December 11, 2018

Keep the rotating house rotating or destroy it?

Filed under: Architecture,Art,General by Orangemaster @ 11:55 am

Ten years ago (where does the time go?), we told about the Rotating House (‘Draaiend Huis’) on a roundabout in Tilburg, North Brabant, made by John Körmelings. For quite some time now, the house hasn’t been turning anymore, as it’s broken, and fixing it would cost about 45,000 euro. The artwork cost 400,000 to build, and according to article on Vice.com (see link below), it broke down three times already. This would mean it has been fixed at least twice.

Sadly but not surprisingly at the moment, the Netherlands has a government that doesn’t like high art too much and feels that much of it is overrated. Since Dutch cultural institutions are dependent on government grants as opposed to endowments, sometimes people who don’t like art get to decide what lives or dies art-wise.

There’s currently a discussion about whether the rotating house should be fixed or destroyed. The city of Tilburg wants to fix it, but local youth politicians say the money can be better spent elsewhere like in healthcare. If the house is destroyed, then a lot of money would have been spent for nothing, whereas fixing it up means keeping a world-famous artwork turning for others to drive past and talk about.

Here’s a timelapse video of the ‘Draaiend Huis’ (‘Rotating House’)

(Link: vice.com, Photo: Stinkfinger Producties)

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December 10, 2018

Cheesiest slogans of 2018 are up for vote

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 4:57 pm
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It’s that time again, time for cringeworthy bad slogans, and much like in 2016 (see link below), we’ve got a fun one in the running from a barbershop in Laren: ‘We do women, but we don’t cut their hair’ (‘We doen wel vrouwen maar knippen ze niet’). It started as a joke that their male clients and female friends thought was funny, and it kind of stuck.

And in the running, there’s always a construction-related business as always, with ‘Don’t fuck around yourself, call Ronald Schutte!’ (‘Ga niet zelf kutte, bel Ronald Schutte’). My rough translation of ‘kutte’ is basically ‘fuck around’, but in this case, it’s a verb made from the noun for female genitalia that indicates the same thing and even rhymes.

Last but not least, there’s ‘For every arse, there’s an Aarts toilet’, (‘Voor ieder reetje een Aarts W.C’tje’). Once again, the word ass ‘reet/reetje’ [diminutive] rhymes with W.C’tje’ [diminutive for toilet aka water closet = WC], the name of the company.

And you can vote here.

See also: Cheesiest business slogans of the year 2016. and Cheesiest slogans of 2017 up for vote.

UPDATE: ‘We do women, but we don’t cut their hair’ took the win, with ‘Ga niet zelf kutte, bel Ronald Schutte’ winning second place and ‘Voor ieder reetje een Aarts W.C’tje’ taking third place. Read the rest.

(Link: waarmaarraar.nl)

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December 6, 2018

Porno boss threatened with exposing his viewing behaviour

Filed under: Online,Technology by Orangemaster @ 12:47 pm

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Me and my co-blogger Branko had recently been threatened per e-mail. While I got something that said ‘pay x amount of bitcoin or else you won’t be able to use your computer’, which reminded me of an episode of American television show NCIS, Branko got a nastier message, saying ‘if you don’t pay x amount, we’ll release a film of you watching porn’, or something to that effect. We both did nothing and suffered nothing, so that’s good news.

Here’s how not to blackmail Dutch folks per e-mail: Jan Wenderhold, 78, the publisher of porno magazine Chick was told in an e-mail to transfer a ridiculous amount of bitcoin or else the world would know he watched porn. I’m sure he laughed his ass off.

His daughter Sandy Wenderhold tweeted about it, saying “My father is being blackmailed per e-mail. If he does not transfer 7,000 bitcoins, his family and friends will find out he watches porn. Oh no!”.

This type of blackmail is a bit like the common cold at the moment: it’s doing the rounds, but will hopefully disappear on its own, over time. And according to a response to Wenderhold’s tweet from a magazine aimed at people 50 and up, the e-mail tends to threaten older people who may not know what to do.

In any case, as they say, it’s good to know your target audience, even when you’re a cyber moron.

(Link: nhnieuws.nl, Photo by BTC Keychain, some rights reserved)

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December 4, 2018

Christian party wants rating system on YouTube

Filed under: General,Online by Orangemaster @ 12:33 pm

Similar to what is done with film and television, Dutch national Christian party CDA says it would like to help parents protect their children against images containing violence, sex and swearing on YouTube. The Dutch system, called Kijkwijzer, is a Dutch film and television rating system that is slightly more liberal than the one many people know from the United States or Canada. However, applying it to YouTube any time soon is said to be next to impossible.

Every minute, YouTube puts up 400 hours of video. The CDA says it’s up to YouTube themselves to protect children, which seems like, as they say in Dutch, ‘yelling into the desert’. If multinationals can’t even sort out all the copyright infringements that appear on YouTube, then they won’t care about some Christians giving their opinion about it in such a small country. This discussion had already been brought up in Parliament in 2015, but now that YouTube (and in this case, Google as the owner) may have to abide by the same rules as television (I don’t know about film), then getting YouTube to comply is a step closer, but still very close to impossible.

As a parent, a member of the CDA said that his seven-year-old son looks at YouTube films and it is tough to determine if a film is suitable for him or not, which is completely understandable. Sadly for him and I bet also his spouse, they have to look over their child’s shoulder to make sure they can control what their kid watches. As well, a representative of Google Netherlands said that imposing the Dutch system is impossible and that YouTube would then come with its own system, and the entire world would have to follow whatever they come up with.

(Links: bnr.nl, bright.nl)

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December 3, 2018

Girl tells on daddy’s green plants

Filed under: General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 1:25 pm

Not long after a goose pointed the cops to a big drugs lab, a young girl got her father into trouble while talking about his extra curricular activities at school.

A man and father from Hengelo, Overijssel was sentenced to 80 hours of community service for illegally growing cannabis. “My dad has green plants in the attic”, the girl said. There was 450 odd plants in said attic, which is 445 more than usually allowed. Daddy was cultivating cannabis to make some much needed extra money due to circumstances, including mommy moving out and his car breaking down.

He used legal equipment bought at the DIY store and legal electricity, which isn’t standard fare. And he didn’t get high on his own supply, but he still got busted.

The moral of this story: maybe let your kid talk about what mommy does on career day even if she might be a housewife, it’s safer.

(Link: nltimes.nl)

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November 30, 2018

Dutch massively encroach on municipal ground

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 4:40 pm

According to research conducted and recently published by the University of Groningen, some 100,000 Dutch folks are guilty of ‘stealing’ (‘encroaching on’) municipal ground when they build extensions to their gardens, driveways and houses.

The research looked at five municipalities: four of them had folks doing some serious encroachment, on average 20 to 40 square metres, with a few whoppers of more than 400 square metres.

When the city comes asking for its ground back, it often leads to court cases and claims that there’s a statute of limitations, with people getting away with the ‘theft’. The idea is to modify the law, so that cities can ask for their land back at any time, which I imagine would deter people from stealing it in the first place. In the case of an entire house partially built on municipal ground, that’s going to be difficult to rectify.

(Link: rtvnoord.nl)

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November 29, 2018

Fake fine for putting up Christmas decorations too early

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 3:32 pm
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First, the Dutch celebrate Sinterklaas, then after that’s done and dusted on December 6th, you can put up your Christmas decorations, but not before that, at least not in a fake letter from the city of Tilburg, North Brabant doing the rounds.

People who decorated the outside of their house were fake fined 132 euro for doing so before Sinterklaas. For anyone from North America, it would be like being fined for wearing white after Labour Day, an old school urban myth possibly drummed up by the fashion police.

Speaking of fake things for the holidays, let us remind you that today is Saint Pancake, a tradition that started from a Dutch comic strip.

(Link: omroepbrabant.nl)

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November 28, 2018

Goose’s honking betrays huge XTC lab

Filed under: Animals,General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 2:40 pm
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In the village of Sint Willebrord, North Brabant, people were illegally producing XTC in a large lab in some warehouse, making barrels of cash while keeping their activities on the down low.

Then, one day the cops came knocking on the lab door because they heard a goose honking like the end of the world was coming, on the train tracks near their secret lab.

The goose was a regular at the neighbour’s property, but possibly didn’t like the weird noises it heard and when it heard them, started honking like crazy, waking up the neighbour in the middle of the night. The neighbour then woke up to see a suspicious van making several runs in the night, put two and two together and figured out drugs were being produced.

The neighbour then told the police what she saw, and that’s when the cops went to check it all out.

The cops arrested the 70-year-old owner who claimed to know nothing, saying he rented the warehouse to some guys who paid him cash up front and refused to let him see what they were doing. The owner’s lawyer attacked the woman’s claim, saying ‘she honks as loud as the goose does’, but stick and stones, the man is looking at three years in prison.

The cops had a good day, seizing 1.2 million euro worth of raw materials for producing XTC pills. They said the whole place smelled of anise, a characteristic smell of synthetic drugs. The theory is that the goose wasn’t honking over noise, but about the smell of anise, which attracted it, if we believe the Internet. And since the drugs were made at night, the smell was then at its strongest.

The moral of this story is that the cops were not sent on a wild goose chase.

(Link: vice.com)

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November 27, 2018

A hundred Roman coins found in North Brabant

Filed under: History by Orangemaster @ 3:25 pm

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Brothers Wim and Nico van Schaijk have found over 100 Roman coins near the Noord-Brabant town of Berlicum. They are silver and bronze coins dating from the first and second century AD, according to the Netherlands Cultural Heritage Agency after studying the coins for quite some time.

Using a metal detector a year ago near the Aa river, the brothers found four silver denarri and 103 mainly bronze sestertii and asses Experts from Leiden University said the coins were minted between the reign of Emperor Vespasian in 69 AD and that of Emperor Marcus Aurelius in 180 AD.

Researchers believe that the ancient Romans may have thrown coins into the water before crossing the river, as a sort of sacrifice for a safe crossing – or perhaps as thanks after a safe crossing. Roman pottery was also found where the coins were discovered.

Back in 2014 some rare Medieval coins were also excavated in Utrecht.

(Link: nltimes.nl, Photo: cultureelerfgoed.nl)

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November 26, 2018

Serious lack of birth control pills still unresolved

Filed under: Health by Orangemaster @ 2:55 pm

A problem that affects the population’s sexual health and continues to appear in the media in much too lukewarm of a fashion, is the fact that four of the seven major brands of birth control pills have not been available for months in the Netherlands, including the most popular non-name brand.

Most companies didn’t exactly shout from the rooftops that they could no longer supply their products. Even though the government is acutely aware of the situation, calls it ‘a scandal’ and promised to sort it out in September, we’re approaching December and the problem persists. Production upgrades that went awry and attempts to fix the problems have caused a pile of problems that genuinely qualify as a clusterfuck.

According to Rutgers, a sexual and reproductive health organisation, 63% of Dutch women between 18 and 24 use the pill as their main contraception, and in this case, it is the no-name, major brand pill that’s been entirely unavailable. In this country, it is policy to prescribe no-name cheaper brands before anything else, and I’m sure price and having taken the Pill out of the free healthcare package not helping in any way, shape or form.

Options? Buying pills off Dutch auction sites for ‘usurious prices’, including buying pills from dubious sources as if it were illegal drugs. Why a problem that affects more than half of the population – it’s an issue for women and their partners! – can’t be solved is not just a scandal, it’s a general health hazard and embarrassing for such a rich country.

(Links: vice.com, nos.nl)

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