Since we are talking about shithouses in Norway and international politics, I should mention as a Frenchman the existence of French toilets with the colours of the French flags and the France national motto displayed on top. In front of the Norwegian parliament in Oslo.
It's also the colours of the Norwegian flag (as well as the US flag). I think the flag is quite literally coloured by the time when the flag was created (1820s, post French revolution).
Really loving such responses to POTUS, I hope they don't spend too much of our tax money on addressing his childishness though, although, in PR this probably has good ROI :)
I'm new to HN. Does it always get like this before US elections?
I was really enjoying the apolitical vibes, but then that all went off a cliff about two weeks ago. Hard to tell if it's astroturfing or if it's just on people's minds.
Because the us government leaders have become extreme and have also taken drastic steps that effect the economy in bad ways, people naturally post more on this in more places since often people only start caring and talking about things when it effects them economically
I'm surprised you've had an apolitical experience up until two weeks ago. HN has always had politics creep onto the front page, less so during the off-season, but still pretty present IME. Especially prevalent over the last two years. Lots of side conversation bickering in random threads.
It's definitely been increasing compared to what it used to be, but this may also be natural consequence of the fact that big tech itself has become much more "political". It didn't use to be the case that the owners and managers of technology corporations displayed their political preferences quite so brazenly (in the case of Elon Musk, even to the point of taking on a leading government position).
Of course, corporations have always had policy preferences, but those tended to be mostly about taxation and regulation, where debate is less emotionally charged, and compromise is more achievable. These days, though, it seems that tech and political culture have become almost inextricably linked.
I'm increasingly convinced that awful public restrooms are mostly a North America thing. Travelling in Iceland a few years ago I was shocked at how nice the restrooms at the major gas stations were (N1 stands out). Full-height doors and stall walls, meticulous cleanliness, no weird smells.
At a gas station off the ring road in the middle of nowhere.
> 1. The original and locally preferred view is that Iceland, Finland, Faroe Islands, and Greenland are all countries considered to be part of the Nordics, but not technically part of Scandinavia (which would only be Sweden, Norway and Denmark in this case).
> 2. The international and more commonly preferred view is that the Faroe Islands, Finland and Iceland are part of both Scandinavia and the Nordics, leaving Greenland as the only non-Scandinavian country in the Nordics (along with the Norwegian territories of Svalbard, Jan Mayen and Bouvet Island).
I don't think it the more common perspective outside of Scandinavia either. It is common, but lots of people from outside the Nordics are perfectly aware that it annoys us.
In the Nordics the terms are not just "preferred" but unambiguously used this way.
The word I used, "Scandinavian", can be used both to mean "part of the Scandinavian peninsula" and "part of or relating to the culture originating on the Scandinavian peninsula". Calling Iceland Scandinavian easily satisfies the second definition.
You're right, in that Scandinavia is a peninsula and Iceland being a far off island is not part of it.
English is a weird and inexact language where there are a lot of different things words can mean. Seizing upon a single obviously-incorrect definition is not the whole story.
I'm sorry this bothers you; however I fear that you face the same battle as would a German trying to get Americans to call their country "Deutschland" instead of "Germany".
The term Scandinavia includes Denmark, which is not on the peninsula.
The use to include any country other than Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, is something that will tend to really annoy Scandinavians, as we're generally consistent in that use and it's foreigners trying to tell is what names to use for ourselves.
It may be a losing battle, but it's not one we'll give up on.
In Scandinavia or categorically always includes Denmark.
Only English speakers ignorant of the history of Scandinavia sometimes excludes it.
Tjere is no English language authority that has any business redefining what Scandinavia means at all. It's just insulting when English speakers believe they get to decide to redefine the names of regions that don't belong to them. It's rude.
> Tjere[sic] is no English language authority that has any business redefining what Scandinavia means at all.
Right, and none exists.
> In Scandinavia or categorically always includes Denmark.
> Only English speakers ignorant of the history of Scandinavia sometimes excludes it.
These two sentences are contradictory.
Maybe this is a translation error for you where what you mean when you say "Scandinavia" and what others mean when they say "Scandinavia" don't match up, and this upsets you?
Like I said above; what you're doing is tantamount to a German fighting to get English speakers to call their country "Deutschland". Who are we to redefine them as "Germany"? The difference here being that the English word in the "Scandinavia" case actually does have a slightly different meaning than your own native word, but this is upsetting to you because unlike with "Deutschland" it is pronounced the same.
"Scandinavia" is an English word as well despite its resemblance to words in your native tongue. Who are you to tell English speakers what their own language means?
As an English speaker, just stop you're embarrassing us. You didn't know Scandinavian meant what it does. That's ok, just learn. Don't make it like nonplussed, where Americans gave it a new meaning out of stubborn ignorance, just learn
> Don't make it like nonplussed, where Americans gave it a new meaning out of stubborn ignorance
I do believe you are mistaking how the English language works for stubborn ignorance.
There are many dialects of English, and the way I speak mine doesn't change how you speak yours.
It's very colonial of you to think that your way of doing things is the best and must be forcibly pressed upon others. That you feel embarrassed by the (correct!) use of a word in a different dialect means you have some work to do on yourself.
I wish Americans would stop conflating some small part of Europe with the entirety of Europe. Scandinavia is of course within Europe, btw. Things may be handled vastly different depending on where you are in Europe. One small part of it does not define the rest of Europe. This is why you can't really compare "the EU" to "the USA" (Norway, while being part of Europe, is outside the EU btw). Not directly, anyway. Maybe some day, Europe will be much more homogeneous, but for now it's a pretty culturally, politically and economically diverse continent. Some European countries have epic public toilets. Others, not at all. It all depends on which country or culture you visit.
My conflation comes from the fact that in Canada, you're almost guaranteed to have terrible washrooms at gas stations (and frankly, in most public venues outside of really nice hotels and restos) coast to coast to coast.
A washroom at at an Irving in rural New Brunswick will have the same weird smells and nonspecific grossness as a Petro in North Vancouver.
Granted, I also haven't visited most of Europe since being a kid, though at that time I remember a few Orlans in Poland and Elfs and Mobils in France having a much cleaner vibe than the gas stations back home.
Gas station restrooms in Germany are possibly bearable, but annoying since you need to ask for keys - I have used them about twice in 25 years of driving. Autobahn restrooms are either pretty disgusting or paid.
Awful everything is an American thing. We are cheap and boring in the name of lining some rich wackos pockets. It’s pathetic how gross most of the bathrooms are at national and state parks. These are the Crown Jewels of outdoor areas and we have disgusting, under maintenanced toilets with single ply (if you’re lucky).
> I'm increasingly convinced that awful public restrooms are mostly a North America thing.
There used to be a fairly robust rest stop program here, but it's been basically replaced by exits with large gas station chains and fast food.
US and Norway seem to have roughly the same number of government rest stops per mile, not including the more common "commercial exit" I guess you could call it.
Isn't this a private gas station? Certainly some brands differentiate on rest room availability and cleanliness (I'm partial to Love's when traveling) but I believe parent was referring to state run rest areas.
Yeah, service areas between between PA-NJ-NY were always pretty good, I miss those today driving here in FL today, where its mostly shitty gas stations where you have to ask for a key to use the restrooms.
You don't get the Norway views but its also not a complete mess.
I can assure you that as a fellow European, both this amazing jab at the Clown in Chief and the beautiful vistas have renewed my interest in travelling to Norway as soon as I can, so I'm pretty sure it will pay off!
So there's also all the stuff about the wonders of Japanese toilets with heated seats and bidets etc. and I was amazed at how many of what are really low budget toilets in like mid-tier shopping malls, fast food restaurants and rural train stations had the full deal. And how clean they were. Toilets in those kinds of places here are often a mess and it's not uncommon to find the toilet seat missing entirely, so nobody's installing a expensive fancy seat in a public bathroom.
The flip side is if you go off more rural, you can run into the type of toilet that Japanese people consider a "Japanese toilet". Complete opposite of the tech wonders that the rest of the world pictures when they hear Japanese toilet. Because they're pretty much relegated to toilets without much investment at this point, they're also usually much less maintained than other toilets too.
Perfect Days is in my top 10 movies of all times - a must watch for everyone.
ps - I learned the beautiful word / concept komorebi from the film: "dappled, shimmering light and shadow created when sunlight filters through the leaves of trees"
Some of the most beautiful English-language writing I've read is describing the interplay of light and shadow under a canopy. This is an area where I think having a single word description is a linguistic loss.
Technically you're supposed to wait around and consume your product at the shop where you've bought it, but I didn't have any objections to doing one-in one-out, so as long as I bought a new drink I just dropped the refuse from the last one at the store where I bought the next one.
IDK man, I was just there for 2 weeks in Kobe, Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo, and there were so few publicly accessible trashcans that I started considering photographing the handful I saw (2-3 next to drink vending machines, and one (1) large one in Shinjuku's main luxury-tourism thoroughfare) for their shiny rarity. At one point we were joined by our third member, and we warned them first thing "there are no trash cans in Japan!" and sure enough, about 2 hours later, they were clutching an empty beverage, looking around futilely for somewhere to throw it out...
I think they don't have enough mechanical degrees of freedom to hurt you. The nozzle can only move forward / back. The seat and hot air blower could overheat and set your house on fire, but nothing could keep you on the toilet while they do that.
Yet no trash cans. It's a frustrating trade off, especially with all the vending machines. If you don't have a backpack, you're stuck carrying trash. If you do, it gets messy.
Also, this does not hold in Hokkaido. I taught English in Obihiro (well, Makubetsu) and you had to plan your trash and restroom breaks.
Yes, there's litter in Australia of course, but most Australians are taught from a young age to leave nothing but footprints and trek out whatever they bring with them when moving about a city, a park, wild areas.
Relative lack of litter and glares from Australians when tossing stuff on ground as a tourist is apparently enough to make a number of those daft "10 things about Australia ..." videos and listicles.
And I was taught to put it in a public trash receptacle. There is a middle ground here between tossing it on the ground and lugging it with you for hours.
I hiked Norwegian fjords above Bergen a couple of times in the past, highly recommend it if you ever get a chance.
Also: Norway has one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world, valued at $2.2 trillion; over 50% are investments in US assets; close to $200 billion in US Treasury securities; and is a major shareholder in US corporations, especially across the tech sector.
So well done Norway, this is how you deal with clowns, not debate or argue on social media, but rub their face in your pure awesomness.
Norway has done a great job with what they've been given, but remember that they've had the national equivalent of being born into a rich family - they have had enormous wealth from natural resources in the form of North Sea oil.
You say it like it's given that natural resources wealth is distributed for population like it's in Norway. Its not. It takes a lot of work. Otherwise you get shithole countries where warlords/corporations/mafia take over control of resources and enrich them selves instead of raising global wellbeing.
Exactly. They managed to use it to generate wealth inside their own country instead of spaffing it into the capital of the country next next door like Scotland.
You can only compare Norway to richest of the gulf states like UAE, though (e.g. Saudi Arabia produces less oil per capita than Norway). Put 10x more people in Norway and keep the same amount of oil like in many of those “shithole” countries and you’d end up with a slightly different situation
Fair, but so does UK, Canada - which might be one of the richest countries in the world in terms of natural resources I think? - and especially US of A.
But how these countries use their resources is quite different.
The UK had a tiny amount of oil compared to Norway if you adjusted by population so it’s not a fair comparison. Also I’m not sure the share of the revenue the British government was getting was massively much lower than the case in Norway.
The UK government has had a huge income from the North Sea but unlike Norway we didn't invest it. We spent it as fast (or faster) than we received it. When modern Conservatives wax lyrical about Thatcher's economic miracle they seem unaware that it was mostly just oil revenue.
True, but the point is that no matter what the UK did it could never have been in the same position as Norway. Simply too many people and not enough oil.
Realistically even if they managed to accumulate a significant amount of money there would have been a lot of societal pressure to spend all of that during various economic downturns. How could a government that’s sitting on a fat pile of money ever justify cutting spending on the NHS or social services?
OK, so the US' sovereign wealth fund would be 5-6x less per capita than Norway's, so less effective, but nonetheless capable of benefitting Americans substantially.
Except that ... it doesn't exist, because, from the beginning, we've given it all away to Big Oil, who spend some of it making sure that politicians get elected who keep supporting Big Oil.
Norway is hardly unique in having abundant natural resources. Other countries have larger oil reserves. What's unique is the fact that instead of letting a few large corporations, or corrupt mafia, get rich off of them with "trickle down economics" benefitting the rest of the country, the government is in charge of it and uses it for the public benefit.
Also their taxes are proportional to wealth and everyone pays them, so good public service. It's not that hard to understand and there is no need to circle around it.
As per usual, that’s British slang which was carried over to Australia. Almost all slang phrases Americans associate with Australia are British in origin and still in wide use, as you’d expect given the history of both countries.
It's also commonly used in the US. I've never heard it of it being associated with the commonwealth at all - based on the vulgarity I always assumed it was a native production.
Nope, sorry, Norwegians actually tax mining / energy corporations (so the government has money to spend on... designer dunnies!), instead of just giving away their non-renewable natural resources to billionaires for free. That's un-Australian!
That's such an appalling misrepresentation of what happens here in Australia that even Konrad Benjamin himself would correct you. State, Territory and Federal governments all take revenue for non-renewable resource extraction.
You're aware of the revolving door between politics and resources right? You can't take a bribe in advance, but you sure as hell can take a kickback later.
Their resource company is effectively the government and reducing their climate impact is basically impossible without killing their economy. I think we'd rather not be in that position.
> In 2019, fossil fuels contributed 48 percent of Norway’s export revenues of around $53 billion. And that number is much, much larger today, thanks to ballooning demand for natural gas in the wake of the Ukraine war.
How do you propose they kill the public company exactly? At least in Australia, govt. revenue is barely reliant on fossil fuels.
Norway is more reliant on oil/gas money than almost every country on Earth. e.g. to its small population it produces significantly more oil per capita than Saudi Arabia. So yeah for instance it is/was way easier for Britain to kill its privatized oil industry.
I'm from Australia and always assumed the word "shithouse" was mostly used here, and at first glance assumed this post was an amusing joke by an Aussie (though - being somewhat cutesy with a Trump-ism?) rather than a Norwegian government website.
Though I might be wrong - I doubt this word comes up in tech blogs and academic conferences very often?
They can’t possibly be the best because I went into the public bathroom out our local playground last week at 10am and there was a gigantic steaming turd perfectly deposited on the seat of the all-metal prison-style toilet. My 3 year old was as stunned as I was. To think, some local resident was thoughtful enough to bless us with this gift.
Are you telling me my Oakland California toilets are somehow inferior? I find this hard to believe…
Plus, there were persistent stories of terrifying beasts that lived in the sewers and bit people’s bottoms. Of course those stories could have just been invented by people who were waiting on line, to help people get done quicker.
I find it fascinating that the cost of these gorgeous places is roughly the same as the cost to build a public restroom in San Francisco. Notably the architects in SF are much more expensive than those in Norway. Certainly quite interesting.
Maybe more what amazing things you you can achieve for your people when the citizens are the shareholders of the economic benefits of your country’s natural resources?
How much better would the US or UK or wherever else be if our wealth of natural resources was shared instead of hoarded by private land-owners and SuperMegaCorp?
Norway drills about 1/4 of the barrels we do here in the US, but reaps more than double the revenue into public coffers. ~78% tax rate in Norway vs a published rate of 21% in the US (and a real rate of <10%).
True but even if it was 100% the amount of money per capita would be tiny compared to Norway. Only some of the smaller gulf states are comparable to Norway.
Increasing the tax rate by ~8x to match Norway would drop 60x to ~8x. What percent of Norway's per capita is from Oil & Gas? I have to imagine that 10% of that is actually still meaningful for an average American.
When you get a dollar bill, you can actually tell whether it's from oil or not? I can't..
What's really amazing are the lengths by which people justify they cannot have a nice society. It's easy to see, mathematically, the willingness to share has no relation to absolute GDP or where it comes from.
Way to miss the point. Any government can take any share from economy and redistribute it more fairly. There is nothing specific to oil that makes society more equal.
The argument "but Norway has oil" is so tiring. So what, US has a big tech with huge profits. Why can't you have a UBI from ads? Of course you can.
Generally building public works becomes quite difficult when you have one dominant sector pushing up wages (oil and gas in this case). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect
I’m not sure I would bring high IQ into this. Norwegians tended to own their own farms, they knew how to manage resources. The winters taught them to plan ahead.
Most importantly, Norway realised it had to avoid spending all its oil money to be responsible. An Iraqi immigrant helped establish this policy. Wouldn’t give him all credit as some give the impression of, but I think it’s interesting that people from the Middle East do have the right ideas. But the environment they’re in prevents their voices from being heard.
It reminds me that the mediocrity of an enormous amount of the U.S. is really quite voluntary. Enormous potential. Enormous wealth. Just cannot figure out how to socialize the prosperity.
Norway was not that poor before oil. That’s a myth. Relative to some other European countries, yes. But it was still a country with a long history of trade, industry and natural resources.
Though I’m not surprised a Swede thinks of us mainly as poor farmers ;)
(no bad feelings, you literally had an empire so the attitude is understandable)
Sorry, I have that image due to, just the image of a "poor" fishing country. Now we envy you and I heard all my life that we in Sweden are Norways poles/polacks due to cheap labour from Sweden.
That said we in Sweden where extremely poor too, see the famous book "Utvandrarna" for how it could be so miserable that people left.
Now we are the ones causing issues - "det svenske tilstander"
Well, I say "we" but these are not the Kalles Kaviar looking people. It could get to that point though...
In fact, immigration to Norway from Sweden started already back then. My great great grandfather moved from near Bullaren to Southern Norway in the late 1809's. But then emigrated with most of his family onwards to the US a couple of decades later as Norway was also poor at that time.
What was Norway's way out of the worst of that poverty apart from reduced surplus of people from emigration was shipping, and several of his sons, including my great grandfather ended up working on ships (and my great grandfathers family ended up moving back to Norway, supposedly in part because his wife got tired of the warm summers in Brooklyn...)
> we in Sweden are Norways poles/polacks due to cheap labour from Sweden.
Hopefully you'll be treated "with love" on your binge drinking trip to Gdańsk because simply buying and drinking a bottle of wine is a challenge back home.
For anybody who was interested in the stats: The correct number is c. 20 perc are immigrants.
The largest group is from Finland followed by Iraq and Iran. It's a bit higher in the capital.
I wouldn’t say poor, fishing was the backbone for over a thousand years and generated its fair share of wealth, so did timber. Seafood is still second after oil, even if oil of course is much bigger.
Norway benefits greatly from being a massive country with a small population and enormous natural resources. This makes governing far simpler compared to many other countries, and the culture is of course vastly different too.
I’ve only ever been to Lofoten but it was lovely, I think that’s how humans are supposed to live, too bad I can’t afford to move there.
Sorry, I have that image due to, just the image of a "poor" fishing country. Now we envy you and I heard all my life that we in Sweden are Norways poles/polacks due to cheap labour from Sweden.
That said we in Sweden where extremely poor too, see the famous book "Utvandrarna" for how it could be so miserable that people left.
Now we are the ones causing issues - "det svenske tilstander"
Well, I say "we" but these are not the Kalles Kaviar looking people. It could get to that point though...
I'm still not sure whether Donald himself is just dumb or whether he knows he can get away with saying things because his voters are dumb. Neither option looks good in an international context...
Not only the Norway thing, but he also (pretends?) doesn't understand how NATO works. Being angry about NATO members, a defensive treaty, not joining an offensive campaign in Iran.
> I'm still not sure whether Donald himself is just dumb
Yes.
He has failed upward in an insane way. A combination of his petty exploitation of people's good nature and subordinates desperate to be trickled down upon have propelled him to a level of power and wealth he is not fit for outside of his greediness.
Of course you can. Your handlers have to know what they’re doing, of course, but the candidate themselves? They don’t even have to be able to speak coherently (Bush II had some issues in that direction, and of course Trump pretty much just babbles nonsense, for hours, and people put up with it).
> They don’t even have to be able to speak coherently
One painful lesson of my childhood was that coherent logic doesn't win arguments, telling people what they want to hear wins arguments. Sure, 10% of people think rationally but GUESS WHAT it's the other 90% that actually puts politicians into positions of power so it's important to win THEIR votes.
Trump understands this perfectly. HN is an echo chamber "Trump is such a dum-dum" but none of you stupid pigfuckers consider the option that he simply never cared about correctly fulfilling his civil duties, he only cared about power, fame, and money, and he learned how to game the system to achieve these goals, which is an impressive skill to wield.
It's like, engineers complaining again and again about "stupid managers" while failing to see that they're the ones doing on-call while the manager is chilling on Bahamas.
So we're all stupid pigfuckers, but it's OK for Trump to rape women and underaged children, be best buddies with Epstein, cover up the Trump-Epstein Files (TM) because he and his oligarch doners are in them, and for you to defend and praise him, huh?
The painful lesson you should have learned was that you personally are not capable of coherent logic, so you always lose arguments, just like you're spectacularly losing this one.
Instead, you admittedly learned to easily lie through your teeth, and always tell people -- including yourself -- just what they want to hear. That's not winning an argument, that's surrender. The argument is over, and you sealed your loss with your own words.
No woman in her right mind would want to be around a MAGA incel like you, who worships and defends pedophiles. And it's a good thing -- as you've recently admitted yourself -- that every relationship you've ever had failed, because you pedophile defenders should not reproduce yourselves or ever be around other people's children. And that's why you'll always be alone with your AI girlfriend, because you debase and humiliate yourself by worshiping and defending pedophiles like Trump.
Edit: esuorac: "I mean the evidence speaks for himself. One of you two is president." -- this and the rest of your comment are incoherent non-sequiturs. I can't make heads or tails of what you're trying to say.
Please don't be coy and pseudorational like a neck-bearded libertarian. Be clear and unambiguous about your position, then justify it without handwaving or bald faced lying as anal_reactor does: do you support and defend rapists and pedophiles like anal_reactor does, or not? If you do, then explain your justification for not releasing the Trump-Epstein Files (TM).
"Equal time" isn't going to stop a narcissistic rapist pedophile with a cult of brainwashed followers like anal_reactor, who already surrendered this argument by admitting that since childhood he lies to tell people what they want to hear.
Since Hillary called Trump Putin's puppet during the debate, history has proven her absolutely correct. And when she called Trump supporters a "basket of deplorables", she was being polite and wildly understating it -- they're much worse than that. The fact that they took "deplorable" as a badge of honor and ran with it, and everything they've said and done since, proves her right.
It's not about us fucking pigs, it's about Trump lusting after his own daughter, fucking children, raping women, starting unwinnable wars, and bombing schoolchildren. And anal_reactor and his ilk condoning and defending that by lying for him. Why not release the Trump-Epstein Files (TM)?
> Instead, you admittedly learned to easily lie through your teeth, and always tell people -- including yourself -- just what they want to hear. That's not winning an argument, that's surrender. The argument is over, and you sealed your loss with your own words.
Politicians are never having just a debate. They're only nominal arguing with the other contestants and really talking to the audience. It's not surrendering when you tell the audience what they want.
> So we're all stupid pigfuckers, but it's OK
I mean the evidence speaks for himself. One of you two is president. IMO, the solution here is not to re-hash arguements about whether or not he's fit to be president. It's going to be to expand the fair-time rules to apply to cable & not-cable.
If you have some large reach like Fox News then when you run altered footage to make it seem like Donald Trump is in favor of releasing the Epstein files you should have to allow opposition to have equal time explaining why Trump is not going to release files he's in.
Or if you're a financial podcaster like Dave Ramsey, when you have Trump on your show to promote him as good for the economy you then need to allow opposition equal time to explain how he repeatedly attacked Iran and started numerous trade wars in his first time and absolutely is going to do that in his second term leading to inflation.
You obviously can. An EU delegation had to explain the EU to Trump using colored cards as if he was a small child and it took many attempts before he got it. So the deciding quality must be something else.
You're assuming that understanding it was his priority in the first place. It wasn't.
Imagine a painter saying "these software engineers are profoundly stupid, I spent a whole day explaining to one how different color combinations are differently interpreted by different cultures and he still wouldn't get it".
I still find it amazing nobody brings up he "aced it" once.
When a 80 year old "aces" a driving test they still have to take it more times to check for further decline. You only take these tests until you fail them.
Trump stans: "actually he's very intelligent, he just has a gift for focusing on what the average voter cares about and talking in their terms rather than those of elites"
Trump: "Not many people know this, but dumb is spelled with a 'b' "
That happened when Trump was discussing trade issues with the EU. Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission at the time, had to prepare colorful flash cards in simple language to explain the issues to Trump, because Trump didn't know at all what he was talking about.
A similar thing happened between him and Merkel, when Trump didn't understand that the EU was a unified trading bloc with a common market and that making separate trade agreements with Germany was not possible. Trump allegedly asked Merkel more than 10 times why he could not do that.
I don't think Americans still understand what a laughing stock their president is to the rest of the world. This goes beyond personal sympathies and antipathies; he is objectively a very unintelligent person and his exceptionally poor manners make things only worse.
> I don't think Americans still understand what a laughing stock their president is to the rest of the world.
The US is a very big and diverse place with a lot of different people and perspectives. However, most of us actually do understand what a laughing stock the president is. It’s the response that ends up being what we’re judged upon. The responses that perform insane mental gymnastics to absolve him (such as gp) cast most of us in a bad light as thoughtless parrots. There’s also a big nationalist response that leads people to defend a president that they know is an embarrassment because “USA.” There are also those of us who work in silence to educate and allow the embarrassments to carry on humiliating themselves
> I don't think Americans still understand what a laughing stock their president is to the rest of the world.
And, I don't think that Americans yet understand what leaders elsewhere are incrementally factoring in: this is not a one a one-off event. It happened twice. There is every reason to expect that it can happen again - this is a thing that the USA will do from time to time, and so they cannot be relied upon. Decoupling is the wise direction.
e.g.
"The world's trust in America is collapsing. That has consequences"
There's nothing more amusing than watching a butt-hurt thin-skinned Trump cult member lose his shit and pathetically attempt to defend him whenever somebody makes a joke at his expense that's funny because it's true.
Trump's reaction to Robby Roadsteamer singing "Trump went on the Jeffrey Epstein plane" was priceless. If he wasn't on the plane, then why doesn't he release all the Trump-Epstein Files (TM) like he promised?
Enjoy the midterm elections, and keep up the performance for our amusement. Now do "Trump's not racist"! Then "Trump's not demented!" Then "Trump's not a rapist!" Then "Trump's not a pedophile!"
I believe that it simply speaks to his worldview. It's an institution in Norway, so he expects that Norwegian leaders can and should pressure the organization into awarding him. This is what he would do.
> In January 1944 an attempt by the Quisling government to take over the functions of the Nobel Committee led to the resignation of Jahn and other committee members. The Swedish consulate-general in Oslo formally took over the management of the Foundation's Oslo property on behalf of the Nobel Foundation.[14]
Norway won't play Trump's games. Just because the government appoints members to a committee doesn't mean it will (or even can) fire those people to force a decision it wants.
I don't disagree, but the name is pretty much where trump gets Norway from. He doesn't comprehend that our heads of states dont have the power to influence this in the first place.
It is the committee that is based in Norway. Doesn’t mean it is Norway the country. Just like US does not control the decisions of UN just because UN is located in US.
Well, it's a bit more muddled than that, to quote wikipedia:
"
Five members are appointed by the Norwegian Parliament. In his will, Alfred Nobel tasked the parliament of Norway with selecting the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize. Despite its members being appointed by Parliament, the committee is a private body tasked with awarding a private prize. In recent decades, most committee members were retired politicians.
"
A diverse Committee that makes its own decisions, and politicians abstain from influencing it. Because it is intended to be independent, and people see value in that, so they honour it. Nobody needs from the outside to have a say, because politics and the committee trust each other to do the right thing. It's alien, I know.
My home has thirty-eight rooms on thirty-six worlds. No doors: the arched entrances are farcaster portals, a few opaqued with privacy curtains, most open to observation and entry.
...
The architect, a student of the legendary Millon DeHaVre, has incorporated several small jokes into the house’s design: the steps go down to the tower room, of course, but equally droll is the exit from the eyrie which leads to the exercise room on the lowest level of Lusus’s deepest Hive, or perhaps the guest bathroom which consists of toilet, bidet, sink and shower stall on an open, wall-less raft afloat on the violet seaworld of Mare Infinitus.
Are they just peeing now? One of my indelible memories in India from 20 years ago is seeing a rickshaw driver in Connaught Place, the heart of historically respectable Delhi and no isolated slum, crouching behind his rickshaw and defecating right there on the street.
We have it too in The Netherlands "wildplassen", since the Dutch "wild" (as in "in the wild") can indeed also be translated as "wild" (as in uncontrolled), the standard response when caught is "No officer, I was, in fact, peeing very calmly."
The Dutch even have educational public service survival guides, and canal side bars will lend you a free pisriem or piemelpijp to prevent accidental death.
Fox News will absolutely have told minihands that it is; they’ve been pushing an “everyone in Scandinavia is a communist trans Muslim” narrative for a decade or so now.
Besides aesthetics, there are so many functional aspects that sets apart good from shitty bathrooms.
Things I evaluate when I use public restrooms include: are they 100% touch free (doors, toilets, taps)? Recycled towels for drying or air dryers where your hands invariable touch the unit?
Why has the title of this post been changed, when HN rules are to use the title of the article? The rename is less engaging and misses the point completely. Moderators did this or?
It's kinda funny. But I'm a Norwegian, and I can tell you that Norway actually is a shitty country in so many ways. It likes to tell the world how fantastic it is, but there are just so many things that are structurally pathetic, weak, or inadequate about it.
Norway has been severely mismanaged for decades now, and soon the chickens are coming home to roost. Sadly, karma will be a bitch.
Meanwhile in London we have public... urinals. Just a few minutes from the city center. People urinating in the open. Opposite to where my wife goes to dancing classes. UK is really fucking abysmal sometimes.
Well, that's a pretty good ad from Visit Norway: now I'd really like to visit.
In fact, if they weren't so damn rich and everything so expensive compared to my Southern European way of live, I'd consider moving there just to enjoy the gorgeous nature.
I like them and I think they're cool, but Norway is a country of 5.6 million people that discovered a massive oil deposit and has an enormous public fund per-capita because of it, so making it a referendum on how bad the United States is is pretty weird. Saudi Arabia has indoor ski resorts too, yes if we had that much oil per person I bet we could have some pretty sweet toilets.
I'm totally fine with the pit toilet design they came up with for the parks. I'm not there to take an instagram poop, I'm there to go hiking.
On the topic of great shithouses, I highly recommend the 2023 Japanese drama Perfect Days. It's about a quiet man that works for Tokyo Toilets, cleaning a set of architecturally interesting public toilets around the Shibuya district. The movie itself is compelling -- a fascinating study of a man and purpose, very similar to Paterson (2016)[1] -- but the whole thing is like taking a trip to Tokyo, with an enormous number of gorgeous shots of fascinating scenes. Also a lot of shots of someone cleaning toilets.
[1] The directors of both movies are friends, and interestingly Paterson ends with the protagonist talking to a man from Tokyo who came to visit Paterson, as a poetry fan of William Carlos Williams. It is coincidence, but it does make it feel like they're the same universe.
I had the same thought! What do they look actually like in Norway‽ Unfortunately, because of the thing we're commenting on, Google image search has been taken over by those kinds of pictures, and none of the actual toilet and sinks!
Just the fact that the level of politics dropped this low and this is being celebrated is something that makes me feel that we are on a 100% downward slope on our civilizational collapse with no turning back.
How tf the most powerful country on earth became such an openly corrupted clownshow?
It might be that just your knowledge of history is lacking.
Look for example to America (i mean the continent, there is no country named that). Civilisation brought extinction to various indigenous tribes, but in norther and central america. It brought slavery. In a way, we are over that now, aren't we?
Look for example to Europe (I'm so glad that no european country is so full of it and call itself just "Europe"). They had hundreds of wars in a 10 year period. Some small ... but some like the 30 year long war more devastating than even the 2nd world war.Sure, some people there (look into ex-jugoslavia or look into Russia) still think that mass-killing people is good. Oh, did I mention 2nd world war? Then look there, too. And how one society thought they have the right to extinguish Jews, Gypsies, Jehovas Witnesses, mental ill people and basically any political opponent. I still think we can say that we are over such a thing.
Look for example to Asia. There was a country that waged war on China because China was not buying enough Opium. Or look like the asian golden horde devastated with utter cruelty whole (at the time) mega-cities. And they brough the bubonic plague on top of it ...
Or look at Africa. I mentioned the slaver for America ... but actually african tribes captured people from other tribes and sold them. We can't say that slavery is totally abolished in Africa (I heard the Boko Haram does it) --- but certainly not at the scale it used to be.
If you think that society develops backwards, then just looking at how things used to be 100, 200 or 500 years.
I mean clearly Trump, right? Nixon’s behaviour seems fairly minor by comparison, though at that time the Republicans had some residual sense of shame so he had to resign.
I don't wanna absolve any of the evil shits in Trump's circle, or among the MAGA crowd, of blame in this. But I think the biggest issue of all is the anglosphere's love for first past the post electoral systems. There's no excuse for FPTP, and while they often have a positive side effect in giving crazies zero representation, they're vulnerable to crazies taking unchecked control of the system.
Sure, MAGA would've been a large congressional embarrassment in a proportional system. But they wouldn't run the show.
I still cannot believe I'm living in a timeline where the US president is emotionally a 3-year-old and throws a temper tantrum in the public when his parents don't get him a shiny thing he has done absolutely nothing to deserve.
Anyone here who spends time around their aging parents and their friends sees what shows up on their phones. The image of an 70+ year old man poolside scrolling through IG reels seeing ragebait about democratic cities is burned into my brain. I wouldn't stand a chance against it either.
The crazier thing to me is how the press reports stories like this, it's framed purely as reported speech, with zero analysis on likelihood, or legality of such inducements.
There's a statement about reporters having to look through their own windows when reporting on someone who claims it is raining.
A large part of the voters are gullible idiots who don’t understand when they vote against their own interests. Add a personality cult in the mix and this explains the current situation we’re in.
You're describing a couple members of my family except... they don't use any Facebook products. Humans have been surrounding themselves with people that parrot their beliefs for generations; the internet just made it easier for fringe beliefs to reach critical mass.
If it not Facebook, it would be some other medium. What's the alternative, prevent people from talking to each other unsupervised?
My parents and inlaws are all in their late 70s/early 80s. Facebook is an amplifier for the cohort in question...it's an addictive product experience delivered to an audience without lifelong training in how to spot memes vs sincerity, ragebait vs news, and now, AI vs reality.
I think the "it's Facebook" crowd are people who either weren't around for or don't remember before then. I don't remember before the "It's fox news" time but I now suspect there was probably something before that too.
I think a lot of it has to do with the young and idealistic clashing against the old and jaded and both groups yelling at strawmen of each other.
"Fox news has done to our parents what they thought gangsta rap would do to us". This applies to Facebook as well. I wish they would have stayed in their "I don't know how to use the computer" phase.
I would add Fox News in tandem with Facebook, but otherwise, yes. One is the spigot, the other is the hose.
My mom is 76 and absolutely believes the most pressing issues are trans high school swimmers and illegal voting and the biases of the Kennedy Center.
Sure, I have my opinions on those but I’m not saying as a society we aren’t allowed to debate those issues. I’m saying that in some news sources, they’re pure ragebait and completely drown out much more pressing and existential topics we should be solving. They’re simple distraction tactics and a continuation of the culture wars from the 80s and 90s.
Democratic institutional norms and a system relying on informed citizenry will always face new obstacles, but technology companies, particularly social media, adtech analytics, decline in established journalism have done so much damage and contributed to more conspiracy theories. Makes me feel even more icky about firms a16z pouring tons of money into things that undermine these norms… https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49416055
Facebook (and social media in general) just accelerated cultural issues that were already there.
The right has seen Democrats (and "leftists" in general) as communists and degenerates for nearly a century. Literally nothing about Trump or Trumpism is new, it just wasn't normalized. There was a consensus reality around politics and culture that had to be maintained which no longer does.
Yes! Trump is just the symptom of a much more serious disease. Far too many Americans are unable to distinguish propaganda from journalism, unable to critically evaluate the information they receive, where it comes from and who it actually benefits.
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” - Jefferson, 1816.
In the aggregate people are easily manipulated. We've known this since Freud. With mass media and the Citizens United decision, the elite have a much easier time pushing through their agenda.
Obviously there is a lot more going on that can't be easily expressed in a brief forum comment, but it's just not true that the electorate is simply morally corrupt.
That is a high expectation of people being driven by predictable human emotions, lacking the ability to think critically through everything in front of them.
The real issue of our media landscape (information feeds controlled by the elite), probably could have been nipped in the bud some years ago but it may be a little too late for that.
The problem is greatly exacerbated by two-party system. If there was a solid third or fourth choice, then at least people wouldn't be given two bad (in their opinion) choices. Many people don't vote at all, being disillusioned with the voting system.
Can we do something about it? The winner-takes-all Electoral College certainly contributes to two-party system [1] and to narrow margins [2]. There are two states who don't do winner-takes-all (Maine and Nebraska), and we can force all states to split their electoral votes.
He is not, remotely, “like them all”, and I think if you are dealing with your remorse this way then, respectfully, you have a little more work to do, not least because it will give you the skills to help you negotiate the current moment where the tech industry has some people who are aberrant in similar ways.
The threat posed by Trump to the USA was evident from the day he announced his candidacy. That his whole presidency would one way or another be about his awful approach to immigration and to Ukraine was evident by the time of the Republican National Convention.
That he would try to overturn an election that he lost was evident before he ran for one.
If you cannot see that this man’s essential pathology is dangerous, I worry you cannot see dangerous parallels in several current tech CEOs (at least two, fairly arguably four or five).
There are many bad and crooked politicians; there are many their colleagues hate. Trump is not a crooked politician except as a side effect.
He’s not the same kind of “bad person” at all; most of us never meet anyone as dangerous.
I think you do need to recognise that you (and don’t get me wrong, millions of others!) voted for someone who is essentially evil (in the literary sense of evil). And really you should have been able to see it, because it wasn’t that hidden.
It shouldn’t stop you voting again because genuinely so few people are like him, though he has found fellow travellers in this administration. (Notably RFK Jr — a shockingly awful man)
But it would be healthy to look at what it was that let you look past his evil.
Because it isn’t about his policies (and because it’s actually quite like turning an oil tanker, especially stuff like undoing tariffs).
Trump is a malignant narcissist. He’s a deeply unusual man.
The Democratic Party had one perennial fringe candidate, Lyndon LaRouche, who was dark-sided in a way Trump is. A really nasty, scary, creepy dude who fairly arguably ran a “business cult”, the LaRouche Group, who was held at arms length by the party.
It has had a few charming “political sociopaths” in the sense of driven people who can make arbitrary choices. It recently efficiently ejected a repeated power abuser (Eric Swalwell).
But nobody like Trump. People like him are rare (and dangerous when they achieve power)
> The threat posed by Trump to the USA was evident from the day he announced his candidacy.
Why?
Both Democrats and Republicans equally seemed to hate him.
Like there was numerous government shutdowns in his first term because nobody actually liked his agenda. Why was it obvious that eventually both parties would agree to enable him?
Both parties did not enable him. The Dems did not fight him adequately but they did not enable him. He wanted the shutdowns, but the only way not to have a shutdown would have been to make unacceptable concessions. And then he'd have increased his demands and the whole thing would have repeated. Whereas what he got out of the shutdowns is less than he went in with.
You could argue that the left-leaning parts of the media spent a bit too much time laughing at Trump and not enough time worrying about him, but from day one it was obvious who he was and that he had media clout.
> And really you should have been able to see it, because it wasn’t that hidden.
A lot of his voters saw the cruelty and crassness and liked it. Trump was their vessel for vengeance, as one disappointed Florida voter complained during Trump I "he isn't hurting who he is supposed to be hurting"
I agree with all you said with two caveats. If someone only watched Fox News, they likely didn’t see all this from Trump especially the first time. Second is that Trump is a product of the growing and unaddressed wealth/equality divide. It’s a similar reason we see the rise of the far right in the EU.
People who watched Fox News saw allllll of Trump’s bad traits; he didn’t hide them from Fox viewers. They saw the racism and xenophobia and they loved it.
Admittedly they did not hear about Paul Manafort’s connections to corrupt pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians, or his debts, or that he was mysteriously working for Trump for free, or that he successfully weakened the RNC platform language on providing weapons to Ukraine. They heard very little about the “adoptions” meeting. Fox didn’t cover that. But then it only got a little bit of coverage in mainstream US TV media because it is incompetent.
Spoken from a place of true entitlement. Voting is a luxury some of the poorest can't afford, and the republicans have made sure to make it even more difficult now that the supreme court gutted the civil rights act.
I'm guessing you'd have a different opinion if you personally had to wait in line for HOURS because the Rs in your district closed down voting stations specifically to make it nearly impossible to actually vote in precincts that are predominantly liberal or people of color. And it has only gotten worse and more widespread since 2020.
I live in Washington State where we have universal mail-in voting. Unless you're homeless, every registered voter gets a ballot delivered to their door, they can fill it out at their leisure, and leave it back in their mailbox.
Turnout is only like 5%-10% higher than the national average. 30% still don't vote in presidential election years, 45% in midterms.
> Nevertheless, do these poorest really account for a third of all voters?
25% of all eligible voters work jobs like service, retail, or construction where it is very hard if not impossible to get time off work to vote.
Although many states even have laws allowing people to have time off to vote, it's often 2 hours or less, which in many localities is not nearly enough to get through the line.
There are no real blanket voting protections across the country.
Companies should make the day a holiday even if dipshit Trumpublicans won't make it a federal holiday. Consumers shouldn't shop on voting Tuesday and companies that don't shut down their shops on Tuesday should be boycotted. If you are a company that doesn't recognize you've been given more handouts than your employees then f u.
Remember that the republicans have made it very difficult to vote in a lot of states (huge lines, hurdles, etc.) such that only their demographic has time to vote.
This is why they are so against mail voting. It levels the playing field.
I don't mean to bring low value demagougue, I can't help but ask myself, when Hitler rose to power, then being jailed and then rose to power even more, did the normal people who wanted nothing to do with his bs felt the same?
Those viewpoints are always there in society and many people just waiting for the leader who will harness to come. It is one of the hard pills to swallow about humanity that authoritarianism is a popular movement brought forward with cheers and votes.
I think that this viewpoint is only made evident and amplified by the administrations that came before and did not make politics for the common man but a selected few.
Then the need for a "saviour" gets overwhelming for the negleted masses. Especially in a state with a such a religious imprint.
I would stipulate that the viewpoint is always there as you said but acting on it is a product of bad politics that came before.
I used to think that the (2018) book "The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States", which ridicules Donald Trump quite a bit, was overdoing it for dramatic effect...
Ah yes, the timeline where the US president is a convicted sex offender, 34 times convicted felon, tried to overtake a democratically elected president, stored top secret nuclear secrets in his toilet, orchestrated a cover up of the biggest pedophile ring in history, is an active russian agent, and all we talk about is ...his tantrums....
It's been one of the biggest ways the media has helped him since the beginning. (Including outlets supposedly on the "left".) They spend so much time on how he's a terrible human being that it helps obscure that he is grossly incompetent and unfit to lead anything, much less a country.
Even now, it seems like more time is spent on his looks or his health or his pettiness than on his crimes and his destruction.
To be fair it's a non-political post with a political title which invited a conversation/argument completely unrelated to the contents. I'm not against politics here but this is exactly the low quality flame bait that this site would be better without.
Yes, you are missing the context where this is Norway's playful response to Trump petulantly calling Norway "a shithouse country" because it once again didn't award him the Nobel peace prize like it did Obama. Norway is just "Yes, and"-ing the tirade, all judo-like "we are a shithouse country, because our toilets are architectural marvels with unbelievable views"
As an American it is pure hell. Every day I feel like Marty McFly waking up in the nightmare timeline where Biff controls things. And my own brother voted for Trump 3 times yet absolutely refuses to talk about him under any circumstances.
This is probably inevitable once you combine winner-takes-all voting systems with the organized hysteria that is social networks.
Given that many of us here have helped the latter emerge and dominate the entire societal discourse, we should meditate somberly upon the law of unintended consequences. It certainly did not look this way when it started, but social networks are a major channel for hate and allow the worst of the worst to set standards for everyone else.
Frankly if AI can mitigate this, it would be a positive development and I would tolerate all the sickly-sweet sycophancy if it also steered people away from hating one another with passion.
He served a couple of terms as one of a dozen Deputy Chairmen of the State Duma (an administrative rather than leadership role), and got single digit percentage vote shares on the five occasions he ran for President.
So, yes, he was a thuggish populist troll, and I agree that his mode of operation was often comparable to that of Trump. But he never had power, and never came close to getting it.
For that reason, I think most would see Trump as being in a completely different league.
And how does that compare with the Epstein level shenanigans of trump? The cheating on all his wives? The banging of a p0rn star with no protection? Grab them by … all these rape accusations?
> It is unfathomable to me how anyone can defend or relativize this despicable behavior.
From the perspective of a person who is neither a US citizen nor living in the USA: I (and many of my fellow countrymen/countrywomen) will relativize and defend a lot of Trump's tantrums since they give you so much material to laugh about.
It's honestly somewhat refreshing. Politicians are all sociopaths who say all the right things while keeping their true thoughts secret. Trump calls other countries shitholes, and that's actually what he thinks. No doubt it's a diplomatic nightmare but I can't help but muster a small amount of respect for the sheer brazenness of it.
Brazenness is one way to describe it. Another might be a total lack of respect for anyone that doesn't capitulate.
It isn't like "saying it like it is" is actually good, or a morally respectable position. It is just word vomit. Most cynically, it is a political strategy to distract from his real self-interests.
There's a good number of differences between "shithouse countries" and countries that care enough about the wellbeing of their citizens to have good, clean, and free public toilets.
We should definitely make not using that phrase one of them.
Imagine building such objects and a graceful website only to have the visitor be confronted with "Shit" right at the beginning. Try this Norway: 'Outhouse'.
I think the hundred of thousands of tourists packing the roads all summer didn't get your memo.
You can do expensive vacation or cheap vacation, and both are possible in Norway. You can get a cheap flight and sleep in a tent, or you can drive your car through Sweden.
Norway has everyman's right, so for some holidaymakers that means no accommodation costs. It is also popular to do one's grocery shopping on the Swedish side of the border, or even drive up from Germany with a full load of food for the length of the holiday.
> Not thinking something is worth what it cost doesn't mean you can't afford it.
Make it the official motto of entire Scandinavia. "This burrito is 30 EUR and a seat in a shuttle coach is 50 EUR, but I have to eat something and get to the airport". In certain circumstances I can even afford a 1000 EUR burrito.
Scandinavia (except for Norway) is no more expensive to tour than the rest of Europe. After Covid they caught up in price.
But you don't go to Norway for the burritos or beer pints or hotels, but for the nature and outdoors experiences. Which are free. So if you really want it, then you can have it without breaking the bank. But if you want a traditional holiday of drinking and eating and guided tours, then Norway isn't it.
https://koro.no/prosjekter/liberte/
I was really enjoying the apolitical vibes, but then that all went off a cliff about two weeks ago. Hard to tell if it's astroturfing or if it's just on people's minds.
Of course, corporations have always had policy preferences, but those tended to be mostly about taxation and regulation, where debate is less emotionally charged, and compromise is more achievable. These days, though, it seems that tech and political culture have become almost inextricably linked.
At a gas station off the ring road in the middle of nowhere.
Mainland Europe's free public restrooms are not nicer than the US.
> 1. The original and locally preferred view is that Iceland, Finland, Faroe Islands, and Greenland are all countries considered to be part of the Nordics, but not technically part of Scandinavia (which would only be Sweden, Norway and Denmark in this case).
> 2. The international and more commonly preferred view is that the Faroe Islands, Finland and Iceland are part of both Scandinavia and the Nordics, leaving Greenland as the only non-Scandinavian country in the Nordics (along with the Norwegian territories of Svalbard, Jan Mayen and Bouvet Island).
https://nordicperspective.com/facts/nordic-vs-scandinavian#w...
In the Nordics the terms are not just "preferred" but unambiguously used this way.
You're right, in that Scandinavia is a peninsula and Iceland being a far off island is not part of it.
English is a weird and inexact language where there are a lot of different things words can mean. Seizing upon a single obviously-incorrect definition is not the whole story.
I'm sorry this bothers you; however I fear that you face the same battle as would a German trying to get Americans to call their country "Deutschland" instead of "Germany".
The use to include any country other than Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, is something that will tend to really annoy Scandinavians, as we're generally consistent in that use and it's foreigners trying to tell is what names to use for ourselves.
It may be a losing battle, but it's not one we'll give up on.
There's no English language authority dictating what the word "Scandinavia" does/does not mean. The language is its usage.
The first wikipedia paragraph does a good job breaking it down: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavia
Only English speakers ignorant of the history of Scandinavia sometimes excludes it.
Tjere is no English language authority that has any business redefining what Scandinavia means at all. It's just insulting when English speakers believe they get to decide to redefine the names of regions that don't belong to them. It's rude.
Right, and none exists.
> In Scandinavia or categorically always includes Denmark.
> Only English speakers ignorant of the history of Scandinavia sometimes excludes it.
These two sentences are contradictory.
Maybe this is a translation error for you where what you mean when you say "Scandinavia" and what others mean when they say "Scandinavia" don't match up, and this upsets you?
Like I said above; what you're doing is tantamount to a German fighting to get English speakers to call their country "Deutschland". Who are we to redefine them as "Germany"? The difference here being that the English word in the "Scandinavia" case actually does have a slightly different meaning than your own native word, but this is upsetting to you because unlike with "Deutschland" it is pronounced the same.
"Scandinavia" is an English word as well despite its resemblance to words in your native tongue. Who are you to tell English speakers what their own language means?
I do believe you are mistaking how the English language works for stubborn ignorance.
There are many dialects of English, and the way I speak mine doesn't change how you speak yours.
It's very colonial of you to think that your way of doing things is the best and must be forcibly pressed upon others. That you feel embarrassed by the (correct!) use of a word in a different dialect means you have some work to do on yourself.
Which mainland European countries have epic free public toilets as a rule rather than as an exception?
I'll admit it's possible these countries exist, just that they aren't any of the ones I've been to.
Since the mainland European countries I haven't been to are mostly either microstates (which I'm not counting) or post-Soviet, I doubt your claim.
A washroom at at an Irving in rural New Brunswick will have the same weird smells and nonspecific grossness as a Petro in North Vancouver.
Granted, I also haven't visited most of Europe since being a kid, though at that time I remember a few Orlans in Poland and Elfs and Mobils in France having a much cleaner vibe than the gas stations back home.
I’m not above admitting I’m not up to date on how the public washroom situation in the rest of Europe has changed in the past 15-20 years, though.
There is no need to be like that about it. The free market is going to come along and solve it, any day now.
There used to be a fairly robust rest stop program here, but it's been basically replaced by exits with large gas station chains and fast food.
US and Norway seem to have roughly the same number of government rest stops per mile, not including the more common "commercial exit" I guess you could call it.
https://www.nj.com/news/2021/12/the-24-thoughts-i-had-while-...
You don't get the Norway views but its also not a complete mess.
> If you are a mere mortal like us and can’t afford a gold-plated toilet seat, the Golden loo on the island Senja is the next best thing.
All joking aside, I'm impressed at the beauty and serenity of these public restroom facilities. They are truly architectural works of art.
Kudos to the people who designed and built them!
The flip side is if you go off more rural, you can run into the type of toilet that Japanese people consider a "Japanese toilet". Complete opposite of the tech wonders that the rest of the world pictures when they hear Japanese toilet. Because they're pretty much relegated to toilets without much investment at this point, they're also usually much less maintained than other toilets too.
1. Watch Perfect Days 2. Go to Japan 3. Do the The Tokyo Toilet [1] _tour_
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tokyo_Toilet
ps - I learned the beautiful word / concept komorebi from the film: "dappled, shimmering light and shadow created when sunlight filters through the leaves of trees"
Technically you're supposed to wait around and consume your product at the shop where you've bought it, but I didn't have any objections to doing one-in one-out, so as long as I bought a new drink I just dropped the refuse from the last one at the store where I bought the next one.
Also, this does not hold in Hokkaido. I taught English in Obihiro (well, Makubetsu) and you had to plan your trash and restroom breaks.
Yes, there's litter in Australia of course, but most Australians are taught from a young age to leave nothing but footprints and trek out whatever they bring with them when moving about a city, a park, wild areas.
Relative lack of litter and glares from Australians when tossing stuff on ground as a tourist is apparently enough to make a number of those daft "10 things about Australia ..." videos and listicles.
What?
> Carry your trash with you.
What do you think I did with it? I don't litter.
It's just not at all enjoyable carrying two empty bottles for miles with just my hands while I have other things to carry.
https://ibb.co/5X009NcX
It's common practice to dig a new hole 10m further and move the shithouse over.
Also: Norway has one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world, valued at $2.2 trillion; over 50% are investments in US assets; close to $200 billion in US Treasury securities; and is a major shareholder in US corporations, especially across the tech sector.
So well done Norway, this is how you deal with clowns, not debate or argue on social media, but rub their face in your pure awesomness.
The major differentiator for Norway is policy, not oil quantity.
If you can't trade with the rest of the world your life gets hard very quickly
But how these countries use their resources is quite different.
Realistically even if they managed to accumulate a significant amount of money there would have been a lot of societal pressure to spend all of that during various economic downturns. How could a government that’s sitting on a fat pile of money ever justify cutting spending on the NHS or social services?
Except that ... it doesn't exist, because, from the beginning, we've given it all away to Big Oil, who spend some of it making sure that politicians get elected who keep supporting Big Oil.
So yes, a very fair comparison.
"But socialism is bad!!"
… Oh wait …
There were signs in the article lol
Q: How do you build with bricks?
A: You stack them.
But there are many to choose from. “Face like a dropped pie” is another gem.
You're aware of the revolving door between politics and resources right? You can't take a bribe in advance, but you sure as hell can take a kickback later.
How do you propose they kill the public company exactly? At least in Australia, govt. revenue is barely reliant on fossil fuels.
However, Saudi Arabia needs higher prices than Norway to balance the budget, so Saudi Arabia will likely cut first.
eg: https://www.absolutely-australia.com.au/culture-and-history/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenny_(2006_film)
I Hope Your Chooks Turn Into Emus (and kick your dunny down) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpg22KSrswc
Just as Australians share a love of the BBQ with parts of the USofA.
Though I might be wrong - I doubt this word comes up in tech blogs and academic conferences very often?
Are you telling me my Oakland California toilets are somehow inferior? I find this hard to believe…
The ones at Sketch near me are funky https://live.staticflickr.com/881/42433327302_280548ddd2_b.j...
"Trump calls Norway a ‘shithouse country’" - https://www.euronews.com/video/2026/10/27/trump-calls-norway...
Rather: many people who are not US citizens or don't live in the USA don't really care about the gossip around Donald Trump's most recent tantrum.
How much better would the US or UK or wherever else be if our wealth of natural resources was shared instead of hoarded by private land-owners and SuperMegaCorp?
Norway drills about 1/4 of the barrels we do here in the US, but reaps more than double the revenue into public coffers. ~78% tax rate in Norway vs a published rate of 21% in the US (and a real rate of <10%).
Increasing the tax rate by ~8x to match Norway would drop 60x to ~8x. What percent of Norway's per capita is from Oil & Gas? I have to imagine that 10% of that is actually still meaningful for an average American.
What's really amazing are the lengths by which people justify they cannot have a nice society. It's easy to see, mathematically, the willingness to share has no relation to absolute GDP or where it comes from.
The argument "but Norway has oil" is so tiring. So what, US has a big tech with huge profits. Why can't you have a UBI from ads? Of course you can.
It's super impressive, isn't it!
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease
Most importantly, Norway realised it had to avoid spending all its oil money to be responsible. An Iraqi immigrant helped establish this policy. Wouldn’t give him all credit as some give the impression of, but I think it’s interesting that people from the Middle East do have the right ideas. But the environment they’re in prevents their voices from being heard.
Though I’m not surprised a Swede thinks of us mainly as poor farmers ;) (no bad feelings, you literally had an empire so the attitude is understandable)
That said we in Sweden where extremely poor too, see the famous book "Utvandrarna" for how it could be so miserable that people left.
Now we are the ones causing issues - "det svenske tilstander"
Well, I say "we" but these are not the Kalles Kaviar looking people. It could get to that point though...
In fact, immigration to Norway from Sweden started already back then. My great great grandfather moved from near Bullaren to Southern Norway in the late 1809's. But then emigrated with most of his family onwards to the US a couple of decades later as Norway was also poor at that time.
What was Norway's way out of the worst of that poverty apart from reduced surplus of people from emigration was shipping, and several of his sons, including my great grandfather ended up working on ships (and my great grandfathers family ended up moving back to Norway, supposedly in part because his wife got tired of the warm summers in Brooklyn...)
Hopefully you'll be treated "with love" on your binge drinking trip to Gdańsk because simply buying and drinking a bottle of wine is a challenge back home.
I don't need to downvote you for your nationalism, but I do need to downvote you for your casual racism.
I’ve only ever been to Lofoten but it was lovely, I think that’s how humans are supposed to live, too bad I can’t afford to move there.
Sorry, I have that image due to, just the image of a "poor" fishing country. Now we envy you and I heard all my life that we in Sweden are Norways poles/polacks due to cheap labour from Sweden.
That said we in Sweden where extremely poor too, see the famous book "Utvandrarna" for how it could be so miserable that people left.
Now we are the ones causing issues - "det svenske tilstander"
Well, I say "we" but these are not the Kalles Kaviar looking people. It could get to that point though...
Not only the Norway thing, but he also (pretends?) doesn't understand how NATO works. Being angry about NATO members, a defensive treaty, not joining an offensive campaign in Iran.
Yes.
He has failed upward in an insane way. A combination of his petty exploitation of people's good nature and subordinates desperate to be trickled down upon have propelled him to a level of power and wealth he is not fit for outside of his greediness.
One painful lesson of my childhood was that coherent logic doesn't win arguments, telling people what they want to hear wins arguments. Sure, 10% of people think rationally but GUESS WHAT it's the other 90% that actually puts politicians into positions of power so it's important to win THEIR votes.
Trump understands this perfectly. HN is an echo chamber "Trump is such a dum-dum" but none of you stupid pigfuckers consider the option that he simply never cared about correctly fulfilling his civil duties, he only cared about power, fame, and money, and he learned how to game the system to achieve these goals, which is an impressive skill to wield.
It's like, engineers complaining again and again about "stupid managers" while failing to see that they're the ones doing on-call while the manager is chilling on Bahamas.
The painful lesson you should have learned was that you personally are not capable of coherent logic, so you always lose arguments, just like you're spectacularly losing this one.
Instead, you admittedly learned to easily lie through your teeth, and always tell people -- including yourself -- just what they want to hear. That's not winning an argument, that's surrender. The argument is over, and you sealed your loss with your own words.
No woman in her right mind would want to be around a MAGA incel like you, who worships and defends pedophiles. And it's a good thing -- as you've recently admitted yourself -- that every relationship you've ever had failed, because you pedophile defenders should not reproduce yourselves or ever be around other people's children. And that's why you'll always be alone with your AI girlfriend, because you debase and humiliate yourself by worshiping and defending pedophiles like Trump.
Edit: esuorac: "I mean the evidence speaks for himself. One of you two is president." -- this and the rest of your comment are incoherent non-sequiturs. I can't make heads or tails of what you're trying to say.
Please don't be coy and pseudorational like a neck-bearded libertarian. Be clear and unambiguous about your position, then justify it without handwaving or bald faced lying as anal_reactor does: do you support and defend rapists and pedophiles like anal_reactor does, or not? If you do, then explain your justification for not releasing the Trump-Epstein Files (TM).
"Equal time" isn't going to stop a narcissistic rapist pedophile with a cult of brainwashed followers like anal_reactor, who already surrendered this argument by admitting that since childhood he lies to tell people what they want to hear.
Since Hillary called Trump Putin's puppet during the debate, history has proven her absolutely correct. And when she called Trump supporters a "basket of deplorables", she was being polite and wildly understating it -- they're much worse than that. The fact that they took "deplorable" as a badge of honor and ran with it, and everything they've said and done since, proves her right.
It's not about us fucking pigs, it's about Trump lusting after his own daughter, fucking children, raping women, starting unwinnable wars, and bombing schoolchildren. And anal_reactor and his ilk condoning and defending that by lying for him. Why not release the Trump-Epstein Files (TM)?
Politicians are never having just a debate. They're only nominal arguing with the other contestants and really talking to the audience. It's not surrendering when you tell the audience what they want.
> So we're all stupid pigfuckers, but it's OK
I mean the evidence speaks for himself. One of you two is president. IMO, the solution here is not to re-hash arguements about whether or not he's fit to be president. It's going to be to expand the fair-time rules to apply to cable & not-cable.
If you have some large reach like Fox News then when you run altered footage to make it seem like Donald Trump is in favor of releasing the Epstein files you should have to allow opposition to have equal time explaining why Trump is not going to release files he's in.
Or if you're a financial podcaster like Dave Ramsey, when you have Trump on your show to promote him as good for the economy you then need to allow opposition equal time to explain how he repeatedly attacked Iran and started numerous trade wars in his first time and absolutely is going to do that in his second term leading to inflation.
Imagine a painter saying "these software engineers are profoundly stupid, I spent a whole day explaining to one how different color combinations are differently interpreted by different cultures and he still wouldn't get it".
When a 80 year old "aces" a driving test they still have to take it more times to check for further decline. You only take these tests until you fail them.
Trump: "Not many people know this, but dumb is spelled with a 'b' "
A similar thing happened between him and Merkel, when Trump didn't understand that the EU was a unified trading bloc with a common market and that making separate trade agreements with Germany was not possible. Trump allegedly asked Merkel more than 10 times why he could not do that.
I don't think Americans still understand what a laughing stock their president is to the rest of the world. This goes beyond personal sympathies and antipathies; he is objectively a very unintelligent person and his exceptionally poor manners make things only worse.
The US is a very big and diverse place with a lot of different people and perspectives. However, most of us actually do understand what a laughing stock the president is. It’s the response that ends up being what we’re judged upon. The responses that perform insane mental gymnastics to absolve him (such as gp) cast most of us in a bad light as thoughtless parrots. There’s also a big nationalist response that leads people to defend a president that they know is an embarrassment because “USA.” There are also those of us who work in silence to educate and allow the embarrassments to carry on humiliating themselves
And, I don't think that Americans yet understand what leaders elsewhere are incrementally factoring in: this is not a one a one-off event. It happened twice. There is every reason to expect that it can happen again - this is a thing that the USA will do from time to time, and so they cannot be relied upon. Decoupling is the wise direction.
e.g.
"The world's trust in America is collapsing. That has consequences"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBcHwbuOKXU
Trump's reaction to Robby Roadsteamer singing "Trump went on the Jeffrey Epstein plane" was priceless. If he wasn't on the plane, then why doesn't he release all the Trump-Epstein Files (TM) like he promised?
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2Tj-j9IcdIc
Enjoy the midterm elections, and keep up the performance for our amusement. Now do "Trump's not racist"! Then "Trump's not demented!" Then "Trump's not a rapist!" Then "Trump's not a pedophile!"
> In January 1944 an attempt by the Quisling government to take over the functions of the Nobel Committee led to the resignation of Jahn and other committee members. The Swedish consulate-general in Oslo formally took over the management of the Foundation's Oslo property on behalf of the Nobel Foundation.[14]
Norway won't play Trump's games. Just because the government appoints members to a committee doesn't mean it will (or even can) fire those people to force a decision it wants.
" Five members are appointed by the Norwegian Parliament. In his will, Alfred Nobel tasked the parliament of Norway with selecting the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize. Despite its members being appointed by Parliament, the committee is a private body tasked with awarding a private prize. In recent decades, most committee members were retired politicians. "
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrgWp9_J1UY
> ARE THESE THE WORLD’S BEST SHITHOUSES?
What happened to
> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.
Is Norway really a non-white country? ;-)
Things I evaluate when I use public restrooms include: are they 100% touch free (doors, toilets, taps)? Recycled towels for drying or air dryers where your hands invariable touch the unit?
etc.
Norway has been severely mismanaged for decades now, and soon the chickens are coming home to roost. Sadly, karma will be a bitch.
In fact, if they weren't so damn rich and everything so expensive compared to my Southern European way of live, I'd consider moving there just to enjoy the gorgeous nature.
Lots of shit coming out of Norway lately.
I'm totally fine with the pit toilet design they came up with for the parks. I'm not there to take an instagram poop, I'm there to go hiking.
That said, our public restrooms in big American cities are, in many cases, a disgrace. Vandalized, disgusting, and sparse/inacessible
But outside of cities (and even in some cities) it’s totally fine
[1] The directors of both movies are friends, and interestingly Paterson ends with the protagonist talking to a man from Tokyo who came to visit Paterson, as a poetry fan of William Carlos Williams. It is coincidence, but it does make it feel like they're the same universe.
(That is, an outhouse with a great view, which is different than finding ones which are architectural masterpieces.)
I can find no trace of those results online. Perhaps someone here has better success?
Look for example to America (i mean the continent, there is no country named that). Civilisation brought extinction to various indigenous tribes, but in norther and central america. It brought slavery. In a way, we are over that now, aren't we?
Look for example to Europe (I'm so glad that no european country is so full of it and call itself just "Europe"). They had hundreds of wars in a 10 year period. Some small ... but some like the 30 year long war more devastating than even the 2nd world war.Sure, some people there (look into ex-jugoslavia or look into Russia) still think that mass-killing people is good. Oh, did I mention 2nd world war? Then look there, too. And how one society thought they have the right to extinguish Jews, Gypsies, Jehovas Witnesses, mental ill people and basically any political opponent. I still think we can say that we are over such a thing.
Look for example to Asia. There was a country that waged war on China because China was not buying enough Opium. Or look like the asian golden horde devastated with utter cruelty whole (at the time) mega-cities. And they brough the bubonic plague on top of it ...
Or look at Africa. I mentioned the slaver for America ... but actually african tribes captured people from other tribes and sold them. We can't say that slavery is totally abolished in Africa (I heard the Boko Haram does it) --- but certainly not at the scale it used to be.
If you think that society develops backwards, then just looking at how things used to be 100, 200 or 500 years.
Sure, MAGA would've been a large congressional embarrassment in a proportional system. But they wouldn't run the show.
I truly believe we're here because of Facebook.
There's a statement about reporters having to look through their own windows when reporting on someone who claims it is raining.
Asserted without proof.
If it not Facebook, it would be some other medium. What's the alternative, prevent people from talking to each other unsupervised?
I think a lot of it has to do with the young and idealistic clashing against the old and jaded and both groups yelling at strawmen of each other.
"It's shortwave radio"
"Fox news has done to our parents what they thought gangsta rap would do to us". This applies to Facebook as well. I wish they would have stayed in their "I don't know how to use the computer" phase.
My mom is 76 and absolutely believes the most pressing issues are trans high school swimmers and illegal voting and the biases of the Kennedy Center.
Sure, I have my opinions on those but I’m not saying as a society we aren’t allowed to debate those issues. I’m saying that in some news sources, they’re pure ragebait and completely drown out much more pressing and existential topics we should be solving. They’re simple distraction tactics and a continuation of the culture wars from the 80s and 90s.
How important is it right now to a very vocal group of people that you attach the word genocide to gaza?
The right has seen Democrats (and "leftists" in general) as communists and degenerates for nearly a century. Literally nothing about Trump or Trumpism is new, it just wasn't normalized. There was a consensus reality around politics and culture that had to be maintained which no longer does.
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” - Jefferson, 1816.
This is neither a particularly contemporary problem nor an American one.
Even if the elites are the only ones funding political campaigns, we expected more from regular Americans to vote on facts, rather than ads.
The real issue of our media landscape (information feeds controlled by the elite), probably could have been nipped in the bud some years ago but it may be a little too late for that.
Can we do something about it? The winner-takes-all Electoral College certainly contributes to two-party system [1] and to narrow margins [2]. There are two states who don't do winner-takes-all (Maine and Nebraska), and we can force all states to split their electoral votes.
[1] https://www2.law.temple.edu/lppp/electoral-college-two-party...
[2] https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article-abstract/108/3/727/11948...
Also donated to Bernie, once – then ShareBlue gave it to a Clinton.
This political whoredom works best against our own interests.
The threat posed by Trump to the USA was evident from the day he announced his candidacy. That his whole presidency would one way or another be about his awful approach to immigration and to Ukraine was evident by the time of the Republican National Convention.
That he would try to overturn an election that he lost was evident before he ran for one.
If you cannot see that this man’s essential pathology is dangerous, I worry you cannot see dangerous parallels in several current tech CEOs (at least two, fairly arguably four or five).
There are many bad and crooked politicians; there are many their colleagues hate. Trump is not a crooked politician except as a side effect.
He’s not the same kind of “bad person” at all; most of us never meet anyone as dangerous.
I think you do need to recognise that you (and don’t get me wrong, millions of others!) voted for someone who is essentially evil (in the literary sense of evil). And really you should have been able to see it, because it wasn’t that hidden.
It shouldn’t stop you voting again because genuinely so few people are like him, though he has found fellow travellers in this administration. (Notably RFK Jr — a shockingly awful man)
But it would be healthy to look at what it was that let you look past his evil.
We will know this only if The Next One reverses all his policies.
Because it isn’t about his policies (and because it’s actually quite like turning an oil tanker, especially stuff like undoing tariffs).
Trump is a malignant narcissist. He’s a deeply unusual man.
The Democratic Party had one perennial fringe candidate, Lyndon LaRouche, who was dark-sided in a way Trump is. A really nasty, scary, creepy dude who fairly arguably ran a “business cult”, the LaRouche Group, who was held at arms length by the party.
It has had a few charming “political sociopaths” in the sense of driven people who can make arbitrary choices. It recently efficiently ejected a repeated power abuser (Eric Swalwell).
But nobody like Trump. People like him are rare (and dangerous when they achieve power)
Why?
Both Democrats and Republicans equally seemed to hate him.
Like there was numerous government shutdowns in his first term because nobody actually liked his agenda. Why was it obvious that eventually both parties would agree to enable him?
Both parties did not enable him. The Dems did not fight him adequately but they did not enable him. He wanted the shutdowns, but the only way not to have a shutdown would have been to make unacceptable concessions. And then he'd have increased his demands and the whole thing would have repeated. Whereas what he got out of the shutdowns is less than he went in with.
You could argue that the left-leaning parts of the media spent a bit too much time laughing at Trump and not enough time worrying about him, but from day one it was obvious who he was and that he had media clout.
A lot of his voters saw the cruelty and crassness and liked it. Trump was their vessel for vengeance, as one disappointed Florida voter complained during Trump I "he isn't hurting who he is supposed to be hurting"
Admittedly they did not hear about Paul Manafort’s connections to corrupt pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians, or his debts, or that he was mysteriously working for Trump for free, or that he successfully weakened the RNC platform language on providing weapons to Ukraine. They heard very little about the “adoptions” meeting. Fox didn’t cover that. But then it only got a little bit of coverage in mainstream US TV media because it is incompetent.
31.6% of all eligible voters.
36% of eligible voters didn't even vote in 2024.
I'm guessing you'd have a different opinion if you personally had to wait in line for HOURS because the Rs in your district closed down voting stations specifically to make it nearly impossible to actually vote in precincts that are predominantly liberal or people of color. And it has only gotten worse and more widespread since 2020.
https://www.npr.org/2020/10/17/924527679/why-do-nonwhite-geo...
I live in Washington State where we have universal mail-in voting. Unless you're homeless, every registered voter gets a ballot delivered to their door, they can fill it out at their leisure, and leave it back in their mailbox.
Turnout is only like 5%-10% higher than the national average. 30% still don't vote in presidential election years, 45% in midterms.
Maybe. I live in Switzerland. Here even the poor can afford to vote.
Nevertheless, do these poorest really account for a third of all voters?
25% of all eligible voters work jobs like service, retail, or construction where it is very hard if not impossible to get time off work to vote.
Although many states even have laws allowing people to have time off to vote, it's often 2 hours or less, which in many localities is not nearly enough to get through the line.
There are no real blanket voting protections across the country.
They always can take the matter in their hands. Worked wonders in Europe the last fifteen years.
This is why they are so against mail voting. It levels the playing field.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_2020_Commission_Report_on_...
Even now, it seems like more time is spent on his looks or his health or his pettiness than on his crimes and his destruction.
Given that many of us here have helped the latter emerge and dominate the entire societal discourse, we should meditate somberly upon the law of unintended consequences. It certainly did not look this way when it started, but social networks are a major channel for hate and allow the worst of the worst to set standards for everyone else.
Frankly if AI can mitigate this, it would be a positive development and I would tolerate all the sickly-sweet sycophancy if it also steered people away from hating one another with passion.
"Norway has become a shithouse country, actually"
Not a head of state, but I nominate:
Vladimir Volfovich Zhirinovsky (Владимир Вольфович Жириновский), "Russia's Trump"
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Zhirinovsky
So, yes, he was a thuggish populist troll, and I agree that his mode of operation was often comparable to that of Trump. But he never had power, and never came close to getting it.
For that reason, I think most would see Trump as being in a completely different league.
From the perspective of a person who is neither a US citizen nor living in the USA: I (and many of my fellow countrymen/countrywomen) will relativize and defend a lot of Trump's tantrums since they give you so much material to laugh about.
:-)
It isn't like "saying it like it is" is actually good, or a morally respectable position. It is just word vomit. Most cynically, it is a political strategy to distract from his real self-interests.
We should definitely make not using that phrase one of them.
you do realize that half your country had voted for the guy three times?
You can do expensive vacation or cheap vacation, and both are possible in Norway. You can get a cheap flight and sleep in a tent, or you can drive your car through Sweden.
Or you can fly in and stay on expensive hotels.
Not thinking something is worth what it cost doesn't mean you can't afford it.
Make it the official motto of entire Scandinavia. "This burrito is 30 EUR and a seat in a shuttle coach is 50 EUR, but I have to eat something and get to the airport". In certain circumstances I can even afford a 1000 EUR burrito.
But you don't go to Norway for the burritos or beer pints or hotels, but for the nature and outdoors experiences. Which are free. So if you really want it, then you can have it without breaking the bank. But if you want a traditional holiday of drinking and eating and guided tours, then Norway isn't it.
Bad accessibility, not just for the fatties but also elderlies.
(I assume you mean Russia, but given that it’s only barely holding it together in Ukraine, it probably won’t be invading _Norway_ anytime soon).