I don’t think this is semantics. It reminds me of the Elon Musk nazi salute thing: maybe we are all tired of leftist nitpicking but it’s making people prone to misidentify it.

I disagree. Having some kind of grievance with capitalism an sich is central to being leftwing.

I imagine a lot has changed in that regard anyway, especially with the way mainstream politics has gone in the intervening years, but it does indeed sound like you lived in a bit of a bubble at the time too!

I’m probably falling into the habits I caught when living in Britain and using the word “excellent” to mean what people in other countries think of as “good”

I’m British, and I know the British tendency is to understate rather than overstate, so I don’t know how you’ve landed there!

for areas with less demand…

That’s why I expressly mentioned that it was because they don’t learn Dutch: so you don’t have to wonder if there were any confounding factors at play.

Dutch is easy (a relative term, admittedly) if your mother tongue’s English because they’re so closely related. Many basic words are either very similar or spelt the same but pronounced differently. Bit like what Spanish is to Portuguese. I think it’s quite obvious that native speakers don’t learn Dutch quickly, if at all, because they have no one to practise with, and perhaps the idea of switching languages being rude plays a part too. I’ve met a couple of people who think it’s not worth it to learn and none of them were from the Anglosphere.

I distinctly remember liberal messages rising to the top on Reddit, stuff like that you should just accept that you have to go out and work for a living. That’s not left!

It’s actually the second or third thing I mention about Lemmy if it ever comes up in conversation. Sometimes I feel like just dropping it because of it.

And two different brands?

That said, most Dutch speak excellent English

That’s not true, not excellent English. Many speak enough to get by, except the elderly and the young, and some of them speak it well, fewer still excellently. Over four years, I’ve met probably a handful at most who could express their deepest thoughts and desires while pronouncing “th” correctly and their As not as Es.

Many banks won’t take you in if you don’t speak Dutch and it’s harder to find a job (this was in the news just recently, as it happens: nearly all international students are struggling in the job market because they generally don’t learn Dutch, despite there being so many vacancies). You can definitely get by with English, and I’ve heard of many people living here decades without learning Dutch too, but if you want to live well, that’s another thing altogether.

The good news is Dutch is easy if your mother tongue’s English or German but there is indeed a problem in the Randstad of it being hard to convince anyone to let you speak it with them, in part because they often overestimate how well they speak it. There’s a relatively famous quote from colonial Indonesia about how the Dutch colonisers would rather speak bad Indonesian than Dutch, which the Indonesians spoke fluently. I think it’s like a feedback effect with the reputation they have for knowing second languages.

Anyway, details details.

You’re not all too far from Hebden Bridge if you settle up them ways anyway. She’ll be sound. Best of luck to yous.

By Jove, that’s true!

They’re excluded, and the rental commission is one of the bodies who’s inspected us on the behest of the landlady. There’s a little sentence at the end of the report saying something like “we realise that we’ve inspected the property based on a fraudulent tip-off”.

The other thing is that the rental commission come down and measure the place as part of the test, so if it was being used for commercial purposes, we would’ve been caught red-handed there and then.

I used to be in a group that use it, and it works very well; we made great use of the mailing list feature, which Proton lacks beyond “contact groups”. The only thing is getting an invitation, which I seem to recall reading they’re not doing any more.

A few years ago, I was working at a restaurant when it went under, so as sous-chef they let me take a few bits home with me. I took 5kg of kimchi home. I used to, like, come home drunk and eat a handful of it out the fridge, haha.

My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas was the mnemonic when Pluto was still a planet. I suppose not totally obsolete but I find myself ending at “nine” instead of something you’d serve beginning with N.

No, I saw the screenshot in the article of “going to PRISON?!?!?!” and thought, you know, I don’t think that’s all that schocking in itself. Granted it had the look of Tumblr about it and Tumblr’s signature move is overreacting, in hindsight.

I don’t know about other countries, but in the Netherlands you go to the rental commission for a “rent check”: https://www.huurcommissie.nl/support/huurprijscheck

I’m laughing quite hard now but I do apologise. Hopefully this makes it clearer:

• "Is this how I find out that
  • "other people find
    • “finding out that someone’s going to prison”
  • less normal than I do?“”

Yes! Sorry!

Is this how I find out that other people find finding out that someone’s going to prison less normal than I do?

We’re currently being threatened with court action by our landlady for using our flat for commercial purposes. It’s obvious bunkum, and we’ve had inspections and everything that prove we don’t do it and sent all kinds of evidence to the lawyer accusing us, but the thing is that we followed a rental commission procedure last year to have the rent tested and so the landlady’s losing money or whatever. It’s all very dramatic but we’re confident because it’s so easy to prove that it’s a load of bollocks.

Sounds like a categorisation issue.