Rene Beugie

Fix It First – A Forgotten Human Instinct When I was a boy, my father and I would sit at the kitchen table with a broken kettle or toaster between us. A small box of screwdrivers, a few spare parts, and patience — that was all we needed. He worked as a technical operator in a power plant, and at home, everything could be repaired. Not because we had to, but because it felt right. Fixing something was a form of respect — for the object, for the work that went into it, and for the quiet joy of making things whole again. Years later, I saw that same spirit in my mother-in-law. After living thirty years in the Netherlands, she returned to Mindelo, Cape Verde. When we visited her, she had a brand-new mixer sitting in its box. The old one had stopped working. My wife said, “Just use the new one.” Her mother shook her head: “No, no — first I have to repair this one.” In Cape Verde, almost everything has to be imported, so people repair out of necessity. But it’s more than that — it’s a way of life. Downstairs from her apartment, she rented out a small garage to a local workshop. There, a few men repaired and dismantled old cars. When I arrived, I brought them some leftover T-shirts from my old job — KONE and NedTrain printed on the front. They wore them proudly, like team colors. And I’ll never forget what I saw: they were panel beating a car using nothing but a few bricks, because they didn’t have the proper tools. Yet when they finished, the result was straighter and cleaner than what most body shops in Europe achieve with all their high-tech equipment. Those men were real craftsmen — artists of necessity. In the wealthy parts of the world, that spirit is fading. Our wages are high, spare parts are scarce, and products are designed to be sealed shut — unrepairable by design. It’s often cheaper to replace than to repair, and we call that “progress.” But to me, it feels like loss. When we throw away what could be fixed, we also throw away a part of ourselves — the patience, creativity, and quiet satisfaction that come from understanding how something works. That’s why the Right to Repair movement matters. It’s not just about saving money or reducing waste; it’s about reclaiming a human instinct — the will to mend, to care, to preserve. Machines once invited us to open them, to learn from them. Now they resist our hands, sealed with glue and warning labels. The more we lose that tactile relationship with the material world, the more we forget what resilience really means. Maybe repair is more than a technical act. Maybe it’s a philosophy — a way of saying thank you to the things that serve us, and to the people who taught us how to keep them alive a little longer. #RightToRepair #Craftsmanship #Sustainability #HumanInstinct #Mindelo #CapeVerde #PhilosophyOfWork #RepairCulture

The Death Spiral of Modern Systems Las Vegas is just a mirror. A city once built on chance, risk, and human emotion — now a perfectly optimized machine of extraction. It no longer sells freedom, only the illusion of it. You used to lose money at the tables; now you lose it in fees, taxes, and hidden costs. A $10 bottle of water, a $50 “resort fee”, and a smile that says: this is normal. But it’s not. It’s manipulation wrapped in marketing. They call it innovation. I call it fraud. Because when every part of life becomes a transaction, meaning dies. And when trust dies, the system begins to feed on itself. That’s the death spiral — each turn tighter, each lie thinner, until there’s nothing left to sell but the illusion itself. Vegas isn’t unique. It’s the prototype. Every industry that replaces honesty with optimization will follow the same path: from thrill to greed, from greed to decay. You can’t trick people forever. Once the magic fades, the lights will still shine — but no one will care to look. #Vegas #DeathSpiral #ModernEconomy #IllusionOfChoice #Trust #Decadence #Truth #Philosophy #Awakening

“Europe Without Borders — Please Wait, You Are Being Scanned” They said Europe would be without borders. That was the dream: no lines, no fences, just freedom and cooperation. But drive from Coevorden to Germany today, and you’ll find the dream politely waiting in line — somewhere between a scanner and a blue flashing light. You see, in modern Europe, borders don’t disappear. They just become smart. The old customs officer is gone, replaced by a machine that analyses your heat signature “for safety reasons.” The sign still says Welcome to Germany, but the message is clear: We’re watching you, just in case you’re not European enough. Meanwhile, politicians in Brussels write new rulebooks faster than migrants cross rivers. Germany says: We’ll send them back to where they came from. The Netherlands replies: But they didn’t come from here. And the EU mumbles something about “shared responsibility” while everyone quietly builds their own fence — made of paperwork this time. It’s not the borders that are the problem. It’s the illusion that we ever truly removed them. Because when rules replace relationships, trust becomes another document that needs a stamp. And in the end, the refugee — like water — simply flows to where resistance is lowest. Only now, Europe is too busy regulating the river to remember why people were crossing it in the first place. So yes, the dream of “one Europe” still exists — right behind that police van, third in line, waiting for permission to move forward. #Europe #Satire #Politics #Borders #Migration #Philosophy #Society #HumanCondition

The Illusion of Equality Before the Law We are told that we live in a state governed by law — that citizens and the state stand equal before it. But in reality, equality often exists only on paper. When a citizen faces the state, he quickly discovers that the scales of justice are not balanced but weighted by structure, habit, and institutional self-preservation. A police officer can detain you “for maintaining public order,” a term so vague it can stretch to cover almost anything. You may be calm, polite, and harmless — yet in that moment, the one wearing the uniform decides. You can protest, of course, but your protest will be recorded as “uncooperative.” You can later file a complaint, but by then, you’ve already lost your freedom, your time, and your peace of mind. Justice, when delayed, becomes a hollow concept. The system knows this. It is built not to be evil, but to be efficient — and in that efficiency, it defends itself first. If citizens too often won their cases, each victory would become a precedent, a ripple through the bureaucratic waters. It would invite others to question authority, to demand accountability, to ask why a free citizen needs permission to prove his freedom. And so, quietly, the system protects its own legitimacy. Errors are minimized, responsibility diluted, and the citizen’s truth gets buried under layers of procedure. It is not corruption in the cinematic sense. It is inertia — the deep instinct of power to preserve itself. The state cannot easily admit wrong, for that would expose its fallibility. A single admission of guilt threatens to become a seed of doubt, and doubt is dangerous in a society that runs on obedience. Yet this is precisely why awareness matters. To understand that the law is not the same as justice is not to reject the law, but to see it clearly. To recognize the limits of fairness is not to lose hope, but to act with wisdom. You cannot always win — but you can remain dignified, calm, and awake in the face of the machinery that would prefer you silent. True freedom does not begin when you are free to act. It begins when you remain free to think, even when you are told to obey.

💭 The Natural Flow of Markets (and Life) People love to sound smart when they say “arbitrage.” But in the end, it’s just trying to make money from the difference between two worlds — borrowing cheap in one place and hoping for a better deal somewhere else. Carry traders, hedge funds, yield farmers… they’re all chasing imbalance. And sure, they might win for a while. But every game that shifts value without creating it is a zero-sum game — someone always pays the bill. Usually, it’s the people who never even played. A truly free market doesn’t need all that noise. Its natural state is deflationary — prices drop as efficiency rises, quality improves as competition refines the process. That’s not a bug; it’s evolution. Nature does the same thing — less waste, more balance, no bailout needed. And when it comes to value… there’s no such thing as loss, only transformation. If you traded your Bitcoin for a house, you didn’t lose anything. You just turned digital scarcity into a home — warmth, shelter, life. Regret is a useless emotion. Do nothing, and the world keeps turning. Force it, and the balance breaks. That’s the quiet wisdom of both markets and the Dao — truth doesn’t need to perform; it simply is. #DeflationaryTruth #BitcoinPhilosophy #FreeMarket #NoRegret #DaoOfValue #NaturalBalance

The New Chains of Trade Empires no longer need armies to rule. They use money, markets, and manipulation. Australia sells wine, lobster, and iron ore — but behind every shipment sails a silent truth: dependence. When one buyer can dictate your tone, your economy is no longer free. Trade becomes obedience. Diplomacy becomes submission. France perfected this method long ago with the CFA franc, keeping parts of Africa chained to its central bank under the illusion of “stability.” When Burkina Faso resisted, factories “managed” by France were shut down — not for justice, but for control. China now plays the same tune on a global scale. Australia bends to keep the trade alive. Mongolia — landlocked and rich in minerals — faces the same quiet coercion: comply, or lose the only door to the world that China provides. No armies needed, just leverage. But before the West points fingers at Beijing, it should first look in the mirror. Through the IMF, the World Bank, and “development” programs, the same mechanisms of control persist — wrapped in diplomacy, debt, and fine print. South America knows this story well: loans that promise growth, but bind entire nations to endless repayment and foreign approval. Economic freedom traded for “financial stability.” The West lectures China about coercion while still using the same tools it condemns. You can’t warn others about chains when your own hands still hold the keys. Colonialism never died. It simply learned to smile behind a handshake and call itself “trade.” True sovereignty begins the moment a nation dares to say no — even if it costs them everything. #geopolitics #freedom #sovereignty #economy #truth #colonialism #Australia #China #Africa #Mongolia #SouthAmerica #IMF #WorldBank

The Green Lie — When the State Owns the Soil So I’m watching this “documentary” about farming in the Netherlands — and I’m honestly fuming. Did you know that 15% of all farmland here is owned by the state and the provinces? Fifteen percent! That’s not a free market anymore — that’s communism with a tax office. And what does the government do with that land? They lease it out — not to the most sustainable farmer, not to the one who heals the soil, but to the highest bidder. Because, of course, money smells better than manure. There was this ecological farmer in the film. For four years, he worked his ass off to restore poisoned soil — you know, the stuff sprayed dead by “conventional agriculture.” He brought life back to the earth, rebuilt fertility, biodiversity, the whole dream. And guess what? After four years, the land lease expired. The government auctioned it again. He got overbid — by a “normal” farmer who doesn’t farm ecologically at all. Why? Because that guy can produce more per acre, dump more chemicals, make more profit, and therefore pay higher rent. So the state, waving its green flags and chanting about “sustainability,” happily rents it to the one who will kill the soil again. The ecological farmer said it perfectly: “He didn’t do anything wrong. He was smart. I fixed the soil for free, and now he profits from it.” This is how the game works: You build value for nature. Someone else extracts it. The government cashes in and calls it climate policy. If that’s not absurd, I don’t know what is. It’s like watching someone steal your bike, repaint it green, and tell you it’s for the environment. And then — the cherry on top — the documentary ends with a beautiful shot: Happy farmers jumping in the field, smiling in the first sunlight of spring. Lush green meadows, birds singing, everything perfect... Except in the background, there’s a plane spraying pesticide mist across the horizon. A perfect postcard of Dutch hypocrisy. The green dream — sponsored by the Ministry of Irony. The truth? We don’t have a free market. We have a rigged game, run by bureaucrats pretending to be moral. They speak the language of sustainability but count only in euros. The state owns the soil. The farmer owns the risk. And nature — well, she gets to rent herself out to the highest bidder every two years. #TheGreenLie #DutchFarming #EcoHypocrisy #SystemFailure #FreedomNotControl #SoilIsLife #BitcoinFixesThis #MinistryOfIrony

The Collective Debt Illusion There’s something deeply paradoxical about the idea of eurobonds. A continent drowning in debt proposes to save itself… by borrowing more, together. It’s like a group of gamblers deciding that, if they all share one credit card, they’ll somehow become responsible adults. Politicians love this sort of idea because it sounds like unity — a symbol of European solidarity. But unity without responsibility is just a costume over decay. It’s not real cohesion; it’s the quiet merging of weakness, the dilution of accountability into a grey bureaucratic fog. When everyone owns the debt, no one truly owns the consequences. And that is precisely how systems rot from within — not through one grand failure, but through the slow erosion of responsibility, replaced by committees, slogans, and shared illusions. The truth is, Europe doesn’t need more shared debt. It needs shared discipline. It needs honesty about limits, scarcity, and the fact that wealth is not created by printing or pooling promises, but by work, trust, and time. But honesty doesn’t win elections, and limits don’t make for good headlines. So instead, we inflate, we postpone, we pretend. We rename the old disease — call it solidarity now — and swallow another dose of the same medicine that made us sick in the first place. The debt grows, the illusion holds, until one day it doesn’t. And when that day comes, when the system finally collapses under the weight of its own contradictions, some will say it was unforeseen. But it wasn’t. It was inevitable — written into the logic of our denial. So yes, let’s do it. Let’s issue the eurobonds, merge our debts, and share the illusion. Because sometimes the only way to expose a lie… is to let it fulfill itself. #Eurobonds #Satire #DebtIllusion #FinanceComedy #CollectiveMadness #ModernEconomy #SystemCollapse #PhilosophyOfMoney #BetOnBlack #TruthInIrony

🪶 On Cheating and the Extension of Being This morning, I sat down at my laptop to write an email to my manager. Just a simple, practical message. But as I began to form the sentences, that familiar feeling crept in — the sense that maybe I was doing something I shouldn’t. I asked ChatGPT to help me phrase it better. The content was mine, but the sentences became smoother, clearer. And suddenly I thought: am I cheating? That feeling didn’t come from the present moment. It was old. An echo of something planted in me long ago — the idea that what you do must be entirely your own. As if using a tool somehow diminishes the value of your own ability. My father learned to calculate using a slide rule. That was perfectly normal in his time — a tool to measure and compute with more precision. I learned with a Casio calculator in the 1980s. Those little electronic wonders, with their rubber buttons and glowing red displays. But in the first year of technical school, it was strictly forbidden. You had to do it in your head. Only later, when efficiency became a virtue, did it suddenly become acceptable. It shows how strange our relationship with progress is: first we declare it suspicious, then we call it natural. And every new generation grows up believing their way is the proper one. The truth is, every tool once began with the feeling of cheating. The slide rule, the calculator, the computer, the internet. And now ChatGPT. But none of these tools are deceivers of humanity — they are extensions of it. A slide rule extends the hand. A calculator extends the mind. ChatGPT extends the language. We don’t use these tools to inflate our egos, but to do something deeply human: to express ourselves more clearly. Not to pretend we know more, but to better reveal what we already know — only clearer, calmer, more balanced. Honesty isn’t found in avoiding tools, but in the intention behind their use. A person seeking to understand themselves may use a mirror. And a person seeking to communicate better may ask a digital partner to think along. Cheating? No. It’s honesty, finally. Because for the first time, we can truly say what we mean — without form getting in the way of meaning. #AI #ChatGPT #Technology #Humanity #Honesty #Reflection #Philosophy #Innovation #Tools #Progress #Authenticity #MindfulTech #Ethics #Evolution #ModernLife #Language #Expression #Creativity #DigitalAge #SelfReflection #Truth #Writing #AIandHumanity #ConsciousLiving

The Beam of Veldhoven – On the Illusion of Power and the Gravity of Knowledge There is a single beam of light in Veldhoven, the Netherlands, that quietly holds the modern world together. It isn’t political, religious, or philosophical — it’s literal. A laser beam. It etches circuits onto wafers of silicon so precisely that a single human hair would look like a mountain beside them. And without that beam, nothing digital would exist: no smartphones, no artificial intelligence, no self-driving cars, no cloud. That beam belongs to ASML, the only company on Earth capable of building EUV lithography machines. These machines are the lungs of the chip industry — they breathe light into matter. Every advanced chip, whether made by TSMC in Taiwan or Samsung in South Korea, begins with an act of light from a small Dutch village. 🔹 The House of Cards Called Progress The Magnificent Seven — NVIDIA, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Tesla — are celebrated as symbols of progress. But their entire existence rests on a single link: the ability of TSMC to keep producing chips. And TSMC, in turn, depends entirely on ASML’s light. If TSMC stops, the world stops. And if ASML breaks, the world goes dark. This is not an exaggeration; it’s a design flaw disguised as globalization. The West spent decades chasing efficiency and profit, outsourcing production to Asia while congratulating itself on being “innovative.” But when you outsource production, you also outsource knowledge — and, eventually, control. The United States didn’t lose chipmaking. It sold it. 🔹 The Illusion of Intellectual Property American companies still believe their power lies in intellectual property, the sacred vault of patents and design files. But every time TSMC manufactures a chip, it learns something that the original designer doesn’t know. How the material behaves. Where the tolerances lie. Which process steps produce fewer defects. Knowledge leaks — not through espionage, but through practice. The craftsman always surpasses the architect. So if one day TSMC decided, “We’re done producing for you,” no contract could stop it. You can sue a company, but not a country. And even if you could, you can’t litigate reality into existence. A chip that isn’t made simply doesn’t exist. 🔹 The Paradox of Power Washington knows this. That’s why it’s pouring billions into building new fabs in Arizona. But a factory is not a culture. You can import the machines, but not the mindset that runs them. You can copy the design, but not forty years of disciplined precision. The paradox is cruel: the only way to enforce control over your dependency is by destroying the very network that sustains you. An invasion of Taiwan, for instance, would vaporize the fabs the world depends on. A boycott would freeze the same companies that demand “sovereignty.” The producer now owns the master. The tool has outgrown the hand that forged it. 🔹 The Hidden Empire of Light It is poetic, really. For centuries, power was measured in territory, armies, and oil. Today, it’s measured in nanometers and wavelengths. Empires once fought over gold; now they compete for photons. And in the middle of it all stands ASML — a quiet Dutch company with no soldiers, no slogans, and no illusions of grandeur. Its light passes silently across the world, engraving the patterns of human ambition onto slivers of silicon. The beam of Veldhoven is both creation and dependence, both mastery and fragility. It is the light that powers the illusion of control. Perhaps that’s the lesson of our age: we’ve built a civilization on precision so delicate that one misaligned mirror could end it. And yet, we still believe we are in charge.

The Wave of Wealth – On Unity, Apparent Opposites, and the Eternal Dance of Balance People often say the world is getting poorer. But that isn’t true. The whole world can’t become poorer — it’s impossible. Poverty and wealth exist only by virtue of each other. They are communicating vessels within a single closed system. When twenty percent grow richer, eighty percent must grow poorer. That’s not an opinion — it’s physics. We often forget that money, like energy, never disappears. It only moves. What appears as profit in one place, dissolves as loss somewhere else. Economists call that a cycle. Nature calls it balance. And the Dao simply calls it the Way. Rich and poor are not enemies; they are two faces of the same whole. One cannot exist without the other. Just as day needs night to be day, and warmth draws its meaning from cold. The Catholic Church turned this into a battle: good versus evil, light versus darkness, God versus the devil. But in Daoist philosophy, that opposition is an illusion. Light does not drive out darkness — it emerges from it. Darkness is not the absence of light; it is its source. Balance is never perfect. The world is always in motion. Like the wave within the yin-yang symbol that endlessly turns from white to black, wealth too moves through society — sometimes more here, sometimes more there. The system isn’t sick when it moves; it’s alive. Yet we live in an age where people act as if wealth is a permanent possession, something that can be stored without consequence. But that’s impossible. Every gain that isn’t shared will eventually be reclaimed by reality. It’s not punishment — it’s a law of nature. You might call it the thermodynamics of the soul. The world of money is like a casino. The bigger the reward, the smaller the chance of winning. The higher something climbs, the harder it can fall. And that applies not only to stocks, but also to egos, empires, and civilizations. Wealth is not a number — it’s a wave. It comes, it goes, and it moves through us. Those who understand that no longer try to own the wave — they learn to ride it. #dao #yinyang #economy #casino

From VPN Bans to a Control Society When safety becomes the excuse for surveillance There’s a quiet shift happening in the Western world. Governments that once spoke the language of liberty are now speaking the language of safety. And somewhere along that path, safety became the justification for surveillance. The United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act is the latest example. While it doesn’t outright ban VPNs, political voices and media headlines have started framing them as a “loophole” that lets children bypass age-verification systems on adult sites. The proposed solution? Limit or even block VPN usage. It sounds noble: protect the children. But behind that slogan hides a deeper danger. Safety vs. Freedom A VPN (Virtual Private Network) is not a threat to children — it’s a tool for privacy, security, and free access to information. To demonize it is to mistake the symptom for the cause. The problem is not that VPNs exist; the problem is that we’re raising generations who aren’t being taught how to handle freedom. True safety is not created by walls, but by wisdom. You don’t protect a child by hiding the world from them — you protect them by teaching them how the world works. Every act of over-protection creates under-responsibility. And when that pattern spreads to adults, it builds a society that obeys before it understands. The Slippery Slope Once you start banning privacy tools “for safety,” the logic becomes endless. First VPNs. Then encrypted messaging. Then anonymous browsing. Then — inevitably — digital ID verification just to access a website. Imagine the absurdity: “Please log in with your government ID to continue to Pornhub.” Sorry, this is your third visit this week — your viewing limit has been reached. What begins as protection ends as permission — the state granting you the right to see, say, or think. And once the infrastructure of control is built, it never stays confined to its original purpose. History shows this pattern clearly: control expands until resistance becomes inconvenient. Education, Not Erasure There is a better way. Instead of banning privacy, we can educate for responsibility. Instead of outsourcing moral duty to algorithms, we can teach digital ethics at home and in schools. Instead of shaming privacy, we can normalize it — the same way we normalize locks on our doors or curtains on our windows. Because a free society is not one without risk. It’s one where people are trusted to navigate risk with awareness. The Final Thought We live in a peculiar age — an age where freedom is marketed as danger, and obedience is sold as virtue. The net is tightening, quietly and politely. Not through violence, but through terms of service. And the moment citizens accept surveillance as safety, there truly will be no way back. But consciousness cannot be banned. As long as there are people who choose to see, to question, and to teach the next generation how to think — not just how to comply — there is hope. Don’t ban the tool. Strengthen the human.

The Digital Twin — A Copy Without a Soul Somewhere between convenience and control, a quiet revolution is taking place. Governments and corporations are building what they call digital twins — virtual replicas of citizens, made of data, not flesh. They say it’s about efficiency, security, better service. But beneath that polished language hides a fundamental shift: you are no longer treated as a person, but as a profile. Your twin is made from fragments of your life — your payments, your medical files, your education, your browsing history, your travel patterns. Each piece seems harmless on its own. But together, they form a reflection so complete that the system no longer needs you. It only needs the data that behaves like you. And when questioned, officials will say, “No, we’re not storing you. We’re only storing information about your digital representation.” As if separating the map from the territory makes the surveillance disappear. But we know better. When decisions are made — about credit, about travel, about taxes, about trust — it’s your digital twin who stands trial first. If the algorithm misjudges, it’s not the twin who suffers. It’s you. They call it “progress”. They call it “smart governance”. But smart for whom? And to what end? A society that replaces people with profiles may become efficient, but it also becomes heartless. A twin without a soul cannot forgive, cannot understand context, cannot see the nuance between a mistake and a crime. It only knows patterns, probabilities, and flags of suspicion. And once that twin exists, it’s no longer you who controls it — it controls you. We are told it’s for our safety. But what kind of safety requires every citizen to be monitored, indexed, and pre-judged? True safety comes from trust, not tracking. A human being cannot be reduced to data without losing something essential — the invisible spark that makes you you. When we trade that for efficiency, we may gain speed, but we lose meaning. And in that loss, something sacred disappears — quietly, like a shadow that forgot where its light came from #digitalrwin #cbdc #spy

🎬 Classics with a Warface I like movies that do something to you — not just popcorn flicks, but films that hit you in the soul. Sure, I enjoy a good explosion, but it’s the quiet moments in between that turn a movie from good to masterpiece. Take The Matrix. No cape, no superpowers — just a guy behind a computer who suddenly tears open reality. Red pill, blue pill — I’d already swallowed both before it was trendy. Or Terminator 2. Arnold isn’t exactly Shakespeare, but he gets away with it. A machine that learns what love is, while we humans forgot long ago. And Sarah Connor — the mother of all mothers. Predator — pure testosterone with a soul. That helicopter scene: chewing tobacco, loud jokes, and brotherhood. You can almost smell the sweat. Then suddenly… silence. No macho left, just mud and fear. Dao in camouflage. Then there’s Alien — the mother of all tension. Ripley talking to Mother in the dim light — it’s like hearing the universe breathe. No screaming, no CGI, just existential dread done right. Full Metal Jacket deserves its spot too. “I bet you could suck a golf ball through a garden hose!” Vulgar, yes — but brilliant. Kubrick showed how language can break a person, and Private Joker proved you can still be human in a world that forgot how. And of course — Joker (2019). Not the comic villain, but the man beneath the mask. Arthur Fleck, laughing through pain, dancing down those stairs like a broken angel. Was it all real, or just in his head? Maybe it doesn’t matter — because in the end, the madness of one man might just be the sanity the world refused to see. Then there’s that one film you wish you could forget — SAW (Part 1). Two men chained in a bathroom, no escape. It’s not the horror that makes it great — it’s the silence. The realization that you’re trapped… not in a room, but in yourself. Raw, clever, and brutally honest. 2001: A Space Odyssey — a cosmic meditation. HAL 9000 calmly says, “I’m afraid I can’t do that.” Polite, logical, and terrifyingly human — the machine that surpasses us because we forgot what humanity means. These are films with soul — films with guts. Not made for likes or algorithms, but because someone had to tell that story. So yeah, give me a night with The Matrix, Terminator, Predator, Alien, Joker, or SAW. A bottle of water, a bit of silence, and maybe a wink to the humans we used to be. And if it gets intense? No worries. Sergeant Warface is present. 🎖️ And maybe that’s the real question these films still ask us today: What is real anymore? In a world of deepfakes, headlines, filters, and noise — perhaps truth isn’t what we see, but what we still feel #movie #real #fake #life

Cantinero Nights — and the Silence After the Music There was a time when my life moved to the rhythm of zouk and kizomba. It all started when my wife and I took salsa lessons before our wedding. We didn’t want the usual quickstep — we wanted something with soul. That search for rhythm led us to zouk, and soon, dancing became part of who we were. I wasn’t the best dancer, but I danced with heart. Over time, my passion for the music grew stronger than my steps. I began collecting songs, spending hours online looking for new tracks that made people move. One night, someone asked, “Why don’t you DJ?” And just like that, I found myself behind the decks — spinning the music I loved. My favorite place to play was Cantinero, a small bar tucked behind the Heineken brewery in Amsterdam. Up front, people ate tapas and laughed. But if you slipped past the kitchen, through a narrow passage, there was a secret back room — dim lights, warm air, a little chaos, and a lot of magic. It reminded me of Dirty Dancing — hidden, alive, real. There I stood, behind my Pioneer SL1200s, watching couples move as one — soft, slow, and connected. For a few hours every Sunday, life made sense. I didn’t do it for the money; the fifty euros I earned went straight into new CDs. It was never about profit — it was about the pulse of people, the energy in the room, and the feeling of belonging to something larger than myself. But like every rhythm, mine had a darker beat too. One night, I had an argument at home — I don’t even remember why. Probably the drinking; in those days, alcohol was the way I tried to drown what I couldn’t face. On the way to a gig in Utrecht, I stopped at a liquor store, bought a bottle of vodka, and went to play. I woke up in the hospital the next morning. That night ended my DJ career. Maybe it was already ending before that — but that was the final song. Still, when I think back to those Cantinero nights — the music, the sweat, the laughter, the secret little room behind the kitchen — I smile. It was real. It was alive. And even though I lost my way for a while, I learned something that still guides me today: The music ends, but the rhythm stays — if you learn to listen to the silence that follows #dance #Zouk #Kizomba

The Journey of Sound Last night, something stirred deep within me again. My wife and I went to see The Wanderer — a band I’ve listened to countless times in the car, but hearing them live is something else entirely. They don’t just play music; they create space. From the moment you step into that old theatre in Kampen, you feel it — the atmosphere changes. There’s no rush, no scanning of tickets, no tension. You simply walk in. They trust that if you’ve paid, you belong there. And somehow, that simple act of trust sets the tone for the whole evening. It’s how the world should be. They call it not a concert, but a journey. You’re invited to sing along if you feel moved to, or to close your eyes and just listen. Between songs, there’s no clapping, no noise, just silence — a living, breathing silence that allows the music to settle into your bones. And then… the cello begins. The moment her bow touches the strings, something happens inside me that I can’t explain. My nostrils tingle, my chest tightens, and tears rise without reason. It’s not sadness, nor joy — it’s something deeper. The cello vibrates at a frequency that feels like it’s made for the soul. It’s the sound of being human. They once played without the cellist, replacing it with a violin. Beautiful, yes — but it didn’t touch the same place. The violin sings to the mind; the cello speaks to the heart. It’s grounded, earthly, yet infinite. Last night, they said it themselves: “The cello is the instrument of the soul.” And I believe them. Every note feels like a prayer. Every pause, a breath. You don’t just hear The Wanderer — you travel with them. It’s not a performance; it’s communion. A shared space where everyone, knowingly or not, is searching for something real. And what moves me most is their humanity. They know my wife is ill, and they’ve told us that she’s always welcome — even if the show is sold out. That’s not business; that’s love. That’s the kind of world I still believe in. When I sit there, eyes closed, I feel a rare kind of stillness. The cello vibrates, the voices merge, and for a brief moment the walls between sound and silence disappear. There’s no stage, no audience — only presence. That’s why I go back every time. Not for entertainment, but for remembrance — to remember what it means to feel alive. #thewanderer #sound #soul #cello

“Cold Showers, Warm Hearts — and the Biology of Meaning” We spend billions searching for the cure to cancer, yet somehow forget the simplest medicine of all: being alive on purpose. Not surviving — living. With taste, with sweat, and, occasionally, with a scream in an ice bath. At a recent lecture on psychoneuroimmunology (PNI), the message was clear: the body doesn’t just respond to pills, but to purpose. A strong immune system is not only built in the lab — it’s built in the heart, the gut, and the stories we tell ourselves. It thrives on laughter, good food, shared effort, and the feeling that life still has something worth doing. When people have no purpose, their biology drifts. Inflammation becomes chronic, sleep becomes shallow, and the immune system starts acting like a bored teenager — distracted and moody. But give that same person a reason to get up, someone to care for, a garden to tend, or even a dream that sounds a little crazy, and something magical happens: their cells listen. The immune system straightens its back and says, “Alright, boss, we’ve got work to do.” Researchers now confirm what our grandmothers already knew: A walk with friends heals better than a pill taken alone. Singing in a choir can lower inflammation more than arguing on Twitter. And yes, purpose — that mysterious sense of “why” — can shrink tumors, or at least grow courage. So what’s the secret formula? It’s not hidden in a pharmaceutical vault. It’s in the simple rituals that make you human: Eat real food that makes you smile. Work your body until it remembers it’s alive. Breathe the cold air until it bites — and then laugh about it. Surround yourself with people who remind you why it’s all worth it. Because in the end, health is not the absence of disease — it’s the presence of meaning. So yes, go to the gym. Jump into that freezing lake with Wim Hof and a few mad friends. Cook something delicious. Make a mess. Live a life your immune system can believe in. #wimhof #cancer #eenzaamheid

Freedom on Prescription – How the System Decides Who Gets to Live Something is profoundly wrong in a world that claims to protect “freedom,” yet decides who may live — and who may not. We live inside a system that calls itself humane, but has traded every trace of humanity for protocols, insurance codes, and control. A system that says “We want to heal,” but truly means: “We want you to obey.” Those who refuse to march along the chemotherapy path, those who choose natural or alternative ways, suddenly lose their right to care. Doctors look away, clinics close their doors, and words like “responsibility” and “science” are used as smoke screens for fear and obedience. What was once a health system has become a belief system — and anyone who questions its doctrine is cast out as a heretic. The Hypocrisy of “Free Choice” We proudly proclaim that everyone is free to choose. But what does that freedom mean when the system determines the consequences of each choice? Freedom without consequence is an illusion — and it’s precisely this illusion that keeps people compliant. You are free, yes. But if you choose differently, you pull on a rope that leads to silence: no guidance, no help, no support, no coverage. Freedom ends where the system begins. And that system was never designed to heal people — only to sustain itself. The Price of Humanity A vitamin C infusion in Germany can cost hundreds of euros. Not because vitamin C is rare, but because the system that decides what counts as “healthcare” refuses to pay for anything that cannot be patented. There’s no profit in what works if no one can own it. So research stalls, people remain dependent, and the word “evidence” becomes a shield for power rather than a search for truth. The irony is that those defending the system wash their hands in innocence. “We just follow the guidelines,” they say. But who writes those guidelines? Who decides what is “medicine” and what is “alternative”? Who gave anyone the authority to define survival by the boundaries of corporate profit? The Power of Obedience Our healthcare system is a mirror of our society: built by humans, governed by fear. Fear of being wrong. Fear of liability. Fear of stepping outside what’s approved. And so doctors obey — not out of malice, but out of their own instinct to survive within a cage of rules. We, the citizens, the patients, the loved ones — we are the fuel of this machine. We complain about bureaucracy, yet still believe that “the rules are there for a reason.” We follow, because following is easier than feeling. And those who do feel, who dare to ask, who sense that another way might exist, are labeled as difficult, irrational, or naïve. The Real Disease The real disease of our time is not cancer, nor fear, nor ignorance. It is dehumanization. We have learned to obey rather than to understand. We have technology, but we’ve lost our soul. We measure everything, yet we no longer know what value means. We call it progress, but it smells like regression. And still… Beneath that thick layer of control and fear, something remains unpatented: humanity. Compassion. That quiet force of love that says: “I help you not because it’s allowed — but because it’s right.” That is the kind of healing no hospital provides, but every human carries within. Conclusion A society that claims to be free while deciding who gets to live is not a civilization — it’s a machine. A machine powered by obedience, profit, and fear. And as long as we keep feeding it, it will continue to grind people into numbers, protocols, and files. Freedom begins the moment someone dares to say: “No further.” Not with violence, but with awareness. Not with hate, but with truth. Because the greatest act of resistance in an inhuman system is, and always will be: to remain human.

Sick Cities: From the Bijlmer to The Line — How Humanity Lost Its Pulse In the 1960s, Amsterdam’s Bijlmermeer was hailed as a utopia. A perfect, modern vision of the future — light, air, and concrete order. It was meant to liberate people from chaos, but it became the opposite: a maze of isolation, crime, and decay. The failure wasn’t architectural; it was spiritual. The planners built apartments, but forgot to build belonging. Half a century later, we are repeating the same mistake — only bigger, glossier, and more digital. Projects like Forest City near Singapore, The Line in Saudi Arabia, and countless “eco-smart” utopias across the world promise paradise through design and data. They call it sustainability, but it’s really control wrapped in green glass. These cities are monuments to a sickness — a global fever that mistakes perfection for progress. Money flows into artificial islands and desert corridors while millions have nothing to eat. We engineer skylines, but not compassion. We optimize life, but forget to live. The Bijlmer was a warning: A city without soul collapses, no matter how rational it looks. But the lesson went unheard. Now we build whole nations like that — private states run by corporations, governed by algorithms, marketed as heaven. Humanity has outsourced its moral compass to profit and PR. We have concrete instead of community, innovation instead of empathy, and “smart cities” designed by people who have never walked barefoot on real earth. There’s a single word that captures this era — a word that’s half disgust, half despair: Sick. Sick of watching technology masquerade as wisdom. Sick of seeing empty skyscrapers rise while children go hungry. Sick of progress without humanity. Until we rediscover the pulse — the messy, imperfect heartbeat of real life — our cities will keep gleaming, our towers will keep rising, and our souls will keep dying. Sick. #power #system #ghosttown

🧰 From Mechanic to Parts Replacer — and from Machinist to Knob Turner Once upon a time, machines were alive. Back then, troubleshooting meant listening to a pump’s rhythm, smelling burnt insulation, and feeling if a relay was just a bit too warm. You could tell a cable’s mood just by looking at it. Today, that’s called wasted time. The modern technician doesn’t think — he scans. An error code tells him what’s broken, and he replaces a module. Done. No spark, no insight, no magic. And so, the mechanic slowly became a parts replacer — a man who knows his way around boxes, but not what’s inside. A technician proudly swaps a €400 module when the real problem was a three-cent layer of oxidation. “Time is money,” they say. But apparently, understanding has become too expensive. And it’s not just mechanics. The old-school machinist has been reborn as a train operator — a title better suited for an amusement park ride. The veterans who could feel the engine through their seat have been replaced by button-twisters with tablets. Where there used to be craftsmanship, there’s now firmware. Humans have become spectators to their own tools. Everything must be faster, safer, easier — and dumber. Fixing something can no longer be an art, because art can’t be measured — and therefore isn’t efficient. But there’s still hope. Some mechanics can still hear the difference between a bearing that spins and a bearing that complains. Some machinists still know that a train should rattle, and that silence is far more dangerous. Because a true mechanic knows — once you stop listening, that’s when the real trouble begins. #money #oldkills