Pirate ship
I was childishly happy to see this "pirate" ship in Funchal harbor in Madeira island recently 🏴☠️ Shiver me timbers matey!
jan's stuff
Alles wat Jan bezighoudt, interesseert en irriteert... en ook een beetje onzin...
Latest posts
The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, the Lost Hero of Science: Costa & Royal Society Prize Winner (English Edition) eBook
This very entertaining and interesting book is now only €3,99 on Amazon. https://www.amazon.nl/Invention-Nature-Adventures-Alexander-Humboldt-ebook/dp/B00PW4O1SQ I haven't finished it yet, but 30% in it reads like a fictional coming of age boyhood adventure. And I guess Von Humboldt's life really was like that 😂
When Reading Went Silent
By the 18th and 19th centuries, the practice of silent reading became widespread. We may not think of reading silently as a subversive act, but many historians recognize it as the key to rising individualism and private thought. https://bookriot.com/when-reading-went-silent/
The (Mini) Shortkit
Welk AI hulpmiddel kun je het beste voor welke situatie gebruiken? Dit handige lijstje geeft wat ideeën: https://www.theshortcut.nl/mini-shortkit
Jane Goodall has died
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45441069 I knew about Goodall for a long time. I guess she was on a podcast or documentary that I've consumed. I found this comment by Evanb on HN very interesting: If you find Jane Goodall inspirational, you may be delighted to learn about Anne Innis Dagg [0], whose studies of wild giraffe predates Goodall's study of chimps. The documentary "The Woman Who…
Subscribe to my lists of stuff to do in…
If you're on an Apple device you can now share your lists of places to visit that you crated in Apple Maps . These lists publishable as a URL. I love making lists of places that I've been to or would like to visit next time I'm around. In fact some places I've had bookmarked for years before it got to visit them at all. So here are several of my favorite places to visit in London, Ireland and…
GDP per land area.
I knew about the GDP (gross domestic product), a metric for how well an economy is doing. Mostly, GDP is measured per capita, or in other words, per citizen. So China has a lot of money, but seems poor because it also has a lot of people who need to share that money. It's a few bucks per citizen. There is however, also another metric, one that maybe is even more useful for comparison. The GDP per…
Wool? Or Polyester?
So I'm in Austria with my wife and I see these cute Woolen socks. I want woolen socks. Did I mention I like wool already? Anyways, I checked the label on these cute baby’s because I’m that kind of guy. It pays to check labels. These socks are mostly…. Plastic 🤔 I am not paying €12,90 for socks that are only 20% wool. What a fraud. Thanks for reading my blog. You are awesome.
A culture hub map of Los Angeles.
This article by Fast Company was interesting on its own: Here's what happened when an artist mapped every visible word in NYC But when it referenced a cultural map of Los Angeles, a city I love to hate on, my interest was especially tickled: In 2018, the research collective Slab used Google Street View to create Culture Map , a cultural and ethnic map of Los Angeles. By mapping the city's signs,…
Book reviews: Lords of easy money. By Christopher Leonard.
This book gives a short reason for why the FED was formed a good 100 years ago. It also explains what the FED does (they determine the price of money, or at least the price of US Dollars) and goes into details about how they do this. This is where things get really interesting, because how exactly does the FED create and destroy money? How do they force the market to pay more or less interest for…
EarthRoamer
Boys and their toys. I never knew I wanted a camper van. But after watching some of the very manly trucks campers on Earth Roamer , I have a new want in my life.
Dutch coffee
#TIL: All of Asia called Cold Drip coffee "Dutch Coffee"
Open for work, starting now.
I'm about to get married this autumn 🍂 😃 🥳 So naturally most of my time was spend helping my girlfriend fiancé move her stuff to my house. And basically make it our house. So, most of my furniture is gone. The walls have different colors. My books move an entire floor and the floors have all changed from carpet to PVC. 😅 Anyways. It's been about one year ago that decided to take a sabbatical.…
Best Portable Power Stations - Price Comparison | GearScouts
The Gear Scouts website offers a helpful comparison chart for those who're looking into getting solar panels. I ran into this site by happy accident. A HN post mentioned running an old iPhone 8 on solar , and naturally, I was interested in the off-grid nature of this set-up.
The Translator’s Dilemma: Thinking Versus Doing? - Public Books
The Translator's Dilemma: Thinking Versus Doing? - Public Books How (un)-important is a translator to get the true meaning and depth of a text across? This article asks this question to some professional translators. https://www.publicbooks.org/the-translators-dilemma-thinking-versus-doing/ An interesting turn of phrase I came across was this: Hahn and Searls have each Englished over 60 books from…
Red team blues - a story only made possible by misunderstanding Bitcoin
I am currently enjoying " Red team Blues " by Cory Doctorow ( Funny side note: for a long time I thought his name was made up. It's not.) Anyway, Red Team Blues describes a modern day whodunit investigation by the protagonist Martin Hench. In the story, a cryptographic backdoor is programmed into a fictional cryptocurrency called Trustcoin. This backdoor seems to fall into the wrong hands and…
Are there any good blogging platforms left in 2025?
We don't do it because it is easy, but because we thought it would be easy. - jest at the famous JFK quote . I'm one of those stubborn bloggers persons who like to blog. Why? Because getting things off my chest is a liberating feeling. Or sometimes I have a "deep" insight that I feel the universe, or at least posterity, should be able to look back at. One of my blogs is mostly tech focussed, and…
All Clothing Is Handmade | Ruth Kitchin Tillman
I've been annoyed for a while now about the low quality of a lot of the clothing I see in stores these days. I know "fast fashion" has an "upside" namely, it's relatively cheap. Why the price of raw cotton doesn't reflect the huge impact on the environment and the need for lots of drinking-quality water , is beyond my current understanding. I guess the countries and companies involved rather have…
stupiddovenests
TIL of the existence of a subreddit, devoted entirely to " stupid dove nests ". If you are looking for so good, wholesome, Christian, clean and belly bunching humour, then check it out 😂
The sad truth about metabolism: why nothing works
For those of you who want to be a "new me" starting 2025 I have one word: don't. It's not that I don't want you to be happy and healthy and succeed in life and so on, it's just that these "new years resolutions" rarely work to bring real change, but they do bring real disappointment, and I want to spare you that pain. It always feels good to have a scientific underpinning for a held belief, so let…
My dystopian week
This is a cross-post to our brother/sister platform, so you can either read this post on janromme.com or on seriousaboutech.com . Last week the well-known software engineer and investor Marc Andreessen (of Mosaic/Netscape fame) went on a long interview at with Joe Rogan in which he explained, to I imagine the shock of millions of listeners, the existence of a pressure mechanism barely controlled…
Bijbelse Geschiedenis van Rome
Lieve vrienden, Afgelopen week heb ik samen met ongeveer 1500 personen (dat is een schatting op basis van 600 Zoom connecties waarbij er 2/3 personen achter een beeldscherm zitten) kunnen genieten van een tour door het oude Rome. Deze stad groeit uit tot de hoofdstad van een wereldrijk, maar heeft een klein begin, ingeklemd tussen de grote jongens als de Etrusken, Grieken en Feniciërs. Via deze…
Learn languages online: English, German, Russian, Japanese... - LingQ
I've basically learned English by watching Divx movies that classmates burned on CD's for me. There were no subtitles back then. Or they were in English only. If I didn't understand a words I had to look it op. On paper. In a dictionary. This platform gives kids these days the same freedom, to learn a new language while having fun doing it: https://www.lingq.com/ I have no idea if it works or if…
Bijbelse geschiedenis, virtuele Rome tour, 10 november 19:00
Lieve vrienden, De afgelopen jaren hebben we kunnen genieten van verschillende digitale rondleidingen in het British Museum 🏛️ Met behulp van foto’s, landkaarten, tijdbalken en videoclips zijn we beter bekend geraakt met verschillende Bijbelse wereldmachten van Egypte helemaal tot aan Griekenland. Op veler verzoek heb ik besloten nog één keer en nieuwe geschiedenis tour te maken, namelijk over…
The News is Information Junk Food | Chuck Carroll
https://chuck.is/news/ Avoiding news may lead one to think I live under a rock, but if it's important enough, the major news stories will make it's way to my perception. If something horrific happens in my country, I do find out about it perhaps hours after the news breaks - maybe a few days for less dramatic stuff from other people in my life. That said, what difference does it make if I hear…