aahaha corona phase flashbacks =D Everyone knew it was bubbles, right?

Okay cool. Within Brussels it’s sorta fine indeed, I guess I’m biased by the commuter view ;) Within the city it’s definitely getting better the last few years.

The main policy issue is for sure the cars for pay… Some politicians wanted to abolish it since years, but it only grows year after year. Recently they made it only tax-friendly for electric cars, saying the system must stay because it helps transition to electric cars faster (I think that transition would happen very fast anyhow and I think transitioning to (e-)bicycles is better). Understandably, people who currently have such a “free” car from work don’t want to give it up (and that’s a lot of voters), as they also use it to go on holiday with the family and such.

A main infrastructure issue is the tunnel (you probably travelled in it) running north to south. So many different trains in Belgium get squozen in the same little piece Brussels North - Central - Brussels South, the tunnel is very saturated, and messy with highspeed, intercity, local and S trains all going there. It just needs 1 little incident and plenty of trains all over the country get delayed.

It’s a long long battle. I’m guessing you never visited Brussels? It’s hard to compare a capital of a small country, and de facto of the EU, with a mid sized city in a huge country.

The survey you’re reading about was done with the residents of Brussels. Way more than many other cities: Brussels is a real commuter city. Hundreds of thousands of people commute into the city. We’re talking 350.000 or more. Few people living in Brussels commute out of it.

From those commuting people, 17 % cycle, 15 % use public transport (rush hour trains are full AF), about 65 % uses the car.

Reason? Cars are used in Belgium as a replacement (addition) for paying employees (it is called “salariswagen”) and they often get a “free tanking” card on top and it is completely legal (even expected/encouraged) that these cars are used by the employee both for coming to work and for wherever they wanna go privately on holidays or weekends. It is very gently taxed, while paying employees actual money in Belgium is taxed among the heaviest in the world. There are estimates of there being 700.000 cars like this (it’s estimate because it intertwines with actual “company cars”: people who need the company car for their actual job and not just to drive to work). A lot of those commute to Brussels everyday, from Antwerp, Ghent, Liège, … and from the hundreds of small cities towns in between and around.

The roads around Brussels (and Antwerp, and Ghent, and …) are really really jammed. On an average day, there are 160 km of traffic jam in rush hour. When there is shitty weather (cyclists turn to cars and public transport), it can go up to 400 - 500km all jammed up. For reference: if you measure very broadly, the country is east-west only 280km and north-south only 220km (while in reality one should ignore the south for this, it is very sparsely populated).

Whatever you do, do not take the way public transport is run in Belgium/Brussels as a prime example. It might be better than your average mid sized US city, but for European standards: public transport in Belgium is very insufficient, unreliable, too expensive and by far not the most popular mode of transport (and for good reasons). Truth be told: among this situation, the Brussels company (MIVB-STIB) is the best public transport company in Belgium, but compared to public transport in big cities in the Netherlands, Germany, … it still sucks pretty bad.

There’s way worse songs this could be happening with…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k85mRPqvMbE&t=3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqZsoesa55w&t=28

Lava chicken is quite groovy actually, tasty. You’re in luck.

You can buy a used office computer from businesses that are upgrading (downgrading) to win11 for less than 50 bucks. They tend to be relatively low power, relatively quiet, lots of PCI slots and USB ports so there are many upgrade options, yet low entry price for a decent computer. If you plan on using as a jellyfin server: either mind the chip now for transcoding capabilities (there’s lists out there) or know that if you want that, you’ll have to put in a GPU at some point if the onboard can’t transcode well.

I have a mix of external and internal SSD’s. Some are running way not as fast as they theoretically could, but it all works well enough for me. You can start with what you have, storage is still expensive.

I’ve been denied with luggage by a tram driver once. Moving a 2 person mattress was not allowed on the tram…

For brushing in Asia, please upgrade your Oral-B account to the Oral-B premium account for just 5 € / month!

Exactly this, but it will be sold the other way around, you’ll get a gift or a discount if you log+link data

An over engineered toothbrush is a dental product just as much as a very cheap one and there are for sure greedy people interested in trying to get people to log their brushing data on a corporate cloud and later link together their insurance and their dental habits at some point and there are for sure people willing to pay for detailed brushing data. It’s just the very beginning of it all still. Give it 20 years, your insurance company or dentist will ask you how come you’re not logging your brushing.

It can be more. It can really be like hitting a wall in some cities, suddenly you’re on the shitside, the change is very sudden and very dramatic, lot more than from a field to a forest.

Exactly!

Still in disbelief how they wreck it even in the simplest things.

Remember how clicking the audio system tray icon would open… The common audio settings and nothing else, idem dito for the network icon. For some incomprehensible reason they jammed those system tray icons menus all together a few years ago, you need more clicks, it’s less intuitive and less efficient. For what reason? No one knows.

Remember how right clicking an icon would open a quite extensive context menu? Gone. Now it’s a few BS options I never need. For example “open with…”: gone. Now in the freaking context menu you have to click “more options” for another, full context menu to appear.

Incredible BS tiny changes with a big negative user experience impact I truly cannot grasp why they’d do it. Only reason everyone sticks around is (bad) habits, vendor lockin and obligations for certain software by school or work who insist on keeping Microsoft because they themselves are also vendor locked in or just very very scared of change.

Most countries will be raising taxes on fuel even more and in general it will become less available fast: gas stations, mechanics who know how to fix the ICE old timers etc. it will become a hobby thing (like old timers today already). Certain niches will keep ICE way longer (heavy construction vehicles etc) but it will suddenly become quite rare in 20 or 30 years to see a regular old ICE driven by a regular person doing regular things like commuting or so.

Dunno but I never saw it before

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinational_Eurodistrict_of_Basel?wprov=sfla1

Skyscrapers =/= big city. Basel is a very well known city in western Europe (France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands…). Known for it’s beautiful old town, trams, many museums. It’s the cultural capital of Switzerland. Also with people who never went there. As for “not big”, it’s just not the case, it spreads out into Lörrach, Rheinfelden, Saint-Louis, lots and lots of people from FR and DE work in Basel, go visit it regularly etc. The commuter attraction reaches easily into Freiburg and Mulhouse, with thousands going there daily to earn a way higher Swiss paycheck. The wider urban area goes towards 900.000 people! Compared to polish cities too it’s not that small. It’s only the old town and the river area that gives that vibe (stayed out of the wars, nothing was destroyed…). Really the lack of skyscrapers is a very unreliable way to judge how “big” a city is! Basel by the way houses the tallest buildings of Switzerland! Roche towers. High rise is just very uncommon in Switzerland, but they get high density living with regular apartment buildings. I really don’t understand where your “Basel is a small provincial town” impression is rooted.

Depending where you’re from this might be a perception issue. Cities in Europe are generally smallish on modern city world scale. 200.000-500.000 inhabitants, with just a few larger city exceptions per country. There’s just a LOT of those medium-large cities and they are often all rather near to each other. How a “city” is defined can differ a lot, many urban areas consisting of many entangled and interdependent cities are technically still all their own (historic) “city”. Look at the Ruhr area for example, the Randstad, Flemish Diamond, …

Well in places like UK, people are installing AC instead of trying many other, passive cooling options first. They don’t plant a single shrub next to their building but do put in highly inefficient portable AC units meanwhile asphalting/concreting there driveways… That’s exactly what got me on my high horse. AC can be needed, but it’s definitely not the first way to go in a northern-ish European place if the building doesn’t have outside shutters, very non green streets around etc. It’s not the miracle solution, AC adds to climate change, other ways of dealing with heat do not.

Exactly this, it’s a last resort measure. More important is that every passive cooling option needs to be tried: outside shutters, more big green around the buildins, minimize concrete and asphalt around buildings, closing and airing at best times, etc. Some people just skip all that and go airco, especially in the USA. They are actively adding more BS to the shitstorm that is climate change.

Why would they need more airco when many houses and apartments still don’t even have proper shutters for windows and many people still don’t know you should keep your windows closed during peak heat hours, many roofs still barely insulated and they turned all their yards and driveways into concrete and asphalt hellscapes. A nice adult tree in your yard does more than an airco, fight me.