u/henkiseentoffepeer

Obviously prices have skyrocketed for rent, which attracts a different group that can still pay it (900 for a student room, more than 2.5k for an apartment). Let that go on for 20 years and you basically have another city.

Even if all those people are still cool, they just have a more yuppie lifestyle. You're a Dutchy or an expat who works a lot at, say, Booking.com, to pay for your super expensive housing, go to a pretty decent bar or restaurant on the weekend, and fly home often. That's basically the yuppie lifestyle. No value judgment, but it's very different from a lifestyle of paying 200 for a student room and hanging out with your friends all day, growing pot in the basement and smoking it in Vondelpark, jamming some music, going to a new squat bar for a show. Just naming one thing out of old Amsterdam that would be practically impossible at today's rent prices.

Do that times 100,000 renters and you basically have a different culture.

Apart from that, there's another group I've noticed a lot more in the last 20 years, and I find them more intense: investors who jumped on the whole "Zuidas plus rising house prices" train, doing some kind of vague job investing in something, earning three times the Booking.com wage, and buying houses because they know prices will keep rising. Etc, etc, etc.

I see those people a lot more than 20 years ago. I think they're the ones the original Amsterdammers in the Jordaan complain about most, more than the yuppies described above, who are basically just expats who need to work a lot to pay rent. The investors are often somewhat older, in their 40s, and have way more money, most of it earned by not really doing anything.

And yes, luckily there's still 40 percent social housing, so it will never be only that. But the middle class might get squeezed out too. No idea, but at least I see some changes, among many others that get named more often: how De Pijp looks and feels compared to 20 or 30 years ago, the Centrum as a tourist theme park, squatting culture gone, Jordaan hipsterification, Zuidas, etc, etc.

wonder what era of the city you liked better and if there are some things you dislike right now?

it feels so much worse. and of course there are many reasons: trump, wars, russia invasion in ukrain, covid backlash, climate in europe atm,

just wonder how others feel....

H.J.A. Hoflandlezing door Sander Schimmelpenninck.
"De minderheid die zich meerderheid waant"

Voor iedereen die iets tegen fascisme heeft, is dit heel Ad Rem, en het lezen waard.

vbp-rdam-website-p01.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2026-05/hjahoflandlezing_sanderschimmelpenninck.pdf

zie ook:

https://www.bibliotheek.rotterdam.nl/nieuws/hoflandlezing-sander-schimmelpenninck

just curiious, because i hear very little debate, but there is a lot of money involved around it, and quite some controversies with the last metro

just wonder what people picture here. mainly pro? mainly con? somewhere in between? or very strong opinions?

---

if you are stil unsure here is some reading about it inclduing some facts. first two articles are in
EN:

2026: (NL Times): Budget for extending Amsterdam Noord-Zuid metro line to Schiphol up to €6 billion short

2018: (DutchAmsterdam) with quite some of the controversies around the last metro-line finished in 2016 )

NL:

2022: (Parool:) [opinie[ De gemiddelde Amsterdammer heeft weinig aan ‘gruwelijk dure’ verlengde Noord/Zuidlijn

2016: (NOS) Noord/Zuid lijn: het probleemkind dat Amsterdam ooit niet eens wilde.

so yeah, yesterday i walked in Delfste Hout. at the height of the camping, i went through the wooden gate to take the public path through the meadow, where the cows are. to the direction of the back of Ikea/mountainbike. i was just chill happy, it was early morning, venturing around the cows. it are like 20 of them, puberty age but still heavy.

they were curious and approached me, which was fine because usually cows are friendly, but they seemed annoyed at one point, severely understimulated and probaly overheated from the sun, and irritated by the many flies on their head. And so at one point there were many around me , and they started to headbutt me with the side and the front of their head. It was just a real threatening situation, because a cow that age is 500kg on average, and - for the nerds out there since this is Delft a cow this age at a small nudge delivers already 4000N, but a small charge and buckle can deliver around 20.000N at an area of about 0,15m2. thats a serious risk. a trained boxer knocking you out has a 4000N impact on 0.05m2, for reference.

They were doing exactly this. the risk after this is also that they are so enthousiatic they just trample over you. around me some cows where status jumping eachother, so mounting eachother doggystyle and dryfucking all of a sudden, which also looked way more agressive and domineering than any chill meadow of cows. - because they are so heavy and a real threat to humans by their weight - than my prior experience with cows.

anyway, i walked back facing them and keeping a safezone (can explain if anyone wants to know how) and got out of the fence i entered to alive and sound, but that was not ok.

so a primary warning to everyone. dont just go in there thinking that because there is a public path that is signed through there, that its safe. even as i tried to keep distance fro the cows yself, they were actively approaching me!

i am planning on writing some Delft representative in municipality to share this with. cow tramplng is a real threat with multiple deaths and many more injuries per year in NL, so.

p.s. they were curious but also maltreated, were in a huge field without much shade nor any trees in the second heat wave this year. had many infestive flies around their eyes (20-60 per cow) that is a known plague and sign of maltreatment. also very non diverse field, little to play with. and get fed power food on top of their grass diet, which makes them more on edge like overstimualted children.

i often hear its pretty hard for infj's to spot eachother. your own mirror image can be too familiar, you just gloss over it . something like that. ;)

I often -do spot INFJ's in the wild, and i always get really excited. yay kindred spirit!.
I dont approach usually btw. but sometimes is wonder if i should, just say a quick: "hey could it be that you are infj? "

wonder if other people here meet (other) infj's in the wild ?

please anyone can reply but please mention your type!

We are fucked. Historically, every major disruptive technology that could grow so fast due to financialization of the (evil) clas of venture Capitalists, (dot com crash , 2008 crisis etc) had this exact same cycle:

• Phase1, the boom: sky is the limit. Billions if not trillions are pumped in of VC money, which is partially our community money -penson funds, bank reserves, surpkusses in real community life. This is now--2027/2028
• Phase2: the bust: can't keep the mirage up forever. Everything collapses. Only the biggest AI players stay. -(which was the whole reason this zero sum -boom/bust race was there anyway. the survivors, the biggest immediately have a monopoly that way. And are too big too challenge. exactly how amazon or fb got big before. This happens probably right after trump is gone 2028. VC and society loses trillions of dollars overnight.
• Phase3: part1: boxing in and cheesegrating. now there is a debt, (probably going to be trillions I'd not 10s of trillions of dollars. ) and this debt should be earned back. By society to the VC, that is . Partially through austerity measurements by governments, partially be proces rising, partially be deflation of what your money is worth. This is the crisis feel, but it never passes. like stripped bare life more and more: culture gone from society, not being able to buy a drink on a hot day. Etc. .
• Phase3, part 2 is advertisements. This is how the dotcom bubble was payed back,this is how Facebook survived, this is how Google changed from ok search engine to SEO Advertisement adviser, , into the moloch its now. Change from what you actually did , to pretending you still do that while being a advertisent engine. AI will be no exception. I suspect ~2035 onwards

This scheme is so bad for all of Society, no-one wins, in fact all of Society loses a huge part of its shared wealth and prosperity, while it's flows up hugely towards a few big tech companies, It steals and burn through money of Society to become the biggest player for a few nih companies only. It's a scheme, and society and we as communities are the collateral in that.

Most of all: it's a colonization move- first dominating the market, let all alternatives fizzle out, then eclsong it and changing fronthe real product to a sponsored(Advertisement first) mechanism. A retirement scheme to earn back the money, This is exacclty how Google became big. .

It's horrible.

You can suspect Advertisement to steer your knowledge production, what and how you think, what you need. We are doomed. This dystopian. Thank you for listening to my Ted talk.