There are a few words which are homophones in English and German: House/Haus and Bush/Busch immediately come to mind (along with similar-sounding words such as Mouse/Maus and Fish/Fisch). In Dutch we have Foot/Voet and Boat/Boot. Are there any words which are homophones in all 3 languages? The […]

I imagine that a jellyfish sting tastes like licking a fishy kiwi peel covered in potassium permanganate

I resent the fact that emeralds can't be grown as easily as rubies or sapphires. I would like a copy of the Emerald Tablet etched onto an actual emerald tablet

Just woke up to my Dutch clock radio playing Margaret Singana. For a second I thought I had entered some kind of parallel universe

Cook rice. Forget about rice. Burn rice. 🔔 Start again 👋 🤡 I really need to buy a rice-cooker

Just realised that if Donald Trump kicks it before 2028 then JD Vance will be the first US president with facial hair since William Howard Taft

Today's #thursdayfivelist is close to my heart, songs which transcend genre #thelastgenrebender One from my childhood, mixing rock and kwaito https://youtu.be/w2TrqqYt_RE Big band meets djent and dubstep https://youtu.be/QL1Dv_BGf18 There's that time a prog metal band did a disco song […]

Got a jumpscare on my phone telling me that the power outage is solved. Uh thanks, I guess?

It saddens me that James Dyson and Freeman Dyson are not the same person. It would have been so cool if the guy behind powerful hairdryers were also behind the Dyson sphere

I wanted to build a computer this year. Seems like what I should have done instead is invested that money in computer hardware futures

One of my favourite genres of music is half-hour-long-instrumental-that-tells-a-story-with-random-spoken-word-samples-from-long-lost-media

Only in Holland

I love how NOS has the headline "Erich von Däniken dead, pseudoscientist who saw ancient aliens everywhere"

Is it bad if I use my 3D printer to dry herbs?

We need about another week of this sustained cold for there to be a chance at an Elfstedentocht. Sadly, the climate-change demons have it in for us

Zoologists: Nooooo we can't rename the Hitler beetle once a scientific name has been published that is its name! Botanists: We are renaming every plant whose name references the K-word.

I saw elsewhere that the SABC started broadcasting today in 1976, 50 years ago. This seems apt:

Just realised that drone metal legends Earth are performing in Amsterdam at the same time as FOSDEM 😭

I respect Eddy Grant for not putting his music on streaming platforms due to the poor rates they pay artists, annoying as it is for me whenever I want to rock down to Electric Avenue or tell the world that I love to truck

One of the things I did was I bought two Christmas trees for a little experiment: one sits outside on the balcony while the other was brought inside and decorated. It's just about time for the inside Christmas tree to be put outside, but buds have started sprouting, so I suspect it thinks it's […]

Just got jumpscared by my phone with an NL-alert warning that 112 is extremely busy at the moment. Stupid fireworks

Normally at around this time on New Year's Eve I'd be waiting for my flight from Cape Town back to Amsterdam. This year I'm sitting at home watching Dinner for One and keeping the cats company while people outside blow stuff up. It's a good thing they've gotten used to the fireworks after all […]

People who know this sort of thing better than I do: what should I use to host my website? Let's say a personal website based in the EU, and I would also like to dump random web-apps that I write

You're not allowed to castle through check. If you do, they can capture your king en passant

Work-life delineation for the new year looks like: work stuff is written in the A5 line-ruled spiral notebooks I get for free from the office, and personal stuff is written in the A5 square-ruled spiral notebooks which I just bought 30 of because they're a pain to find

Calendrical hot take: week numbers should start with the new year. Today it should be week 53, not week 1

There is a town in Utrecht called IJsselstein, named such because it is on the Hollandse IJssel, which is not to be confused with the more notable IJssel that drains into the IJsselmeer, and the town is not to be confused with Ysselsteyn in Limburg, which is named after the old Minister of […]

The Gävle Goat has fallen. 2026 is going to be a good year https://youtu.be/lfGpo6t2As0

[Marketing nonsense] That's a very specific target for your ad you've got there, Eneco https://youtu.be/kNWfqxrCtog

A friend: wouldn't it be cool to be able to fold a chain-mail model in software so as to print it in one go? Me, several weeks and a couple of rabbit-holes later: okay so I can show a point coplanar to a triangle in 3D is contained in the triangle by taking two vertices of the triangle, using […]

Happy Boxing Day! Reminder that Jake Paul got his jaw broken and Andrew Tate got knocked out while the chuds at Polymarket had him winning his fight at 6:1 odds

Christmas tradition number 1: The flamingo. We got this flamingo made from LEDs in December 2020 and since then it's been a Christmas staple. It reminds me of the warm summer Southern Hemisphere Christmas I used to enjoy growing up

Day 33: They still suspect nothing

Me: I'm rubbish at chess. I wouldn't mind getting better at it Youtube: Here's a bunch of chess puzzles that require you to work out a dozen variations. Have fun!

Had a good laugh at the news yesterday that the Department of Home Affairs (they handle stuff like immigration, passports, birth registrations) raided the office where American government officials were processing refugee applications from wealthy white Afrikaners. lots of "YOU CAN'T COME IN […]

The past was wild. Remember in like 2011 when we *wanted* infinite scroll? Someone wrote a browser extention that gave infinite scroll on reddit and we were like "This is awesome!" Now we weep silently as we scroll because we're unable to stop.

Type Ia supernova error and Type II diabetes error

I resent the fact that penguins don't make good pets

I generally dislike all kinds of mushrooms, but I kinda want to throw a puffball in the air and hit it with a tennis racquet

I should have spammed this song all year just to mess with Spotify https://youtu.be/-3IBamDXhFU

Nobody: Bodybuilders: Hey did you know the hormone that causes insects to moult also weakly interacts with your body's estrogen receptors and promotes muscle growth?

Conventional wisdom dictates that when you sell your house, the walls should be white, the floors an inoffensive wood or laminate, and the furniture should be as normal as possible. But when I eventually sell my place, I want everything in it to be blue and I want to have an ambient piano […]

Thou knowest not how to do it, but my friend Anne hath a way.

Who exactly is Big Tech nowadays? Meta, Alphabet, Netflix, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, plus maybe some AI-related companies like Nvidia, and Anthropic. Put it all together, and I guess that gives you MANAMANA https://youtu.be/TbZ_hTEOKZc

New rule for determining whether or not the funny animal video is slopped: if it was uploaded 10 years ago, it's probably fine. AI hasn't invented time-travel yet

I fear not the man who has graffitied 10 000 walls once, but I do fear one who has graffitied one wall 10 000 times

Why is the person who writes public addresses for politicians called a speechwriter and not Toastmaster General?

Dutch vocabulary for today: De koet heeft een rare voet

Every time you use AI art at work, an illustrator at the Corporate Memphis factory gets laid off.