March 21, 2015

Toy shop sells mirrors for assaulting women

Filed under: Weird by Orangemaster @ 7:37 pm

Mirror

A distant cousin of the 1970s T-shirt ‘Sex inspector first lesson free’ that was once funny but now icky, this wonderful gadget called the ‘Extendable inspection mirror’ could be used as a toy to find things stuck behind furniture, but the image on the box suggests otherwise.

The image conveyed here is that it is OK for young boys (what is up with those glasses?) to sexually assault women because it’s funny. Although I’m glad Dutch folks on Twitter blew the whistle on this one, the typical ‘we thought it was odd too, but we stacked in the shelves anyway’ response from the shop shows how much critical thinking some employees have, which is none at all. The toy shop in question is busy scrambling and pulling the item from their shelves after it hit the media because they were too stupid to come to that conclusion themselves.

(Link and photo: nieuws.nl)

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March 20, 2015

First ever Dutch Comic Con: many supporting actors

Filed under: Dutch first by Orangemaster @ 2:55 pm

Ecto1

On 28 and 29 March, the Jaarbeurs in Utrecht will play host to the first ever Dutch Comic Con, which promises to be a proper cheesy nerd fest full of sci-fi, cosplay and meet & greets with famous supporting actors. The big names will be Ernie Hudson who played Winston Zeddemore in the original Ghostbusters film and the Ecto 1 vehicle, as well as a bunch of supporting actors from series and movies that most of us have to look up.

Ivan Lok, owner of Comic Toys, a site that has been pulled offline and associated with theft and bad behaviour by many online, is the organiser of Dutch Comic Con, but don’t let that stop you from enjoying a lot of comics. A weekend admission presale ticket costs 30 euro and if you want to have your picture taken with Ecto 1, it will cost you 40 euro, while an Ernie Hudson signature will cost you 25 euro.

(Links: www.vice.com, www.retecool.com, Photo: Photo of Ecto 1 by Jappalang, some rights reserved)

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March 19, 2015

Stedelijk Museum bans man threatening to pee on art

Filed under: Art,Weird by Orangemaster @ 10:10 am

Stedelijk2

Not only has a man threatened to pee on art from South African artist Marlene Dumas at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, but he is also a known Dutch artist, Rob van Koningsbruggen, giving this story a hint of sour grapes. In 2012 the Stedelijk Museum had banned Van Koningsbruggen based on an email threat to pee all over the work ‘Osama Bin Laden’ by Dumas, saying that his stream of urine would greatly improve the painting.

The sad thing is, Van Koningsbruggen had a name for himself in the art world until about 2000 and after that he’s been mostly known for his criminal record. Van Koningsbruggen was found guilty of arson in 2007 and got banned from the Stedelijk, where he once had a major solo exhibition back when disco was still a thing.

Van Koningsbruggen went to court over the ban to have it overturned, but it will remain in effect. There was talk of having it overturned recently, which is why Van Koningsbruggen was back in the news.

If you like pee art, there’s always Theo from Eindhoven who makes pee eagles.

(Link: www.kunstbeeld.nl, Photo of Stedelijk Museum by chrissam42, some rights reserved)

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March 18, 2015

Dutch data retention law scrapped for now

Filed under: Online by Orangemaster @ 11:23 am
privacy

A ruling from the District Court of The Hague says that Dutch telecoms no longer have to retain Internet and phone traffic data for law enforcement purposes because the retention law infringes on the privacy of the Dutch. The law required telecoms to save the communication and location data of everyone in the country from six months up to year, which was disproportionate for the courts. Saving all that data in order to fight possible crimes made everyone a suspect, never mind how bad the government is at data storage.

Journalists, lawyers and activists are thrilled with the verdict because it would ensure the confidentiality of their communications. However, the whole thing is unsure because the now former Minister of Justice and Safety Ivo Opstelten and his deputy Fred Teeven have had to resign over a shady pay off with a drug dealer and new people need to be appointed.

A bill is already before Parliament to scrap the retention law, but until it’s a done deal – like the above-mentioned drug dealer pay off – it’s not over yet.

(Links: www.theregister.co.uk, fd.nl)

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March 16, 2015

Dutch and Swiss designers revamp 1940s furniture

Filed under: Design by Orangemaster @ 3:21 pm

Prouve-G-Star-Raw-Office-Edition-collection_dezeen_468_1

Dutch denim company G-Star RAW and Swiss furnishings company Vitra plan to use and update furniture and lighting created in the 1940s by French designer Jean Prouvé. The 10 furniture pieces of the collection, including chairs, desks and tables, were initially developed for G-Star RAW’s new OMA-designed headquarters in Amsterdam, which opened last year.

“We ergonomically changed it so that it is set up for 21st century modern interiors – we’re all a bit taller, so we had to extend things and make it for modern human beings,” explains Shubhankar Ray, global brand director for G-Star RAW.

Jean Prouvé as a French metal worker, self-taught architect and designer who was the first designer to demonstrate a lightweight prefabricated metal building system.

(Link and photo: www.dezeen.com)

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March 14, 2015

Election video shows tweeting turd and its adventures

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 8:34 am

drolly_21Waterschap Zuiderzeeland has animated a tweeting turd, Drolly_21, to create interest for the water board elections in the Netherlands next week.

We follow Drolly on its way from the toilet bowl to the fertilizer plant. Drolly gets stuck in the sewer behind a balloon animal, but a crew of the city government and the water board quickly take care of that problem. Even when turned into phosphate, Drolly keeps tweeting the most inane messages: “I’ve become feritilizer!”

Water boards form a parallel local government that controls water ways, water barriers, water quality and sewage treatment, amongst others. The water board elections are held simultaneous with the provincial elections.

(Video via a Dutch knock-off of John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight, Zondag met Lubach)

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March 13, 2015

Dutch town asks locals to adopt dustbins

Filed under: Weird by Orangemaster @ 10:04 am

Pumerend, the town with the owl attacking everyone, has more worries on its hands: their budget for dustbins. Having decided to remove 431 of the 1011 dustbins to save 150,000 euro on emptying them, Pumerend is asking its residents to adopt dustbins so that they can stay in place.

Adopting a dustbin isn’t code for paying for it to stay in place while already paying for rubbish removal, that would be crazy talk. It means emptying on a regular basis, picking up any rubbish within a five meter radius, cleaning it, removing any stickers on it and a few other things you can read about in Dutch.

(Link: nieuws.nl)

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March 12, 2015

Dance film shot in CERN Large Hydron Collider

Filed under: Dutch first,Film,Science by Orangemaster @ 11:13 am

CERN

‘Symmetry’, a new film by Dutch film-maker and former dancer of the Nederlands Dans Theater Ruben van Leer, transforms a particle accelerator with its scientists in hard hats into a experimental dance fest. On Saturday 14 Match the show will premiere at the Cinedans Film Festival in the EYE film institute in Amsterdam for anyone who is in town.

According to Van Leer his first challenge was writing a film script for dance, which he had never done before. The main character is called Lukas played by himself, a scientist/dancer, who, by way of a soprano voice in his head sung by Claron McFadden, begins to doubt his rational thinking.

There is also a making of you can watch as well.

(Link: thecreatorsproject.vice.com, Photo of Large Hydron Collider by shotleyshort, some rights reserved)

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March 11, 2015

Unwanted animals turned into fancy snack food

Filed under: Animals,Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 10:20 am

parakeets-amsterdam-branko-collin

In 2011 Amsterdam artist Rob Hagenouw contacted some hunters and scored geese to create his own croquette recipe. It was a big deal because by law geese cannot be killed unless they are deemed a nuisance, like the geese at Schiphol airport.

Hagenouw’s project The Kitchen of the Unwanted Animal (‘Keuken van het ongewest dier’) is a food truck in Amsterdam that sells snack food made from unwanted animals like muskrat, horse, pigeon, crawfish and parakeet. Unwanted means that these animals are not indigenous to the Netherlands (crawfish), are no longer being cared for as pets (horse) or are a nuisance (geese). Instead of killing these animals and throwing them out, Hagenouw and his partner Nicolle Schatborn decided to build a whole cuisine around them that’s getting international attention.

Although rabbit was not on the list yet, they are considered a plague, although a hugely cute one.

(Link: www.npr.org, Tip: Fred, thanks!)

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March 10, 2015

Metallica rocks Friesland in the 1980s, a documentary

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 2:45 pm

Metallica

‘How Metallica raised hell in De Westereen’ in Frisian with English subtitles gives you an idea of how laid back Frisians can be and how that worked to history’s advantage, like it did for Metallica.

This historical gig featured Twisted Sister as the opening act by mistake, making their hit song ‘We’re not gonna to take it’ that much more amusing, accidentally giving Metallica their first headliner in Europe. The bookers said to themselves, “they’ll be just as big as Iron Maiden”, and they were right.

The local church was less amused about having a ‘hard metal rock band’ play on Whitsun and asked the city to revoke the license for the show. The bookers’ answer to that was “but the Bible doesn’t say: Thou shalt not organise a hard rock concert” and
“church organs are loud, too”.

You’d assume the problems with the show for the church would be the lyrics because back in the 1980s all that devil talk was often banned. However, the Frisians in the documentary didn’t really understand the lyrics, so they didn’t care. The reverend at the time just thought it was too loud and not the best choice without any ranting and raving about blaspehmy like they did in the US at the time.

After looking at a few pictures, Metallica’s James Hetfield talks about hanging out with the fans, having a few beers and this one guy with real wooden clogs on.

Even if you’re not a metal fan, this video is still a great story.

‘How Metallica raised hell in De Westereen’ (English subtitles):

(Link and screenshot: 3voor12)

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