Tootfinder

The fracturing of the Dutch far-right, after Wilder's reminded everyone that bigots are bad at compromise, is definitely a relief. Dutch folks I've talked to definitely see D66 as progressive, <strike>so there's no question this is a hard turn to the left (even if it's not a total flip to the far-left)</strike> a lot of folks don't agree. I'm going to let the comments speak rather than editorialize myself..
While this is a useful example of how a democracy can be far more resilient to fascism than the US, that is, perhaps, not the most interesting thing about Dutch politics. The most interesting thing is something Dutch folks take for granted and never think of as such: there are two "governments."
The election was for the Tweede Kamer. This is a house of representatives. The Dutch use proportional representation, so people can (more or less) vote for the parties they actually want. Parties <strike>rarely</strike> never actually get a ruling majority, so they have to form coalition governments. This forces compromise, which is something Wilders was extremely bad at. He was actually responsible for collapsing the coalition his party put together, which triggered this election... and a massive loss of seats for his party.
Dutch folks do still vote strategically, since a larger party has an easier time building the governing coalition and the PM tends to come from the largest party. This will likely be D66, which is really good for the EU. D66 has a pretty radical plan to solve the housing crisis, and it will be really interesting to see if they can pull it off. But that's not the government I want to talk about right now.
In the Netherlands, failure to control water can destroy entire towns. A good chunk of the country is below sea level. Both floods and land reclamation have been critical parts of Dutch history. So in the 1200's or so, the Dutch realized that some things are too important to mix with normal politics.
You see, if there's an incompetent government that isn't able to actually *do* anything (see Dick Schoof and the PVV/VVD/NSC/BBB coalition) you don't want your dikes to collapse and poulders to flood. So the Dutch created a parallel "government" that exists only to manage water: waterschap or heemraadschap (roughly "Water Board" in English). These are regional bureaucracies that exist only to manage water. They exist completely outside the thing we usually talk about as a "government" but they have some of the same properties as a government. They can, for example, levy taxes. The central government contributes funds to them, but lacks authority over them. Water boards are democratically elected and can operate more-or-less independent of the central government.
Controlling water is a common problem, so water boards were created to fulfill the role of commons management. Meanwhile, so many other things in politics run into the very same "Tragedy of the Commons" problems. The right wing solution to commons management is to let corporations ruin everything. The left-state solution is to move everything into the government so it can be undermined and destroyed by the right. The Dutch solution to this specific problem has been to move commons management out of the domain of the central government into something else.
And when I say "government" here, I'm speaking more to the liberal definition of the term than to an anarchist definition. A democratically controlled authority that facilitates resource management lacks the capacity for coercive violence that anarchists define as "government." (Though I assume they might leverage police or something if folks refuse to pay their taxes, but I can't imagine anyone choosing not to.)
As the US federal government destroys the social fabric of the US, as Trump guts programs critical to people's survival, it might be worth thinking about this model. These authorities weren't created by any central authority, they evolved from the people. Nothing stops Americans from building similar institutions that are both democratic and outside of the authority of a government that could choose to defund and abolish them... nothing but the realization that yes, you actually can.
#USPol #NLPol

How to fix a post-secondary sector in crisis, forced by decades of shrivelling provincial funding to rely on high international tuition paid by students who can no longer enrol in anywhere near the same numbers since the feds decided to play the facile and xenophobic card of blaming them for a housing crisis they had nothing to do with and to slash student permits? Marketing!!!!*
*Aimed, of course, at potential international students not governments.

Canada's education sector has a new idea to lure international students back. Here's what it is
Canadian Bureau for International Education is leading an effort to try to save Canada's reputation as a top destination in the face of drastic cuts.

You’ll still get your social security and Medicare.

Flights will keep going, but with unpaid and possibly limited staff.

Most parks will remain open, but will probably be under-maintained.

Smithsonian museums and the National zoo are open through at least 6 October.

Federal workers are the hardest hit, withmany being unpaid or furloughed.

Consumer protections, which have already been hit hard by cuts, are at risk of incapacity.

It would have been some great weather for a day in the mountains. But I decided that I wanted a very relaxed day with reading on the couch.
After lunch I thought that I should really utilise this wonderful weather, even though It took me quite some mental effort to get out.
But it was worth riding a little loop in the neighbourhood.
#BikeTooter

German has a unique problem: the default noun for any job is male. Every effort to include the female or neutral form is fought tooth and nail by conservative parties. So when a mayor was forced to remove the mention of both genders in the statute for firefighters.... he kept just the female form of every job title 😈
"That's not what we meant!" the city council is now crying. "Not every person is female, after all!" they lament without noticing the irony.
…

Proud to have my research featured alongside Sasha Luccione/Hugging Face Noman Bashir/MIT Marissa Loewen in this AP story on ways to reduce your AI climate impact—and a surprising blind spot most users have about their digital footprint.
https://abcnews.go.co…

I just updated my latest #Pixelfed post to cut back on the excessive emojis, haha.
https://pixelfed.social/p/midtsveen/869670749084242036

One thing I learned from our female IT-specialists is how offensive the term "man days" is.
Recently there was a discussion (all men) about efforts and "man days". I just said "It's Person Days - there are quite a couple of women in the team as well."
Short silence, bit surprised looks.
"Sure"
Continued in "Person Days"
Sometimes it doesn't take a lot to change language to the better. Just do it.

Facilitating the Emergence of Assistive Robots to Support Frailty: Psychosocial and Environmental Realities
Angela Higgins, Stephen Potter, Mauro Dragone, Mark Hawley, Farshid Amirabdollahian, Alessandro Di Nuovo, Praminda Caleb-Solly
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.08510

Facilitating the Emergence of Assistive Robots to Support Frailty: Psychosocial and Environmental Realities
While assistive robots have much potential to help older people with frailty-related needs, there are few in use. There is a gap between what is developed in laboratories and what would be viable in real-world contexts. Through a series of co-design workshops (61 participants across 7 sessions) including those with lived experience of frailty, their carers, and healthcare professionals, we gained a deeper understanding of everyday issues concerning the place of new technologies in their lives. …

New #Pixelfed post!
#Fediverse