Too many old, retired people and too few babies.
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@arjandirkse
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There should be more craft beers with lower alcohol…I like a special beer but sometimes the alcohol is just too high. I mean a 10 % beer can be very tasty but if you drink that too much, it is just not good.
Brouwerij ‘t IJ from Amsterdam has this beer that is 4.4 % which is very tasty.
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Obesity kills almost as many people as smoking. Are we going to ban cookies next?
Your burgers and milshakes are burdening the NHS!
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The First Age, Millarworld, ended.
You’re forgetting the Authority forum! That was the first phase.
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Or they would’ve complained about Brad Pitt as Achilles, or Diane Kruger as Helen.
Achilles is depicted as blond in the Iliad though. There is a small minority of Greek people who are blond, and in mythology more are described as blond. Like Apollo is usually described as blond. For the record I do think it is dumb when it is done the other way as well, like for the sequel to Passion of the Christ they are letting a Nordic looking man play Jesus. I think blond hair was very uncommon among the Hebrews at the time.
But I don’t care that much. I may still go see Odyssey if the reviews are good.
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Monday could see 34 degrees in London! That’s crazy…In May.
Honestly it’s quite clear to me by now that climate change is real. I mean doubting scientists and the media is one thing, but if you look at these temperatures you’re experiencing right now and still deny it’s happening, you’re gaslighting yourself. Unfortunately some people close to me have fallen into this.
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Well at least he didn’t cast Pedro Pascal.
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I thought that happened in 2012?
Yes but very briefly. Although some of my crockery is still stuck in the zero quantum zone.
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Bold to assume the universe hasn’t collapsed into a state of nothingness before 2028.
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I looked up Achel and apparently the monastery is closed since 2021 when the last two monks left. Kinda sad, but that seems to be the way it’s going with the church in general, and also the monasteries. The beer is officially no longer trappist, it’s been taken over by a private enterprise but it still tastes great.
At least it’s not part of the big conglomerates like InBev or Heineken.
It’s true that a lot of “abbey ales” aren’t actually brewed by monks, sometimes the names is just licensed to a professional brewery. Like Duvel Moortgat is now brewing Maredsous beer. But Westmalle, Westvleteren, Orval, Rochefort and Chimay are still officially belgian trappists. And in the Netherlands Zundert and La Trappe. There have also been trappist breweries popping up in other countries, Tynt Meadow in the UK, Tre Fontane in Italy, one in Austria…and maybe a few others.
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BTW I actually LOLd at this twitter comment: “I didn’t know Helen of Troy could generate so much conflict.”
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Still quite cool here but the US is getting really hot. 36 degrees on the East Coast. Stay cool guys.
I don’t know about 36, but we currently have 31 in the NYC area and I’m loving it!!
I saw 36 in Philly.
31 is alright, but if it get above that, I’m done for.
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Still quite cool here but the US is getting really hot. 36 degrees on the East Coast. Stay cool guys.
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That kind of booze demands respect. Quaff it down disrespectfully fast and you’ll quickly be wrecked.
Yeah tripels are quite heavy, they’re between 8 and 10 percent. So they can be double of what a regular pilsner beer is.
There are also quadrupels, which are darker coloured and about 10 to 12 percent. I think that type of beer is also called “barley wine”.
Enjoy but drink in moderation…
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That trailer for the Odyssey is bland. Nothing in it makes me feel I need to some more of this.
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For the record, I don’t mean all troublemakers are from other ethnic backgrounds than Dutch, Dutch kids very much also can be troublemakers. But we seem to have groups that hang out with people of the same ethnicity.
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Bob Kagan, perhaps the most prominent neocon is American academics, has written an article in the Atlantic saying the US and Israel have utterly lost the war in Iran.
And in other news, water is wet. ;)
In all seriousness, that was always going to be an unwinnable war. Benjamin Netanyahu has been wanting this fight for decades. Previous, US leaders always said no to him. Trump was finally in a susceptible enough state to say yes. Trump was told this was a bad idea, but he ignored his own military and intelligence people and pushed ahead with it. I saw something this morning where Bibi might leave Trump in the cold with the fight.
Meanwhile, Iran has been preparing for this fight for 47 years. And here’s the thing about Iran: They don’t have to have an outright military victory to win. All they need to do is endure and maintain pressure. Either the US taps out or the whole world collapses. Either is an acceptable outcome to them. Hell, they could have a fishing boat drag its anchor on the seafloor and destroy an underwater internet cable and several Middle Eastern countries lose 80% of their internet. The aftershocks from that would be global.
Make no mistake, Iran is in the driver’s seat.
Yeah for a country that is playing the defensive side in a war scenario all they have to do to win is endure.
Iran has a terrible human rights record and I sympathize with Iranians who want regime change, but it’s an interesting country. It’s a sort of mix of theocracy and democracy. All the candidates and laws have to be approved by a council of religious leaders. (Although some people say the military has the ultimate power in the country. I don’t know about that though) Something I wonder about is if you have such a council who have to approve of the candidates, wether you would still get leaders like Trump, or Hitler. That said, maybe Khomeiny isn’t much better.
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Bob Kagan, perhaps the most prominent neocon is American academics, has written an article in the Atlantic saying the US and Israel have utterly lost the war in Iran.
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Some psychos in the Netherlands came with this flag to an asylum centre.
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I follow some mennonites on bluesky (yes there are mennonites who use the internet) and they have interesting posts sometimes. I like these more peaceful Christian traditions.
They also have an interesting online magazine:
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They’re building a bicycle bridge in my town across a canal, that would make traffic between Alphen and villages in the vicinity faster, for some people at least. But the whole project has been terribly delayed, I think it should have been finished more than two years ago. The cost has also spiraled. They already built the pillars on which the bridge should be resting, which looks surreal in the landscape. It’s kind of symbolic for a lot of current day politics.
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Our democracies are failing in part because the public institutions are all chronically under-financed, and the reason for that is that about half of the wealth belongs to a handful of people who have managed to make sure that nobody will ever ask them to contribute.
I am seriously losing hope about politics in my country. Honestly I’m not letting it ruin my mood too much, because I’m doing pretty well atm. But the whole narrative is so fucked. Everything is moving to the right.
It all benefits Putin by the way. We could see a Europe with AfD en Front National in power. If that happens I think it’s unavoidable that Europe reconciles with Russia, the EU will cease to exist other than as Putin’s toy. We’ll see Putin do a victory speech in the EU parliament.
In the Netherlands after the next election, we could see Wilders, Eerdmans or Baudet as prime minister. They’re all jokers. They’re no serious politicians. These people are so dumb, it could be as bad as Trump.
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The gesundes Volksempfinden in the Netherlands is blaming the current government for the prices of petrol. Which are obviously so high because of the blockade in the Hormuz strait.
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This is terrible, the US is blockading Cuba and the world is not paying attention:
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We have about one third of the electorate right now who would vote for extremist parties. They’re beyond reason. I’m not seeing it shrinking at the moment.
Really it sucks…but you can’t do a whole lot about it. I try to do something on a small scale, by discussing with people who I think could be tempted to vote for Wilders. And being kind to people in general.
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These violent anti-asylum protests have really rattled me. It’s an escalation of what has happened so far with the far right here. Gangs of people roaming around, breaking things, settting things on fire and hurling the most offensive slurs about minorities, including black people and Jews…Fascism is here.
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I made the bike ride to the town where I was born, 12 km away, last weekend. I stopped doing that a while ago, because of physical aches and pains, so I was a bit afraid that it would be hard to do, but it went very well. The weather was perfect for a bike ride.
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I just saw a poll that said the Netherlands was one of the countries most critical of Israel, in the world…this is a huge reversal from the past. We always used to be one of the most pro-Israel countries in the world. On X it looks very different, there are a lot of Dutch posters who attack everything even slightly critical of Israel. Probably not all organic posters.
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Of course Trump is terrible but Merz sucks as well. He went from saying “Trump is doing our dirty work for us” to “LOL Trump is stupid, Iran won the war”. Seeimingly forgetting he himself supported the war in Iran when it began.
It’s all so irrational. Like these people lack the awareness of the consequences of their words and actions.
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I heard the actor who played Lord Ichimonji in Ran had died recently. He played an older character in a movie in the 80s so I would have assumed he died long ago. I rewatched it and was again blown away. The soundtrack is probably the best soundtrack ever made.
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https://www.thecut.com/article/false-memory-syndrome-controversy.html
This is a pretty interesting piece about Jennifer Freyd, who cam up with the term DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) to describe a tactic abusers use to shove the blame on their victims – and her parents, who she alleged abused her, and came up with the “False Memory Foundation”, a group which alleges many memories of abuse are false, and which has functioned as defense expert in the cases of such people as Ted Bundy, Harvey Weinstein, and Ghislaine Maxwell. Little detail: the False Memory Foundation also featured two psychologists who wrote in a pro-pedophilia magazine that sex with children is not necessarily abusive.
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Yeah that core is always voting right, or today far right. The others just have to bring better ideas to the table. In a democracy you will always have the risk that the middle votes for parties willing to work with the far right.
(That is if they don’t vote for the far right candidate, like in the US with Trump)
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Another violent anti asylum protest here.
Part f the problem is that right wing governments have given ever less money to asylum centres. This means many asylum seekers now need to be housed in emergency locations which are often inappropriate. This again strengthens the anti asylum sentiment.
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I found some tasty meat substitute products in the supermarket. I want to eat this more often. I also found a vegan chocolate milk (made with oat milk) that is tasty.
There was a terrible story here in the media, I won’t even repeat it because I don’t want to upset you guys but it made me reinforce my commitment to eat less meat and and dairy. I will still eat some meat, but I think if people reduce their intake a little (voluntarily), that is probably a good thing.
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Dates are fantastic but you have to get the right ones. I had dates from the supermarket that tasted like nothing. But the medjoul dates from the greengrocer are delicious.
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Chuck Schumer : "Of course we say it's our land, the Torah says it. But [the Palestinians] don't believe in the Torah. So, that's the reason there is not peace."
The fact that this monstrous genocidal maniac is the minority leader in the senate is a disgrace and an… pic.twitter.com/EPjU5ojtvb
— It's politics (@uspolitics1111) April 17, 2026
Chuck Schumer is a blut und boden ethnonationalist for Israel.
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(Still I agree the economic factor is probably the most important here.)
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Replacement migration is going pretty well though. The Netherlands grew from 16 to 18 million in the last two decades and that isn’t due to births.
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It’s a conundrum. But Gar is probably right, at its core it’s just capitalism at work probably. Babies don’t make sense economically. That’s the hard truth, and it probably accounts for most of the decline. You can say you should counter that by spreading the conservative message that childbearing is an essential part of life, but many people just aren’t receptive to that. They look at their wallet.
It’s noteworthy that even conservative societies, like Iran for instance and Hungary like Gar said, are seeing the decline. Israel is an exception, with a birth rate of 2.92 child per woman on average.
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There is a bit of a backlash against metoo stuff here in the Netherlands. A Dutch singer, Marco Borsato, who was on trial for sexual assault of a minor and who was acquitted was on tv again for the first time in years, trying to do a come back. Some people firmly believe he did nothing wrng, this despite certain clear established facts, like he apped an underage girl about masturbation. In the trial it sort of didn’t get proven definitively that he did things which can be described as sexual assault, but it’s clear he’s a pervert who was hanging around girls of the “Epstein age”, like 13-14-15, way too much. And yet many people say “oh, that’s not so bad. He should be welcomed back to resume his career”. Makes me sick.
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Can’t imagine why the Republicans party is chock full of paedophiles
I wonder when people are going to accept we have to work around this?
Essentially this is an issue affecting every developed country, quite a few developing too, and no solution has worked. Even India is now below replacement level. Singapore loosened laws on sex in films to get people friskier, Nordic countries have put in generous parental leave and child support, Korea has given a whopping $280bn in cash or voucher incentives and it still keeps reducing, they are rock bottom globally.
Orban’s right wing autocracy made it a key policy aim to have replacement fertility rate of 2.1 by 2030, spending a whopping 5% of GDP on it and essentially got nowhere much. It remains around 0.3% lower than most western European countries, probably because they clamped down on migration and new migrants tend to have more kids.
So basically short of forced birthing camps or some other fascist nightmare nothing works other than migration. Maybe countries like Japan that are looking at things like how robotics can provide elderly care are being more realistic.
I still don’t really understand why this is happening. It’s really happening everywhere except a fe African countries.
I think increased wealth is one factor probably, people don’t need kids anymore to look after them when they’re old, because the state takes care of that.
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Yeah ads are really a plague.
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