April 2, 2016
The city of Amsterdam released a video yesterday titled 15 Years of Equal Marriage.
The video shows the city celebrating and looking back on the four same-sex weddings that were held at city hall on 1 April 2001. The weddings were officiated by Job Cohen, the former mayor of Amsterdam, at midnight.
(Video: Vimeo / Amsterdam; image: crop of a still from the video)
Tags: Amsterdam, gay marriage, human rights, marriage, same-sex, Stopera
March 31, 2016
As of March 30 KLM has been letting its passengers check in online using Facebook Messenger. Passengers can get their boarding cards and flight information as well as ask KLM any questions they may have directly instead of having to use Twitter or post their story on KLM’s Facebook page for all to read. A boarding pass that used to have to be sent per e-mail or text message can now be sent by Messenger.
Although a world premiere in aviation, we’re calling this a Dutch first because car service Uber was the first company to use Messenger. You can now order an Uber as you land at Schiphol if you wanted to. In the future, other companies will follow suit as well, according to Facebook. KLM is also talking to WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, to extend their services.
(Link: www.nu.nl, Photo: Steven Straiton, some rights reserved)
March 30, 2016
Here’s another super scientific 3D chair by Joris Laarman who created some revolutionary chairs back in 2010 using algorithms.
This aluminum gradient chair on display in New York in 2014 was the second in a series of three chairs that researched microstructures for furniture. According to Laarman, it was designed and directly laser sintered in aluminum, basically creating a lightweight aluminum foam that is engineered on a cellular level to address specific functional needs for different areas in the object. The solid cells in the design create structural strength and rigidity while the more open cells create material reduction and lightness, all within one printing technique.
(Link: www.designboom.com, Photo: www.jorislaarman.com)
Tags: 3D, chairs, furniture, Joris Laarman
March 29, 2016
World War II grenades pop up on the beach, at flea markets and even in potatoes here in the Netherlands, but this time a grenade was in fact sitting in an old man’s cupboard with its pin out.
A resident of an old folks’ home in Amsterdam East has had a live grenade for years that everybody thought was a fake. Sadly, the man recently passed and when his belongings were collected, the people that found the grenade among his model boats and books had it checked out by the police.
The staff of the home just assumed it was a fake, but once the police checked it out, they realised it was in a fact a live grenade. The bomb squad came and picked it up and had it detonated. All we know is that it was an English grenade that finally came out of the closet, although thankfully not with a bang.
(Link: www.waarmaarraar.nl, Photo of grenade by macspite, some rights reserved)
March 28, 2016
Last summer we told you about a new law that allowed Dutch citizens to call for a non-binding referendum, in this case to veto Ukraine’s entry to the European Union. On 6 April, the Dutch will vote on a non-binding referendum on the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, a vote and campaign that happens to fall at the same time as the Dutch presidency of the European Union — as if they didn’t have enough on their plate already.
One things the Dutch Party for the Animals doesn’t want on their plate is chicken, so they’re encouraging people to vote ‘no’ in the video below. One of the baddies happens to be one of the world’s biggest producer of broiler chickens for starters. As well, a lot of people throw around the word ‘oligarch’ without knowing what it means, now you can learn more about it and hear how horrible it sounds in Dutch.
“According to Transparency International Ukraine is the most corrupt country in Europe. Ukraine is ruled by oligarchs. Take Myronivsky Hliboproduct (MHP): it is one of the biggest poultry producers in the world and annually slaughters 332 million chickens.”
Long story short, billionaire Yuriy Kosiuk owns it, puts his money in tax havens in Luxembourg and Cyprus, is friends with President Poroshenko and has his fingers in way too many pies. The Dutch Party for the Animals considers him and the Ukrainian government corrupt, and wouldn’t be totally wrong in saying so. MHP’s motto is “if you want something done well, do it yourself”, and that seems to include bullying the government.
Ukraine has always been the doormat doorway to Russia, stuck between maintaining old Soviet relations and sucking up to the European Union. The people of Ukraine are the real losers of any deal, chickens and all.
Dutch companies have a reputation of trashing Ukraine using gross stereotypes like they did during the Euro 2012, which makes any normal dialogue unproductive.
(Links: dearkitty1.wordpress.com, gianalytics.org, european-times.com, Photo of Ukranian woman by my3colors, some rights reserved)
Tags: animal welfare, chickens, corruption, Ukraine
March 26, 2016
For anyone like me who usually finds ceramics dull, Dutch designer Floris Wubben of Eindhoven has found a way of making ceramics cool. He created a rotating flame-throwing device that makes exciting textures on his ceramic pieces.
A wet ceramic piece is placed on a rotating central stand, where an adjustable semicircular arm holds a blowtorch. The blowtorch then applies a flame directly to object’s surface, creating all kinds of patterns.
Wubben is able to control the flame, the distance and the speed at which the blowtorch hits a ceramic piece, creating cooler patterns than you’d normally see on ceramics. Wubben has produced bowls, pots and cups with different glazes in collaboration with Cor Unum ceramics studio of Den Bosch, Noord-Brabant.
(Link and photo: www.dezeen.com)
Tags: ceramics, Den Bosch, Eindhoven, Noord-Brabant
March 24, 2016
According to BN De Stem, food giant Unilever is pulling the plug on the longest running ice lolly in the Netherlands, the Raket (‘Rocket’).
BN De Stem suggests the Rocket is too Dutch for its own good. Unilever was only producing them for the Dutch market. The company, operating under the Ola brand in the Netherlands and Wall’s and Algida elsewhere, wants to streamline its production of ice cream flavours by reducing them from 450 to 90. As one observer said: “How much more streamlined than a rocket can you get?”
RTL Z claims that the story is an April Fools’ joke, citing “sources within Unilever”. Unlike any other April Fools’ joke I’ve seen, this one doesn’t refer to April however. The original source talks about May instead. Elle smells a rat, because why would a brand ditch a product that sells so well? So I decided to find out for myself, picked up the phone and called Unilever: turns out, their press department is conveniently unavailable for comment during the four-day Easter weekend.
Everybody agrees that if this really is an April Fool’s joke, it’s one of the lamest ever.
If Unilever is really abandoning the Rocket, then you’re in luck. Cheap knock-offs are still being made by competing brands as Z24 helpfully pointed out two years ago .
The news that Unilever is going to discontinue its traditional Dutch treat follows recent news that two major ‘bitterball’ manufacturers, Mora and Van Geloven, are now in foreign hands, and news from 2014 that aniseed cubes were discontinued by De Ruijter because the machine that made them could no longer be kept in repair.
See also:
Tags: April Fools, ice, ice lollies, Ola, Unilever
March 23, 2016
A mechanic peregrine falcon was named the best innovation of the year at the European Robotics Forum in Ljubljana this week, Tubantia reports.
The winning robot is called Robird and is made by Clear Flight Solutions from Enschede, a spin-off of the University of Twente. It mimics the flight of the peregrine falcon and is used to keep the air space near airports clear from birds such as geese.
In an interview in 2014 with RTV Noord Holland (see below), CEO Nico Nijenhuis said that real falcons will only hunt when hungry. They also tire quickly. “Once [a peregrine falcon] has made two flights in a row, it’s really tired. [Our robot] on the other hand keeps going. You swap out a battery and it’s good to go.”
Clear Flight Solutions received 1.6 million euro in funding from the Cottonwood Technology Fund last week and is in talks with Schiphol Airport for a pilot project [pun unavoidable]. Nijenhuis told RTL Nieuws last week: “Dutch rules are very strict, but we expect to have our paperwork in order within six weeks.”
See also: Scaring off seagulls with drones in Haarlem
(Photo of geese flying by Don DeBold, some rights reserved)
Tags: Enschede, falcons, geese, peregrine falcons, robotics, robots, startups, University of Twente
March 21, 2016
During the Dream and Dare festival on April 22 through 24 at the Eindhoven University of Technology to celebrate their 60th anniversary, they’ll be tech, innovation and debates as well as art, music and food. The food part will have drones acting as waiters, happily combining tech and drinks.
At the drone café, visitors will be able to order drinks from one drone while its drone colleague brings the drinks to you. It sounds way easier than it is to have drones flying indoors instead of outdoors. They need to fly much more accurately, they need to make way less noise and they need to not clip off any fingers when you grab your drinks from their talons. As well, the drones can only handle 300 grams of weight at a time.
Tessie Hartjes, of the student workgroup Blue Jay Eindhoven, says the combination of navigating and grasping is a big deal. She explains that although the drones use speech recognition software (and I’m assuming it only understands Dutch), the café is too noisy for that to work properly so you can order from the bar, old school. The drones also fly a certain route that you cannot walk into for fear of causing an accident. You can also pay to the drone, and tipping them might actually make them tip. I’m kidding.
(Link: www.tue.nl, www.bright.nl, Photo of Drone by Karen Axelrad, some rights reserved)
March 19, 2016
They say the Dutch are really big on denim, with big Dutch names such as G-Star, Denham, Scotch & Soda and Kuyichi competing with the rest of the world on the jeans front. Even American brand Tommy Hilfiger, which also makes jeans, has its international headquarters in Amsterdam.
The Dutch can dress quite informally at work as compared to the rest of Europe, making denim a common occurrence at the office for both men and women. There’s no need for casual Friday over here.
A new small-scale jeans brand from Chèvremont, Limburg called Grivec Bros could very well be a brand to watch out for. Twin brothers Marcel and Roger, 44, are huge denim fans and owners of Jeanpaleis in Kerkrade, Limburg, which they inherited at age 18 from their parents when they got divorced. Even though Amsterdam can claim to be the ‘jeans capital of the world’, the brothers explain that the first jeans were sold to mine workers in their mining area way back when, linking Limburg to the US as far as jeans go.
Grivec Bros jeans are made in Portugal and cost 209 euro, with names like ‘Cool Pete’ (above) and ‘Hower’. They just started selling them in their shop, and they will be available online soon. Marcel says he can’t wait to see someone with his name on their ass. Their motto is “we eat, breathe and shit denim!”
(Links: www.limburger.nl, www.euromonitor.com, Photo: Grivec Bros)
