Brussels

(this was originally posted in !right_to_unplug ~~but for some reason it does not show up there~~ it’s there now.. just had a long delay)

In Brussels we are increasingly reaching a point where we can no longer talk to people face-to-face without technical hurdles and blockades. It’s clear why the Gang of Angry Elders are angry.

I simply entered a law office as a prospective customer. The door man said all visitors must register on the touchscreen tablet they had mounted on the desk, which made email and phone number a required field in order to advance to the next screen before submitting the registration. This is in Belgium, where the GDPR has a data minimisation protection in Article 5. You must surrender an email address (likely to a Microsoft user) as a precondition to sitting in the same room with someone.

Law offices, press offices, banks, and NGOs (some of which protect human rights) have put these security gatekeepers in their lobbies to prevent people talking to people. You ask to talk to someone and the response is always “do you have an appointment”? When the answer is “no”, they are helplessly incapable of making an appointment then and there. It’s a new level of human dysfunctionality.

Some Dexia branches have a very narrow time slot for people without appointments. You must get there early in hopes to get a queing position that does not get cut off at the end of the time slot.

The concept of a supplier that is subservient to the customer’s needs has been lost. It has flipped because too many boot-licking consumers are simply willing to be a doormat.

The persistence of CAPTCHAs proves this. If enough people were wise enough to refuse to solve CAPTCHAs, the CAPTCHAs would natrually be discontinued. But CAPTCHAs remain because too many boot-lickers are serving their corporate masters.

If you need to report a story or “blow a whistle” on something, any ideas where to go?

I went to a couple news outlets (e.g. RTBF) and they have a security gatekeeper forcing people to make appointments. The email addresses are generally Gmail addresses -- WTF? They seem to think their vanity address hides the fact that they force sensitive info through a dodgy surveillance advertiser.

They push webforms that are CAPTCHA-encumbered. I don’t do CAPTCHAs.

Is there a media outlet where people can just walk-in, with no appointment, and expose a story without having to go through some shitty or insecure process?

I hope no one pays €50 for a new flip phone from Aldi considering there are hundreds of 2nd-hand feature phones every Sunday morning at Mabru for around ~€2—5, and occasionally new ones for €10. Seems crazy Aldi can fetch €50.

Folks should be boycotting Aldi anyway, in support for a free unoccupied Palestine.

The fixed fees for electricity and gas are taking a big leap (17.5%). Not sure what happened but this is likely nowhere near inflation indexes.

In my case the fixed annual fees will be 16% of the total annual bill (over 2 months worth of the total annual bill). This flat fee/consumption ratio encourages consumption. There’s a point where it actually makes sense to buy electricity and gas from a neighbor. And we may be crossing that point.

The injection rate is ~2.7 €c/kWh, compared to ~16.5 €c/kWh that you pay them for the same quantity of energy. The goal with this immense spread as well as the high fixed annual fees seems to be to push people off grid.

• https://flatironbike.com/what-does-a-white-bicycle-mean/
• https://shunauto.com/article/what-does-a-white-bicycle-mean

It should really be more than just a symbol. Everytime a cyclist is killed, the gov should take these actions:

• increase all car costs across the board by 1% per dead cyclist. That is, cost of car registration, emissions tests, cost of public parking, license renewal fees, etc.
• convert streetside parking to a cycling path.. one unplanned rework per death. Planned improvements don’t count.
• cost of traffic fines increase by 1% per death.

That is what should happen.

I have seen this at least twice now.

(background: Instead of paying bPost the extortionate cost of €10 to deliver a letter and collect a signature, I personally deliver the letter and ask for a signature.)

Most recipients are honest and simply sign. But in at least 2 cases I have seen the recipient open the envelope and read the letter in front of me before deciding whether to sign. That’s off, no? These are not individuals. It’s businesses and agencies who I approach to make a signed delivery.

Since I am not bPost, the situation is murky and does not seem to be legally defined. So I can understand some hesitation with signing as some recipients are alienated by a non-bPost courier. In fact 3 or so businesses/agencies outright refuse to sign, effectively giving bPost a monopoly on recorded delivery.

At the same time, the entities that refuse to sign for non-bPost recorded deliveries will accept email from anyone, which has the same legal status as recorded delivery. (Indeed it’s a terrible idea to give a simple email that does not pass through a digital notary service that level of standard of evidence, but that’s another matter). Anyway, it amounts to another situation where analog/offline people get unequal adverse treatment.

English translation, emphasis added:

A joint operation of the BTI Team 8 and the Local Research Centre of the Brussels Police Capitale-Ixelles allowed to put hands on several alleged bicycles stolen during a check following a situation deemed suspect. Thanks to this intervention, some of the owners have already been found, but several bicycles are still waiting to be claimed by their legitimate owners. In the announcement that was posted on Facebook and that you will find at the bottom of this article, you will see all the bikes found.

If you recognize one of these bikes or think it might be yours, the police invite you to contact them quickly. Each bike is individually referenced and can be identified with specific details provided by the owner during the contact.

To report that one of these bikes belongs to you, contact the police via private message on their dedicated page "Vancingflic" by mentioning the reference of the advertisement and the number of the bike concerned. In order to check your legitimacy as the owner, specific details will be requested, such as the serial number, photos or any other element to prove that the bike belongs to you.

To protect your bicycles, consider registering them in databases like mybike.brussels, a Brussels-based initiative to facilitate the identification of stolen bicycles. The recording is to mark your bike with a unique number linked to your personal details. In the event of flight, it simplifies the procedures to recover it.

A commune newsletter also recently wrote:

(English translation, emphasis added)

What about THEFT?

If theft of your bike took place without violence or direct contact and if you do not know the author of the facts, the complaint to the police can be made online (my.police.be) or in a police station (taking an appointment in advance via polbruno.be). The bicycles found are listed on a Facebook page, managed by the Brussels Region, the police and the CyCLO asbl (f MyBike. brussels Bikes found). If you recognize your bike, follow the instructions to know who to contact and how to get it back.

(original French)

QUE FAIRE EN CAS DE VOL ?

Si le vol de votre vélo a eu lieu sans violence ou contact direct et si vous ne connaissez pas l’auteur des faits, le dépôt de plainte à la police peut se faire en ligne (my.police.be) ou dans un commis- sariat (en prenant rendez-vous au préalable via polbruno.be). Les vélos retrouvés sont recen- sés sur une page Facebook, gérée par la Région bruxelloise, la police et l’asbl CyCLO (f MyBike. brussels Vélos retrouvés). Si vous reconnaissez votre vélo, suivez les instructions pour savoir qui contacter et comment le récupérer.

I was out drinking with some Irish heavyweights. Learnt my lesson. I reached a point where I was unconscious on the curb while they were still seemingly 100%. They woke me up to say it was my round to buy another pitcher of Mojito or something (which I think was their way of winding down slowly). So I managed to get more down after that, unfortunately for the cab driver who later drove me.

The window was open, and so I was able to get most of the HCl out the window, down the door exterior. That’s better than upholstery. Cab driver was not happy. I think he demanded something like €30 or €50 to clean it up. I don’t recall, but I was able to haggle him down to €15 or 20. As plastered as I was, IANAL but the analytical law part of the brain triggered and functioned well enough that I could pitch my defense case like this:

• Did I sign a contract when I stepped in here agreeing to a vomit cleanup fee?
• Can you show me a placard on your dashboard disclosing a vomit cleanup fee?
• Most of it is on the outside of the door (just do a robotic car wash bro).. you just have a little on the inside of the door.
• It’s not the really chunky variety, FWIW.
• Will you take €15/20? (I forgot exactly what deal we struck but he seemed satisfied that he was at least getting some compensation)

Indeed after sobering up I realized I was the asshole. Or maybe we both were. IDK.. weird situation. On the one hand, vomit cleanup is not exactly a competitive marketplace. The driver has a monopoly and he can quote whatever crazy price he wants. OTOH, I had all the leverage because I’m basically just anonymous cash-paying street trash without motivation to buy additional services that I don’t need, and you can’t suck blood out of a rock.

In principle it should be me cleaning the car, but I was so dysfunctional.. struggling to walk, I probably couldn’t handle the job to any level of QA that would pass the next customer’s standards. If it weren’t 3am or whatever, we could have driven to a street corner where people just stand around looking for ad hoc work. Then maybe we could have gotten bids from everyone to clean the cab at a competitive market price.

Anyway, if you take a cab in Brussels and see a big loud and clear sign posted on the dash quoting a vomit cleanup fee or the driver requires an advance cleanup deposit, you might know the history.

This should really just be covered by insurance.. like getting a rock chip, no deductible.

Update

I just thought of another fun argument to make for the next time this happens:

A boss once told me: if I know that you are intoxicated when you sign my contract, the contract becomes unenforceable in Belgium.

So, when I step into a cab in a plastered state and there is later a negotiation, I can say “you must have known I was drunk as I stumbled around taking an indirect walking path to your cab and my speech is slurred -- therefore any contract express or implied is null and void.” (as if they are taking advantage of my bad state :)

bPost mailboxes throughout Brussels are littered with stickers and graffiti. They look abandoned. Some boxes have a placard that shows the last collection time of the day, and some do not. If they don’t have the placard, does that mean the box is out of service?

I also wonder how the abandoned ones could be of use. Maybe if you have a legal obligation to send something but you don’t want to, you could use one of these possibly abandoned boxes just to have a courtroom defense.

Neuhaus: €26/kg Lindt: €50/kg

The Neuhaus factory outlet’s best deal is 3kg for €78. The Lindt factory outlet in Aachen had prices so high I wonder if the prices are any better than Lidt’s retail shops. To be fair, I did not have time in the Lindt shop to look around for the best deal therein. I was in a hurry and just had to grab and go. But with a quick glance around I don’t think Lindt even had bulk amounts. The Lindt pricing is so high it seems to defy the concept of factory outlets.

Coffee-flavored chocolate was my focus and I found the Neuhaus chocolate to taste better than Lindt. So Neuhaus is a clear winner.

But the Neuhaus deal has worsened over the past ~10 yrs. It used to be irrefutably the best place to buy chocolate. IIRC, it was like €48 for 3kg. The price has apparently really outpaced inflation and yet the shop was ram-packed. It was of course better when the Neuhaus factory outlet was somewhat of a secret. Of course when the shop is popular and packed in with people, it makes sense to raise the prices.

At €26/kg (bulk only), I’m looking for better options than Neuhaus. I mean, grocery store chocolate starts at €10/kg and gets up to around €29/kg for the premium stuff. So non-bulk prices are now better than factory outlet bulk. Are there any other chocolate factory outlets within ~250 km of Brussels worth visiting?

What would be the best local chocolate for ~€18/kg or less? Colruyt has something called Ritter Duo bars (coffee flavored I think) for €16/kg.

(edit) I just popped into some arbitrary artisinal chocolate shop nowhere near tourist areas, and it was €120/kg.

(edit2) Prices are all over the place, but they seem to follow these ranges:

• €8—30/kg: grocery stores
• €26—50/kg: factory outlets (Neuhaus, Lindt)
• €?—80/kg: large scale retail brands (Galler, Pierre Marcolini, Leonidas)
• €70—150/kg: artisinal shops

An artisinal shop worker told me Corn au-Royal is really a cheap variation of Neuhaus.

For quite some time I would only do intercity travel on Flixbus because the train sites and BlaBlaCar websites are all either tor-hostile or broken in some other way (e.g. CAPTCHA or tons of 3rd party JS). Flixbus had a website that simply worked - even over Tor. Recently that changed. Flixbus is now tor-hostile. So my loyalty is gone as all options are essentially equally garbage.

Since the web is garbage, buying tickets (in fact buying anything) online is also inherently a shitshow.

So my question is: are there any physical shops in Brussels where BlaBlaCar bus tickets can be bought? Is there price variation between different sellers?

How are unbanked people and those with cashless bank accounts expected to pay lawyers if the money they have for the lawyer is in cash?

Why are lawyers of all people not trusted with cash? Can’t lawyers be disbarred if they do something dodgy?

I’m not sure when in 2025 the law takes effect - or if it’s already in effect - but there is a ban on installing solar panels if you have an analog meter. People who already had solar panels before 2025 and an analog meter are grandfathered in, but the grandfathering is only good until Sibelga forces you change to a digital electric meter (at which point you get a lousy price for injecting energy).

I heard if you want to install solar panels going forward, you are better off selling your energy to the neighbors than feeding the grid. Otherwise to feed the grid you must apply for green certificate which entails a process that includes replacing your meter with a digital one.

Added to the sidebar.

It’s probably not ideal to split a tiny community into even more tiny segments. There are of course decently sized active forums covering Belgium, but they are unworthy of mention because they only exist on large centralised freedom-compromising platforms (like lemmy world).

The best we can do is link the free world sister communities in the sidebar so people can crosspost and monitor the other decent venues.

Any leads for finding malt vinegar?

A spice shop called Misao has vinegar based on lambic beer, which would be worth trying if it weren’t so costly (€14 for a small bottle).

You might think the shop “Oil & Vinegar” would have it.. but no, only really exotic vinegars.

Are there any European cuisines that make use of malt vinegar apart from British? I thought searching for German specialty importer types of places might be worth a look but German cuisine somewhat surprisingly does not use malt vinegar.

Seems bizarre how Belgium has thousands or so beer breweries but none are taking the next step to make vinegar.

Some of the repair cafes in brussels:

• St.Josse? (called cafe repair /Brabant/), rue vert (1st Saturday of the month, small 1-person shop, also sells 2nd hand clothing)
• Ixelles (1st Sunday of the month, large but crowded)
• st.gilles (2nd Sunday of the month, large but crowded)
• Schaerbeek (2nd Sunday of the month)
• St.Josse, rue de liedekerke (3rd Wednesday of the month) -- dicey schedule.. often no one shows up.

There’s often a line at the large ones, which have ~6 or so repairers. The small one on rue vert is 1 person but so few people go there that there is a good chance you have no wait at all.

Some of these places do clothing repair as well. But the focus is small appliances and electronics.

It’s all donation based.

I always thought if you produce your own energy, you would need to upgrade to a bi-directional electric meter. The linked article gives interesting insight -- that consumers need not switch to a bi-directional meter.

IIUC, the figures are like this:

bi-directional meter: you receive ⅓ the price of energy you inject as the cost for consuming. (wtf? That seems terrible)

analog meter: your injection simply makes the old analog meter run in reverse. So I think you must get equal credit for energy you supply. But you must pay a flat ~~€50/year~~ (correction: €50 per kW per year) extra tax for that privilege.

~~Both scenarios seem a bit far from fair, but it seems like people with modern digital bi-directional meters really get screwed. Or am I missing something?~~

update: sorry, I thought I read flat €50/yr. It’s €50 per kW per year. So if you inject 1500 kWh/year, you pay €75,000? Can’t be. What’s wrong with my calculation here? Billing deals with kW hours, and the tax is based simply on kW (capacity). I’m not sure what a typical kW would be.

update 2: Actually there is no prosumer tariff in Brussels:

https://soltis.be/en/faq/what-is-the-prosumer-rate/

That makes it easy. So IIUC you get equal compensation for electricity injection in Brussels if you have an analog meter.

update 3: Heard a rumor that analog meters are being replaced with digital ones in all of Belgium eventually. Brussels is slow but it will happen. And when it does, people with the new digital meters will get screwed if they are injecting power into the grid. I’m somewhat wondering if Brussels is deliberately slow. Maybe they are waiting for more people to be enticed to install solar panels before they do the conversion.

Bait and switch.

update 4: some sources say digital meters will replace analog meters soon in Brussels. There is nothing good about this for consumers. Why people should resist this change:

• (unfairness) Digital meters will enable the electricity supplier to compensate consumers less for injection than they charge for consumption. Even though they are not using unfair pricing yet, the digital meter paves the way to make unfair pricing possible.
• (reduced availability) Digital meters enable Sibelga to remotely cut off the power to your house at the flip of a switch. People behind on their bills will lose power more easily.
• (surveillance?) I’m speculating here, but once the meter is digital it might enable the energy supplier to monitor the meter in realtime. This would enable them to (e.g.) know when someone is home, how many people, etc.

I see no advantages for the consumer w.r.t. digital meters. Maybe you won’t need to periodically let someone enter the house to read the meter anymore (not sure), but in any case it’s a bad trade-off.

Brusol’s deal seems almost too good to be true. They provide solar panels, insure them, install them on your roof, and maintain them for 30 years, all at no cost. The panels remain the property of Brusol for 30 years.

Any energy you use is free to you to the extent of the input energy. Essentially you give up roof space in exchange for some free energy. Seems like a good deal.

But of course I’m looking for how this can go bad. If you want to bring in batteries and take all the energy for yourself (e.g. to go off-grid), they charge €850 per panel. I heard that’s ten times the cost of a panel. Apparently they factor all their labor and overhead materials into that price.

Intermarché has a 1+1 promo on clips of Cubanisto (Tequila flavored beer). Then the 3 packs of beer themselves had 2+1 printed on the case.

There is no print to say the promos cannot be combined. So of course I expect to pay for 2 bottles and get 4 gratis. Other grocery stores work that way. If there is a promo of that discounts multiple clips and then there are also in-pack promos, you can end up buying fewer bottles than what they give for free.

In the case of Intermarché the register is a bit extra diligent and works out which promo is better then makes adjustments to ensure the promos are not combined.

I fixed the motor for my washing machine. All the components work fine now (motor, drain pump, water inlet valve). But the controller board is trapped in an error state because it does not know that I fixed the motor.

So I need to reset the PCB to clear the error. Beko refuses to tell me the special sequence of keys to reset the board. And I won’t pay them €200 (more than the value of the quite old machine) to send someone out to reset the board.

Buying a new PCB would likely fix the problem, but the parts dealers sell just about every part for my model except the PCB.

I need a junkyard that that allows people to remove parts. These seem non-existent in Brussels. I only found 2 trash points where large appliances go to die. I’ve been kicked out of them like half a dozen times now. It seems they pile the e-waste quite high, which causes more damage and creates a safety hazard (which would be part of why they kick people out). They seem to be breaking stuff down to its raw materals for melting down. I see no middle step in the process; no way for repairers to salvage the components they need.

So ultimately it looks like I will have to throw away a functional washing machine just because some bits on the circuit board are flipped the wrong way.

“In terms of cost, we estimate that – during over 13 years of its deployment – 819 million hours of human time has been spent on reCAPTCHA, which corresponds to at least $6.1 billion USD in wages. Traffic resulting from reCAPTCHA consumed 134 Petabytes of bandwidth, which translates into about 7.5 million kWhs of energy, corresponding to 7.5 million pounds of CO₂. In addition, Google has potentially profited $888 billion USD from cookies and $8.75-32.3 billion USD per each sale of their total labeled data set.”

Where else are people forced to solve a reCAPTCHA in the course of public administration or essential public transactions like utilities? We should make a list.

(edit) Those figures are for worldwide use of reCAPTCHA, not just Sibelga. I’m just calling out Sibelga for adding to the problem. Hope my thread title isn’t misleading.

I’m not talking about the telco landline phone booths that were probably around in the 1990s. I think it was ~5—10 years or so ago that there were many hole-in-the-wall convenience shops that had phone booths. I never used them but I’m not liking GSM voice prices so I wanted to try them out. I assume they are cheap voip lines.

But I cannot find any now. I saw 6 or so (what I think are) phone booths in a Ria money transfer shop, but they were taped off and out of use. Anyone know of any that still exist?

I found this but I think they are just talking about telco serviced phones:

https://www.thebulletin.be/public-phone-boxes-thing-past-belgium

As the world quietly and non-transparently removes the cash option, I try to keep an eye on whether I am a boiling frog in that pot.

Mutuals for healthcare do not accept cash payment for their administrative fees, and yet their service is mandatory. Though I wonder if the bPost cash payment service would work for this. I believe bPost’s service is restricted to only certain kinds of bills like utility bills.

Mutual staff told me if they need to reimburse a patient who gave them no bank info, they send a Belgian “circular cheque”. Many people erroneously believe cheques to be non-existent, even some bankers!

It’s a bit off because generally (in the commercial sector) when you pay for something using a certain payment instrument, any refunds should use the same payment instrument. If you paid cash, you should get cash back. If you paid by a bank card, the reimbursement should go back to that same card. It’s important for accounting and avoids shenanigans like a consumer asking the bank for a chargeback when the refund was already given through a different means.

Anyway, it’s understandable that a mutual would not have that degree of precision. But isn’t someone who is unbanked essentially screwed in this case? What can an unbanked person do with a Belgian circular cheque? In some countries they would in the very least be able to cash the cheque at the issuing bank. According to Belfius, a circular cheque cannot be cashed and must be deposited on an account. This seems to impose forced-banking, correct?

Product returns

BTW, I paid cash for something in a shop which I later returned. The shop was “incapable” of refunding cash and they insisted on reimbursing to a bank card. I could not work out how that could be legal. Consumers are entitled to refunds in certain situations, so if a merchant refuses a refund due to a consumer not having a bank account, they are essentially violating the consumer protection law, no?

As a test, I insisted on cash reimbursement. It was under €10 yet still a big hassle for them. Even though they had a cash register holding cash from inbound payments, they had to discuss with management in order to make an exception and reimburse cash.

Anyone see this before? I have only ever seen a cavity in the bottom near base where it balloons out. The top has always been solid edible flesh in every butternut squash I have worked with until this point.

(edit) I should mention that the street market is surprisingly fair. Prices tend to be lower on lower quality produce. Avacado pricing is all over the place, as is the qualty, which is hard to know in advance. But I’ve never felt ripped off on the avacados. It’s possible that the price of €2 per butternut squash factored in the reduced flesh. It’s just something to be aware of.

Of course it’s well-known that Belgians do not need a passport to move freely in the Schengen area +2 nearby countries, but I thought it was interesting that some overseas countries allow Belgian tourists without even a passport:

“3. Bilateral Agreements: Some non-European countries have bilateral agreements with Belgium allowing Belgian citizens to enter without a passport. For example, Belgian citizens can visit certain countries in South America and the Caribbean with just their their national ID cards.”

That was just a vague and incomplete blurb in the linked article. Does anyone have more details? Which parts of S.America?

This page also mentions Netherlands in the Americas, presumably the Dutch Caribbean. So then the question is, is just the Dutch regions of the Caribbean accessible without a passport, or rest of the Caribbean?

I also wonder: what if a Belgian re-enters Belgium from abroad, e.g. Africa, with just a national ID card. I that allowed? I mean, Belgium obviously recognises their own ID card and there’s no reason for citizens to need a stamp. So if they can re-enter Belgium on an ID card from the Caribbean, why not from anywhere?

🇦🇹 Austria
🇧🇬 Bulgaria
🇭🇷 Croatia
🇨🇾 Cyprus (non-Schengen; must show the card)
🇨🇿 Czech Republic
🇩🇰 Denmark
🇪🇪 Estonia
🇫🇮 Finland
🇫🇷 France (in Regions of France))
🇩🇪 Germany
🇬🇷 Greece
🇭🇺 Hungary
🇮🇸 Iceland (non-EU)
🇬🇧 Ireland (non-Schengen; must show the card)
🇮🇹 Italy
🇱🇻 Latvia
🇱🇮 Liechtenstein (non-EU)
🇱🇹 Lithuania
🇱🇺 Luxembourg
🇲🇹 Malta
🇳🇱 Netherlands
🇳🇴 Norway (non-EU)
🇵🇱 Poland
🇵🇹 Portugal
🇷🇴 Romania
🇸🇰 Slovakia
🇸🇮 Slovenia
🇪🇸 Spain
🇸🇪 Sweden
🇨🇭 Switzerland (non-EU)

^ That list is well published all over, but excludes S.America and the Caribbean. Can we get a complete list for Belgium?