Here’s the thing: most men don’t bother women on the internet, but some do. Most men may feel good about being on the right side, but for women it is still a constant barrage of harassing messages. All that silence of us is not louder than that, and it isn’t good enough. So what to do?

I don’t know.

One thing would be to somehow take away the anonymity, because belief me, most men will cut any ties with men that harass women, if they would know. Another thing would be to somehow increase the risk or cost of sending such messages. Yet another would be technical solutions like blocking DMs, maybe have a concept of 1st level and 2nd level connections rather than fully open DMs, etc, with a woman blocking an account reducing the reach of that account much more than it does now.

Part of the problem is maybe that these men think their behaviour is silently accepted. As men we should speak up more often that this is not the case. (Which is also the point of this message)

Obviously if every single one of the 3-4 billion men on the planet would not behave like this the problem is also gone, but I feel we can’t wait for that to happen.

(Originally posted as a somewhat lengthy ‘microblog’)

What I still want to see in #F1 is a woman being an actual driver. I know we had Susie Wolff as third driver for Williams and she did formally drive in the racing weekend, but not in the actual qualifying sessions or the race.

There’s no rule preventing women driving in F1, so I wonder what we can do to make it happen.

It occurs to me that same as always, almost all of today’s problems can be solved by people respecting others the same as they respect themselves.

This could mean respecting others more, or yourself more, depending on the problem.

What I mean is this: some people value their right for safety and happiness highest, then their family, then people of their own race, then others. This leads to providing less opportunities for people with a different skin colour than their own. Simply taking into account that others have the same rights for safety and happiness as yourself corrects that attitude.

And the other way around: some people don’t value themselves at all. They will continuously place other people before their own happiness, leading to many mental health issues. Keeping in mind that you need to respect yourself as much as you respect others, would help.

The European elections are happening, e.g. this Thursday in The Netherlands, and we have to vote to stop the fascists.

This may sounds overly melodramatic and I wish it was. Fascist movements are rising at several places in the world and it is madness that we let it happen again. It is madness to be able to say it in this day that these movements are here again.

They are fueled in part by Russian misinformation. The propaganda tries to break up the western world, which is most easily done by getting the western societies to disintegrate themselves. Breaking up the EU is very much part of that plan.

The EU was founded to promote better relations among the European states in the hope we never need to have a war with each other again.

The extremist movements are also fueled by the growing sense that people should only look after themselves and not care about others. People nowadays don’t want to share their relative (!) luxury with people who have even less. They don’t want to provide a safe haven to people fleeing war. Somehow they think it is people’s own fault that they are ruled by a brutal dictator raging a war on his own people. They don’t want people coming in from other European countries providing cheaper and better labour, even though those are simple market forces. Fight for your market share by being cheaper or better and remember that it is unfair to argue that they have to live worse lives just because of where they are born.

In the EU we help each other out. Now there are refugees coming in from the south and people in north and west Europe resent having to help out sheltering them. But next time, when a stream of refugees comes across the North Sea, we of course demand the assistance of all these other countries. Next time our economy is down, we argue we should be able to work where there is demand. How could we not?

Hidden money streams of the ultra rich are fueling policies of hate. Ultra rich people that could solve poverty in a heart beat. But the economically downtrodden are fighting their fight, believing in populists’ slogans. How do these ultra rich sleep at night.

Somehow the idea has risen that it is unfair that fuel prices rise when it is running out and destroying the environment. That it is somehow unfair that governments increase the fuel prices to force people to change their ways, literally. That it is somehow left-wing politics to demand free use of resources that do not exist. No, that is right-wing politics: to not care what this does to others, including future generations.

We in The Netherlands are the ultimate example that we need the EU. We are simply too small to go it alone. On our own, any environmental politics will have no impact. You need to do that with the whole EU, and use the EU to get the world on board.

So let’s vote for pro-European parties this election. Let’s make sure the institutions are not crumbing from within by the machinations of dark forces. Let’s make sure this culture of me-me-me and us-before-them does not survive and that the principles of solidarity and shouldering the burdens together win. Let’s care, about others and about our future.