• Rotterdam, last year: 716 fines.

• The city of Almelo just made it illegal to sleep outdoors.

• The Hague, last year until December: 643 fines.

The malicious stigmatization of poverty and homelessness is becoming just as bad in the Netherlands as it is in Tory England.

Here’s a difference: If such cases end up in court, Dutch judges almost always dismiss them.

Lawyer Ineke van den Brûle: Some people are fined multiple times within a mere few minutes.

Homeless people in the Netherlands are also being fined for not having ID on them or for hanging around.

What this reminds me of is John Stuart Mill’s assertion that the sight of some people is so aesthetically unpleasing to better-off and able-bodied others that the latter must be protected from that.

That concerns Dickensian or Victorian England, in case you didn’t know that and John Stuart Mill was an immensely privileged Englishman as was Jeremy Bentham, the co-founder of the English way of thinking called “utilitarianism”. France briefly experienced a similar development but managed to nip it in the bud.

(I discussed these two gentlemen and their ideas in my book “We need to talk about this”.)

Source: NOS
https://nos.nl/artikel/2514733-boetes-voor-daklozen-beschamend-maar-op-sommige-plaatsen-worden-het-er-meer

The Dutch city of Utrecht is being plagued by what I see as typical incel thinking, but I shouldn’t forget that this is also how Facebook once began.

For anyone interested, there’s a film about how Facebook got started. “The social network”

Banga rankings. (bangalijsten) Rankings of female students, dividing them into Stacys and Beckys, that’s typical incel thinking, isn’t it?

Banga = urban slang for “slut”
https://www.politie.nl/informatie/wat-is-een-bangalijst.html

Dutch police is asking women to contact them if they find that they’ve been included in such “banga” rankings. They’re asking women not to try to have any material removed as this material can serve as evidence.

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Read up: https://protectthewild.substack.com/p/defra-badger-cull-consultation

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I’m reminded of this article in the Dutch FT.

I’m also reminded of this:

Many things seem to have changed a great deal in the past decades. The Dutch, for example, are now much more formal than the English and than Americans. They now also seem to use a strange mix of informal and formal, however.

7:11 drilling and hammering.

(There’s also been hammering starting at

Meanwhile, police in California killed Ryan Gainer (on 9 March) because that’s what they do when an idiot calls the police about something that has nothing to do with policing.

Ryan was a 15-year non-speaking autistic kid. He had been throwing things.

Now they say that it concerned a murder attempt on an officer, apparently. Yeah, right. Sure. Whatever you say. But not really.

When is the public ever going to get rid of the idea that scientists do nothing but look down microscopes all day, everyday?

Speaking of which, I was once asked “Do you only do research or do you also do scientific work?”

For many many years, people colored me ugly after I moved to England. And this got worse and worse and worse (and still hasn’t stopped).

When you do this to a person for a very long time, the person will eventually start losing beauty and may need a lot of healing to recover. There’s little to no healing behind bars inside other people’s cages.

If you color a person beautiful, that person will become more beautiful.

We are currently in a world in which we are often coloring other people ugly.

Let people be who they are. Let people free. Let them out of your mental cage.

Watch this:

I’d missed this…

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And this, below, makes me smile… and despair. Look at those criticisms. What is it with people that they can’t just let others be themselves and do their thing?

Dutch people tend to think that all other countries are exactly the same as the Netherlands, except that people speak a different language, whereas English people tend to think that other countries have almost nothing in common with England.

(The English have a point, but the Dutch don’t.)

In addition to the monthly premium of about EUR 130 to 165, and the a minimum reimbursement threshold of EUR 385, which you will need to put for yourself, you ALSO pay for healthcare through a percentage of tax on your income. 5 to 6% apparently.

The billing system for the monthly premiums appears to be a giant mess, by the way. Why is that so? In this day and age?

Tickets to this ERC event are free. The last places are going fast…

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Ben Feringa (chemistry) is on the panel too. I attended an event in Groningen once that had him in it. I don’t remember whether this was before or after he got that Nobel Prize. Probably before. Engaging speaker. I spotted Maria Ressa on Twitter, years ago, and she’s certainly very worthwhile to listen to. I don’t know any of the others.

https://www.worldofshowjumping.com/en/News/Harriet-Biddick-on-her-bridleless-derby-experience-It-made-me-understand-how-unique-our-partnership-and-connection-truly-is.html

I am 39 minutes into this and there’s far too much that I seem to identify with. But I’m Dutch. And I was in England.

It is unsettling.

And now it may be happening again, and it scares me. Who are you if nobody’s on your side?

https://www.lawofficesofjudithlwood.com/

Who are you if nobody ever tells you that you need to keep fighting for yourself? If they tell you to shut up, over and over and over again?

It’s good to be reminded that those who keep telling you to shut up aren’t necessarily right. It’s good to be reminded that you always have to keep fighting for yourself.

Like that teacher, though, it isn’t always possible. Sometimes, people will just “disable” you and call you catatonic.

And afterward, you may first suggest to marry your uncle, that nobody will know that it’s not a real marriage, conveying that you don’t count anyway. But then you must find a way to straighten your back and stand tall.

I just posted the following on a forum:

There’s this ad on YouTube for an IT company. Employees are featured. Every single one of them is dressed in drab olive green. Doesn’t appeal to me. Maybe they want to emphasize “we don’t care what you look like, we’re interested in your brain”, however. Who knows.

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One of the webpages on this site had been taken offline. Must have happened overnight.

Eh. It’s been… Duplicated???