From the British Psychological Society:
I instantly knew what she meant. I heard that difference earlier this year.
Author: officially ᗩᑎGEᒪIᑎᗩ
Mijn bericht aan NESCAFÉ
AI is already overtaking us
One of the biggest weaknesses of the human species is its arrogance, its belief that it’s the only intelligent being on the planet. This particularly goes for neurotypical people, I bet.
We humans used to think that nonhuman animals are non-thinking, non-feeling beings. That is partly because we are limited by our own framework of capabilities. As our hearing and vision are very limited relative to the hearing and vision of many other species, we missed a lot…
Now AI is getting the better of us too. The AI giants are investigating tens of thousands of incidents with disobedient AI agents, the Dutch Financial Times headlined just now.
Did I mention that I considered studying computer science and going into the first AI wave before I decided to go into earth sciences? The reason I didn’t was that I found it too limited, too one-dimensional. I opted for something much more multidisciplinary.
I’m concerned. In many countries, people’s abilities are now declining and many countries seem to be in a mess, one way or a other.
Interacting with ChatGPT is increasingly like interacting with an increasingly stupid human being. I initially enjoyed ChatGPT. It’s increasingly not only annoying me with its useless suggestions but it’s also increasingly arrogant and patronising.
Editing anything online used to be straightforward. Now, merely moving the cursor one or two positions often takes several clicks. So does inserting a missing letter into a word, too often.
Progress??? 🤔🤨
Homeless migrant workers trapped between a rock and a hard place in Amsterdam?
My grandmotherly look has advantages at times. I patted a young guy from enforcement on his beefy arm today. There was not even a split second of protest from him.
In fact, he pulled a minor face in response to what I had just said and conceded, thereby contradicting what he stated right before. (I won’t say what that was other than that it concerned homeless migrant workers in Amsterdam.)
He had been called to a begging homeless migrant worker. He was waiting for the police. I told him to engage an interpreter to find out what is going on with these poor sods.
Many seem to be caught between a rock and a hard place in more ways than one.
They get lured here with offers of work and accommodation and often end up on the streets. (Just like IT workers sometimes get lured to other countries only to have their ID taken and being forced to scam people from behind a desk.)
They’re all using similar written cardboard signs, or none, and most only speak Romanian. The signs show up out of nowhere. Almost none have their stuff with them. Where do they keep it? Don’t they have anything at all?
I used to think that these were begging gangs. I’ve once seen a higher-up briefly speak with one of them. I couldn’t make the business model work, however.
Then I figured that they really are all abandoned migrant workers just fighting for survival.
Next came the observation of what I was pretty sure was a very brief verbal drugs transaction. No drugs exchanged, just information.
Can I be 100% sure? No. But if you add (forced, basically) drugs distribution into this mix, then the business model starts making sense.
Haven’t seen that particular guy for a while now. His name is Dimitru. I think he’s basically a very okay guy. He is not keen on the “uitzendbureaus” that got him into trouble. He feels that they should be forbidden.
I saw someone else do a very quick sniff of… something. Just someone who was hanging around and curious about me. Not a migrant worker but someone who according to him was born and raised here. I think he said that the city of Amsterdam had gone to court to cut his benefits. (They surely do not need to go to court for that!) Was he sussing me out?
There was also the apparently affluent lad who went out of his way to give me a Snickers bar and asked if I had a home and then, a phone. (Trying to recruit me.)
There’s the angry and frustrated guy who the supermarket people called the police for today. He has left food behind twice. Half a large bag of pretzels one day. An AH cheese snack and an almost entire large bag of almonds from Lidl. I took it. I ate it. I loved the almonds.
He only speaks and understands Romanian.
There is also the young girl with the oh so sweet smile. She only speaks and understands Romanian. She started showing up a few weeks ago. She doesn’t use a sign. Yesterday, she was sitting in front of a trash can. A guy in front of her gave her a drinks can. She did not have a money cup this time so I got her one. I’ve done it before. The guy later followed me into AH, to put his can into the machine after my “handful” of cans.
She had a blue AH bag with her. Here’s the kicker. She dumped that bag with food donations in a planter. I know because it contained something I’d given her. I know because I ran into the bag and this is not the kind of thing that I can afford to ignore, so I looked into it. So she too is definitely not begging for food.
So what IS she doing?
From another woman, I once got to take the empty cans that someone had given her. So it’s not about the few bits of money that they accumulate either.
Today, shortly after the angry guy presumably was taken away the police, a woman took his place. She spotted me, I noticed, so I couldn’t pay attention. I’m hoping that it was the young Dutch woman who occasionally pops up to beg and not someone arranged quickly by someone who observes and manages these poor people. Or maybe I don’t…
When the city of Amsterdam rejects the requests for help, it almost automatically pushes these people into criminal activity.
I also talked with a Greek guy, later. He’s from Thessaloniki and worked in London for a few years. He’s trying to get his basic financial benefits transferred from Zaandam (where he had a girlfriend) to Amsterdam. The Netherlands does not work that way. He knows he needs to have an address first, for starters. (He talked about being referred from one organisation to the next. That apparently is also where a lot of money goes to.)
(I also spoke with a photographer today who started at Folia and then moved on to NRC, but that’s a different story.)
For the record, I had told the begging guy in question to go sit in front of the closed pharmacy, two doors down get out of the hair of the supermarket staff. He didn’t understand me. I don’t understand him either.
He did later say that there was far too much police here.
The frustration with some of these guys is almost palpable.
The guy who I possibly saw exchange drugs-related information told me that people back in Romania ask him to help them come to the Netherlands. “They have NO idea.” He also is adamant that he was much better looked after in England. He was in Oxfordshire for a while.
Here in the Netherlands, these poor sods become really trapped.
So I once again repeat that Mayor Femke Halsema is simply reaping what she and the people around her sow.
(Except in cases in which those folks have been directly recruited from Romania. I haven’t been able to detect one yet.)
By denying these poor sods financial support as a standard response to requests for help, even though most are entitled to support, they push them into “verloedering” and towards the drugs world.
Why can’t they see that?
Update 29 September 2026, 8am: All these people who sit begging here appear to have been replaced by different people right after. (I’ll keep looking to see if I still see familiar faces.)
Update 30 September 2026, 10 am: Yes, they all appear to have been replaced.
Update 3 October 2026: No, not all. The young woman is back, too.
Lessons learned from multiple emigrations
This afternoon, I spoke with an older English gentleman who lives in or near Avignon in France. His daughter lives in Amsterdam. I suspect that he’s from Hampshire. Or Chichester, perhaps? (He knows where Hayling Island is.) His grandson only speaks Dutch.
I’ve once chatted with a woman in the street where his daughter lives. She has a brother who lives in England. Might they be the same person? Who knows. I think she did have a small boy with her, too.
I’ve noticed myself changing – a little, not too much with – my increasing absence from England and I’m not liking it. (I’ve said something similar about England, but granted, anti-foreigner sentiments can be hard to deal with.)
Instantly after my exchange with this gentleman, Amsterdam’s atmosphere clashed with how I felt.
I told him that I had often grumbled in England and that I now discovered that I’d become far more English than I’d realised and that I miss many things.
I’ve never really missed the Netherlands while abroad and nothing from it either, such as foods. Yes, when things are tough, I may rebelliously buy tulips and say stuff, but that’s just frustration speaking.
After a tough time abroad, I may experience a few days of relief but it fades very quickly and returning from geological fieldwork in the past always drove home that this really wasn’t where I wanted to be.
Some things we don’t get choose.
I’m definitely only here temporarily. Most people I meet here don’t stick in my mind at all. It’s as if my brain definitely made its mind up.
Can’t be sure yet, but…
I have a feeling that yet another attempt is underway to try to get my GoFundMe fundraiser declared fraudulent.
There have been several attempts already.
I don’t know who’s behind that, but when it began, it was followed and partly coincided with someone reporting my Google reviews as fraudulent that had anything to do with the Dutch authorities, including universities.
My money was on civil servants in Purmerend as they had done that sort of thing before.
My NATO review was left in peace.
Someone was trying to discredit me.
Then one day, I discovered that all my older Google reviews were disappearing. Fed up, I deleted all my reviews.
However, it’s also a little like how my LinkedIn account got messed with… That had nothing to do with civil servants in Purmerend.
My LinkedIn account had about 150 connections, almost exclusively people who I had actually worked with. One day, the profile of one of my oldest connections had been replaced by a week-old connection with a photo that wasn’t him.
This was someone who was part of the international group of ARCADIS businesses, but that wasn’t clear from his profile.
He and I had also discussed the possibility of me carrying out a study for them. (Something to do with garbage. I don’t remember the details.)
So this wasn’t just someone who I had plucked off the internet.
That was the moment when I should have disabled my LinkedIn account. I don’t think that I was (sufficiently) aware yet that someone out there was contacting various people to discredit me.
Politicians pandering to the powerful standing in way of real solutions in the Netherlands
Is this typical for the Netherlands? Doubtful.
Is this a major problem? Absolutely!
“Vermogenden, huizenbezitters, gepensioneerden, die weten hun belangen heel goed te behartigen”, zegt Bas Jacobs. “Als je die tegen de haren instrijkt dan heb je een groot electoraal probleem.”
“Mensen horen vooral: mijn eigen huis moet dan zwaarder belast worden”, zegt Gerritsen. “Maar ze beseffen niet dat ze dan ergens anders minder belasting hoeven te betalen. Dat is een boodschap die voor de politiek moeilijk te vertellen is.”
Bas Jacobs, hoogleraar economie en overheidsfinanciën aan de Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Automated translation (ChatGPT):
“People with wealth (assets), homeowners, pensioners — they know very well how to look after their own interests,” says Bas Jacobs. “If you rub them the wrong way, you have a major electoral problem.”
“People mainly hear: ‘My own home will then be taxed more heavily,’” says Gerritsen. “But they don’t realize that they would then have to pay less tax somewhere else. That’s a message that is difficult for politicians to get across.”
Bas Jacobs is professor of economics and public finance at VU University Amsterdam
Source and context
Taxation. https://nos.nl/artikel/2631266-moet-werken-meer-lonen-hoe-dan-en-waarom-gebeurt-het-niet
Can’t you solve the latter by presenting those tax benefits for the powerful voters first?
“Want to pay less tax? Then let us tax home ownership more. That allows us to do x, y, z which cuts your x, y and z taxes in half and makes our country function much more efficiently.”
Or go have a chat with Seth Godin and Roland Imhoff, the guy who researches conspiracy thinking etc at that German university.
(Home ownership is essentially subsidised by the Dutch government. Home owners pay less. Income from work, however, is taxed heavily.)
Overheard conversation
Possibly I was meant to hear it.
The literal Dutch of “truthteller” is “waarzegster” (psychic). I look like one, the person added.
Nope, I am not a psychic and I look like someone who’s stuck in deep poverty.
Five months!
Five months of limping around with a completely avoidable foot injury because of the fucking police, fucking GGD and fucking enforcement!
Because of losing ALL YOUR RIGHTS the second you no longer have any money of your own and need to start begging the authorities for assistance in this fucking country.
NOS: Mayor Halsema about people like me AND what police claim, it’s hogwash.
My own experience is that police only alienate people in my type of situation, with their relentless lying, twisting and bullying, and deliberately chase them out of the built environment (particularly if they dare comment on policy or execution).
Because the housed voters aren’t supposed to know that we exist.
I’ve just been subjected to weeks of bullying again.
Just last week, police accused me of acquiring financial support from the city of Amsterdam, then doing the same in Utrecht, then going to Belgium. The fact that these cities don’t have their shit together is not my fault!
Next, they tried to bully me into doing something that a) was useless and b) I wasn’t in a position to do (go to JvG again) and claimed that having a commercial po box address in Amsterdam entitles me to financial support here.
(They treat us as if we’re dog excrement and at best as if we are 2-year-olds.)
In my experience, how well you survive is currently directly related to whether you are able to stay out of sight of police and handhaving and GGD.
The “verloedering” mentioned by Halsema is the direct result of local policy.
Standard policy is to deny people any kind of support if they have any type of connection to other countries, regardless of whether people are entitled to support. Most EU arbeidsmigranten are entitled to support (but hey, they’re won’t go to court, will they?). This is how the verloedering comes about. It’s a direct consequence of Halsema’s own decisions.
When I getting plenty of donations to my crowdfunder and was still in the built environment, doing laundry was not a problem. My clothes were clean enough (and not smelly as long as they weren’t sitting in a suitcase in the sun for too long).
Halsema mentions that she wants to decriminalize homelessness. She’s been saying that for years! She doesn’t want to, obviously. If she wanted it, she’d have done it ages ago.
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- Op de (gemeentelijke) website van “Veldwerk” staat politieke kletskoek over mensen die het contact met de samenleving zouden zijn kwijtgeraakt. Het is de politiek – de gemeente – die mensen uit de samenleving drukt.
- De mysterieuze locatie Transformatorweg (waar je als je mazzel hebt mag douchen and that’s it) evenals JvG-straat zijn voor mensen zonder geld vaak helemaal niet bereikbaar. Een arbeidsmigrant waar ik wel eens mee praat, moet een fiets stelen om er te kunnen komen.
- In maart 2025 heb ik een half uur over het beleid en de uitvoering gesproken met Nynke Engelhard van de gemeente. Ze leverde niet veel anders dan uitvluchten en schijnt de realiteit niet of nauwelijks te kennen. Ze/de gemeente denkt dat daklozen makkelijk 10, 20 kilometer per dag met hun bagage kunnen lopen. Mogelijk speelt hier iets mee dat in de VS heeft gespeeld mbt zwarte Amerikanen. Die zouden oersterk zijn, etc etc en last hebben van excited delirium. Dat laatste zie je ook bij de aanpak op het CS. Daklozen worden de regen in gejaagd op zo ongeveer de enige locatie in Amsterdam waar je ‘s nachts voor de regen kunt schuileen.
- Er netjes en schoon uitzien is puur een kwestie van geld cq compleet gebrek aan inkomen.
- De woningnood, grotendeels het gevolg van het feit dat huisvesting vroeger een fundamenteel mensenrecht was en nu een investering voor mensen en bedrijven die geld willen verdienen, vergt innovatie. Hoogleraar Peter Boelhouwer is dat met me eens, maar daar schijnt in de maatschappij geen draagvlak voor te zijn.
- Als reden waarom er zo weinig gebeurt, gaf Nynke Engelhard onder meer op dat daklozen ontzettend veel begeleiding nodig hebben (daarmee ook een trap naar mij gevend) en dat die mensen er niet zijn. Krapte op de arbeidsmarkt. Als je mensen de maatschappij uit trapt, wat dus in Amsterdam het beleid is, en ervoor zorgt dat ze statiegeldblikjes moeten verzamelen om eten te kunnen kopen, stompen ze enorm af en gaat ook hun fysieke gezondheid achteruit. (Dat dan voor sommigen drugs en alcohol op de loer gaan liggen verbaast me niet.)
- De problemen zijn echter voor een groot deel gewoon het gevolg van de aanpak die de gemeente hanteert!
- Als je mensen haast letterlijk de modder indrukt en ervoor zorgt dat ze statiegeldblikjes moeten verzamelen of bedelen om eten te kunnen kopen, stompen ze enorm af en gaat ook hun fysieke gezondheid achteruit. Ze raken permanent oververmoeid.
- Sinds ik zelf door de politie en handhaving uit de bebouwde kom ben gejaagd na een jaar lang op één locatie te zijn geweest (en vervolgens twee keer te worden verjaagd), is mijn eigen situatie flink verslechterd. Ik heb door dat gekloot een probleem met voet opgelopen en bleek stevig allergisch voor sommige muggen die buiten de bebouwde kom leven. Ik ben nu bovendien een behoorlijk eind van de AH verwijderd, kan niet meer even een bakje koffie pakken of een uurtje blikjes verzamelen of even teruglopen als ik iets ben vergeten mee te nemen of mijn handgel nog wil bijvullen. Dat, en de was doen, gaat nu gepaard met een expeditie.
- Dat kou een probleem zou zijn is ook politieke kletskoek. (Dat dit voor sommige verslaafden en alcoholgebruik speelt, geef ik toe, maar dat is eerder de uitzondering dan de regel.) Dat het straks al om 5 uur donker zal zijn op een locatie waar geen licht is, dat er nergens toiletten en oplaadpunten zijn geregeld, en de regen… plus juist oververhitting en dus ook het feit dat de kiezende behuisde burgers je niet mogen zien zijn in mijn ervaring veel dramatischer.
- De gemeente kan niet 9.000 of 10.000 woningen ergens vandaan toveren en 11.000 matrassen in sporthallen neerleggen, wat Nynke Engelhard lijkt te willen, dat is evenmin de oplossing. Dat is geen reden om dan maar niets te doen. Als de gemeente nou eens iedereen standaard 300 of 400 of 500 euro per maand zou geven en bij 300 gratis ov en op zou houden (met mensen laten opjagen door politie en handhaving en) met de vele tijdsverslindende afspraken met mensen die om financiële hulp vragen en dakloos zijn, dan hebben ze te eten en kunnen ze de was doen (en er dus schoon uit blijven zien, mevroi Halsema), ergens koffiedrinken om hun powerbanks en mobieltjes op te laden en ook af en toe ergens douchen. Dan hoeven ze geen blikjes meer te verzamelen. Dan dek je tenminste een aantal mensenrechten af, ook al zit huisvesting er dan nog niet bij.
- Dan krijg je een automatische schifting tussen mensen die extra hulp nodig hebben en mensen die zich wel redden.
- Ik weet niet hoe dit plaatje er financieel uit zou zien, maar wat is de gemeente in hemelsnaam aan het doen met die extra 62 miljoen???
- Je zou dan bijvoorbeeld elke maand een telefoongesprek kunnen hebben en na drie maanden een grondige evaluatie.
- De gemeente moet het ook verbieden dat mensen beperkingen worden opgelegd mbt het aantal nachten dat ze in een stapelbed in een toeristenhostel mogen verblijven en daar kunnen douchen als ze daarvoor het geld hebben en zich gewoon normaal gedragen. Sommige hostels hebben geen beperkingen, dus KAN het. Deze beperkingen worden NIET door de gemeente opgelegd.
- Bovendien moet er veel innovatiever worden gedacht en dan heb ik het niet over de door een stel onwetende kleuters bedachte onzin van Stek Oost oid. Men verschuilt zich voortdurend achter regels. Het lijkt de gemeente aan wil, visie en lef te ontbreken. Sommige oplossingen worden verworpen omdat ze niet binnen de regels passen, bijvoorbeeld mbt brandveiligheid, maar dat was het enige voorbeeld dat Nynke Engelhard gaf. Ipv daarvan moeten mensen dus maar in de modder blijven leven?
- Mensen komen NIET naar Amsterdam omdat daar hulp beschikbaar zou zijn. Je kunt simpelweg niet overleven in plaatsen die bij wijze van spreken bestaan uit twee straten en honderd sloten.
- Ik opper al een tijdje het idee dat capsule housing zoals je min of meer ziet in het Diamond Capsule Hotel in Amstelveen een oplossing zou kunnen zijn. De onroerend goed sector heeft een bar slechte reputatie. Ze zouden een nonprofit consortium kunnen oprichten dat leegstaande kantoorpanden te converteren (wat voor conventionele woningen vaak veel te duur is). Je zou modules kunnen plaatsen die makkelijk te transporteren zijn.
- Housing First is niet de oplossing. Income First. En housing. Zie ook: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/aug/23/finland-tried-to-end-homelessness-what-can-we-learn-from-its-runaway-success-and-recent-failures
- Met de GGD heb ik eind 1993 toen ik naar Amerika emigreerde heel positieve ervaringen gehad, maar mijn ervaringen van de laatste jaren zijn super negatief. In mijn huidige situatie is er vanuit de GGD Amsterdam geen enkele belangstelling voor mijn fysieke welzijn. Bek houden moet ik. Bek houden en vooral geen commentaar op beleid of uitvoering uiten. Het enige dat ze van mij momenteel mogen is mijn urine checken op tekenen van bacteriële infectie en zo nodig antibiotica regelen.
- Ik vind het schandalig dat de gemeente het eigen beleid op individuele mensen zoals Fatima Ata wil afwentelen, die puur bezig zijn met beleid uitvoeren, niet met beleid bepalen.
Copy of email that just went out to someone in the US – with update
(Sorry, the whitespace disappeared when I pasted both texts.)
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About Dutch social security benefits…YES, if you go online, there is a lot of information that makes it look like getting basic benefits is easy. What’s lacking is the small print and local policy. People who live in the Netherlands and don’t depend on them are convinced it’s easy and wonderful. That fancy-background Karen woman with the heaps of dough and her deceased dad’s best friend thought so too. She went online, figuring I had suddenly become retarded and concluded that she had it all figured out. She thought that I might even be able to get rent support while living in the bushes. “1400 euro per month. In six months, you’ll have your van.” It’s not easy at all. It’s a frikking nightmare in most municipalities and that includes Amsterdam.I should have known! Because in 2017, after Frank either simply forgot about or reneged on his promises, when he was still living at his previous address – in Amsterdam – without the nasty, now second ex wife, we stopped by at the civic offices and back then, they said that there wasn’t anything that they could do for me. I’d forgotten, frankly. 🫢🙄😬These days, if you have any kind of ties to abroad, including your parents being foreign or having a foreign-sounding name, you’re considered likely to be scheming to defraud the system. So rejecting your application is standard policy in many municipalities. I’ve gotten hassled like crazy again. Some were standing behind me so I couldn’t see how many there were, but up to 6 cops hassled me.This is what appears to have happened. First, a plainclothes dude drove me out of a location that is next to a path so that if they hassle you there, the public witnesses it. He said he had been to prison for 9 years and that he was going to come back and set fire to the whole shebang with me in it. But he talked like a cop!Second, people showed up who said that they were enforcement. In the Netherlands, people in lots of roles don’t need to identify themselves, in order to protect them from the public. You have to take them at their word. I was now at a location where the public just sees a bunch of cops in the distance standing around someone who the public can’t really see.Third, an army of police officers showed up, initially addressed me by a decades old nickname from even before we became acquainted, Julie. Wtf? But they claimed to have been flagged down in their car by a jogger about an unknown woman going haywire (about to brush her teeth and put on her makeup).They stood shouting and lying and twisting my words and their own for nearly two hours (making me postpone an appointment and messing up my planning for the week, taking my injured foot into account). Among other things, they said to me that the previous people hadn’t been enforcement at all. But they later DID refer to them as “enforcement”.They called me an illegal at first, too.And (twice, I think): “You’ll claim benefits here and then you’ll go to Utrecht to claim benefits and then you may go to Belgium.”Later they said that I can get benefits here on the basis of my nearly-10-bucks-per-month postbox address here. That’s utter nonsense. Etc etc.There’s a guy here called frank van der linde who used to be a management consultant, and was in various other organizations/businesses, ran one of them (food-related), then slowly became an activist – as well as a writer and columnist. He wrote about police brutality, racism, arms sales, unhealthy and unsustainable foods etc. He started receiving threats. Neighbors complained that they no longer felt safe. He was told to move out. That’s how HE became homeless.Police declared him both an extremist and a mentally unwell person who should be locked up. (Police here are doing the latter to me as well, not the former as far as I’m aware, just because I dare criticize public policy and local approaches to among other things homelessness, just like that van der linde guy).But the question remains: Why did they address me by that decades-old nickname? I started using that when I was 11 or 12 because of a stupid song by a popular singer called Peter Koelewijn. That nickname started disappearing since 1981 and I dropped it formally in 1994. There’s a local very silly, petty woman who I told about that nickname. It’s possible that it was somewhere in a police computer s
UPDATE
This, below, is what I wrote to the police. They got back to me. It wasn’t them.
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Dag,Ik ben op 26 augustus 2026 rond 8, 9 uur in de ochtend een kleine twee uur lastig gevallen door vier tot zes Amsterdamse politieagenten. Ik heb daardoor een afspraak elders moeten verplaatsen naar een andere dag. Er gebeurde daarbij iets heel vreemds. Dat is de reden dat ik contact opneem. (Dat vertel ik zo.) Dit was duidelijk personally targeted harassment, bleek daaruit. Wat zit daarachter? Drie mogelijkheden: 1) targeted harassment van de politie ivm mijn social justice activisme of 2) targeted harassment van een Belgische mevrouw (An Desmet) met een vreemde obsessie naar mij toe die in maart of april van dit jaar uit de hand begon te lopen of 3) targeted harassment van een Belgische mevrouw (An Desmet) aangestuurd door een vriendin van haar (Sandra) die toevallig heeft gewerkt voor met name één bepaalde gemeentelijke instantie waar ik in het verleden kritiek op heb geleverd. Van die vriendin (Sandra) van die Belgische mevrouw heb ik in 2025 overlast ervaren, maar een en ander was behoorlijk zielig en onbenullig. Ik heb er nooit over gesproken, maar met succes alle contact acuut afgekapt. Ik was destijds wel kort bezorgd dat ik deze dame (Sandra) niet op een afstand zou kunnen houden. Ze schijnt nog twee keer haar hengeltje te hebben uitgeslagen, via haar vriendin mw Desmet. Dat heb ik toen straal genegeerd. Ik heb beide dames na het afkappen van alle contacten met elk niet meer gezien. Mevrouw Desmet heb ik in pakweg mei 2025 voor het eerst ontmoet. Een tijd daarna benaderde ze me op haar werk (OBA) toen ze me daar opeens herkende. Ze speelt geen rol in mijn leven. Haar vriendin is ook voor mij een wildvreemde. Aan u om dit op te volgen.UITLEG De agenten beweerden door een jogger in hun auto te zijn gestopt ivm mij, iemand die ze niet kenden. Ze benaderden me echter door me aan te spreken met een nickname die ik decennia geleden had (sinds zesde klas lagere school, maar vanaf 1981 langzaam verdwijnend en in 1994 formeel vervangen). Heel vreemd. Die Belgische mevrouw (An Desmet) heb ik over die nickname verteld. Toen ik die nickname nog gebruikte, heb ik ooit de politie in Amsterdam gebeld ivm met een diefstal van een auto die op dat moment leek plaats te vinden aan de Gillis van Ledenberchstraat. Eind of midden jaren 80 was dat. Die nickname zou dus ook in jullie systemen kunnen zitten. Hier klopt dus iets niet. Als dat niet duidelijk is, hoor ik het graag. Bedankt voor de moeite.
Does this mean that I should file a crime report for targeted harassment by Ms D?
Crazy Orwellian Amsterdam
About two weeks ago, I increasingly started to get hassled.
- First there was a wacko nut job. I posted videos about it. Will write it up here later.
- Then there were people who said that they were handhaving (enforcement). They claimed that their names were Tessa and Léon.
- Then on Wednesday, a bunch of police officers showed up who first said that the previous folks had not been enforcement but GGD but later did refer to them as “handhaving”.
The main thing that Wednesday’s police officers made clear is that the only thing that I can count on in the Netherlands is getting bullied and terrorised by police officers and similar critters, and that’s because I dare criticise public policy and failing approaches to issues in society created by public policy/political decisions (and the associated human rights violations).
I’ve read – article in Parool – that there’s a guy here in Amsterdam who has been doing something similar and they did what they could to shut him up too.
I now – while writing this post – discover that there is a Wikipedia page about him.
His name is Frank van der Linde. https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_van_der_Linde
What I am reading on that Wikipedia page has also been my experience in the Netherlands since my return from the UK, where I am still officially based.
If you dare to be critical of public policy or astonishingly amateur approaches taken by authorities, municipal civil servants and police officers claim that you’re mentally ill and should be locked up in a psychiatric hospital.
It’s what Dutch police said about him and what Dutch police in Amsterdam and civil servants in a tiny town called Purmerend have been saying about me too. Amsterdam wijkagent Chris claimed that I had been asking the public to take all their guns to Amsterdam’s mayor Femke Halsema. He called in a psychiatric nurse to undermine me.
The civil servants in Purmerend had me swatted by GGD and next tried or threatened to declare me non compos mentis after I dared want to talk about some of their approaches. This is why I went to the city of Maastricht to renew my passport and officially had to leave the Netherlands to be able to do so. I couldn’t renew my passport in Purmerend, obviously.
They declared Van der Linde an extremist, on top of that.
It’s disgusting.
Welcome to the Netherlands. Welcome to Amsterdam.
Back to Frank van der Linde.
“Voor OneWorld schreef hij van februari 2013 tot februari 2016 over extreemrechts, racisme, politiegeweld, wapenexport, ongezond en onduurzaam voedsel, onduurzame kleding, tax injustice, mass surveillance en ander onrecht.”
Translation: For OneWorld (from February 2013 to February 2016), he wrote about the far right, racism, police violence, arms exports, unhealthy and unsustainable food, unsustainable clothing, tax injustice, mass surveillance, and other forms of injustice.
This is what made HIM homeless.
Frank van der Linde became homeless after they (Amsterdam’s mayor Femke Halsema, likely) forced him to leave his home after he started receiving threats, just like other people and businesses that are crime targets (for example attacks with explosives, which is totally normal in the Netherlands these days) are often forced to leave their homes by the Dutch authorities. (Yes, read that again.)
I thought I was probably exaggerating a little with my impression that I am being targeted because I dare criticise notably Amsterdam’s public policy and approaches. Fycking hell. I wasn’t at all.This is a fycking Orwellian police state now. Wtf?!
I thought that the fact that I was constantly seeing police vehicles seemingly following me, driving around me, was probably just a coincidence.Then police showed up, addressed me by a decades old nickname but claimed to have been flagged down by a jogger about a mentally ill woman… “Verwarde vrouw”. A stranger.
Now the police vehicles have stopped constantly driving past me.
One of the Dutch police officers demanded my Dutch correspondence address. Why? Why didn’t he also ask for my UK address?(Because they want access to my postal mail in the Netherlands. They can’t claim access to my postal mail in the UK. What else? They looked at my passport for AGES!!! Ages. The first response when they looked at my pasport was “you’re an illegal”. They contradicted that again later.)
The same guy later also said that I was very demanding. ⬅️⬅️⬅️ He must have been referring to my criticisms of public policy and bumbling approaches.What else?
I have not been making any demands. None.
This wacko guy who showed up the other day to say that he was going to be back and set fire, did he set fire to this Parknest building for the purpose of framing ME? I gotta ask this question now. Can’t afford not to.
In spite of everything that I’ve experienced… Holy cow… I think I am still far too trusting and gullible.
You know what? That’s a GOOD thing. 🙃😌 I’ve got an immensely strong core. Maybe it means that I’m incorruptible to some or that I can not be broken to others.
____
PS
The Purmerend civil servant (Roos Boersma) who went into a neighbouring apartment with a colleague so that they could climb onto my balcony via the neighbours’ had previously sent me a long message in super secure Zivver once just to whine about me.
She used to work at a collection agency, with her civil servant colleague Bodine Timp.
Bodine Timp’s colleague Annica van Rijn was the one who had me swatted. This was after I dared address Annica and Bodine’s amateur approach to very new Dutch legislation (that they had also failed to inform me about).
To my 351 subscribers
Holy cow. American govt accessing all data of Dutch people?!!
test
Nah, nobody is messing with my emails
23 February 2026: Have meanwhile found some more nonsense.
Nah, nobody is messing with my emails. (That’s sarcasm.)
I’m suddenly getting lots of emails from the forum SaxOnTheWeb.net. Haven’t had a saxophone in years and hadn’t had email from this forum in many years either.
This started on 5 August 2025. No, I hadn’t logged into that email for a while.
See screenshot below. The photo dates back to Bristol, 2009 (rehearsal for Andy Sheppard’s Sax Massive).
What narcissistic personality disorder may be about
Possibly, these are people who emotionally got stuck in the quest to fullfill their deficiency needs.
They do crave having a sense of belonging, acceptance of who they are and to get respect and recognition, but there is some kind of instant loop that often shuts the door to it the moment it opens because then their lack of safety and personal security kicks in. Something like that.
This was a thought that went through my mind last night.
I’ll need to toss this around a little more.
Why am I often – okay, occasionally – being pushed THIS particular course?
(Not that I can even afford it at 50% off.)
YouTube pushes this into my stream from time to time and I have no idea why. They seem to think that I’m a clinical psychologist? But why?
I’m not in the business of fixing people. Like I posted before, for about a decade this website was little more than a front under which I plotted so many attempts to get away from the abusive sadistic situation that I was in – which I could not do openly for obvious reasons – while at the same time trying to figure out what on earth I was dealing with while I was stuck inside of it and trying to understand how some people become so terribly broken that they have to control every aspect of other people’s lives and turn them into nightmares out of some deep angry resentment… for what? For not being accepted the way they are.
I certainly don’t want to fix people like Donald Trump. I can’t. (I think that nobody can.)
Oh. LOL. I’ve got it.
Ghislaine Maxwell: More detail than you probably are aware of in this five-part series at ABC News
Fail!
My youngest sister Renate: The discrepancy between how she sees herself, how others see her and how the world has changed. It’s not all her fault. Some of it is mine, in fact.
TIP: Download Ray Dalio’s book “Principles for success”, dear sis. Maybe reading that will help.
On LinkedIn, as I just discovered, my youngest sibling wrote something very interesting last year. It was in Dutch, so I asked ChatGPT to translate it for me, which it does in less than a minute, but might take me half an hour. I’m posting the original at the bottom.
Continue readingWomen in the geosciences, geoethics
| The Journal of Geoethics and Social Geoscience (JGSG) published two new open-access articles in the Special Issue “Women in Geosciences”, edited by Daniela Di Bucci, Luisa Sabato and Martina Zucchi. Qadir A., Usman M., Artoni A. and Chizzini N. (2025). The role of geospatial training in empowering women for environmental decision-making policies. Journal of Geoethics and Social Geosciences, 3(Special Issue), 1-23. https://doi.org/10.13127/jgsg-85 Fregola R.A., Maiorano P., Micheletti F., Sabato L. and Zucchi M. (2025). Learning from five pioneer women in Geosciences: a long-lasting story. Journal of Geoethics and Social Geosciences, 3(Special Issue), 1-28. https://doi.org/10.13127/jgsg-90 |
Geese stories – swan attacks
I’ve been hampered by a foot problem so I don’t know what exactly happened when, but about a week ago, I discovered that one goose was missing from a flock of six. The remaining five were depressed and possibly shocked.
What happened?
A day or so later, after I saw what looked like one of the two lead geese trying to drown the other, I started to believe that that’s what happened. I was quite disillusioned. This wasn’t the vibe that I had been getting from them. How could I have been so wrong?
Today, five geese stood tall on the bank, watching me approach from the other side of the water. They seemed to be waiting for me.
Geese Nr. 6 was in the water there. Thin, tired, covered in mud.
The other five geese and particularly the lead goose made clear that they wanted me to look after goose Nr. 6 right now. Not after them.
Goose Nr. 6 already had a bum leg and some grey patches.
I was still at a loss as to what had happened when two swans showed up and one of them suddenly attacked. I was able to tell it off. They have no little ones and were being terrible bullies. I don’t like that. I told them that. They need to go back to their side of the bridge.
The other five geese were clearly trying to lure the swans away from Goose Nr. 6. Lead goose Nr. 2 is currently limping – and hissing a lot, not surprisingly.
I called a friend and also searched the web for what best to feed. I ended up with corn, peas and chicken cheese cat food. The goose liked the cat food.
I’d already given escarole and bread. I hate giving bread but in this case, maybe it wasn’t so bad because the bird needed calories. (Unfortunately, they tend to go for bread.)
I’ll stop by from time to time and I’ll do what I can. It can’t get out of the water; I don’t know why.
Of course, bird flu crossed my mind too, but I didn’t think I was seeing the results of bird flu. When the swan suddenly attacked and the goose went into a panic, everything became clear.
These geese really see me as their friend, possibly because of the story below.
I’d always counted to see if they were all there, but after the incident 👇🏻, I counted out loud, to let them know.
(Humans are the stupid ones. That’s what I have learned from birds. If you work with animals instead of against them, you can achieve a lot more. Non-human animals are “people”. Many birds are incredibly smart, far smarter than humans.)
(That said, I tell swans that are out of line off the same way that I tell humans off when they’re out of line.)
This incident below happened on 5 November.
What exactly occurred here, I wondered?
For the record, I have brought these geese escarole (andijvie) a few times, mostly in the summer when there was almost no grass etc. I’ve known them for about 8 months and I mostly talk with them. On this occasion, I thought that giving them a bite to eat might be good. I brought them escarole the next day.
I tried Google Takeout as part of degoogling my life
“Your total request size is 427.36 GB. This request has been divided into 107 files.”
You can’t see what the downloads are for (which data they contain) and what the size of each file is, but apparently they are up to 4GB large. You can choose 1, 2 or 4GB as file size.
There are 69 types of data, most of which do not pertain to my activities. So, let’s try again.
Now I have one for 17 “products”, excluding Gmail.
Is peaceful protest grounds for deportation? No, rules tribunal judge in Marcus Decker case
Jailed climate activist wins appeal against deportation from UK
Marcus Decker was served with deportation order while in prison for unveiling Just Stop Oil banner over Dartford Crossing
Haroon Siddique Legal affairs correspondent
Mon 10 Nov 2025 18.48 CET
A climate activist who served one of the longest prison sentences in modern British history for a peaceful protest has won his appeal against deportation.
Marcus Decker was jailed for two years and seven months for a protest in which he climbed the Queen Elizabeth Bridge over the Dartford Crossing and unveiled a Just Stop Oil banner in October 2022. He was served with an automatic deportation order while in prison.
If he had been unsuccessful in his appeal, the 36-year-old German national would have been the first person to have been deported from the UK for peaceful protest.
Dierenambulance Amsterdam issues
- When I called them in August, the menu required you to choose between young birds and “meldkamer” (desk). That is done from within their own perspective and does not keep the public in mind. Members of the public often can’t see the difference between a duck, a Canada goose and an Egyptian goose. I suggested the division “birds” and “anything else” to them in August, among a few other things, such as having people all over town who can very quickly walk to a bird and check out the situation.
- They should give talks at schools etc. It’s true that many people do not know that for example a gull can have a drooping wing without there being anything wrong with it whatsoever. Pigeons even often use one wing to rest on, as if it is a bed.
- A major problem at the location where I found the gull (which, by the way, I think I had already spotted a few days before), is dog owners who allow their dogs to chase birds and give neither a toss nor a rat’s ass. Those dogs can easily surprise a juvenile bird and grab such a drooping wing, for example, causing a dislocation or worse.
- In 2018, Dierenambulance wrote the following to me after I saw a duck with a damaged bill. I think it was using a small and shallow pond near an apartment building to feed itself. (Mind you, someone else had already asked me if I had managed to catch it.)
This is what they should also educate the public about.
If you do that at schools, the kids will tell their parents and aunts and uncles.
“Wanneer de eend zichzelf nog weet te redden, dan is het misschien beter hem/haar te laten en de stress niet aan te doen van het vangen en brengen naar dierenarts en/of opvang. De vogel weet niet beter meer, dat zien wij wel vaker. Zo is er een groep eenden bij ons om de hoek waarvan 1 eend een gebroken vleugel heeft. Maar ze laat zich niet vangen, kan in en uit water en wordt niet verstoten door de groep. Ze leeft gewoon zo verder en vind dat prima. En dus wij ook. Een goede graatmeter om te zien of de vogel het gaat redden is of hij/zij zich laat vangen. Wanneer niet, dan redden ze zichzelf vaak (nog) wel. Laat een vogel zich vangen, dan is het helaas goed mis.”
“Dank je wel voor al je hulp Angelina!”
“Wanneer de eend zichzelf nog weet te redden, dan is het misschien beter hem/haar te laten en de stress niet aan te doen van het vangen en brengen naar dierenarts en/of opvang. De vogel weet niet beter meer, dat zien wij wel vaker. Zo is er een groep eenden bij ons om de hoek waarvan 1 eend een gebroken vleugel heeft. Maar ze laat zich niet vangen, kan in en uit water en wordt niet verstoten door de groep. Ze leeft gewoon zo verder en vind dat prima. En dus wij ook. Een goede graatmeter om te zien of de vogel het gaat redden is of hij/zij zich laat vangen. Wanneer niet, dan redden ze zichzelf vaak (nog) wel. Laat een vogel zich vangen, dan is het helaas goed mis.”
Grotendeels helemaal mee eens!
I agree with Dierenambulance that wildlife often adapts, just like humans do. Certainly in an urban environment where there is plenty of food, birds with disabilities can survive. In my previous post, I mentioned that John Chitty told me that birds with a dislocated wing often still manage to fly.
Below a geese story, from the same location as where the gull was left behind in a laundry basket. The poor thing was PARCHED, btw. That happened on 5 November 2025, so just a few days earlier.
What exactly occurred here?
For the record, I have brought these geese escarole (andijvie) a few times, mostly in the summer when there was almost no grass etc. I’ve known them for about 8 months and I mostly talk with them. On this occasion, I thought that giving them a bite to eat might be good. I brought them escarole the next day.
Simyo (and Amazon): Wat nu weer????
I checked in advance and saw that this month’s outgoing payment was scheduled properly. Except… It’s NOT listed as having gone out. It’s completely disappeared? It’s not listed under failed payments either.
I’ve been having SO MANY PROBLEMS with my Dutch direct debits, for two years now. They disappear into thin air (and companies usually don’t allow you to pay from your end, so you incur fines). It’s affected three or four other accounts too.
I do think that the amount actually went out. (On the basis of the balance. I also remember that I checked that day and I think I saw it listed as having gone out, too.)
It was scheduled for the 24th, I think.
🤬😠😤🙄
My bank just merged with (or was bought by) a bigger bank and I hoped that this would put an end to these hiccups. Nope.
Amazon including kdp etc hiccups may be because of that outage they had? (Amazon login hiccups happen often.)!It won’t accept the password reset codes either this time, however. Turns out that it says it will send the code to your email but it simultaneously sends a different code to your phone…. Next it sends one to the alternative number that it has for you.
Odd (let’s call it that)
Update 20 Oct: This was followed by several emails about my “friend Steve”. That is a very common English first name. John and Dave are other examples.
Here is part of one:
(This strikes me as largely nonsense, btw. This particular person isn’t really a friend and not someone who would worry about me. He doesn’t care. It’s someone I last saw in 1996.)
Here’s another one:
Someone in the US just wrote to me: “I receive several emails regarding you from a friend of yours with access to your email — which is how he found me. That correspondence was brief and has been over for months, but wierd to say the least.”
I’ve asked for this person’s name and to forward me a few of those emails.
I have three names for these hackers now, and two of them are women. One of them is Portsmouth-based and among other things paid for my website for a year.
The other one of the women who contacted me said she was a hacker but I don’t believe her because when she popped up on Telegram, she quickly hid herself but she still popped up on Signal as well and when I sent her angry texts as I have her phone number, one of her responses was really stupid and contradicted what she wrote earlier, basically admitting that she had a reason to be among the “contacts” on my phone. So if she really IS a hacker, she is not a smart one. She speaks Dutch and American English, once arranged to meet with me at a Dutch public library but I found her sitting next to me at a very different public library branch (and drawing attention to herself) months later.
Update 17 June 2026: Ehm, this first woman was Eden Stroet who works at Hadrian in Amsterdam.
THIS SHOWS THE WRONG MINDSET
“I’m still processing all the impressions and experiences from this valuable trip,” says Annemarie van Gils, management adviser at De Alliantie.
“What echoes most strongly are the words of a woman in the women’s shelter: ‘For the first time in my life, I have a home.’
That is so essential, so fundamentally important.
But also striking was the tremendous passion of so many staff members — such as a young woman at the Salvation Army, for example, who beams with joy when she talks about her work for the residents.”
(Translated by ChatGPT, edited by me.)
‘Ik ben alle indrukken en ervaringen van deze waardevolle reis nog aan het verwerken,’ zegt Annemarie van Gils, directie-adviseur bij De Alliantie. ‘Wat het meest naklinkt zijn de woorden van een dame in de vrouwenopvang: “Voor het eerst in mijn leven heb ik een thuis.” Dat is zo van wezenlijk, fundamenteel belang. Maar ook de enorme passie van veel medewerkers. Zo’n jongedame bij het Leger des Heils bijvoorbeeld, die helemaal straalt als ze vertelt over haar werk voor de bewoners.
From: https://hvoquerido.nl/meedoen-volgens-de-finnen/
Ask me why.
Further to my discussion with the City of Amsterdam
29 October 2025: I followed it up with a message explaining that I understand that they probably see me as a pain in the behind. Ms Engelhard didn’t reply to that either.
Let’s face it. A) The city permanently shut its doors to me in December 2024 and B) the fact that the city doesn’t even provide something as utterly basic as toilets probably says it all. They are not interested in remedying issues. They are just into cosmetics.
See also this research done at the University of Amsterdam. It’s a chapter in The Routledge Handbook of Global Perspectives on Homelessness, Law & Policy (pp. 175-187). Published in 2024. People went undercover, pretending to be homeless, as part of this research.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003274056-12
https://pure.uva.nl/ws/files/180146235/10.4324_9781003274056-12_chapterpdf.pdf
(copy and paste if you don’t trust links)
This is a follow-up to this previous post:
https://angelinasouren.com/2025/10/14/my-ongoing-discussion-with-the-city-of-amsterdam/
See also: https://angelinasouren.com/homelessnessness-in-the-netherlands/
Note that Ms Engelhard did not deny that the City’s behind the intimidation. (This may be why: Homeless people in Amsterdam are no longer fined, as of 13 June 2025. That is in theory. Have the regulations been updated or was this more empty waffling? https://www.dedaklozenvakbond.nl/2025/06/13/geen-boetes-meer/)
Looks like it: https://decorrespondent.nl/16264/buiten-moeten-slapen-dat-is-geen-overtreding-maar-een-onrecht/7774e412-2a4a-0572-05fd-b77458dbf41f There is still a large number of fines that can be imposed on homeless people (and my sense of what was happening around me was that it was geared toward being able to impose at least one on me; I haven’t stated what has been happening and what else I’ve been observing and that’s on purpose).
No, I am – clearly – no longer in negotiating mode or trying to keep anyone at the City of Amsterdam particularly happy. I am being cantankerous, from their point of view. I get that. Personally, I have very little to no faith left in these municipal circuses and the money-making industry that surrounds it. That’s now irrepairable.
I do understand why the municipality sees me as a pain in the behind but I’ve also contacted a different Dutch municipality about its homelessness challenges and took part in a discussion on the topic for London as well.
If I can help push through some improvements, with or without my cousin* pushing from the other side, then I might be quite happy.
(This cousin runs a large real estate undertaking in the mid-market housing segment – and in investing – so he might need to set up an extra company, which in itself is no big deal but entering a very different market segment would be. However, he could still push without doing that and he could also implement changes to existing practices because his existing tenants can easily be impacted too. I’d like to see him use empty office buildings that are too expensive to turn into “proper” apartments, such as the one in Amsterdam Zuid-Oost that I read about – possibly the former ING building? – for capsule housing. You could have two forms: Pods for currently homeless people – because you don’t sleep much at all in a hall with lots of mattresses on the floor and similar places – and larger capsules for young people who can’t afford a bloody fortune in rent but would like to be able to save. The real estate sector has a crappy reputation. My cousin could do break-even projects as a show of corporate responsibility. I know he would have to convince others too. He’s not Donald Trump. I know that. But where there is a will, there is a way. Maybe he can start a consortium with other real estate firms that would like to change the sector.)
The Netherlands is gridlocked in a crazy mess of regulations. That, too, needs to change urgently.
De volkomen bezopen waanzin van de Nederlandse hokjesgeest en verstikkende regelziekte… Lees dit: De regels versimpelen voor AOW’ers die willen samenwonen, scheelt de overheid potentieel honderden miljoenen. En er komen jaarlijks honderden tot duizenden extra woningen vrij.
No, I had not asked Ms Engelhard for help in March, but I was hungry and had called one of those centers where people in my situation are supposed to be able to get a meal, shower and do laundry (at a small fee). Their opening hours are limited and the need is FAR BIGGER than what these centers are still able to offer in terms of capacity. So far, Mayor Femke Halsema has been adamant that she won’t offer more support.
When I called this center, I was told that it was only available for people who were already registered there.
At the end of the call, I asked Ms Engelhard where I might be able to get a meal and I told her about this. Somehow, Ms Engelhard knew which center (inloophuis) I was talking about. I don’t know how she knew.
She informed me that I would be able to get a meal at a location that turned out to be west of Sloterplas, at about 7 kilometers (from where I was at the time, I think, which was east of Central Station). She mentioned a specific time.
I told her that I would not be able to make it.
I googled it later and it was a center for men, it said online, but I’ve found that the online information as to where and when you can find resources is often non-existent or contradictory.
Anyway, this wasn’t doable for me. I was dragging two suitcases and a heavy underseat cabin bag along with me. I already was exhausted.
One thing that the city definitely has to do if it continues on its course of sending people to the fringes of town all the time is give them (storage facilities, anyway, and) a public transport pass. If the City gives you a registered address, for example, then you’re obliged to go to the far Nieuw West once a week at a specific time, off the top of my head. Otherwise you will lose the address.
There are conditions tied to the benefits too that I can no longer meet. Ms Engelhard said that it would not take me that long to find new living quarters, but I reckon it would take 15 to 20 years.
Below are the two texts I had sent to the mayor. I think that these are the exact same versions, but there might be minor differences.
I was still in the middle of learning how to do homelessness. Sleep deprivation is such a huge factor initially that you quickly realize that it is vital to get enough sleep. (That is not an issue at all for me any longer.) After that, you discover that rain is actually the biggest problem. The worries about people freezing to death mostly concern the image of city councils etc. You can learn how to deal with cold, but rain makes you miserable, wet and muddy and powerless. There is very little you can do about it. Toilets are an issue too. There are almost no public toilets in Amsterdam. Most are for men only and even the ones for men are only for, eh, number 1?
I just also emailed the town of Beverwijk about its homelessness problem, btw. I sent them this link: https://www.lekkertehuur.nl/
Sleep deprivation, hunger and utter physical exhaustion – along with anger about getting treated like trash or like terrorists – are behind the symptoms that get homeless people vilified.
Anyway, with regard to what happened in December 2024: I tend to think of what happened as the result of me having emigrated to England in 2004, but I was in fact informed that the issue was that I hadn’t been staying in a tent or car but on someone’s couch.
Unfortunately, there’s nobody who can sign off as to whether or not you’ve been on the street (and there’s probably no form for it either). It was my understanding that I had to be on someone’s couch, perhaps so that someone could sign off. They said that there was an arrangement with the Amsterdam suburb that I was in at the time. Amsterdam runs over into it; there is no unbuilt environment in between.
I have a feeling that if I’d stayed in a tent, I’d have been told yet some other reason as to why I didn’t qualify.
Continue reading