Luc

Where does all that stuff go after it’s used? I can’t imagine it’s all recycled properly (let alone reused) but also not really that the bulk is not separated out at such volumes

dack - Dutch

Dutch is alsjeblieft (informal), alstublieft (formal), thanks (informal), dankjewel (informal), or dankuwel (formal). The former probably means “as you desired” in old Dutch, the latter “thank you well”, and the formal/informal variants simply insert the right word for “you” (je or u). And then there’s thanks being commonly used. Or also bedankt, sounds kinda formal to me as well, not sure when you’d use that instead of dankuwel

Just “dank” (maybe you wrote that and autocorrupt kicked in?) is not really a thing we say, it just means “thank” which you’d also not say by itself in English (unless you’re Rocky)

Edit: writing “dank” in an English sentence feels like everyone will think our thank-yous are like dank memes. The pronunciation of the “a” there is as in Clark; the English pronunciation of dank would map to denk in Dutch and means think!

Have you ever seen someone use a turn lane to only jump out of it at the last moment?

Yeah, when they have their turn signal on to indicate they want to change to a different lane

Leaving the turn signal on when you’re already where you want to be is the more confusing thing. I know most people do it because it’s taught that way in driving schools, but it’s a matter of habit, not actually logical if we’d design the system anew and everyone learned from scratch

Interesting. For me, the latter scenario is the most clear. In the first one, they may want to turn into a driveway, just stop on the roadside altogether, switch to a different lane to their right (on a double turn lane), whatever: they’re potentially trying to deviate from the path they’ve chosen to take. If they just want to follow the path they’re on, turn signals off makes the most sense to me

Of course, if you’re in a country that crosses different traffic directions on green (like Belgian and German lights that go green for you wanting to left turn, but there’s traffic coming straight on) then it’s needed to indicate you’re a turner and not someone going straight on. But then, mixing traffic is a recipe for confusion and accidents anyway (saw a stat recently that right turns having green together with pedestrians increases accidents by iirc some 60% — probably a low number to begin with and so any change looks big, but still crazy to me that countries continue to choose this)

Another scenario that appears more universally, where you have one lane for two options (straight on or right, for example), the turn signal is also needed of course: there is no path you’ve already chosen and so you need to show intent to change

Yeah exactly. The key combo was ctrl+shift btw

What moved them to pick the bigger devices?

Asking as someone who is currently trying to pick between the smallest options on the market

Over here in the Netherlands we are a bit of an outlier in the sense that we use the US layout of QWERTY

Tell that to Microsoft! I remember people using Windows would complain their : turned into ± etc., actually I haven’t heard that in a while now, did they finally fix that or just change the layout switching hotkey to something one doesn’t accidentally press?

• 2 decades: Netherlands
• 2 years: Belgium
• 2 months: Finland
• 2 weeks: Iceland
• 2 days: United Kingdom
• 2 hours: Switzerland
• Somewhere between 2 minutes and 2 seconds: Netherlands, Germany, Belgium all at once

• 6 years: Germany
• 6 months: France
• 6 weeks… this is getting tricky, Luxembourg is probably closest but not close enough to claim this tier
• 6 days: Poland
• 6 hours: Sweden
• 6 minutes: I give up

I didn’t realise it was a life goal of mine to spend 6 minutes in a country until this post, but now I’m not sure I can unsee this list. Maybe the Vatican is a good candidate for that? Italy can go in the 2 days slot, bumping UK up to 6 weeks another time. Germany will exceed the 6 years slot soon though, maybe I’ll need to visit all sixers to get bingo on a row of sevens instead. And where are we going for 7 seconds? Another tripoint, does that count?