Judith Snoek-Romkes 🥛🍔

🚜Bij #boer Frans loopt de rivier de #Dinkel door zijn achtertuin. Deze rivier passeert een paar keer achter elkaar de Duits-Nederlandse grens. Als je op de kaarten van de #waterkwaliteit kijkt, valt op dat de waterkwaliteit in Duitsland goed is, en in Nederland niet, terwijl het letterlijk hetzelfde water is! 🇩🇪🇳🇱 🧑🏻‍🌾 #klimaatgekte #stikstofhoax #EUbeleid #rekenmodellen #boerenprotest #KaderrichtlijnWater

Why, in God's name, has the BBC been told to ignore this ?

As the world welcomes the New Year, the dawn of a new era in Iran is upon us. My brave compatriots are on the streets in cities and towns across our country—fighting for their freedom, risking their lives. The current regime has reached the end of the road. It stands at its most fragile: weak, deeply divided, and unable to suppress the courage of a rising nation. The growing protests show this year will be the definitive moment for change. To the international community: I call upon you to stand with the people of Iran not only in word but in action. Peace in the Middle East and stability across the world depend on a free Iran. Unlike the 46 years of chaos and terror this regime has brought, the new, democratic Iran I seek to forge will usher in an era of prosperity and security. The tide of history is turning. I invite you not only to witness the birth of a new Iran, but to stand by our side as we achieve it and to work with us to build a legacy of lasting peace.

Kom vanavond naar de Dam in Amsterdam! In een jaar vol spanning en groeiend antisemitisme is het goed om naast de Joodse gemeenschap te staan. Op de Dam hopen we te bidden, liederen te zingen en wordt de Chanoeka-kandelaar ontstoken.

Rechts blokkeert het voorstel om zieke en gewonde kinderen uit Gaza in Nederland te verzorgen. Onze artsen en ziekenhuizen staan klaar. Nederlanders zeggen: wij moeten helpen. Op 30 oktober gaan we met de sociale meerderheid zorgen dat die kinderen wél worden behandeld.

zoals ik zei gekke religieuzen. het is de morele plicht van de hele wereld om free palestine te roepen. En voor het wegvagen van de zionistische genocide nazi israëliërs.

The Submarine Bicycle of Urk (1886): A Carpenter’s Nautical Obsession In 1886, the isolated fishing island of Urk, then still separated from the mainland by the Zuiderzee, became the improbable birthplace of a mechanical oddity that defied both logic and hydrodynamics: a pedal-powered underwater vehicle, hand-built by a self-taught carpenter named Benne Hooijer. Though never officially recorded in engineering annals, the tale of his “onderwaterfiets” persists through oral accounts, municipal side notes, and a single blurred photograph housed in a private collection in Kampen. A Mind Against the Sea Hooijer, a widowed father of three and a devout Calvinist, spent most of his days crafting fishing sleds and barrels. But following a shipwreck that nearly killed his eldest son, Benne became obsessed with outmaneuvering the sea. He reportedly withdrew from local church gatherings and instead spent hours sketching what he called “de trapvis”—a half-boat, half-bicycle contraption designed to glide along the shallow seabed near the island. Unlike the diving bells of his time, which relied on vertical descent, Hooijer’s design was horizontal, crank-driven, and entirely mechanical—eschewing steam or air tanks. The vehicle featured: A wooden hull, coated in whale oil and pitch Hand-welded iron pedals connected to a propeller A reinforced glass viewport made from repurposed ship lanterns A pair of oiled sheepskin sleeves embedded in the hull, allowing manipulation of external levers The Descent In September 1886, just after dawn, Hooijer launched his invention from the beach east of Urk’s lighthouse. Witnesses describe him pedaling into the shallows, vanishing beneath the water, then resurfacing minutes later, gasping but jubilant. Two more trials followed. On the third, he failed to re-emerge. No body was found. Fishermen claimed to see bubbles several hundred meters offshore. A search party recovered one of the glass viewports a week later, cracked and algae-covered. The rest of the craft was never recovered. Reactions and Rumors The elders of Urk declared the act “mechanical hubris.” Children were forbidden from speaking his name in church. Others, more fascinated than scandalized, believed Hooijer had built a secret tunnel to the mainland, or had been taken by the sea as a modern Jonah. In 1910, during reclamation work, a set of oddly machined bronze gears was unearthed near Urk’s old harbor, leading one local historian to write: “Perhaps Hooijer did not fail. Perhaps we lacked the language to recognize success beneath the water.” Legacy Though the underwater bicycle remains lost, its story lingers as a symbol of mechanical mysticism—where faith, grief, and inventiveness collided in a man who tried to tread the seabed like dry land. His only surviving schematic, stained with ink and fish scales, is preserved—unlabeled—in a binder at the Flevolands Archief under “Misc. Maritime Curiosities.”