Maedhros

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.

Saudi-Arabia and Israel rejoicing

Everyone can get the utterly fantastic Crusader Kings 2 for free on steam right now https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/crusader-kings-ii-is-currently-free-on-steam-and-there-is-a-sale.1086965/

I thought Ready Player One was quite bad. I liked some of the action sequences, but I didn't really get it when it tried to be deep or meaningful. The last 20 minutes were terrible.

La casa de papel (Money Heist) Very entertaining, if a bit far fetched Netflix-series that revolves around a very well planned robbery on the Royal Mint in Spain. I just found out that season 2 is coming in a couple of days, so I'm quite happy with my timing.

When one company owns several local news stations

Looking forward to that. We need more films and tv series based on books by Dan Simmons. Give me Hyperion already!!