December 4, 2020

Time to vote for the Worst Dutch Slogans of 2020

Filed under: Animals by Orangemaster @ 3:04 pm

Regardless of the state the world’s in, some things march on, and one of those things is voting on the worst Dutch slogans of 2020.

There are 10 in the running, but let’s pick the raisins out of the porridge, as the Dutch would say. And if you follow the link below, you can cast your vote as well.

First, the obligatory dirty joke that’s surprisingly not misogynistic, from animal protection group Gaia: ‘Laat je poesje knippen voor ze begint te wippen’ (roughly, ‘Get your pussy fixed before they start reproducing’, but rhyming and a bit funnier. ‘Wippen’ here is Dutch for ‘having sex’ and amusingly enough it means ‘see-sawing’, which the Dutch associate with the act.

Then, there’s the quintessential ‘poop and fart’ joke, from Rennie, pills that help against flatulence and stomach acid: ‘Liefde maakt blind, maar je neus ruikt nog steeds een wind’ (roughly, ‘Love is blind, but your nose can still smell a wind’. Sadly, ‘blind’ (blind) and wind (wind/fart) rhyme in Dutch, but not in English.

And there’s always the Dunglish joke, that you need to know Dutch and English to understand, and that would be ‘O my goot…’ (‘oh my gutter…’) from a roofing company. ‘Goot’ is Dutch for ‘gutter’, and of course the slogan is trying to say ‘Oh my God’ in English, which in Dutch would be ”Mijn God’, with ‘God’ and ‘goot’ sounding very similar.

UPDATE: ‘Laat je poesje knippen voor ze begint te wippen’ from animal organisation Gaia won.

(Link: sloganverkiezing.nl)

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December 10, 2018

Cheesiest slogans of 2018 are up for vote

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 4:57 pm
Kdag2010-2

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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June 5, 2018

Dutch invent world’s first cement separating machine

Filed under: Dutch first,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 8:00 am

inovahuis

Amsterdam company Rutte Groep has succeeded in building a machine capable of recycling cement – a world first. The machine is called ‘Freement’, which is being presented today at the Provada fair in Amsterdam together with the New Horizon Urban Mining company.

Fremeent, invented by Koos Schenk, can separate blocks of cement into its three original materials of gravel, sand and cement. It is a big deal, considering that producing cement is responsible for nine percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. Not unlike a cow, the machine ‘ruminates’ cement until the gravel is clean. Freement can process 130.000 tonnes of cement a year.

(Link: trouw.nl, Photo of an unrelated energy-neutral house: bright.nl)

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November 7, 2017

World’s first hybrid mobile crane is Dutch

Filed under: Automobiles,Dutch first by Orangemaster @ 8:14 pm

Crane

Crane manufacturer Spierings from Oss, Noord-Brabant will be presenting the world’ first hybrid mobile crane, a zero-emission vehicle, with the exception of using a small diesel motor on the motorway. Its SK487-AT3 City Boy will be unveiled on 18 November to guests from around the world.

The SK487-AT3 City Boy was specially designed for an urban environment where environmental requirements are increasingly higher. It is modular, runs on electricity, and is easily manoeuvrable in typically narrow Dutch streets and busy cities. Like a hybrid car, the SK487-AT3 can be charged up and can also run on its own battery for a few hours.

(Link and photo: omroepbrabant.nl)

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June 11, 2016

Time-lapse video of tunnel placed under motorway

Filed under: Automobiles by Orangemaster @ 8:59 am

Dutch construction company Heijmans has published a time-lapse video on Facebook of them digging a 70-metre stretch of tunnel and then inserting it very efficiently under motorway A12 near Ede, Gelderland all in one weekend. The film has been viewed over 750,000 times on Facebook (it’s now floating around on YouTube) and their post has had 7,200 likes and over 8,400 shares so far.

Someone posted, ‘Hey, it would be nice if it has some music to it’, and then Heijmans gave them the classic Dutch radio answer of ‘You asked, we’ll play it’ and here is the result below.

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December 31, 2015

Moving a school building 30 metres on steel rollers

Filed under: Architecture by Orangemaster @ 11:31 am

1e_fase_kindercampus_wordt_opgeschoven_en_aangesloten_op_de_2e_fase

A new school building in South Amsterdam, the Kindercampus Zuidas completed in October 2014, was pushed 30 metres further before the holidays to its proper place next to the first part of the same building in order to become one, as originally planned.

The first part of the Kindercampus was built at the right place behind a sports hall, so that children could have their urgently needed school and day care. Once the sports hall was destroyed, the second building was pushed into place 30 metres further, a tough task that required a specialist. It took 20 hours to move the one million kilo building 30 metres. The move was delayed due to high winds at one point. Depending on the sources below the fastest speed was either 2 or 3 metres an hour.

Nothing was removed from the school when they pushed it. The kids (click and scroll until you see them) were given a complete explanation by the director of the operation and were able to watch some of it from a higher nearby building. I like how the Dutch called him the ‘school-pushing director’.

Why didn’t the city destroy the sports hall earlier to avoid all these extra costs? Because the temporary sports hall, the ‘bubble hall’ where coincidentally I trained at for a few months, was only ready in September 2014 and the Kindercampus had to be delivered by October 2014.

Here’s a time lapse video of the unusual operation:

verschuiven KinderCampus from EmielBakker.nl on Vimeo.

(Links: at5, amsterdam.nl, Image and design: Hund Falk Architecten)

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January 4, 2013

Power company covers up butt cleavage

Filed under: Fashion,Weird by Orangemaster @ 1:26 pm

In Dutch they call it ‘bouwvakkersdecolleté’ (‘construction worker’s décolletage’), which pertains exclusively to men, in English it is better known as ‘butt cleavage’, which actually includes both men and women. And in 2013, the male version should be a thing of the past if we can believe Dutch power company Eneco.

About 500 technicians — assumingly all male, but we don’t know for sure — are getting new uniforms that don’t show their unsightly butt cracks when they bend down. The trousers will have a higher waistline and jackets will be longer. I personally can understand the trousers, but most of the year they will not be wearing the jacket because it’s too warm. As well, the clothing will be more ‘sweat resistant’, which will surely enhance any experience with having burly men work in your house on your power supply.

What I do not like about the Dutch expression is that it automatically assumes that only men are technicians in the Netherlands, which is often the case, but surely not always. It also gives me the idea that female butt crack is acceptable, which leads to more inequality. Whale tails went out a few years ago (someone please pass this memo around, a lot of girls didn’t get it) and a technician with butt crack comes off to me as being less competent and desperately in need of attention.

(Link: www.ad.nl, Photo of Female shipyard workers by BiblioArchives / LibraryArchives, some rights reserved)

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December 6, 2008

Delayed construction killing unique bookstore’s business

Filed under: General,Literature by Orangemaster @ 7:00 am

There’s a lot of ways to kill walk-by business and one of them is having heavy duty construction right in front of your shop for as long as The Bookstore Exchange has had—13 months and counting. This second hand, English-language bookstore (photo), apparently the largest on the European continent with over 80,000 books, located near the Faculty of Sociology of the Universiteit van Amsterdam has been around since 1978 and is going bankrupt due to this construction.

Run by Jeff, a perfectly integrated American—a real ‘Amsterdammer’—who has been living in the capital for 30 years, said in November already to different media that he was as good as bankrupt. The construction blocks the view of his shop window and so passers-by don’t just pop in anymore, never mind the sand from the construction outside that gets into books, the noise and what have you. In a city with 1.5 million tourists a year, being invisible is deadly. The City of Amsterdam has no intention of compensating the mess they are still making for something that was scheduled to be finished by end of 2007.

Sources tell us that Jeff has neither the time nor money nor energy to fight against the bureaucrats and we get that. The closing of his shop is not just his loss, but a loss for anyone who enjoys hard to find English-language books. Apparently, the source of pride from being able to say that the continent’s biggest second-hand English-language bookshop is in Amsterdam and the labour of love built by Jeff himself means nothing to bureaucrats who can’t even finished projects on time or within budgets anymore. We won’t get into the hugely delayed North-South metro line, which literally put people out of their sinking homes and ruining other businesses.

Christmas is around the corner and so I invite you to check out The Book Exchange in Amsterdam (click on the link for directions). It’s short walk from Central Station. We plan to do so as well.

More info: bookexchange.nl. Thanks to my friend Nathalie for pointing this out!

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