It’s pretty ball-sweatingly hot here in the Netherlands as well. Expecting 35c tomorrow and 36-38 on Wednesday.

Problem is, few houses and buildings are equipped to deal with heat like that. Everything’s well insulated, but built more for cold winters rather than hot summers. Every year, more people get air conditioning. Because you need to. It’s that or be miserable for two weeks straight. Anything above 20 makes me want to hit people.

The Netherlands also shipped a large amount of anti-tank, air defence missiles as well as a hundred sniper rifles and 30.000 rounds of ammo to Ukraine. And that was just the start.

You need to walk a fine line in international politics as a country.

But here, just you and me talking: as a Dutchman I remember those victims. And I hope every single one of those 30.000 rounds finds a loving home in the brain of a Russian. Fuck the lot of ‘em. You invade a country, you deserve to get a Dutch-sponsored surprise lead injection.

Police better keep an eye on mom and any other siblings, as bad decisions clearly run in that family…

Edit: I’m just going to assume the 20 downvoters didn’t actually bother to read the article 🤷‍♂️

Yup. I’m not going to actively hang out with shitheads just to try and change them. I will however steamroll over them if they come into MY space and do it.

So they figured it was a good idea to use a racially-charged fake profile to provoke online users for an ‘experiment’? And one would assume these responses were subsequently studied without the poster’s consent?

That’s going to run afoul of a few European privacy rules I imagine. Someone definitely needs to get fired, blackballed and sued for this. At the very least.

I enthusiastically support punishing Russians in every way, shape and form.

Airplanes have very particular maintenance schedules. Some things are based on the amount of hours flown, others are calendar items on a set schedule. They are also periodically stripped down completely to check every last part.

Basically, every critical component on it will have been recently replaced, overhauled or checked. If done correctly, a 50 year old plane is not inherently more dangerous because of its age. The caveat to that being: if it’s done properly.

When US policy can change in hours, based on the whims of a madman, it’s not exactly difficult to see why people lose faith in that stability. Investors want long term stability, and right now things are complete chaos.

They need to seriously quit this bullshit. It serves no practical purpose in our modern society, while also having tangible negative effects. So why keep doing it?

I enthusiastically support getting rid of this nonsense.

You don’t invite foreign invaders, you shoot them between the eyes. See Ukraine.

Glad they got the hint.

People book vacations like that well in advance. So there’s a time delay between the bookings and drop. Yesterday I read an article about Dutch travel agencies seeing far less bookings for US holidays. In january they saw a 20 percent drop, but they didn’t have February figures yet.

So by the end of this year, the tourism decrease will likely be much higher.

And the absolute insane part about it is: most actual religions are not opposed to vaccination!

The pope doesn’t mind vaccination, and indeed encourages it:

https://www.npr.org/2022/01/10/1071785531/on-covid-vaccinations-pope-says-health-care-is-a-moral-obligation#%3A~%3Atext=Francis%2C+85%2C+has+generally+shied%2Cget+inoculated+was+"suicidal."

Mormons encourage vaccination. Hindus and Buddhists have no issues with it. Most of Islam and Judaism are OK with it as well…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccination_and_religion

So if most of your mainstream religions agree that vaccination is a good thing - one of the few things they agree on, I’d imagine -it doesn’t make sense to oppose it on religious grounds.

Some people just want to difficult. And kids are dying because of it.

Sounds great; anything that hinders Russia is cause for celebration.

Heck, I’ll take any president who lived during my lifetime over Trump.

Dubya definitely got rehabilitated the past decade in many people’s eyes. Of course, he’s still… probably… a war criminal over the whole Iraq / war on terror situation. But I certainly understand the average American wanting him over Trump. I miss when the worst thing a president did was misspeak like his ‘fool me once’.

I miss the good old ‘we don’t negotiate with terrorists’ US.

If someone breaks into your house, kicks your dog and rapes your wife, you don’t negotiate to let them keep your TV. You shoot that fucker between the eyes. That’s what we need to be doing.

Definitely give The West Wing a chance. It’s warm and fuzzy, which we can all use a bit more these days.

I really liked Space Force! That was a fun show; I was sad it got cancelled.

I really like The West Wing. I’m currently going through it again.

It was always a hopeful show, but these days even the ‘bad guys’ in it start to look pretty appealing compared to what’s actually in the White House. At least the ones on the West Wing had fairly mundane motives and could be worked with to some extent.

If they made a current show inspired the actual White House, it would look more like Idiocracy than competency porn…

I’m glad we get to see this shameful display. I wouldn’t talk to a dog like that, much less the democratically elected leader of another sovereign nation that’s an ally. The US used to be a beacon of freedom and diplomacy, but clearly we shouldn’t expect that from the current regime.

Europe will keep supporting Ukraine regardless, but it really is in the US’ interests to stay involved in this conflict. It’s disconcerting that Trump can’t seem to grasp that basic fact.

We had those for decades in the Netherlands. They were literally small supermarkets on wheels. They had a limited assortment on board, but you could order specialty items for delivery next week. They were reasonably popular in the 70’s and 80’s, even in larger cities. Those days, there were fewer supermarkets and they tended to close at 5-6 pm. They also didn’t really do delivery like we have now.

They are still around in a limited way, but usually only for small villages that don’t really have a supermarket.

Here’s a modern example.

There’s also simply way too many people on earth as it is. My country - one of the smallest on earth- had 15 million people back in 1995. Right now, 30 years later, we’re at 18 million. And in 2037, they’re expecting 19 million.

Small numbers on a global scale, but definitely a lot of growth that’s causing issues. There’s a housing shortage, rising prices, healthcare and pensions are under threat, etc etc.

And there’s places that are much, much worse. For example, even India is encouraging population growth. When the country is still very poor. That’s going to help their economy in the short run, but it’s going to be a much larger problem down the line.

We need a controlled population decline, sooner rather than later.