Maedhros

I like Ghost. Cheesy in a good way.

Watched the new Mission Impossible at my girlfriend's behest. Vaguely amused at the scenes in the end that are supposed to take place in India, but is clearly in Norway (Pulpit Rock/Preikestolen). As for the film it was alright, but you get the feeling you've seen it all before. Mildly entertaining, but not really worth the price of admission.

I've been a Liverpool fan since 93-94ish (barely missing out on the last time they won the league). I don't think this year will be it, because Man City are just too strong - but we're looking better and better under Klopp. He's truly transformed us into a great team again. That CL final was an absurd experience - I truly believe we'd have won it if not for the early Salah-injury.

Been reading the Witcher novels recently myself. Though I was surprised to find out that they were actually quite good. Looking forward to the Netflix series now.

They keep being told how free they are and how they are fighting for their freedom overseas, so at some point they start believing it. To be honest I very much doubt that is true for Gromnir and given his occupation he was probably talking about certain laws. Freedom of speech I can imagine, for instance. freedom o' speech is indeed different in US. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-11254419 same goes for freedom o' press and religion. we always get some person from sweden or similar telling us 'bout how much freedom o' press is respected in their country, then we show 'em case 'bout a journalist being criminalized for writing stories which offended some specific religious or social group. I'm not a Swede, but "similar", so gonna butt in here. How many examples of that can you find? I bet not many, compared to other countries. Sweden (and Scandinavia in general) are always at the top of any "press freedom" list. https://freedomhouse.org/report/table-country-scores-fotp-2017 https://rsf.org/en/ranking

Dubbing is ridiculous yeah (unless it's for children's films). It's a large part of the reason why Dutch and Scandinavian people tend to be more profecient with the English language than the German and French. Relevant map:

Freedom is a strange word that can be interpreted in many ways. Take freedom of speech for example - yes some European countries have laws banning hate speech. But that doesn't really affect 99,9% of people, so most people don't feel "less free" by it. However, look at an everyday situation like your workplace. I think you're far more likely to suffer negative consequences (getting fired) from speaking up your mind in the US, than in your average European country where unions and the government protect you more. Your employer is more "free" in the US, but the employee is more "free" in Europe. In terms of general freedom, to give an example: Me and my wife are having a baby in September. When it's born I get 2 weeks of paid holiday, and later on after my wife's done with her maternity leave (15+10 weeks of it I believe), I get 15 weeks paid paternity leave to be with my son. For me that's freedom. Guaranteed by the government.

We have expensive beer, but our tap water is amazing. So when I'm travelling abroad I always enjoy how cheap the alcohol is, while at the same time miss the top quality tap water I use here to get rid of my hangover.

I live in Norway. It's a very beautiful country. The nature here is quite astonishing, so it's no wonder that hiking is a popular thing here. Like many other countries, we have "Public right of access", meaning everyone here can go camp in nature wherever they want (as long as you keep a 150 meter distance to houses). I live in a pretty idyllic city called Bergen (the second biggest in Norway), which is surrounded by seven small mountains that you can hike up from the city centre in under an hour. Fell in love with it when I studied here nine years ago, and have lived here since. We're a very rich country, especially considering our tiny population. That is of course in very large part due to the oil. We have saved a lot of the money earned in a Government Pension fund, which has over 1 trilion dollar in assets. So a lot of the politics here revolves around how much of it we should use. Anyway, I feel pretty privilidged to grow up and live here. It's a very safe and stable country. Free education, free healthcare, etc. Also, Norwegian seafood is ridiculously good. If I have to point out something negative it has to be that the roads here are terrible. It takes way too long to travel between the big cities.

Cheering for England for the first time since I was a kid. It's pretty cool that their best tournament since 1990 is without any superstars in their team (except Kane I guess). Think it'll be tough to beat Croatia though, especially with Rakitic and Modric in form.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jul/08/trump-administration-opposes-breastfeeding-resolution-report But my corporations....

Are you drinking that stuff pure, or as gin and tonic? I found my favorite Gin (and tonic water): Wellinghouse Premium London Dry Gin (from a discounter) and Thomas Henry tonic water, with lime or lemon. We had some Skin & Hendricks Gin on the weekend, can't really tell the difference, especially in a longdrink! Pure 2012 Serafin Père et Fils Morey St. Denis 1er Cru Les Millandes Very dark on the nose, a smoky and meaty composition of black fruits and black pepper. Tastes similarly. Fills the mouth nicely. Very rustic in style. Early still, will likely get better. Not necessarily what I look for in a Burgundy Pinot, but still a good and relatively interesting wine. 90/100

16GB (even 8GB) is more than enough for most people though Also, Logitech mice over Razer any day. MX518 for life. I believe its current iteration is called G403.

Pretty insane that Icardi isn't even in the squad

I find that Nintendo games age really well, in large part because of the responsive controls. Controlling Mario in Super Mario 64 still feels great, and the old 2d games are also still a joy to play. Heroes 3 is of course an obvious mention. Shoutout to Warcraft 3 (and Starcraft). Some people may not like the graphics, but I like the colorful cartoony look, and the gameplay is still fantastic. You can't really match Blizzard when it comes to the smooth camera movement, the responsive unit and hero controls, and the competetiveness in online play.

Coutinho has scored so many of those the last couple of years. His trademark type of goal.

Probably a bit blashphemous to not have an oldschool crpg on my list, but my three are: 1. Witcher 3 2. Morrowind 3. Pokemon Blue

So...Trump doesn't seem interested in killing the conspiracy theories. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/06/trump-is-fulfilling-russias-dream-of-splitting-the-west.html https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-g7-summit-trump-russia/trump-says-russia-should-be-in-g7-meeting-idUKKCN1J41O4?il=0

I love my christian and muslim friends, but I think religion (of any sort) is ridiculous. I can respect the positive aspects of religion (trying to follow Jesus' teachings etc) - but it's hard to fathom how people I know to be smarter than me can believe in a supreme magical being without any evidence. I'm sure they feel we heathens are ridiculous too though.

Not too into Gin, but tried a relatively new Gin called Bareksten that's supposedly the best in the world (and coincidentally from the city I live in). It's very different from any other Gin I've tasted, with lots of herbs and very concentrated and longlasting taste. (without that lingering taste of alcohol some Gins have). Loved it. https://www.masterofmalt.com/gin/bareksten-spirits/bareksten-gin/

With Bioware being irrelevant for some years now, the only thing interesting for me this E3 will be CD Project Red's showing.

Thought it was pretty interesting that Norway and Sweden, who are so alike in many ways, have such a different view here. Too bad the study is only for Western-European countries. Pretty interesting survey overall, mostly about religiosity in Western-Europe: http://www.pewforum.org/2018/05/29/nationalism-immigration-and-minorities/

You kind of want the teacher job to be attractive to ambitious and smart people though. A good teacher can save/earn the country millions of dollars throughout his/her career. Obviously not quantifiable, but there's little doubt that to many kids nowadays the teacher is basically a second parent. At least for the young ones.

https://www.apnews.com/82625458838c4ba39b58affa88473500/Dems-want-to-scrap-tax-cut-for-rich-to-fund-teachers'-raises Sounds good to me.

Didn't know this was the Breitbart comments section.