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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November 24, 2018

Instagram cat gets own student ID in Groningen

Filed under: Animals by Branko Collin @ 5:47 pm

Professor doctor Doerak (pronounced ‘Durak’, from Russian Дурак) is his name and he is well-known character at the University of Groningen, where he frequents law school classes.

That is why this cat of Instagram received his own student ID card a few weeks ago. His owners, who live next to one of the university buildings in the city centre, requested their cat got a student card. The administration replied: “We are working on it. An invitation to pick it up will follow.”

Jorien Bakker, spokesperson of the university, told local university magazine UKrant: “We liked the idea. Doerak is a sweet cat. He is a good student and we appreciate how much he means to students and staff.”

(Illustration: screenshot of Durak’s Instagram account)

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November 23, 2018

Why the Dutch are observing Black Friday

Filed under: General,Online,Weird by Orangemaster @ 3:19 pm

According to Wikipedia, Black Friday became a thing in the Netherlands about three years ago. Even as a Canadian, it was the first time I’d ever heard of it. In Canada, where Thanksgiving is celebrated in October and for very different reasons that in the United States, we’ve always had Boxing Day (26 December) as our shopping madness day, where shops want to get rid of their stock before the new year. In the Netherlands, 26 December is actually a holiday.

This year the Netherlands has a lot of shops big and small participating in Black Friday, acting like not doing so would be missing out. A lot of people think this ‘commercial appropriation’ is ridiculous, but mark my words, it will continue to grow here and in Europe because it remains a money maker, especially with Cyber Monday a few days later.

One person on Twitter captioned a picture of packages of American cranberries, saying sarcastically “The cranberries are already in the supermarket, so that we can celebrate Thanksgiving tonight and Black Friday tomorrow. But changing anything about Dutch traditions, well no.” The comment alludes to this year’s escalation of the Zwarte Piet (Black Pete) debate, which has turned to hate and violence, two things that do no pair well with gift giving and happy holidays.

And seriously, most Dutch kitchens do not have an oven and if they do, good luck fitting a turkey in there. I’m still bummed I can’t put two trays of 12 muffins in side by side.

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November 22, 2018

Dutch comedian Arjen Lubach on Seth Meyers in US

Filed under: General,Shows by Orangemaster @ 11:36 am

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Dutch comedian Arjen Lubach, known for his comedy show Zondag met Lubach (‘Sunday with Lubach’), was a guest on the Seth Meyers show in New York City last night.

In a good game of Zoek de Nederlander (‘Find the Dutch person’), Lubach has been getting more and more international attention with his punchy, satirical videos, which are very much compatible with American-style humour, such as the ‘American First, Netherlands Second’ video, voiced by Amsterdam-based American-Dutch comedian Greg Shapiro, who in turn did the rounds himself on Dutch talk shows after the video went viral back in January 2017. Oh, and Lubach also did that hilarious video about the NRA (Nonsencal Rifle Addiction).

Why Seth Meyers? Seth Meyers was based in Amsterdam at Boom Chicago back in the 1990s where Shapiro was also a regular. This also goes for Amber Ruffin, an American writer for Seth Meyers, a comedian in her own right and a Boom Chicago member at one point.

Name dropping aside, there’s no legal video to be shared about it yet, but Dutch news site nu.nl has a nice clip of it. I know how we all get excited when someone speaks Dutch on telly in the US.

(Link: parool.nl)

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