March 5, 2018

Sexist toys for boys pulled from Dutch supermarkets

Filed under: General,Sports by Orangemaster @ 4:13 pm

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A football party pack marketed to boys aged 8-13 is being pulled from the shelves of the Albert Heijn supermarket chain for being sexist and glorifying stereotypically bad behaviour. Sure, a party pack with football-related items sounds almost acceptable except that this one automatically excludes girls form the get-go, making it not only sexist but also implying girls don’t play football, which they do en masse. What an odd situation, especially knowing Dutch women win at the highest levels of football. Maybe they should market this party pack to girls instead, albeit without belittling others in the process.

But this game gets worse, fast. They are cards in the game with multiple answer questions like “If a girl you don’t like asks you out, what do you do?” One of the answers is “I laugh at her”. Another question is “what is something you don’t want to see?”. One of the answers is “crying girls”. There’s another card about what to do at the beach that suggests “looking at girls” as an answer. Aren’t boys usually playing in the water or kicking a ball on the beach at that age?

This is a country where companies don’t check what they aim at children and a colouring book with an image of Hitler making a Nazi salute and wearing a Swastika armband and toys for boys to use to assault women (not girls, women).

(Link and screenshot: nltimes.nl)

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March 4, 2018

Amsterdam boasts world’s first plastic-free supermarket

Filed under: Dutch first,Food & Drink,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 9:08 pm

A few days ago, a branch of organic food supermarket chain Ekoplaza in Amsterdam West not far from 24oranges HQ, opened a plastic-free pop-up supermarket, selling close to 700 plastic-free products. Although the initiative comes from international action group A Plastic Planet from London, Amsterdam’s Plastic Soup Foundation was able to convince the Londoners to launch the world premiere in the Dutch capital.

The packaging resembles the look, feel and strength of real plastic, but is made using natural, 100% biodegradable materials. Ekoplaza has 74 supermarkets throughout the Netherlands and hopes to rollout this concept to other branches by the end of 2018.

“Dutch designers Eric Klarenbeek and Maartje Dros developed a bioplastic made from algae, which they believe could completely replace synthetic plastics over time, while Design Academy Eindhoven graduate Shahar Livne created a clay-like material using discarded plastic.”

And if they can do, so can everybody else at some point, starting with the insane amount of uselessly, individually wrapped vegetables at regular supermarkets.

(Links: dezeen.com, plasticsoupfoundation.org)

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March 3, 2018

Amsterdam turns into picturesque skating rink

Filed under: General,Sports by Orangemaster @ 10:41 am

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As of Thursday, people started skating on a few selected stretches of canals in Amsterdam, mainly the Prinsengracht. Yes, there’s been skating of all kinds happening in the north of the country as it is somewhat colder, but when skate fever hits Amsterdam, it’s a big deal worldwide. The sheer amount of spectators on the canal bridges means we’re all on someone’s holiday pictures and social media.

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While co-blogger Branko was taking pictures, I cleared my schedule on Friday and went skating. I’ve own a pair of custom Riedell ice skates since I was girl in Canada and they are at my door with my hats and gloves at 24oranges HQ ready to go skating. The last time the canals froze in Amsterdam was February 2012 and back then I had a broken leg from roller skating and missed out on all the fun. I couldn’t be happier to finally get to skate this time around. Practicing any of my figure skating jumps was not an option though, sadly, since the ice would crack in places as we all skated over it. It got a bit scary: getting on and off the ice at strategic places meant relying on the help of strangers and nobody is going to tell you where to skate and where not to, which is all very unregulated yet freeing.

I saw a guy cycle on the ice while texting, I saw girls and boys playing hockey together with some adults and I saw people skating for the first time on speed skates.

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March 1, 2018

Germans pass on naming train after Anne Frank

Filed under: History by Orangemaster @ 2:30 pm

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German railway company Deutsche Bahn has decided not to go ahead with plans to name one of their Intercity trains after Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl who was deported by train to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944 and whose diary is world-famous. Frank was German until 1941 when she became stateless while living in Amsterdam.

Last September, Deutsche Bahn asked people to suggest names for trains, and along with Anne Frank, they suggested first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany Konrad Adenauer and scientist Albert Einstein. Both Jewish and non-Jewish organisations pounced on the railway company with ‘this is a terrible idea, don’t do it’ and the original reply from the railway company was ‘Anne Frank stands for tolerance and reconciliation’.

Following the criticism, Deutsche Bahn is going to go the ‘IKEA’ route and give the trains names of German rivers and mountains.

A lot of companies and organisations seem to get Anne Frank wrong: as a Halloween costume, an espace room or even as a Spanish musical.

(Link: nos.nl)

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February 26, 2018

‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ in the spotlight next week

Filed under: Art,Technology by Orangemaster @ 8:48 pm

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As hinted to in an article about using the Rijksmuseum’s scanner to catch baddies, the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague will be using a Macro-X-ray Fluorescence scanner (MA-XRF) scanner to analyse Vermeer’s ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ next week, to find out more about the painting.

And lucky us at 24oranges HQ, we’ll be there and bring back photos if we’re allowed to take any, as we have ‘a man on the inside’.

Nicknamed ‘the Dutch Mona Lisa’, Vermeer’s iconic painting was last studied in 1994 during a conservation project. In those days, they had to take paint samples from the priceless work to examine it, something that doesn’t have to be done any more thanks to technology. Scanners and X-ray machines don’t even need to touch the surface of the canvas and can provide new insights into how Vermeer painted the girl and the materials he used.

Whether her earring is a pearl (I’m in the ‘no’ camp) or some shiny trinket and whether or not the girl had some sort of connection with Vermeer is still a matter of speculation.

(Link and photo: phys.org)

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February 23, 2018

Stay over in a 1950s Fokker airplane

Filed under: Aviation,General by Orangemaster @ 6:50 pm

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In Hoogerheide, North Brabant adventurous folks can stay over at a Bed and Breakfast in an old Fokker 27 aeroplane, the most numerous post-war aircraft to have been manufactured in the Netherlands and one of the most successful European airliners of its time.

The plane has a big sofa, small kitchen and even a sauna. Hosts Gerhard and Esther Slootweg wanted to provide optimal comfort with a nod to the 1960s, although the planes are from the late 1950s. The accommodations aren’t far from the Fokker factory and the Woensdrecht military air base, and get a lot of ‘flyers’ as guests.

The Fokker Bed & Breakfast was on a Dutch television channel that caters to an older audience, and is getting all kinds of bookings since.

(Link and photo: omroepbrabant.nl)

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February 22, 2018

Multi-purpose robot boats to float on canals

Filed under: Technology by Orangemaster @ 3:37 pm

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Amsterdam will get the world’s first fleet of autonomous boats, ushering in a new chapter in the international push for autonomous vehicles thanks to ROBOAT, the world’s first large-scale research that explores and tests the possibilities of autonomous systems on water. A collaboration between America’s Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS), the ROBOAT project will have a round of testing in Amsterdam’s canals in September 2018.

“This project imagines a fleet of autonomous boats for transporting goods and people that can also work together to produce temporary floating infrastructure, such as pontoons or stages that can be assembled or disassembled in a matter of hours,” explains Carlo Ratti, Professor of the Practice of Urban Technologies in the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning.

ROBOAT will also deploy environmental sensing to monitor water quality and offer data for assessing and predicting issues on public health, pollution, and the environment.

Here’s a smaller version zipping around Amsterdam’s canals:

(Links: designboom.com, ams-institute.org)

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February 21, 2018

Personal computer museum to open in Helmond

Filed under: Gaming,General by Orangemaster @ 11:44 pm

On 17 March, the Home Computer Museum in Helmond, Noord-Brabant will open its doors. At noon, visitors will be able to check out a collection of old personal computers, gaming computers and arcade games. There’s also an arcade café, 1980s films, a repairs corner, and more.

Thanks to crowdfunding, founder Bart van den Akker was able to raise the money needed to launch the museum. The city of Helmond also pitched in 7,000 euro for start-up costs and even an annual amount of 3000 euro for the next three years.

(Link: ed.nl)

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February 20, 2018

Detecting fake news by playing a game

Filed under: General,Online by Orangemaster @ 11:09 am

Dutch media collective DROG together with Cambridge researchers is launching an English version of the fake news game online today that teaches people how to immunise themselves against fake news.

“The game encourages players to stoke anger, mistrust and fear in the public by manipulating digital news and social media. Players build audiences for their fake news sites by publishing polarizing falsehoods, deploying Twitter bots, photoshopping evidence, and inciting conspiracy theories in the wake of public tragedy, all while maintaining a ‘credibility score’ to remain as persuasive as possible”.

Teenagers at a Dutch secondary school played the game use pen and paper, and demonstrated that the perceived ‘reliability’ of fake news diminished with those who played the game, as compared to a control group.

“If you know what it’s like to walk in the shoes of someone who is actively trying to deceive you, it should increase your ability to spot and resist the techniques of deceit”, explains says Dr. Sander van der Linden, Director of Cambridge University’s Social Decision-Making Lab.

The game will be rolled out in other languages and aimed at countries that have a high level of fake news like Ukraine.

(Link: phys.org)

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February 19, 2018

Bunker Day to feature two ‘unopened’ bunkers

Filed under: History by Orangemaster @ 6:54 pm
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On 9 June, two unique WWII bunkers in the small town of Driehuis, North Holland will be open to the public for one day only. According to Ruud Pols of the Bunkermuseum in IJmuiden, North Holland, this will be the first time these bunkers will actually be opened since the end of the war. Both bunkers are part of the Festung IJmuiden, one of the most important strategic defenses of the German Atlantic Wall. In fact, they’ll be open on National Bunker Day (Bunkerdag).

Pols also has no clue what they’ll find. Will it have been frozen in time or did someone already visit it that they don’t know about? No less than 2300 bunkers have been built in and around IJmuiden, a Dutch port city, and when taking a train and looking out the window in that area, you see cows grazing around the bunkers like it’s a normal sight.

(Link: nhnieuws.nl, Photo: cyberbunker in Zeeland)

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