That was pretty wild development, yes. But still, we will not make any territorial claims. Doing so would effectively render the protection provided by NATO’s Article 5 null. We would once again be alone against a nuclear power with much larger resources than we could ever have.

So we won’t be doing that.

Finland won’t make any claims. This much is certain.

The only way we would even consider restoring the stolen lands would be IF the Russian Federation falls and IF the initiative for reunification would come from the Karelian Republic.

Yes! I bought mine in 2004, it was the only proper steel string guitar that I could afford at the time. And it is a really good guitar. There has been zero need for any adjustments, the only replaced part (excluding strings, of course) is a single tuning peg. I was drunk and slipped while I was playing, the guitar hit the floor first but miraculously there was no other damage.

A friend of mine was a guitar tech/roadie for Dio and Metallica in his youth and when he tried the F310 his opinion was that “This isn’t a bad guitar at all, actually it sounds a lot like my own Martin back home. You really might want to hold on to this one.”

Living in the same latitudes I could only take it as a compliment.

“You fucking Alaskan!”

I laughed uncontrollably for several minutes after receiving this compliment. Wrong continent, buddy.

We X’s were born into the analog world and grew up as the digital age started to emerge. We have the luxury of knowing both.

My older daughter looked exactly the like her mother at the same age when she was 3-6 years old. When I compare their childhood photos it would be hard to tell which is which, if not for the hideous fashion of the 80’s being a a clear tell for mother.

After the age of 7 my daughter quickly grew into her own look, but when she makes certain faces the resemblance is still striking.

This is the true question. Also, do we still love lamp?

No magic tricks or diet fads.

Eat less, move more.

Eat more vegetables and salad, cut down bread and meat.

Stop drinking sodas and juices with extra sugar in them and learn to quench your thirst with water.

Limit eating candy or cookies to one day per a week, if you can’t let them go entirely.

This. Learn basic economics at a young age and compound interest shall serve you well.

It’s getting harder every year.

I remember well the constant fear of nuclear war in the 1980’s.

I remember the wonder we felt when the Berlin Wall fell and Soviet Union collapsed. A hope of a tomorrow free of fear.

I remember the dreadful recession of the early 1990’s and the steep economical rise that followed it.

I remember the amazing advancements in technology and the standard of living in the late 1990’s. And at the same time, it felt like the world was coming to it’s senses.

I was 21 in the year 2000. The world was full of promise, technological advancements were just pouring in, old mortal enemies were finding common ground and it seemed that we were slowly heading towards a Star Trek - like post scarcity utopia.

This age of hope eneded by the finance crisis of 2007-2008. Russia tried the waters with the war in Georgia. The general atmosphere of the world turned towards gloom again. And the downward spiral just seems to keeps going and going…

Yet I continue the work I started when I chose teaching as my profession in those golden years of hope. The kids are very different today, any class from 20 years ago would be a piece of cake compared with the problems they have now. But if a change for the better is to come, it will come from the kids. My generation is hopelessly lost in consumer greed and watching mindless “reality” shows that they somehow feel more important than real life.

I alone cannot be the change we need, but I CAN educate a few hundred kids and with good luck, maybe a dozen or few of them will have a some effect for a better future.

This was also my previous assumption.

I remember reading some scientic article that examined what would happen if we eradicated the mosquitos entirely.

Surprisingly, they came to the conclusion that they’d just be gone and we would be a lot happier without the nuisance and the diseases they spread.

No other species is dependent on mosquitos as a food source, they could easily find enough to eat with them gone. Mosquitos apparently serve no known vital purpose in their ecosystems, although it was mentioned that males of some species have some little value as secondary pollinators.

Things were pretty crazy, but not Ankh-Morpok-level crazy ;)

I’ve eaten a rat.

In my youth I was trekking in Thailand and we arrived to our next destination late at night and we were starving. The only option to get food was a street grill which served only two foods: rat-on-a-stick and some kind of a fried jellyfish-on-a-stick.

The rat was actually pretty good. My friend chose the jellyfish and regretted this instantly.

Physical. I read a lot and a real book won’t run out of battery.

I strongly dislike reading from a tablet but I’ve been meaning to buy a Kindle for some time. Unfortunately they are still ridiculously high priced in my country, so I haven’t bit the bullet yet.

This is the way.

This is the only movie that has made me truly angry.

I bought a 2 gen iPod Nano 8GB in 2007 and I have used this amazing device almost daily ever since. The original battery somehow still managed to hold a 5-6h charge last spring, but after the summer it can only do 2-3h of continous playback. I already ordered a replacement battery.

The jogwheel can be easily operated through your pocket fabric which makes it far superior to touchscreens.

I intend to keep using it as long as I can and I’ve already picked up a few spare ones in case it breaks beyond repair.

More often than you’d think.

When I lived alone while studying, I usually kept only a tiny kitchen worklight on. My friends were always baffled by this when they came to visit.

Once my co-worker asked to borrow my favourite sunglasses. When she put them on, she was still for a moment and then went “MY DEAR GOD, HOW CAN YOU SEE ANYTHING WITH THESE ON?”

The only sunglasses that make sunny days outside enjoyable for me. And yes, they are very dark.

I’m like you. Bright lights - including daylight without really dark sunglasses - are painful but in low light conditions I can operate far better than the average person.

I don’t know if anyone had this in my family before me, but I strongly suspect that my kids have inherited it from me. They are quite young, but we’ll see.

Back in the days when Netscape Navigator went down, I switched to then-new Firefox.

I have had no reason to not use it. With mods Firefox even allows me to keep the UI looking exactly the same as it did with version 3.x, where everything is just where I want it to be.

Change just for the sake of change is pointless.

The swamps of Dagobah.

Scandinavian, mid-40’s. The vast majority of cars in Europe have manual transmission, in my country you can’t even get a driver’s license if you can’t handle it. I prefer manual, whenever I drive automatic I feel like there’s something missing.

I like to repair and restore broken vintage audio gear.

“Wow, this 60’s Sansui amp and those 70’s AR speakers are practically free! I already have all the tools I need to repair them, it’ll be fun and cheap. When I get these restored, I won’t need anything else ever again!”

How little did I know.

Jesus. That theory is the one my professors talked about in university, as an example of “how to never teach anyone anything”.

Yes. For years now. And I am horrified.

I am a teacher and I’ve had students who could not find the article about lions from the animal encyclopedia I handed to them. And when I helped them to find it, one started crying, one tried to read it (stopped after a minute or so) and one asked “Isn’t there some lion video we could watch instead?”. It was two pages with a lot of pictures. But it was too much for these 5th graders.

Reading proper books has become almost impossible to kids because their attention span is almost non-existent with written material.

We’ve tried to add more emphasis on basic reading skills in the early grades for some time now, but it seems to have very little effect.

In Finland many high school seniors go to an overnight booze cruise some time before their final exams. It can get pretty wild.

1. Do not let Mom ever have brain surgery.
2. Make grandma see a different doctor. The current one is clueless.
3. Bust Dad for smoking in secret and force him to stop. You know how it can be done.
4. Idea of Mom and Dad getting a divorce is a scary one, but it probably would make their and your life a lot better.
5. Start jogging daily. You’ll never like it, but you need to do it to.
6. Ask her out when you’re 15. She likes you too.
7. Start taking guitar and piano lessons. Turns out you have musical talent, you just haven’t realized it yet.
8. No, I won’t tell you how to get rich. You’d fuck your life up royally with unlimited money.

When we met, we were both pretty broken from past experiences. She had had a line of bad relationships and I had my own issues. She was creative, smart and very beautiful, way out of my league.

With her I was happy for the first time in my adult life and I loved her just as she was. We enjoyed the same things and our friends talked of us as a “perfect couple”. And for a time everything truly was pretty perfect.

Then one day she called me and said: “I’m sorry. I can’t do this anymore.”

After the initial shock I managed to say: “I love you and want you to be happy. If this makes you happy, so be it.”

And that was it. I was emotionally devastated.

I never saw her again. Nine months later a common friend told me she had a baby coming in the next month. Apparently she had switched me for a better candidate and gotten herself pregnant almost instantly.

Realizing this broke me even more. I guess our time together had fixed her to a point where she was ready to start a family, just not with me. According to my friend she got three kids with the same guy and is very happy with her life.

It took me years to recover from this and I don’t think that I’ll ever really get “over it”.

I had a larger surgical procedure done when I was 7. They gave me the calming pre meds maybe half an hour before the operation to make sure that I wouldn’t freak out with the IV. I remember clearly how strange it felt when the pre meds started to kick in, the whole world slowed down and everything felt “good”.

Then they wheeled me into the OR and took my robe off. The operating table was cold and I commented on it, the anesthesia doctor just laughed and said “don’t worry, in a minute it won’t be”. Then she put the IV in and asked me to count down from twenty. “Nine” was the last word I managed to stutter before I went under.

Then I woke up in the recovery room, about 9 hours later. It felt like I had slept a really long, dreamless sleep. The operation had gone as planned, but the recovery period in the hospital was still pretty painful.

Wasn’t that Chewie’s dad?

Very fast reflexes and I can see in the dark far better than most people.

I had never realized that my eyes were different until my compulsory miltary service. I could reasily read maps when others couldn’t see shit and I never stumbled during night training in the forest.

Fast reflexes are generally pretty cool to havel, but it’s not fun when a knife falls off the kitchen table and it is impossible to stop your own hand trying to catch it.

My “learned talent” is fixing mechanical devices. When I was 6 or 7 I took apart and fixed the family VCR so I could finish watching the Smurfs. My mom found me studying the jammed mechanism, with all the parts lying on the living room carpet. She had a fit and wanted to collect the parts away, I started crying and told her that I’ll never get it back together if she messes up their places. She watched as I released the stuck tape wheel and reassembled the device. And it worked.

I’ve fixed countless devices with just visual analysis and pure intuition after that.

Thank you. This is amazing.