Reminds me of when I was having a chat with the owner of a company I worked at in London. We had just made ourselves a cup of tea, he got himself a digestive to go with it. He dipped the digestive in his tea, and mid-sentence only half of the biscuit came back up. Stunned silence. The look of utter misery and disappointment on his face stays with me to this day - this was the last thing he needed just then. I suggested it could be fixed by adding the rest of the packet of biscuits and enjoy it as a biscuit porridge - he wasn’t entirely convinced. 😄

This happened outside of Trondheim in Norway. Funny thing is that the homeowner didn’t even notice. He slept through the whole thing and woke up to a 135 metre cargo ship outside his window.

You think you’re gonna have an election? Like, an actual one?

Mindless troll

And what you’re doing there is often called red-tagging; baselessly accusing whichever person is disagreeing with you or being inconvenient of being a communist in order to “win the argument”. Common practice in places with either authoritarian rule or corrupted democracies, such as the US and the Philippines. A very poor strategy, though - it only reveals that you have nothing to show.

It’s not hard to detect your animosity towards tankies, I’d venture to say you identify them as enemies. Question is: What are your criteria for someone else to be defined as what you call a “tankie loser”? Have those criteria gradually narrowed over the years?

Thanks for the explanation, it’s really helpful. Though I do appreciate open fora where all ideologies and viewpoints can converge and discuss in a peaceful manner, what I don’t like is the otherization, polarization and labeling of those not sharing someone’s opinions. I hope the discourse climate will move in the right direction soon.

No worries, I’ve told my fair share of compete flops, many of them in front of everyone at work. 😆

I think the phrase we’re looking for is panem et circenses; bread and circus. That’s the delicate balance the powers that be are using to keep the general populace complacent. Any developed society is three meals away from collapse, but when we have a steady supply of junk food and Netflix binges coming our way, we’re just too comfortable to care.

What is this obsession with the term “tankies” on Lemmy nowadays? Fled here from Reddit because it had turned into a quagmire of American politics, rage and misery. The others fleeing seem to have brought it with them.

I had cat scratch disease last year, and do not recommend it. Very painful and uncomfortable. If a cat bites or scratches you hard enough to break skin, clean and disinfect immediately. If you feel ill after a couple of weeks to a month, test yourself and kitty for Bartonella Henselae. If positive, prepare for three months to a year of misery.

I stand corrected. I do know what legal tender means, and thought that the Euro was required to be accepted in all of the EU. Not any less confusing when your neighbours in Slovakia use the Euro and we were visiting Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia in the same trip. Good beer, btw.

Pretty much, though that’s not a requirement either. Sweden and Denmark still have their kroner, the Czechs have their koruna and Hungarians their forints. The euro is legal tender in all of these countries, but it’s also legal tender in most parts of Norway already. 😂

The only arguments against joining the EU I’ve heard so far from staunchly anti-EU people are variations of “we’ll be ruled from Brussels”, “the EU will take all our money”, “we’ll be flooded with foreigners” and “we’ll lose our culture”.

The response to these claims:

We won’t be ruled any more from Brussels than France, Spain or Hungary is. All these countries have their own methods and unique sets of laws you have to familiarise yourself with before moving there. The EU won’t take our money any more than any other member; it’s a mutually beneficial transaction. We’re already a part of the EEA and Schengen so anyone in the EU has the right to live and work in Norway, just as Norwegians enjoy the same rights. I’ve visited most countries in the EU, and can’t say I got the impression that any of their unique cultures were under threat. We stayed in normal residential areas, far from the touristy parts of town, and could clearly see the unique characteristics of each place we went to.

The transition would be minimal. We already adopt EU laws and standards (or their equivalent) in our own laws, we’re a part of ACER, EFTA and Schengen, as well as numerous intelligence and police partnerships. The top leadership of the EU considers the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund a casus belli and is strictly hands off. We’re pretty much all in already, only that we don’t have a seat in the European parliament. I’m struggling to find arguments against membership.

A lot of good points here about pros and cons when considering republic vs constitutional monarchy. I was myself against the idea of monarchy for quite a while, but I realize it’s mostly because I was living in the UK at the time and was exposed to how normal people are treated compared to the upper class. In addition, though the British royal family doesn’t have any power on paper, they have vast connections in all parts of the government and private sector with many ways to influence things. Also, the UK was until recently a two party state, which meant almost total power to whichever party won the election.

Scandinavia doesn’t have as much of a disparity between social classes (even counting royals), and what I see here is that the monarchy provides a stability and continuity that we wouldn’t get with a republic. Anyone can lie, cheat and bribe their way to getting elected president, but when you have a dozen different parties with different policies passing laws with a monarch as an anchor, it works out pretty well.

The King of Norway has a mostly symbolic role in day-to-day affairs. New laws that have been passed by the Storting (Parliament) will have their final approval signed by the King, but this is largely a token approval. The King does have veto power over any given amendment, but if he invokes it, Parliament has the right to vote the same amendment through a second time, at which point it cannot be vetoed. He is the head of the Church of Norway, and also supreme commander of our armed forces. Though command is delegated to other commanders, the King would have a more direct role in questions regarding central command or wartime. When representing our country abroad, he is very much considered a personification of the nation, rather than a representative of the ruling party. Norway’s main reason for maintaining our own monarchy stems very much from declaring independence from Denmark and Sweden, which ruled us for about 500 years.

The city stated the remains had gone unclaimed by the families after the bombing, but in May 2021, the city of Philadelphia’s Health Commissioner, Thomas Farley, resigned under pressure after it was revealed that in 2017 he ordered the cremation and disposal of victims’ remains without either identifying them or contacting members of the family. A day after Farley’s resignation, staff at the Medical Examiner’s Office found the box labeled “MOVE” in a refrigerated area of their office containing the un-cremated remains.

The remains in question were those of two children, 12 and 14 years old.

non-renuable

Not a word, my dude.

Who needs’em? If Uncle Vlad hears that Ze Germans are rolling across the Polish border, he’ll be skipping on one leg back to Russia while changing his soiled pants. :D

Probably couldn’t trust Trump to come through, but you have to keep in mind that he’s not an autocrat quite yet. Not everyone in the US government shares his views on NATO and the commitments the US has pledged to under that alliance. Look at the rest of NATO. You have four of the top ten military powers in the world to start off with (UK, France, Turkey, Italy). Then add to that the rest of Europe and Poland’s own considerable military might. Canada would also join in, and those otherwise peaceful Canadians go fucking nuts when provoked. Even disregarding NATO, you have the Anglo-Polish Alliance, which is a mutual assurance that the UK provides military assistance (or vice versa) if their ally is invaded. Poland also has many close friends and allies in the old East Bloc, so the misconception that they would be left to their own devices is simply untrue.