100% agree. I’m Dutch and he’s sent there to represent me/us/the country, it’s fucking disgusting.

I totally agree with you and fuck this guy, but there is some context to his sentence here in the Netherlands:

One legal distinction is that Van de Velde is unlikely to have been convicted of rape had he stood trial in the Netherlands rather than England. In England, sex with a 12-year-old is rape, regardless of the circumstances: an under-16 cannot legally consent. But after he was extradited to the Netherlands, having serving almost a year of his prison sentence, he was released after less than a month. Under Dutch law, his crime was deemed to be the lesser offence of ontucht, sexual acts that violate social-ethical norms.

From https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/30/netherlands-child-rapist-olympics-steven-van-de-velde

Wait so you can get married under the age of consent? That seems completely illogical… if you can’t consent to sex surely you can’t consent to marriage?

Just to be very clear I’m not defending him in the slightest, this whole thing is horrible and I agree he raped her.

I was just explaining the situation and the differences in law in England and the Netherlands.

While I agree that this crime should definitely fall within the definition and corresponding punishment of rape, I don’t agree that no 15 year old can ever consent to sex.

I’m not sure what the law ought to be though. I personally think a 16 year old should be legally able to have sex with their 15 year old partner. Maybe in england the difference in age matters. But if not, and a 15 year old legally cannot consent, is this hypothetical 16 year old now a rapist? That doesn’t sound right to me.

A 19 year old having sex with a 12 year old? That is clearly wrong and that’s rightfully already illegal here. But it’s not automatically rape because Dutch law does recognize consent from people under 16. I have no idea at what age people can give consent though. I’m not sure if there is a minimum. But if the 12 year old in this situation did not consent then it would obviously be rape, just to make that clear.

A question: what is the situation in other countries with high schoolers having sex? It must happen all the time that some 18 year old is dating a 15 year old and that they have sex. I think the overwhelming majority of Dutch people would not want that to be illegal, let alone considered rape.

Not saying it’s right, but for context:

One legal distinction is that Van de Velde is unlikely to have been convicted of rape had he stood trial in the Netherlands rather than England. In England, sex with a 12-year-old is rape, regardless of the circumstances: an under-16 cannot legally consent. But after he was extradited to the Netherlands, having serving almost a year of his prison sentence, he was released after less than a month. Under Dutch law, his crime was deemed to be the lesser offence of ontucht, sexual acts that violate social-ethical norms.

From https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/30/netherlands-child-rapist-olympics-steven-van-de-velde

Why wouldn’t you want an expert to run the economy is such trying times?

Because this so-called expert is a danger to the the common Argentine. His way of “fixing” the economy is by growing inequality, privatizing key government duties and destroying unions.

I personally disagree with him on many points, such as:

he has called for the elimination or merging of major ministries such as the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Social Development, the Ministry of Women, Genders and Diversity, and the Ministry of Health.

Milei articulates a critical view of the role of the state in economic matters, calling it “the greatest enemy of wealth”

Milei wants to privatize public health care providers

Milei has expressed support for legalizing organ trade

Also, he is president of the country, not just the economy. I totally disagree with him on points like:

A supporter of law-and-order politics, Milei endorses the unrestricted ownership of firearms

Milei opposes both abortion and euthanasia … Milei holds that abortion is morally indefensible, even in cases of rape

He intends to eliminate the law that makes comprehensive sex education (CSE) in schools mandatory, which he has linked to brainwashing, and said that students are “hostages of a system of state indoctrination”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Javier_Milei

regarding your comment:

So let me hear it. What would you do to so wonderfully fix the economy that an expert is getting all wrong?

This is a fallacy. It is of course not necessary to know the right answer in order to know that another answer is wrong. I might not know what 483 × 749 is, but I know it’s not 10. Or 100. Or 1000.

I have this system at home and it’s great. Similar climate to Paris and never a problem.

That shows because this article (even the title) tells you France will have parliamentary elections, not presidential. Macron will remain president regardless of the outcome.

Hahaha also blue but waaaay more scary!

I think most countries with their own sesame street have slightly different characters. We don’t have big bird, we have the superior Pino.

Organic Maps (google maps replacement) - https://f-droid.org/packages/app.organicmaps/

AntennaPod (podcast app) - https://f-droid.org/packages/de.danoeh.antennapod/

That’s numberwang!

Oh nice thanks for sharing the video! I made up the part where the trickster mates with the female, but the first part was true!

It is real. And I think it continues with this snake pretending to be a female so many males try to mate with him, thereby warming him up and allowing him to sneak in and mate with an actual female snake join the mating frenzy

So yeah “things” are shittier, because nowadays we have the ability to live in a nearly post-scarcity society but we just don’t wanna.

Humankind could have been living in blissful peace for centuries. We’ve always had the ability to not kill each other or fight for resources. But many people, then and now, don’t want that.

The way civilizations/empires/countries have operated has largely been competitive. It’s naive to think we’ll all just come together and solve these very complicated problems.

Saying that people are stupid or racist… I don’t think that barely has anything to do with what prevents all major countries of the world to work together to combat things like disease, climate change, inequality, etc.

How do you define “things”?

On a global scale and on average, life for humans is getting significantly better than, say, a century ago. The number of people dying from preventable diseases, war, natural disasters has been steadily going down for a while now.

Of course there are many more people on earth than there were 100 years ago, so accumulatively there is a lot more suffering now.

Also, the lives of individual people, the state of certain countries and areas are certainly getting worse.

As for non-human animals… For most of them the world is getting increasingly less habitable and for those who are raised in an industrial setting for human consumption, living conditions are largely atrocious.

I think your question is too broad for a single answer. But you might be interested in this now 17 year old (!) TED talk by the late Hans Rosling, which at least partially answers your question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w

Around 2004 we had some people over for a card game night. We were all sitting on our house’s big terrace, where we had also put this type of lamp. The terrace was open to the outside and the lamp attracted a large amount of bugs, which would burn and start to smell, the same smell you are remembering.

To stop this from happening, my brother decided to put a kind of glass plate on top of the lamp as a cover. Initially this worked great and the smell was gone.

10 minutes later, the glass had gotten so hot that it exploded violently, shooting shards of glass all across the terrace. It was a lesson learned.

Haha nice. In Dutch you say you’re gonna “wash the piglet”

Jose is not happy