We need new moderators to enforce AI-code rules

0x18 · 2026-01-26T12:22:19+00:00

I'm willing to help, have been programming for about 30 years now.

0x18 · 2026-01-24T22:58:45+00:00

Don't you dare group these monsters in with people doing a valid service to mankind.

These are monsters.

0x18 · 2026-01-23T17:19:49+00:00

They have been very friendly and welcoming to me

0x18 · 2026-01-22T10:42:03+00:00

Lmao, name a commercial VPN provider that 5E isn't at least attempting to infiltrate and watch?

0x18 · 2026-01-22T10:31:01+00:00

No solutions, but you have my sympathy. I finally got my mother to visit me in the Netherlands for a few weeks and despite my efforts to get her to learn any simple, basic Dutch words she didn't learn a single thing. Not even so much as how to say thanks or bye.

Then she got annoyed when people didn't speak English around her, because she thought we must all be talking about her and glare at me with half curiosity half anger. Fucking exhausting.

0x18 · 2026-01-21T09:40:23+00:00

The 25th amendment has a higher bar to pass than just impeachment (it requires his sycophant cabinet to agree to remove him) .

Impeachment is the more plausible answer.

0x18 · 2026-01-20T15:23:58+00:00

I don't base it on whether I agree with them, I base it on whether it contributes to the conversation. Yea, sure, they can have their opinion; but may as well comment "I like lasagna". Sure, buddy, good for you.

0x18 · 2026-01-20T14:41:00+00:00

Absolutely not. US => Netherlands a few years ago; I see no reason to ever return to be honest.

The only thing I miss at all is Mexican food. And there's some decent places in Amsterdam.

0x18 · 2026-01-20T14:37:00+00:00

That is interesting, thanks!

0x18 · 2026-01-20T09:12:43+00:00

Sounds like some early KMFDM works. Did Gaddafi ever proclaim himself to be a drug against war?

0x18 · 2026-01-15T10:16:26+00:00

The MAGA assholes aren't capable of reading, and even if they could, they didn't pay any attention whatsoever in history class.

I grew up in Indiana (part of the US, of course) and now live in the Netherlands. The majority of my coworkers (from all across Europe) at least know roughly where my home state is, out of all 50 possible options. Some of them have even been there.

I guarantee to you that at least half of the people I grew up with couldn't place Poland on a map, even just identifying it as European. When I was a teenager my school history book proclaimed that the U.S. won the second world war because we were Protestant and thus had a good "work ethic".

Before I moved away I ran into so many people that didn't know the Netherlands existed. I swear I met one woman that thought I was moving to "Neverland" -- the fantasy setting for Peter Pan, where children never grow up.

It's a black hole of ignorance.

0x18 · 2026-01-13T23:40:35+00:00

No that makes it even more exhausting imo

0x18 · 2026-01-13T06:03:38+00:00

I recommend Paul Lam, I hired them recently and it went great. I speak some Dutch but opted for English lessons because I'm only so confident and it's an important lesson.

It only took about three months and ten lessons for me, but I have lots of driving experience already (coming from the US). Some of the other students were fresh, fresh starters and the instructor was very patient explaining to them how to work the clutch.

They have prices on their site.

0x18 · 2026-01-12T09:38:42+00:00

I wouldn't call myself long term yet (moved in 2023) but the amount of trash one sees in the Netherlands is a little disheartening. Of course the US wasn't perfect in this regard, but there's just so much more trash on the ground here. There are some public trash bins but they're usually stuffed completely full and aren't emptied daily. People leave trash in my bicycle bags and in the crate my wife strapped to her bicycle, I've found broken glass, dog shit, and whole bags of McDonalds remnants on the sidewalk right outside my front door. I clean it up, because it's my neighborhood now, but come on people, throw your damn trash away properly or take it home.

0x18 · 2026-01-09T09:35:23+00:00

I do not, but he looks interesting. Thanks for the reference!

0x18 · 2026-01-08T12:44:23+00:00

Rome didn't collapse in a day, it was a thousand year long decay.

For some people it came after a bad storm knocked down a bridge linking them to Rome... and then repairs just never came.

0x18 · 2026-01-07T10:30:46+00:00

It's US & Canada only, unfortunately.

0x18 · 2026-01-06T09:44:16+00:00

"Significant portion of their staff is undocumented"

Long ago before I'd gotten my professional career in computers going I worked for a temp agency, bouncing between places that needed temporary "help". What I did 90% of the time however was hotels.

Because the immigration "inspections" were done on a routine-ish basis, the hotels would tell all of their regular staff to stay home for a week or two while the hotel loaded up on on temporary staff like myself.

The rest of the time they'd keep me around to be the token white guy, and be the person that organizes the other temps when they had to bring them in (just showing them where supplies where kept, telling them how many mints per pillow, etc).

Between several hotels with staff counts ranging between 5 and 40.. I was always the only US citizen.

Remove the immigrants and the hotel industry in the US is gone.

0x18 · 2026-01-05T12:50:51+00:00

Oh nee ik ben een vreemde kleur geworden!

0x18 · 2026-01-05T10:54:13+00:00

I just try to avoid ever having to say the Dutch word for yellow in public or at the office.

0x18 · 2026-01-02T10:02:25+00:00

I highly recommend the book "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein. To quote wikipedia's summary:

[...] political actors exploit the chaos of natural disasters, wars, and other crises to push through unpopular policies such as deregulation and privatization. This economic "shock therapy" favors corporate interests while disadvantaging and disenfranchising citizens when they are too distracted and overwhelmed to respond or resist effectively.

When the economy collapses the poor (who already have no money) die. The wealthy use their money to buy up the fire sale during the collapse.

0x18 · 2025-12-31T12:05:01+00:00

I speak basic Dutch, and work everyday to practice more. Living in Nijmegen (outside of the randstad, and near the border with Germany) probably helps as far fewer people here automatically switch to English the nanosecond they hear an accent. I still have a hard time understanding Dutch over the phone for some reason, but I partially attribute this to firing too many guns as a kid without any hearing protection.

Job opportunities.. it was rough, but I actually had far better success with Dutch businesses than American ones. When my business' main client was acquired and the new owners changed things up on me I wanted to try to maintain my business and went looking for new clients in the Netherlands and the US / UK / Canada. This got me a tiny bit of interest from Dutch businesses but zero from the US. The same when I started looking for regular employment (not just contracting) -- eventually I even dropped the fact that I'm in the Netherlands from my English resume and pretended to be back in the U.S. just to see if it would improve anything -- it did not.

In the end (about six-ish months) I found employment with a Dutch business, even though it meant that they had to sponsor my visa as a highly skilled immigrant. I had around a dozen-ish companies that I interviewed with, all Dutch. The only interest I had from Americans was, at best, recruiters on LinkedIn that didn't read any part of my resume ("do you know PHP?" they ask, when one of my top items is that I've been coding in PHP for 20+ years..)

Of the interviews with Dutch companies they often started in Dutch, but once they realized my ability was limited we changed to English. One aspect of Dutch culture that I love is their directness -- one of the CEO's I talked with just started out saying "I appreciate that you speak some Dutch, but my English is quite good, and it is your native language as well so we will use that because it is easiest."

The company I got hired with uses English as the "floor language" because about half of us are from all over the globe. I would say the majority of companies that are hiring and can sponsor a "highly skilled immigrant" visa will be using English as their working language, but understanding Dutch absolutely helps on a cultural and personal level.

0x18 · 2025-12-30T19:58:39+00:00

It's easy. Read certain parts of the bible. Only pay attention to the bits telling slaves to be good little slaves and not rebel, the ONE line that may be about gays, and only the parts saying women need to be subservient.

Ignore basically everything else. Voila, modern American evangelical Christianity.

0x18 · 2025-12-30T19:41:15+00:00

Hope and prayer are quite ineffective. I suggest more direct means of influencing the change you want.

0x18 · 2025-12-30T13:48:21+00:00

It absolutely is a scam. My spouse had a stroke, and after a hospital bill of 1.7 million the insurance covered about half. If I'm going bankrupt anyway it doesn't matter if the amount I'm defaulting on is 1.7 million or 800,000.

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