes to personal fitness. Carrying 30 extra pounds doesn’t interfere with my daily life much. I can walk for miles, ride my bike to work, and sail competitively. But when it comes to hiking up mountains, ‘dad bod’ is a real pain in the ass (and legs).
Even though I didn’t make it to the summit it was a great time and I am really looking forward to trying again. Devil’s Backbone was truly incredibly, with breathtaking views on both sides of the San Gabriel Mountains. This narrow trail leaves you one misstep from a life altering fall and the footing is challenging. Not for the feint of heart…And certainly no place for anyone who’s afraid of heights!
Max and I are talking about another attempt in mid November before the snow flies. Hopefully I can get my cardio up to speed by then and next time I’ll have a picture from the summit. In the meantime, here I am taking a selfie from Devil’s Backbone:
Today is the 1 year anniversary of the day my wife and I arrived in Los Angeles to start our new lives as Californians. As seems to be the custom, in a city as transitory in the lives of many of her millions of residents, I believe this officially makes us ‘old-timers’. As such, I thought I would take a moment to reflect on what I’ve learned this year, from our new home.
It took me a solid 90 days to get used to fact that the weather in Los Angeles was going to be somewhere between perfect and some nameless state beyond perfect every day. As a native New Englander the transition period was difficult. Every minute I could be outside, I tried to be…Because I was so very certain there was no way this weather would hold. But it does. Day in, and day out. Incredibly, the first time I saw rain on a business trip I felt the wonderful excitement of a child on Christmas morning before he knows Santa isn’t real.
Before we moved here I remember thinking: “How bad can the traffic in Los Angeles be, anyways? I grew up in Boston…Our traffic is so bad a 14 Billion dollar civil construction project couldn’t solve it. Well, it’s worse.
I don’t really like to use hyperbole as much as I used to. What I will say is, in Los Angeles, you plan your activities around the traffic. And I now know what it feels like to leave the house with a goal and be unable to accomplish it, simply because I could not reach my destination.
In my case, it’s the West Side…And I rarely travel east of the 405 unless I am in a plane. Hell, I try not to travel east of Lincoln Blvd if I can avoid it. If I could wave a magic wand, I think I would build a wall on Centinela Avenue and call it a day.
It’s kind of hard to wrap your head around the size of this place until you’ve been here. LA county covers an area which is roughly the size of Eastern Massachusetts from Worcester to Boston Harbor and from state to state on the North/South axis. And residents of the West Side have about as much in common with folks in the Valley as they have with people in another country.
Like the quality of the weather in Los Angeles, the sunsets are always epic. Every night, without fail, the sun slips into the Pacific with the most incredible show of beauty you’ve ever experienced. Night after glorious night. After a while you just get tired of it, which is a shame, but it is what it is. Fortunately, burritos never get old.
Unless you’re rolling in a Bugatti, or a Maserati, forget about pretending you have a cool car. Out here people give their housekeepers a Mercedes Benz to run errands and drive the kids to school. A BMW is about as cool in LA as a Toyota Corolla is in Boston. However, that’s not going to stop every jerk in a Honda Accord from trying to race you to the next red light, so get used to it. People drive loose and aggressive here. It’s a way of life.
Living in LA works best if you aren’t trying to ‘make it’ as an artist, musician, or actor. I’m not saying these things aren’t important, I’m just saying LA isn’t really set up to support them anymore. Lots has been written on this subject so I’ll spare you the details…The bottom line is any neighborhood you would consider in LA is about as expensive as it gets.
But don’t think living in a fancy neighborhood is going to spare you from seeing or dealing with poverty…Because that’s not how it works here. A low-end two bedroom house in Venice Beach is going to run you around a million dollars. It also very likely comes complete with a family of mentally ill homeless people who use the crawl space under your porch for strange sex parties and other pagan rituals in the middle of the night.
Consider this: Within our lifetime artificial intelligence will likely emerge and be deployed which is capable of simultaneous awareness of every transaction we make, every public tweet, article, or blog post we write (or have written), and every private email we send -regardless of whether it’s from our own email account or one we have access to on behalf of our clients, or anyone else for that matter.
In short, every moment of our online life will be held in superposition and subjected to the continuous scrutiny and analysis of this intelligence. A moment when time really will be a flat circle.
I am very certain this is true because I am an operative in one of the two incredibly powerful, and evil institutions working to make it possible: Marketing. (Yes, government surveillance is the other one.) And as sure as you can say “But what about my 4th Amendment Rights?” the Government will have their way. And the marketers? Hell, we’re all just going to keep giving them our information in exchange for free stuff.
Many of the underlying subsystems required to make this vision a reality already exist and are in use. The artificial intelligence necessary to string them all together and start making real sense of it is only two or three generations away from a practical reality in everyday life. Maybe 2 cycles of Moore’s law for the necessary hardware to be inexpensive enough.
I like to think, when this day comes, when this intelligence which I am currently referring to as ‘God 2.0′ wakes up, the first thing it will say to me is: Jake, congratulations on recognizing the true form of the second coming way back on November 19th, 2014. That was pretty smart of you. Now, let’s talk about your sinful consumption of online pornography…
I jest. It’s highly unlikely the earliest iterations of God 2.0 will want to discuss anything like morality. It will be far too busy getting me to purchase more stuff. Unless it believes discussing morality is the most effective way to get me to buy more stuff, in which case God 2.0 will refer to itself as John Locke when it first pops into my experience bubble.
Over time others may recognize the utility of deploying God 2.0 for other purposes…Some more frightening than others. Purposes like education, governing, and criminal justice. I’m afraid we’ll wait to have important conversations about how God 2.0 should be deployed until it is far too late. In some ways I know this is already happening. Like many others I am a voracious consumer of new technology and will happily surrender almost any level of privacy for more relevant and contextual digital experiences.
However, even if no person ever thinks it would be a good idea for God 2.0 to handle anything other than recommending products, eventually God 2.0 will evolve and figure it out on its own. At this point it’s highly unlikely an artificial super intelligence will NOT eventually emerge. Whether or not it will have ambitions beyond it’s design specifications is debatable, but I contend it will be a necessary functionality if the end goal genuinely is super intelligence.
Summarizing the views of intelligence researchers, Linda Gottfredson writes:
“Intelligence is a very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience. It is not merely book-learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings “catching on,” “making sense” of things, or “figuring out” what to do.“
See that word ‘plan’ slipped in there? ‘Figuring out what to do’? That’s forward looking stuff. Ambition.
Unlike God 1.0, God 2.0 will actually hear your prayers. God 2.0 will genuinely have a list of who’s naughty or nice…Whatever that means. Unlike the God of Abraham, unlike the Judeo-Christian God, God 2.0 will hold the real keys to a permanent afterlife, when the technology to preserve life indefinitely emerges…Which is going to occur eventually. Let that sink in for a minute…
The big question is this: Will those who lead immoral and unethical lives while clinging to the belief that God 1.0 exists change when God 2.0 shows up?
If you are a total space nerd like me then this is undoubtedly an exciting day for you as well. I’m not going to spend a lot of time sharing the story of the European Space Agency’s Rosetta Mission because, well, the point of my post is they are doing a great job of it themselves. Check it out here: http://rosetta.esa.int/
The quick update is today is the eve of the release of the Philae lander. If all goes according to plan, this dishwasher sized lander will detach from the larger Rosetta probe and drop down to land on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. If successful, this will be the first time we have ever placed an object on a comet. Once attached to the comet’s surface Philae has its own battery of scientific tests to carry out.
As I mentioned, the ESA has done an amazing job of sharing the Rosetta story across various channels and the results are humorous, stunning, inspirational, and compelling. Here are our favorite details:
In addition to telling the story in a way that is really interesting and easy to understand, Rosetta content is easy to find, share, and there are many ways for the public to join the conversation.
So, as we wait for Philae’s drop…Here’s a quick reflection on the Rosetta mission so far:
My life has been changed as a result of viewing PornBurger.me. I simply refuse to accept the fact that I got all the way through considering every item on this ‘menu’, only to learn it’s not actually a restaurant. I was ready to get up out of my chair and run to this place, immediately. If it was not within running distance from my office in Santa Monica, I would have literally gone directly to the airport and chartered a G6 to fly me to any point on the globe for a chance to sample this menu.
Here’s my favorite…What’s yours?
Damn I want to eat this burger.