Indeed, that is what had happened to the League of Nations and why the US never joined.

Also the UN is still an important platform where diplomatic relations are upheld even in dire situations. Even with Russia it is important to have some lines of discussion.

Where I live now, in the Nordics, I get really agitated when I see people (in cars) standing in the middle of crossings and blocking T-junctions to smaller roads. Unlike in the Netherlands, and probably most countries, you can tell that there is way less time spent with an actual instructor (not claiming Dutch drivers are perfect, people in general are not flawless, let a lone in a high speed box on rollers). Another thing that annoys me is the amount of people on their phones while driving, it is insane. I didn't observe it like this in the Netherlands, but that I might just have missed this. Mobile phones must be the most dangerous addiction if we can't even put them away when doing potentially dangerous activities.

I completely recognise the experiences you have while driving. My primary transport is public transport. I love it as I can chill and let my mind just relax a bit, but we have access to a car, and, indeed, when using it (when I snoozed a few too many times), everything is upsetting (the issues in the first paragraph are in general bothering me though) and their is no chill time when driving to work. I like driving on a holiday, cause you get to see new things and get to drive scenic routes, but as a means of everyday transport it is the worst.

I can give the people here some slack. The streets are terrible, even in the urban space. And it does indeed help a lot to have guidance and good structural rules on how to use the roads (like roundabouts).

Or even better, care about your digital privacy and ditch Google and Youtube and use an alternative front end, like invidious, or piped.

Instead of stopping all professional football in the Netherlands, stop all those games with teams that repetitively cause problems. There is definitely too many games with issues, but not the majority of them. Then again, Van Basten, probably has his red/white glasses on again, and sees Ajax as the epicentre of Dutch football.

One should actually facepalm at "Trump", so the rest of the nonsense can't be read.

Trams are the cosiest things to sit in. I enjoy being half asleep in the morning and just look at all the people being busy. Wish my town had some more grassy lines, but they don't lack on where you can go.

(edit: I want to add that I am also happy with the buses here, don't think there is a reason to be either or and rather focus on reducing cars in town and in its suburbs. Obviously easier to do for smaller towns).

Is that a flag from Luxembourg?

e-lement

I was all in on the ecosystem when I was a few years younger, than I started to care about privacy, and although Apple might be good compared to it’s direct competitors, I don’t trust mega corps with all my data, nor do I support that tendency.

Also, I think it is good to not be too deep in their applications as a lot is proprietary and when you’d decide to move, they can’t be exported and used between services.

I still use their devices (phone + laptop), as I find it hard to change them, even if I think Android looks better these days (I don’t want to switch to Google services for example and with LineageOS I can’t use key applications), yet I use a minimal amount if their services (Apple Music (TV is included in a student offer), iTunes to buy movies. But stay away from iCloud in favour for open source alternatives and flexibility.

Hmmm didn’t think about that, but this would be either unfair competition, as Apple has addons for Safari, or when Browsers can be downloaded from their websites directly an inevitable consequence of EU (and later other states) forcing the app store to be competitive.

Both Chrome and Firefox have started development on their own engines.

https://www.macrumors.com/2023/02/07/mozilla-developing-non-webkit-version-of-firefox/

There was a similar report on Chrome and Blink. Nothing official, but I feel positive ;)

Apple is going to allow alternative browser engines, like Gecko which desktop and android Firefoxes are using. Firefox on iOS is nothing more than lesser version of Safari/webkit with Firefox interface and lacks proper blocking and other features. It is expected that Apple allows alternative browser engines when iOS 17 launches.

At that point I hope we can get proper Firefox addons for it! Like uBlock Origin.