Observations

 1.  Is there a discussion going on to cancel Oktoberfest.....not due to Covid, but to the heating situation in the fest tents (requiring natural gas)?

Well....there is some discussion going on, and at best....I think the tents will have some marginal heat (probably limiting temperatures to 18 C).  

From 1810 (the first Oktoberfest)...until the 1960s, other than wood fires....the fests weren't heated.  Having been there myself....for daytime operations, you don't need to worry much over heating.  There might be some evenings with rough rainy weather, and the heat might be necessary.

2.  Votes are being counted today from the Lufthansa pilots on the next strike.  Results should be announced by mid-afternoon.  Last week's strike was held by non-pilot members of the company.  

3.  The Finance Minister (Lindner, FDP) is asking the Economics Minister (Habeck, Greens) to lessen use of the natural gas energy plants, and allow the nuke plants to operate instead.

Part of this discussion gets to a pretty hypocritical situation....where the Germans are buying natural gas.....which was pumped out via fracking, but from another country (since it's been illegal in Germany to frack since 2016).  

I noticed last night via the news, the Bavarian state government is now asking blunt questions about why fracking can't be done in Germany for this emergency situation....if the purchased non-German gas is fracked anyway.  

4.    I noticed the German Federal Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW) and the Federal Network Agency....both said that you can't allow Germans to drift back to use of electrical heating, while cutting natural gas use.  Reason?  The grid can't handle the demand.

Sales of the electrical radiators/heaters?  Well....if you walk into a Hornbach or Obi store (hardware stores in Germany)....there simply aren't any heating systems on the shelf (they've all been sold).  You can order some, and probably anticipate a four to six month waiting period for delivery.  

5.  There's some internal polling done on the nuke plant issue (keeping them open past December of 2022).  A majority of Green Party members would now agree to keep the three plants remaining plants open, and it would appear that a multi-year situation would be accepted.  

6.  I noticed from WELT (the newspaper), that around 70 German linguists and philologists are squaring off against ARD/ZDF (the two public TV networks) on their efforts to push “gender-equitable forms of language”.

Their hype?  This gender chatter attack on the German language is "ideological, disregards valid rules and produces social discord".

Prior to 2022?  You just didn't see this gender language chatter much at all....it's come on real sudden.  

What'll happen?  Eventually, via a public forum on ARD or ZDF....this gender-language chatter will be put up for debate, and it won't go in a friendly way for the network folks.  Wokeism will be discussed and it's just not something that Germans want to deal with.