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

Everyone saying they look like nazis, and sure they have the uniforms, but at least the nazis knew how to march, how to look organized. These guys walk like a gang, no training whatsoever, which matches their recruitment strategy.

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.

It seems to have a very different, potentially better feed than lemmy, interesting, might switch

I’m running it through proton, didn’t get the audio on the native version to work

I don’t really understand the difference between the two. Don’t they essentially do the same thing, connect to the same communities, etc? (Apart from some minor details)

Multiplayer games in Civilizations VI take much longer to load on Linux Mint than they used to on Windows. Multiple minutes now vs about half a minute previously. Once loaded it’s fine, no noticable differences between old and new. The longer loading times do become quite annoying when we need to reload/reconnect due to networking issues.

It’s going great. A bit of a learning curve at the start, but nothing difficult. I had a few minor issues along the way, but it’s all worth it, because I no longer get bothered by all the annoyances of Windows. My device is now managed, updated, etc by me instead of big tech that doesn’t serve my interests, feels much better.

Some time ago I wanted to get my xbox controller to work with Linux Mint. There were no working drivers installed, the drivers from the ‘app store’ (whatever it’s real name may be) didn’t work, the drivers I installed from some github page via the command line did work.

Ze zijn alweer op weg naar huis, maar blijkbaar hebben we als Europa toch simpele middelen om Trump mee dwars te zitten

Dat komt voor mij wel even uit het niets, maar kan er niet over klagen.

Ik krijg de indruk dat de groep die nu afsplitst graag wil regeren/meebeslissen in tegenstelling tot Wilders’ liefde voor oppositie voeren. Dat vind ik wel een beetje eng want dat betekent dat het nu een stuk makkelijker is om in combinatie met JA21 over rechts een meerderheid te vinden.

A couple of things that come to mind

• advertise, drop the name here and there, especially on reddit because it is so similar in purpose, also share posts from lemmy with friends
• interact with communities you’re interested in, make sure there’s good content or at least comment, especially in smaller, nicr communities
• improve user experience, Lemmy is slow, especially when loading subscriptions, also posts reappear all the time while scrolling
• more casual content, I don’t want to be confronted with all the horrors going on in the world all the time, sometimes I just want to see something funny, apolitical, etc, something chill

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