Does he know the Netherlands have a king? I doubt he cares about any monarch other than Charles maybe.

It seems ever less likely the US will participate in the NATO summit in The Hague. Too bad for Mark, though people living and working there will probably not mind.

I wouldn’t even be surprised - so long as they can outbid whatever some other rich dictatorship is willing to offer, it’s theirs. Though, Putin may well not live to see it, being 72 (poor thing).

This isn’t directly about Europe, but I still posted it here as the World Cup is obviously a huge event in many European countries (I understand if it’s removed, though).

With the World Cup likely becoming a Trump-fest (with fucking ‘mid-time shows’ or whatever they’re called), this’ll probably the second time I’ll not be watching, after Qatar. And then there’s the 2034 one in fucking Saudi Arabia. They really want to rub your face in it that the only thing that matters is money.

My main ‘traditional media’ (newspapers, news broadcasts) are all Dutch and German language. Like I said, even there there’s too much of a focus on America.

We actually had a Facebook-like social medium called Hyves in the Netherlands, which was very big until Facebook also took off here, indeed probably because of the network effect. I’ve never been a fan of online social networks as a concept, though, so I didn’t like either :p

Maybe we will now get our own evil oligarch-run social network monopolist!

Eh. It’s not America’s fault its soft-power works so well, nor that Europeans apparently prefer flocking to US (and Chinese, bizarrely) social media instead of coming up with their own. There is also a good rationale for the in-detail reporting on US politics, considering it’s by and large the protector of the status-quo in Europe (though I’ve read European reporting on US internal politics is very lacking).

But yeah, it’d be great if, under this Europe-first atmosphere, media (on- and offline) also start focusing more on Europe.

Speaking as an American, it would also be awesome if the fediverse explodes in Europe, and the dominant topics/discussions shift to EU focused ones.

I’d certainly love this. I’ve blocked all American(-focused) communities to achieve this already. Honestly, I often feel Dutch people know more about US internal politics than those of the EU or even the Netherlands, and I’ve myself gotten a bit sick of 80% of the news I see being about America (even in traditional media I feel America takes up way too much space).

I think in our media America should have a presence a bit bigger than China.

The Danish minister of foreign affairs thought it was really important that Trump said in his idiotic speech that he recognised the self-determination of the Greenlanders: ‘(Trump) said (they) respect the right to Greenlandic self-determination, and that I think was the most important part of that speech, …’

Like anything that Trump says matters (besides, if it did matter, being the bare minimum anyway).

The butt-licking is quite offensive.

I’d be surprised if Fico wouldn’t have Orbáns back in this case, though.

Here’s the song, by the way.

(the above is an AI image, by the way)

Had to check.