Porcelain eyes

 Hi!

Recently, Sidney SN released a Heute war einfach ein besonderer Tag mix. But he has something else on his heart —Porcelain Eyes.

I don’t want to say what it means: Porcelain Eyes. It is something I see in a certain reality—This goodness tells me more about these realities than words ever could.

When it comes to music, Sidney SN should have been primarily about liquid drum and bass. In break beats, yes. However, liquid drum and bass is a melodic music, and it has quite a something in common with progressive house. 

Sidney SN’s choice of music is also about values—the values found in music such as progressive house or house.

Porcelain Eyes has different sections. And this progressive session is exclusively made up of tracks that I love… ❤️ 

01. Don’t let me go by Melarmony 

02. Just can’t stop by Hessian, Cortney Storm 

03. What I do by Because of Art 

04. Retrospect by Parallel Voices 

05. Fear No More by Parallel Voices 

06. Folding lights by CVMRN 

07. Spend my Days by MXV, L. GU, Coulson 

08. Hearth Beat by Hessian, flyckt, Farves 

09. Coming back for more by Avenue One 

010. Never Enough by Tailor, Hessian, Moders 

011. Nina by Jako Diaz 

012. Ranger by Because of Art 

013. Sharks by 16B, feat. Nour 

These places of a best quality of life

 Because of my experiences in places such as Dutch cities, I often find myself wondering how easily people’s origins or ethnic diversity can be turned into an arguments that such a society cannot function, or that it must inevitably be less safe—for me, these arguments are a nonsense. My experience in the Netherlands has been the opposite. Some of my favorite places in Europe are also places with exceptionally diverse populations.

One of them is the province of Zuid-Holland, which I have mentioned several times before. This is where Rotterdam, The Hague and many other beautiful cities are located. Zuid-Holland (South Holland) as a whole is a beautiful place and is often among the leading places in Europe and in the world when it comes to quality of life—also according to the current Numbeo ranking, cities in this province are also among the top ten cities in the world for Quality of Life.

This time, however, I do not want to focus on the entire province—although this reality is similar to Zuid-Holland as whole. I want to focus on one particular place that, in my opinion, illustrates very well just how diverse contemporary European society can be — Rotterdam-Zuid.

 Rotterdam-Zuid 

is generally one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse parts of the city.

The Dutch statistical office CBS records statistics and these statistics show just how exceptionally diverse some of the neighborhoods here are.

For example, in Afrikaanderwijk, only 17% of residents had a Dutch background in 2025, while 74% had a background outside Europe and approximately another 9% had a European background outside the Netherlands. Put simply, around three quarters of the residents of this neighbourhood have a non-European background.

A similar picture can be seen in Hillesluis, where people with a non-European background accounted for approximately 71% of the population in 2025. Around 15% had a Dutch background, while another 14% had a European background outside the Netherlands.

In Tarwewijk, only 18% of residents had a Dutch background in 2025. 57% had a non-European background and another 25% had a European background outside the Netherlands.

These figures illustrate quite well just how dramatically the demographic composition can differ between different parts of the same European city.

Rotterdam-Zuid as a whole has a very visible Black population, partly due to communities with Surinamese, Caribbean, Cape Verdean and Sub-Saharan African backgrounds. At the same time, there are also large communities with Turkish, Moroccan, Muslim and many other backgrounds.

So when a man walk through Afrikaanderwijk, Hillesluis, Bloemhof, Tarwewijk or Feijenoord, a one encounter people with roots in many different parts of the world — Sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean, South America, Turkey, Morocco, and other parts of Asia and Europe.

And in my opinion, this combination is precisely what characterises Rotterdam-Zuid.

 Rotterdam-Zuid as a multicultural space

This diversity is also evident when looking at Rotterdam as a whole. According to 2025 figures, approximately 248,000 residents of Rotterdam had a Dutch background, 80,000 had a European background outside the Netherlands, and 281,000 had a non-European background.

National statistics also show that Rotterdam, together with Amsterdam and The Hague, is among the Dutch cities with a very high proportion of residents with non-European backgrounds. In 2024, people with a non-European background accounted for just over 40% of Rotterdam’s population.

And Rotterdam-Zuid contains some neighbourhoods where this proportion is even higher.

Yet Rotterdam remains one city, one society and one shared everyday public space in which a very high level of ethnic diversity exists. For me, this diversity is one of the things that makes Rotterdam such a fascinating and enjoyable place — together with its highly modern architecture, interesting history and constantly changing society.

For me, Rotterdam-Zuid is therefore one of the most interesting examples of how extraordinary cultural and ethnic diversity does not, in itself, mean that a society cannot function. And this highly diverse part of Rotterdam-Zuid lies directly next to one of the city’s most modern, international, and one of the most popular areas — Kop van Zuid.

Quite the opposite — Rotterdam shows how a highly diverse population can simply be a natural part of everyday life. Rotterdam exists because of this very diverse society. 

How I said in the start of this article, no one can convince me that such a society cannot function, or that it must be unsafe. 

Camp Fire /\ wildfires in France

 Yesterday I watched the film The Lost Bus 2025, which depicts the true events of the Camp Fire in California in 2018, when the fire hit the town of Paradise.

The film was very tense, and after watching it I became curious to see how this event actually compares with the extensive wildfires in France this year.

The comparison in terms of the area burned is interesting in itself. The Camp Fire in California ultimately burned approximately 62,000 hectares. The enormous wildfire in Gironde this year affected approximately 40,000 hectares, about two-thirds of the area burned by the Camp Fire. And when all the wildfires in France this year are taken together, approximately 72,000 hectares had been burned by mid-September.

The Lost Bus movie 2025

But the scale of the Camp Fire was not just about the area burned. The fire quickly affected the communities of Concow, Paradise and Magalia, triggering the evacuation of around 40,000 people. Paradise itself had a population of approximately 26,700 before the fire. The Camp Fire ultimately claimed 85 civilian lives and destroyed more than 18,000 structures.

“Every year, the fires get bigger. And there’s more of them. We’re being damn fools. That’s the truth.”, said Fire Chief Martinez (Yul Vazquez)

The Camp Fire also had a very specific character. It was not simply one continuous fire front moving through the landscape. The fire was caused by a failure in the power lines, and strong winds then carried burning embers far ahead of the main fire front. This caused additional spot fires to break out in Paradise before the main body of the fire had even arrived.

I think this is exactly what the film captures so well. There was not simply one clearly defined fire front in front of people; the fire could suddenly appear in different places all around them. Some of these spot fires were several kilometers ahead of the main front.

And this is where the comparison with this year’s fires in France becomes interesting. The French fires were enormous in terms of their overall area, and some of them spread extremely quickly, but the Camp Fire illustrates a somewhat different type of danger: an extremely fast-moving fire that, through burning embers, was able to “jump” across parts of the landscape and start new fires directly within populated areas.

After watching the film, I was therefore surprised that the difference in the actual area burned is not all that large. A single wildfire in California managed to burn approximately 62,000 hectares, while the total area burned by wildfires in France this year is expected to be around 72,000 hectares.

But it is precisely the way the Camp Fire spread that gives the film its extraordinary tension. It is not just a story about a huge wildfire. It is a story about a situation in which fire suddenly appears all around you, and the time you have to make a decision is measured in minutes. 

A comment: The railway sabotage incidents in the Netherlands

 I was looking at the locations of the railway sabotage incidents in the Netherlands, and I have to admit that some of them surprised me.

Without going into too much detail, what I find somewhat surprising is that the locations do not seem to involve the more heavily used southern railway corridors, including routes used for international connections, by people entering the Netherlands from other countries, or by visitors traveling to and in the main destinations in the Netherlands.

Some of the locations therefore seem rather unusual to me. It is not entirely clear why these particular parts of the Netherlands appear to have been targeted, as they seem to me to be much more closely associated with domestic rail traffic.

Major routes around Eindhoven, Breda, Tilburg and South Holland, as well as the Eindhoven–Amsterdam corridor and several other important connections, do not appear to have been affected. I would think that even more remote sections of these lines could potentially have been vulnerable.

This is particularly interesting when considering international movement into the Netherlands. People travelling from the eastern parts of Europe via Germany generally enter the country through its southern and eastern approaches when heading towards South Holland or further north towards Amsterdam. People travelling from other parts of the Benelux, as well as from France and southern Europe, also tend to use the southern parts of the Dutch railway network, especially when traveling to major destinations such as South Holland, Amsterdam or Utrecht.

The international movement is therefore concentrated largely along routes that do not appear to have been affected. These include connections between Eindhoven and South Holland, South Holland itself, the coastal area, Amsterdam and other major destinations. There are similar international movements on routes connecting the Netherlands with the other Benelux countries, France and the United Kingdom.

ProRail identifies Amsterdam–Eindhoven, Breda–Eindhoven, Schiphol–Utrecht–Nijmegen and Rijswijk–Rotterdam, among others, as major high-frequency passenger corridors. At the same time, Amsterdam, Schiphol, Rotterdam and Breda are important nodes in international rail transport. Eurostar, for example, runs from Amsterdam via Schiphol and Rotterdam to Belgium, with international services continuing from there towards France and the UK.

And if I leave these busier southern routes aside, Venlo is also quite an important point in this analysis. It is not simply a “German direction”, but an important eastern gateway between the Dutch railway network and the Düsseldorf/Mönchengladbach area.

Amsterdam–Venlo–Düsseldorf is an established international rail connection. NS International lists it as an alternative route between Amsterdam, Venlo, Düsseldorf and Frankfurt. From Venlo, regional trains continue directly to Mönchengladbach, Düsseldorf and Hamm.

There is also a rail connection between Rotterdam and Düsseldorf, meaning that South Holland is connected to Düsseldorf as well.

At the same time, there is a direct ICE service from Amsterdam to Düsseldorf via Utrecht and Arnhem, so Düsseldorf is connected to the Netherlands through more than one corridor.

I may be missing something in my reasoning, and I am not claiming that this analysis is necessarily correct. But if the objective was to cause as much disruption as possible to the Dutch railway network, my question would be why these busiest and most internationally relevant corridors were largely left untouched, while the infrastructure that was targeted appears, at least to me, to be more closely associated with a specific domestic rail traffic.

In other words, if the intention really was “to cause as much disruption as possible to the Dutch railway network”, it seems to me that this could be true especially for a particular part of the Netherlands, rather than for the Dutch railway network as a whole. 

German people must really like South Holland

 During the summer seasons, when I visit The Hague, I notice that I often see people from Germany. If I don’t see a Dutch license plate, I also often see German license plates in the car parks by the sea. 

I also notice people from Germany in places in Rotterdam. 

In my opinion, people from Germany like South Holland for similar reasons to why I like this part of the world. 

And because I was convinced that people from Germany are perhaps among the largest groups of visitors to The Hague, I looked up the statistics.

And I laughed…

The statistics confirm my assumption. The data from The Hague & Partners show that guests from Germany are the second-largest group of hotel guests after guests from the Netherlands.

Dutch Younger Generations Are Usually Wealthier Than Those Before Them

 I have another report about the Netherlands…

 Somewhere it is often said that today’s younger generation is the first one that will be worse off than their parents. And maybe in some European countries this is the truth. 

Dutch data, however, paint a somewhat different picture about Dutch situation. 

A new analysis by the Dutch national statistics office, CBS, compared different generations at the same ages.

First of all, Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS) is the Dutch national statistics office and one of the most important institutions for understanding how Dutch society is actually developing. CBS was established as early as 1899, and its task is to collect, analyse, and publish reliable and independent statistical data about Dutch society and the economy.

The CBS results are fairly clear: at the same age, younger generations generally have greater purchasing power and more wealth than the generations before them.

For example, at the age of 45, the generation born between 1970 and 1985 had purchasing power almost half again as high as that of the baby boomers at the same age. Overall average purchasing power among the population also increased from €26.3 thousand in 1977 to €45.3 thousand in 2024, measured in 2024 prices.

A similar development can be seen in wealth. The median wealth of the Dutch population in 2024 was almost five times higher than in 1993. Rising property prices played a particularly important role in this.

This does not mean that young people in the Netherlands have everything easier. Up to around the age of 25–30, the youngest generations often have less money and wealth, partly because they spend longer in education. And housing in particular has become very problematic: the generation born between 1970 and 1985 has the highest rate of home ownership among the post-war generations studied.

Nevertheless, the main conclusion is this: the Netherlands is not a country where every new generation automatically falls into a worse economic situation than the one before it. On the contrary, when comparing people at the same age, the long-term trend is generally the opposite.

And that is precisely one of the reasons why the Dutch model is so interesting. It is not only about how much money people have today, but whether a society can continue to improve its standard of living over the long term, across generations. 

In a way, I perhaps can now tell the truth that this may be connected with a “porcelain eyes” that I sometimes see looking at me, or that I see them exclusively in the Benelux countries, as well I saw this among someone’s from France. This itself say a lot to me about Western Europe. 

An Islanders fun

 I have already mentioned that I am a fan of the New York Islanders. My fandom has several rather bold and also another reasons behind it. I also watch Long Island in New York from afar. And although she is originally from LA, Chloë Grace Moretz, whom I have somehow come to like, is also an Islanders fan—Chloe Moretz is valuable in her own right to me, and if I had one wish involving Chloë Moretz, it would be to go to a game at UBS Arena. Islanders is also an only one hockey about I have an interest. 

The new NHL season will begin soon. I enjoy following the Islanders, so I am curious to see what this season will bring. The Islanders are more of a middle-of-the-tab team, and sometimes it can be a little nerve-racking during the season depending on how the team is doing at the time. It is also somewhat about being a die-hard fan, because the Isles are not regularly among the NHL leaders. They last won the Stanley Cup at the beginning of the 1980s, when they won four titles in a row from 1980 to 1983.

Last year, the Islanders had their best season in recent years. They finished the regular season with a record of 43–34–5 and 91 points, which was nine points more than the previous season. At one point during the season, the Islanders were also the best team in New York, and Islanders fans joked that the Isles had taken over New York. Towards the end of the season, however, the Isles were apparently also losing some of what they had earlier in the season, perhaps because of the pressure leading up to the playoffs.

Patrick Roy also ended up leaving his position as head coach, apparently partly because of this finish. I admit that I still have mixed feelings about it, because for most of the season the team was in good positions, unlike in previous seasons. The Islanders had already improved significantly after Patrick Roy took over in January 2024, reaching the playoffs that season.

In 2025/2026 most of the season, the Islanders had their best record in several years – 42–31–5, or 89 points in 78 games. Although they ultimately failed to make the playoffs, they spent a large part of the season in playoff positions and were still third in the Metropolitan Division shortly before the end. Even new head coach changed nothing in the end of this season. 

Cocktail movie (1988)

Maybe I am being skeptical, but the Isles could possibly be even worse during 2026/2027 season than they were last year.

In other words, the Isles perhaps may have greater potential as a team in the future, especially thanks to their young players and planned financial flexibility, but this season they could easily be just as good as last year — or even slightly worse. NHL says the Islanders enter the 2026–27 season after a 43–34–5 record and without making the playoffs.

 I have already written that, in my opinion, it is also justified that the Netherlands was chosen by people as Best Quality of Life 2026 in the Numbeo ranking. The reasons why this happened are certainly also connected to the Dutch system.

I almost do not even want to publish this—many people may not be aware of these Dutch advantages. However, I would publish it for those who see a problem with very liberal societies…

Dutch society demonstrates that a very liberal society can be resilient and also safe precisely on the basis of its liberal values.

This topic is terrible when it comes to a liberal societies such as the Dutch one. But when I look at the Netherlands, Dutch society, and the Dutch infrastructure in the event of a serious conflict, I see several major advantages from both a human and technological perspective.

  

 The Strength of a Liberal Society 

Photo is shared from another social medias. 

   The Netherlands represents an example of a very liberal society that is exceptionally proactive and also has the potential to be resilient in the event of conflicts of the most serious kind, including a war.

Dutch initiative is not limited to business and the economy. It is also reflected in the emphasis on individual rights, humanism, civil society, very high-quality and strong infrastructure, efficient public services, economic development, and the ability to solve problems in practical ways.

Dutch society has a strong tendency to actively organize, improve, and adapt things on its own. When a high level of quality does not meet expectations, there is an emphasis on institutions to ensure that what is required is provided.

These Dutch characteristics can also be significant in the event of a serious crisis or armed conflict.

The Netherlands also has very good material foundations for ensuring basic needs. It has exceptionally productive agriculture, diverse farming, and is one of the world’s most important food exporters.

The Netherlands is therefore creating a very strong foundation for food resilience.

In terms of electricity generation, the Netherlands has significant domestic electricity production capacity. It not only produces electricity for its own consumption, but is also a net exporter of electricity. The fact that it imports electricity from neighboring countries at certain times cannot be interpreted as an inability to meet its own consumption—it is rather a consequence of the advantages of the market.

A significant advantage is the decentralization of energy production in the Netherlands. In renewable electricity generation, the Netherlands is among the leaders. It has a very large number of solar installations, including on individual homes, as well as extensive wind power capacity. Energy is not produced primarily in a few large power plants, but rather across many geographically dispersed locations.

Such infrastructure can be advantageous from a resilience perspective. The loss of a single large generation facility does not necessarily mean the loss of a comparable amount of generation capacity, as it might in a system based primarily on a few large centralized sources, compared with a system relying on highly dispersed sources across the country, including widely distributed decentralized wind generation or a individual solar panels at homes. 

Decentralized electricity generation can also increase the flexibility of the system and make it easier to gradually restore it after disruption.

Public transport also operates to a very significant extent on this infrastructure. Transport such as railways is electrified, as are metros and, in many cases, urban and suburban public transport systems as a whole.

Electromobility fits into the same concept. The Netherlands is one of the strong supporters of electric mobility. If transport is increasingly powered by domestic electricity generated from wind, solar, and other sources, the need to import oil and distribute fuels through relatively centralized infrastructure is reduced.

Electric vehicles also represent a potentially significant distributed battery-storage capacity. This could help balance fluctuations between electricity generation and consumption, and potentially provide part of that energy back to the grid or local infrastructure.

For current normal state electricity consumption in the Netherlands, the CBS quarterly data are precise: 18.446 TWh from renewables out of 27.307 TWh of net consumption, meaning that the Dutch renewables cover 67.55% of consumption.

When it comes to technology, it is also worth mentioning that thanks to ASML, the Netherlands has a practically monopolistic position in EUV lithography—precisely the technology that is critical for manufacturing the most advanced semiconductors.

The Netherlands does not need to be completely self-sufficient in the sense of being isolated from the outside world. Its strength lies rather in the combination of social initiative, economic performance, very high-quality and strong infrastructure, the ability to meet basic needs such as domestic food production, and high and extensively decentralized electricity generation.

In my opinion, it is precisely this combination within a very liberal Dutch society that creates a high degree of resilience and energy autonomy, including in the event of extensive disruption to the normal functioning of society.