100% agree. I’m Dutch and he’s sent there to represent me/us/the country, it’s fucking disgusting.

I totally agree with you and fuck this guy, but there is some context to his sentence here in the Netherlands:

One legal distinction is that Van de Velde is unlikely to have been convicted of rape had he stood trial in the Netherlands rather than England. In England, sex with a 12-year-old is rape, regardless of the circumstances: an under-16 cannot legally consent. But after he was extradited to the Netherlands, having serving almost a year of his prison sentence, he was released after less than a month. Under Dutch law, his crime was deemed to be the lesser offence of ontucht, sexual acts that violate social-ethical norms.

From https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/30/netherlands-child-rapist-olympics-steven-van-de-velde

Wait so you can get married under the age of consent? That seems completely illogical… if you can’t consent to sex surely you can’t consent to marriage?

Just to be very clear I’m not defending him in the slightest, this whole thing is horrible and I agree he raped her.

I was just explaining the situation and the differences in law in England and the Netherlands.

While I agree that this crime should definitely fall within the definition and corresponding punishment of rape, I don’t agree that no 15 year old can ever consent to sex.

I’m not sure what the law ought to be though. I personally think a 16 year old should be legally able to have sex with their 15 year old partner. Maybe in england the difference in age matters. But if not, and a 15 year old legally cannot consent, is this hypothetical 16 year old now a rapist? That doesn’t sound right to me.

A 19 year old having sex with a 12 year old? That is clearly wrong and that’s rightfully already illegal here. But it’s not automatically rape because Dutch law does recognize consent from people under 16. I have no idea at what age people can give consent though. I’m not sure if there is a minimum. But if the 12 year old in this situation did not consent then it would obviously be rape, just to make that clear.

A question: what is the situation in other countries with high schoolers having sex? It must happen all the time that some 18 year old is dating a 15 year old and that they have sex. I think the overwhelming majority of Dutch people would not want that to be illegal, let alone considered rape.

Yeah the search is not forgiving. One typo is enough to ruin the search results.

How well an area is mapped also matters a lot for search though. I now live somewhere that has all addresses in the country mapped from a government source. I didn’t before, and it’s so much easier now because at least I can just punch in the address and I’ll find whatever I’m looking for.

Not saying it’s right, but for context:

One legal distinction is that Van de Velde is unlikely to have been convicted of rape had he stood trial in the Netherlands rather than England. In England, sex with a 12-year-old is rape, regardless of the circumstances: an under-16 cannot legally consent. But after he was extradited to the Netherlands, having serving almost a year of his prison sentence, he was released after less than a month. Under Dutch law, his crime was deemed to be the lesser offence of ontucht, sexual acts that violate social-ethical norms.

From https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/30/netherlands-child-rapist-olympics-steven-van-de-velde

Why wouldn’t you want an expert to run the economy is such trying times?

Because this so-called expert is a danger to the the common Argentine. His way of “fixing” the economy is by growing inequality, privatizing key government duties and destroying unions.

I personally disagree with him on many points, such as:

he has called for the elimination or merging of major ministries such as the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Social Development, the Ministry of Women, Genders and Diversity, and the Ministry of Health.

Milei articulates a critical view of the role of the state in economic matters, calling it “the greatest enemy of wealth”

Milei wants to privatize public health care providers

Milei has expressed support for legalizing organ trade

Also, he is president of the country, not just the economy. I totally disagree with him on points like:

A supporter of law-and-order politics, Milei endorses the unrestricted ownership of firearms

Milei opposes both abortion and euthanasia … Milei holds that abortion is morally indefensible, even in cases of rape

He intends to eliminate the law that makes comprehensive sex education (CSE) in schools mandatory, which he has linked to brainwashing, and said that students are “hostages of a system of state indoctrination”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Javier_Milei

regarding your comment:

So let me hear it. What would you do to so wonderfully fix the economy that an expert is getting all wrong?

This is a fallacy. It is of course not necessary to know the right answer in order to know that another answer is wrong. I might not know what 483 × 749 is, but I know it’s not 10. Or 100. Or 1000.

I heard about this from a podcast called The Missing Cryptoqueen from the BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/p07nkd84

In a way it’s a classic ponzi scheme so in that sense it’s not that novel. But this Dr. Ruja, as she was known by people who “bought” OneCoin, sold herself and OneCoin super well and took full advantage of the crypto craze. The scale and then disappearance are crazy.

Maybe this is in the article but I think the leading theory is that she’s in the UAE or Qatar or something. I assume she can’t really travel but she can just live like an actual queen over there and those governments won’t care about where he money came from.

I have this system at home and it’s great. Similar climate to Paris and never a problem.

That shows because this article (even the title) tells you France will have parliamentary elections, not presidential. Macron will remain president regardless of the outcome.

Organic Maps (google maps replacement) - https://f-droid.org/packages/app.organicmaps/

AntennaPod (podcast app) - https://f-droid.org/packages/de.danoeh.antennapod/

Better late than never, right?

Gast pleur echt heel hard op met zulke comments. Op wie wil je dan dat Amerikanen gaan stemmen? Je krijgt maar twee opties. Dan maar de minst slechte. Als we in Nederland zouden moeten kiezen tussen D66 en PVV dan toch veel liever D66?

So yeah “things” are shittier, because nowadays we have the ability to live in a nearly post-scarcity society but we just don’t wanna.

Humankind could have been living in blissful peace for centuries. We’ve always had the ability to not kill each other or fight for resources. But many people, then and now, don’t want that.

The way civilizations/empires/countries have operated has largely been competitive. It’s naive to think we’ll all just come together and solve these very complicated problems.

Saying that people are stupid or racist… I don’t think that barely has anything to do with what prevents all major countries of the world to work together to combat things like disease, climate change, inequality, etc.

How do you define “things”?

On a global scale and on average, life for humans is getting significantly better than, say, a century ago. The number of people dying from preventable diseases, war, natural disasters has been steadily going down for a while now.

Of course there are many more people on earth than there were 100 years ago, so accumulatively there is a lot more suffering now.

Also, the lives of individual people, the state of certain countries and areas are certainly getting worse.

As for non-human animals… For most of them the world is getting increasingly less habitable and for those who are raised in an industrial setting for human consumption, living conditions are largely atrocious.

I think your question is too broad for a single answer. But you might be interested in this now 17 year old (!) TED talk by the late Hans Rosling, which at least partially answers your question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w

Yeah this is basically an ad.

Also to note: all they say about the built-in password manager of Firefox is that it lacks the feature to save credit cards. But I don’t care about that and am perfectly happy using Firefox (alongside pass (https://www.passwordstore.org/) on my laptop).

I used ‘reader mode’, or whatever it’s called, on Firefox and that worked well.

It is probably a politically popular move in South Africa and especially considering the many problems South Africa is facing I understand your skepticism. However, it also makes historical sense SA does this.

Israel was one of the very few countries that continued its relationship with South Africa during apartheid. Israel would buy raw materials and South Africa weapons as well as technologies like nuclear. It’s the reason why South Africa actually had nuclear weapons for a while and still have nuclear energy (pretty sure still the only African country). Israel also helped them make petrol for vehicles out of coal, which sounds insane but was a way to seal with the sanctions against South Africa that prevented them from importing oil. The apartheid regime undoubtedly lasted longer because of Israel, and South Africans haven’t forgotten this.

The support for Palestine is widespread in South Africa because of this as well as the parallels between the apartheid regime and the Israeli government.

So yeah, it makes political sense for SA to take Israel to court like this, but I honestly think a big reason for it is historical and showing genuine support for Palestine.

Physical buttons in cars

My induction hob, my extractor fan, a light above the countertop… All of these things just in my kitchen don’t have physical buttons and I hate it. Physical buttons are so easy to use and in so many ways superior to these “touch” buttons.