Tuuktuuk

And, the Latvian language test is hilariously easy. I have learned Latvian and listened to the test material.

In listening comprehension you hear a phone call to a bus station. The worker answering articulates more clearly than anybody ever would.

And then the multiple choice question is:
Where did the caller call?

• His workplace
• Bus station
• A clothes shop

(I don't remember the other two variants, but the point stands: the question was super easy to answer)

And then, you need to write the first verse of Latvia's anthem, in Latvian. That means having to learn a series if sounds as horribly long as 28 words.

The only way to fail that test is to have a strong principle not to want to learn Latvian or wanting to NOT know the anthem's lyrics.

There are a few more exercises, but all of them are identically ridiculously easy.

It's made so that russophiles will be unable to make themselves fill the test and everyone else will pass with flying colours.

It's the only exam I've ever seen where you need to make an effort in order to fail.

I usually like being notified of messages in certain chats. But even with that I'd like to be able to choose which chats are allowed to disturb me no matter what and which ones should make noise but not that damn much!

Like what gets done?
Depends on whether the police like what needs to get done or not. If they like it, it gets done.

A relatively recent small anecdote:
They forbade using spikes in your winter tyres on one throughfare street in the centre of Helsinki. The police said that so many people will be breaking that rule that they cannot fine all of them, so they will refuse to go enforce the restriction. And after they had gone public with that, the signs were removed as meaningless.

I've had two cases where a car has hit me. In the other case I was in my thoughts and accidentally stood in a wrong place waiting for the light to turn green. I was technically on the roadway – it just wasn't very clear that that's a road. A van intentionally crashed into me with a relatively slow speed and I called the emergency number. He fled the scene, but had to later come to an interrogation because I had seen the number plate. The police then said that I have a possibility to withdraw my demands, and if I don't they will also fine me for having gone against the red lights. They don't have enough resources and didn't want to bother with this case, so they made sure it'll get closed. I was young and very badly out of money, so I let the thing be and allowed them to close the case.

Here's a photo from the spot. The place where I was standing is marked with a blue cross, the car came from the direction shown by the red arrow:

Then there was another case, where a car saw me about to cross a street and put the pedal to the metal in order to get past the crossing before I get there, speeding through an intersection at a ridiculous speed. As the car sped very close to me, I decided to hit its back window with an open hand to tell that "that was not okay". The driver stopped his car in middle of the street, stepped out and shouted "Who are you to touch MY car?!" and then tried to grab my throat, leaving some bruises that I then got documented by a doctor (or nurse, or whatever he was technically). The man had said that I had ran across the street crossing, endangering the traffic, and the police told me we can close the case or they can open a case against me as well. I allowed them to close the case.

Here's the spot where that happened; the car was coming from the direction of the crane, towards the direction where this picture is made from, and I was crossing the nearest crossing in the picture from right to left:

The police is so extremely under-resourced in Finland that I can absolutely understand they are kind of desperate. If they want to have time to investigate murders and other really serious crime, they have to leave something else undone. Or otherwise murderers can just run free. And because they need to choose things to ignore to save their resources, they tend to ignore things that are done by people that they assume don't agree with their political views.

Those things with the two traffic incidents would have folded out differently if I hadn't been an under 30-year-old guy with a long hair and if the the drivers hadn't been middle-aged men in both cases. The police felt like those people were their peers and symphatised with them, so they wanted me to shut up. They also really sympathise with people who drive cars and typically dislike bicyclers. Of course, in the end, that depends on the individual. Each policeman has their own values and chooses what to ignore based on what they find important.

Here's how Finland fares regarding policemen per 100 000 inhabitants:

and here's the same for Germany:

...oh, apparently Germany has cut its police force a LOT. Last time I checked, their number was far over 400.

...and then came Valmet with its Dm6.

And nobody paid anything for the intellectual property. The history of these railbuses is fascinating in how it's a chain of betrayals.

Well, yeah. Up to a point, we do.

But they tend to be based on people knowing that When I say "count the ticket, it's hundreding" in the meaning "lower the flag, it's raining" (based on the Finnish word "laskea" meaning both "count" and "to lower", "lippu" meaning both "ticket" and "flag" and "sataa" being both the partitive form of "hundred" and "it rains", the joke is about the Finnish language having funny homonyms.

And similarly here the arse of the joke is English being funny in having to meanings for the word "come"? It's not usual to make such jokes with words that are actual cognates. They are more usually made with word pairs such as read and read, or read and red. I mean, jokes are goof things to have, but they shouldn't be based on the laughee being ignorant.

What would be a fantastic name for a brothel, however, is this:

Those trains were blatantly copied by another Swedish company, and then that one was again blatantly copied by a Finnish company, leading to the models Dm6 and Dm7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VR_Class_Dm7

Zero royalties paid!

I was just talking with a Russian woman I know who always seemed like a decent person.

And then she uttered "there's no leader around who would be better for the Russia than Putin is". I was left gobsmacked. I've still to go back to her and ask how the hell that's supposed to be possible in her opinion. Like, what should some other leader do in order to be even worse than Putin, really? How is killing hundreds of thousands of people, spending all the money saved for the future, torturing people en masse, destroying the own country's economy, and destroying the image of the Russia as a country and Russians as a people in the eyes of other peoples not a problem?

It seems crazy. You cannot really run a country down worse than Putin has done. Or maybe you can, by being a Pol Pot. But is there really a chance that a Pol Pot would somehow manage to seize power in the Russia? Almost anybody is better than Putin. But Russians disagree. They like their Putin the best possible president they have. They say it's sad that they've got nothing better than that asshole, but they still do think he's the best available. They think that if Putin dies, somebody "worse" will replace him. That is utterly moronic.

But shortly put: They don't get their shit together because they don't feel like there is any shit to get together. They've got a leader they like. He's making the Russia strong, and that's what they want. They've got a leader that is doing what they think a Russian leader should be doing. Or, is at least doing stuff more in that direction than anybody else would.

They like Putin. If someone tried hurting him, the whole population would get their shit together to protect him.

Thank you!

The Ukrainian system of names basically functions this way: If your name is Oleh Melnyk and you want to call your newborn child Nastia, what gets written in the documents is Anastasiia. Then, people will call that Nastia this way:

• If they have to be very formal, they call her Anastasiia Olehivna (this is the father's first name with a suffix)
• If they have to be formal, they call her Anastasiia Melnyk (this is Nastia's family name)
• If they have to be somewhat formal, they call her Anastasiia
• If they have to be informal, they call her Nastia

Every Anastasiia is always called Nastia by most people around her. And every Nastia has "Anastasiia" as their name in their official documents. Nastia's parents will never* call her Anastasiia. Not even when telling their friends what their newborn's name is. They will say "Look, this is our Nastia!"

The same applies to basically all other names as well. There are lists online for what name corresponds with which nickname and there is no simple pattern that you can reliably use to automatically turn a name's informal form into a formal form of the name or vice versa. For foreign names, -chka is a very common solution. When I lived in Ukraine, I would have ended up being Tuuchka, which is kind of funny because it means a small cute cloudlet, but people found that weird and just had to resort to always using my name as in documents, which made them feel kind of uncomfortable. If they cannot distinguish between whether the form they use is a formal or an informal one, their brain breaks a little.

Oh, and when I call my wife's phone from an unknown number, she answers with "Anastasiia ", but if I give her my phone and she knows she's talking to a friend of mine without knowing precisely whom, her first words in the phone are "Nastia ". And no, her father's name is not Oleh. Nor Melnyk. I just took those names randomly. Melnyk is the most common family name over there.

*) Never, except when they are super angry at her for some seriously bad mischief. Then they shout ANASTASIIA MELNYK, and she knows she in trouble. And if it's "ANASTASIIA OLEHIVNA, come here NOW!" then it means she immediately knows she's been caught after all for having killed her sibling three years ago, or something like that. And similarly, if they want to be just generally stern and not angry (although: almost angry), they can go with just "Anastasiia. Come here. Now."

I cannot get that to work. I tried this link: https://piefed.europe.pub/post/35873 . And no. Nothing.

The US instituted a mandatory draft to fight that war.

But that was an offensive war, and most countries don't do those.

Finland was much much safer before.

Depends on how you define "to be safe". The Russia had declared that its goal is to return the borders of the Russian empire. That sounded a bit scary, but we shrugged it off, because it would require a war and that would hurt the Russia so much that such a war would be idiocy and therefore will not happen.

In case you don't know where the borders of the Russian Empire were, they included for example these:

• Finland
• Estonia
• Latvia
• Lithuania
• half of Poland
• Ukraine
• Moldova

The Russia has declared that it wants to make all of those countries part of the Russian Federation.

So, we were not in danger, because the Russia would not be stupid enough to begin a war in Ukraine or in Finland, as it was clear that it would hurt the Russia's economy more than it could ever be of use to it. The Finnish defence doctrine was based on the concept of credible defence. We were told in school that "they can attack us and they could most likely even take over all of Finland, but our army is able to incur such big losses to them that they will not want to do that."
But then, it turned out that the Russia does not care about losses.

So, we found out two things:

• the Russia is really interested in acting to its declarations. They are not just empty words as we had assumed
• the Russia does not care about losses – therefore the doctrine of credible defence does not protect from the Russia

You can say that we were not in danger because we didn't know that we are in danger. And in some way that's true. But, once we found out that we are in danger, then, well, we were.
Since the doctrine of credible defence went down the drain, meaning that Finland effectively did not have a defence that is able to protect it, what else than joining NATO do you suggest we should have done to gain a level of defence capability able to keep the Russia out of Finland? Name one other option that we had.

Your idea that the Russia has a right to defend itself by preemptively taking over Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, half of Poland, Ukraine, and Moldova is, well... It would be impolite saying what it makes you look like.

EDIT: And of course this is relevant: In January 2022 the support for joining NATO was around 35 %. No "let's join NATO" propaganda had been made at all, but in May 2022 the support for joining NATO was around 80 %. The only thing that caused this was that people around Finland saw that what we had been taught about the Russia in our schools was crap. It was part of the school curriculum to make sure every Finn knows that the Russia is not going to attack us, with an explanation of why not. And it seemed to make sense. And everyone had that in their heads. And then... We saw what the Russia is doing in Ukraine, and it was clear from that alone that shit, we are fucked! That meant, 80 % of the people decided they wanted a new kind of safety against the Russia.
Maybe you can say that they told that in our schools for about 40 years just so that in 2025 Finland could join NATO. But... Well, you know.
In May 2022 you could go to any bar to talk with random people and it would be clear that the assumption was "we are joining NATO. There is no other option." There was no real dialogue about it, because basically everybody was of the same opinion. For the abovementioned reasons.