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Op de natuurbegraafplaats waar we een kleine twee jaar geleden mijn oom begroeven, stond een eenzaam schaap.

In het programma ‘Oorlog is erfelijk’ gaat Natascha van Weezel in gesprek met mensen die oorlog van dichtbij hebben meegemaakt. Vanaf dinsdagavond wordt de interviewreeks in de aanloop naar 4 en 5 mei uitgezonden.

New Yorker-journalist Evan Osnos schrijft al jaren over de 0.01%. Hoe ziet de verborgen wereld van de ultrarijken eruit? En wat zegt dat over onze tijd?

Volgens het Europees Parlement moet seks zonder toestemming in de gehele EU gedefinieerd worden als verkrachting. Het parlement wil dat de Commissie nu wetgeving voorstelt om dit te regelen.

Het adviesorgaan van een van de grootste wetenschappelijke subsidieverstrekkers ter wereld gold 75 jaar lang als een apolitiek overheidsorgaan. Tot nu.

In het jaarlijks rapport van EU-waakhond Liberties wordt onder meer de overname van RTL Nederland door DPG Media gehekeld. Persconcentratie in heel Europa betekent volgens de ngo een „verlies aan diversiteit in berichtgeving, meningen en bronnen”.

De voorstellingen van Theater Na de Dam, die jaarlijks in het hele land op 4 mei te zien zijn, liggen steeds vaker onder vuur. Juist dáárover maken ze nu een stuk. „Het is alsof er sprake is van een ‘pijnpikorde’, waarbij het ene slachtofferschap het andere bestrijdt.”

Kunstenaar Dries Verhoeven haalt vanaf volgende week de rolluiken naar beneden in het Nederlands paviljoen op de Biënnale van Venetië, het belangrijkste kunstevenement ter wereld. „De deelname van Rusland en Israël hebben me alleen maar gesterkt in het gebaar dat ik daar wil maken.”

Mei is de maand om in de bioscoop stil te staan bij oorlogsverhalen. Er zijn nog altijd onbekende geschiedenissen op te diepen, zo blijkt. Maar klassieker ‘Het meisje met het rode haar’ maakt de meeste indruk.

Darren Schiller has added a photo to the pool:

Morialta Street, Adelaide CBD

Darren Schiller has added a photo to the pool:

Waymouth Street, Adelaide CBD

The Union Hotel on Waymouth Street, established in 1845 as the Union Inn, is a historic Adelaide pub. Rebuilt in 1880, it is a Local Heritage-listed site known for its Victorian-era architecture and, notably, as a former home of a caged "black tiger" in its early days. It continues to operate as a popular city gastropub today.

Key Historical Details
Establishment & Original Owner: Established in 1845, the original inn was associated with John Michael Herring, who died in the hotel following an accident.
The "Tiger" Era:
In the late 1800s, the pub was famous for housing a "black tiger" brought by a Mr. Creech. It was kept in a cage at the rear, and visitors paid sixpence to see it.
Architecture:
The current two-story brick and sandstone structure was designed by architect James Cumming and built around 1880, replacing the original, according to historical documentation.
Renovations:
The building underwent multiple, extensive renovations, including work in 1914 by builders Hackett & Harris and in 1925 by J. Oliver. These renovations removed the original balcony and decorative urns from the roofline.
Heritage Status:
The hotel has been a continuous part of Adelaide's culture for over 160 years, featuring in stories of the city's past, including tales of it being haunted by its original owner.

Darren Schiller has added a photo to the pool:

The warehouse on this site was built for the wholesale wine and spirit merchant firm of A.E. and F. Tolley in 1913. The firm was founded by the brothers, Albion Everard Tolley and Frederick Osborne Tolley in C 1877. A.E. and F.O. Tolley’s father, Albion James Tolley had migrated to South Australia in 1853 and established an importing business in Angas Street,
soon after his arrival. His business interests included the wine and spirit industry. Four of
Tolley’s six sons became involved in some aspect of the wine and spirit industry.
A.E. Tolley was the driving force behind the establishment of the A.E. and F. Tolley. He was
the eldest son of A.J. Tolley and commenced work in the wine and spirit industry by working
in Melbourne for the firm Jones, Scott and Company, Merchants and Importers in the early
1870s. In 1873 A.E. Tolley briefly joined his father in business but by the following year had joined with P.C. Campbell in a wine and spirit business in Leigh Street, Adelaide. The company was granted a storekeeper’s license, permitting the sale of not less than one gallon of spirit or a dozen bottles of wine or other fermented liquor between the hours of 6am to 11pm from the Leigh Street premises.
In 1875 A.E. Tolley dissolved his partnership with Campbell, and in 1877 began in partnership with one of his brothers, Frederick Osborne, trading under the name of A.E. and
F. Tolley. They established their new business in a building in Currie Street. The land on
which the Waymouth Street warehouse is built is located nearby. The new company rapidly expanded in South Australia and into Western Australia setting up a number of companies. In the 1880s two other brothers established the brandy distilling firm of Tolley, Scott and Tolley, taking over the Phoenix Distilling Company. The company established a 100 acre vineyard at Hope Valley which is famous for TST Brandy. The firm is still owned by the
family and is known as Douglas A. Tolley Pty Ltd. A.E. and F. Tolley have always acted as
the agents for TST Brandy and other products of the family business.
In 1891 A.E. and F. Tolley bought the wine and spirit business of Heseltine and Reid and in 1893 together with George Milne, purchased a share of the interests of the South Australian Brewing, Malting and Wine and Spirit Company Limited in the city of Adelaide and Port Adelaide. They also acquired at this time the lease of several hotels. The company became involved in the purchase and construction of hotels and theatres in Adelaide and in the South East of South Australia.
As part of their purchase of Heseltine and Reid, Tolley’s acquired a site near Frome Street, which contained a stable, yard and two storey premises suitable as the city depot for the
company’s horses and carriages, so necessary to their business (now the heritage listed and refurbished Stables development).
In 1913 when additional accommodation was required, the company built the warehouse and offices in Waymouth Street, immediately behind the original Currie Street premises. It was completed in January 1914, the Adelaide City Council Annual Reported stated:
The architectural appearance of Waymouth Street has been greatly improved by the
erection of a warehouse with imposing facade for Messrs. A.E. and F. Tolley.
A.E. and F. Tolley is now owned by The Distillers Company Limited of Edinburgh, Scotland
and retains the wholesale wine and spirit business as well as owning several hotels.
The building is of three storeys with a basement and is constructed of rock faced sandstone and brick with a strong projecting cornice, below a parapet at the roofline. The composition is topped by a rectangular domed structure in the centre of the roof. The front elevation of the building consists of three recessed vertical banks of windows framed by columns supporting semi-circular arches. The building is faintly reminiscent of the work of the American architect, H.H. Richardson. The architects responsible for the design of the warehouse were David Williams and Charles T. Good.
The warehouse which was a very distinctive element in Waymouth Street, has to a degree been overshadowed by adjoining redevelopment. Nevertheless, it is a building which makes a positive contribution to the streetscape, its dome being a particular accent to the street even
when viewed from King William Street. The integrity of the exterior of the building is high
although it is reported that the interior underwent a major refit in 1972. A two-storey brick
and reinforced concrete addition of C 1920 has been constructed at the rear.
The Waymouth Street warehouse was used by A.E. and F. Tolley until the mid 1960s when it was leased for a number of years. It was sold in 1982.

​“Groter”, fluistert Prins Bernhard jr. als hij de brillenwinkel bij hem om de hoek betreedt. “Sorry meneer, kan ik u helpen?”, vraagt een medewerker die bij de ingang staat vriendelijk. “Groter”, fluistert Bernhard. “Het moet groter.”

“We hebben deze van Oakley meneer, die is best groot”, zegt de medewerker, die een bril aan de muur aanwijst. Prins Bernhard jr. schudt zijn hoofd. “Groter”, fluistert hij weer. De medewerker knikt en kijkt peinzend naar de brillencollectie. “Misschien een van Armani, dat zijn ook best forse monturen?” Bernhard fronst. “Gróter”, sist hij.

De medewerker loopt met een rood hoofd naar zijn kantoortje. Even later komt hij terug met een enorme bril, met twee glazen van het formaat ‘raam’. “Ehm, dit is echt de grootste die we hebben, meneer. Dit is een speciale limited edition van Ray-Ban. Wilt u deze misschien proberen?” Prins Bernhard kijkt hem emotieloos aan. “Groter, pik”, fluistert hij.

“Sorry, dan denk ik dat ik u niet verder kan helpen”, mompelt de medewerker. “Groter hebben we niet, meer kan ik niet voor u doen.” Het gezicht van prins Bernhard jr. betrekt. “We zijn pas klaar als ik zeg dat we klaar zijn”, gromt hij. “Groter.”

​

&''

Researchers say infrasound -- low-frequency vibrations from things like pipes, HVAC systems, and traffic that humans can't consciously hear -- may help explain why some old buildings feel unsettling or "haunted." Rodney Schmaltz, senior author and professor at MacEwan, says: "Consider visiting a supposedly haunted building. Your mood shifts, you feel agitated, but you can't see or hear anything unusual. In an old building, there is a good chance that infrasound is present, particularly in basements where aging pipes and ventilation systems produce low-frequency vibrations. If you were told the building was haunted, you might attribute that agitation to something supernatural. In reality, you may simply have been exposed to infrasound." ScienceBlog.com reports: Infrasound sits below roughly 20 Hz, the lower limit of what the human ear can ordinarily detect. It's generated by storms, by volcanic activity, by tectonic rumblings deep in the Earth's crust, and (this is the part that matters) by the mundane mechanical heartbeat of cities: ageing pipes, HVAC systems, traffic, industrial machinery. "Infrasound is pervasive in everyday environments, appearing near ventilation systems, traffic, and industrial machinery," says Schmaltz. Most of the time, we walk through it without a second thought. The question the team wanted to answer was whether walking through it was actually doing something to us, whether the frequency was registered somewhere below consciousness, somewhere we couldn't readily name.

The experimental setup was deliberately ordinary. Thirty-six undergraduate students filed one at a time into isolated testing rooms and sat alone with a piece of music, either a calming instrumental or a horror-themed ambient track designed to provoke discomfort. Hidden subwoofers, including a 12-inch unit positioned in an adjacent hallway and a 16-inch speaker oriented toward the ceiling in a neighboring room, pumped infrasound at approximately 18 Hz into half those spaces. The participants had no idea. That last point turned out to be rather important. When the team ran the numbers, they found that participants couldn't reliably identify whether infrasound had been present. Their guesses were, statistically speaking, no better than chance. And according to Schmaltz, participants' beliefs about whether the infrasound was on had no detectable effect on their cortisol or mood. The physiological response didn't care what the participants thought was happening. It just happened anyway.

What happened, specifically, was this: those exposed to infrasound reported higher irritability, lower interest in the music, and a tendency to rate the music as sadder, irrespective of whether it was the calming or the horror track. Cortisol levels, measured before and about 20 minutes after exposure, were also elevated. Kale Scatterty, the PhD student who led the work, notes that irritability and cortisol do tend to move together under ordinary stress, but adds that "infrasound exposure had effects on both outcomes that went beyond that natural relationship." That distinction matters more than it might seem. Previous theories about infrasound and paranormal experience have often leaned on anxiety as the explanatory mechanism, the idea that low-frequency sound triggers a kind of free-floating dread that the mind then reaches for supernatural explanations to account for. The new data don't really support that picture. Measures of anxiety didn't budge significantly. What went up was irritability and disinterest, a kind of sour, low-grade aversion rather than fear. That's perhaps a more honest description of how a lot of ghost stories actually feel in the telling: not screaming terror, but wrong atmosphere, a sense of unease that never quite crystallizes into something you can point at. The study has been published this week in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Het grote probleem met de lui in de Europese Commissie is dat we nooit op ze gestemd hebben, maar het grote probleem met de lui in het Europese Parlement is juist dat we wel op ze gestemd hebben. Want als je eenmaal in Brussel zit, dan bekijk je de zaken vanuit Brussel, en dan is méér Brussel opeens de oplossing voor ieder denkbaar probleem. "Het Europees Parlement eist een begroting van een slordige 2200 miljard euro voor de EU. Dat is bijna 200 miljard meer dan het voorstel van de Europese Commissie". 2200 miljard euro, dat is een 2, nog een 2, en dan 11 nullen. Dat is heel veel geld (voor zes jaar, jaja). En Nederland gaat dat betalen. 

We citeren de T.: "Vorige week heeft premier Rob Jetten tijdens een EU-top in Cyprus de begrotingsplannen afgebrand. „Het bedrag moet fors naar beneden”, aldus de minister-president." Nou en als Rob Jetten A zegt ,weet u wel wat de D66-fractie in de Eerste Kamer het Europees Parlement B doet. "Maar zijn partij D66, die uitgesproken pro-Europees is, heeft dinsdag in het Europees Parlement wél ingestemd met de wens voor een fors hogere begroting. „Door de geopolitieke situatie komt er nu een stuk meer op Europa af. De EU moet krachtiger en eensgezinder opereren. Met bijbehorende investeringen”, stelt D66-voorman Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy." Dit, terwijl D66 erkent dat de EU die centen vervolgens lukraak over de balk smijt. "Over de bestedingswensen is de pro-Europese politicus kritisch: „We hadden graag scherpere keuzes gezien met meer hervormingen.”"

BONUSQUOTE

"„We kunnen niet meer doen met minder”, zegt de Roemeense hoofdonderhandelaar Siegfried Mureşan. „Europa kan alleen sterk zijn met een sterke begroting.” Terloops pleit hij nog even voor de invoering van een EU-belasting voor online games." Een EU-belasting voor online games? Waarom geen EU-belasting voor ademen? Een EU-belasting voor friet? Een EU-belasting op woensdagen, te heffen op donderdagen? Een EU-belasting op supermarkten die de eieren op rare plekken neerzetten? Een EU-belasting op chemtrails? Een EU-belasting op wenskaarten die misschien vriendelijk bedoeld zijn maar vanwege de passief-agressieve teksten bij de tekeningen toch kwetsend kunnen overkomen? Een EU-belasting op Roemeense hoofdonderhandelaars die Siegfried heten en voor heel veel geld en heel veel onkostenvergoedingen willekeurige dingen verzinnen waar de EU extra belasting op moeten gaan heffen? Deze geopolitiek onzekere tijden vragen erom!

jasohill has added a photo to the pool:

Jon Siegel has added a photo to the pool:

Random shot from my in-laws kitchen. Preparing dinner for the evening at their house.

Shot with the Nikon Zf, which I picked up the other night. I really wanted something different to change things up with my photography. I was originally aiming for a lighter kit, but just couldn't bring myself to leave the Nikon system.