The Amsterdam city council released plans to possibly move much of its infamous red light district into an indoor erotic complex with a hotel, sex club, theater, and cafes. From The Guardian:

Amsterdam’s mayor, Femke Halsema, has vowed to clean up the city’s red light district as her staff complain that throngs of tourists, often drunk and rowdy, “disrespected both prostitutes and residents”. Halsema also wants to fight a new trend, a “major increase in unlicensed underground prostitution” around the city centre’s Wallen area, near the central station, for centuries the haunt of sailors and sex workers...

“Sex work is a normal job and the idea is not to chase prostitution from the city,” the council said.

The erotic centre will not just cater to pleasures of the flesh but also house a beauty salon, a hair dresser and a tanning studio.

image credit: Bjarki Sigursveinsson (public domain) Read the rest

Amsterdam's Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica (AKA "The Ritman Library) houses more ths 25,000 occult texts, covering "Hermetics, Rosicrucians, Theosophy, alchemy, mysticism, Gnosis and Western Esotericism, Sufism, Kabbalah, Anthroposophy, Catharism, Freemasonry, Manichaeism, Judaica, the Grail, Esotericism, and comparative religion." Read the rest

A man with knife made a bomb threat at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam today, and was 'overpowered' and arrested by Dutch police. Departures and Arrivals in the airport's hall 3 were evacuated, but have since reopened.

Here's what happened. Read the rest

Frites, truffles and canals are awesome. Also doner kebab. Read the rest

The Smarter Bridge is a project led by Mix3d, which makes robotic 3D printers that can sinter stainless steel structures and inch their way along the surfaces as they are completed. Read the rest

Venice banned cruise ships, Mount Everest has traffic jams, and now even tourists are saying places like Amsterdam have too many tourists. It's all part of a problem dubbed overtourism. Read the rest

Gumshoe sneakers are made with rubber derived in part from gum chewed by residents of Amsterdam, made jointly with Gumdrop, whose gum recycling bins are used to collect feedstock for processes that create plastics and rubbers. Read the rest

Amsterdam's excellent American Book Center is now carrying my DIY science fiction short story collection, With a Little Help, in its inventory; they've got a print-on-demand machine that'll print and bind a copy in any of the four covers (they'll also ship within Europe and abroad). Read the rest