Dutch design duo Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren (aka Viktor&Rolf) celebrated their 25th anniversary with a “collection of memories”, called the Immaculate Collection, an entirely white collection, adorned with Swarovski crystals, an ode to many of their iconic creations, from a reimagined Bedtime Story collection to the ‘No’ trench coat seen above.
The presentation of this collection coincides with the Viktor&Rolf Fashion Artists 25 Years exhibition running until 30 September at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam.
As of yesterday, the police, together with Eindhoven University of Technology, started a trial using data correlation to determine the bad behaviour of criminals such as pickpockets more quickly.
In Roermond, Limburg, a city next to both Belgium and Germany that welcomes tens of thousands of visitors from other countries every day for their outlet shopping centre, the city has a major pickpocketing problem. A university team led by data-mining professor Mykola Pechenizkiy is helping the police analyse various databases containing information about shopping centre visitors, including automatically recognised number plates, data collected for marketing purposes, messages on social media and camera images.
Of course, privacy is an important part of this project for both the criminals and visitors. “For this reason, we also work closely with the mayor and public prosecutor, for example. Based on the experiences in the living labs, they can assess the impact on the privacy of citizens and decide whether this is acceptable in order to achieve the desired goals’, explains Marius Monen of the university’s Data Science Centre.
In Rotterdam a while back, a dynamic teenage duo was following pickpockets, taking pictures and calling the cops on them.
After a decade of fighting in court with American shoe company Converse over ‘fake’ All-Stars shoes, Dutch company Sporttrading Holland is now awaiting about 100 million euro in compensation. Just the lawyers cost easily 2 million euro, according to the Dutch company.
In 2009, Sporttrading Holland went bankrupt over Converse’s decision to sue them for selling similar shoes. Amusingly enough, their shoes were made at the same place that Converse’s shoes were made and were even distributed by the same distributor.
The Dutch company managed to rise from the ashes, but now it will have the chance to continue the way it should have in the first place instead of being ‘portrayed as a bunch of criminals’. Dutch distributor of Converse shoes Kesbo Sport hasn’t said anything in the media as we write this.
Dutch publishers and distributors can’t seem things to get right sometimes. Last year, a drugstore was selling a colouring book featuring Hitler, and now a mother was shocked to pick up a copy of ‘Suriname, here we come’ at the library containing some discriminating comments about the former Dutch colony.
The book tells children that cheating on one’s spouse is common and that men often have multiple women as partners. There’s all kinds of ways of discussing something like this seriously with children, but here the goal is to imply that it’s morally wrong, which is the wrong way to go about it. Why children need to know this if they visit Suriname is beyond me.
The rest depicts the Surinamese as bad people. “The Surinamese deliberately hit dogs with their cars, and used to sell themselves as slaves. Did you know that phone calls between Surinamese can often take a long time? A Surinamese needs an endless introduction and is unable to end a conversation”, all of which is presented as ‘facts’. I bet money the author is Caucasian and I can’t be bothered to check.
In light of pictures of the book’s content floating around Twitter, the publisher has decided to pull the book, basically admitting it was a bad decision to publish it in the first place. However, the publisher was obviously fine with it until they got called out for peddling such nastiness, which makes them tone-deaf and not suitable for children. Educate not hate, right?
And in true Dutch form, the ‘excuse’ contains “we never intended to hurt anyone”, but in fact they thought this was appropriate content to teach children until they were called out on social media.
A preacher of the Reformed Congregations (Protestant) from Amersfoort, Utrecht got into it with the Dutch tax office over wanting to deduct a dress jacket he used for special occasions like weddings as work clothing, which the tax office refused.
The 354,95 euro jacket was bought in 2013 and claimed as work clothing that year, but the tax office claimed it could also be worn casually, therefore it could not be deducted.
The preacher brought the matter before a court in Gelderland. He claimed he only wore the jacket for very specific work occasions, not in his spare time. The court also turned down his claim.
Not finished pleading his case, the preacher appealed the lower court’s decision, and the court of Arnhem-Leeuwarden took his side this week. Due to the buttons and other specific traits of the jacket, the court clearly saw a different type of garment that just a jacket and sided with the preacher who was then allowed to deduct it as work clothing. It was also bought at a very specific shop for that very same reason.
The preacher was refunded the money he spent fighting the case in court and can now adjust his tax return.
Amsterdam-based Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen has created a series of dresses that replicate the feathers and soundwave patterns of birds in flight, which was presented a few days ago at Le Trianon, Paris for the Paris Haute Couture fashion week.
To go along with them, Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta of Amsterdam’s Studio Drift had an installation of moving glass tubes that also capture the motion of birds in flight. Inspired by Studio Drift, Van Herpen also used chronophotography, a Victorian photographic technique that captures movement in several frames of print.
At lunch, before stepping into a plane back to the Netherlands from Canada, I was told about the story of Léo Major, a French Canadian soldier of the Royal 22nd Regiment of the Canadian Armed Forces who single-handedly freed the Dutch city of Zwolle, and other places, with some unbelievable tactics.
Léo Major of Longueuil, Québec was a corporal who refused to move up in rank despite his brilliant moves. He pulled off stuff without consulting his superiors and made bluffs work that nobody else would have come up with. He pretty much freelanced and the army just let him because he was brave and smart.
During WWII, Zwolle, Overijssel was surrounded by German troops and the 22nd Regiment that was trying to recapture it were failing miserably, losing dozens of soldiers every day. Léo Major and his best friend Wilfrid Arseneault volunteered to go and find out where the Germans were positioned to try and improve their situation.
At nightfall the pair went to the farm of the Van Gerner family who tried to explain in Dutch that the forest was full of Germans. Shortly after, Arseneault was shot, his stomach full of bullet holes, as explained by Major himself in the video below. Major, determined to complete the mission left his best friend behind and pressed on.
Major entered Zwolle and attacked German patrols and ran through the streets throwing grenades to convince the enemy that Canadian troops were marching in, and it worked. He captured entire troops of 8-10 Germans who let themselves be delivered to the 22nd Regiment outside the city, believing the city was under attack. Major kept going back to Zwolle to pull the same tactic over and over. He even set fire to Gestapo headquarters.
At dawn, he realised that the last German troops had left the city and that Zwolle was free. After making sure the city knew they were liberated, Major went to pick up the corpse of his friend that he brought to the Van Gerner farm for safe keeping until the burial. Later that morning, Canadian troops marched into the city and the residents of Zwolle finally saw that they were liberated.
Léo Major was given his first medal, the Distinguished Conduct Medal of the British Army, the only Canadian and one of only three soldiers in the British Commonwealth to ever receive the Distinguished Conduct Medal twice in separate wars. Major went on to pull some more great moves in the Korean War. His friend Wilfrid Arseneault was given a Bronze Lion posthumously in 1970 by Queen Juliana.
This YouTube video features Léo Major himself in English on Zwolle television, with parts translated into Dutch.
A farmer in Berkelland, Gelderland had a shed built on his land along the new N18 motorway to use as a shed, reduce traffic noise and make some extra cash. The idea was to rent space on the side of his shed to advertisers.
However, once the space was rented, which happened fairly quickly, the mayor went over to the farmer and explained that he was not allowed by local law to have advertising on his shed that was unrelated to his business. The farmer removed the advertising banner, but used several Dutch expressions to say that he wasn’t going to take it lying down.
The farmer then parked a trailer next to his shed and put advertising there. He is allowed to put adverts on a trailer by law, and it would be weird if he couldn’t. The municipality checked their facts and indeed, the farmer can go this route. “There are tons of trucks driving around with adverts on them, you’re not going to pull them all from the road?” reasoned the farmer. Since the trailer is ‘rolling stock’ with wheels, it can have advertising that is non-related to the business of the farmer.
However, the mayor isn’t quite ready to let it go: if our farmer friend doesn’t move his trailer within a year or takes the wheels off and makes it a more permanent structure, then they’ll be back in a year. Farmer wins for now.
I wonder if he farms any cucumbers, as this is great ‘cucumber news’ (slow news period in the Netherlands).
In an American study entitled ‘Effect of Oscillation on Perineal Pressure in Cyclists: Implications for Micro-Trauma’, the all-male authors report that “genital numbness and erectile dysfunction in [male] cyclists may result from repeated perineal impacts on the bicycle saddle (micro-trauma) that occur during routine cycling. And if there’s a country we know that has men who into routine cycling, it’s definitely the Netherlands. Slots two and three are taken up by Denmark and Germany, with Sweden, Norway, Finland, Japan, Switzerland, Belgium and China rounding out the Top 10.
The study’s authors concluded that there was a strong linear relationship between oscillation magnitude and perineal pressure during cycling and that using shock absorption in bicycle design may reduce this perineal micro-trauma while possibly improving cycling-associated perineal numbness and erectile dysfunction.
Dutch bicycle company VanMoof of Amsterdam has launched a high-security electric bicycle it claims is impossible to ride or even sell if when it gets stolen.
“The Electrified S2 and X2 model bicycles boast “stealth locking” that activates with a kick, rider-recognition technology that automatically unlocks the bike on approach and an alarm system that activates if tampering is detected. The security features negate the need for a traditional bike lock.”
And I want to believe that this is all true and that it works fine, but only time will tell. It’s also true that many folks who live in the Netherlands avoid buying expensive-looking bikes so they won’t get stolen, and if when it happens, it won’t be an expensive loss. In that sense, VanMoof is onto something: just making bigger locks won’t deter thieves, so it’s cool that they have come up with something, but will it work?
Based on casual observation in Amsterdam, if when you get your bike stolen, you’ll probably need to buy a new one fast if you use it to commute. At that point, quite a few people think about buying a stolen one, having felt cheated because they were decent enough not to buy a stolen one in the first place. Flaunting an expensive bike that looks like it doesn’t have a lock might also attract thieves.
Let’s see how the anti-theft system will pan out then.
At lunch, before stepping into a plane back to the Netherlands from Canada, I was told about the story of Léo Major, a French Canadian soldier of the Royal 22nd Regiment of the Canadian Armed Forces who single-handedly freed the Dutch city of Zwolle, and other places, with some unbelievable tactics.
