Category: Europe

Biking without bike infrastructure: the Netherlands

by philg

In Danish happiness: bicycle infrastructure I described the Danish system of road/curb/bike path/curb/sidewalk. What if a significant percentage of a society used bicycles for transportation, but nobody bothered to build infrastructure? That’s the Netherlands!

I recently visited a friend in Delft, a university town south of Amsterdam. There are no generally no curbs at all in the downtown area. The road is informally divided into car/bike/pedestrian, but these divisions can change depending on what exactly is sticking out from a house, possibly forcing pedestrians into the bike area, or whether a truck is trying to use the road.

The risk of injury has ballooned in the last few years due to the popularity of cargo bikes and electric bikes. Instead of getting hit by a 200 lb. person-bike combo going 8 mph you’ll get hit by a 400 lb. person-small person-groceries-bike combo going 15 mph. “Trouble in cyclists’ paradise: Amsterdam accused of favouring pedestrians” (Guardian 2021) describes the increasing conflict between walkers and bikers in Amsterdam.

There aren’t as many collisions as you’d imagine, but pedestrians are required to be constantly mindful. This works for the Dutch, but tourists are frequently wandering casually into near-collisions with cyclists. What the cyclists have gained is balanced by a loss of mental peace and capacity among pedestrians.

Here’s a narrow street designed for pedestrians in The Hague:

The bicycle is being used for transportation, not recreation, so it might be whipping by these pedestrians at 10-20 mph. Here are the two transportation modes interacting in Delft:

Maybe those white boxes are supposed to delineate between walking and biking? Or maybe there are two lanes for opposite directions? I didn’t figure it out.

Just a few of the bikes parked near the Amsterdam Zuid secondary station:

What if you choose “neither” but don’t have a car and/or don’t want to pay what my rich local friend said were insanely expensive parking fees? Take the tram!

My take-away: the Danes did it right.

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American Eagle eschews Rainbow-first retail in Rotterdam

by philg

May 2023, Manhattan, American Eagle shop windows:

July 2023, Rotterdam (different city), American Eagle (same retailer):

Despite the fact that rainbow flags are almost non-existent in this region, and therefore are sorely needed, American Eagle doesn’t roll out its 2SLGBTQQIA+ message in Rotterdam. If the company is committed to this cause (which they should be), why don’t they promote it in Rotterdam? If the company is not committed to this cause, why do they promote it in New York City?

Related:

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Ireland in the European heat wave

by philg

Below, a photo from last week in Ireland (ferry near Carlingford). Due to the brutal European heatwave, this family had already brought out their summer parkas.

European readers: How are you doing in this record-setting climate change-caused event? After a multicultural tram ride in The Hague 10 days ago, I told my host that it was “like being in Detroit, but without air conditioning.”

We, personally, have been living in “dangerous heat” here in South Florida, with a temperature of up to125 degrees according to the NYT on Tuesday:

We met a neighbor on yesterday morning’s dog walk. His son had on long pants and was heading out to play three games of baseball in the “danger” zone.

When the professional climate Scientists at the New York Times are forecasting 125 degrees, what are the amateur enthusiasts at the Weather Channel expecting for West Palm Beach? A high of 89 degrees:

Maybe the Danger will hit later in the week?

What’s the record high temperature for West Palm Beach in July, according to the National Weather Service? 101 degrees. That was set in 1942. How about the average July high temp for West Palm? The Google says it is 91 degrees. The NYT reminds us that “summer temperatures have become hotter and more extreme in recent decades.”

The forecast is for high temps right around the historical average high temp and the Scientists at the New York Times say that coastal South Florida is in a “Danger” situation. Was any relief in sight, as far as the NYT Scientists were concerned? No:

Related:

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How are the French doing on this Bastille Day?

by philg

Happy Bastille Day to our brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters in France! Wikipedia says this day is also for “the Fête de la Fédération that celebrated the unity of the French people.”

What’s the situation in France right now with “the unity of the French people”? Are the mostly peaceful protests over and the French population, including Muslim immigrants, are now unified once more?

I can’t figure out what the theory behind low-skill immigration in France is. Even the French are no longer impressed by French culture. Why would immigrants to France want to adopt traditional French cultural values? If immigrants to France aren’t going to adopt French cultural values, why do the French want them as neighbors? It can’t be for financial reasons given that low-skill migrants in the world’s most expensive welfare state (by percentage of GDP) are going to be burdensome (the U.S. had the world’s 2nd most expensive welfare state, but that was before coronapanic enhancements so maybe we are actually number 1 now).

Here’s a picture that I took back in October 2022 from the Centre Pompidou:

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The Californian comments on the marvels of Europe

by philg

Overheard in Delft… a chubby California blonde was on her iPhone describing the marvels of the city to friends back in Sacramento and San Francisco: “It’s incredibly clean, not like the cities in our country.”

This was late on a Sunday afternoon and, in fact, the streets and sidewalks were somewhat trashed by all of the weekend tourists and strolling locals. Trash cans are relatively sparse, takeout food is common, and smoking is more common than in the U.S. In fact, even before the weekend I had noticed that the city was dramatically more littered, especially with very small items, than what we’re accustomed to in the parts of Florida that we visit.

A potential source of trash (my host forced me to eat fries with mayonnaise):

Locals eating just outside the shop:

Three tourists (background left) eating/drinking outside of the old city hall:

A lot of the houses in the center are tidy:

For fans of 1980s Artificial Intelligence:

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Dutch government falls one day after my arrival

by philg

Just a day after my arrival in the Netherlands, the government has fallen. “Mark Rutte: Netherlands coalition government collapses in migration row – reports” (BBC):

His conservative VVD party had been trying to limit the flow of asylum seekers, following a row last year about overcrowded migration centres.

This week Mr Rutte tried to force through a plan which included a cap on the number of relatives of war refugees allowed into the Netherlands at just 200 people per month.

But junior coalition partners the Christian Union, a pro-family party, and the socially liberal D66, were strongly opposed.

A compromise proposal, known as the “emergency brake”, which would only trigger the restrictions in the event of an excessively high influx of migrants, was not enough to save the government.

The proposed law seems unworkable. What’s “excessive”? Roughly 27 percent of people who live in the Netherlands aren’t “Dutch” (stats). There was never a popular vote asking for this level of immigration or any other level. The native-born people with whom I have spoken so far have said that the country is too crowded with both low-skill migrants and mass tourists and that their desired number of both would be 0. None of them was ever asked “In an ideal world, what percentage of your neighbors would be from Africa and the Middle East?”

How does it look on the ground? I’m staying in a college town (Delft), but have seen no coffee shops or stores practicing Rainbow-first Retail (examples from Bozeman, Montana), which would be likely to offend Islamic migrants. Any trip by public transit includes companions who don’t appear to share Western sexual mores. Near the center of The Hague, the third-largest Dutch city:

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Meet in Holland or Ireland?

by philg

Folks: I’m heading over to mostly-peaceful Europe this week. I’ll be at the Delft University of Technology in Holland for a few days and then going to Ireland (Dublin, Sligo, and Belfast) for some aviation projects. If anyone would like to get together over there, please email philg@mit.edu.

“The ferry in the Netherlands hosting refugees and migrants” (BBC, April 2023) shows one place where I’m not planning to stay:

The Irish voted to end birthrate citizenship by an overwhelming margin in 2004. Nonetheless, the haters aren’t satisfied. “‘There is no room’: anti-immigration protesters march in Dublin” (The Guardian, Jan 2023):

Pickets and blockades of roads are often held outside refugee centres in working-class neighbourhoods but on Saturday activists marched in the heart of the capital.

“It’s not about racism. There is no room for them,” said Gavin Pepper, 37, as he and about 350 others denounced the increasing number of asylum seekers. “Why should migrants skip Irish people on the housing list? I won’t accept it.”

An acute housing and homelessness crisis has collided with the state’s struggle to accommodate Ukrainians and asylum seekers, fuelling accusations that foreigners receive preferential treatment.

Protesters also say centres with “unvetted” young male refugees make them feel unsafe. “I have five girls and two boys and the girls are afraid to go out at night,” said one man, who declined to give his name.

I won’t be staying in a work-class neighborhood, so I may not meet the migrants.

In France, meanwhile, things are entirely peaceful not merely mostly peaceful, according to the New York Times… “Unrest in France Eases Nearly a Week After Fatal Police Shooting”.

In the alternate universe inhabited by the Deplorables at Fox, however, what the New York Times calls “protests” are “riots”… “French riots: New report details thousands of arrests, hundreds of attacks on police since violence broke out”:

A new report from France’s Ministry of Interior quantifies the damage done after nearly a week of protests in response to the police killing of a teen of North African heritage.

The report, obtained by the French newspaper Le Parisien, recorded 5,662 vehicle fires and more than 1,000 damaged buildings.

Since rioting first broke out on Tuesday, police have made 3,354 arrests – 1,282 of which were in the Paris metro area alone, according to the report.

Like Harvard and Democrats on the Supreme Court, the French are blaming Asians:

“Asian tourists, in particular, who are very concerned about security, may not hesitate to postpone or cancel their trip,” he warned. Didier Arino, managing director of the Protourisme firm said: “Tourists who know us well, like the Belgians or the British, who also have problems themselves in their suburbs, will be able to make sense of things”.

Maybe this summer it makes more sense to do Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure in EPCOT.

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Ukrainian wives discovering the superiority of being married to the German taxpayer

by philg

Western Ukraine is safe enough for elderly Americans to visit (example). Friends of friends go about their daily work there without any thoughts of becoming a war casualty. One guy, however, misses his wife and kids (elementary school age). They fled to Germany during the early days of the war, taking 100 percent of the family savings with them. Now the wife is established in the German welfare system, getting per-child payments, and has discovered how much more pleasant life can be without a husband in the house (does Germany have Tinder?). The father has sought to recover the children at least, but a German court agreed with the wife that Ukraine is not safe enough for anyone to live in (though the Ukrainian mom and teenage son whom I wrote about in April 2022 moved back long ago).

In the pre-globalized pre-welfare-state world, a live husband with a good income would become more valuable in the event of a war that killed a lot of working-age men. But in our current world, the husband, despite being a high-status professional in Ukraine, became surplus when he couldn’t compete with the German government (and German Tinder?).

Context from the BBC:

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A public library in Portugal

by philg

As a companion to my pieces on what public libraries offer in Palm Beach County (in Florida, where books are purportedly banned) and in Maskachusetts, some March 13, 2023 images from a library in Ponta Delgada, Portugal.

What’s the neighborhood like? Here’s the building next door, a museum of sacred art:

Who uses the library on a Monday late afternoon? A lot of studious school kids:

Does the library promote social justice? Here are the books recommended for adults:

I would love to see someone actually read that 700-page book on Max Weber (who envisioned our current bureaucratic world)!

Are there books on skin-color-based victimhood promoted to children? I don’t think so. Here’s the rack:

(I thought that “O Protesto” might be about a mostly peaceful social justice protest, but the star is a gorilla rather than a martyr in the struggle against racism.)

The library seems to take a more neutral position on what to read than do its counterparts in the U.S. A larger majority of books are simply shelved spines out. My Portuguese wasn’t good enough to enable me to identify the 2SLGBTQQIA+ section within the teens’ room so I don’t know whether they have anything corresponding to what we found in Cambridge last week:

The library devotes a fair amount of space to Portugal’s Nobel laureate in literature, José Saramago. I had no idea that he wrote a badly-reviewed travel guide to Portugal.

The library has a complex layout due to its location in a historic building. There is a nice little café for patrons.

Overall, there seems to be much less emphasis on the divisions among groups within Portuguese society than one finds in U.S. libraries regarding divisions among groups within American society.

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How are the Europeans doing with their Cheat Our Way to Economic Prosperity plan?

by philg

Back in September, the Europeans decided to deal with energy price inflation by cheating. They’d hide the market prices from consumers by borrowing (printing?) money. “Germany will borrow nearly $200 billion to cap consumers’ energy bills” (CNN, 9/29/2022):

The German government announced plans to borrow €200 billion ($195 billion) to cap natural gas prices for households and businesses. That’s a bigger price tag than the £150 billion ($165 billion) the UK government is expected to borrow to finance its own price cap.

Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, is trying to cope with surging gas and electricity costs caused largely by a collapse in Russian gas supplies to Europe. Moscow has blamed these supply issues on the Western sanctions that followed its invasion of Ukraine in February.

“Prices have to come down, so the government will do everything it can. To this end, we are setting up a large defensive shield,” said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Thursday.

The package will be financed with new borrowing this year, as Berlin makes use of the suspension of a constitutionally enshrined limit on new debt of 0.35% of gross domestic product.

Lindner also said the steps would act as a brake on inflation, which has hit its highest level in more than a quarter century.

Consumer prices rose 10.9% in the year through September, provisional data from the country’s statistics office showed on Thursday.

As in the U.S., when the government spends more, inflation is guaranteed to come down (our “Inflation Reduction Act”). It’s been a few months How has the decision to pretend that gas prices didn’t go up gone? This December 14, 2022 report says that inflation across Europe is typically in the double digits. How about in Switzerland, where they deny the Science of printing money? From December 1: “Swiss inflation steady at 3.0% in November as expected”. The U.S. Congress and Federal Reserve have proven that there is no need to work harder in order to become richer and yet the Swiss reject this proven scientific result.

At least back in October, inflation wasn’t keeping folks in Paris from partying:

What about our own stagflation? “Home Depot co-founder says ‘socialism’ killed motivation to work: ‘Nobody gives a damn’” (New York Post, 12/29/2022):

The 93-year-old billionaire co-founder of Home Depot blamed “socialism” for Americans lacking the motivation to work and warned that the future of capitalism is in danger.

Bernie Marcus — who along with Arthur Blank built Home Depot into a nationwide empire from just two stores founded in Atlanta in the late 1970s — told Financial Times on Thursday, “Nobody works.”

“Just give it to me. Send me money. I don’t want to work — I’m too lazy, I’m too fat, I’m too stupid,” Marcus said about what he perceived as the attitude permeating the country.

“Nobody gives a damn.”

The longtime Republican backer ticked down a list of people he blamed for standing in the way of private enterprise, including President Biden, “the woke people,” the news media, Harvard graduates, MBAs, lawyers and accountants.

“I’m worried about capitalism,” said Marcus, whose net worth is estimated by Bloomberg at $5.25 billion. “Capitalism is the basis of Home Depot [and] millions of people have earned this success and had success.”

Billionaires can’t buy this Bernie because he already is one!

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