Category: Worth Your Time

For the past ten years, Amsterdam has hosted a light show festival on the canals during the dark winter months. This show has been popular with locals and tourists alike, and people can see the lights from both land and water.

This year, due to the ongoing chaos of Covid (policy), most of the lights are turned off at 5pm, in line with Covid restrictions requiring that bars, restaurants, most stores and museums, and other tourism-related activities stop by 5pm.

But this makes no sense for an outdoor light festival. Why not leave the lights on and let people walk by (or come on their boats) to see them? Why not, since take away food and drink are allowed after 5pm, encourage small businesses to set up shop, selling drinks and food at some installations?

One reason why not might be is that the festival is primarily devoted to the interests of “business partners,” i.e., the boat companies looking for ways to attract tourists during the off season. (I hate these companies for their enormous, ugly floating blockades.)

Now I looked briefly at the financial statements of the stichting (non-profit foundation) that runs the festival, and I see that over 60% of its funds come from the city and ±15% comes from “sponsors,” but that would not be the first time that the city has subsidized tourism. (I was scanning quickly through the Dutch, so please comment on my mistakes or information I missed.)

What’s ironic (or “funny” as the Dutch would say) is that the current city government has vowed — after years of “please fuck, smoke and piss all over our city” promotions — that Amsterdam Tourism would spend less time on attracting foreigners and more time on engaging with citizens. 

Turning off the lights at 5pm, at the same time as the boats stop running but NOT at the same time as residents wold want to enjoy their city, seems to contradict this message.

My one-handed conclusion is that Amsterdam has lost a golden (lit!) opportunity to make a Festival that truly serves its citizens and small businesses. 

1. Listen (hacking) British and Americans spies break into Belgian telecom
2. Read: Opposition to taxes is not just a racist Southern thing in the US. It also has deep roots in Northern industrial opposition to workers. rights.
3. Listen: One of my favorite podcasts (“Scene on Radio“) has an entire season looking into the history of our (human) proclivity to over-use the environment. The series — correctly, IMO (read this) — points a strong finger at the West for exploitation (would an Asian country have colonized the world, if Europe didn’t first?) and the US for its oil industry and PR-driven “greenwashing”. Worth a listen!
4. Read: “Driver error” doesn’t cause as many car crashes and deaths as bad road design and unsafe (too big) cars.
5. Read: In the past few decades (beginning with 9/11), I have regretted America’s mishandling, via ignorance, selfishness, and overconfidence, of its hypuissance (as the French termed it) that allowed me, for example, to travel for five years during the Pax Americana. Now we are seeing the results, not in the (inevitable) rise of China, but in the many annoying, degrading and fatal conflicts within and across borders that are being fed by so-called “middle powers.” For more on how badly this will be for everyone, read Anne Appelbaum’s essay (“the bad guys are winning“) and this Economist briefing, “the menace of midsized meddlers.”
6. Watch: Stewart Lee speaks out against religious attempts to limit speech as blasphemy in the UK.

H/Ts to AW and PB

1. Watch: PFAS (the chemicals used for teflon and goretex) are everywhere in the environment and our blood — and they are terrible for us.
2. Watch: Tristan Harris explains the evil in Facebook’s manipulation. Related read “I made a bland FB profile then it got weird.“
3. Watch (funny): How podcasters ask questions
4. Read: Charities are giving people cash. Basic income gets closer.
5. Read: Depressing but not surprising: People prefer inefficient regulations to prices (e.g., a carbon tax) when it comes to reducing GHGs
6. Read: Singapore’s tech-utopia dream nightmare
7. Read: How the Dutch used reed mats to build dams
8. Read: Where is the water going? [I’m quoted… it’s about ground and surface water scarcity in California’s Central Valley]
9. Listen: How we turned dogs into distorted toys
10. Read: “Food delivery apps” are breaking restaurants while losing money

H/Ts to DL and RC 

1. Read: Are “super fast” (~50kph) e-bikes bikes or motorcycles? Related: Read how cars did NOT rescue cities from a flood of horseshit.
2. Read: Habits? Projects? How about a balance?
3. Watch: This episode of Tegenlicht (Dutch, Dutch subtitles) has a very interesting discussion of the shortage of “manual” labor in NL. It seems that many students choose pride (and poverty) over challenging jobs in the trades.
4. Listen: Corruption: How Power Changes Us
5. Listen: Is Venture Capital the Secret Sauce of the American Economy? (Yes, but there are other factors, e.g., risk-taking, bankruptcy, etc.)
6. Read: The migrant workers cleaning up (in the US) after climate chaos
7. Read: Misunderstanding risk and the Peltzman effect
8. Read: The great organic food (certification) fraud
9. Listen: How to hold companies (and governments) accountable? Charge individuals with criminal “ecocide” (I think this is a good idea!)
10. Listen (a lot!) to Darknet Diaries. I’ve been binging, and these episodes are interesting: (12) The US Government tries to block (pretty) good encryption, (16) a guy gets pissed off when he can’t watch a DVD and hacks the algorithm, (23) the Russian who pulled the first online bank robbery and (24) police take over Hansa and Alphabay (I tested that market just before it was seized), Israel’s Unit 8200 (28), and stealing naked selfies (34).

1. Read: What happens to the used electric car batteries?
2. Read: “Internal documents show Facebook routinely placing public-relations, profit, and regulatory concerns over user welfare“
3. Read: The Roaring Twenties, pandemics, lust and greed
4. Listen: Is the U.S. Really Less Corrupt Than China? (No, just differently corrupt)
5. Read: How Corruption Ruined Lebanon
6. Listen: Women bear the brunt of the damages from (but not the blame for) climate chaos.
7. Watch: Why Dutch bikes are better
8. Read: A Dutchman who succeeded with humility
9. Read: Marin (California) struggles with water scarcity
10. Read: How humans disrupt sustainable ecosystems (whales and iron?)

1. Read: Why is drip irrigation so popular while useless at conserving water? “…some of the key players who continually support the ‘zombie idea’ include those who sell water-use efficiency equipment; politicians who prefer simple popularist solutions; and donor organisations who want easy investable options, rather than dealing with hard and unpopular choices.”
2. Read: Facebook’s quest for profits over society echoes the era when US automakers prioritised profits over lives
3. Read: Worried that supply chain problems are stopping people from getting essential goods (everything from machines to medicine)? Good, then stop buying useless crap that’s taking space on ships.
4. The founder of Trader Joes on governance: A deeply troubled company is always the fault of the CEO, the board of directors, and the controlling stockholders who appoint these worthies,” he writes. “It is never the fault of the frontline troops.”
5. Read: Social media is bad for people because it puts us into too many conversations with too many people — as I said in 2010.
6. Watch: This deep fake of Dutch PM Mark Rutte explains the climate policy the Dutch should pursue for sustainability. Sadly, short termism and greed are the actual policies. Not wise when your country will be underwater in the foreseeable future.
7. Read: A case study of lies turning into policy in Montana. Read: How German social workers are helping those caught in social media delusion back to reality. Related: Facebook employees know how to fix the site, but management will not act.
8. Read: Declining (Covid) antibodies are a GOOD thing.
9. Read: 20 years ago, the iPod changed the way we listen to music 
10. Read: Watson and Crick stole credit for discovering DNA from their female colleague.

 

H/Ts to CP and RB

1. Read: The Great Resignation is restoring flexibility to America’s economy (and Americans’ lives) — watch this space!
2. Listen: The bizarre ways in which Big Butter tried to stop margarine
3. Read: How climate change is causing heavier downpours
4. Listen: An insightful look into the physical and financial drivers of commodity prices
5. Read: Workers are rethinking the role of “work” in their lives 
6. Read: David Graeber died last year, but his last book is coming out soon. The Dawn of Everything looks like a good counterargument to those scholars who propose centralised versions of early human settlement.
7. Read: The US defence establishment has a new report on the dangers of climate change to national security (e.g., food shortages, refugees, flooded bases). At least SOMEONE is taking it seriously!
8. Watch: Roger Hallam, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, on how climate activists might start a revolution for change. I hope they succeed!
9. Read (in Dutch): Dutch water boards are not that “democratic” and that’s leading to some serious financial stress.
10. Watch: Public transport, not dangerous, hackable self driving cars, is the future

H/Ts to IT and PB

1. Read: The rise of the unregulated “lifecoach” industry
2. Read: Smart: “Housing activists, officials and researchers are deploying new tools to empower tenants, spotlight negligent property owners and curb evictions in U.S. cities.“
3. Read: It’s Time to Stop Talking About “Generations”… “So who were these silent conformists? Gloria Steinem, Muhammad Ali, Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Nina Simone, Bob Dylan, Noam Chomsky, Philip Roth, Susan Sontag, Martin Luther King, Jr., Billie Jean King, Jesse Jackson, Joan Baez, Berry Gordy, Amiri Baraka, Ken Kesey, Huey Newton, Jerry Garcia, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Andy Warhol . . . Sorry, am I boring you? It was people like these, along with even older folks, like Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, and Pauli Murray, who were active in the culture and the politics of the nineteen-sixties. Apart from a few musicians, it is hard to name a single major figure in that decade who was a baby boomer. But the boomers, most of whom were too young then even to know what was going on, get the credit (or, just as unfairly, the blame).”
4. Read: Inflation is back: The US hit 5.9% (annualised)
5. Read: The thorny truth about socially responsible investing (it’s not)
6. Watch: Container homes are a terrible idea
7. Watch: The story of oil (and how we got climate change, 50 years after we saw it coming)
8. Read: “Time millionaires” are enjoying life more than pursuing money. Related: The 9.9% (upper middle class) who are simultaneously harming themselves and destroying the world in their quest to “stay on top.”
9. Read: Is the Democratic Party’s tail (woke college elites) wagging the dog (the median voter)? That would explain how they barely beat T**p. Related (and very interesting) read: Hungary’s anti-gay laws are not nearly as dangerous as the EU’s attempt to force the country to wokeness.
10. Listen: Energy, capital and commodity markets are disrupting each other

1. Read: Natural gas prices spike due to an “unbalanced energy mix (good analysis).
2. Listen: An excellent perspective on the CCP’s use of markets to leverage themselves to a socialist (centrally controlled) paradise.
3. Read: John Carreyou, the reporter who broke the Theranos scam, on Elizabeth Holmes’s trial
4. Watch: Why city design matters (and I live in Amsterdam)
5. Read: Insider trading is the norm in US stock markets
6. Read: It’s time to switch from cloth to N95 masks
7. Listen: The whistleblower behind the Facebook files explains how the company is putting far too few resources into fighting disinformation, often because it doesn’t want to lose “engagement” (ad revenue). Extremely related, read how Zuckerberg’s empire of 2.9 billion is a “hostile state” to democracy. Related: MIT on FB’s “dangerous algorithms”
8. Read: The best way to transition from fossil fuels to renewables is to raise the price of fossil fuels. What does the Dutch government do when natural gas prices spike? Rush to spend (taxpayer) money on subsidizing gas prices. This is a total fail. (A partial fail would be to send more INCOME to poorer households, which coild then decide to spend more on gas… or food or clothes…)
9. Why is US media so negative (and why that poisons public discourse)
10. Listen: The Sunday Debate: The Battle Over Free Speech: Are Trigger Warnings, Safe Spaces and No-Platforming Harming Young Minds?

1. Read: Rebooting one’s career as a teacher at 50 years old
2. Read: A real generational gap in mental models has emerged: Kids (“these days”) don’t understand files and folders on computers.
3. Read: Paradise lost: The rise and ruin of Couchsurfing.com
4. Read: More climate change, more rain, more mosquitoes, more disease
5. Read: Three tales of “up by your bootstraps-style” American Dreaming: The collapse of the LuLaRoe MLM cult, an influencer who’s succeeding by telling it like it is and Gig-workers organise (world wide) for their right… to know what they will earn.
6. Read: The problem with the internet is not that everyone can talk but that everyone can listen. The resulting cacophony undermines our social relations.
7. Read: Americans have no idea what the supply chain really is
8. Read: How medieval monks reduced (non-phone) distractions. Related: Our brains evolved for habits not uncertainty.
9. Watch: Greta Thunberg is amazingly smart (put her in charge!)
10. Watch: Want affordable homes? Your best move is to change the zoning laws to allow more density.