The article makes it sound like there was some ringing, but instead of looking out of the window or checking the door the residents called the police - probably because they were afraid of kids from across the road, which is a framing that their source, the very shitty Bild, just _loves_.
What really happened is that the ringing happened multiple times, residents looked out of the window and out of the door but couldn't find anyone, and only then called the police. More trustworthy sources than the Bild do not mention any abandoned house over the road, just that they assumed it must be someone who does the ringing, which is a very sensible assumption.
I suspect that German media only picked up on it because they could end their articles with the pun that "the perpetrator has been turned into a slug", which is a direct translation of a proverb which means that the perpetrator has been dressed down.
Actually, what they mean is squatters. In many parts of Europe -especially germany and spain- it's quite normal for 16 to 25 year olds to squat abandoned buildings and live there until the police kicks them out. These kids tend to get intoxicated and do stupid stuff. Like ringing a bell in the middle of the night. The squatting thing is seen by many as a measure against speculation on living space and at the same time giving young kids a cheap place to live and get on their feet. In most places in Europe the squatting is semi-allowed because of remnants of old roman law. It's quite fascinating and -in my opinion- a tragedy that it is disappearing.
Drunk kids unable to afford housing, in a society where owners of property would rather let it get run down instead of develop it or sell it, and where it's expected that the homeless youth will harass their neighbors, sounds like a failure of society.
The young people shouldn't have to squat and abandoned buildings shouldn't be allowed to just sit and rot.
You are making too many assumptions. Some squatters are the homeless, some are young-ish adherents of the far left, for whom this is a lifestyle choice.
The most famous Prague squat, Klinika in Žižkov, was full of blue-haired nepo babies whose parents were well connected politicians or businesspeople. That is also why it was tolerated for a fairly long time, and it was always able to summon a crowd of friendly journalists whenever someone tried to empty the building.
(Note that this is something that actual poor people rarely are able to - but lifestyle squatters who studied the same faculty before dropping out can do easily, as they still have the phone numbers of their graduated friends).
The common feature is freewheeling attitudes to drinking and drugs. Most homeless shelters or cheaper landlords won't tolerate too much consumption on the premises, or even have a dry policy. In a squat, anything goes.
> The squatting thing is seen by many as a measure against speculation on living space and at the same time giving young kids a cheap place to live and get on their feet.
This is true for abandoned empty buildings. If the owners are not using a building and someone starts to live in there, they are allowed. The idea is that the right to housing is greater than the right to own empty buildings just for speculation.
In cities were housing offering is lacking this is seen as a measure to push speculators to sell or rent their properties.
A friend of ours is an old lady who needed to spend a few weeks in the hospital. While she was there, her house was squatted and removing the squatters took a bit more than a year during which time she was effectively homeless. So I am glad that the laws are gradually being tightened against squatters
Yep, a very common story. Or someone whose parents pass away, they take a few months to put affairs in order and start selling the house, only to find out the house is now being squatted and they have a nightmare to deal with.
But somehow people much prefer the “bohemian squatters sticking it to greedy capitalistic landlords who don’t use their property” narrative.
Underage kids that ran from their family should be brought back to the family or into foster care, not live in crack houses, that's not a tragedy, it's progress.
But there are some rules that allow teens above 16 to work in certain jobs and they may be considered adults depending on the circumstances depending on a judge interpretation. Below that age the police will bring the kids to their parents or to a foster home.
Yes, now the cheap cooking stoves have touch interfaces which is an OBVIOUSLY bad idea, much worse even than touch buttons in cars. The expensive professional stoves however...
I didn't realise that it was a touch sensors, and was wondering through the article how on earth a slug was pushing the buttons to bell people, and maybe somehow its slime was conductive enough to get inside and short things?
Sadly it is not a new species, otherwise what a name it could have slagged...
Nacktschneckecus Klingelstreichus
Also mysterious... why did nobody just... walk downstairs to look? Use them peepers? At least we know no software engineers are to blame. Along with the slug, we are the one group most reluctant to walk.
I had a similar experience. It was a dark summer night, 03:00 o'clock. Me and my partner were semi-asleep when suddenly a loud noise from the kitchen wakes us up. It sounds eerily electro-mechanical. And then some seconds later, it happens again. And again. And again. We had no pets, no one else living with us, so we were concerned someone had broken into our apartment in the middle of the night. I mustered up the courage to enter the kitchen. There are no people there, not even a small animal. I turn on the lights and confirm that. But I see the lid of our bin is open. It was a stupid purchase from costco, this household bin with an automated lid that used a depth sensor. Turns out, there was a slug walking all over the sensor. This is how we figured out we had a big hole somewhere under the kitchen furnishings that was a source of slugs. We moved away in less than a year, but boy was it not fun to think about the slimy mess that may have been left on the countertops.
I think it's quirky enough to be amusing, maybe even better that it's from "another" country.
Pre internet age I worked in a store where one "unlucky" guy out of reflex asked the king of Sweden for identification when buying with a credit card (fully aware of who was in front of him, it was a toy store and the king used to shop there once a year for Christmas). A colleague told the story at dinner, the colleagues father worked at an evening news paper and wrote a small blurb about it. The following two days news papers from (literally) around the world tried to get an interview with the guy.
I went through several emotions reading this article.
It has to be said, that I probably have the habit of most people: skim the title, skip to the comments, skim the article, skip back to the comments, and maybe if I am intrigued enough (as I was this time) read the article.
Well, the more I skipped back and forth the funnier it became. Realized it wasn't the UK started trying to find that abandoned feral children apartment and what not. Then I decided to the read the whole article when a depressing thought mixed with indignation hit me.
The article reads like the following llm prompt: "translate this article from BILD to english make it short and funny" voilá. I still hold the Guardian in a little higher regard than other online media, but this ended up being a small gut punch. But I had fun, thanks chatgpt.
Probably in large part because all after WW2, German has been used exclusively when making fun of a certain dictator, in English. You've been taught that it's funny, if you're in the Western world.
Of course, before the radio, making fun of languages couldn't spread that quickly, so German was probably the first language to lose a war (or two) after globalization had started.
English vs. German vs. Swiss-German
Nut vs. Nuss vs. Nüssli
Mess vs. Durcheinander vs. Chrüsimüsi
Rascal vs. Lausbub vs. Glünggi
Chicken vs. Huhn vs. Güggeli
I've had Germans kill family too, but the video above is a non-native German speaker making fun of German words. I agree that German isn't the most pleasant language to hear spoken, but that video isn't evidence.
No, but it's a funny reminder of how it's perceived. It's not supposed to be evidence, nor I linked it as if it was some scientific proof settling the matter.
Basically captures that part you said "I agree that German isn't the most pleasant language".
I don't have to think how Germans speak there's no shortage of Germans passing around these parts.
That's how it sounds in everyone's ears, in countries with more melodic languages like Spanish or French.
(It's not even the pronunciation overplayed in the video for comedic effect, many words are already threatening sounding by themselves, just the letters on page invoke either threat or bureaucracy).
...at a certain point I think you just have to assume that the doorbell is malfunctioning, no?
We've had that happen. It was annoying as hell. We didn't call the police, though. (Pretty funny that it was a slug and not a dying piece of electronics, I must say.)
The article makes it sound like there was some ringing, but instead of looking out of the window or checking the door the residents called the police - probably because they were afraid of kids from across the road, which is a framing that their source, the very shitty Bild, just _loves_.
What really happened is that the ringing happened multiple times, residents looked out of the window and out of the door but couldn't find anyone, and only then called the police. More trustworthy sources than the Bild do not mention any abandoned house over the road, just that they assumed it must be someone who does the ringing, which is a very sensible assumption.
I suspect that German media only picked up on it because they could end their articles with the pun that "the perpetrator has been turned into a slug", which is a direct translation of a proverb which means that the perpetrator has been dressed down.
There should be those sorts of houses everywhere, or the feral children would roam in street gangs, steal pies from window sills, and ring doorbells.
the way the world economy's going I could see Oliver Twist becoming relevant again.
Actually, what they mean is squatters. In many parts of Europe -especially germany and spain- it's quite normal for 16 to 25 year olds to squat abandoned buildings and live there until the police kicks them out. These kids tend to get intoxicated and do stupid stuff. Like ringing a bell in the middle of the night. The squatting thing is seen by many as a measure against speculation on living space and at the same time giving young kids a cheap place to live and get on their feet. In most places in Europe the squatting is semi-allowed because of remnants of old roman law. It's quite fascinating and -in my opinion- a tragedy that it is disappearing.
Drunk kids unable to afford housing, in a society where owners of property would rather let it get run down instead of develop it or sell it, and where it's expected that the homeless youth will harass their neighbors, sounds like a failure of society.
The young people shouldn't have to squat and abandoned buildings shouldn't be allowed to just sit and rot.
You are making too many assumptions. Some squatters are the homeless, some are young-ish adherents of the far left, for whom this is a lifestyle choice.
The most famous Prague squat, Klinika in Žižkov, was full of blue-haired nepo babies whose parents were well connected politicians or businesspeople. That is also why it was tolerated for a fairly long time, and it was always able to summon a crowd of friendly journalists whenever someone tried to empty the building.
(Note that this is something that actual poor people rarely are able to - but lifestyle squatters who studied the same faculty before dropping out can do easily, as they still have the phone numbers of their graduated friends).
The common feature is freewheeling attitudes to drinking and drugs. Most homeless shelters or cheaper landlords won't tolerate too much consumption on the premises, or even have a dry policy. In a squat, anything goes.
> The squatting thing is seen by many as a measure against speculation on living space and at the same time giving young kids a cheap place to live and get on their feet.
This is true for abandoned empty buildings. If the owners are not using a building and someone starts to live in there, they are allowed. The idea is that the right to housing is greater than the right to own empty buildings just for speculation.
In cities were housing offering is lacking this is seen as a measure to push speculators to sell or rent their properties.
this was known in the US as "squatter's rights." unfortunately it's mostly vestigial now.
A friend of ours is an old lady who needed to spend a few weeks in the hospital. While she was there, her house was squatted and removing the squatters took a bit more than a year during which time she was effectively homeless. So I am glad that the laws are gradually being tightened against squatters
Yep, a very common story. Or someone whose parents pass away, they take a few months to put affairs in order and start selling the house, only to find out the house is now being squatted and they have a nightmare to deal with.
But somehow people much prefer the “bohemian squatters sticking it to greedy capitalistic landlords who don’t use their property” narrative.
Apparently in France it’s common enough that you can hire people, effectively goons, to harass and intimidate them into leaving.
Underage kids that ran from their family should be brought back to the family or into foster care, not live in crack houses, that's not a tragedy, it's progress.
If you're an independent and clever 16 year old you might be better of on your own than in foster care.
There are enough foster care horror stories that I don't think anyone "must" be there.
Young teenagers live in streets and squats are abused a lot. By a lot I mean, massively lot.
That they will do with anyone below 18.
But there are some rules that allow teens above 16 to work in certain jobs and they may be considered adults depending on the circumstances depending on a judge interpretation. Below that age the police will bring the kids to their parents or to a foster home.
So yeah, feral children
Kids hanging around in abandoned houses to smoke or do dumb shit is like a staple of childhoods.
There’s an alternate universe where programmers are fixing slugs because it wasn’t a bug that died in a mainframe transistor
I think that was a relay back then (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/First_Co...). Also, if the climate inside your mainframe is so humid that it attracts slugs, you have bigger problems...
I need to deslug my computer, it's getting sluggish.
A long morning of slugfixes awaits me...
Will you do a hotslug release today?
At least Firehen has released new deslugging tools.
Meh, a month ago slug destroyed a robot lawnmower: https://imgur.com/a/k6guVxi
I’m guessing it was mutually assured destruction.
We had physical buttons for decades. That required a certain amount of deliberate physical action and force by a person to press the doorbell.
Now designers and manufacturers have decided that everyone wants and needs touch sensors.
Sacrifice in the process -
Inadvertent triggers and lack of tactile feedback.
They didn't even decide that we want them, from what I've heard, capacitive "buttons" are simply cheaper as they require not additional parts.
Yes, now the cheap cooking stoves have touch interfaces which is an OBVIOUSLY bad idea, much worse even than touch buttons in cars. The expensive professional stoves however...
I didn't realise that it was a touch sensors, and was wondering through the article how on earth a slug was pushing the buttons to bell people, and maybe somehow its slime was conductive enough to get inside and short things?
Still miss the keyboard on my HTC Tilt2
Indeed. Especially as I get older and my accuracy on a virtual touchscreen keyboard gets worse.
I live in a pretty rough neighborhood - it happens around here a lot.
Teenage slugs causing havoc on a Saturday night after drinking beer in the park.
Sadly it is not a new species, otherwise what a name it could have slagged...
Nacktschneckecus Klingelstreichus
Also mysterious... why did nobody just... walk downstairs to look? Use them peepers? At least we know no software engineers are to blame. Along with the slug, we are the one group most reluctant to walk.
> It kept ringing even as we telephoned and despite the fact no one could be seen at the door.
> Together residents and police discovered the slug
they did?
It sounds like they called the police first before going down to check.
OMG I've been telling a joke about a slug that rings a bell. This used to be so unreal
A joke about a slug? That rings a bell.
Slugs aren't known for quick getaways. Did no one check the doorbell before calling the police?
They move a few inches per minute, so it's easy to ignore the irrelevant slug that is nearby but not over the button.
IME they tend to leave a lasting conspicuous shiny trail....
I had a similar experience. It was a dark summer night, 03:00 o'clock. Me and my partner were semi-asleep when suddenly a loud noise from the kitchen wakes us up. It sounds eerily electro-mechanical. And then some seconds later, it happens again. And again. And again. We had no pets, no one else living with us, so we were concerned someone had broken into our apartment in the middle of the night. I mustered up the courage to enter the kitchen. There are no people there, not even a small animal. I turn on the lights and confirm that. But I see the lid of our bin is open. It was a stupid purchase from costco, this household bin with an automated lid that used a depth sensor. Turns out, there was a slug walking all over the sensor. This is how we figured out we had a big hole somewhere under the kitchen furnishings that was a source of slugs. We moved away in less than a year, but boy was it not fun to think about the slimy mess that may have been left on the countertops.
Sounds like a broken doorbell button design.
Okay, I can see that maybe this could be a funny story in the local paper, but it's quite strange that it ended up as _international news_.
I think it's quirky enough to be amusing, maybe even better that it's from "another" country.
Pre internet age I worked in a store where one "unlucky" guy out of reflex asked the king of Sweden for identification when buying with a credit card (fully aware of who was in front of him, it was a toy store and the king used to shop there once a year for Christmas). A colleague told the story at dinner, the colleagues father worked at an evening news paper and wrote a small blurb about it. The following two days news papers from (literally) around the world tried to get an interview with the guy.
Anything can become international news.
Hey, we can't just go around accepting credit cards without ID from anyone who just happens to look like the king!
I went through several emotions reading this article.
It has to be said, that I probably have the habit of most people: skim the title, skip to the comments, skim the article, skip back to the comments, and maybe if I am intrigued enough (as I was this time) read the article.
Well, the more I skipped back and forth the funnier it became. Realized it wasn't the UK started trying to find that abandoned feral children apartment and what not. Then I decided to the read the whole article when a depressing thought mixed with indignation hit me.
The article reads like the following llm prompt: "translate this article from BILD to english make it short and funny" voilá. I still hold the Guardian in a little higher regard than other online media, but this ended up being a small gut punch. But I had fun, thanks chatgpt.
I wonder if the residents are millionaires #iykyk
If the slug violates the terms of release, there is a DIY Perks solution for that: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oAA9nCqNfR4
As someone from the UK, this really threw me for a second!
> At first they had suspected the so-called klingelstreich (bell prank), a sometimes popular pastime among German youths.
Does German sound funny to everybody or just the English speaking world?
Probably in large part because all after WW2, German has been used exclusively when making fun of a certain dictator, in English. You've been taught that it's funny, if you're in the Western world.
Of course, before the radio, making fun of languages couldn't spread that quickly, so German was probably the first language to lose a war (or two) after globalization had started.
Wait 'til you see Dutch.
We hebben een probleem.
Wait till you see Swiss-German
English vs. German vs. Swiss-German Nut vs. Nuss vs. Nüssli Mess vs. Durcheinander vs. Chrüsimüsi Rascal vs. Lausbub vs. Glünggi Chicken vs. Huhn vs. Güggeli
T-Shirt > T-Shirt > Libli (Leibchen in German)
A nacktschneckelich Crimespree like this is no Laughingmatter.
There ver zwei Slugs, valking down der Straße, und von vas assaulted
slugs worry about getting a-salted
Two ape babies with sign language education invented "waterbird" on their own when they saw a duck. English speakers should have more compound words.
It mostly sounds authoritative, unemotional, and sadistic.
You’ve been watching too many WW2 films.
I've been having actual WW2 Nazis occupy my country and kill family back in the day. Not everybody gets their history from movies.
But I'm talking about their regular everyday speaking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghRKZRcxeI4
I've had Germans kill family too, but the video above is a non-native German speaker making fun of German words. I agree that German isn't the most pleasant language to hear spoken, but that video isn't evidence.
No, but it's a funny reminder of how it's perceived. It's not supposed to be evidence, nor I linked it as if it was some scientific proof settling the matter.
Basically captures that part you said "I agree that German isn't the most pleasant language".
For me, Dutch is even worse. Turkish I also dislike, for some reason, I think because of the throaty "l" sounds.
Sorry, Dutch and Turkish friends.
You... you don't actually think we talk like that, do you?
I don't have to think how Germans speak there's no shortage of Germans passing around these parts.
That's how it sounds in everyone's ears, in countries with more melodic languages like Spanish or French.
(It's not even the pronunciation overplayed in the video for comedic effect, many words are already threatening sounding by themselves, just the letters on page invoke either threat or bureaucracy).
Imagine not speaking English and reading "ding dong ditch".
Imagine learning English in a country without that idiom, and reading it. Not to mention "knock down ginger"!
Yeah, knock down ginger was the one I went "wtf?" on, for sure.
We think German sounds too direct, and it makes us laugh. If it were serious and important, it would be in French.
I envy people with such quiet, peaceful lives that they consider this a newsworthy problem.
...at a certain point I think you just have to assume that the doorbell is malfunctioning, no?
We've had that happen. It was annoying as hell. We didn't call the police, though. (Pretty funny that it was a slug and not a dying piece of electronics, I must say.)
Not sure what the problem is.
I imagine that they, quite reasonably, expected that the prankster was some slimy character. And it looks like they were correct.
How dare it? It should be promptly arrested, pour decourager les autres
I love getting downvotes on an obvious joke post
Why is HN so uptight about literally everything?
Does it talk?
He's probably pining for the fjords...
Only in Morse code.
No. It is pushing up the daisies, singing to the choir invisible.