Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
User ID: 137
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
I generally write standard 5-paragraph essays in the PolSci exams I'm currently taking and have been getting 4s and 5s (on an 1-5 rating scale).
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
It might do exactly that, yes. Language learning becomes a niche specialist skill, maybe Finns now in elementary school will wonder how the younger generations don't even know any English the same way Millennials wonder how the Zoomers can't even use computers properly.
As I've mentioned previously, I'm at a Finnish university right now, doing a new degree (PolSci) since the future in translation is, well, uncertain, and I'm seeing a potential niche in the "political implications of AI" field that could be potentially seized upon.
Since I already have a lot of old studies I've been able to take in to the new degree as credit transfers and since I no longer get subsidies and student loans I have to work while studying, so I haven't taken a lot of "actual" courses. What few I have had seem to be at some sort of a paradigm shift point regarding AI where it's still uncertain how it should be handled; mainly, I've taken two courses of Russian, and it seems to be taken as granted that the students will use AI to look up Russian words and their forms, but there's still a "preferably don't do this, and if you do, at least tell me" instruction for longer tasks. In any case, the Russian courses were pass/fail and otherwise the professors generally indicated that coursework isn't that important and would mostly count for edge cases regarding grading.
The book exams are done at a student's leisure by booking a room at a special exam class without phone and with computers that basically only allow the specific exam software to run and are done as essay questions, which is good compared to the old pen-and-paper exams, since my handwriting is atrocious.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
You can be arrested in Ukraine for questioning Holodomor. Does this falsify Holodomor?
This seems like a fairly odd rule in general. People have been arrested throughout history for advocating claims that are not true. For instance, it is literally impossible for the claims of all religions (or the central claim of atheism) to be true, and yet, throughout history, it has been typical for people to get arrested for advocating all and sundry religions or for advancing atheism.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
In the acclaimedmusic.net list of most acclaimed artists by critic consensus, cataloguing and adding together by some ratio a huge number of "best albums/songs of..." critics lists, Kanye is number 13, the best result by a hip-hop artist they have. The site was last updated in 2020 as the guy running it has had a number of personal and work-related issues which have pushed the planned new update forwards to some indefinite time, I wonder how Kanye's position is going to be affected if/when the new update rolls in. Of course there's a huge amount of acclaim already grandfathered in.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
I know it's not the same thing, I was just playing around with the literal meaning of the words.
It has always struck me that the American belief that the most likely chance to have to face down an oppressive government from the inside is a belief enabled by the fact of belonging to the most powerful country in the world without any conceivable external enemy that could defeat it in warfare; in a small nation with a powerful authoritarian neighbor, the threat matrix and the perceived ways to combat that threat are obviously different.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
I would say the number of Brits who believe that people should be armed so they can fight bad guys and their oppressive government is approximately 0.
I'd say that a clear supermajority of the Finnish people hold this belief, at least - with the caveat that the definition would have the armed people being the Finnish nation as represented by the conscription-based Finnish Armed Forces and the bad guys and their oppressive government being Russia and Putin.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
Isn't it just a reversing of the "When you think about it, LoTR has a powerful queer subtext" style of thing?
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
For Millennials, it was more overtly a sea change in gaming (constant updates, a rise in indie titles, graphical reversion), more directly creative as a more adult/late teen outlet, with nerdy overtones. At least in this viewing, Jack Black's Steve represents on some level the disconnect between the two generations that are so close, yet so far.
I've never played Minecraft, is this more of a late-millennial thing? (I was born in 1984.)
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
The Bush admin also didn't post any of those images, making this a strange comparison.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
I mean, just for instance, compare the Dune novels and David Lynch's adaptation, where the love between Paul and Chani is a fated historic romance. In the newer adaptation I don't think Chani so much as smiles at Paul once, and they supposedly love each other?
Huh? She smiles throughout the entire main romance scene.
I don't think that Zendaya is a particularly good actor and the romance subplot wasn't handled all that well, but come on.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
Whenever I try to look at Australian politics, I'm struck by how this guy Dutton is one of the most lizard-looking politicians I've seen. Just uncanny valley looks.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
Well, no, you wouldn't expect large constituencies of "make [another country] great again" voters in another country, unless we're talking about special cases like Christian Zionists supporting Israel for religious reasons. Beyond that, why would one expect even right-wing Canadians to feel particularly positive about the guy who talks about annexing Canada and has just slapped Canada with punitive tariffs for... something?
Insofar as I've seen, the sort of Canadians who would actually support American annexation or at least be OK with it would be either disaffected forumlords who treat politics as an abstraction, general fringe loons, or recent immigrants - I remember seeing a post indicating that the Indian immigrants in Canada would be more likely to support annexation than the born Canadians.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
It's the sort of an ideological position that you would expect to be committed to free trade in all conclusions. Minimum wage and basic income are separate questions, I'm not sure why they need to be mentioned here.
I've followed Scott's writing for over 20 years (before he started blogging, even!) and I'm not sure if there are any points where I would have expected him to support tariffs on the basis of his other ideological positions, is the point.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
The US House of Reps just in 2023 passed the resolution Denouncing the Horrors of Socialism with 109 Dems voting for it (86 against). Last year, the same House passed Crucial Communism Teaching Act which "makes optional educational materials available through the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation to help educate high school students about the dangers of communism and totalitarianism and how those systems are contrary to the founding principles of freedom and democracy in the United States" with even more Dem support.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
Scott has never been a standard left-liberal, though. "Liberaltarian" would probably be closer.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
At what point of his ideological history would you have expected him to go "actually, tariffs are great and Trump is great for trying to do tariffs"?
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
Not to forget that the Confederacy claimed several states that never formally seceded from the Union, seated their representatives in the Confederate Congress etc.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
Russian Empire was basically unable to utilize state power to anywhere close to the degree that a modernized state could, though it was starting to make up the difference already in the years before the Bolshevik Revolution.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
Casual encounters and visits to England and Ireland might also leave one convinced that they are basically the same nationality on the basis of not only language but also surface aspects (left side of the road, two faucets, crap insulation etc.), and yet... (or England and US/Australia/Canada/whatever.)
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
Crimea only became demographically majority Russian after WW2. Sure, it wasn't ethnically Ukrainian either, but the Crimean Tatars of the current day identify strongly with Ukraine, for understandable reasons.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
Apart from Ukraine being conquered by Russia and forcibly assimilated, what would "Ukraine as a people to survive" mean here? Even if their population levels are drastically reduced, well, there are nations half the size of Ukrainians surviving as a people, even triple or quarter the size of Ukrainians. The Paraguayans were able to survive the War of the Triple Alliance. It would mean huge amounts of death, to be sure, but that's still different from national extinction.
There genuinely has been concerted, ideological voting for Israel in this and previous Eurovision, I don't know how one could deny this. At least last year, people were organizing "vote for Israel" campaigns in evangelical Facebook groups at least here with indications that many of those voting didn't even watch the contest. The primary motive isn't as much political as religious, ie. Christian Zionism, though of course politics and religion overlap here. This is helped by Eurovision allowing people to vote as many as 20 times for their favorite.
At least last year's Israel entry was quite good musically. This year's was the height of mediocrity.
This year Finnish media didn't even focus on Israel that much, as the main topic of interest was the fact that there were in practice two Finland entries as far as the media was concerned - Finland's own entry Erika Vikman and Sweden's entry KAJ, sung by a group of Finland-Swedish comedians from rural Ostrobothnia. This was actually a topic of a mini culture war, contrasting Erika Vikman's hypersexualized "feminine empowerment" style favored by liberals with KAJ's national-stereotype-oriented light rural comedy favored by more conservative/normie types, though the entrants themselves got along quite well at the contest.
I'm also pretty sure the jury votes were rigged to favor the Big Five funder nations. Nothing else can predict UK's absolutely dire entry getting so many jury votes. I also lost a bet on this exact topic.
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