The other day, as I was walking through Amsterdam Central Station, I was behind a young woman, probably a law student, who was discussing what sounded like a classroom exercise in which she had needed to take on the role of prosecutor. I think the case concerned a hijacking. Of what, I don’t know. The point was about distinguishing between the law and morality.

I’d have liked to go for a coffee and hear a little more about it.

She sounded like she was really into it. Eager to learn and explore. I like that. The world needs that.

She may not have been a law (or perhaps political philosophy) student at all. No idea. I didn’t get to see her face.

It may sound strange but few things are so nourishing and encouraging and motivating as seeing students grow. It’s one of the reasons why I wanted to have my own research group. I loved that aspect of it, including sometimes helping someone over a little hump. I can’t quite find the words to describe this, but I find it wonderful. It’s wonderful to be surrounded by wonderful, motivated people. Maybe it’s that, but I think it’s more than that.

On 24 October 2024, Tom Whipple wrote an article in the Times about whether you need to be attractive to get ahead. (Yes, but this isn’t news.)

Old is ugly too.

Many people assume that I think and do all other work with my skin and that my wrinkles impede my functioning.

Now I understand where all those “plastic” faces come from. Scary.

(The good thing? It ain’t much fun anyway, interacting with people who have nothing but contempt for you. So, good riddance to anyone who doesn’t want to work with me on account of my wrinkles.)

Holy cow. 40% of companies post fake job vacancies and many even hold fake interviews.

I have mentioned fake vacancies before, not that long ago.

But fake interviews? That’s seriously deranged.

This may explain some of my recent experiences.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2024/oct/30/ghost-jobs-why-do-40-of-companies-advertise-positions-that-dont-exist

I have had several weird experiences. You get the feeling that something is off or even that someone is pulling a prank on you. Because sometimes you can see that things aren’t adding up. But you don’t quite know what to make of it.

Holy cow.

In comments on YouTube and other online venues but also in real life, people often talk about being alone.

For most of us, the only time when we are not alone is until some point after our birth. Anything else is usually merely an illusion. Spouses and children, friends and siblings can commit suicide (such as my brother in law), get killed in a crime or accident, divorce you, succumb to a disease or simply disappear.

None of this is permanent. Nothing is, except aloneness.

I became first aware of the illusion that the lack of aloneness is when I was working on my master’s. To test this, I hid from all my contacts for a while. Nobody noticed. Nobody called to ask where I was, how I was doing.

A little later, I got admonished while on geological fieldwork in Spain for not letting the others know where I was going. Just in case something happened. A few days later, I accidentally walked off my map and “got lost”. When I finally made it to the village where I was staying, after 10 pm, I saw people with flashlights.

I was touched! They had been right! People were looking for me!

Except, they were not.

The people with flashlights were strangers.

Nobody had noticed that I hadn’t gotten back yet.

That’s life.

It’s an illusion to think different.

(The hackers in my equipment are too often just messing with me and abusive by definition, because hacking is such a massive boundary violation. They may create a dependency, an illusion of company or support, but it’s based on a massive power imbalance and on the anonymity of the hacker. The hacker knows who you are. You don’t know who he is. You have no idea of his intentions or his level of information or intelligence. But there isn’t anyone else. That’s the big tragedy at the moment.)

For those of you who don’t know this, I recently ended up in the middle of an actual care home. I suppose that this was very hard for me also because I watched my mother suffer for years and then die when I was 14. But that’s an aside.

The huge housing shortage in the Netherlands made me click on a place for which I was placed first on a waiting list of 2600 people in the housing allocation system. I clicked on another one – max 2 allowed – and visited that too, in Amsterdam, but it was being renovated and should have been ready. It wasn’t. I needed a place to live. (How bad could it be?) My apartment was supposed to be a pretty normal apartment. At least, that’s what I expected. It wasn’t. It was anything but. Things were pretty bad from the beginning and were getting worse and worse and worse. It’s not the people who live there who are the problem. The other wing on my floor had dementia patients, but they were not the problem either.

I couldn’t stand it any longer. I wanted my life back. I want my life back.

A man and a woman are living somewhere nice. They are both elderly. He’s fine mentally, but weak physically. She needs a lot more care.

Their physician recommends that they move into a place where care is easier to access. Their daughter asks if they can move into a home in her town because she can’t do much right now because of the distance, she says.

The two listen and move.

Now they are stuck in an apartment (and place) that they don’t like at all and their daughter still doesn’t visit. They can’t get out any longer.

I could and I did, and I really needed to, to save myself. Easy? Hell no, but all sorts of things were really getting out of hand, as you may have noticed.

This story is part of the misery that I was seeing, or sensing.

The creation of ghettos for older adults often constitutes cruel and unusual punishment for being of a certain age. Look up the definition of the word “ghetto”.

I had to get out. I really had to.

I so wish that I had never moved in there and that I had insisted on waiting for a home in Amsterdam. (It would not have come with all the craziness that goes with living in such a place, apparently.) I’d felt I had no choice. I guess I was wrong again.

(When will I ever learn?)

I was increasingly shuddering with misery and revolt, but doing my best to keep it at bay. I had to get out. I really had to get out. Staying would have been a big mistake.

So there’s that.

I’m so pleased that I got out. Things are already looking up, and even though I am physically tired, I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I was about to wither away and die there. I deserve better.

I’d already had fifteen years that were a lot like this behind me. Ugh. No more!

I know a woman who just like me had a small business for approximately as many years. We’ve cooperated a few times, I know her from a network for women in science and technology. She has a PhD.

She too is getting some kind of benefits now. She’s in the Netherlands, but not in Purmerend. She has a very well managed bipolar disorder. She gets to talk about what she would like to do in terms of work. In a normal relaxed atmosphere.

No people are climbing onto her balcony either.

No people are suggesting that she has dementia or whatever. She’s slightly older than I am. She’s divorced these days, living on her own.

I feel HOUNDED and HARASSED, by contrast. HATED. I’ve never before felt this hated. Not even in Portsmouth.

I think that that’s because this is supposed to be my home country. This is where I should be able to expect to be treated like an equal. To discover that my civil rights get violated just as easily here is very painful.

The Dutch say that they want to treat people equally in equal circumstances. This last bit holds the clue to inequality.

I want to feel safe again. I have not been able/allowed to feel safe in a long time, I think. The first two or three weeks after I moved from Southampton to Portsmouth, perhaps. That was at the start of 2009.

What can I say? I’m doing a lot of physical stuff and I am no longer 30.

Please do not euthanize me yet, you “voltooid leven” people. That would really be about 30 years too early.

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Besides that I’ve been dealing with completely bonkers and often pretty aggressive and extremely biased behaviors from people at the local municipality (civic offices, council), there is also a trend here to use EXPLOSIVES when people aren’t getting along.

Portsmouth is pretty tame by comparison. It’s hard to believe that I really just wrote that.*

nohoooooo, that is not what I meant … 😂

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/oct/19/fight-save-vulnerable-uk-children-school-exclusions-lawyers

❤️🙏🏻👍🏻

It’s part of what drove me out of the country in my thirties when I still looked like I was barely 20, at most, but was already considered too old on paper. Age discrimination is illegal in the Netherlands, but it’s still considered perfectly permissable to require someone’s DOB for a job application.

When I was in the US in the 1990s, I learned that your DOB and marital status had no place on your CV because they have nothing to do with your suitability for a job. The Dutch were later appalled to find that I had adopted that habit. Thirty years have passed, and little has changed in that respect.

Your way around such biases? Also racism etc? Be your own boss! If you are worth your salt, you can do it. Move abroad if you have to. Go where you are appreciated. Don’t stay where you may be merely tolerated either. You deserve better.

So RIFT (Renewable Iron Fuel Technology), a startup that works on developing the concept of iron fuel as an alternative source of energy, has just won 11 million euros in investments. Previously, it already received financing from Bill Gates’ climate fund.