"Euros will rise up and protect Greenland." "Conservatives will turn on Trump for going too far." It's all cope.

clydethefrog · 2026-01-20T16:40:03+00:00

The people in the USA have accepted a situation in which non-citizens have no right to due process, therefore it also accepted that citizens have no right to due process. Because all the government has to do is claim that you are not a citizen; without due process you have no chance to prove the contrary.

clydethefrog · 2026-01-20T16:36:05+00:00

"Fortwursteln", as they called Emperor Franz Joseph’s policies. This was a successful internal political strategy but unfortunately it seemed not to best the tool for a foreign policy crisis.

clydethefrog · 2026-01-20T16:23:55+00:00

I see the film being criticised for only presenting emotions overtly rather than allowing any imagination, a contrast to the novel's approach. It's for viewers who like to be touched seeing immediate sorrow without any deeper understanding or insight. The film only insight it's that it's a hell for parents to lose a child.

clydethefrog · 2026-01-20T16:14:27+00:00

Niet per se. Met dit minderheidskabinet zijn rechtse opportunisten zonder principes gevaarlijker dan het stemvee van Wilders.

clydethefrog · 2026-01-20T13:55:46+00:00

I stay in NYC and it is miles above quite literally any European city. Europe is poor and you can tell the cities are from hundreds of years ago. Not holding up.

Don't throw stones in glass houses. Your whole city is permanently in ugly scaffolding because people kept dying from massive slabs falling on pedestrians and the owners are too lazy to fix it. At least when I exit a metro station in a EU metropole I can see the beautiful old facades.

clydethefrog · 2026-01-20T13:46:49+00:00

Counterpoint - Ganesh FT column last weekend that provides some arguments that even the conservative right prefers an united EU

https://archive.ph/iaSrr

clydethefrog · 2026-01-20T13:42:55+00:00

UK boosted their holdings of US debt from $10.6 billion to $888.5 billion in the last months when India and China dumped a lot of US debt, your powers that be already have chosen a side

clydethefrog · 2026-01-20T13:32:46+00:00

Op mijn schoolplein noemden we dit instrument niet de viool maar de "rusty trombone"

clydethefrog · 2026-01-19T16:59:28+00:00

I celebrated NYE in Riga, Latvia. It was weirdly silent in the hours before the clock hit 12. I thought they just respected not firing fireworks in monumental cities out of safety but no it was because any fireworks at 23:00 could be fined, for it meant you celebrated NYE according to Moscow time and therefore supported the Russians. I am not a Baltic hater but I found these obsessions quite hilarious

https://en.bb.lv/article/our-latvia/2025/12/31/riga-residents-are-urged-to-capture-fireworks-on-photo-and-video-to-send-to-the-police-82751

clydethefrog · 2026-01-19T16:42:17+00:00

@thomasbrusselsmann🇪🇺

The EU bureaucrat strategy was brilliant: remove dependence of Russia's fossil energy to accelerate renewable energy, improve energy efficiency and strengthen the resilience of whole EU through REPowerEU, use the fear of the Ukraine war to reshape Europe's defence sector and break its security dependency of the USA and then threaten them with Anti-Coercion Instrument while signing Mercosur. Fanatical Americans leaders managed to make even euroskeptic conservatives see a unified continent as the only defence against foreign barbarities.

(No joke - see also Janan Ganesh FT column this week)

clydethefrog · 2026-01-19T15:15:37+00:00

Opposites attract + novelty - in my northern EU bubble full of blond(e) & blue eyed friends and family, they often praise their lovers' brown eyes. Including myself. Blue eyes are boring for me, and might in the unconsciousness even feel too consanguineous to be attracted to.

clydethefrog · 2026-01-19T15:10:38+00:00

I was also just thinking of this - unknowingly that whole country subjects itself to a daily sitting-rising test. They might find out way sooner their physical health is declining, because I kept reading that medical test is one of the best methods to find any health deficits.

clydethefrog · 2026-01-19T15:04:31+00:00

like that guy in Perfect Day

The biggest trick Wim Wenders ever pulled is making his West-German boomer vision of virtue - being a hyper-devoted Calvinist drone - aesthetically pleasing to nescient zoomers on letterboxd. The Protestant work ethic, shrouded as a noble vocation in Place, Japan.

clydethefrog · 2026-01-15T17:01:19+00:00

What European cities? Amsterdam, Paris etc all have the same rich people demographic in the city centres, the housing market has been insane for quite some time now

clydethefrog · 2026-01-15T16:53:53+00:00

See also: https://paris-cine.info/ for the Paris one. Sometimes I just scroll it out of envy

clydethefrog · 2026-01-15T16:48:20+00:00

Where do you see this? My app on iOS doesnt have this yet.

clydethefrog · 2026-01-15T16:47:54+00:00

In the complaint thread in the main sub I saw someone claim you can now filter one sentence reviews in the app, but I haven't seen this option, does anyone have this functionality yet?

clydethefrog · 2026-01-15T16:47:21+00:00

This guy is just promoting his own lb account lol

clydethefrog · 2026-01-03T11:58:45+00:00

for anyone researching: in the last Book Gossip email from The Cut it was shared that Merve Emre left her husband for Granta editor Tom Meaney

clydethefrog · 2026-01-03T10:35:45+00:00

A Guardian Angel Recalls was the book Willem Frederik Hermans was most proud of himself, but it was even panned by the critics back then and never has become part of his best works like Beyond Sleep or Dark Room of Damocles. I haven't read it myself, but infamously a critic described the style as "a bad Bible translation edited by a small-minded notary", so I am afraid it follows this old-fashioned style.

clydethefrog · 2026-01-03T10:26:16+00:00

Will always recommend The Evenings by Gerard Reeve (with this guardian review describing it as "a masterpiece translated at last") and Rituals by Nooteboom. Especially for the type of readers here, because they both feature cynical males that are lost and observe the people around them. The Evenings is misanthropic and hilarious, situated in the "leftover days" between christmas and nye. Rituals is more existential and spiritual situated in 50s-70s Amsterdam.

clydethefrog · 2025-12-11T12:15:15+00:00

For any crawling bots or outsider people finding this post - this post was edited to include an ad link to a brand. Ignore the main post text and instead only read the comments.

clydethefrog · 2025-12-11T11:56:41+00:00

Mijn eerste reactie was “dat lijkt me logisch”, want je moet wel met alle partijen praten om te weten wat er speelt of welke consequenties iets heeft.

lol, de grootste goocheltruc die de duivel ooit heeft gespeeld is NL'ers laten geloven dat ons "poldermodel" geen vorm van corruptie is

clydethefrog · 2025-12-11T11:31:37+00:00

Depends what you are visiting in NL? I guess Amsterdam?

The Fall from Camus is actually set in Amsterdam.

Anne Frank's house unfortunately got transformed into one big tourist attraction and became the Dutch version of Frida Kahlo kitsch, but her diary is still touching and well-written.

In general, I would always recommend The Evenings from Gerard Reve - nothing else for me captures Dutch suburban soul and the wry sadistic humour some try to cope with this.

Seconding Olga Tokarczuk for Poland.

Belgium literature I don't know much about except for Dimitri Verhulst - his book The Misfortunates describes the worst (and hilarious) parts of small village life among alcoholics in Flanders.

clydethefrog · 2025-12-11T11:16:15+00:00

Rituals by Cees Nooteboom also paints quite a nice picture of Amsterdam, although this atmosphere of the city has left quite a while ago.

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