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

The Broken & The Relics 🧱
断壁残垣 🧱
📷 Nikon F4E
🎞️ ERA 100, expired 1993
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite

"Britain’s 300-hectare Seed Processing Center Opens to Build Climate-Resilient Forests"
#UK #UnitedKingdom #Trees #Environment

Britain's 300-hectare Seed Processing Center Opens to Build Climate-Resilient Forests | Happy Eco News
Britain's largest seed processing center opened in Cheshire to produce seeds for climate-resilient forests. The facility processes four tonnes of seeds annually and can store them for up to 20 years.

If you know something about Basic Income, you may be aware that
👉one of the first proposals for a Basic Income came from Thomas Paine, hero of the American and French revolutions.
In 1797, after a stint in a French prison, Paine wrote the pamphlet 
"Agrarian Justice",
⭐️which sets out an argument for taxing land and distributing the proceeds among the population at large as compensation for landlessness.
Paine’s proposal to tax land and distribute the …

Thomas Paine’s 1797 call for a Basic Income: a New Paper Tells the Full Story
You may be aware that one of the first proposals for a Basic Income came from Thomas Paine, hero of the American and French revolutions.

In diplomatieke kringen is sprake geweest van een deal waarbij Rusland zijn gang kon gaan in Oekraine en de VS in Venezuela.
Stukje uit het verhoor van Fiona Hill in het impeachment proces in Trumps eerste termijn.
Bron: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/poli…

We’re proud to support Polar Connect Step 2 (24-EU-DIG-PC2) as an Associated Partner, working alongside the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat, NORDUnet, GlobalConnect, CSC, and the Swedish Research Council (the project coordinator).
With the Grant Agreement now signed, PC2 takes a major step toward realising Polar Connect – a resilient Arctic submarine cable system linking Europe, North America, and East Asia for the benefit of the global internet.
🔗 Read more:

Anthropic unveils two Claude Code upgrades: a new plan mode that creates more precise plans, and support for Claude Code in the Claude desktop app (Frederic Lardinois/The New Stack)
https://thenewstack.io/anthropics-new-claude-opus-4-5-reclaims-…

Anthropic's New Claude Opus 4.5 Reclaims the Coding Crown
In addition to the new model, Anthropic is also announcing two updates to the Claude Developer Platform that go hand-in-hand with the Opus 4.5 release.

Freitag bis Sonntag:
Rollenspiel-Online-Convention -> an 4 One-Shots in 3 Tagen teilgenommen.
Me: »Endlich das Gefühl, so richtig sattgespielt zu sein.«
Montag:
Eine regelmäßige Session.
Me: »Uff, langsam setzt Erschöpfung ein.«
Dienstag:
Me: »Ich hätte ja jetzt Lust auf ’ne Session …«

Monumental III 🪦
纪念 III 🪦
📷 Nikon F4E
🎞️ Ilford HP5 Plus 400, expired 1993
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite

Seneca, which is developing autonomous firefighting drones, raised $60M in seed and Series A rounds led by Caffeinated Capital and Convective Capital (Christopher Marquis/Forbes)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/…

How Seneca’s Firefighting Drones Signal A New Era Of Climate Adaptation
Seneca’s firefighting drones show how adaptation tech is shaping a resilience economy amid rising climate risks and billion-dollar wildfire disasters.