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Is this loss?

My most-used chat app is Discord, and that one has custom emojis.
These are my most frequently used “emojis” there:

I think the main problem is that they get stripped from their context? So it becomes unclear whether an emoji is used in earnest or whether it is used sarcastically or ironically.

The custom emojis do add a bit of a personal touch though

The Dutch gold reserve is nothing to sneeze at. It’s a fifth the size of Germany’s gold reserve, and a quarter the size of Italy’s

Source: https://statbase.org/datasets/finance/gold-reserves/

Germany has about 37% of its gold in the US, for the NL this was previously 31.3% (and now 18.5%)
So the amount of Gold that was moved by the NL is still significant.

Edit: Accidentally said quarter the size of Germany and a third the size of Italy. This is incorrect.

That is basically it yeah. The vast majority of gold was moved from the US (essentially 41% of Dutch gold reserves in the US were moved out), while we barely moved anything out of Canada.

The official reason is “crisis preparedness”, but I believe the actual unofficial and unspoken reason is that the US is simply too unreliable to store our gold.

I’ve read the news in Dutch papers, referencing the Dutch Central Bank directly.
Having skimmed through the AP article, it doesn’t really seem to provide any real additional information.

I guess 41% of Dutch gold stored in the US is technically a fraction

The “crisis preparedness” argument boiled down that in case of crisis they needed to be able to sell the gold quickly. And that that would be easier in London than it would be in New York or Ottowa.

I do not believe that this is the real reason.

There has been concern about the US “confiscating” (read: stealing) our gold reserves ever since Trump got re-elected. The Dutch Central Bank also has regularly voiced concerns about the reliability of the US, and our over reliance on American financial services and payment services.

I think the real reason is that they want to secure the gold from Trump’s grubby little hands.
And the “official reason” is meant to obfuscate the actual reason, and buy plausible deniability.

Source: https://nos.nl/artikel/2629369-nederland-haalt-groot-deel-van-de-goudvoorraad-weg-uit-de-vs-en-canada

According to the NOS the vast majority of gold that was moved was from the US, not Canada.
The share of Dutch gold stored in New York has gone down from 31.3% to 18.5%.

Edit: Added translations to the graph

Not sure if you can buy unlocked phones from 3rd parties where you live, but over here in the NL I can get a green one for €511,-

https://www.galaxus.nl/nl/s1/product/fairphone-gen-6-256-gb-bosgroen-631-sim-esim-5g-smartphone-57937990?offertype=retail&offerid=2705624

(They used to be under €500 for all models, but the RAM shortage makes a fool of us all)

Buying the /e/OS version from Fairphone directly is €649. So the difference is still €138, which I wouldn’t say is insignificant.

If you specifically want /e/OS, you need to watch out where you buy the Fairphone.
There is two versions, with the regular Android (with Google services) version being the more common one.

https://www.fairphone.com/nl/the-fairphone-gen-6-e-operating-system

If you buy this one from their website you are guaranteed to get the /e/OS version

Edit: Also worth noting that you could also unlock the bootloader, and install /e/OS on the regular Android version as well. You might be able to save € 150-200 that way.

To my knowledge you can relock the bootloader after you are done? You’d have to look into that yourself though.

You don’t need to get a non-Android phone in order to get a non-Google phone.

Android is open source, and if you are willing to forgo the Google Play Store and Google Play Services there are non-Google options. GrapheneOS and /e/OS are de-Googled versions of Android, for example.

Fairphone comes with an option with /e/OS installed by default, if you don’t want to bother installing it yourself.

It’s still showing as Lake Ontario on Google Maps in the Netherlands

The Gulf of Mexico is also still called the Gulf of Mexico, but they put Gulf of America in parenthesis

By all means de-Google though. Cut all the American tech companies out of your life as much as feasibly possible.

You think I don’t hate Russia? Bastards invaded a sovereign nation and fucked up the stability we’ve had in Europe over the past few decades.

I just make a distinction between a regime ruling the country, and the people that are under that regime.

Would be nice if the Russian people rose up and showed Putin what’s what, but I don’t entirely hold it against them that that hasn’t happened yet.

I was talking to my boyfriend a few weeks ago (he’s from Iceland) and he pointed out that in order to actually join the EU they’d need to amend the constitution. Specifically on the topic of sovereignty.

In order to update the constitution they need a 2/3rds majority in parliament twice, with a parliamentary election in between.
And that is on top of a second referendum that’d have to pass after a deal with the EU has been hammered out.

Joining the EU would not be decided by such a narrow victory in a singular referendum.

Maybe… Not saying it won’t go that same way. America did vote in their own authoritarian fascist in 2024 after all.

But if we are talking about American media today compared to Russian media today, then the American media is still vastly more free. American media is still allowed and able to critique their government and question the official narrative, even if they seem to be doing that less and less.

As an example, shows like Last Week Tonight are still allowed to exist on the air. In Russia they would have been undermined or otherwise dealt with for disagreeing with the official government narrative.

Iceland has always been very close to a 50/50 split on whether to join the EU or not. In the end it came down to the undecided voters, who ultimately landed on the “no” camp in the last few days before the referendum.

Edit: From my understanding polling for the youth vote also switched from “yes” to “no” at the last moment, so I have my suspicions that there may have been some Tiktok propaganda tomfoolery going on as well.

The main issue is the common fisheries policy. That is the policy that would have allowed fishing vessels from other countries to fish in Icelandic waters, and vice versa. It’s a sensitive topic to Iceland, because fishing is such a large part of their economy and their identity.

It’s still a bit silly to not even bother negotiating with the EU though, because the EU had signaled that the common fisheries policy was something that could be a topic of negotiation. Without talks we will never know if the EU was willing to give Iceland an exemption on the common fisheries policy.

It’s worth keeping in mind that this was a refending on resuming negotiations. There would have been a second referendum on whether or not to accept the deal that would have resulted from those negotiations.

Okay, thanks for letting me know.

I’m not planning to change your mind, I’m just tossing in my two cents. That is what these internet forums are about after all.

American media is a coorporate shitshow, but that is still not nearly the same degree of control of the media that Russians find themselves in.