Lol, they should start doing that here in the Netherlands, just for fun. There are SO many people that go fuel in Belgium or Germany. People would lose their minds.

They always act like we have it so tough here but then I read something like this and it really puts things into perspective.

Yeah, it’s honestly insane to me how many people at my company use it for everything. They receive an email from someone, complain how it feels very “written by Ai”, only to then use Ai themselves to write a reply…

And it’s not like they’re difficult emails, it’s the type of email I can write myself in less than 5 minutes. I really don’t understand why people are the way they are now.

It would be pretty funny if the bubble burst while Trump and his cronies are balls deep in the Iran war. That might honestly be enough to ruin the whole country.

I don’t think MTG has a chance, she’s alienated too much of the republican party. Also, she’s a woman. They never do well, especially not in the republican party.

happily vote for the next Trump

You mean Trump himself? There’s no chance in hell he wouldn’t try to run again if he hasn’t kicked the bucket by then.

It’s pretty unlikely he’ll make it until then and if he does die I’m not sure who will be his successor (definitely not charisma black hole JD) but if not then he’s too proud to give anyone else a chance.

If only… He seems to be able to do whatever the hell he wants and get away with all of it.

I mean, why would they stop? They can’t hit the US and can barely hit Israel. Their best approach is to drag them through the mud by causing as much chaos as possible. Every country that’s not taking measures against Israel and the US is more or less complicit anyway. Europe especially really needs to stop pussy-footing around Israel just because of WW2.

It was a long time ago and we should be able to speak out against them. But no, instead we have governments that barely speak up and basically allow them to do whatever they want, including committing genocide in Gaza, constantly attacking Lebanon, now attacking Iran and soon attacking the next country (Turkey?).

Germany has a lot of plug-in solar for balconies (Balkonkraftwerke) and it’s available at very cheap prices (example here). I know it only provides up to 800W on a very sunny day but that’s still a significant amount for an apartment. And the beauty of these is that they are so plug-and-play, everything is included. You hang it, connect the cables and plug it into a socket and then you’re done.

I live in the Netherlands but I’ve been seriously considering picking up one of these if my building HoA doesn’t want to do a rooftop solar project for our building.

There are people in the Netherlands that have the system you describe. This is pretty rare though due to the massive push for new energy meters that’s been going on for the last 10 years or so. And with good reason: lots of the old meters people had were pretty unsafe and unreliable. For most people, having automatic usage reports going to both them and the electricity provider far outweighs the downsides.

Most of us are in a similar situation as Germany. We have smart meters that allow you to provide power back to the grid and this is currently very profitable. However, from 2027 onwards they are (mostly) getting rid of the profits this brings the consumer, in order to make the grid more stable and also for other, less clear (most likely energy company and government spending related) reasons.

As someone who’s worked in the grid provider field for a bit I’m not necessarily against this change; peak power surges due to lots of people selling of their excess solar power production is a huge problem that’s making the energy transition that much more difficult. Even in local grids, we’re starting to have to use massive power cables to be able to handle this. This brings with it a lot of extra costs and permit nonsense, making the life of the grid manager that much more difficult.

I wish people would take this upcoming deadline to start electrying more things in their house. But if my parents are anything to go by, all they’ll do is complain about losing their golden goose that they’ve profited from for over 10 years. They could get an electric car instead of their nonsense plug-in hybrid, they could electrify their heating needs, they could install a home battery and so much more. I know it costs money to do so but you basically run all of it for free most of the year. And besides that, with all the current global issues that are going on the reliance on fossil fuels should be phased out rapidly.

I wish they would move all their stuff there. And then for a bomb to drop on them. That’d be great.