That’s not even a nice way to get salmonella poisoning.

I live in Flanders, Belgium and we have an opt-out system of sorts. Everyone is a donor, unless official objections were made. That sounds great, but doctors need to ascertain if there are no objections, even informal ones.

So it kind of boils down to doctors still having to ask your next of kin. But - according to data from UZ Leuven, one of our biggest hospitals - asking ‘are there any objections to the normal course of events’ works better than ‘do you wish to donate you loved ones organs’. Especially during a time of grief. It says Belgium has about 30 donors per million, whereas Germany and The Netherlands have about 15. (Data from 2024)

Because of this system you can still also officially state that your organs are to be donated if possible. And apparently you can do so from the age of 12 onwards. If you do so, no questions are asked and no one is able to object.

Tl;dr In Belgium we have an opt-out system, but it’s not bulletproof. And it doesn’t result in an enormous amount of donations. There are still waiting lists, though there are more donations than in some of our neighbouring countries. Reality is messy!

The numbers four and five (quatre, cinq) are pronounced like ‘cat’ and ‘sank’ in informal spoken French.

Kite?

I also came here to say I don’t wear shorts.

Only for sports. And reluctantly.

In the Netherlands and Belgium, where I am from, helmets are still very much optional. We have very strong cycling cultures and lots of people are opposed to it. They never used them and have cycled everywhere for decades.

However. There are a lot more helmets riding around than ten years ago. Especially kids wear them a lot. Their parents less so, but their numbers are increasing. Older people are coming around very slowly. They get one when they buy a fast ebike. Not so much for a normal bike.

For myself, I go cycling most weekends and always wear a helmet for that. Purely because it’s an appropriate thing to do. It’s part of the culture. I didn’t wear one for commuting or for getting groceries or going out, while those trips are A LOT more dangerous. So at one point I just realised how weird that was. And that there are no good objective arguments to not always wear a helmet. I’d absolutely hate to see it become mandatory, but I’d love to see more people make a positive choice to wear one.

On a slightly related note: could any US lemmings tell me why non-catholic christians in the US are so involved with the pope?

I have a friend from KY who went to Rome and everything. I asked her why, since she’s protestant, and she genuinely did not understand the question. Her entire family was praying for the pope. And they are methodists?

I have some catholics in my family and they would not bat an eye if the patriarch of Constantinople died. They consider orthodox Christians or protestants as a different religion.

It’s a scene from Reynaert the fox It’s arguably the most amazing text that survived in medieval Dutch. Earliest versions date back to the 13th century.

It’s full of trickery and very dark humor.

Here’s a more recent depiction of the scene:

38mm is pretty big to fit through most rimbrakes.

I’ve literally done more with a cargo bike.

Yeah, I’m lucky I got in way before the changes. I think new users are stuck with having to pay for everything? Now I just can’t access the multi-day rides, which is inconvenient if I want to go bikepacking, but the workarounds are fine.

And yeah, they will probably find a way to make older users pay for basic features too.

I used to love how they didn’t have a subscription model. Just buy the maps once and you’re set.

:-(

I’m fine with it if women are allowed to be polygamous as well.

No goedendag? Pffff!

It’s about to be ‘Dodge rammed in the Netherlands’

It’s a great app and it really does help to avoid waste, but… I know a few businesses that went from donating their leftovers to charities for the poor to selling them through TGTG, because that way, they still make some money off of it.

A friend of mine had one over for a visit on his balcony.

They are getting quite common in my city. There are several nests.

I liked it a lot, more than Tidal (what I have now). But the last few months with Qobuz I had streaming issues, because of something on their end. It was a freak issue though. The catalgue was absolutely wonderful especially if you’re into jazz like me. It allowed you to browse record labels too, which I sorely miss.

I switched because of the streaming issues and because tidal has a connect option, which allows me to send music without compression over wifi to my stereo, natively from tidal (spotify has it too, but lower quality sound)

Hey, this is great! Being from the EU, it’s been harder to get certain less-sought-after editions in English since brexit (and the shutdown of bookdepository). And I hate ordering from amazon.