Erik of Hazelfield

You can get the vote numbers up without compulsory voting. In Sweden it’s been varying from 91.8% to 80.1% in the last 50 years. I think the main reason is that we make it ridiculously easy for people to vote. Every citizen gets a mail with the necessary voting card and info, but you can actually vote without it as long as you have an ID card, a driver’s license or a passport (nearly everyone has at least one of those). We send out information on all channels and make it possible to pre-vote in certain places weeks before. The election day is always on a Sunday so most people don’t work, the voting stations are staffed enough so that queues are usually nonexistent, and you can vote from something like 8 am to 9 pm. You really have to go out of your way to miss it.

Zelenskyy has visited Sweden today and has met with Sweden’s prime minister Kristersson. He’s eager to get Gripen fighter jets but Sweden’s airforce is so far claiming we need them for ourselves. Ukrainian pilots have been invited to train on Gripen though. According to some sources, the Gripen would be a good choice for Ukraine. It needs a shorter landing strip (600 meters for landing and 500 for takeoff) and has been designed for easy maintenance by a small, mobile crew. I hope it will be possible to send some.

Wait, what? No such party in Sweden last time I checked. Unless of course you mean the National Socialist Reformistic Party, which got exactly one vote in the latest election, almost certainly from the founder himself. As a comparison, the Donald Duck Party got 144 votes and the Evil Chicken Party got 39. I shit you not. Link in Swedish, official election results: https://resultat.val.se/val2022/slutlig/RD/rike

So today was the big day. Maybe not a huge surprise after having been together for almost five years, having a kid and having bought a house together… … but she said yes!

To sail on a sunny day in a good breeze To share a nice barbecue dinner with friends To make love to my woman To see the joy in my son’s face as he discovers something new in the world To talk for hours to my brother To gaze into the night sky and be overwhelmed by the beauty of the stars To die satisfied, knowing I really, truly lived

What exactly does absorption into the “liberal West” mean and how are the countries homogenised? I mean, last time I checked France, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Turkey and so on were pretty different from each other. You don’t have to give up your language, culture or traditions just because you join a military alliance. I have so many questions about this liberal empire. Being Swedish, I guess I’m part of it. Do I belong to one of the suppressed peoples of the empire or the ruling class? Where is this empire being ruled from anyway?

SpaceX and NASA do things differently. NASA has historically opted for very methodical calculations of each step to make sure nothing goes wrong while SpaceX has had more of a trial-and-error approach. They can do this because they do mostly unmanned launches and because they design everything with manufacturability in mind. And it works. I agree that Elon Musk is an asshole and a narcissist, but there’s no denying what SpaceX has done for the space industry. They will succeed to send people to Mars one day, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they did it in the next decade.

Yes, that’s more or less my take on it too. We were quite safe before and we’re quite safe now. The possibility that has been floated is that Russia could, probably as a strategic move in part of a larger conflict, launch a surprise attack on the island of Gotland. Gotland is right in the middle of the Baltic Sea so has great strategic importance. Given the lessons from the 2014 occupation of Crimea, it’s that it’s not so easy for the international community to respond to a fait accompli. A NATO membership could help in that regard, according to this theory. I don’t know.

As a Swede, the NATO membership comes with mixed feelings. It’s probably the right thing to do in terms of making Sweden safer. It also makes the Baltic countries safer, as it will further deter Russia from attacking them. Sweden doesn’t have the biggest army in Europe, but we do have a rather large and modern airforce with over 100 JAS Gripen fighter jets. We also have a small but modern fleet of stealth corvettes and submarines designed to operate in the Baltic Sea. Furthermore, we have rather advanced intelligence and anti-air systems. All this is good news for NATO’s capability of repelling attacks in the Baltic Sea region. But while it does feel good to be part of this alliance to defend Europe, there are also drawbacks with a NATO membership. First of all, the diplomatic games leading to this decision have been absolutely awful, with the Quran burnings, lifted export restrictions of weapons to Turkey, throwing Kurds under the bus etc. Now it culminated with Sweden promising to assist Turkey with their EU membership application, which is of course an utterly empty promise because Turkey are very very far from fulfilling the democratic and economic standards of membership and they’re going in the wrong direction too. To have them lecturing us on human rights and freedom of speech is pretty rich. Second, the one-percent goal (military spending part of GDP) is perhaps necessary, but a necessary evil. Of all spending, military spending is among the most wasteful and I’d much rather we could use that money for education, healthcare or other useful stuff. Arms races are tragedies like that. And right now, ironically, the threat of a Russian invasion of Sweden is likely lower than in a long time now that the Russian army is in shambles as well as tied up in Ukraine. But it became an internal political prestige issue for this government to successfully enter NATO, so it had to be done quickly. The drawn out process has been embarrassing for all involved parts, including Sweden, Turkey, Hungary, the US and NATO itself. In the end I think Erdogan just realised that everyone was getting tired and that further obstruction wouldn’t give him any more perks than he already got.

I must say I appreciate some of butterweedstrover’s posts, not because I agree with them, but because I find them fascinating. I have a hunch they actually do offer some insight into how the Russian mind works. The idea that Russia is an empire and needs to fight and dominate in order to keep existing as a nation is certainly interesting. If the Russians themselves believe this then it would explain a lot. Anyway - what butterweedstrover gets wrong is “Western imperialism “. The desire to protect Ukraine doesn’t have anything to do with imperialism. It has several other reasons though: 1) Preservation of a world governed by international laws rather than military power. You solve political and territorial disputes through diplomacy, not warfare. That route leads only to pain and suffering. Europe knows this very well. 2) Defence of a democracy versus a dictatorship. The “West” (if there is such a thing) likes democracy and considers it worth defending. Ukraine, for all its corruption, nazis (that do exist even if they’re not in charge) and myriad of other problems, does have a democratically elected parliament and president. 3) A desire to weaken Russia. Yes, this is a reason for supporting Ukraine, but not for the reason you think. It comes from fear and weariness of the Russian threat. Finland, the Baltics, Poland and the Czech Republic are among the strongest supporters of Ukraine. Guess why? Because they were all relatively recently invaded by Russia or the Soviet Union. If we can support Ukraine, they can make the world a safer place for all of us.

What are the problems involved in that? The record for staying in space is 437 days, by cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov on the Russian space station Mir. A quick search says a Mars journey takes seven months so a round trip would be on the same order of magnitude as has already been achieved. I’m likely missing something here so please enlighten me!

It’s far older than that. It’s been attributed to Winston Churchill but even Machiavelli wrote it 500 years ago and it may not have been new then.

The idea that it was Ukraine who blew up the dam is Russian propaganda. Please don’t spread it. Russia has been in control of the dam for a long time now and had likely prepared it with many tons of explosives, just for this purpose. It’s not unintentional. They even increased the water level of the dam to a record of 17 meters in order to maximize the effect. This is a severe human and environmental disaster, but it will slow down the Ukrainian counter offensive for three reasons. The first is that it prevents Ukraine from using the dam bridge to cross the Dnipro, the second is that it will drown a lot of land on the left (i.e. Eastern) side of the river, making it muddy for weeks or months making it harder to move there, and the third is to keep the Ukrainian government busy with the evacuation and catastrophe response so that they can spend less time on the offensive.

That’s very unfortunate. I’m not a fan of Elon Musk anymore, but I do think the mission of SpaceX is an inspiring one. The question is if the usual modus operandi of SpaceX (trial and error) is really compatible with rockets of this size. It’s certainly a failure to misjudge the blast impact the way they did (unless you take the more sinister interpretation that they knew about the risks and lied about them). I guess this will delay further testing by a long time.

What further makes the NATO expansion argument bullshit is that NATO is, by design, a defensive alliance. It’s not a WW1-style military alliance where every member needs to join in on a war of aggression from one of its allies. If, say, Finland would want to retake former territory from Russia and launched an attack - utterly improbable in itself - then not a single NATO country would be compelled by the NATO rules to join them (and none would, for that matter). So I fail to see how Russia could feel threatened by the NATO expansion, as they claim. It’s like complaining that your neighbours lock their front door, saying it threatens the security of the neighbourhood. It makes complete sense from another perspective though, and that is that Russia wants their “sphere of influence”. In practice it means that they want to be able to bully their neighbours, dictate what they can and cannot do, and threaten them with war if they don’t agree. If Russia don’t want NATO to expand, maybe they should ask themselves why countries want to join.

Ok, so I slipped pretty badly the second half of the pandemic as my girlfriend was pregnant and I didn’t want to go to the gym and get Covid. And then of course our son was born and between all the sleepless nights, diaper changes and us moving to a new house, there just wasn’t enough time to exercise or energy to watch my diet. Add Christmas on that, with all the food and sweets. Now the result is in: 92.9 kg (205 lbs). That’s a 10 kg gain over the course of less than 2 years. This has to stop now. Yesterday I signed up for a membership of the local gym and today I started counting calories again. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep it up, but I got to do something.

Something I’ve learned in my career is that it’s almost always possible to change stuff for the better of you speak to your boss. Drowning in work? Ask them to prioritise your tasks. A function or team of the company that never delivers? Bring it up. Give concrete examples. Small things like this rarely make a bad situation perfect overnight, but it can help. The caveat is that you have to do your part. If you get some priorities, make sure to really finish them. If your manager doesn’t listen or care - that’s your cue to look for a new job.

Very likely. I have the same approach - when speaking English, I pronounce my name as the English “Eric”. No point in trying to push a pronunciation that no one can manage. The way I see it, I have an English name in much the same way as the pope is called Francis or Franciskus or Francisco depending on country. Did you ever cover the practice of translating royal names? That could be fun.

I wouldn’t say the Swedish way of pronouncing Annika rhymes with Monica. It’s closer to Anne-Icka but it’s not really that either. The Swedish short “a” just doesn’t exist in the English language. At the beginning of this clip (00:09) you’ll hear it: Cool to hear about the impact she had on US girls’ names. I don’t think most Swedes understand just how big she was.

I have a new favourite, from Dune: In the film, I think it was shortened to “judge a man by what he hates” or something like that. The more I think about it, the more I realise how true it is. What do you hate? Racism? Imperialism? Slavery? Gays? Libtards? It really does tell you loads about a person.

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” - Anne Frank

Slowly getting back on track with the training. I haven’t gone to the gym since before the pandemic and a few weeks ago I was probably in my worst shape ever. Could hardly run 3 k without stopping and feeling weak in general. I decided enough is enough. I don’t want to feel that way. Also with everyone in the household finally fully vaccinated I have no more excuses to avoid the gym. I’ve now done 5 or 6 different sessions over the past two weeks, from swimming to spinning and running, and I’ve also started biking to work again after having worked from home for 1 1/2 years. I think it’s already having an effect, though that might be imagination. I do feel better though, and I realise how much I’ve missed the exercise. It’s fun!

I'm from Sweden. Have lived in Stockholm nearly all my life.

On the other hand, they actually did give the prize to Tranströmer last year, long after people had given up on him ever getting it. The campaign for Tranströmer in Sweden was beyond ridiculous. Every October on a certain Thursday the journalists would gather outside his home at lunchtime to be first in place if he was awarded the prize. I wouldn't be surprized if they eventually gave the prize to Roth, just to spite everyone who thought they'd never do it.

I have an idea. Replace the system with two buttons: "I agree" and "I disagree". The post then gets a little addition where it says "5 people agree with this post". This doesn't affect reputation and has no limit, other than that you can only agree with a post once. This feature would serve the purpose of simply agreeing or disagreeing with people without having to post anything yourself. As far as reputation is concerned, I don't care much about it. If it can get more people to post Goodkind parodies and barbarian fiction mockery though, I'm all for it. Perhaps another button saying "thank you for this awesome post"?