I watched it last year, binged it in three days.

I originally scrolled past it a few times on the streaming app. I figured it was some dumb workplace comedy like an Office ripoff due to the vague blurb. But, there was nothing else that piqued my interest so I figured I’d give it a go. Five minutes in and I was hooked. Definitely not a dumb workplace comedy.

That’s pretty much what I’m assuming for an actual answer.

Though I’ve certainly read about people who spent ungodly amounts to save pets, even old ones or street dogs. Bless them for it, for sure.

Seriously though… I’m all for giving animals excellent care. But is that actually a thing people do? Give their hamster an MRI? That’s a very expensive procedure for humans with good insurance, so I’d assume it to be rather unaffordable when applied to pets like this.

I could see it for say, a beloved dog who’s got years of life left. But hamsters kick the bucket if you breathe in their general direction.

Heck, journalists get threatened for their work anyway. It’s a fact of life in this profession.

I’ve been in radio and TV since the early 2000’s and have been a newspaper writer since the mid 2010’s.

We’ve gotten letters with bullets in them, ‘anthrax’ letters (they were all the rage post 9/11) and most recently we had two attacks with fireworks explosives on our building. Mind you, this is just a local newspaper. We’re not exactly the New York Times.

I couldn’t tell you what reporting might’ve prompted it. Could’ve been the articles we wrote about wind farms, could’ve been climate change, could’ve been local politics or the soccer scores.

Because these days, people get seriously outraged at basically nothing. Even the most neutral, strictly-the-facts reporting can set some folks off. So it’s not exactly surprising that a ‘controversial’ topic like anything related to climate change prompts threats.

But: we keep reporting. Because fuck them. Facts are facts. Don’t like it? That’s a you problem.

I really miss webrings. You’d discover the most absurd niche shit people were into. Especially since everyone seemed to have their own Geocities page or something similar. Nobody has one these days, as we all just use social media and big sites.

It really sucks. You just don’t get that these days now everyone is inside their own little bubble on the net.

I wouldn’t even really call that ‘competing’. There are some immovable objects that just… are. If you write fantasy, your work will be compared to Tolkien. And Tolkien will always win that popularity contest. Complaining about is as useful as complaining about the wind blowing or the setting of the sun.

It’s difficult to get in ANY established field, especially if you do ‘the same thing but worse’ than established greats in your chosen field. Either get better, find better ways to be visible or do something else entirely. Not everyone’s cut out to be a fantasy writer. Maybe she’d have more luck writing say, a travel guide.

Microsoft also had a decent credibility with mobile device OS’s. They made OS’s for PDA’s like Windows CE, Windows Mobile, Pocket PC… those were all on some very capable devices.

God, I miss my Compaq Ipaq Pocket PC. That thing was a fucking beast.

There’s also the ‘guilt by association’. Look at organisations like PETA: they even complained about things like the treatment of entirely fictional animals in video games, like Palworld. Basically, you can’t even argue that ‘they look like real animals so it encourages real-world mistreatment’ like they usually do.

That does not make you look particularly sane. I’m sure they do good work as well, but that sort of thing isn’t helping their cause.

It’s very annoying in general. I’ve got a visual disability. Meaning I see about 20 percent.

When shopping, I know where all of my most used items are, and where the general category of products is. But if they move things around too much, it’s really exhausting trying to find what I need. And no, I don’t really want to bother staff to ask where things are; I just want my shopping done quickly with as few annoyances as possible.

Ahh, the human mind is a wonderful, magical place of creativity.

I’ve already got that song stuck in my head for a week or two, so thanks for ruining that 😀

Well we are proud of Dutch manufacturing in general. We like to make good products, even if they might be bad for you: for decades, we had the best weed in terms of THC content. And the Netherlands is also a highly regarded global producer of XTC pills and amphetamines. There’s only so many tulips you can export…

So yes, loose tobacco is one of our fine export products. We Dutch also loved it; it was really popular to use in joints (see: Dutch weed) and rolling your own cigarettes tended to be cheaper than buying packs (we Dutch are notoriously cheap). These days people prefer a vape, or pure joint. And with smoking in general on the decline, loose tobacco is a rare sight here these days.

Well, Europe is a big place. The percentage of smokers differs from country to country, as well as the anti-smoking legislation and when that was introduced.

In the Netherlands, you cannot smoke in the workplace, restaurants, cinema, on public transport, near a hospital, etc. Sale of tobacco products is illegal to anyone under 18 and we’ve banned things like flavoured vapes.

Because of all these measures, ‘only’ 19 percent of the Dutch population 15 and older smokes, with people lower on the socio-economic ladder smoking more frequently. That’s below the European average of 19.7 percent.

Now, compare that to other countries like France (22 percent), Spain (23 percent) and Bulgaria (28 percent).

Now, those countries have anti-smoking legislation as well. But because they had statistically higher numbers of smokers, it takes longer to see the overall effect.

So depending on where you are in Europe, your perception of smoking habits could vary wildly.

Childhood asthma, unfortunately. I was born in 1982 and basically everyone smoked everywhere here in the Netherlands. If you had a birthday, you couldn’t see across the room due to the smoke.

Because of it I had childhood asthma, which cleared up immediately when my parents stopped smoking. In the early 90’s, things got a lot better with smoke-free environments. We eventually got full on smoking bans, thank god. As far as I can tell, it didn’t do any permanent damage.

I still absolutely HATE smokers and smoking. It is and was an antisocial thing and children should never have been exposed to it like we were.

That place really went to shit over the past year. Which is hardly surprising seeing how many good people were pushed away from the platform.

Good mods were replaced by power tripping shitheads and good posters and commenters were driven off when they couldn’t use their desired app and the subreddits they liked went to shit or were nuked. Meanwhile, bots are ruining everything else.

And let’s not even get started on the ads, the IPO shenanigans, the AI thing…

Reddit needs to be taken out back and shot. It’s the humane thing to do; we shouldn’t let it suffer like this.

I absolutely love his channel. The sheer amount of bad puns he can come up with for his April Fools day video is amazing. God only knows how long it takes him to record these without cracking up.

Don’t get me started on Christmas….

At our radio station, we start Christmas music on December 6th, right after the Dutch celebration of Sinterklaas. And like every other station out there, we play the same exact ten songs every hour until december 27th.

Most people probably aren’t really aware, but as a station you get sent a LOT of unsolicited music. Which also includes a ton of Christmas themed songs starting around June. Everyone wants to be the next Mariah Carey.

One year, our music programmers decide to get creative: “Everyone has the same playlist. Fuck that! We’ll play the Christmas songs nobody else plays!”

So they meticulously comb through that mountain of CD’s that we got throughout the year, digging up the proverbial diamonds in a pile of manure. And they put together a lovely playlist featuring unique, decent songs.

December 6th rolls around. 9 AM. It’s The Big Day. The new playlist goes live. By 9.15 the first calls come in. By 10 AM, the phone is red hot with calls. By 11 AM, someone phones in an honest-to-God death threat. The listeners aren’t having it; they want goddamn Mariah Carey or nothing at all. So by midday, the new playlist gets yanked and replaced by four-times-per-hour ‘All I want for Christmas is you’.

And since that year, we know better than to get creative around Christmas. Don’t fuck with Mariah Carey fans…

It’s absolutely gotten way worse the past 15 years or so.

As someone who works for a newspaper: the days leading up to and directly following april 1st tend to be very frustrating because of this.

Usually starting on the 30th, we get the first ‘funny’ press releases, with most showing up on the 31st. Which means you have to be extra careful not to use something that SEEMS plausible enough not to warrant extra suspicion on days other than april 1st.

As journalists, we’re perhaps more aware than most regarding potential pranks. We’re always taught to question sources. Which makes it all the more annoying that so many companies and organisations try to pull one over on us. Making reliable, accurate news is difficult enough as it is without all these fuckers trying to poison the well.

Basically, companies and organisations who do it usually get their press releases trashed for a month afterwards on principle. Waste my time? Welcome to the trash bin.

I absolutely loathe this day. Most of it is just dumb, silly and annoying. Especially when this dumb shit gets forced on you by companies whose marketing teams think they’re clever.

I also used to work at a radio/TV station where we covered pranks during april fools. That was a real eye-opener: there are waaaaay too many idiots out there who fall for jokes and take things at face value. Basically, they’re a cruel way to mess with vulnerable, gullible people.

Now, if someone wants to make a joke at their own expense, go for it. But don’t do it at the expense of others.

Absolutely. Thankfully we actually have it in the Netherlands, with some restrictions. I.e you do need to be clearly ‘suffering’ for a doctor to agree to it.

Personally though, I think there shouldn’t be any restrictions on this beyond making sure it’s a well articulated wish and not someone just having a bad day.

If say, a healthy 30 year old wants off this ride, they should be allowed to die with dignity at a time and place of their choosing. Nobody asked to be born, so we should at least give them the freedom to choose how they depart this realm.

In my opinion, nobody should disagree with that - it’s not your place to force someone to live if they don’t want to.

The early days of web shopping sure were interesting. I was a very early adopter compared to most people.

The very first thing I ever bought online was a flashlight back in 1999. Which was such a novelty at the time that I actually visited the two guys who ran that shop from a literal broom closet in order to collect it. I was like their third customer ever. These days they have 75 employees and around 7 million euros of revenue.

Collecting a web order seems silly now, but at that time it basically avoided a two week wait. Back in 1998-2005, if you bought something online in the Netherlands, you usually had to transfer the money by bank. Which took a few days. After that, they would send the product, which again took a few days.

In 2005 we got a new online payment method that let you transfer the money immediately, much like paying at a register. That made it way more convenient for everyone and you saw massive increases in spending year over year.