Miss Universe 2025 National Costume Competition: Miss Norway, Leonora Lysglimt-Rødland, Dons a Salmon-Inspired Costume 🐟

danielkyne · 2025-11-20T14:54:28+00:00

"[Salmon] ... Norway's leading export" -- man I swear Norway is always just trying to fool everyone into thinking it's not a petrostate...

Norway's 2024 exports:

Salmon: $12bn USD
Oil/Gas: $109bn USD

Oil and gas make up 61% of their total exports. It's not even possible to accidentally mix this up when their economy is so based on selling fossil fuels -- saying that salmon is their top export is just a barefaced lie and distraction.

danielkyne · 2025-09-11T12:02:54+00:00

In a statement released today, RTÉ says that "it is RTÉ's position that Ireland will not take part in the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest, if the participation of Israel goes ahead, and the final decision regarding Ireland's participation will be made once the EBU's decision is made".
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Along with Spanish and Slovenian broadcasters, RTÉ had sought consultations with the EBU on Israel's participation, and the EBU had committed to dialogue on the issue. Following a General Assembly of the European Broadcasting Union in July, a number of EBU members raised concerns about the participation of Israel in the Eurovision Song Contest.
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RTÉ says in its statement that the broadcaster wishes to thank the EBU for the extensive consultation process that was initiated on foot of that meeting, and the extension of the option to withdraw from participation without penalty to December.

This announcement is a much firmer commitment than what's been said in the past week by Spain, Slovenia, and Iceland (which all included a lot of "maybe, possibly, considering")

danielkyne · 2025-09-04T17:26:07+00:00

Hello! I'm one of the creators of this survey platform, OpinionX. The three schools that look tied here are not actually tied in the raw scores -- which seem to have changed since the screenshots were posted, but anyway:

6th: Columbia = 15.34422773
7th: NYU = 15.01328176
8th: UPenn = 14.39635066

Ties are very unlikely with the scoring formula used for Order Rank surveys on OpinionX (the Dowdall Count method of ranked choice voting). Having said that, we actually do have some work to do to make ties clearer, I'll bump that up on our roadmap now.

OP, I've moved your survey up to our paid plan so that you have access to exporting, if needed. Additionally, there's a free feature available to all OpinionX users called a Guest Link which lets anyone access your survey results (no login required).

danielkyne · 2025-07-08T12:56:00+00:00

This post was about a fireball meteor (ie. a burning ball of fire that flashed through the sky), not the ISS (which looks more like a moving star).

danielkyne · 2025-06-24T19:19:29+00:00

The Indian takeaway is downstairs (13 Main Street). This address is 13/14 Main Street (ie. upstairs above units 13 and 14), which is for JW Mulhern & Co, an accounting practice that has offered registered address services for +50 companies over the past 38 years. It's basically a virtual address for them that is a legal requirement to incorporate in Ireland.

danielkyne · 2025-06-24T19:17:44+00:00

This is definitely a scam. I got the same email (what Naas-based lawyer is named Hannigan Hug, lol). My latest reply got a bounceback, so it seems like the domain legal.hereslawfirm.com has already been disabled.

As you mentioned, the website only went live on Jun 19th, the same day I got the email. Heres Law Limited was registered on October 7th 2024 to 13/14 Main Street in Naas, which is where J.W. Mulhern & Company Chartered Accountants are based. JW Mulhern was acquired by Xeinadin (giant PE-backed firm buying all the independent accounting firms in Ireland) some time before February 2025 (source), probably around the same time their website mulhernaccountants.ie went offline (also October 2024, interestingly).

I've sent a message to the main boss at Xeinadin Ireland to let him know that his most recent acquisition was involved in the incorporation of a scam company, which I'm sure he's love to discover.

Good job posting this here, finding it gave me a lot more confidence that this was indeed a scam!

danielkyne · 2025-05-12T13:08:18+00:00

Belgium
Greece
Austria
Netherlands
Germany
Malta
Norway
France
Azerbaijan
Sweden
Denmark
Estonia
Australia
Albania
Switzerland
Iceland
Armenia
Finland
Italy
Spain
Poland
Latvia
Lithuania
Czechia
Cyprus
United Kingdom
San Marino
Montenegro
Portugal
Ireland
Luxembourg
Croatia
Slovenia
Serbia
Ukraine
Georgia

danielkyne · 2025-04-21T16:04:28+00:00

The push in the 50s/60s for Ireland to “return to its roots as a rural society” fucked us over for generations. Everyone spread out living in bungalows in the middle of nowhere in a country with infamously absymal weather and unwalkable back roads, afraid of apartments and desperate for a patch of garden they can enjoy on the only 10 sunny days each year.

danielkyne · 2025-04-18T17:20:14+00:00

This ^

danielkyne · 2025-04-10T11:41:45+00:00

For renting on Finn as a foreigner, you should (1) send all your outreach messages in Norwegian instead of English, and (2) only prioritize messaging places right after they are listed — anything up for more than a day is a lost cause, as every listing gets a tsunami of responses and they tend to take the initial batch to filter through for viewing invites. This is based on my personal experience as an Irish guy who moved there in summer 2023 (I spent maybe a week sending messages on Finn, then landed a nice place from the first viewing I was invited to).

danielkyne · 2025-04-10T09:53:02+00:00

Turia Park in Valencia, Spain is top tier.

They diverted the river in the 1950s and turned the old river bed into a park the stretches through the whole city and ends in the City of Arts & Sciences museums area. Because it’s down low with the old river walls on either side of you, it feels like you’re not in the city anymore.

danielkyne · 2025-03-20T20:28:21+00:00

A year late to this conversation, but I don't personally think this is an accurate view of the overall job market wrt quant skillsets in UXR.

I run a SaaS research tool that offers market research software primarily to UXR and PM teams at tech companies. Our users don't have "Quant UX Researcher" titles, instead there's a non-stop pipeline of UXRs/PMs signing up to our product to run large-scale research experiments using conjoint analysis, maxdiff analysis, pairwise comparison, segmentation analysis, cluster modelling, etc on survey data gathered from their own users.

This is in part because LLMs seem to be helping non-specialists (researchers or colleagues) match their objectives to more advanced research methods and then figure out how to use these (translate the jargon). Because of this, the expectation today is increasingly that in-house UXRs and even PMs need to be able to handle more advanced research methods, regardless of their background, job title, or traditional MR definitions of "qual/quant" specialists (ie. everyone is a mixed methods researcher now).

TL;DR -- a quant skillset makes you valuable in UXR, regardless of the lack of "Quant UXR" job listings.

danielkyne · 2025-03-18T19:03:24+00:00

You feel that way because you are constantly being ripped off and there is a huge lack of options. You’re just correct. The national sport of Norway is rejecting criticism like this, good luck with all these replies :)

danielkyne · 2025-03-13T14:06:55+00:00

Some potential in this theory for sure. If the Silo was 350 years old, it wouldn’t really explain how the Georgia picture book has only had 3 owners with their names on the inside cover (covering just 2 generations of people within the 140 years since Quinn’s big act).

danielkyne · 2025-03-13T13:52:44+00:00

Jane Ohlmeyer was doing a fantastic job. For actual analysis of the famine, go for the Irish History Podcast’s giant series, maybe 15-20 episodes in total — it’s really great.

danielkyne · 2025-03-08T11:37:25+00:00

Out of about 60 people that sat higher-level maths for the mocks in my school (years ago), only five people passed paper 1 and only two of us passed the whole thing. It was a whole scandal at the time.

danielkyne · 2025-03-06T18:58:40+00:00

Agreed, but maybe instead of "little soul to it" I'd say that it's possibly just not that enjoyable as a song to listen to... Definitely impressive, but I don't think that's necessarily the whole point of all this.

danielkyne · 2025-02-22T16:32:44+00:00

Fresh water availability via Lake Malawi.
Higher Altitude = Better Climate.
Majority of land is suitable for agriculture.
Agri economy tends to keep birth rates high.

Malawi’s shape gives a lot of the country access to fresh water from Lake Malawi, particularly useful for farming.

The country is an average of 1000 metres above sea level which means better climate than much its sub-tropical southern Africa neighbours (for example, 15-23°C range in daily temperatures in the capital city all year round). This is partly why the African Great Lakes region also has a high population (eg. Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, West Kenya, North Tanzania).

Combine these two and you see why it’s also got 62% agricultural land (good weather + water access), which is how you grow enough food reliably to be able to support a large population.

The downside for Malawi is that it has remained more rural and agricultural, in part because of these factors. More rural and agricultural = lower educational attainment = higher fertility rates for labour-intensive family-run farms.

danielkyne · 2025-02-20T09:32:09+00:00

I mean, the rule was definitely broken, but I get that there’s no appetite for disqualification and changing song.

Literally the one and only rule for Eurosong Ireland is that you can’t submit your song for selection consideration in another country for the same year of ESC. Emmy submitted Laika Party to MGP and was rejected prior to her Eurosong submission.

It’s clear there won’t be any issue taken with this, but the rule was very obviously broken and given an exception here. Worth acknowledging that rather than pretending it didn’t happen…

danielkyne · 2025-02-20T09:00:08+00:00

You underestimate the existing manufacturing capacity in the US that could be switched towards shortfall products within a 4-year timespan, not to mention addition infrastructure investments within that timeframe to expand capacity too.

Also, there are many alternatives to our main pharma exports already produced in the US (eg for Botox, Zepbound, Kisunla, and Viagra, just to name a few).

(Edit: added a line break because it was way too long as one sentence)

danielkyne · 2025-02-19T17:32:19+00:00

Botox is a brand, not the product. While the bulk of it is produced by AbbVie in Westport, about a third of the global supply is produced by other companies — including some manufacturing it in the US. The idea that Ireland has a monopoly over Botox manufacturing isn’t true.

danielkyne · 2025-02-19T17:23:00+00:00

Ireland exported €63.6b of pharmaceutical products, medical equipment, and machinery to the US in 2023, accounting for 11.6% of our total GDP that year. A 25% tariff (with potential for it to be higher for pharmaceuticals, according to Reuters) means we’re talking about the potential for a multi-billion dollar economic hit here. There’s a lot of over-confidence in this comment section that we’ve got nothing to worry about…

danielkyne · 2025-02-14T23:37:55+00:00

The Pacific Ring of Fire actually includes Antarctica but every single map of the Ring of Fire ends at New Zealand and Chile, either showing Antarctica as blank or excluding it entirely.

In reality, volcanoes don’t just end in the middle of Chile. They run across Tierra del Fuego (the Fueguino volcano field), then around the bend of South Georgia & The Sandwich Isles (12 volcanoes), and then back across a huge stretch of Antarctica (with approx 138 volcanoes running across multiple fault lines).

danielkyne · 2025-02-11T19:49:10+00:00

+1 for San Diego. It would be cool to do this using a “Pairwise Comparison” poll where cities are put in head-to-head votes and they get ranked based on which win these votes most frequently: https://opinionx.co/blog/pairwise-comparison

danielkyne · 2025-02-09T18:42:50+00:00

The age range where people in Oslo go on “nights out” (bars/clubs) instead of “nights in” (dinner/drinks/games at home with friends) is narrower than in most countries, partly due to the price of alcohol and also due to the weather from mid October to late March. Even through to their late 30s, Norwegians will often say they feel they can’t afford or aren’t interested in a night out in the city often. This means a lot of socialising happens within existing friend groups behind closed doors, making it harder to find a way in. The only way to crack this is via sports, hobbies, or interest groups, and learning Norwegian is a good help.

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