All the big European cities have them, but for some reason the Netherlands has been very late to get with the program on this one, as the country’ first vegan supermarket opens today.
The honour goes to Groningen, that ‘way up North’ city full of bike paths and students, who are most probably the target market of the store located on Nieuwe Ebbingestraat in what used to be a former post office.
In fact, it’s mostly female students who are setting the trend in vegan food shopping according to employee Benny Lobo of the Vegan Super.
A man from Wanneperveen, Overijssel has been sentenced to nine months in jail with three months suspended sentence for trying to sell a painting by Vincent van Gogh using a collection of fake documents. He was trying to sell a preparatory sketch of the painting ‘The Harvest’ (close up shown here) for 15 million euro.
Someone who found out about the sale had the idea something was off and called the police. The man apparently had many dubious small companies in his name and already a bit of a bad reputation.
Filed under: Architecture by Branko Collin @ 10:30 pm
You don’t often see night-time photography on housing sites, but this real estate agent had a special reason. They are advertising their 16th century, 270 square metre farm house in Huissen near Arnhem as haunted.
Whether they are taking their ghoulish inhabitants seriously, remains to be seen. The advert quickly adopts a more serious tone. The house is currently the property of Dutch celebrity Johan Vlemmix who in the first decade of this century unsuccessfully ran for parliament in the hope of becoming Minister of Parties. He bought the house in 2008 from another serial celebrity, positivity guru Emile Ratelband (catch phrase: ‘Tchakaaa’).
Ratelband had to sell the house, or so the story goes, because his wife thought it was haunted. Vlemmix tried to use the publicity in turn by organising ‘horror evenings’ in the old farm.
Having had celebrity owners and having a built in bar and cinema is not helping much so far. In the past eleven months the asking price has already been dropped by 50,000 euro to 350,000 euro. That doesn’t strike me as much, so maybe it is a monster to heat. Whether the prospective buyer will get all the props that were used for the photographs is unclear, but Vlemmix promises to throw in six caskets.
Filed under: Design,Gadgets by Orangemaster @ 7:00 am
Graphic artists Leanne Wijnsma and filmmaker Froukje Tan have created a product called ‘The Smell of Data’, a ‘grenade-shaped scent diffuser’ designed to alert Internet users of data leaks from their smartphones, tablets and computers. After all my recent reading on data security by Edward Snowden and Jacob Appelbaum (did you know he’s studying in Eindhoven?), you’d think a diffuser like that would be on almost constantly. Since most people don’t experience the consequences of a data leak, they don’t really care until something goes terribly wrong and by then it’s too late, a bit like carbon monoxide.
Wijnsma and Tan researched the human response to gas leaks, inspired by a 1937 explosion in Texas caused by an unnoticed gas leak. The incident prompted the government to artificially add an odorant to odourless gases (tert-Butylthiol, which smells like rotten eggs), making them more easily detectable. Carbon monoxide, also know as the ‘silent killer’, is a byproduct of combustion by stoves or heating not working properly in a home and is odourless, which makes you feel grateful for the smell of rotten eggs keeping you safe.
Launched in September 2016 at the Science Museum in London, The Smell of Data is meant to give people the same reaction as smelling a gas leak, hoping that people will finally take it seriously. Watch the video:
According to Johan Schmit, owner of Olivier’s cafe in Utrecht, his venue has the world premiere of selling Belgium’s strong Duvel beer on tap. Duvel needs extremely high pressure carbon dioxide on a tap to be served properly, something a normal tap cannot handle. And to be able to do so, the Duvel Moortgat brewery developed a new tap that Olivier has had the honour of trying out.
It could work or it could also not work, which is why no marketing has been done so far. And maybe fans will still want to drink it out of the bottle, who knows.
The beer in the picture is probably ordinary Dutch beer.
Filed under: Film,General by Orangemaster @ 7:16 am
LuckyTV.nl, which produces funny segments for Dutch television show ‘De Wereld Draait Door’, has had their mash up of the latest American presidential candidate debate go viral. Sander van de Pavert is the brains behind the operation and until now, mostly known within the Netherlands.
I avoided watching the actual debate and read the fallout, but having a laugh at the idea of Trump and Clinton singing a duet is a nice change from the violence of the entire entreprise. Van de Pavert doesn’t just put an entire new sound on top of a video, he lets any sounds that match what he’s going for permeate, which makes his work recognisable. He wasn’t thrilled with this one, but at least his point is well made, which is more than we can say for either candidate.
And if it makes you feel any better, the Dutch world heritage people have gone so far as to have a video campaign that says “Our world heritage is world-famous, soon to be famous in the Netherlands”, which is passive-aggressive speak for ‘how embarrassing, we don’t even know our own heritage’.
The underlying gripe in the Dutch media is that World Heritage sites in foreign countries are way cooler because the grass is greener on the other side of the fence and all that. I’m a foreigner who thinks there’s some great stuff to see here that even my family pushed me to visit years ago, which helped my score.
The Royal Dutch Mint has produced silver proof coins featuring Trix the Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, currently exhibited at the Naturalis museum in Leiden, South Holland. And they’re not just any old dino coins either, there’s one that glows in the dark, something the mint has done for the very first time. The coins are limited editions, with only 750 minted, a set of which costs 59,95.
How did the Naturalis score a T.rex in first place?
Back in 2012 researchers went hunting for a T.rex in the US, and found one in the state of Montana. The skeleton was carefully cleaned and prepared, and arrived in August 2016 in Leiden, escorted by the police and experts. The Queen of the dinosaurs, Trix is 12 metres long and her bones, muscles, claws and teeth weigh 6,000 kilos. You can visit Trix until 5 June 2017 after which the museum will be closed for renovations until 2018.
This T.rex skeleton is one of the three most complete ones in the world and obviously a great addition to the museum.
Filed under: Film,Gadgets by Orangemaster @ 5:23 pm
Three students from the University of Twente, Nick Schijvens, Pablo Trautwein and Mark de Boer, have developed a big plastic dart with a Go Pro camera inside it, called ‘Throw your Go Pro’, made by their startup, AER. The idea was to get the most out of a GoPro camera and bring it onto the market, with some help from crowdfunding platform Kickstarter. The money seemed to be pouring in, with close to 59,000 euro as I write this – their goal is 70,000 euro in another 27 days, which sounds like it will hit the mark.
The gadget has a GoPro mounted into a flying dart which you can throw into the air to create cool aerial footage. Have a look yourself at what AER have shot on their instragram.
Dutch designer Pauline van Dongen, who designed the full solar jacket for Wadden Sea walkers and a few other items, has now introduced the FysioPal undershirt, designed to correct bad upper-body posture by alerting the wearer when they are slouching, which helps correct their posture.
The top, which contains sensors that send information to a smartphone, measures the position of the neck, shoulders and back. The measurements are then sent to an app, which visualises the data and assesses the wearer’s overall posture. If it it detects slouching, the top will softly vibrate, alerting the wearer to change their posture.
It’s the modern-day version of having your parents tell you to stop slouching, but way cooler.
