Mavytan

I think there’s many contributing factors, local politicians being only one of them.

The Netherlands is a near perfect country for bicycling. The country is flat, very flat, borderline level. The moderare, marine climate helps too, you won’t often arrive sweaty or completely frozen, the common rainfall is a downside though. It’s also a small country with a high population density. This means the next village/town/city over is often less than 30 minutes biking away. Almost everything that matters in day to day life can be within such a distance for the vast majority of the population and has been for the past hundred years.

This brings me to the historical aspect. I’m no historian and I’m making some educated guesses here. Bicycles have been popular in The Netherlands pretty much since their introduction. They became commonplace in a time where cars were really only for the elite while the price of a bicycle was managable for the working class even before WW2 (then the nazis stole many many bikes during the war). After the war, resources were scarce, so once again bicycles were a sensible option.

The ANWB, the Dutch cyclists association has existed since well before WW2 (founded in 1883), but entered the car space shortly after the war in the form of roadside assistance. They have been (and still are) a major player in promoting both cycling and car infrastructure. They provided the highway signage until as late as 2004. I have no doubt that the ANWB is one of the reasons that the car lobby didn’t become as excessive as in many other countries.

Another piece of the puzzle is the nature of Dutch infrastructure planning. It is quite pragmatic but not very rigid. There’s a guideline published by the ministry of infrastructure (whatever the real name may be). This handbook is written and updated by infrastructure specialists, not by politicians and its contents are based on research and data. Research has repeatedly shown that has repeatedly shown that (among other things) bicycle infrastructure is greatly beneficial to (Dutch) cities and also shows how to build such infrastructure with traveler’s safety in mind. Politics only comes into play once it comes to planning specific roads etc. At this point it is the default to follow the guidebook (including the bicycle infrastructure) and only deviate if the situation requires it. I.e. bicycle infrastructure is the default in the system.

Finally, the specific situation of Utrecht comes down to local politicians. A car free neighbourhood is a deviation from the standard recipe, but one that fits in general recent trends. This case mostly jumps out in scale, but not by much. 12 000 people sounds like a lot, but in the context of high density apartment complexes it’s not that big of an area. I don’t know the specific plans, but I expect a tram/bus stop right in the middle of the area and car parking within a 5 minute walk for everyone. Pretty cool though, sounds like a nice neighbourhood to live in once it’s finished.

The logical thing to do is to raise the retirement age, especially eith increasing life expectancy. But even suggesting something like this has half of France up in arms…

The article also mentions something about the availability of low carbon emitting energy sources in Slovakia resulting in lower CO2 emissions per car produced. This seems to matter for car subsidies/tax breaks

On the one hand I can understand that they want to invest more in maintaining/replacing the highway infrastructure since it’s old and thousands of bridges are (past) due for replacement. On the other hand it seems completely idiotic to shift money away from railroad investments, it’s so so clear that the German rail network needs a lot of money to be fixed.

I’m not at all familiar with legalese, but wouldn’t ‘non-exclusive’ in that statement mean that you, and others permitted by you, can redistribute the content as you see fit? Meaning that copying and redistributing reddit content doesn’t necessarily violate reddit’s terms of service but does violate the user’s copyright?

And battery tech

Easier trade means more money, for both sides, regardless of the history

Probably not unless everyone has some radio device that can send as well as receive.

I stand corrected on my assumptions about commuting distances in North America.

It would be interesting to see what happens if Dacia tries to establish itself there

Looks like a little, simple car that’s great for city use. The range isn’t too bad for day to day use. It’s probably only a viable option in European cities though

I don’t get how you come to that conclusion. If you properly read the article you would have seen that the €30k limit is for a subsidy/emission reduction scheme by a governmental organization in Italy bringing the car prize down to €3900. That’s far from pushing the people into debt…

I don’t know what typical ranges are for given kWh, but it’s probably worth noting that it’s quite a lightweight car and that number is for city use, i.e. low speed

You might be right that the usa has the military means to conquer Greenland, but Europe has the means to make it not worth it

I’m assuming the same until shown otherwise with sufficient sources

Sources? That’s a lot of claims without anything backing it up

Could you elaborate on the complete control over EU parliament appointees?

One more: criminalize data brokers, make it hard to combine data from different sources, make it impossible for one single entity to have access to all your data and create a complete picture of your life.

They really keep trying to ratchet further and further to taking full control over what should be private, with all the negative consequences it has for democracy.

We should push ratcheting in the opposite direction. Start with various levels of crazy and sensible ideas. Make privacy a human right anchored in law with no exceptions, it should not even be possible to propose laws that weaken privacy. Make it a punishable crime to come even close to violaring privacy, put the CEOs and people making the technical implementations in jail. And require encryption to the point that if data is leaked, the data hoster is guilty if the data is readable. If any data is leaked, then the data of the leaker becomes public property. Etc.

If they can go crazy with the proposals to remove any semblance of privacy, then backtrack a little, but not completely, when there’s opposition, then so can we.

They have those… Currently limited to the web app

100W idle is a lot imo. That’s about €0.50 per day where I live -> more than €150 per year in power consumption. To be fair, you’re running quite a lot of things at the same time.