Ah, I see you’ve met my mother.

The IND (Immigration & Naturalization Department) has pretty good docs online and in English: https://ind.nl/en/residence-permits/work/residence-permit-self-employed-person

Not just any business; IIRC lawyers & doctors are restricted, and prostitution isn’t allowed. Although if you bring a spouse they are allowed to work without restrictions, including prostitution… if that’s your/their thing.

There’s no minimum “value” or income requirements at first (though if you want to get renewed at the two year mark you’ll need to demonstrate the business is doing at least something), you basically just need to put 4.5k euro in your business’ bank account and never let it go under that base 4.5k.

General advice: read everything you can; what I just wrote is ~3 years old and could have changed since. I paid an immigration attorney to handle my & spouse’s application something like 1k euro and think it was well worth it. Shipping stuff by boat usually comes with a minimum space purchase, which also means a minimum cost of 5k (again, few years old on that reference…). Most electronics aren’t worth bringing due to the AC/DC difference, though I disassembled my desktop and brought everything but the case and power supply in my luggage on the plane.

And lastly, if you are seriously considering it, learn the language. I can’t stress it enough. This isn’t just a two week vacation, you will eventually need to interact with dentists, doctors, repairmen, delivery people, etc, who probably speak great English but it isn’t guaranteed – especially if they’re older or if you live outside the randstad. I know some fellow Americans here that barely know any Dutch and it makes everything feel more difficult for them; even basic knowledge helps a lot if you’re on the train and you hear an announcement “the rear of the train is staying at the following station and going back, if you wish to continue further move to the front cabins”

Avoid Duolingo, it used to be good but it’s all AI-enshittified shit. I recommend Busuu, and when you feel like it’s starting to make sense do some actual lessons. “NOS Journaal in Makkelijke Taal” (“NOS Journal in Easy Language”) is good to watch; it’s a 8-ish minute news report of the day in simple and (usually) kindof slowly spoken Dutch. Just keep watching until it works.

Ahhh fuck now that I read it in that way I can totally see it lol!

I moved using the Dutch-American Friendship Treaty; basically start and run a Dutch business that employs yourself and sponsor your own immigration. It was the only valid path I had from the US -> Europe, and it’s actually surprisingly easy if you’re capable of being self employed. My business went well for a while until my main client screwed me over but now I have a regular highly-skilled-migrant visa which requires a Dutch company to hire you and sponsor your work visa.

I think it’s a wonderful place in it’s in own right. If I compare it to where I used to live I question why I didn’t do it sooner.

You have to be someone who identifies with your European heritage and ancestry.

Meanwhile I, an American living in the Netherlands, encounter black people on a daily basis that speak better Dutch than I ever will.

I mean, of course these people are fucking morons, but it’s also pretty telling that their view of what is European is insanely whitewashed.

I was actually just thinking about those the other day and how I kindof miss them in a certain way. Just a silly little break from daily monotony of writing code; wiggle the cursor a bit and watch a tiny cat try to catch it.

That’s all true, but besides my point.

Gas was expensive before, now it’s just completely bonkers. Rubio can celebrate that the US is “fortunate”, but that ignores the damage being done worldwide.

That said: the roads here are absolutely immaculate. Barely a pothole in sight, roads are so smooth you can rollerskate on them. I really think they could spend a bit less on road quality and still have some of the best roads in the world.

Best of luck! If you’ve got questions or problems feel free to DM me (or reply here) and I’ll try to help as best I can. I’ve been using linux since the mid 90s, so I have a decent idea of how it all works :)

11.26 USD per gallon here in the Netherlands.

Meanwhile in the Netherlands I just saw a station selling gas at $11.26 gallon. So good job Rubio, super awesome, you’re only utterly fucking over all of your allies and making people’s lives miserable worldwide. Great job.

I think it has some valid use as a tool in programming, though relying entirely on it (“vibe coding”) just produces a mountain of difficult to maintain crap.

What works for me is using it as tool like one could delegate to a junior programmer. I can write the signature of a method that it will complete the contents of; for example I’ll write “function reverseTextInSentence(string: text) {}” and tell an AI to implement that method. It saves me a little time and I can keep thinking about the larger picture rather than the details of reversing a string of text.

That said: do not let it organize the structure of your project, don’t let it name things for you, don’t use in place of critical thinking, don’t ever think it can actually use logic and reason besides repeating things it found on online forums, and don’t let it write projects wholesale. It’s a tool that can be useful, and you need to know when to use it and when its use will just make things worse.

Also fuck the AI corporations, run a free model on your own hardware.

Police have had, since the late 90s I think, the “Hotplug” which is a special battery pack / generators that provide a special power plug where you can gently loosen the existing plug, slide the generator’s plug in place over it, then remove the computer from the main supply while keeping it powered on.

Power plug locks only buy you time or prevent casual mayhem; the police can work around those.

There’s still hope, I just recently bought a home just after turning 40. You just need to put a ton of money into savings, go bankrupt paying medical bills after something bad happens to your spouse, spend 7 years in borderline poverty, and then have one of your parents die the same month they retire and collect their retirement fund.

I hate that the best thing my father ever gave me was his pension.

https://health.aws.amazon.com/health/status

I suspect the big problem is that IAM (AWS authentication system) is affected and it is not decentralized, which is causing other systems worldwide to fail because the internal authentication is broken.

I can’t login to the AWS console to check on my stuff in the European zone, because the login goes through IAM in us-east-1 where all the authentication does.

It really highlights just how centralized so much of the internet is on like three companies (Amazon, Microsoft, and Google)

https://health.aws.amazon.com/health/status

I suspect the big problem is that IAM is affected and it is not decentralized, which is causing other systems worldwide (even outside of AWS’ us-east-1 location) which rely on IAM in us-east-1 to also fail. I’m having trouble even logging into the AWS console to check on my European servers.

Edit: IAM is the main authentication method. So AWS may still be up and running fine in other locations around the world; but if you can’t connect to them because AWS’ internal authentication is all fucked up…

Medicine is full of specialization, and pharmacists are more well trained in how drugs work and their interactions. Doctors may default to “blood needs thinned, take blood thinners” without considering how all of the patients other prescriptions may interact with blood thinners.

They also act as another layer of oversight, preventing issues caused by typos and verifying the dosage is correct for the patient.

He wrote Altair Basic, which is more than just repackaging. I can only assume he tended towards more business related tasks after that though.

I saw this attitude growing up around evangelicals. “God gave man sovereign control of the earth to benefit us” kind of nonsense.

These assholes see a beautiful park like Yosemite and are disgusted that it’s full of people relaxing and enjoying the scenery; because all they see is a forest of trees to cut down and a mountain range just waiting to be mined.

They don’t care about the long term consequences at all because they’re also convinced that Jesus is going to return any day now, and when he does the entire planet is getting incinerated as all physical reality of the universe is summarily disintegrated as god sends all the good people to heaven and the rest of us losers to hell for all eternity.

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard the argument that NOT clear cutting the world’s forests was actually bad stewardship of the planet that their god ‘gave’ us.

I have to nitpick slightly; Holland is not a country. Amsterdam is in the North Holland province of the Netherlands.

Source: I’m on the train from Amsterdam to my home in Nijmegen, Netherlands, which is not a part of either Holland.

Not a teacher, but my mother is a retired professor.

It would absolutely work on a large percentage of students, especially the type that are so lazy they are plugging their assignment into an ai. She retired in 22 and had students that had never used a desktop computer with a mouse and keyboard, only phones, tablets, and ChromeOS laptops. Text formatting, beyond the very basics of bold and colors, were a new concept for them.

There have actually been three popes from Africa! Though the last one was pope from 492 to 496. Not 1492… 492.

I totally agree with you though, I just had to "uh actually’ a little because I think it’s interesting.

Source: https://www.blackcatholicmessenger.org/the-three-african-popes/