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.

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:

No goedendag? Pffff!

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

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 don’t think it would take on an adult red deer. But roe deer definitely, and probably fallow deer too. They are known to hunt animals well above their own size. And sure, hares and smaller animals too.

Scotland has a deer problem (they have no natural enemies anymore). So any reforestation effort fails because deer eat the shoots and young trees (just look up the Brewdog reforestation fiasco). The re-introduction of a predator would bring balance. Wolves would do, but people and especially sheep farmers are very scared to do that. The lynx is a less intimidating option.

I’m not from Scotland, but I live in Belgium, where wolves are making a comeback, even in Flanders, and lynx are also back in the ardennes. I’d say Scotland has A LOT more wild land than Belgium, which is massively paved over and farmed intensively.

The French admit that ‘French fries’ are in fact Belgian? Sounds very un-French.

“Fatally murdered”. Makes me wonder…

I see it like this: Men who can’t cook and clean and wash and do laundry are called boys. If you are a grown man who needs a woman to help you with basic survival skills, you have a lot of growing up to do. Being entirely dependent on others to get you through the day is about the least manly thing I can imagine.

Cool! French writer Georges Perec used this pattern to structure his novel Life: a user’s manual. The book follows the lives of people in a block of flats and moves from one to the other using the Knight’s tour.

It’s projecting. And delusion.

First words are also often ‘mam’ ‘mum’ and a bit later ‘da’ or ‘pa’, not because babies love their parents, but because those are the easiest sounds to mimic.

So we adopted those sounds/words to mean mother and father. Not the other way around. We are really good at finding arguments to fit our view and narrative.

I think the writer meant to say ‘gone rogue’ instead of ‘AWOL’. Just poor writing skills.

It’s the fermentation process. You’ll find it more in natural processed coffees or honey processed. Even more so with anaerobic fermentation or yeast based fermentation.

What you’re looking for is washed coffee, or commodity coffee with no mention of the processing. Or dark roasts, as the taste of heavily roasted coffee will negate a lot of the taste that is inherent to the bean and the processing. A bit like a well-done steak.

Find an Italian place. Or an old mom and pop shop. Or you can always lick some of the burnt tires that you find along the highway if you really miss the taste of that robusta shot. /s

To each their own. No need to crap on what other people like.