Different leftist organizations in Norway seem to have different stances.

Tjen Folket referred to opposition to wind turbines as a "just campaign", but it's not clear to me in context whether this is referring to opposition to wind turbines in general or just opposition to specific wind farms. The Communist Party of Norway seems to support floating wind turbines but does not mention wind turbines on land. The Young Communists, its youth wing, does not appear to have anything about wind power on its website. The Red Party is opposed to wind turbines in general, on land and on sea; however the Red Youth, the Red Party's youth wing, supports the construction of wind turbines provided that this is done in a "responsible" way. Revolusjon.no and marxisme.no seem to oppose the construction of wind farms in general, focusing on Norway's relationship to the EU in general and Germany in particular, saying that these wind turbines are essentially being built to generate profits for capitalists to the detriment of locals in these areas. They have a number of articles that I would like to eventually read in full.

So there seems to be a range of opinions within the Norwegian left, but the general trend seems to be against the construction of wind turbines.

Wind turbines are a topic of growing prominence in Norway as plans for more and more wind farms are unveiled across the country. I was recently introduced to this blog post that presents a number of arguments against the construction of wind power in general, providing sources for everything and even some responses to common counterarguments. However I am of course skeptical to this blog post, because sourced or not, it is a lot of claims to reflect on and research, and the single brief remark about "population growth" (apparently quoting the UN) seems a bit sussy. I would also like to look more into the organization Motvind and criticism against it, and get through everything on the Wikipedia article "Environmental impact of wind power".

Still, interim, I figured I should hold a "fact-finding meeting" to see if anyone here has any thoughts on when the construction of wind turbines should be supported or opposed, especially if you have experiences with wind turbines being built or opposed in your local area. When is opposition to wind turbines "NIMBYism in environmentalist clothing", and when is there more to it? What do you all think?

This is too much of a cognitohazard for me to bother translating in full, hence the summary rather than full translation

What concerns me above all else is, firstly, that NRK would actually publish this opinion piece; and secondly, that "half of young men" according to this piece believe in this sort of nonsense, that even the most charitable among us would hesitate to call "sophistry at best". The "student of economics" who wrote this piece plainly to me reads as a ghoul of the oil industry and a "belly-showing dog" for Septic imperialism, and generally a reactionary who is staking his life on the continuation of capitalist system.

Keywords: eightball,magic

I made emojis of eight different magic eightball answers but I got a rate limit error when I tried uploading them all

I'm surprised no-one's ever shared Yothu Yindi on this site before. The band name means "Child and Mother" in Yolngu, a language of Arnhem Land. The band was formed in 1986 from the merger of two earlier bands, one was a folk music group with all Yolngu members and one was a rock band with all white members, so Yothu Yindi's music combines like traditional Yolngu music with pop/rock, and their lyrics are mostly in English with a bit of Yolngu as well. From the songs I've heard (this, "Djapana", and "Treaty") the lyrics tend to concern Indigenous issues.

But yeah, this particular song, "Tribal Voice", makes me think of an anime OP. Like you can hear the part where the logo would go "thud".

Keywords: boondocks,the,huey,freeman,book

I've been wondering for a while why we have no Boondocks emojis, especially emojis of retired domestic terrorist and founder of 23 radical leftist organizations Huey Freeman.

Proposed emoji name comes from Werner Herzog's description of Huey Freeman in the episode "It's a Black President, Huey Freeman"

In Bavaria we have a saying, "Der Junge ist ja total bedient." — it means, "This is the most depressing fucking kid I've ever met in my life."

I mentioned that I voted, and they naturally asked me who I voted for. I said, "De la Cruz. Third party."

"Sorry, I didn't quite catch that?", one of them said, and the whole group looked at me a bit puzzled — so I reiterated, "De la Cruz, a third-party candidate."

"...Wait, there's a *THIRD* party?"

CW: drawing of a human skeleton

(since we have emojis of skeletons I guess I don't need to provide a CW but strictly speaking that is a representation of a human corpse which should have a CW so I'm just being cautious)

So yeah, it started with this picture, or specifically Luke Correia's voice-over of it posted in early 2021. As I remember it, I inexplicably misinterpreted "had die" as a clipping of "had diarrhea" — probably because the sentence was implying death by foodborne illness, was preceded by some scatological terms, and I had at that point only recently learned "drop trou" as a clipping of "drop one's trousers", so I was already "primed" to look for similar clippings.

I soon realized that I had misinterpreted the meaning, and "had die" was simply intended as a funny way of saying "died" — but I was still amused by the idea of clipping "have diarrhea" to just "have die", and so I found myself saying "boyyoass how I had die over some [insert food I ate earlier]" to myself in a Skeletor-type voice any time I had that type of night. From there "die" (later respelled as "di", and often in the form "mad di") quickly became my preferred term for loose or liquid stool in most contexts, since it was more humorous and indirect than most other terms for a phenomenon I think we can all agree is a bit gross to talk about.

Believers in the geocentric model of the solar system were not stupid. They were wrong, by all means, but they were not stupid: while it does not require much intellect to come up with the initial hypothesis that Earth is at the center of the solar system, it does in fact require plenty of intellect to be able to continually iterate on this model to rationalize the mountain of evidence against it in a coherent way.

Likewise, when Kamala Harris presents herself as the only candidate in this election to vote for to "save our democracy," it is a mistake to assume that Americans are stupid when they apparently do not notice the paradoxes of her and her supporters' rhetoric. In any other country in any other time, I'd think most Americans would be able to point out the irrationality just as easily as they know Lucy Van Pelt's intents with that football. Yet many Americans, it would seem, see red whenever someone points out the absurdities of electoralism in the USA — and whenever confronted with these absurdities, simply choose to dig themselves further into a safe trench of creative sophistry, just like the geocentrists of old.

The Act of Voting

Elections are treated as a sacred thing by many, and I don't think this treatment is incidental to the fact that elections are ritualized events generally observed on special days or seasons. Voting in Norwegian elections, ballot boxes have reminded me of the donation boxes at Shinto shrines, and voting booths have reminded me of church confessionals; but really ballots themselves bear a greater resemblance to the ema tablets of Shinto, right down to the firm request to write neatly — or in the ballot's case, to fill in the box completely. Ema are incidentally a type of "votive offering", funny that that's the technical term for it.

Ballots also remind me of the idea of religious fetishes, objects which are said to inherently possess non-material values or powers. Part of this supernatural allure comes from the fact that ballots must have this particular form, and cannot be tampered with; another part is just that people generally don't see where the ballot's been or where it goes before and after conducting the ritual of voting.

Psychologically, events we wait in line for feel more special, if they're things we want to do; and the act of putting something in a box can provide emotional relief on its own, this is why "worry boxes" are sometimes recommended for sufferers of guilt or anxiety. There is also something to be said about the voting age, since when I first voted in an American election in 2020, I took that experience as my equivalent to a coming-of-age ritual — it was proof that I had finally become an adult in my family, and my living situation at the time made the event feel even more special.

What I'm getting at by pointing out all of these things is that the act of voting, especially if one is voting in person at a polling station, literally uses many of the same "devices" as actual religious rites: the way elections are carried out makes them feel like very significant and serious events, regardless of how significant they are in reality, and this is reinforced by how American (and to an extent Norwegian) society at large talks about voting.

Looking at elections from this perspective of "civil religion" as it's known in religious studies, I think helps explain why a lot of people see red when their "common wisdom" about elections is questioned: be the questioners non-voting "atheists" or third-party "pagans", questioning the common wisdom around elections is in any case tantamount to questioning God Himself. The elections are something Americans have been psychologically primed to take very seriously, and they do not want to feel like they have been played for fools after investing so much of their mental energy into the elections.

Lady Democracy

I should think most Americans are able to provide a decent definition of "democracy" and sincerely believe on a conscious level that when they speak of "democracy" that they are using their own definition. The belief that the USA (or any other liberal "democracy") matches that description is what is religious, and it is this religion that is the true object of Kamala Harris' defense. She aims to defend the rituals and cultural practices of electoralism in the USA — the cultus of Democracy the patron goddess of the USA — which carries the form but decidedly not the substance of the common people's ability to have control over their own country. Kamala Harris defends a religion so normalized that most Americans don't realize they even believe in it, and she claims that "the other side" will disrupt this cultus of Democracy that many Americans hold so dear, just as "the other side" claims that Harris' side will disrupt their own cultus of the Nazarene, a cultus without at least the modest decency of wearing a "secular" garb.

Religions and their gods, of course, always exist to serve some sort of purpose in society, be it a Mandate of Heaven justifying an emperor, or a Sky Father justifying a house patriarch, or simply various gods in each corner of the world personifying various natural phenomena. This considered, I think a reason why I fell out of the worship of American Democracy so early on is because I don't live in that society, I am and always have been geographically isolated from the things that most effectively produce and reproduce American "election worship": The Americans in the USA live in a settler-colonial society built on slavery and stolen land — that is the country's primary contradiction, the cognitive dissonance of which has been the driving pressure of the formation and development of the original American national identity of the United States. My own national identity, on the other hand, is then a settler-colonial identity which has been taken out of its proper settler-colonial context. The original driving pressures of American identity are therefore non-factors for myself, and so I am afforded at least a somewhat easier time recognizing and questioning the aspects of American national identity based in these pressures.

When settlers slaughtered and enslaved entire nations supposedly to "bring the light of civilization and progress" from sea to shining sea, the belief that these settlers were sincere in their aims and ultimately "succeeded" is, for the settlers' sanity, then as today, practically necessary. This is the forgone conclusion at the core of the worship of Lady Democracy, and it is then only natural that her cultus would take this specific ritualized form. Rituals, after all, create meaning and help with the regulation of one's emotions, and as mentioned earlier, putting a physical manifestation of one's guilt or anxiety in a box is something that is specifically recommended for sufferers of these emotions — and who could be more anxious, and more guilty, than colonizers?

Indeed, the USA is a country that will never come to terms with its own crimes, for it is a criminal country at its core — the settlers will supremely value their spiritual cleansing in the form of show-democracy, far more than they will ever value a genuine choice of leadership. Hell, what choice do the settlers really need in their leadership, anyways? Two "parties" on the ballot is enough for petty suburban drama and the superficial appearance of choice; one Party in practice is enough to maintain the status quo that the settlers benefit from. The countless millions oppressed by this paradigm can nevertheless be sold on the cult of Democracy on the promise of acceptance and an easy solution to their troubles — their worship will however always be far more unstable than the settlers'.

Three days ago I said that I tried soy milk for the first time. I finished the entire carton pretty quickly, and decided that at the next opportunity I would buy more plant milk, to try different brands and types, and to figure out where I could find plant milk at different stores.

I noted last time that the plant milk was hidden in a random out-of-the-way corner of the store — in the store I went to this time, the plant milk was in a section called frifor (also spelled fri for, fri-for), a play on fri for which means "completely without (dairy, gluten, etc)". I'm assuming the plant milk in the other store I went to was also in this section and I just didn't notice the sign. I just expected to find plant milk in the same place you'd find dairy milk, rather than in its own little section of the store for people with dietary restrictions.

Anyways, I bought chocolate oat milk this time. The brand is called Oatly. The soy milk I bought last time was Alpro brand. The oat milk was a few kroner cheaper than the soy milk, but I forgot to compare prices with dairy milk.

What I'll say right now is... Oatly brand chocolate oat milk is kinda how I expected plant milk to be like before I tried the soy milk from the previous post. By no means "chemical-y," like a lot of bozos seem to think, just... "bouba"...? I don't know how to put it, exactly, but it's a taste that's distinctly "I'd rather not"

So, Oatly is drinkable, in small amounts, but it's not nearly as good as the Alpro soy milk; I poured a glass of Oatly for myself and actually spat out the last bit because I "needed a break". I also noticed that while Alpro didn't smell at all, Oatly has a distinct scent to it, mild but I still don't favor it; on the other hand Oatly resembles dairy milk slightly more in appearance (not a major concern for me), and it doesn't stain the cup nearly as much (which is a positive).

Oatly brand chocolate oat milk is serviceable enough that I'll drink the whole carton eventually, but I think the next time I'm shopping for plant milk I'm not gonna go for Oatly again. I'd rather pay just a little more for better-tasting moloko. I'm not sure if I'll go for rice milk or almond milk next time, but I do think I'll have the milk be plain rather than flavored in any way.

One last thing I'd like to address is just the packaging.

I haven't actually thrown away the Alpro carton yet, so I have that to compare as well.

So on the Alpro the only words of Norwegian/Scandinavian are the contact information for customer service on the proper right bottom third of the carton, and the product information / ingredients / nutritional information on the reverse. There is also text in Finnish and Romanian in these same places, and some other Romanian fine print on the obverse and proper right. But as a whole the entire carton is covered in big, bold, flashy English, and I do not like this.

Because if the reverse assumes that anyone buying the milk necessarily speaks Scandinavian, Finnish, or Romanian, then why should the package assume that everyone buying also speaks English? Conversely, wouldn't the vast majority of the packaging being entirely in English lead one to believe that one should also be able to find the ingredients and nutritional information on the back in English?

The obverse has plenty of room to in fact entirely replace the English text with translations into Scandinavian, Finnish, and Romanian; the sides, too, could cut out the marketing flourishes and convey the same information in all three languages as well. There is no reason for English to be there at all other than I guess to be trendy and to save the negligible amount of money it would take to localize the packaging beyond the literal bare minimum required by law.

I do have to wonder why Romanian, though. There are many far more widely spoken immigrant languages in Norway, Romanian is not a super widely spoken language on the global scale, and Norway and Romania are not particularly close to one another, so it seems a bit of a random choice, doesn't it? But whatever, it is a pretty language, so I can't object to seeing more of it.

Now Oatly on the other hand, there is a nice and clear "HAVREDRIKK SJOKOLADE" written on the front. In that regard, it's way better than the Alpro carton.

However... Again, most of the carton save for what the carton itself labels as "the boring (but very important) side" is written in English. Basically none of it is anything actually important, but it's just this really aggravating "corporate silly", you know the kind, the kind of writing that feels like it's a variant of that same vile disease that also brought us "wholesome adulting" and grown-ass characters swearing like 5th graders in Hollywood blockbusters.

Like I know I probably seem really petty by focusing so much on the packaging, but I don't want to feel cringe when buying abuse-free milk. Like I know there isn't really any other way to do it, but I don't want to be reminded that I'm buying from some corporation that's cashing in on people's desire to not support animal abuse and trying to turn veganism from a radical movement for animal rights to a qwirkee #aesthetic under their own Brand Image of corporate silly wholesome chungus English for the globally-minded youth. Just give me the fucking plant milk, in the local language, without marketing frills. No different from the store brand apple juice and instant ramen. No different from the dairy milk.

Is that really so much to ask?

Specifically it was chocolate-flavored soy milk. I figured that would be "safer".

The experience of drinking the soy milk went roughly like so:

[pours the milk]

"Hmm. Maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me, but it looks ever so slightly opaque compared to dairy milk..."

[gives it a good sniff]

"...It smells like basically nothing. Just as I like it!"

[tastes it]

...

...

...

"...Yeah??? OK! I can fuck with that!"

[puts glass down]

"Well, it feels somewhat watered down, yet also a bit saccharine; and the chocolate flavor is clearly different from what I'm used to; but on the whole it's not bad, it's just different, and 'different' is exactly what I was expecting. Really, as a whole this milk is largely indistinguishable from a different brand of dairy chocolate milk I've had previously."

[gulps down the rest of the glass]

"I mean, you know, it's not like the flavor on its own is preferable to what I'm already used to — God knows this costs a bit more as well — but I would gladly only drink chocolate milk that tastes slightly 'off' if it means less animal abuse. This hardly counts as any sort of sacrifice."

[drinks two more glasses]

"Honestly, I take back what I said, this is just good. Why on Earth isn't this just the standard milk already‽ Why was this stuff just hidden away in some random corner of the grocery store, where I nearly missed it completely‽ I mean I know the answer already, I'm just saying it's messed up..."

October 21st through 27th

https://www.giellavahkku.org/

[NB: It took me a few hours to translate this article, during which the protest the article concerns already took place. NRK reports that the protest was attended by 1,000+ students; I can translate that article later. Also, if I got anything wrong here, please say something. I took more liberties with the translation than usual, adding extra context or rephrasing ideas more naturally.]

Thousands of protestors are expected in Hamar to protest the closure of multiple schools. The police comes with a clear message.

AWAITING TRAFFIC CHAOS: The police requests that people avoid driving into Hamar when thousands of protestors are expected to descend upon the city. Map courtesy of Google Earth.

By Magnus Kallelid, Annabelle Bruun, Bendik Hansen, and Kristoffer Solberg. Published Tuesday October 22nd 2024, 10:33 AM, last updated 10:40 AM.

HAMAR (Dagbladet): Prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre strongly reacts to the comments made on Monday by mayor of Lom municipality, Kristian Frisvolds, concerning the school structure debate, TV 2 reports.

— "For a mayor to call for a war, I think that's completely unacceptable," Støre said to the TV channel.

County-level politicians in Innlandet County, representing the Conservative Party, Labor Party and Green Party have proposed the closure of Dokka and Skarnes upper secondary schools as well as the school grounds in Dombås, Lom, Flisa, and Sønsterud.

This has caused outrage in Innlandet County. Several thousand protestors are expected to descend upon Hamar's downtown on Tuesday afternoon, according to the police.

According to Hamar Arbeiderblad (lit. Hamar Workers' Paper), several buses full of people from various places in Innlandet County are on their way to the city, which is located on the coast of Lake Mjøsa.

— "We're on the ball and monitoring the situation. These are people who desire to make use of their freedom of speech, which is by all means legal in democratic Norway," Ketil Enger of Innlandet police district, who is leading the police group assigned to the protest, said to the newspaper.

He said that it would in principle be possible for the protest to happen without a police presence, but that they will still be present on Tuesday. He wished for the time being not to say how large the police presence will be.

— "Some have notified us beforehand that they wish to attend the demonstration while others have not. There is both an organized and unorganized section that will join in this demonstration," Enger said.

He made a request for those thinking of going to the demonstration by car:

— "Avoid driving into the city if possible. There will be many people, and we may be forced to close individual roads and regulate traffic if the situation calls for it," Enger said to the newspaper.

Declared "total war"

On Monday evening, mayor of Lom municipality Kristian Frisvold spat fire, saying that "a total war is declared" and that there is no longer a need to be impersonal about the case of the proposed school closures, but that it is now acceptible to go after the politicians personally.

Frisvold has received much criticism for his commentary. He said in NRK's Political Quarter Tuesday morning that they have tried everything, but that this has been decided beforehand. [Does he mean "this was inevitable"? And who is "they"? The anti-school-closure movement?]

Kristian Frisvold is a member of the Conservative Party but in his capacity as mayor represents a different party, the Village List. The Conservative Party has distanced itself from Frisvold's comments, saying that they violate the party's ethical guidelines.

When Frisvold declared a total war, he stated that "all is fair game".

He said that he had contacted journalists to ask them to dig into members of the county council representing the Labor Party, Conservative Party, and Green Party. "We want to uncover all sorts of dirt," Frisvold said.

— "Can you as mayor say that all is fair game?" NRK's host asked.

— "I will utilize all legal means possible to stop [the closure of the schools]. I have only encouraged legal methods and nothing else," Frisvold replied.

On the subject of Conservative Party members contacting the police after his request, Frisvold said:

— "They can go ahead and do that. I have nothing other than legal methods to use, and I will use them. It is legal to investigate if people have nothing to hide."

SCHOOL CLOSURES: During the meeting of the Lom municipal council on Monday October 21st, mayor Kristian Frisvold declared "total war" against the county-level politicians in Innlandet County. Video courtesy of Lom municipality.

— "Completely unprepared"

The mayor's political party, the Village List, commented Tuesday on the mayor's strongly criticized remarks.

— "Mayor Kristian Frisvold must speak for himself, regarding his choice of words in yesterday's municipal council meeting, about Lom's situation around the school structure reform, and personal attacks on county-level politicians in Innlandet County", Trond Volden of the Village List wrote in a press release.

— "We the members of the Village List in Lom were all completely unprepared for the words that came from the mayor's mouth," Volden wrote.