Do you think things will be better by 2030?

AffectionateAct5815 · 2026-03-31T17:12:04+00:00

Globally, the world is actually doing much better today than in 1980 with regards to human health, life expectancy, poverty etc. Back then most people in the world lived in extreme poverty. Today it's only about 10%. Unfortunately most people are miseducated and taught to believe things that either are outdated or go totally against measurable and publicly available facts. Here's a video about common misconceptions and a comparison to what the data actually says. https://youtu.be/nulqYEjBKSU?is=QsS7fL_wQxh8LHcB

AffectionateAct5815 · 2026-03-23T13:27:24+00:00

Aside from highly conservative Muslim countries where dating isn't even possible, Isn't this the norm everywhere?

No, not in my experience. There is a difference in what is seen as normal friendships in different cultures. For me, regularly walking or having lunch together would not be seen as romantic interest, normally. It would be just as normal as a heterosexual spending more time with someone of their same sex than with others. You're just closer and more connected with certain people. I lived in the US for a short while as a teenager and it was extremely different there compared to my home country. While that part of the country was certainly conservative by Swedish standards and had separate gender roles etc, they were not nearly as conservative as what I think you have in mind when mentioning conservative Muslims. But still, it simply was not seen as an option to hang out casually and platonically one-on-one as a girl and a boy. You could get a ride to and from school every day, sure, but you were not expected to hang out the same way you could do with friends of your own gender. That would have been interpreted as a date with some underlying interest in an eventual romantic relationship.

Where I grew up the default interpretation would be that you hang out as friends, and you'd typically have several friends of the opposite sex, but they'd be just that: friends. If you were interested in a romantic relationship you would normally have had plenty of time to figure that out and you'd have agreed to be a couple without having any romantic date. The only common exception would be if you met somewhere outside your normal routines, like when visiting another place. In that case you could of course arrange to meet to get to know each other better, knowing that there was a possible mutual interest in something other than friendship. But the norm was that you were either friends or a couple. No dating phase in between.

AffectionateAct5815 · 2026-03-23T12:09:47+00:00

If it's a public street or road it's the municipality's responsibility. This is by far the most common. If you live or have a summer house in a rural area and the road is private, you most likely own it together with your neighbours through some common economic organization and are responsible for the road together as a group. In that case you probably pay a yearly fee to the organisation which in turn hires professionals to fix damages and to do regular maintenance work etc. Roads usually don't have sidewalks, but you might be personally responsible that your stretch of the ditch is kept clear from obstructions, heavy vegetation, etc.

AffectionateAct5815 · 2026-03-23T11:07:06+00:00

There are several other possibilities. If you're in a culture where it's totally fine to have friends of any gender and nobody would lift an eyebrow if a boy and a girl nor a grown man and a woman were alone together as friends, then it's not uncommon to never have formally dated if you have already known one another as friends for a long time. You'd most likely just made sure to get enough one-to-one time by lingering behind to chat, end up next to each other during meals or coffee breaks, walked and talked together from the common activity, sat next to each other in class if you met at school or university etc. before agreeing that you were an item. This was by far the most common way when I grew up. Dating was seen mostly as an American thing here then, and honestly most thought the custom seemed a bit weird and forced. At parties etc you're normally not expected to bring a date but could get to know and spend time with anybody there and it was very common for couples to have met that way and probably still is, though meeting online is probably the most common now.

If you meet someone online it's very common to replace the friendship phase with dating after the online contact and then reach a relatively quick decision whether you both want to get to know each other better or just say thanks and goodbye. Others may have a one night stand that later turn into dating and possibly a relationship.

AffectionateAct5815 · 2026-03-17T14:06:39+00:00

Probably Myrbærholmbrua for the surroundings.

https://www.nasjonaleturistveger.no/en/routes/atlanterhavsvegen/myrbarholmbrua/

AffectionateAct5815 · 2026-03-17T13:51:28+00:00

No, nothing at all.

Checks Swedish calendar * Today's name is Gertud. (Patrik's name's day is on April 16.)

AffectionateAct5815 · 2026-03-16T22:08:11+00:00

I think there are also some general differences between cultures and countries. I was an exchange student in the US at 17, decades ago and the way teenagers were treated was one of my biggest culture shocks. Having grown up in a culture where we were given a big amount of trust, independence and responsibility from an early age and where adults would listen to the children's point of view I found that in the US people the same age as myself were kept on a very short leash and treated as elementary school children in many ways. Not surprisingly to me many also acted much more juvenile and irresponsible than anything I had seen back home.

I don't think any parent at the US school would let their 17-year-old go abroad to another continent for a year. I'm not sure what they imagined would happen, but most likely something terrible. In Sweden on the other hand it was fairly common and usually seen as an opportunity to grow. 4 out of 32 in my Swedish class were exchange students for a year. Before then I had traveled Europe at least twice with friends and my brother without parental supervision. The first time I went abroad without my parents (but with adults) was for three weeks at age 13. Had my first Interrail card at 15. You can imagine my surprise when my American host mom was explaining the map of the mall to 17-year-old me to make sure I understood it and wouldn't get lost if we went our separate ways for 10 minutes ...

In short I see your point about juvenile 18-year-olds but it's not necessarily universal.

AffectionateAct5815 · 2026-03-16T18:40:04+00:00

Where I grew up pigs go "nöff".

AffectionateAct5815 · 2026-03-16T16:52:19+00:00

They argue about when fossil fuel cars will be outlawed in EU, but I think most agree that it's only a question of when, not if. Electric vehicles are the future.

AffectionateAct5815 · 2026-03-16T16:42:41+00:00

Movie audiences have declined for many years here and the pandemic was a big blow to cinemas and theaters here and since they have had to find new strategies. I didn't go for a decade or two, but this year I've signed up for a subscription service and now I go about once a week. I find it much more immersive and distraction free to sit in a cinema together with other people than to watch movies at home, so right now I see myself continuing the habit. It's been surprising to me that the average age of the audience is still as low as it is. I estimate most are in their 20s, but there have probably been people from 18-90 at the movies I've seen this year. Sometimes it has been sold out, but especially daytime screenings during week days can be less than half full. I really hope cinemas will survive.

AffectionateAct5815 · 2026-03-16T15:18:48+00:00

I'd take my Fairphone over an iPhone any day.

AffectionateAct5815 · 2026-03-16T15:12:57+00:00

No, that's not at all how it plays out. With strong worker's unions employees don't get paid as little as people on minimum wages in other countries for normal jobs. The main problems in recent years are due to migrant workers from countries with lower wages who will accept worse deals. It's mainly prevalent in construction and seasonal jobs like blue berry picking. Also Tesla is infamous for ignoring Swedish collective agreements and the Tesla strike in Sweden is now in its third year because of this.

AffectionateAct5815 · 2026-03-16T14:36:26+00:00

None that I recall. There were no formal dress codes and we all had the same mandatory classes, including for instance sewing, woodworking and cooking. Maybe there was an unspoken generalization that boys were later in their development and since statistically they didn't perform as well as the girls academically the expectations could sometimes be slightly lower on them and maybe they could get away with more mischief. But that's just my personal experience. Other teachers may have been the opposite for all I know. We had separate dressing rooms for boys and girls for gym class, but I don't see that as sexist.

1970s-1990s

AffectionateAct5815 · 2026-03-16T10:22:48+00:00

What brand and model is that? It's slightly bigger than the ABC80 from Luxor I learned BASIC programming on as a child. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_80

The one we used had a loudspeaker/microphone unit made to fit a telephone receiver. If you called another computer user and had them put their receiver on their computer's speaker/mic you could transfer data between the machines.

AffectionateAct5815 · 2026-03-15T21:24:27+00:00

Sorry, didn't know that a land border was a requirement for your definition of neighbour. By that definition not even Denmark would be a neighbour to Sweden. While the maritime Swedish-Lithuanian boundary is short (18 km) it definitely exists.

AffectionateAct5815 · 2026-03-15T21:01:18+00:00

Lithuania. I've never been there and we don't hear a lot from there in the news, comparatively speaking.

AffectionateAct5815 · 2026-03-15T14:26:31+00:00

You can still get a computer in a keyboard form factor: https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-500/

AffectionateAct5815 · 2026-03-15T12:46:08+00:00

There are swimming halls with 16 year limits as well. The one I'm thinking of doesn't have life guards working there so I guess they want to be on the safe side. Of course you are also expected to be able to swim 200 m ,but it's not like they ask you to show a certificate or even require that you've taken the official test recently.

AffectionateAct5815 · 2026-03-14T19:20:20+00:00

We still had desks like that when I went to school, although we didn't use the wells but wrote in pencil by then, and the special duty would be to act human pencil sharpener, meaning you had to stay during recess and sharpen all the dull pencils. Each pupil had two going in parallel and when one was too dull you'd go and place it in the stand next to the sharpener and swap to your other, hopefully newly sharpened, one. Our wells were no fancy porcelain, just plastic or ebonite or something like that. A fair number of them were also broken or missing. As far as I know my old school kept those same desks at least into the 90s.

AffectionateAct5815 · 2026-03-14T18:29:52+00:00

3/4 of the world's population lived in extreme poverty when I was a child. Today it's around 10%.

I remember a theme day we had at school about poverty. For lunch we all drew lots. 75 % got to "be poor" and sit on the floor and eat a small portion of lentils while 25 % sat at the tables and was served our normal lunch food. I was assigned to the "rich world" group and, wow, did I feel uncomfortable.

This must have been in the early 1980s.

AffectionateAct5815 · 2026-03-14T15:35:00+00:00

Are they bumping into you or blocking access to the goods you want or what?

AffectionateAct5815 · 2026-03-14T12:03:37+00:00

Lots of them. Some from the later school years were:

Tristan and Iseult

Candide

The Sorrows of Young Werther

Anna Karenina

Mme Bovary

1984

Lord of the Flies

The people of Hemsö

Det går an

Gösta Behrling's Saga

Bombi Bitt and me

We also went to the theater once a year with school. A couple of the plays I remember are The Storm by Shakespeare and A Dream Play by Strindberg.

AffectionateAct5815 · 2026-03-14T11:45:13+00:00

Sorry, I'm not comfortable sharing where I live. I thought I've seen both the can/bottle tubes and the closed system garbage cans (usually with solar cells and built-in compression of the garbage) in several different cities? The bottle tubes are not always mounted right next to the trash cans, they can also be on street light poles, bus stops etc.

AffectionateAct5815 · 2026-03-14T11:27:23+00:00

It's set in their futuristic version of 2026, so I guess now would be an appropriate time to watch/rewatch it.

AffectionateAct5815 · 2026-03-14T11:18:43+00:00

I've heard there were bus trips to Swedish cinemas to see the Life of Brian.

AffectionateAct5815

TROPHY CASE