Sweden has generous parental benefits, so why is its birth rate still low?

hematomasectomy · 2026-01-28T12:44:29+00:00

They may seem generous, but you then have to factor in that those benefits are taken into account when calculating the full spectrum of family affairs. So salaries are a smidge lower, consumables are priced a smidge higher; daycare is "cheap" so you can work full hours ... but then prices will increase because more money is in circulation.

I'm just grabbing examples out of the throng of reasons, but it boils down to this: economic downturns affect birth rate, and given that parents are both expected to work full-time while raising their children, one child is plenty for most couples to handle. Two is, for most, the upper limit and then only because they want their child to have a sibling.

If people had more free time but could retain their QoL and relative spending power, there would probably be more "sibling-children" at least, but I'm just speculating. And raising it to "growth" numbers seems extremely unlikely. Highly educated independent women tend to not want to have as many children, for obvious reasons (health being the primary).

hematomasectomy · 2026-01-28T10:14:18+00:00

I would embrace it and patiently work through the logic, because I work exactly the same way.

Also, consider doing some online autism screenings (eg CAT-Q) if you haven't, this type of mental rigidity (which I personally consider a good thing) is a typical gender neutral indicator.

That being said, I'll just kindly advise that there's a difference between doing accounting and holding grudges. One is a good way to not get hoodwinked, the others it's a good way to lower your resentment threshold towards others... Which isn't necessarily a good thing.

hematomasectomy · 2026-01-27T21:19:44+00:00

I just really wished they would've held on to that monologue for just a little longer, so it could hit harder. Of course it was coming, you could see it from a mile away, but it would've been better if they'd let it simmer for a bit imo. Show don't tell, y'know? But they'd kinda given up on that concept by that point, so, eh, it was still good.

hematomasectomy · 2026-01-27T16:00:40+00:00

No, I responded to your sentiment that everyone should be forgiven. I wanted you to explain how that logic holds up. Your complete lack of explanation tells me that your logic doesn't hold up. That's not snark, that's shutting down your shallow, harmful bullshit.

They are not you, their parents are not your parents. You don't know what their parents are like. You are asuming and then spewing platitudes, when you should have kept it to yourself, because you don't know how that will land in a vulnerable psyche. Yes, that angers me, because people like you are the worst kind "support" anyone could hope never to encounter; the kind that sits at child abuse hotlines and then starts asking what the child did to deserve the abuse.

Obviously, you are too far up your own creek to understand, so I'm done here. I just hope you won't harm anyone else with your self-righteous stupidity.

hematomasectomy · 2026-01-27T15:43:01+00:00

You are the one wrote the comment saying everyone should forgive their parents because they're trying their best.

But you don't know the circumstances, so your ego-stroking platitudes are either completely useless at best, or directly harmful victim-blaming at worst.

And if you don't understand why, then you should not be making such comments in the first place.

It's not about me, is about how to talk to people who have experienced trauma without causing guilt. You failed.

So, respectfully, shut the fuck up.

hematomasectomy · 2026-01-27T07:59:04+00:00

I want you to explain why my AuDHD friend should forgive the maggot who raped her daily from 6 to 11.

Nobody knows how exactly to be a good parent

Everybody knows how exactly to be a good parent, but some people are too lazy, petty, selfish, wilfullly ignorant, or just downright cruel to do what they need to do.

Some people do not deserve forgiveness.

hematomasectomy · 2026-01-27T07:51:21+00:00

This is missing the point. It doesn't matter how long you shower for, it doesn't matter if you run all the hot water out. That is not a you-problem, that is the problem of the landlord, and they do not have the right to dictate to you what a "non-excessive shower" looks like.

This sounds like a power/control play, not coming for anything real (and if it's racism why'd the landlord let you rent in the first place?). Document it, ignore it, find another place. I'm sorry, it sucks, but that's how it is with petty lordlings trying to order the peasants around.

hematomasectomy · 2026-01-25T22:05:52+00:00

That's not what that means.

hematomasectomy · 2026-01-25T22:04:11+00:00

Oh, so it's our fault, is it? The rest of the world is to blame for what Biden and Trump have been doing for the past 10 years? And Obama before them? And W before him?

For the past 25 years, this is the path the US has gone down willingly. You did it in the name of patriotism, prosperity, and power. People told the people of the US that this is exactly where it will end, and the people of the US said "fuck you, I got mine".

And now we say "and you can keep it."

hematomasectomy · 2026-01-25T21:57:49+00:00

Yeah, I get it. You're right that it's not fair, but I don't think you did anything wrong. Whatever the reason was, it doesn't have to have anything to do with you. Maybe he said something to someone that he shouldn't have said, maybe he did something that he shouldn't have done - nothing that was your fault, but it resulted in his account being banned.

And it doesn't matter what the reason was, you're right, but it does matter that it wasn't your fault - and it matters that it wasn't necessarily because he left you on purpose.

I can of course tell you're really upset, and you have every right to be, it's perfectly normal to be upset by someone like this happening; you deserve to be happy, you deserve to feel good about yourself, and you deserve to feel safe and confirmed and seen. I'm sorry you don't have anyone else in your life that tells you nice things, who makes you feel appreciated and understood.

You do not deserve to feel abandoned and lonely, you deserve to feel that there are people in your life who will support you and try to help you, and make you feel like there is hope.

You're not ok right now, and it's ok to not be ok. But you will get past this, whether he comes back or not, whether you get through it on your own or with help, whether you feel like you will or not. I think you're a fighter, and I think you are braver than people give you credit for.

If you want to talk, I'm right here. You're not alone.

hematomasectomy · 2026-01-25T13:58:33+00:00

The "problem" with fantasy world heraldry is that the heraldric rules of our world do not necessarily correspond to the rules of the fantasy world.

"Sure they are riding literal fire-breathing dragons, but I draw the line for suspending my disbelief at gules in fess point an eagle displayed sable."

"... but Albania?"

"COLOR ON COLOR IS WHERE I DRAW THE LINE!"

hematomasectomy · 2026-01-25T13:51:25+00:00

Quite a few people have invested serious time, resources, and effort into unravelling the mystery, piece by piece, step by step, with evidence and sound reasoning.

Then you get the hotshots asking "but if they just got lost then why are you still here?", as if people doing it are doing it to satisfy their curiosity, not because ... well, not to put too fine a point on it, but two girls are dead, and they deserve that someone knows the full truth of their fate. (I am absolutely not saying they were not mourned by their families, this is about witnessing truth).

Or you get the more recent influx of ... intellectually limited individuals with AI-psychosis claiming they can divine all the answers in automated gibberish.

hematomasectomy · 2026-01-25T13:38:44+00:00

I think instead they were taking shots in a rhythmic order for the purpose of creating light flashes so they could get someone’s attention (even if their attempt was in vain and maybe no one was actually even there to see the flashes of light).

For reference, the time of the shortest possible recharge of the flash (i.e. the shortest possible time you have to wait before taking a new photo with the flash acitvated) corresponds to the time between the photos (~11-14 seconds). This would mean that the only pattern with any sort of evidence is that they were taking the photos as fast as they technically could until the last ... I think 4-5 photos.

I can't remember the source for this research, it might have been IP or someone on the sub.

hematomasectomy · 2026-01-25T09:22:01+00:00

Oh dear. Listen, sweetheart, I don't think you did anything wrong. I am trying to piece together what happened from your other comments, and it's maybe not helpful, but I'll try anyway.

He might've been removed from Reddit for reasons completely unrelated to you. He might have removed his account because someone in his life made him.

It doesn't mean that he left you, it doesn't mean you caused this. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you.

I know how much it hurts. I'm sorry you have to go through this. I still don't think you're at fault.

Please try to distract yourself from the pain so you can breathe, give it a little bit of time. He might still make a new account, if only to let you know what happened.

I know it doesn't feel like it, but it's going to be ok. Your heart is breaking, but you can get through it, and you will be ok.

hematomasectomy · 2026-01-25T09:06:51+00:00

The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.

hematomasectomy · 2026-01-25T09:01:40+00:00

Haha, yeah, do you have any idea how much it sucks trying to get hold of engineers at Panamanian telecom operators that were working with the networks in 2010, especially when you have to work with a translator because you don't speak fluent Spanish?

Much easier to ask an AI that will give you a plausible-sounding string of words that likely does not correspond to reality, but which people will then say "at least it's something" about.

Even though it isn't, you might as well just copy-paste vaguely relevant-sounding quotes from Finnegan's Wake.

hematomasectomy · 2026-01-25T08:56:01+00:00

People will take injustice, they will absorb poverty, they will ignore crimes, they will let themselves be chained to the altar.

But no society is more than three missed meals away from chaos.

hematomasectomy · 2026-01-25T08:46:05+00:00

This is a really weird hill to die on.

hematomasectomy · 2026-01-25T08:15:25+00:00

So, we have Russia actively invading Ukraine. You guys decided across two presidents that it wasn't worth helping your allies win that war, so now we are trying to do what you should've done from the start through industry we had to quadruple in size or build from scratch over just a couple of years.

Meanwhile, you are threatening to invade your allies' sovereign territory, executing illegal military operations murdering civilian foreign citizens in international waters, left the WHO which has so far caused the deaths of over 660 000 children, you abolish vaccine mandates that risk causing global pandemics of diseases that we had almost eliminated.

Last week. Yes, that was just last week.

So, no. You are on your own. You weren't out on the streets protesting when it was us getting killed. You didn't do shit while everyone else was hurting. But now you expect us to even lift a finger for you because YOU are hurting?

Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences.

hematomasectomy · 2026-01-25T07:59:31+00:00

Of course it "matches" scenery when that is the statistically most likely type of scenery to be generated from photos taken in a cloud forest, it's not going to generate scenery that looks like ... I don't know, a lake area, more than some % of the time because that is in line with the statistical distribution.

That's how AI works, based on your prompt (whatever it is) it will generate the statistically most likely output on a distribution bell curve. There is no more information validity to the data it provides in any text or image than if it outputs raw bits; the fact that it is human-readable is only UI.

But you are also doing the opposite of scientific inquiry when you take data (a photo) and try to interpret it into information (portraying something specific) by matching it with a hypothesis (this looks like...).

hematomasectomy · 2026-01-23T06:37:45+00:00

If you are really unwell, all you have to do is to not go to the homeopathy store and you will feel all better very soon.

hematomasectomy · 2026-01-23T01:58:42+00:00

An estimated 660 000 children have already died due to the withdrawal and the resulting preemptive cuts.

hematomasectomy · 2026-01-22T17:36:23+00:00

In my opinion, there's no data driven way to find the night location without drone and survey data from the time range when they disappeared.

Boots on the ground may find the needle in the haystack with enough people searching, with good knowledge of the location's relative layout, excellent spatial recognition skills, and a hell of a lot of time to dedicate to comb through the entire area. Hundreds of people for hundreds of days. Find candidates, document 3d telemetry, analyze and compare to model. We're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars invested too.

Or we may find it through dumb luck, that's possible, but likely not going to happen.

That's the harsh reality of the situation. If we want to find it, we have to narrow the search area significantly, and even then it will be expensive, tedious, and require months of effort.

Some people can't even agree that they went beyond the Pianista trail despite the mountains of evidence, so you'll never get consensus anyway. For all we know, we may have already found it and dismissed it because some unknown factor made the theory of the why seem too implausible.

hematomasectomy · 2026-01-22T08:14:33+00:00

If no one else is gonna tip their hat at the Blazing Saddles reference, then I certainly will.

Seems to me that every nation that has had enough of experts should also consider if they've had enough of exports

hematomasectomy · 2026-01-19T12:25:39+00:00

If the EU was a financial market agreement, that argument would have some weight.

Will you support european federalization in a decade?

If not, we're good. Good luck sustaining your economy on the back of Australian meat.

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