esa

[EEC] is essentially the same as joining, just worse

I tend to agree; I think the decision to not be able to vote was a bad one.

Why mix a defensive alliance with what is mutating into “United States of Europe”, those are vastly different kind of deals.

Norway is a sparsely populated and poorly defended country with a lot of natural resources and a long, often strategic, coastline. We’re better off being allied to countries that share our ideals, in a union that has actually brought peace to the continent, than being gobbled up by some other superpower that believes in one or another variant of ethnic supremacy.

You’re not giving up any serious form of autonomy by joining NATO.

NATO is to a large degree “USA with friends”. An EU defence is looking more and more needed.

1994 is not that long ago,

It’s 31 years ago. The people who were of voting age at that time are 49 or older now. The average age in Norway is 41. The average Norwegian isn’t old enough to have voted on the EU even once, much less twice.

and the politicians still entered EU regardless.

They did not. We are in the EEC and Schengen, but not in the EU.

Your anecdote is just that. The Finns and Swedes had a sudden change of heart about NATO after Putin invaded. Norwegians might similarly have a change of heart about NATO and the EU if NATO starts rotting at the head.

The average Norwegian has never had the chance to vote on the EU. The people who voted twice are all retired or dead.

Norway is incredibly oil-brained and quite steeped in Norwegian exceptionalism … but there’s also a lot of people who love the status quo no matter what, so it’s not clear what the effect of Norway joining would actually be

I had to figure out how to do the factory reset at the gym after I got the blue triangle of death when leaving work. Oddly enough it synced the gym plan I wanted and leaving it connected to the phone didn’t seem to produce any other ill effects, but I stayed away from anything using GPS.

But yeah, the general advice for Garmins just now seems to be “just don’t” and hope it doesn’t triangle itself until the fix is out

They’re stuck in a reboot loop, but not bricked. A factory reset works (but the problem may reappear on update).

Oh and as for raingear goes, I’ll wear it in colder seasons, but my favorite is summer rain. Just put on some wicking material and treat it as free sweat.

It varies. IME you can’t combine them with something like a respro mask in winter, you have to choose whether to expose your lungs or your eyes. In some weather you might feel like you need wipers, at that point you kinda just gotta use your fingers.

(I used to wear a respro in winter here in Oslo, but between replacing diesels with EVs, some route changes and generally mild auto traffic here, I haven’t bothered this winter. Used to develop this kind of mild, sporadic but chronic cough, but now I think I’m free, apart from when I actually get close to a diesel with their rancid winter fumes.)

Seconding the use of protective glasses as a sort of windshield. I use clear ones in the winter and tinted ones in the summer.

Here in the sub-arctic we get some heavy showers but likely nothing like what you get if you have monsoon seasons or the like. But snow and sleet and the like can be surprisingly unpleasant to get on the eyes anyway.

I have no idea what it could actually be used for either, or what would make it a worthwhile investment

Finally Oslo can get its own Tyholt tower! I am expecting a revolving Egon’s up in there!

yeah, ä and æ get transcribed as ae and is a different sound.

Aj kudd traj tu eksplejn itt, bøtt Aj’ll dsjøst lett the “æøå” viddijåo du the tåking. År singing, Aj gess.

Yeah, X is sort of his Dearborn Independent. Only that never became state-controlled media the way X now has with Musk becoming part of the state.

Better jobs. I would never have had the kind of career growth I had staying where I used to live.

Side note here: Better access to work-related events. It is possible to WFH for some jobs that were previously city-only, but you’ll be missing out on not only the casual socialization of stuff like grabbing a pint after work, but also various technical meetups. I’ve gone to meetups for fields of work not related to me just because I find the topic interesting and it’s easy to swing by.

Central Oslo resident:

• Gym is about 8 minutes by bike away. I’ve gone to gyms further away to train with my PL club but ultimately the gym between here and work wins out (work is about 10 minutes by bike away).
• Groceries are usually five minutes by foot away. Within ten minutes on bike I have access to bigger and more specialized shops.
• There are plenty of bars within walking distance, with various concepts, so we can visit one we’re in the mood for.
• Quiz nights in bars are generally packed. They also frequently have board games available, but I tend to ignore them.
• It’s actually pretty quiet here. There are some noisy party streets, but you more or less just need to live a block or two away to not hear any of it.
• We also have plenty of parks and easy access to the waterfront for Sunday Spaziergang and swimming.
• IMO Oslo could learn a bit from German cafe/Konditorei-culture. We have good coffee pretty much anywhere, and some good pastries here and there, but not their cake selection. There’s also plenty of restaurants around, again within walking distance. Depending on our mood we can just get a döner and watch Star Trek at home, or we could go out to eat at something mentioned in the Michelin guide, or something in between, or even get Foodora. (The Frau was severely pleased when one of her favourite places got a Bib Gourmand.)

A significant difference for the household economy is if you can own your home in the city and not have to own a car. The home will appreciate, while a car depreciates. Generally energy costs will also be lower if you share walls with your neighbours. And, of course, being two helps. Living with a friend or two in a collective is pretty common.

But also going to work and getting groceries is something almost all of us have to deal with. We have to wipe our asses in the city, just like everywhere else.

The bathrooms in the building need to be refurbished and I’m actually thinking of getting a Japanese style toilet with a built-in bidet.

Privacy focused services will generally be sought after by nazis, illegal arms dealers, CSAM dealers (but I repeat myself). But like with the nazi bar analogy, they need to handle it properly and take certain stances to avoid that group becoming their only customers—and the rest of us blocking it.

#!/bin/bash
set -euo pipefail

if [[ -z "${1:-}" ]]
then
  echo "we need an argument!" >&2
  exit 1
fi

The logs are handled, but I mostly use it for command separation and control, including killing unruly child processes.

I suspect my habit of having an alias userctl="systemctl --user" is slightly unusual, as is running Firefox, Steam, and some other graphical programs as systemd units is somewhat unusual (e.g. mod4-enter runs systemd-run --user alacritty)

But what I’m actually pretty sure is unique is my keyboard layout. I taught myself dvorak a summer some decades ago, but the norwegian dvorak layout has some annoyances, so I’ve made some tweaks. Used to be a Xmodmap file, but with the switch to wayland I turned it into a file in /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/.

Part of what I did to teach myself dvorak and touch-typing at the same time was randomize the placement of the keycaps too. It has a side effect of being a kind of security by obscurity layer: I type quickly and confidently, but others who want to use my machines have an “uhh …” reaction.

I get the impression a lot of leftpondians use “bike” to mean MC, so to them saying “ebike” when they mean “electric motorcycle” is pretty natural.