I live in a bigger (left-leaning) city with good connections elsewhere through our train station. Our local public transport isn’t great, we just have buses. I wish our municipality would explore other transport options as well but they don’t seem eager to do so. I live fairly close to the train station but that doesn’t change the fact that the different in travel time is so significant.

I’m not going to move for this job, I’ve never moved for my job since jobs come and go. I search for them in a specific radius from my house and my current job was definitely on the edge of what I feel comfortable with. That all aside though, moving there (Utrecht area) is basically impossible with how expensive housing is nowadays.

I fully agree there should be less subsidies for driving and more for public transport. I understand being able to drive is a privilege and if public transport felt like a solid alternative I would use it more often. I like being in the train, it’s quite relaxing. I was just trying to highlight that the Netherlands isn’t perfect either and that people sometimes idealize our public transport and infrastructure.

As a Dutchie, I can attest to this. Most people I know are VERY much reliant on their cars and would rather die than give them up. Our non-car transportation is okay outside of the the big cities (where trams pick up a lot of the slack), as long as you go to another bigger city / town. Once you want to go somewhere outside of that, the cost and travel-time racks up quickly. Also, companies and governments are very much supporting car ownership.

A personal example: I travel to work by car (it’s around 80 km door to door). I know, wrong community to admit something like this but I have a very simple reason for it: I get paid more to do so and it’s faster. Going by car means I get to work in just under an hour. If I try to do the same thing using public transport, it will take me an hour and 45 minutes.

I get compensated €0,25 per km of driving. My car is quite fuel efficient (a Toyota corolla hybrid which uses around 4 l of fuel per 100 km) which means this easily covers my fuel (and most other expenses that come with driving my car). So when I take the car, I end up getting paid more salary each month.

If I take public transport, my work covers this for me. A one-way trip door to door would cost around €22,00 so that’s €44,00 round-trip. It’s great that they do this but it doesn’t benefit me to do so. I don’t get extra salary and spend more time traveling, for which I am not reimbursed. Therefore, I end up driving instead.

And like I said, the “amazing public transport” you see represented online is usually only the big cities. Outside of those we heavily rely on our trains and buses, which aren’t anything to boast about. I’ve taken the train in other European countries and had very similar experiences for a much lower price. On top of that, if you live in a town that doesn’t have a train station, you’re dependent on taking a bus from that town to a bigger town with a train station in order to get anywhere. And once you need to start doing that you’re going to have a really rough time getting anywhere without a car.

I had a wireless mouse that did that shit, it was infuriating. You’d move it and it would take like 0,5 second to register you moving it, causing it to move with a delay every single time you hadn’t touched the mouse for like 10 seconds.

And especially the foreign cyclists

This. Countries around the world could save SO much money if they stopped subsidizing the fossil fuel industry. But no, better increase the tax on the middle class…

It would be pretty funny if the bubble burst while Trump and his cronies are balls deep in the Iran war. That might honestly be enough to ruin the whole country.

Germany has a lot of plug-in solar for balconies (Balkonkraftwerke) and it’s available at very cheap prices (example here). I know it only provides up to 800W on a very sunny day but that’s still a significant amount for an apartment. And the beauty of these is that they are so plug-and-play, everything is included. You hang it, connect the cables and plug it into a socket and then you’re done.

I live in the Netherlands but I’ve been seriously considering picking up one of these if my building HoA doesn’t want to do a rooftop solar project for our building.

There are people in the Netherlands that have the system you describe. This is pretty rare though due to the massive push for new energy meters that’s been going on for the last 10 years or so. And with good reason: lots of the old meters people had were pretty unsafe and unreliable. For most people, having automatic usage reports going to both them and the electricity provider far outweighs the downsides.

Most of us are in a similar situation as Germany. We have smart meters that allow you to provide power back to the grid and this is currently very profitable. However, from 2027 onwards they are (mostly) getting rid of the profits this brings the consumer, in order to make the grid more stable and also for other, less clear (most likely energy company and government spending related) reasons.

As someone who’s worked in the grid provider field for a bit I’m not necessarily against this change; peak power surges due to lots of people selling of their excess solar power production is a huge problem that’s making the energy transition that much more difficult. Even in local grids, we’re starting to have to use massive power cables to be able to handle this. This brings with it a lot of extra costs and permit nonsense, making the life of the grid manager that much more difficult.

I wish people would take this upcoming deadline to start electrying more things in their house. But if my parents are anything to go by, all they’ll do is complain about losing their golden goose that they’ve profited from for over 10 years. They could get an electric car instead of their nonsense plug-in hybrid, they could electrify their heating needs, they could install a home battery and so much more. I know it costs money to do so but you basically run all of it for free most of the year. And besides that, with all the current global issues that are going on the reliance on fossil fuels should be phased out rapidly.

I can’t wait for it to crash and burn, this bubble is getting so ridiculous.

One can only hope, I can’t wait to see it all burn. All those shitty AI companies can go to hell as far as I’m concerned, they add no value to my life whatsoever.

I think that people with access to higher education who also have constant access to world news is bound to lead to people not wanting to put their kids through it. If you compare that to someone who barely has access to the internet and whose main focus is trying to feed their family and it’s a whole different situation. Humans need meaning in their lives and in western societies this has been waning for a while now.

That’ll last for a couple of months, maybe a year. And then the Republicans will come for medicaid too. If they get away with gutting Medicare, what makes you think they won’t do the same to medicaid?

Or, get this: make it so people don’t take the car. Most of the accidents that involve serious injury or death involve cars or some other fast, motorized vehicle. Why not make more bike and pedestrian infrastructure? I also live in the Netherlands and even here I’d say there are very different approaches based on which city/town you’re in. I really wish they’d make my city more accessible with public transport, there are certain routes where taking public transport to another part of town takes almost 2-3 times as long as taking a car. Why is that? Why not fund public transport and non-motorized traffic infrastructure even more?

Lol I love how it says "considered one of the more humane ways to sacrifice laboratory rodents. Who are they sacrificing them to? The great God of science?

Let me preface this by saying I haven’t read the article so i can’t say anything about this specific case.

As for your comment, I agree. It’s one thing to have an e-bike that goes slightly faster than regular cycling speed (20-25 km/h). However, where I live (the Netherlands) there’s have “fatbikes” now, basically the current generations scooter which is given to children at a much younger age and not regulated at all. No helmets, no protective clothing, no minimum age, nothing. Those things can go faster than 30 km/h and it’s somewhat common to tune them to go 40 km/h or more. That is a ridiculous speed for a 12 year old to take part in traffic with.

You’re going faster than a car driving to a neighborhood area here. There’s a reason why cars can only go 30 and somehow you can go 40? Add to that the brazenness of a young kid and you have a pretty dangerous cocktail. Fatbikes formed a large share of the traffic accidents last year and there doesn’t seem to be any sign of this changing with the government we have here being constantly in crisis or getting ready for another doomed election.

I’d say you see the same thing with bikes, especially in the big cities. They cycle everywhere and go through red lights all the time. However, a bike is a lot less dangerous than a car (unless it’s an electric bike that can go very fast), which makes it slightly less of an issue in my eyes.

It’s because for many people, driving a car comes with a certain entitlement. And why wouldn’t it? Especially in the US, where drivers are fully accommodated to with infrastructure, crazy roads and all kinds of drive through stuff?

It’s even noticeable here in the Netherlands. Lots of people I know that are very kind, mellow people turn into insane road ragers the moment they get into their car.

So, genuine question. If someone is non-binary (which I believe Bella has said they are), does that mean that they are in the run for best actress? Or best actor? It sounds like it’s best actress but it seems like a bit of a difficult one. What would happen with someone with pronouns opposite of their birth gender?

So glad all those Americans didn’t vote because they couldn’t support genocide only to end up with even worse genocide.

Good thing Trump gives zero fucks about the climate and environment then /s