Author Archives: Niki

It looks like better weather will be coming later this week, although of course the best weather falls on Monday and Tuesday next week (24C or 75F). Still, bring it on! It will be nice to be outside again without a jacket on, and feel the sun’s warmth on my skin.

The Hague’s police department held another “turn in your weapons” action in the last week. This one was under the hashtag #dropit. They received more than 650 weapons, including 30 firearms. Th firearms were picked up at home by plain clothed officers in unmarked cars. The rest could be brought to the police station Check out the photo (there are more in the linked article):

What struck me with the photos–especially in the linked article–was how structured the weapons are placed on the table. Someone with a design-forward mind was definitely thinking about how to place the weapons to make the best photographs. My second thought was just how many weapons that actually is! Every corner of that table is covered, plus more weapons on the ground. The police also said they were happy with the action even though they were not expecting to get so many.

In other news: Digitisation project answers questions about Dutch colonial trade in minutes from dutchnews.nl. The project will digitize 25 million handwritten documents from the business administration of the Dutch East Indies company. This will allow researchers to search the documents within minutes. The only problem, of course, is that the handwritten documents are from the 17th and 18th centuries, which means the search results will also be in 17th/18th century Dutch and will thus need to be translated.

Some good news: anyone with a birth year of 1969 or 1970 can make an appointment for a corona vaccine. It is looking better in the Netherlands. However we are still in the top 5 for number of cases in Europe, so as always – patience is required. See also: Dutch Covid hospitalizations 53% below peak; ICU total near 10-week low from nltimes.nl in English.