This is not the first time I read this sentiment, but kidnapping sounds softer to me than disappearing someone.

Kidnapping usually has a ulterior purpose and therefore the implication there’s conditions for return. Like money. Kidnapping is rarely itself the point.

That’s not the case here with government shipping people off to some foreign concentration camp, never to be seen again.

Double income, single household, no kids. (and even then just barely, i will add)

Or, if you’re talking time wise, live in a country that isn’t run by and for corporations and you can still enjoy some paid time off.

Is it that common? How do they handle backpackers?

I’ve literally never gone on a single multi-week vacation in my entire life with fully booked accommodation for the whole thing. I book the majority of the first week and I know when I’m flying back, but in between I’m mostly guided by the wind.

I can’t book hotels in places I don’t know I’ll be going.

He is a complete character like Borat, he just doesn´t know.

The Netherlands more or less does this, so i’m not sure this take is that extremist.

But the Netherlands also doesn’t have nearly as much of a car culture, with infrastructure that favors alternatives like public transport, cycling and walking. And puts large emphasis on separating these different kinds of commuters from each other as much as possible.

This is also why it’s relatively safe cycle around routinely without any kind of protective gear. Something that most (especially overseas) tourists I meet think is wild.

Diplomacy is fine, but the US wanting to change something in the UK that is neither a humanitarian issue or something that affects them at all, is like your car mechanic telling you what kind of furniture you’re allowed to have in your house if you want him to work on your car.

He could technically do it, but it’s also fucking absurd and you’d most definitely go to a different mechanic.

And also the correct thing, from any position of reason.

Trying to control the way other countries are run is fucking wild, the notion of which should never even be remotely entertained.

You’ve been here for year and blocked 264 people, I mean this in the nicest way possible, but ever consider the problem is not the people you block? I think i’ve legitimately blocked maybe 20 people in my whole entire online life (I’m almost 40), most of it spent on platforms like Reddit.

But then I have a high aversion for echo chambers and only block obvious trolls, mostly to keep them from blowing up my notifications. I feel it’s much better to just not give random strangers on the internet the power to actually affect your mood.

Your not towing anything with the smaller transits.

Even the smaller vans can tow 1.5t. I’ll concede it’s a lot less then a pickup can tow but this is not “nothing” and plenty practical for lots of use cases you’d have in any city.

And they suck in winter.

This is the Netherlands, not the Yukon. We don’t have 5 foot deep snow on the roads in the Winter. In fact it’s been years since we had any kind of snow at all. We just have a mild chill and mostly just rain.

The off-road/awd capability’s of any vehicle are almost entirely irrelevant in the Netherlands for the overwhelming majority of people.

Even though mom and pop stores are mostly dead, Amazon’s market share is thankfully still relatively contained where I live. So it’s still simply a matter of just picking a different “big box store” to order your things from.

Teslas are notoriously expensive to repair after a collision, and insurance companies often salvage them because of this.

Yeah, if you have people replace whole battery packs over a broken coolant fitting, things blow up quick. Hooray for corporate greed.

A transit or sprinter makes much more sense for commercial use in the vast majority of professions as the cargo space to vehicle ratio is much higher and you can lock the whole thing up.

The only profession so far I’ve seen where they make some kind of sense is for landscapers, and even that’s debatable considering you can get sprinters with an open bed that is much larger then what’s on these pickups.

This looks like Ram 1500 to me, there’s also the 2500 and 3500. I don’t know how much bigger they are in terms of size or percentage but they do differentiate mainly with things like payload capacity, so it follows they fill the caps between this and a full size transport truck.

But i’m pretty sure you can’t have those on a normal drivers license in the NL as their weight + payload capacity exceeds 3500 kilo’s.

Edit: If you really want to see an Avengers level joke, search for “Ford F-650 pickup” with your search engine of choice.

Imagine thinking tariffs are why these warships don’t sell in Europe.