Metronomy

Max Frost

Today's links

• Austerity creates fascism: We can't afford to not afford nice things.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: The Server of Amontillado; Flapper's Dictionary; Mastercard v rec.humor.funny; Philippines electoral data breach; A front page from the Trump presidency; Spike Lee x Bernie Sanders; France v password hashing; Algorithms as Central European folk-dances; Save Comcast; Lex Luthor v export controls; Zuckerberg in the dock.
• Upcoming appearances: Toronto, San Francisco, London, Berlin, NYC, Hay-on-Wye, London.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

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Austerity creates fascism (permalink)

I'm worried about AI psychosis. Specifically, I'm worried about the psychosis that makes our "capital allocators" spend $1.4T on the money-losingest technology in the history of the human race, in pursuit of a bizarre fantasy that if we teach the word-guessing program enough words, it will take all the jobs. That's some next-level underpants-gnomery:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/12/normal-technology/#bubble-exceptionalism

The thing that worries me about billionaires' AI psychosis isn't concern for their financial solvency. No, what I worry about is what happens when the seven companies that comprise a third of the S&P 500 stop trading the same $100b IOU around while pretending it's in all of their bank accounts at once and implode, vaporizing a third of the US stock market.

My concern about a massive collapse in the capital markets isn't that workers will suffer directly. Despite all the Wonderful Life rhetoric about your money being in Joe's house and the Kennedy house and Mrs Macklin's house, the reality is that 95% of US workers have $955 saved for retirement. You could nuke the whole financial system and not take a dime out of most workers' pockets:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/955-saved-for-retirement-millions-are-in-that-boat-150003868.html

No, the thing that has me terrified about AI is that when it craters and takes the economy with it, that we will respond the same way we have during every financial crisis of the 21st century: with austerity, and austerity breeds fascism.

There's a direct line from every K-shaped recovery to every strong-man who's currently sending masked gunmen into the streets. The Hungarian dictator Viktor Orban rose to power after people who'd been suckered into denominating their mortgages in Swiss francs lost their houses when the currency markets moved suddenly, because the swindlers who'd sold them those mortgages took the position that wanting to live somewhere automatically made you an expert in forex risk, so caveat fuckin' emptor, baby.

Back in America, Obama decided to bail out the banks and not the people. His treasury secretary Tim Geithner told him the banks were headed for a catastrophic crash and could only be saved if he "foamed the runways" with everyday Americans' mortgages. Millions of Americans lost their homes to foreclosure as banks, flush with public cash, threw them out of their homes and then flipped them to investment banks who became the country's worst slumlords:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/08/wall-street-landlords/#the-new-slumlords

Americans were understandably not entirely happy with this outcome. So when Hillary Clinton replied to Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" with "America is already great," her message was, "Vote for me if you think everything is great; vote for Trump if you think everything is fucked":

https://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-dem-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/03/clinton-america-is-already-great-220078

"Austerity begets fascism" is one of those things that makes a lot of intuitive sense, but it turns out that there's a good empirical basis for believing it. In "Public Service Decline and Support for the Populist Right" four economists from the LSE and Bocconi provide an excellent look at the linkage between austerity and support for fascists:

https://catherinedevries.eu/NHS.pdf

Here's how they break it down. Political scientists have assembled a large, reproducible body of evidence to show that "public service provision is crucial to people’s perceptions of their quality of life and living standards." Good public services are the basis for "the social contract between rulers and the ruled" – pay your taxes and obey the laws, and in return, you will be well served.

When public services go wrong, people don't always know who to blame, but they definitely notice that something is going wrong, so when public services fail, people stop trusting the state, and that social contract starts to fray. They start to suspect that elites are lining their pockets rather than managing the system, and they "withdraw their support" for the system.

Fascists thrive in these conditions. Fascists come to power by mobilizing grievances. By choosing a scapegoat, fascists can create support from people who are justifiably furious that the services they rely on have collapsed. So when you can't get shelter, or health care, or elder care, or child care, or an education for your kids, you become a mark for a fascist grifter with a story about "undeserving migrants" who've taken the benefits that should rightly accrue to "deserving natives."

(This is grimly hilarious, given that the wizened, decrepit rich world is critically dependent on migrants as a source of healthy, working-age workers who pay massive amounts into the system while barely making use of it, many of whom plan on retiring to their home countries when they do reach the age where they're likely to extract a net loss to the benefits system.)

Enter the NHS, a beloved institution that is hailed as the pride of the nation by both the political left and the right. The majority of Britons use the NHS, with only 12-14% of the population "going private," so when the NHS declines, everybody notices (what's more, even people with private care use the NHS for many of their needs).

Britons love the NHS and they want the government to spend more on it. There's "a broad public consensus that the government is not going far enough when it comes to funding." That's because generations of cuts to the NHS have left it substantially hollowed out, with major parts of the service handed over to for-profit entities who overcharge and underserve.

The most tangible and immediate evidence of this slow-motion collapse comes when your local general practitioner ("family doctor" or "primary care physician" in Americanese) shuts down. The UK has lost 1,700 GP practices since 2013.

Reasoning that a GP closure would make people angry at the system, the economists behind the paper wanted to see what happened to people's political beliefs when their GP's office shut. They relied on the GP Patient Survey, a longitudinal study run by NHS England and Ipsos Mori. The survey asks a statistically significant random sample of patients from every GP practice in the NHS and then weights the results "to reflect the demographic characteristics of the local population according to UK Census estimates." It's good data.

The researchers cross-referenced this with various high-quality instruments that measured the political views of Britons, like the U Essex Understanding Society Panel, drawing on 13 years' worth of surveys from 2009-2022, gaining access to a protected version of the dataset with fine-grained geographic information about survey respondents, which allowed them to link responses to the "catchment areas" for specific GPs' office. They combined this data with the British Election Study panel, which has surveyed voters 29 times since 2014.

Most of the paper describes the careful work the researchers did to analyze, cross-reference and validate this data, but what interested me was the conclusion: that people who see a severe degradation in the quality of the services they rely on switch their political affiliation to one of Britain's fascist parties – UKIP, the Brexit Party, or Reform – parties that have called for ethnic cleansing in Britain.

This is what has me scared. We can see the looming economic crises in our near future. If it's not the AI crash that triggers the next wave of austerity, it'll be the oil crisis created by Trump's bungling in the Strait of Epstein. And of course, we could always get a twofer, because the Gulf States that were pouring hundreds of billions into AI data-centers now need every cent to rebuild the LNG shipping terminals and oil refineries that Iran blew up after Trump, Hegseth and Netanyahu started murdering all the schoolgirls they could target. Once they nope out of the AI bubble, that could trigger the collapse.

This is a study about the NHS, but it's not just about the NHS. It's perfectly reasonable to assume that people react this way when they experience cuts to their road maintenance, their schools, their community centers, and any other service they rely on. Fascism – what Hannah Arendt called 'organized loneliness' – can only take root when people stop believing that their society will reward their lawfulness with an orderly and humane existence.

The crisis is coming, but whether we do austerity when it gets here is our choice. Everywhere we turn, political leaders are rejecting generations of failed austerity in favor of "sewer socialism" – the idea that you get people to trust their government by earning that trust. Zohran Mamdani is fixing 100,000 potholes in the first 100 days, despite the multi-billion dollar deficit that outgoing Mayor Eric Adams created by "running the city like a business":

https://prospect.org/2026/04/10/zohran-mamdani-getting-new-york-city-believe-in-government/

In Canada and the UK, party leaders like Avi Lewis (NDP) and Zack Polanski (Greens) are vowing to fight the coming crises by spending, not cutting. Compare that with UK fascist leader Nigel Farage, who says that if he's elected, he'll create a "paramilitary style" British ICE, building concentration camps for 24,000 migrants, with the hope of deporting 288,000 people per year:

https://www.thenerve.news/p/reform-deportation-operation-restoring-justice-data-surveillance-palantir-uk-labour

"Socialism or barbarism" isn't just a cliche – it's actually a choice on the ballot.

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Hey look at this (permalink)

• France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, calling US tech dependence a strategic risk https://www.xda-developers.com/frances-government-ditching-windows-for-linux/

• The Indie News Queen Who’s Not Done Pissing Off the Powerful https://www.wired.com/story/the-indie-news-queen-whos-not-done-pissing-off-the-powerful/

• Another Court Rules Copyright Can’t Stop People From Reading and Speaking the Law https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/another-court-rules-copyright-cant-stop-people-reading-and-speaking-law

• EFF is Leaving X https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/eff-leaving-x

• Seven countries now generate 100% of their electricity from renewable energy https://www.the-independent.com/tech/renewable-energy-solar-nepal-bhutan-iceland-b2533699.html

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Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago The Server of Amontillado https://web.archive.org/web/20070112024841/http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20010409S0012

#25yrsago Mastercard threatens the moderator of rec.humor.funny https://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/01/Apr/mcrhf.html

#15yrsago Sweden exports sweatshops: Ikea’s first American factory https://web.archive.org/web/20190404035900/https://www.latimes.com/business/la-xpm-2011-apr-10-la-fi-ikea-union-20110410-story.html

#15yrsago Canada’s New Democratic Party promises national broadband and net neutrality https://web.archive.org/web/20110412064952/https://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5734/125/

#15yrsago Flapper’s dictionary: 1922 https://bookflaps.blogspot.com/2011/04/flappers-dictionary.html

#15yrsago Toronto’s Silver Snail to leave Queen Street West https://web.archive.org/web/20110409181737/http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/970520–the-silver-snail-comics-icon-sold-to-move

#15yrsago WI county clerk whose homemade voting software found 14K votes for Tea Party judge is an old hand at illegal campaigning https://web.archive.org/web/20110412121323/http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/elections/article_7e777016-62b2-11e0-9b74-001cc4c002e0.html

#15yrsago Canadian Tories’ campaign pledge: We will spy on the Internet https://web.archive.org/web/20110412125250/https://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5733/125/

#15yrsago France to require unhashed password storage https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-12983734

#15yrsago Central European folk-dancers illustrated sorting algorithms https://www.i-programmer.info/news/150-training-a-education/2255-sorting-algorithms-as-dances.html

#10yrsago Save Comcast! https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/save-comcast

#10yrsago Goldman Sachs will pay $5B for fraudulent sales of toxic debt, no one will go to jail https://web.archive.org/web/20160412155435/https://consumerist.com/2016/04/11/goldman-sachs-to-pay-5b-to-settle-charges-of-selling-troubled-mortgages-ahead-of-the-financial-crisis/

#10yrsago How could Lex Luthor beat the import controls on kryptonite? https://lawandthemultiverse.com/2016/04/11/batman-v-superman-and-import-licenses/

#10yrsago Congresscritters spend 4 hours/day on the phone, begging for money https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ylomy1Aw9Hk

#10yrsago Philippines electoral data breach much worse than initially reported, possibly worst ever https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/every-voter-in-philippines-exposed/

#10yrsago A cashless society as a tool for censorship and social control https://web.archive.org/web/20260311032317/https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/cashless-society/477411/

#10yrsago Boston Globe previews a front page from the Trump presidency https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2797782/Ideas-Trump-front-page.pdf

#10yrsago Spike Lee interviews Bernie Sanders: Vermont, Trump, Clinton, guns and Brooklyn https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/bernie-sanders-interviewed-by-spike-lee-thr-new-york-issue-880788/

#5yrsago Youtube blocks advertisers from targeting "Black Lives Matter" https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/10/brand-safety-rupture/#brand-safety

#5yrsago Google's short-lived data-advantage https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/11/halflife/#minatory-legend

#1yrago Zuckerberg in the dock https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/11/it-is-better-to-buy/#than-to-compete

#1yrago The most remarkable thing about antitrust (that no one talks about) https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/10/solidarity-forever-2/#oligarchism

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Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Toronto: DemocracyXchange, Apr 16
  https://www.democracyxchange.org/news/cory-doctorow-to-open-dxc26-on-april-16

• San Francisco: 2026 Berkeley Spring Forum on M&A and the Boardroom, Apr 23
  https://www.theberkeleyforum.com/#agenda

• London: Resisting Big Tech Empires (LSBU), Apr 25
  https://www.tickettailor.com/events/globaljusticenow/2042691

• NYC: Enshittification at Commonweal Ventures, Apr 29
  https://luma.com/ssgfvqz8

• NYC: Techidemic with Sarah Jeong, Tochi Onyibuchi and Alia Dastagir (PEN World Voices), Apr 30
  https://worldvoices.pen.org/event/techidemic/

• Berlin: Re:publica, May 18-20
  https://re-publica.com/de/news/rp26-sprecher-cory-doctorow

• Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 19
  https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow.html

• Hay-on-Wye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
  https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2

• SXSW London, Jun 2
  https://www.sxswlondon.com/session/how-big-tech-broke-the-internet-b3c4a901

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Recent appearances (permalink)

• The internet is getting worse (CBC The National)
  https://youtu.be/dCVUCdg3Uqc?si=FMcA0EI_Mi13Lw-P

• Do you feel screwed over by big tech? (Ontario Today)
  https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-45-ontario-today/clip/16203024-do-feel-screwed-big-tech

• Launch for Cindy's Cohn's "Privacy's Defender" (City Lights)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuVCm2PUalU

• Chicken Mating Harnesses (This Week in Tech)
  https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech/episodes/1074

• The Virtual Jewel Box (U Utah)
  https://tanner.utah.edu/podcast/enshittification-cory-doctorow-matthew-potolsky/

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Latest books (permalink)

• "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/04/illustrious/#chairman-bruce

• "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

• "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).

• "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).

• "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).

• "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

• "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.

• "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

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Upcoming books (permalink)

• "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/)

• "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

• "The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027

• "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2027

• "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027

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Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Third draft completed. Submitted to editor.

• "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.

• "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

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This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

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Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

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ISSN: 3066-764X

Weer voor Rotterdam ☁️ - 13-04-2026 07:15 CEST

In één oogopslag:
• 9.4°C · Bewolkt ☁️ | Min 9.2°C / Max 15.1°C | Kans op neerslag 5%

Verwachting voor vandaag:
• Min 9.2°C, Max 15.1°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 5%, 🧭 1013.7 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 13.0 km/u (3.6 m/s), richting: ← 84°

Uurlijkse voorspelling voor de komende 12 uur:

• 08:00: 10.0°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1013.7 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 3.2 km/u (0.9 m/s), richting: ↑ 158°
• 09:00: 11.0°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1013.7 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 2.5 km/u (0.7 m/s), richting: ↖ 149°
• 10:00: 12.1°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1013.9 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 1.8 km/u (0.5 m/s), richting: ↙ 40°
• 11:00: 13.1°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1013.6 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 5.4 km/u (1.5 m/s), richting: ← 73°
• 12:00: 13.5°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1013.5 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 7.2 km/u (2.0 m/s), richting: ← 90°
• 13:00: 14.2°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 1%, 🧭 1013.2 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 5.8 km/u (1.6 m/s), richting: ← 89°
• 14:00: 14.8°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 2%, 🧭 1013.1 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 4.7 km/u (1.3 m/s), richting: ← 71°
• 15:00: 15.1°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 3%, 🧭 1013.2 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 5.0 km/u (1.4 m/s), richting: ↙ 63°
• 16:00: 15.1°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 3%, 🧭 1013.1 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 4.0 km/u (1.1 m/s), richting: ↙ 54°
• 17:00: 15.1°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 6%, 🧭 1013.1 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 6.5 km/u (1.8 m/s), richting: ↓ 354°
• 18:00: 13.8°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 13%, 🧭 1013.2 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 13.0 km/u (3.6 m/s), richting: ↓ 348°
• 19:00: 13.3°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 23%, 🧭 1013.6 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 11.5 km/u (3.2 m/s), richting: ↓ 345°

Voorspelling voor de komende dagen:

• dinsdag 14 april: Min 8.6°C, Max 17.0°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 1%, 🧭 1019.9 hPa ↗️ +6.2 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 10.8 km/u (3.0 m/s), richting: ↘ 320°
• woensdag 15 april: Min 10.1°C, Max 18.0°C (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 0.4 mm, Kans op neerslag 1%, 🧭 1021.9 hPa ↗️ +2.0 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 15.1 km/u (4.2 m/s), richting: ↑ 162°
• donderdag 16 april: Min 10.1°C, Max 16.1°C (Matige motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 0.7 mm, Kans op neerslag 13%, 🧭 1020.4 hPa ↘️ -1.5 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 15.9 km/u (4.4 m/s), richting: ↗ 234°
• vrijdag 17 april: Min 9.1°C, Max 16.6°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 4%, 🧭 1020.8 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 10.4 km/u (2.9 m/s), richting: ↗ 204°
• zaterdag 18 april: Min 9.4°C, Max 15.1°C (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 0.3 mm, Kans op neerslag 15%, 🧭 1019.5 hPa ↘️ -1.3 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 10.7 km/u (3.0 m/s), richting: ↗ 243°
• zondag 19 april: Min 7.6°C, Max 12.1°C (Matige motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 4.2 mm, Kans op neerslag 20%, 🧭 1019.0 hPa ↘️ -0.5 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 13.6 km/u (3.8 m/s), richting: ↘ 314°

Details:
• 🌡️ Huidige temperatuur (om 07:15): 9.4°C (Bewolkt)
• 🤚 Gevoelstemperatuur: 8.0°C (-1.4°C)
• 💨 Windsnelheid: 4.3 km/u (1.2 m/s), richting: ↖ 156°
• 🌬️ Windstoten: 6.8 km/h (1.9 m/s)
• 💧 Luchtvochtigheid: 63%
• 🧭 Luchtdruk: 1013.7 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/3h
• 👁️ Zichtbaarheid: 23.4 km
• ☀️ UV-index: 0.1
• 🌅 Zonsopgang: 06:49 · 🌇 Zonsondergang: 20:35

Luchtkwaliteit:
• AQI: 38 🟢 (Goed)
• PM2.5: 17.2 μg/m³
• PM10: 21.9 μg/m³

Gegevens geleverd door Open-Meteo

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DEN HAAG (ANP) - Het aantal faillissementen is in maart op jaarbasis toegenomen, meldt het Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS). In totaal gingen vorige maand 301 bedrijven failliet. Dat zijn 32 faillissementen meer dan in dezelfde maand een jaar eerder, een stijging van 12 procent. Ten opzichte van februari daalde het aantal faillissementen wel, met 3 procent.

De faillissementsgraad, het aantal faillissementen per 100.000 bedrijven, kwam in maart uit op 8,1. Een jaar eerder werden er per 100.000 bedrijven 7,4 bedrijven failliet verklaard. De faillissementsgraad geeft volgens het CBS een zuiverder beeld van de ontwikkeling van het aantal faillissementen. Ook bedrijfstakken kunnen hiermee beter met elkaar vergeleken worden. Het aantal bedrijven kan namelijk fluctueren door de tijd heen en sterk verschillen tussen bedrijfstakken.

In de horeca werden in maart relatief gezien de meeste faillissementen uitgesproken. Per 100.000 bedrijven in de horeca gingen er 30,6 failliet, een jaar eerder waren dat er 38,5. De sector vervoer en opslag volgde met een faillissementsgraad van 28,6. In de branche cultuur, sport en recreatie werden relatief gezien de minste faillissementen uitgesproken.

Sinds het bijhouden van de gegevens in 2015 piekte de faillissementsgraad in maart 2015 met 24,8. Daarna zette een daling in en in augustus 2021 werd met 3,4 een laagterecord bereikt. Vervolgens liep het aantal faillissementen per 100.000 bedrijven tot 2024 weer op. Daarna stabiliseerde de faillissementsgraad tot het najaar van 2024. Sindsdien is de trend licht dalend.

DEN HAAG (ANP) - De Nederlandse goederenexport is in februari verder gestegen. Volgens het Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS) werden vooral meer machines, delfstoffen en transportmiddelen uitgevoerd. De uitvoer van voedings- en genotmiddelen was echter lager. De exportgroei kwam uit op 1,6 procent.

De groei was iets groter dan een maand eerder. In januari steeg de goederenexport met 1,4 procent. De export van goederen vormt bijna driekwart van de totale export. Over de export van diensten rapporteert het CBS niet maandelijks. Over de totale export wordt per kwartaal en per jaar gerapporteerd.

De goederenimport was in februari 0,3 procent lager dan een jaar eerder. Volgens het CBS werden er vooral minder delfstoffen en transportmiddelen ingevoerd.

Het statistiekbureau kijkt elke maand ook naar de omstandigheden waarmee exporteurs te maken hebben. Deze condities worden in sterke mate bepaald door de ontwikkelingen op de belangrijkste afzetmarkten voor Nederlandse export en door de ontwikkeling van de Nederlandse concurrentiepositie.

In april zijn de omstandigheden voor de export minder ongunstig dan in februari. Dat komt vooral doordat de ontwikkeling van de wisselkoersen minder ongunstig is en het producentenvertrouwen van Duitsland minder negatief is. Het CBS merkt wel op dat een verbetering van de omstandigheden niet per se tot een hogere groei van de export leidt.

Honderden celstraffen dreigen dit jaar te verjaren door de aanhoudende bajescrisis. Het gaat voornamelijk om korte celstraffen, bijvoorbeeld voor het niet betalen van openstaande boetes, die de Tweede Kamer alsnog wil uitvoeren, maar dan met een enkelband. De verjaringsdreiging blijkt uit antwoorden van het ministerie van Justitie en Veiligheid die De Telegraaf heeft opgevraagd.

Door het structurele tekort aan cellen en personeel wordt de uitvoering van straffen al langere tijd uitgesteld. Deze criminelen, die bijvoorbeeld veroordeeld zijn voor relatief kleine vergrijpen zoals diefstal, wachten vaak thuis hun straf af totdat zij worden gearresteerd. Of ze krijgen een bericht als zij zich kunnen melden bij de bajes.

Op vragen van De Telegraaf antwoordt het ministerie dat het gaat om '658 zaken van 534 personen die in 2026 een verjaringsdatum hebben'. "Opgeteld gaat het bij deze zaken om 14 celjaren."

LIMA (ANP/AFP) - Een aantal stembureaus in Peru gaat maandag opnieuw open nadat locaties door heel het land zondag vertraagd opengingen door logistieke problemen tijdens de presidentsverkiezingen. Dat heeft de Peruaanse kiesautoriteit bekendgemaakt. Ongeveer 63.000 kiezers in de hoofdstad Lima konden hun stem niet uitbrengen door een gebrek aan stembiljetten, stembussen en ander stemmateriaal.

De verlenging is volgens de kiesautoriteit nodig om het stemrecht te beschermen. De autoriteiten besloten zondag al om stembureaus een uur langer open te houden. Alleen de stembureaus waar kiezers zondag niet konden stemmen, gaan maandag opnieuw open.

Peruanen kiezen een nieuwe president en leden van het congres. Meer dan dertig kandidaten doen mee aan de eerste ronde van de verkiezingen. Als er geen overduidelijke winnaar uit de bus komt, volgt een tweede ronde. De uiteindelijke koploper wordt de negende president van Peru in tien jaar tijd.

The bold, lively and versatile flavours of the Yemeni spice mix bring out the natural earthiness of roast vegetables

Hawaij is a Yemeni spice mix that came into my life during my time at the Palomar in London, and it has not left my spice cupboard ever since. It’s a mix of turmeric, black pepper, cardamom and ground coriander, giving it an earthy, vegetal flavour, and it’s traditionally used in soups and stews; it’s also a key component in zhoug, a spicy coriander and chilli sauce. It’s one of the most enlivening and versatile spice mixes I know, and should be your forever companion, too.

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Researchers say hardship is a direct legacy of welfare benefit cuts imposed by Tory governments in recent years

More than a fifth of all “austerity generation” British children have been scarred by poverty for at least half their childhood, a direct legacy of the welfare benefit cuts imposed by Conservative governments in recent years, research reveals.

The proportion of children born after 2013 who spent at least six of their first 11 years of life in hardship surged after ministers froze working age benefits levels and imposed policies such as the two-child limit, it found.

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The prime minister’s meal in a Yunnan restaurant in Beijing has spawned a national menu. The man has, bizarrely, become a phenomenon

It’s always heartening when people agree with you. I had Keir Starmer down as a non-ideological technocratic centrist dad the moment I first clocked him, with a tin ear for both simple human interaction and the darker subtleties of the political arts. So despite carrying his famous “Ming vase” over the line in the 2024 election, I’ve been wholly unsurprised by him flatfooting and pratfalling through jagged shards of porcelain ever since, living down to all my worst fears. Now absolutely everybody else thinks he’s crap too.

Or so I thought, until a family visit to China last month, when I established a connection beyond mythical Ming vases. The “Keir Starmer menu” has become a foodie phenomenon.

Martin Rowson is a cartoonist and author

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Carpenter is fired out of a car on water jets, David Byrne wears head to toe orange, and the reclusive Bieber steps into the limelight

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Coach believes there’s no limit to 18-year-old’s talent while athlete himself says he’s ‘ready for more’

Having cracked the 20-second barrier with a sizzling run over 200m – and in the process fulled comparisons with the great Usain Bolt – the question now is, how fast can Gout Gout go?

“How long’s a piece of string?” said Gout’s coach and mentor, Di Sheppard, after he clocked 19.67sec at the Australian championships in Sydney on Sunday.

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The threat from the president has left global markets in another period of uncertainty, with questions over how the blockade will be enforced

Donald Trump has said the US will begin a blockade of the strait of Hormuz, after ceasefire talks with Iran ended without an agreement over the weekend.

The strait has emerged as Iran’s most effective weapon in its asymmetric war with the US. Since 28 February, the US and Israel have pounded Iran, striking thousands of targets and killing dozens of the country’s most senior leaders. Iran has responded by effectively closing the strait – a vital waterway through which about 20% of global oil moves though in normal times – driving up oil prices and fuelling fears of a surge in inflation.

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Ze zijn 72, 81, 90 of zelfs 92 jaar oud. Juist deze ouderen waren doelwit van nepagenten en nepbankmedewerkers die met sluwe babbeltrucs toeslaan. Maar veel van die oplichters zijn nu uitgespeeld dankzij een succesvolle actie van de politie-eenheid Rotterdam-Rijnmond.

Een auto en deelscooter zijn zondagavond laat met elkaar in botsing gekomen aan de Oosterkade in het centrum van Rotterdam. Volgens 112-correspondenten is een slachtoffer daarbij gewond geraakt en naar het ziekenhuis gebracht.

In Zwijndrecht is een auto in de nacht van zondag op maandag compleet uitgebrand. Dat gebeurde rond 03:00 uur, toen het voertuig stond geparkeerd aan de Nieuwerhoek. De brandweer was er snel bij, maar van de auto is weinig meer over.

mikeleonardvisualarts has added a photo to the pool:

mikeleonardvisualarts posted a photo:

"Robotic bird decoys are being deployed at Grand Teton National Park," reports Interesting Engineering, "to influence the behavior of real sage grouse and help restore a declining population.". Robotics mentor Gary Duquette describes the machines as "kind of a Frankenbird." (SFGate shows one of the robot birds charging up with a solar panel... "Recorded breeding calls are played at the scene, with clucking and cooing beginning at 5 a.m. each day.")

Duquette builds the birds with a team of high school students, telling WyoFile that at school they "don't really get to experience real-world problems" where failures lurk. So while their robot birds may cost $150 in parts, the practical experience the students get "is priceless."

Spikes in the electric currents burned out servo motors as the season of sagebrush serenades loomed, Duquette said. "The kids had to learn the difference between voltage and amperage...." To resolve the problem, the team wired a voltage converter in line with the Arduino controller and other elements on an electronic breadboard. "We pulled through and got it done in time," he said...

A noggin fabricated by a 3D printer tops the robo-grouse. Wyoming Game and Fish staffers in Pinedale supplied grouse wings from hunter surveys, and body feathers came from fly-tying supplies at an angling store. Packaging foam from a Hello Fresh meal kit replicates white breast feathers, accented by yellow air sacs...

The Independent wonders if more national parks would be visited by robot birds...
During this year's breeding season, which runs through mid-May, researchers are using trail cameras to track whether real sage grouse respond to the robotic displays and return to the restored lek sites. If successful, officials say similar robotic systems could eventually be used in other national parks facing wildlife management challenges.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.