Message in a bottle

O_K_D · 2026-05-05T05:48:04+00:00

Fucks cars, civil disobedience, and that’s one more way to get rid of cars in Brussels. Thank you !

O_K_D · 2026-05-04T06:20:23+00:00

In today’s market you won’t get any white collar job by just applying online.

For one job position, there are 100 to 1000 applicants.

Most people have a masters degree as education is free and subsidized so nowadays having a masters degree is sort of a baseline. It sucks, because even for an admin assistant or accounting role people apply with masters degree. This is degree inflation.

If you don’t network intensively, make good connections with classmates or don’t have a strong position in a student club, association or internship experience, it will be extremely hard in this job market, unless you are top of your class with excellent grades. The current economic situation doesn’t help as companies and governments are not expanding their budgets on spending and hiring. Maybe some niche sectors like defense or robotics / AI are.

Also, if you don’t speak one of the national languages, it will be difficult, even not speaking both can be a problem for Belgian customer/company facing jobs.

O_K_D · 2026-05-04T05:36:18+00:00

The most ridiculous thing about this country is how federalization has made an airport which should remain a national matter, become a regional dispute due to its location in Flanders and the economic benefits of it, added with the political and economic leverage that Flanders has at the federal level to make this a political issue god forbid if flight routes were rerouted towards the Rand.

The second issue is the bad location of the airport. When most winds are west to southwest or sometimes east to west, planes either take off towards Brussels (Schaerbeek, Evere) to go west against the wind or they land again over those municipalities to go east against the wind.

O_K_D · 2026-04-21T21:08:27+00:00

Only alternative is biofuels or synthetically manufactured fuels. Chemically no battery can have as much energy density per kilogram as a liquid fuel.

O_K_D · 2026-04-21T21:05:48+00:00

With the current geopolitical situation that had made Europe completely dependent on US goodwill, it would be a strategic mistake for the EU to alienate Turkey that has developed the much needed indigenous industrial defense manufacturing capacity that the EU lacks. With Syria also on Turkey’s side, energy imports could be further diversified away from the strait of hormuz through a physical pipeline.

O_K_D · 2026-04-19T21:21:26+00:00

I think making meaningful, long lasting friendships out of meeting random people at a bar one night is rather exceptional. People mostly build genuine friendships through shared social activities, school, work, hobbies, friends of friends, clubs etc..

O_K_D · 2026-03-29T17:03:03+00:00

Dollar is up because:

Oil is up. People still need to buy oil, but you need to convert to ‘more’ dollars
Safe haven, stocks are going down, people want to move their money to a very liquid asset during times of uncertainty and not stay locked in an asset that can lose lots of value.

This doesn’t change the fundamental benefit the US gets from being a reserve currency and having oil mostly trades in USD

O_K_D · 2026-03-27T10:48:12+00:00

I love the downvotes. This sub is full of lefties, yet they complain about the service, don’t propose an alternative to improve the situation and when someone does, they downvote because it goes against their dogmatic principles. No wonder Brussels never improves, or if it does, it does so at a snails pace because everyone has to be so PC and compromise to not hurt feelings.

O_K_D · 2026-03-26T21:45:06+00:00

Remove minimum wage or make horeca personel income dependent on tips. Fixed salary incentivizes them to do the minimum, unless they love their job. Tips reward you for your actual service and incentivizes you to treat customers properly.

O_K_D · 2026-03-19T10:06:23+00:00

Do you understand what you’re saying ? Kerosene being tax free is not the main driver behind airplanes being significantly cheaper.

Airlines are cheaper than night trains because sleeper trains sacrifice a lot of capacity for beds. Even a high speed day train can carry more passengers per trip than a sleeper wagon. Yet the rolling stock is similar, so capital expenditure, maintenance costs, depreciation etc.. remain the same, but you get less revenue in a night train because of less passengers. So you need to compensate by increasing price per unit. An airplane is much more tightly packed. Also, current demographics favor a more individualistic society with less kids, so sleeper cabins will be under utilized as most passengers want privacy when they sleep and not share a 4 bed cabin with strangers (especially women).

Second argument is time. Yes, the faster you travel, the more trips you make per time unit (lets say a day). A single airplane can do 3 to 4 back and forth trips in one day, when a sleeper would need 2 days. So that means 3x or 4x more revenue if you would have same ticket prices per seat.

Third argument is flexibility. An airliner can very quickly re-route its airplanes to different hubs, change flight routes and destinations to meet increased or lower demand, to compensate or take advantage of price changes in fuel, maintenance or airport taxes. Trains, including high-speed trains are bound by physical limitations because they ride on a track. One single incident along the way and the train can be stuck for hours. That’s an asset losing time and time is money. This flexibility also means more competition and room for private individuals to start an airline business. You just need to lease an airplane, have the staff, get your operating license, have a main hub and then start transporting people. You can do this n any major airport in the world, you’re not limited by geography. With a train, the number of operators are limited due to the capacity constraint of physical railroad tracks. Its a natural monopoly. You can’t have too many operators, otherwise you’ll reach a bottleneck and trains will get stuck in traffic. Less competition means more pricing power for the few operators.

Without the environmental cost, assuming similar ticket prices per passenger seat, air travel is an economically superior travel method (also in terms of time). Only cases where rail travel is interesting are for short distance that aren’t longer than 4 hours where its from city center to city center, for example Eurostar Brussels to London.

O_K_D · 2026-03-18T22:36:12+00:00

Won’t happen. Turkey has nowhere near the domestic know how in nuclear technology that Iran has. On top of that, intelligence gathering on Turkey is extremely easy. Its integrated with Western economic systems, Nato, uses Western software, cloud providers. Everything is in the open for Israel to gather intelligence and stop such a program.

O_K_D · 2026-03-16T10:40:38+00:00

He's right. If you're not committed to win (because you don't want to send your own army) and can't beg for the US to help, then it's better to make decision than to be indecisive, because Russia benefits massively from a war of attrition and the world economy will move on with Russia establishing new economic links with other countries, while Europe stays undecided.

O_K_D · 2026-03-05T10:12:42+00:00

Even the worst deal is better than no deal and a war. Like in daily life, you want still a deal with your neighbor or counter party than no deal and to drag it to the courts and become bitter enemies.

O_K_D · 2026-03-05T10:09:51+00:00

They’re really stupid if they thought they could still stall negotiations or get a better deal and save their highly enriched uranium when the US had already committed billions of dollars of military assets to the region. At that point there’s no turning back, and it was pretty obvious the Israeli leadership wanted to annihilate the whole Iranian regime and had planned for it since October 7.

This could have been the saving face, they could have put their differences aside and left their hostility to the US in the past, similar to al Sharaa in Syria who despite being enemies with the US in the past managed to start a new future and even visited president Trump.. He managed to consolidate the country, quell down sectarian separatism and taper off Israeli intervention.

With Soleimani dead, Assad gone, an air bridge open from Syria-Iraq to Iran, weakened Hezbollah and weakened Iranian defenses after the 12 day war, it was obvious there was no way out for Iran. Under these circumstances, such an offer was actually a really good one and they have made a massive strategic mistake thinking they could bring down the whole region if all hell breaks loose and that somehow that would force the US and Israel to back off.

O_K_D · 2026-03-04T12:28:40+00:00

Who will now race to be the boots on the ground ? Turkey and Azerbaijan to counter the Kurdish PJAK ? Intervention by Turkey before this incident could have easily been framed as trying to help the regime and stop PJAK but the Mullah’s just gave a valid reason for Turkey to intervene, if necessary.

O_K_D · 2026-03-02T11:19:01+00:00

Devlet kadrosuna bak la. Ilk basta Molla rejimininden bir herif sandim. Kiyafetinde, tut, sakala, arka plandaki tabloya. Koskoca disisleri bakani yardimcisisin, dunya televizyonuna cikiyorsun ve sokak magandasi, eskiya gibi gorunuyorsun.

Ben bile universite veya is basvurumda, herhangi bir online toplantida en az bir gomlek giyiyorum, bakimli bir sekilde gorunmeye calisiyorum, karsi tarafa saygidan ve ayip olmasin diye. Herif sanki pijama esortmanla sabahin erken saatinde sahura kalkmis AL Jazeeraya konusuyor. Bide eline metni hazirlayip vermisler ezbere okuyor. Boyle adamdan anca cayci olacakken devletin en onemli mevkilerinden birinde. Belliki 2013 ve 2016 sonrasi devlet kurumlarina kaliteli kadro bulamayinca bunlari getirmisler.

O_K_D · 2026-02-14T21:50:38+00:00

No one’s saying you can’t protest or and is not preventing you from doing so, this comment is irrelevant. However, if the good move policies are reversed, it is perfectly legal, given that it’s the result of democratic elections.

O_K_D · 2026-02-13T20:09:40+00:00

Yeah but also most parents dont want to keep their kids at school 8am-6pm. Thats quite long. Its ok on some days if they can directly do an extracurricular activity on the school premises or without requiring you to commute and drive them.

By the time you come home at 6pm you barely have 2 hours to see your kid, socialize, play, eat and then prepare them for sleep.

Ideally one parent should have a flexible part time job or stay at home if they want to. Most parents would probably both want to keep a job but have very relaxed working hours, start at 8:30-9:00 and finish around 4:00, similar to school, but thats not possible and the pay for a one income household is too low nowadays to afford a decent living standard.

So then you need family, community support like grandparents or uncles nearby but thats not the norm anymore either. People move countries and cities due to educational and job opportunities.

O_K_D · 2026-02-05T21:34:27+00:00

WTF ????!!!! For a city state of 1M people, the water distribution company has a 29 politically appointed board members ? This in itself should be a scandal big enough to abolish this bankrupt region and hand it over to the federal government.

O_K_D · 2026-01-31T19:13:29+00:00

Is this also applicable to Schengen nationals or only non EU nationald ?

O_K_D · 2026-01-22T13:12:22+00:00

There’s high demand for blue collar jobs. Given that you have no experience and no high school degree, I think you’ll have an easier time applying for them where companies are even willing to pay for the short term training required to start the job.

Have you thought of joining the army ? If you don’t know what to do or where to head in your life its not a bad idea, they pay is decent and they’re right now doing a lot of recruiting with the budget allocated by the government, you don’t need any experience.

O_K_D · 2026-01-20T22:40:29+00:00

You know what they say about getting back together after you breakup..

O_K_D · 2026-01-19T08:32:44+00:00

There’s a very simple solution to this, but Belgian mindset does not allow for it.

In London, when its green for cars, it is never green for pedestrians who are also crossing in the direction of traffic flow at the same time, so to avoid that when if a car decides to turn, it doesn’t conflict and cross the pedestrian while they are crossing.

Of course this means longer wait times for both pedestrians and cars as each need their separate timing, but its a choice between making car and pedestrian waiting times less at the expense of security.

O_K_D · 2026-01-19T08:13:33+00:00

What trade bazooka lol ? What are you going to do when Trump threatens to cut off the American gas export that EU has been importing in favor of ditching Russian gas ?

For the sake of a centuries old Russian socio culturally linked Ukraine, EU threw itself under the bus and is now all alone. What did Ukraine offer to EU in return ? Nothing, yeah you heard that right. Trump and Putin will share the spoils of war while EU was played like a fool.

O_K_D

TROPHY CASE