ZanarkandAbesFan
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User ID: 2935
The Scandinavian countries have low levels of population density because vast tracts in the frozen north are empty, but that doesn't mean the people are spread out.
Wikipedia gives the respective population density of Germany and Sweden as 234/km^2 and 25/km^2. You could make Sweden a fifth of its current size - going far beyond the point at which you'd be cutting out empty northern regions - and Germany would still be about twice as dense.
Excluding city-states, Sweden is the 8th most urban country in Europe. It's significantly more densely populated than Germany by that metric.
That sort of number depends heavily on how you define urban. The wikipedia page you linked cites the World Bank but they don't provide any actual definition for what counts as urban.
ChatGPT gives the percentage of the population of Sweden that live in an area with density >500/km^2 as 15%, while that same number for Germany is 45%. This seems to suggest that Germany is significantly more densely populated than Sweden when you drill into the numbers.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1d ago
Not at all - it's just not an issue I'm particularly well informed on*, so I don't think I've got a lot to contribute to a discussion with someone who clearly knows a lot about it.
*This feels like a weird thing to write about a topic that involved me living under near house arrest for over a year, but whatever.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1d ago
Honestly I can't do much better at this point than lamely conceding that I'm pretty overmatched in this debate.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1d ago
They still had a colonial empire and weren't paying other countries to take their possessions off their hands.
It would likely force a settlement with the Arabs much sooner for economic and political reasons, but it is not the threat of US intervention that prevents Israel from being invaded.
What sort of settlement are you thinking of? It's hard to imagine Israel giving up much control over the West Bank, much less a full 2SS at this point.
the ultra orthodox situation now threatens to spiral fully out of control as their population continues to expand.
Might there be a silver lining to this? The ultra orthodox are mostly Ashkenazi, as I understand it, so their growing population might produce a high IQ demographic reservoir of sorts to offset other dysgenic trends I've heard the country is experiencing. This of course assumes there comes to exist a mechanism by which they start to participate more in secular Israeli society.
The most interesting suggestion I heard (perhaps here? Can't remember) was that Spain would allow Gibraltar to be used as a processing center for migrants on their way to the UK. Not sure why that would be much of a bonus when the UK could use Gibraltar for that reason right now, but then I'm not sure what the UK is supposed to be getting out of paying Mauritius to take the Chagos Islands either, so who knows.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1d ago
I wouldn't be surprised if it depends a lot on how you define those terms. If we use maximalist definitions i.e. no abortion even in cases of rape/danger to the mothers life, or abortion being legal up to birth, the number of women who support either position is probably both similar and quite low, with most people's views falling somewhere between the two.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1d ago
My money would be on Gibraltar first.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1d ago
Who has behaved this way apart from the UK? France certainly hasn't.
ZanarkandAbesFan
2d ago
Sweden's population density is comparable to the UK's population density if you treat the British Antarctic Territory as actually belonging to the UK. In an alternative timeline where the UK annexed the British Antarctic Territory in 2019, do you think this will have reduced the transition rate of COVID?#
The population of Sweden isn't concentrated in a region that makes up only ~13% of its total landmass, as the British population would be if we were to include its Antarctic Territory in its land area.
Sweden, Finland and Norway owning a bunch of tundra does not affect the population density that the average person experiences. That tundra cannot perform spooky action at a distance and affect what happens in Stockholm.
People living in the middle of Stockholm, as well as in Sweden's other two core urban areas, will experience a high level of population density, but most Swedes are spread out in the sparsely populated regions between these cities, and they will experience a much lower population density than most people living in the UK.
I don't have strong feelings about lockdowns either way. But as someone who's lived in both countries we're discussing, the much sparser nature of the population in Sweden compared to the UK is very obvious no matter where you are in the country.
My question is why doesn't the board or president or whoever just launch a crackdown on pro-Palestinian protestors?
Because the administrators and people in charge agree with the protestors. I honestly think it's that simple.
"Genocide" has basically become a vibes-based term over the past few years, so questions involving the word have become increasingly meaningless.
What seems beyond question is that white South Africans are facing extensive race-based persecution.
I don't have much sympathy for this band but I'm curious as to why the Met are bothering to prosecute one of their members over any of the hundreds of people waving similar flags during near daily pro-Hamas protests in London over the last year and a half.
ZanarkandAbesFan
3d ago
Sweden and its neighbours are much less densely populated than most of Europe, meaning the virus generally has a lower transmission rate in those countries. I'm not sure lockdown lessons from Sweden can necessarily be applied to e.g Germany.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
Quotas can be good or bad.
Quotas can be bad or necessary, is how I would put it.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
That's fair.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
Is it true that Starmer doesn't like this sort of thing? AFAIK he only started acting tough on the sentencing council once it became an awkward political issue, and on a more abstract level he seems to believe any outcome is sacrosanct as long as it's been determined by a legal body of some description.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
It baffles me that these tribunals have the power to just dictate what jobs should pay.
I think this is the part of the story that's more important than wokeness or whatever; that ideological judges have such power in determining policy.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
What if what they're doing is organised crime?
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
I actually think if there's a court order preventing the government from taking the black guy's phone, and the government knowingly grabbed it anyway, then the government should return it back to him. Yes, even if it seems counter-intuitive.
This sort of argument quickly leads to absurd places. Should the government return a kidnap victim to her kidnapper, if she was only found because a racist cop didn't like the look of some black guy who they later found out was hiding stolen children in his basement? Should the government refuse to act on the knowledge that a massive terrorist attack is being planned, if that knowledge was acquired by a racist cop roughing up a shifty-looking Arab?
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
Corbyn's only redeeming feature is being honest about how terrible he is.
Much of what the DR calls ‘based’ is just retarded antisociality rooted in the idea of either machismo or offending as many people as possible.
lol I enjoyed that bit.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
There seems to be serious protests going on in Turkey just now, does anyone know much about the particular details of what's going on? What the protesters want, how likely they are to get it, the political situation that led to it etc?
I broadly agree, but I interpreted 2rafa's use of the word "settlement" to mean some sort of concession or compromise.
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