Energietransitie? Of gewoon eens minderen?
▲ 18 r/zuinig

Energietransitie? Of gewoon eens minderen?

Trouw over energie

Na jarenlang gel*l dat techniek onze luxe levensstijl gaat redden komt nu eindelijk eens een ouderwetse waarheid in de media: "“Ik denk dat er één belangrijke boodschap mist als we het hebben over de energietransitie: we moeten ons energieverbruik verminderen”, zegt de fotograaf. “Zuiniger leven. Dat is wat er moet gebeuren als we de aarde leefbaar willen houden. Maar daar is draagvlak voor nodig en de politiek slaagt er niet in dat te creëren.”"

u/3owi — 5 days ago

Bright light problems after eclipse

It's like 5 weeks ago and I still notice that bright outdoor sun feels much brighter then before :(

Just want to urge everyone don't risk your eyes. It's just not worth it.

If I could turn back time I'd never look longer then a split second, even with 'certified' glasses. Well, honestly, I'd not look at all.

reddit.com
u/3owi — 16 days ago

Transportsector, waar ze het bijzonder vinden dat je je salaris op tijd krijgt

Als chauffeur valt het me altijd weer op: dingen die overal normaal zijn en het absolute minimum dat is in de transportsector een bijzonderheid.

Voorbeeld is gewoon op tijd je salaris krijgen. Normaal is dat alleen een probleem bij bedrijven die op het randje van omvallen staan.

Maar in de transportsector is het zo erg dat ze het als pluspunt benoemen dat je op tijd je salaris gaat krijgen. Ze doen alsof het een soort extraatje is.

Een ambtenaar mag een dure stoel uitzoeken. Een IT'er krijgt een dure laptop en mooie kantine. Maar bij een chauffeursvacature roepen ze van de daken dat je niet om je salaris hoeft te klagen!

Wow, je hoeft geen incassobureau naar je baas te sturen. Hang de vlag uit!

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1097591389272271

Realiteit is;

Geen reiskostenvergoeding voor de eerste 2x 10 km!
Nooit weten hoelaat je klaar bent.
Calamiteitenverlof? Vaderschapsverlof? Dat soort dingen lachen ze om.
Uren boven 8 uur per dag zijn geen overuren. Dat telt pas na 40u per week.
Werkdagen kunnen oplopen tot 15 uren(incl pauzes) maar daardoor heb je maar 9 uren tussen 2 diensten.
Bij solliciteren verwachten ze dat je 1 of 2 werkdagen gratis meegaat om te 'snuffelen' of het wat voor je is. Zonder salaris natuurlijk. Wel zoveel mogelijk leren over de boordcomputer, klanten en procedures in die tijd natuurlijk!
En waar een normaal bedrijf het basisloon op basis van 40 uur plaatst roepen ze bij transport vaak het loon voor 60 uur en incl. koffiegeld(verblijfskostenvergoeding).
Etc etc....

reddit.com
u/3owi — 1 month ago

Short pistol pressure washer

To clean the car underbody I'd like a pressure washer that can be used with a very short pistol.

I already bought a short spray head.

But, what washer can be used without the long parts of the gun?

silent? https://www.lidl.nl/p/parkside-hogedrukreiniger-silent-110-bar/p100400373
mini? https://www.lidl.nl/p/parkside-mini-hogedrukreiniger-110-bar/p100405706

or should I look elsewhere?

maybe just the sewage hose set? https://www.lidl.nl/p/parkside-rioolreinigingsset/p100398587

u/3owi — 1 month ago
▲ 1 r/China

long read about one-child policy consequences

Devastated families, a demographic crisis and desperate parents searching for their abducted children. Ten years after the abolition of the one-child policy, the traces of the harsh measures are still visible everywhere in China.

Firecrackers thunder through the streets of the village of Hengtou Dong, located in the eastern coastal province of Shandong. Red inflatable arches with welcoming slogans in elegant Chinese characters point the way to a stage. “My son Guan Guan is finally home!” Wang Chuanqiang cries excitedly into the microphone.

In 1993, he lost sight of the boy, who was three years old at the time. The young family had moved to Shanghai in the hope that they could earn enough money in the big city to make ends meet. On the fateful day, his wife stayed home with Guan Guan. While the toddler was playing outside less than ten meters away from her, she washed two bowls. When she looked outside again, Guan Guan was gone.

Together with his wife, Wang desperately searched for their son for the past thirty years. On his three-wheeled vehicle, he traveled across the entire country and, according to his own account, covered around 500,000 kilometers. Along the way, he met countless children who were not growing up with their biological parents. But no matter how often a lead gave him hope, it never led to his son Guan Guan. Until, at the beginning of this year, the long-awaited phone call finally came from the police in Shanghai saying that they had found him. A DNA test had confirmed the father-son relationship.

Quote van .

Between 1980 and 2015, 364 million abortions were performed in China

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Guan Guan had no idea that his biological parents were looking for him. He grew up in Shanghai, where he was adopted by a Chinese family. “If I was naughty, they would say that my real parents had given me up and that if I continued to misbehave, they would not want me either,” he recalls.

The welcoming party in Shandong is not only about the return of the lost son, but also serves as a search gathering for other parents. Father Wang invited dozens of fellow sufferers whom he met over the years during his search. They are easy to identify by the T-shirts bearing a photo and the details of their missing child.

Some even have several posters hanging from their bodies or carry them in their hands. The posters were made with the help of Baobei Huijia (Baby, Come Home), a Chinese NGO founded in 2007 to provide people with a platform for searching for their missing children. The organization has a network of 400,000 volunteers and has already contributed to the reunification of around 18,000 families.

In between the festivities, the parents help each other make appeal videos for social media. If such a post goes viral, it can reach millions of people. The platform Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok) even dedicates an official account to this kind of search video, which has been viewed nearly 18 billion times and has 283,000 followers.

Zhu Yangqin is standing a few meters from the stage, recording a video. “Huang Xue, it has been thirty years since we were separated. Your father and I have not slept peacefully for a single night since then, nor have we enjoyed a single meal. I hope you find the courage to come looking for us. We only want to know that you are safe,” she pleads into the camera of her phone.

When asked how she lost her daughter, Zhu says it happened in broad daylight in a shopping center in 1996. “I was carrying her on my back. When I put her down on the ground for a moment and turned my head the other way for a second, she was gone,” she says. Zhu immediately reported the disappearance to the police, placed advertisements in local newspapers and even appeared on television.

Wang Chuanqiang organized a welcoming party in the village of Hengtou Dong for the son he lost as a toddler thirty years ago.

At the gathering, parents wore T-shirts bearing a photo and the details of their missing child. Source Photos Jessie Zhang

Later, she heard through acquaintances that the two-year-old girl had been taken by a middle-aged woman and driven away in a van with covered license plates. “Around that time, another thirty children disappeared in and around that shopping center in a similar way. It is clear that a group of human traffickers was active there,” Zhu believes.

Her daughter was abducted during a period when Chinese family legislation was being strictly enforced. Under this policy, known as the one-child policy, most couples were allowed to become pregnant only once. In 2016, the rules were relaxed and every couple was allowed to have two children. Later, this was increased to three children.

The policy, which formally began in 1980, had devastating consequences and tore families apart. Women who became pregnant illegally or who already had the maximum number of permitted children were forced to undergo drastic measures. According to official figures from the National Health Commission, between 1980 and 2015 a total of 365 million intrauterine devices were inserted, 364 million abortions were performed and 112 million women were sterilized. Some parents saw no other option than to abandon a second, third or sometimes even fourth child on the street. Others lost their baby because it was forcibly taken away by family-planning law enforcers. Those who did not have a pregnancy permit and violated the birth restrictions also risked a fine that could amount to as much as six times their annual salary.

The strict family legislation also created fertile ground for child trafficking. Boys in particular were abducted in broad daylight and sold within China to people who had not been able to have a son themselves. There is generally a traditional preference for a son because he can continue the family line and work the land. Daughters, on the other hand, become part of their husband’s family after marriage.

At the welcoming party in Shandong, one mother is searching for her son Zhao Chuan, who was stolen in 1990 at a local market in Sichuan province. Another mother addresses her son Zhang Jinhao directly on camera: “You were not given up by us. You are our darling. Do not believe what your adoptive family or the person who bought you has told you.”

After China opened its doors to international adoptions in 1992, some orphanages actually bought girls to meet the growing demand from abroad. Tao Ping regrets that he contributed to international adoption in the past. “Illegal adoption makes me furious,” he says.

Tao himself grew up as an orphan in a poorly funded state orphanage, which led him to see it as his mission to spare other children that fate. In the 1990s, he advised which children’s homes met the requirements to join China’s international adoption program. He also helped Western adoption agencies obtain and process the necessary Chinese documents.

Quote van .

She washed two bowls. When she looked outside again, her child was gone.

“I genuinely thought that all those children had been abandoned. If I had known that some had been stolen or taken away from their parents by family-planning law enforcers, I would never have done that work,” he says. Tao now works as a private investigator, helping foreign adoptees find their biological Chinese families.

The problem of child trafficking during the one-child policy was so extensive that China’s Ministry of Public Security established a DNA database in 2009 to reunite parents with their abducted and missing children. According to Chinese state media, the database now contains DNA profiles of at least 1.2 million people and has contributed to around 12,000 family reunifications.

The decades-long one-child policy not only had far-reaching social consequences, but also led to a demographic crisis. And that was completely unnecessary, independent demographers argue, pointing out that China’s birth rate was already declining in the 1970s. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had then introduced the “Later, Longer, Fewer” campaign. In it, party members were urged to have fewer children, later in life, with longer periods between pregnancies. This caused the birth rate to fall from around six to three children per woman.

Nevertheless, the CCP feared food shortages if the population continued to grow. In March 1980, the state newspaper People’s Daily published an article by, among others, rocket scientist Song Jian and economist Tian Xueyuan. The article warned that the Chinese population would grow to 4.26 billion by 2080 if the current birth rate did not fall further.

“The one-child policy was a great disaster,” demographer Yi Fuxian says by phone to Trouw. After Yi moved to the United States in 1999, he began campaigning from abroad for the abolition of the policy. He predicted that China’s population would continue to shrink, even if the restrictions were relaxed or abolished.

Although he found a sympathetic ear among some Chinese top leaders, including former premier Zhao Ziyang, the Chinese government chose the opposite course. In 2002, the Family Planning Law came into force, giving the one-child policy a formal legal basis for the first time since 1980. Until then, family-planning law enforcers had operated in a legal gray area.

In 2007, Yi published his influential book Big Country, Empty Nest. In it, he predicted that China’s birth rate would fall to 1.47 children per woman in 2023. That would be well below the 2.1 needed to keep a population stable. The book was promptly banned in China.

Countless Chinese parents are still searching for their missing children. Source Photo Jessie Zhang

“The one-child policy was supposed to be crucial to the well-being of the country and its people. But the opposite is true: it was a great lie with traumatic consequences,” Yi believes. According to the demographer, China should have abolished the birth restrictions as early as 1990. “But there was disbelief about the low birth rate, so they adjusted the data upward,” Yi says.

For example, the 2010 census initially showed that women had an average of 1.18 children. That birth rate was later adjusted to 1.63. In China, local officials are accustomed to manipulating figures, especially when the central government in Beijing has set certain quotas or expectations.

According to official Chinese government figures, the population only began to decline in 2022. That trend continued in 2025, for the fourth consecutive year: the population fell by 3.39 million to 1.405 billion. “The actual number is much lower,” Yi says. Based on his own calculations, the demographer estimates that China may have 130 million fewer inhabitants.

The abolition of the one-child policy in 2016 was accompanied by a campaign intended to encourage people to have more children. A shrinking population can be disastrous for the growth of the Chinese economy. The government introduced a package of financial and other incentives intended to encourage people to have babies. But that appears to have had little effect on the current generation, many of whom grew up as only children.

Earlier this year, the Chinese government increased the tax on contraceptives such as condoms by 13 percent. But demographer Yi considers restricting or making abortion more difficult, as is happening in the US, impossible in China. “So much medical staff were trained to perform this procedure during the one-child policy that you can have an abortion anywhere. Women were also forced to undergo abortions on such a massive scale that the procedure has become normalized. Don’t want a baby? There you go, abortion!” says Yi.

The one-child policy disrupted the lives of tens of millions of Chinese people. How devastating the demographic consequences will be for the Chinese population in the long term remains to be seen in the coming years. At the individual family level, Wang Chuanqiang’s fellow sufferers hope that they too will one day be reunited with their lost child. “But above all, I wish that the world will be free of human trafficking and that every missing child will soon return home,” says Zhu Yangqin, who says she will continue searching for her daughter Huang Xue until the day she dies.Devastated families, a demographic crisis and desperate parents searching for their abducted children. Ten years after the abolition of the one-child policy, the traces of the harsh measures are still visible everywhere in China.
Firecrackers thunder through the streets of the village of Hengtou Dong, located in the eastern coastal province of Shandong. Red inflatable arches with welcoming slogans in elegant Chinese characters point the way to a stage. “My son Guan Guan is finally home!” Wang Chuanqiang cries excitedly into the microphone.
In 1993, he lost sight of the boy, who was three years old at the time. The young family had moved to Shanghai in the hope that they could earn enough money in the big city to make ends meet. On the fateful day, his wife stayed home with Guan Guan. While the toddler was playing outside less than ten meters away from her, she washed two bowls. When she looked outside again, Guan Guan was gone.
Together with his wife, Wang desperately searched for their son for the past thirty years. On his three-wheeled vehicle, he traveled across the entire country and, according to his own account, covered around 500,000 kilometers. Along the way, he met countless children who were not growing up with their biological parents. But no matter how often a lead gave him hope, it never led to his son Guan Guan. Until, at the beginning of this year, the long-awaited phone call finally came from the police in Shanghai saying that they had found him. A DNA test had confirmed the father-son relationship.

Between 1980 and 2015, 364 million abortions were performed in China

Guan Guan had no idea that his biological parents were looking for him. He grew up in Shanghai, where he was adopted by a Chinese family. “If I was naughty, they would say that my real parents had given me up and that if I continued to misbehave, they would not want me either,” he recalls.
The welcoming party in Shandong is not only about the return of the lost son, but also serves as a search gathering for other parents. Father Wang invited dozens of fellow sufferers whom he met over the years during his search. They are easy to identify by the T-shirts bearing a photo and the details of their missing child.
Some even have several posters hanging from their bodies or carry them in their hands. The posters were made with the help of Baobei Huijia (Baby, Come Home), a Chinese NGO founded in 2007 to provide people with a platform for searching for their missing children. The organization has a network of 400,000 volunteers and has already contributed to the reunification of around 18,000 families.
In between the festivities, the parents help each other make appeal videos for social media. If such a post goes viral, it can reach millions of people. The platform Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok) even dedicates an official account to this kind of search video, which has been viewed nearly 18 billion times and has 283,000 followers.
Zhu Yangqin is standing a few meters from the stage, recording a video. “Huang Xue, it has been thirty years since we were separated. Your father and I have not slept peacefully for a single night since then, nor have we enjoyed a single meal. I hope you find the courage to come looking for us. We only want to know that you are safe,” she pleads into the camera of her phone.
When asked how she lost her daughter, Zhu says it happened in broad daylight in a shopping center in 1996. “I was carrying her on my back. When I put her down on the ground for a moment and turned my head the other way for a second, she was gone,” she says. Zhu immediately reported the disappearance to the police, placed advertisements in local newspapers and even appeared on television.
Wang Chuanqiang organized a welcoming party in the village of Hengtou Dong for the son he lost as a toddler thirty years ago.
At the gathering, parents wore T-shirts bearing a photo and the details of their missing child. Source Photos Jessie Zhang
Later, she heard through acquaintances that the two-year-old girl had been taken by a middle-aged woman and driven away in a van with covered license plates. “Around that time, another thirty children disappeared in and around that shopping center in a similar way. It is clear that a group of human traffickers was active there,” Zhu believes.
Her daughter was abducted during a period when Chinese family legislation was being strictly enforced. Under this policy, known as the one-child policy, most couples were allowed to become pregnant only once. In 2016, the rules were relaxed and every couple was allowed to have two children. Later, this was increased to three children.
The policy, which formally began in 1980, had devastating consequences and tore families apart. Women who became pregnant illegally or who already had the maximum number of permitted children were forced to undergo drastic measures. According to official figures from the National Health Commission, between 1980 and 2015 a total of 365 million intrauterine devices were inserted, 364 million abortions were performed and 112 million women were sterilized. Some parents saw no other option than to abandon a second, third or sometimes even fourth child on the street. Others lost their baby because it was forcibly taken away by family-planning law enforcers. Those who did not have a pregnancy permit and violated the birth restrictions also risked a fine that could amount to as much as six times their annual salary.
The strict family legislation also created fertile ground for child trafficking. Boys in particular were abducted in broad daylight and sold within China to people who had not been able to have a son themselves. There is generally a traditional preference for a son because he can continue the family line and work the land. Daughters, on the other hand, become part of their husband’s family after marriage.
At the welcoming party in Shandong, one mother is searching for her son Zhao Chuan, who was stolen in 1990 at a local market in Sichuan province. Another mother addresses her son Zhang Jinhao directly on camera: “You were not given up by us. You are our darling. Do not believe what your adoptive family or the person who bought you has told you.”
After China opened its doors to international adoptions in 1992, some orphanages actually bought girls to meet the growing demand from abroad. Tao Ping regrets that he contributed to international adoption in the past. “Illegal adoption makes me furious,” he says.
Tao himself grew up as an orphan in a poorly funded state orphanage, which led him to see it as his mission to spare other children that fate. In the 1990s, he advised which children’s homes met the requirements to join China’s international adoption program. He also helped Western adoption agencies obtain and process the necessary Chinese documents.
Quote van .
She washed two bowls. When she looked outside again, her child was gone.

“I genuinely thought that all those children had been abandoned. If I had known that some had been stolen or taken away from their parents by family-planning law enforcers, I would never have done that work,” he says. Tao now works as a private investigator, helping foreign adoptees find their biological Chinese families.
The problem of child trafficking during the one-child policy was so extensive that China’s Ministry of Public Security established a DNA database in 2009 to reunite parents with their abducted and missing children. According to Chinese state media, the database now contains DNA profiles of at least 1.2 million people and has contributed to around 12,000 family reunifications.
The decades-long one-child policy not only had far-reaching social consequences, but also led to a demographic crisis. And that was completely unnecessary, independent demographers argue, pointing out that China’s birth rate was already declining in the 1970s. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had then introduced the “Later, Longer, Fewer” campaign. In it, party members were urged to have fewer children, later in life, with longer periods between pregnancies. This caused the birth rate to fall from around six to three children per woman.
Nevertheless, the CCP feared food shortages if the population continued to grow. In March 1980, the state newspaper People’s Daily published an article by, among others, rocket scientist Song Jian and economist Tian Xueyuan. The article warned that the Chinese population would grow to 4.26 billion by 2080 if the current birth rate did not fall further.
“The one-child policy was a great disaster,” demographer Yi Fuxian says by phone to Trouw. After Yi moved to the United States in 1999, he began campaigning from abroad for the abolition of the policy. He predicted that China’s population would continue to shrink, even if the restrictions were relaxed or abolished.
Although he found a sympathetic ear among some Chinese top leaders, including former premier Zhao Ziyang, the Chinese government chose the opposite course. In 2002, the Family Planning Law came into force, giving the one-child policy a formal legal basis for the first time since 1980. Until then, family-planning law enforcers had operated in a legal gray area.
In 2007, Yi published his influential book Big Country, Empty Nest. In it, he predicted that China’s birth rate would fall to 1.47 children per woman in 2023. That would be well below the 2.1 needed to keep a population stable. The book was promptly banned in China.
Countless Chinese parents are still searching for their missing children. Source Photo Jessie Zhang
“The one-child policy was supposed to be crucial to the well-being of the country and its people. But the opposite is true: it was a great lie with traumatic consequences,” Yi believes. According to the demographer, China should have abolished the birth restrictions as early as 1990. “But there was disbelief about the low birth rate, so they adjusted the data upward,” Yi says.
For example, the 2010 census initially showed that women had an average of 1.18 children. That birth rate was later adjusted to 1.63. In China, local officials are accustomed to manipulating figures, especially when the central government in Beijing has set certain quotas or expectations.
According to official Chinese government figures, the population only began to decline in 2022. That trend continued in 2025, for the fourth consecutive year: the population fell by 3.39 million to 1.405 billion. “The actual number is much lower,” Yi says. Based on his own calculations, the demographer estimates that China may have 130 million fewer inhabitants.
The abolition of the one-child policy in 2016 was accompanied by a campaign intended to encourage people to have more children. A shrinking population can be disastrous for the growth of the Chinese economy. The government introduced a package of financial and other incentives intended to encourage people to have babies. But that appears to have had little effect on the current generation, many of whom grew up as only children.
Earlier this year, the Chinese government increased the tax on contraceptives such as condoms by 13 percent. But demographer Yi considers restricting or making abortion more difficult, as is happening in the US, impossible in China. “So much medical staff were trained to perform this procedure during the one-child policy that you can have an abortion anywhere. Women were also forced to undergo abortions on such a massive scale that the procedure has become normalized. Don’t want a baby? There you go, abortion!” says Yi.
The one-child policy disrupted the lives of tens of millions of Chinese people. How devastating the demographic consequences will be for the Chinese population in the long term remains to be seen in the coming years. At the individual family level, Wang Chuanqiang’s fellow sufferers hope that they too will one day be reunited with their lost child. “But above all, I wish that the world will be free of human trafficking and that every missing child will soon return home,” says Zhu Yangqin, who says she will continue searching for her daughter Huang Xue until the day she dies.

reddit.com
u/3owi — 2 months ago

12v drill is such a game changer

My boss uses 2 expensive machines, a drill and an impact driver. Both 18v. Big and heavy.

He's constantly running up and down the ladders and stairs to get the right machine. We work on different floors all the time.

Meanwhile I wear a toolbelt. The Parkside drill fits in the toolbelt. I have both my hands free. I have bits, screws and plugs all with me in the belt. I can drill holes and fix things right on the ladder. No any extra steps. Swapping bits, drills etc with very little effort.

u/3owi — 2 months ago

1 plant, 15 kilo druiven!

Ongelofelijk, ik denk dat 'ie maximaal zo'n beetje 10m2 ruimte neemt. Deze druivenplant / rank is al wel een aantal jaar oud.

Echt een dikke oogst 15kg. En dat is maar een deel. De rest hangt te hoog daar kan ik niet bij. Winkelwaarde schat ik op zo'n 100,-. En dan is dit nog iets gezonder dan biologisch. Helemaal zongerijpt en totaal geen gif.

Eigenlijk heb ik er niks aan gedaan. Zelfs snoeien niet gedaan. Alleen tijdens de echte droogte wel water gegeven.

Niks aangetast. Geen ziekte, geen beestjes. Ja, er zijn genoeg beestjes maar die storten zich op de appels en andere dingen.

Ze zijn alleen niet groot geworden, had misschien moeten uitdunnen. En ze zijn niet pitloos.

Als die klimaatverandering doorzet dan ga ik me verdiepen in wat er zoal in Zuid-Frankrijk of Noord-Italie groeit. Dat wordt de toekomst vrees ik.

reddit.com
u/3owi — 2 months ago

Art. 2 misconduct in NL

Here's another NL article; https://www.volkskrant.nl/columns-opinie/opinie-het-nederlandse-au-pair-systeem-beschermt-niet-meer-wat-het-belooft~ba5132a5/

Opinion: The Dutch au pair system no longer protects what it promises

If we take the au pair program seriously as a cultural exchange, as it was originally intended, then safety should not be an afterthought.

As one of the administrators of a large Facebook group about au pairs in the Netherlands, with approximately 57,000 members, I see every week that safety within the au pair system cannot be taken for granted. Au pairs report exploitation, non-payment, verbal abuse and intimidating behavior.

At the same time, I see that some agencies are significantly increasing their prices, while having insufficient knowledge of relevant legislation, such as privacy regulations.

Temporary

The Dutch au pair program is intended as a cultural exchange. For those who are less familiar with it: an au pair is a young person who temporarily lives with a family and helps with light household tasks and childcare, for a maximum of 30 hours per week. Most au pairs in the Netherlands come from countries such as the Philippines and Indonesia.

What makes the Netherlands unique is that commercial agencies are required to act as intermediaries between the host family and the au pair. Without such a recognized agency, it is not possible to obtain a visa; they arrange this through the IND and the relevant embassy. There are approximately fourteen of these agencies active. Host families generally pay between 3,000 and 4,000 euros for their services, while for au pairs it is usually free.

In theory, au pair agencies are intended to guarantee the quality and safety of the program. In practice, however, I see major differences in quality – and that is concerning.

One example: an au pair worked for a single father and, according to her, worked approximately 70 hours per week. The father regularly left the house for several days and left her alone with three children, including a child with autism. When she reported this, the agency told her that she had agreed to a “non-standard situation.” That is incorrect – the rules are clear: a maximum of 30 hours per week and no replacement of full parental care.

HIV test

In another situation, an au pair was required to take an HIV test simply because she had a boyfriend. She was also asked not to have ***. When she reported this to the agency, the first response she received was that it was “rather soon to have a boyfriend after three months” and that the host family’s concerns were understandable.

Recently, I spoke to an au pair who was standing on the street crying after being verbally abused and accused of theft by her host mother. She fled into a park and contacted the police. The agency she was registered with was based in the Philippines at the time and indicated that there was little they could do for her remotely in this acute situation. In another case, an agency’s emergency number was found to be unreachable over the weekend.

In both situations, immediate, effective support was lacking at the moment it was needed most.

“Lazy”

Another au pair described online how, after a quick rematch, she ended up with a new host family without having a complete picture of the history. She stated that both the agency and the host family had told her that the previous au pair was “lazy,” but that she later suspected she had never been given the full story. According to her, this led to a situation in which she was systematically verbally abused, humiliated and, in some cases, also subjected to racist treatment.

For example, she described how during her first week she was yelled at because she could not immediately find a stroller, and how small mistakes – such as cooking a dish for the first time or not knowing how a lock worked – escalated into verbal abuse and intimidating behavior. She indicated that this pattern of constant criticism and aggression ultimately took a heavy mental toll on her and made her feel unsafe within the family.

When she decided to leave, she claims she was accused of theft and did not receive her pocket money for several weeks. She also stated that the agency advised her to phrase her departure in a certain way, and that ultimately she did not feel supported at the moment when she needed it most.

No pocket money

These are not isolated incidents. They are recurring patterns that I see every week: reports that are not followed up, emergency numbers that are unreachable, complaints that are downplayed and au pairs who are insufficiently protected. There have even been reports of non-payment, in which au pairs do not receive pocket money, or are expected to pay for room and board – which is contrary to the rules.

At the same time, there are also agencies that do their work carefully and handle situations correctly. Precisely for that reason, it is important to critically examine the system as a whole, which currently makes enforcement difficult. For example, there is no central overview, host families can switch agencies, and au pairs can also register again through another party. That helps no one who participates in the program in good faith.

In addition, I see the relationship increasingly taking on the character of an employment relationship. Due to the bureaucracy and contractual approach, the program sometimes looks more like labor migration than cultural exchange – while that was never the intention. Supporters argue that agencies are necessary to maintain control, but practice shows that this control is fragmented and difficult to enforce.

Better oversight

My conviction is that the system needs to be revised. Not necessarily abolished, as has happened in Norway, for example, but fundamentally adapted. Fewer commercial incentives would be an important step in that direction. A structure that falls partly under or alongside the government – for example through the IND – could provide greater consistency, better oversight and lower costs for host families.

Think of a central reporting point, a 24/7 emergency number and a system in which serious misconduct is recorded. This would make it possible to identify and address structural problems in a timely manner. It is time to take a critical look at a system that was once established with good intentions, but in practice too often no longer delivers what it promises.

As long as commercial interests continue to play a central role, the protection of au pairs will remain under pressure. If we take the program seriously as a cultural exchange, then safety should not be an afterthought – but the foundation.

Please share this on as much social media platforms as possible!

u/3owi — 2 months ago

Nooit gezellige tuinfeestjes gehad

Ben ik de enige? Het is zaterdagavond en regelmatig zijn er dan feestjes in achtertuinen. Gewoon van die gezellige vriendengroepjes. Vaak jonge mensen. Beetje muziek erbij, lekker goedkoop en een hoop lol.

Zelf heb ik dat nooit gehad vroeger en ben altijd wel jaloers op die jongeren die het wel hebben. Het lijkt alsof het voor hun gewoon natuurlijk en makkelijk gaat.

Vooral dat ze zo zorgeloos lol hebben. Hebben ze er nou echt moeite voor gedaan om in zulke vriendengroepen te komen? Of is het gewoon mazzel en toeval om met een goeie persoonlijkheid te zijn geboren?

reddit.com
u/3owi — 2 months ago

New Tianamen protest footage from Nathalie Trouveroy

From the original article in Le Monde

Some youtube video; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PAacUPhhJU

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/video/2026/08/14/tiananmen-square-massacre-le-monde-reveals-unseen-footage-of-the-chinese-regime-s-violent-repression_6756518_4.html

Art historian Nathalie Trouveroy shared footage with Le Monde from her personal archives of the Tiananmen Square protests, shedding new light on how the Chinese regime violently repressed the student protests in June 1989.

u/3owi — 2 months ago

Auto welding helmet doesn't work in sun?

Just checked because there is a solar eclipse tomorrow.

I have the big window auto helmet with shade 13. (that is the minimum to watch the sun).

But it doesn't turn on when focusing on the sun....

reddit.com
u/3owi — 2 months ago