A 33-year-old Dutch woman has been killed in an explosion in Gaza. Islam al-Ashqar was visiting relatives at the Nusairat refugee camp in central Gaza and was one of 22 Dutch nationals the ministry was trying to help leave. Israel bombed the local evening market in the camp on Saturday night.
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We've lived in the Netherlands for 5 years now, and in that time we've been to a lot of small cities and towns. It's really amazing just how good these places are!
Here's a look into what the Netherlands is like outside of Amsterdam.
It's time for another history/museum thread. This one starts in Australia then goes to the Netherlands. It's a long one and it's going to take quite a lot of posts so get comfy.
everyone wants to romanticize the idea of living in the heart of a dense medieval city but the reality is I can’t get out my own front door to go get a coffee without being bowled over by the duke’s carriage or the Flame Pharaoh or a steamboat or some godsdamn ELVES on a QUEST who get offended when the locals don’t speak Sindarin
All the elections in Western democracies have become so ugly.
The societal fracture lines are so predictable that all that politicians have to do to win elections is to exploit them, regardless of basically any other input factor.
All the large cities in the #Netherlands (with the exception of Rotterdam), like basically all the large cities in the West by now, voted compactly for progressive and center-left political forces.
The rural side, and all the cities with less than 50k people, like everywhere else in the West, voted compactly for the populist and xenophobic far-right.
Large cities with large foreign communities are thriving and trying to send a political message - that diversity is ok and it's actually good. Rural districts that have almost no influx of migrants, on the other hand, keep being frightened by something they barely know.
The educational fracture line is also become too wide to ignore. Especially in these elections: https://www.dutchnews.nl/2023/11/analysis-votes-piled-up-for-wilders-as-migration-became-focus/. According to a poll, 62% of college-educated voters in the Netherlands voted for PvdA-GL. When combined with the preferences for other center-left parties (D66, Volt, PS...), it turns out a scenario where almost 3 out of 4 college-educated folks cast their vote on the center-left.
On the other side of the spectrum, however, things are flipped. 47% of those with mid-low level education voted for PVV.
And the old-vs-young divide is also becoming more and more relevant.
The results of these elections, and many others in Western democracies in the past few years, are really shaking my core political beliefs.
I'm probably part of the top 5-10%, but I support parties that want to increase taxes on people like me in order to spread wealth more equally.
I've already purchased my house in the middle of Amsterdam, but I support parties that want to build more houses in order to fix the housing crisis that has left thousands either homeless or struggling to pay rent - even if that means higher taxes on my house, or the value of my house going down once supply increases.
I've already completed my academic studies a while ago, but I want more people to get access to affordable high-quality education in order to have a chance to improve their lives.
I've already got a well-paying job, but I want more people to be granted the possibility of accessing well-paid jobs, and even have a dignitous minimum wage and a dignitous employment contract.
In other words, like many Millennials in my demographic group, and unlike the Boomers and even X-Gens that came before us, I support political forces that often go against my own interests because I see how structural injustice, scarce societal mobility, scarce attention given to equal opportunities for all citizens and outright discrimination affect millions. I support those causes because it's the right thing to do, even if it doesn't directly benefit me on the short term.
On the other hand, how do those who are oppressed the most cast their vote lately?
By voting for those who promise a minimum wage and decent contracts for everyone?
For those who promise to increase the number of paid paternity/maternity benefits, so people can actually take care of their kids and start a family?
For those who promise to increase the number of houses on the market so everybody gets their fair shot at buying a house and starting a family?
For those who promise more funds to education, so many kids will have a better chance in life than their parents?
No, they vote for an ugly racist face with an ugly wig who shouts "kut-marokkan" from a stage like a drunk peasant, who has no plan for fixing any actual problems, but wants people to believe that all of those problems are caused either by the low-skilled African who comes here to do the jobs that the Dutch no longer want to do, or by the highly-skilled EU/US citizen who comes here to do the jobs that the Dutch aren't sufficiently qualified to do, and that once we go out of "their" country things will get better for everyone.
This is seriously one of the biggest political identity crises I've ever faced. Is it even worth to fight political battles to bring more equality and opportunities, when those who need more equality and opportunities the most keep wasting their votes with abhorrent political pipers like #Wilders who have scapegoats for everything and solutions for nothing?
Are you considering visiting the Netherlands because you’re interested in old architecture, canals, windmills, and museums?
COME TO LEIDEN
Leiden is: one intercity train station away from the airport (about 20 mins), just like Amsterdam; has all the historical and artistic value of Amsterdam and none of the sex or drug tourism; is extremely walkable and almost everything you want to see is within 1km of the station, literally everything within 2km; has a highly international population; is much less crowded than Amsterdam any time except the annual celebration of the lifting of the siege in early October. Everything is less tourist-priced as well.
A boat tour in good weather is a god-tier experience. In late spring through midsummer everything is coated in flowers.
I have lived here in Leiden for two years and been extremely happy, attached are photos I’ve taken myself.
We’ve lived in the Netherlands for 5 years now and we’ve been to a lot of small towns and cities in that time. The thing that surprised us the most is that there’s good urbanism pretty much everywhere.
I just went to the store and on my way back I came across a group of guys on a ‘beer bike’ also waiting at the traffic lights and they handed me a beer!
So I biked home in the sun with a beer in my hand :blobhappy:
Welcome in the #Netherlands 🇳🇱 (yes, I don’t think this is allowed but hey)
A most peculiar sight last night while cycling home, a route I must’ve done more than a thousand times in the dark, & yet I’ve never seen this before.
A row of trees was illuminated with a ghostly glow and even though there was a building behind me with a fluorescent strip lighting its front door, I couldn’t figure out the geometry at all.
Ah ha, one of my favourite garden friends paid a visit today: a hummingbird hawk-moth (Macroglossum stellatarum) doing its best to illustrate the principles of convergent evolution 🙂
This is a 240fps slow-motion video: in real-time, it was flitting around like crazy, very briefly supping from each flower with its long probocis. Am happy the phone stayed in focus most of the time.
Be ungovernable, like birds who make nests OUT OF ANTI-BIRD SPIKES. A new study describes resourceful Dutch & Belgian corvids besting evil architecture by stealing metal anti-bird strips and using them like thorny twigs, to construct their homes.
Like thorns, the spikes may protect their nests from predators.
27 October 1940 | Dutch Jewish girl, Henderika Leman, was born in Zwolle.
She was deported to Auschwitz from Westerbork in November 1942 with her younger brother Meijer and her mother Annette. They were all murdered in a gas chamber after arrival selection.
Last week the NRC reported about a little-known refueling (bunkering) point in the south-west of the #Netherlands, at the entrance of the Schelde near #vlissingen. The newspaper uncovered that it is being used by a #shadow#fleet of often badly maintained and very old tanker vessels which play a pivotal role in turning sanctioned Russian #oil in to not sanctioned oil. The vessels make their way from Baltic ports along the North Sea, either to India or Turkey. The newspaper called this bunkering point "Putin's petrol station", because on the way back the sanctioned vessels stock up on fuel. The ships all fly under several different "flags of convenience" and as their companies get put on sanction lists, the ships move to other owners.
It is not often that international politics, global capital, supply chains, the news and infrastructure congeal the way it does at Putin's Pitstop so I had to go take a look #infrastructours.
Dutch woman stranded in Gaza is killed in bombing raid (www.dutchnews.nl)
A 33-year-old Dutch woman has been killed in an explosion in Gaza. Islam al-Ashqar was visiting relatives at the Nusairat refugee camp in central Gaza and was one of 22 Dutch nationals the ministry was trying to help leave. Israel bombed the local evening market in the camp on Saturday night.