cr1895

Just something to keep in mind - the actual site of these wind farms is offshore in federal waters, and construction is subject to federal (as well as state) permits.

The vessel was flying under a Guyanese flag but was not registered there.

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/oil-tanker-seized-by-...

Probably not. It seems to have come as a surprise. They are not loitering - either the wave conditions did not allow for installation or they are in port for resupply.

That's a really neat project! Thanks for sharing.

>And with German lane discipline

The number of big trucks hanging out in the left lane in the US drives me mad...

>You have to constantly be 110% aware of every vehicle within 1/4 mile of you,

Not such a terrible thing honestly...

Personally, I find the lack of predictability on US interstates is much riskier. I'm pretty sure the accident statistics back this up too.

>US companies must pay out vacation time when employment terminates

Doesn't that depend on the state?

>Wages in America must be truly incredible for this to seem normal

They indeed are for a very small subset of people, who are overrepresented on this website.

I really don't think you can generalize that wages o/a are incredible in the US.

>but we promise

of course, who's to say that next quarter priorities of management or shareholders shift & those "promises" evaporate?

Personal experience - emigrating to the Netherlands after higher education is a well-defined and relatively easy process. After graduating you're able to apply for a "search year" residence permit which entitles you to residence and full access to the Dutch job market. (https://ind.nl/en/residence-permits/work/residence-permit-fo...)

Normally then you're able to get a "highly skilled migrant" permit (with less restrictive criteria than had you not studied in NL) which is renewable, then eventually after passing some language and integration tests and sufficient time you're eligible for long-term permanent residence (or even citizenship).

It's a refreshingly sane approach compared to the US.

>By requiring U.S.-built and registered ships, it guarantees high safety and quality, which is really important for complex operations like wind farms.

It certainly doesn't - there are enough "cowboy" US operators who are working far below the quality and safety standards which are practiced by European contractors. It's really a struggle sometimes to ensure that things are done properly and safely in the US. It's a practically new industry in the US and there is a lot of catching up to do.

>is the Jones Act really the thing standing in the way?

It obliges some pretty ridiculous transport and installation methodologies to construct wind farms that just don't exist anywhere else on the planet. This adds significant cost, complexity, and risk and makes US offshore wind farms more difficult and more expensive to build. So much hinges on contorded legal interpretations of what counts as a "coastwise point" and how that relates to "trade" between two of those points in the US.

In Europe, a specialized heavy lift crane ship or jack-up can sail into port and take on multiple foundations, transition pieces (the part between the foundation and turbine), or turbines and sail to the wind farm and install one after the other as fast as the weather permits. And to protect those foundations another specialized ship can come either before or after (or both) and place rock as efficient as possible. And a cable-lay vessel can come along and cut trenches and lay cable all with its own specialized subsea tooling. This is literal decades of development of best practice in terms of cost and efficiency.

In the US that's not possible.

The foreign heavy lift crane vessel can still do the lifting offshore - but, generally speaking, it can't go to port in the US and pick up anything to install offshore because, the US port is "coastwise point" A and the seabed offshore is point B and that counts as "coastwise transport." So that's where feeder barges come into play. The crane ship (or jack-up) sits offshore, more or less stationary (it's permitted to rotate, because that's technically not transport from point A to point B) and components are brought out by tug and barge. Not to mention the embarrasing physical state of & significant lack of fit-for-purpose cargo barges in the US...

The foreign cable lay vessel can still lay cable between two US points (there's an exception), but it can only make the trench to do so by "jetting" or "fluidizing" the soil because "cutting" or mechanically doing so would be dredging, and that's not allowed by any foreign vessels. If the soil conditions don't allow that, then a 2nd US-flagged vessel has to come. Huge cost increase, and again more complex, multi-stage operations.

The rock protection also gets a lot more complicated, depending whether it's US or non-US rock and depending on the foundation design needs to be installed before, or after, or both before & after the foundation itself is installed. It's a huge puzzle with potentially excessively expensive logistics.

All of this is possible & reality, but it's so much more complex, costly, and difficult. It's many more puzzle pieces to fit together accounting for tight supply chains, high weather risk & impact, and global competition where it's just a lot easier to do things elsewhere.

>At some point racing tech moves on and you need a newer frame for the latest and greatest stuff to fit.

Sure, but that's utterly irrelevant to daily commuter / city bikes, which Van Moof are.

Similar thing used to exist in the Netherlands. Think it's been gone for a decade now?

She also has a partner who’s working - I’m sure they live quite comfortably.

I don’t think that’s allowed in the EU - retailers must remedy or replace a broken product without cost to you.

https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/dealing-with-customers...

I’m truly puzzled why “Hey Siri tell me the temperature in this room” and “Hey Siri tell me the humidity in this room” is fine but “Hey Siri tell me the temperature and humidity in this room” might as well be gibberish.

To counter your anecdote with mine, I’m always shocked whenever I return to visit the US how expensive basic things like groceries and rent are. Much more so than the Netherlands.

This is complicated, and it’s insufficient just to state that everything in Europe is generally more expensive than in the US.

>Being agriculturally self sufficient is essential for any country.

This is nothing to do with Netherlands’ own food self-sufficiency.

> You can't claim by that stat that 90% of the fentanyl is brought in by American citizens through regulated ports of entry.

They quite literally did not make that claim.

After you scan all your items and click to pay, you get a “random” check notification and can’t pay until one of the employees comes over and scans a certain number of items in your bag.

It’s pretty frustrating and it used to happen quite infrequently.

Getting “gecontroleerd” in the self-checkout supermarkets in the Netherlands seems to be happening to me way more frequently than it ever did previously (sometimes every visit). I’ve never missed scanning an item, which is something as far as I understand used to be a flag for more frequent checks.

In the Netherlands private health insurance is obligatory but not tied to an employer, however employers can negotiate better group policy deals or compensate somehow. My last employer for example paid a bit extra for me to chose my own (was a salary line item) and my current actually pays for one directly. The basic insurance is all the same regardless of provider, but they vary on secondary benefits.

For me at least, this wouldn’t really be a deciding factor among competing job offers.

> Jesus Christ. Let me get this straight: you're saying the solution to medical expenses is "let old people die, they don't want to live anyway"?

That’s quite an uncharitable take, and plainly not what they meant to express.

>learn Danish to B2 level, just in case e.g. an accident to be able to call a police or an ambulance.

I don’t think Denmark is the best example here. English competency is _extremely_ high and Danish is quite a difficult language to grasp (as far as I know as an A2/B1 Swedish learner).

>As a European, US colleges/universities seem more like boarding schools. Here, no university would think that they have any business interfering with students' personal lives or anything they do outside a lecture hall, because they are considered adults.

Seconding this. It was quite a stark difference in university culture and expectations to me between US and NL.

>What happens when these people start to go home?

The US can very well be home for someone born elsewhere. It would be wrong to assume that those people are somehow just temporarily staying.

I’d imagine the group of foreign-born people who are in the US on time-limited or otherwise precarious visas is a lot smaller.

It’s not really comparable to Germany. Almost everywhere in NL accepts Maestro cards (PIN) or whatever (sometimes not even accepting cash). It’s specifically credit cards that are sometimes less useful.