For those curious:

The book is Entangled Life - How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures

Hehe, I’m still not convinced, but perhaps I could give it a try. Thanks for the inspiration though!

Whoa whoa whoa… Are you like very, very sure you made a toasted ham and cheese sandwich with… Suikerbrood? I’m 100% sure no Dutch person ever would dare to even think about abusing suikerbrood for that…

Source: I’m Dutch

Exactly! Dutch dunes are mostly natural: beach sand is blown onto the land and started to pile up, eventually forming dunes. Even in the places where there are buildings facing the sea, they are at least 100(‘s) meters away from the coastline.

The man-made dikes are much more than just a pile of sand. To quote wikipedia:

Artificial levees require substantial engineering. Their surface must be protected from erosion, so they are planted with vegetation such as Bermuda grass in order to bind the earth together. On the land side of high levees, a low terrace of earth known as a banquette is usually added as another anti-erosion measure. On the river side, erosion from strong waves or currents presents an even greater threat to the integrity of the levee. The effects of erosion are countered by planting suitable vegetation or installing stones, boulders, weighted matting, or concrete revetments. Separate ditches or drainage tiles are constructed to ensure that the foundation does not become waterlogged.

Source

You should give Home Assistant a go! It’s an open-source Home automation platform, managing all your smart home device from a single place. Being open source, it supports almost everything out there, and anything that is not supported out of the box is provided by the community.

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