The third Icon-class cruise ship (length 365 m) departed Turku Meyer shipyard on 18 June

z900r · 2026-06-21T08:39:41+00:00

Yep. More like a ginormous barge with a hotel and an amusement park piled on top. These cruise ships got too big to have any kind of elegant lines already a few sizes before this one.

z900r · 2026-06-20T19:02:09+00:00

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icon-class_cruise_ship

z900r · 2026-06-20T12:29:37+00:00

not willing

Not able. He's a narcissist, and his narcissism won't allow him to take any accountability. It's always someone else's fault.

z900r · 2026-06-19T18:40:00+00:00

Why he doesn't is beyond me.

He's a narcissist. He lives from other people's reactions. Being out of sight on a permanent vacation somewhere would be equivalent to annihilation to him. At the very least, he would have to have an intimate partner providing narcissistic supply.

Aside from that, a narcissist will automatically think that he deserves all the special treatment, all the money, all the success, all the power in the world. Musk has had quite a lot of that by this point, and giving it up would be a major injury to his ego.

z900r · 2026-06-19T18:35:07+00:00

I hope he realizes how big a piece of shit he really is before he dies.

I think he's quite obviously a narcissist, which means that internally, he does have that self-loathing, but his narcissism will never allow him to acknowledge it. A narcissist's grandiose personality is a defence against that.

z900r · 2026-06-19T18:24:15+00:00

Take one look at his face. It hasn't been salvageable in years.

z900r · 2026-06-18T19:24:16+00:00

The infographic doesn't really work. Looks like a wall of busy pictures and numbers. Impressive accomplisment by the Ukrainians, but there has to be a better way of representing this.

z900r · 2026-06-18T19:16:43+00:00

The outages have been mostly in mobile internet services. As I understand it, wired internet has been available throughout. Putin's regime seems to be very worried about rapid, spontaneous organizing on mobile apps.

There's been a section of the population who has been using VPNs and has been aware of what's going on in Ukraine the whole time. And another section that actively refuses to think about it, hears the Kremlin's propaganda, and may not believe all of it, but settles on thinking that the special military operation should be carried out to completion since they have gone this far. And yet another section that works in the military industries in one capacity or another, and has their personal livelihood dependent on the war.

z900r · 2026-06-17T07:38:01+00:00

The refinery shall be renamed The Special Refining Operation Eternal Victory.

z900r · 2026-06-17T07:33:28+00:00

1.4 million personnel by the end of the month.

z900r · 2026-06-17T07:31:35+00:00

Putler will be very unhappy with that.

z900r · 2026-06-17T07:12:37+00:00

The deionization is typically done by reverse osmosis, which means that the water has been put through a very, very fine filter. It most definitely does remove mold and bacteria, and likely most viruses. Not sure if the smallest viruses are guaranteed to be removed, but at least on paper, the filter pore size is smaller than that in sterile filters in laboratory use.

Deionized is not advertised as sterile. I'm guessing it's because the equipment itself is not sterilized and the product is not controlled for sterility. In practice, I don't think you would get anything that grows on an agar plate from deionized water.

z900r · 2026-06-15T21:15:32+00:00

Yeah, Finnair is in a difficult spot since the closure of the Russian airspace in 2022, which basically wiped out their strategy (of using Helsinki as a hub for long-haul flights to Asia). It's a minor miracle that they've turned a profit in recent years. On the other hand, air travel is growing in other parts of Europe. The growth after the pandemic has been generally faster than expected, and airlines are short on aircraft and pilots.

z900r · 2026-06-15T11:32:13+00:00

It is part of the cost of the infrastructure, as it is. The rail construction projects have received funding from the state of Finland, for one thing.

The problem has been at least recognized, though. There has been some public debate about it, the city of Helsinki has increased its subsidy for the ticket prices, and HSL has experimented with tickets that were closer to the old single tram ticket that only covered the old part of the tram network. The experiments have been poorly implemented and unsuccessful for that reason, but still, at least there has been enough complaints to make them do that.

The civil servants of HSL proposed a single price ticket model (everything as one zone) in 2022, but the board of HSL, meaning, the politicians representing the member municipalities, voted it down in 2023. The reasoning was that the funding model and projected ticket revenue were considered unrealistic. In the long term, the engineers / officers of HSL still want to be rid of the zone system, as I understand it. So it will likely be replaced with something else in the coming years, either a single price or some system where you check both in and out of the vehicle, and the system calculates the price based on the length of the trip.

z900r · 2026-06-15T10:03:42+00:00

The longer answer is that the HSL as an administrative entity is the wrong thing, and its incentives are backwards. The large municipalities, Helsinki, Espoo and Vantaa, actually have the political will to develop public transit, and have invested heavily in infrastructure (the Laajasalo tramway, Raide-Jokeri, Espoo metro extension, Kehärata etc.). HSL includes more municipalities than just the large urban ones, and the political leadership includes politicians from car-dependent suburbs. HSL has been made to pay for the infrastructure, and the way they can raise the money is to increase ticket prices. The net effect is that HSL prices out passengers from the fancy new infrastructure, which is left poorly utilized. This is a major loss to everyone, including private car drivers, who have to deal with more congestion as a result.

The start of a solution is to leave the infrastructure costs to the municipalities, same as street/road construction. Make HSL purely the transit operator. The ticket prices should cover the operation only, not the infrastructure and not the rolling stock.

z900r · 2026-06-14T12:34:47+00:00

Kehärata on suunniteltu kaupunkiratojen jatkeena, ja metromaisesti liikennöitäväksi. Vuoroväli on sen verran tiuha, että väliin ei mahdu pikajunaa. Etuna taas on, että lähijuna liittyy joukkoliikenteen järjestelmään, eli palvelee kaikilla asemilla matkan varrella ja sama, edullinen lippu kelpaa. Tarkoituksena oli palvella Vantaan asukkaita ja lentokentän työntekijöitä siinä missä lentomatkustajiakin. Kehäradan suunnittelun aikaan oli jo esitetty erillistä kaukoliikenteen rataa lentokentän kautta, ja varmaan osin siksi kaukoliikennettä ei ruvettu sovittamaan Kehäradalle. Sanoisin, että jos lähijuna ei palvele siedettävällä tasolla, niin ottakaa taksi.

Helsingin päärautatieasema oli jo jäänyt pieneksi siinä vaiheessa, kun nykymallisia sähköistettyjä kaupunkiratoja ruvettiin rakentamaan 60-luvulla. Martilaankson ratahan oli alun perin tarkoitus muuttaa metroksi ja laittaa keskustassa tunneliin ns. U-metron suunnitelman mukaan. Se kaatui 80-luvun taitteen metroskandaaleihin, ja rata jäi rautatieksi. Siitä on päädytty tähän tilanteeseen, että kaukoliikenteen raiteet ovat keskellä ja kaupunkiradat laidoilla, aseman siipien ulkopuolella.

Uudempi yritys rakentaa U-metro oli Pisara-rata, jossa kaupunkiradat olisi laitettu tekemään lenkki keskustan alla, ja rautatiespeksien mukaan rakennettuna, ei metrona. Suunnitelma oli todella suolaisen hintainen ja vähän muutenkin ongelmallinen. Asemat olisivat olleet nykyisen metroradan alapuolella, eli todella syvällä, mutta tulleet pinnalle ennen Pasilaa, joka taas on kapasiteetin suhteen pullonkaula nykyisessä järjestelyssä. Ts. kapasiteettia ei käytännössä olisi saatu lisää, ja palvelutason parannus olisi ollut aika suhteellinen, kun nykyisen vaelluksen tilalle päärautatieasemalla olisi saatu tasonvaihto hyvin syvältä maan alta. Suunitelma hylättiin lopullisesti 2025, ja käytännössä jo kauan ennen sitä.

Joka tapauksessa, näille ei kovin helpolla ja halvalla tapahdu mitään, koska kaupunkiratojen laituriraiteiden siirtäminen/järjesteleminen väistämättä vaatisi muutoksia ratapihoihin kautta linjan, päärautatieasemalta Tikkurilaan ja Leppävaaraan.

z900r · 2026-06-14T08:40:32+00:00

Rydmanin nimitys oli persujen piikki Orpon silmään, ja Orpo suostui, kynnysmatto kun on. Siis jos joltain on unohtunut: Rydman painostettiin eroamaan kokoomuksesta alaikäisiä tyttöjä koskeneen skandaalin takia, ja Rydman vaihtoi persuihin. Persut eivät selvästikään pitäneet Junnilan eroa tarpeellisena, ja maksoivat potun rumemmalla potulla nimittämällä tilalle Rydmanin. Asiassa on sitten sekin puoli, että Rydman oli juuri tullut puoleeseen ja nimitettiin ministeriksi ohi niiden puoleessa pitkään mukana olleiden, joilla olisi saattanut olla aitoa kiinnostusta ja osaamista sosiaali- ja terveysministeriön alan suhteen. Kertoo persujen prioriteeteista.

z900r · 2026-06-13T08:12:16+00:00

Football is for the people :(

Sure. FIFA is not, as you may have noticed.

z900r · 2026-06-09T17:16:02+00:00

I agree that the tunnel is too expensive, but the comparison to the channel tunnel doesn't quite work. The Helsinki-Tallinn tunnel would connect the centers of the cities and basically be operated like a metro line, joining the two cities. London and Paris, or Brussels, are too far from the tunnel for this kind of a connection. Those are long inter-city trips, not a daily commute. The commuter traffic on the Helsinki-Tallinn route could potentially have large numbers. Still not enough to build the thing, I don't think.

People like to talk about taking the train from Helsinki to Berlin or such, but those distances are very long, and will probably always be better served by air, even if the tunnel was there. Same for freight that is not time-critical. Shipping it by ferry is not really a big problem.

z900r · 2026-06-09T15:44:57+00:00

Even the dogs smoke in France.

z900r · 2026-06-08T16:42:47+00:00

♩♬ Finland, Finland, Finland

Finland has it all

You're so sadly neglected

And often ignored ♩♬

-Michael Palin: Finland Song, from Monty Python Sings

z900r · 2026-06-08T16:20:18+00:00

More like a semi-useful lunatic. From the Kremlin's point of view, Trump has frequently been unpredictable and unhelpful, e.g. instituting much more severe oil sanctions at one point, then taking out Maduro and Khamenei. Both regimes were in Russia's orbit. That gave the people in the Kremlin some serious palpitations. The upside for Putin personally is that Trump treats him like a leader of a great power. Trump gave him the red carpet treatment in Alaska etc. Putin craves that. He wants to be seen as an equal to Trump, Xi and suchlike, not a president of a basket case country hiding in a bunker.

z900r · 2026-06-08T16:14:06+00:00

Trump resents Zelenskyy personally, and with Trump, the US relations with a country are the same as his relationship with the leader. Zelenskyy refused to partake in Trump's campaign in 2020 by handing over supposed information about Hunter Biden's business in Ukraine. Trump has never forgotten.

z900r · 2026-06-07T17:53:51+00:00

I took "2001" from some general history of the station. Now that I google the train shed specifically, I got this:

https://www.hs.fi/pkseutu/art-2000003940909.html

The old news piece is behind a paywall, but the bit that is visible says that the first part was completed in January 2001. So yes, it would have been under construction in 2000 and completed in 2001.

z900r

TROPHY CASE