Live. Presence not required at the College Tour

On a beautiful Pentecost day…

You know, it’s really annoying to have to constantly read snarling tweets, angry emails, and hateful comments about yourself or your work. Most of the time, everything is thoughtless, stupid and biased. Sometimes they get under your skin. Sometimes it comes very close. Some days you are more sensitive to it than others. And whoever the person is, no one is immune when moody people see your expressions or behavior as reason for a little verbal aggression. But on a free and open internet in a ditto country, this is part of it, inevitable and insurmountable. In order for you to learn to deal with it, learn to let it escape you or, if possible, to isolate yourself from it. Real threats aside, it’s not impossible. Not even very difficult. But it seems that many politicians and journalists cannot accept or want to understand this. Something about power, ego, position, or maybe privilege. So you see them complaining more and more often, louder and more sentimentally or even flirting with (online) bullying and threats. This elicits little sympathy, especially with people who think they are right to pick on you. You reward them by whining. You also challenge new callers, screamers and all threats to drop a pretty penny into the (digital) barrel organ. Don’t feed the trolls, that’s why we always said. But yes. It was in the past, and they don’t learn that Kaag’s diplomatic class or at College Tour. Here at 8:30 p.m., but there is no (online) presence requirement. For emperors without clothes (Summer) are now too often behind the curtain of your vinexpas stand (Refresh).

Television, the barrel organ of self-satisfaction

Social

“I keep repeating it: Mediahuis, Roularta and DPG Media, owned by three wealthy Flemish families, have a monopoly on almost all newspapers and magazines in the Netherlands and Belgium. The noses all point in the same direction. Whether it’s the blessings of awakening, transgender madness, the European Union, Ukraine, vaccinations, migration, the blessings of Islam, the climate or the “extreme right”: nowhere in the mainstream media do you read a dissenting sound, and certainly not among daily columnists and opinion makers.”

Sunday night. Nice game of Risk