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Goddamn furries!

Darnit!  Scooped by llama-heads! 

Wow, 5.8 million.

To OP:
In 2033, I'll be 39. I'll look somewhat like today, probably coarser facial features. still mostly wearing nondescript, functional clothing. Judging from the rest of my family, I won't have gone grey, and I'll still have my nice thick hair.
I will have at least a master's degree in something, probably history. Quite possibly I'm a high school history teacher, hopefully one of those good ones who manage to make the subject seem alive and relevant and interesting. Or working in academia or at a museum. Ideally I should earn at least part of my living from writing about history/politics/society.
Probably married. A few kids maybe, they'll still be small and ask lots of annoying questions about the world around them. For leisure I'll travel, take long walks, read, listen to and play music.
If Norway is anything like today in 2033, I'll be comfortably middle class.
To alleviate some of my middle class guilt I'll probably do volunteer work of some kind, for example there may be os many climate refugees in Norway at that point that the government barely bothers securing basic necessities of life for them and leaves the rest to NGOs.

Translated a pretty amusing radio interview with the leader of the right-wing Progress Party in Norway, Siv Jensen.

Bjørn Myklebust: What is Norwegian culture?

Siv Jensen: Heh. We've often had this debate. What is the basis of the report that we're going to discuss today is that the Norwegian immigration policy is not sustainable. Therefore, we have had an internal committee that has been working to look at various measures to strengthen Norway's ability to cope with this in the future, to reduce costs. We must, in other words, turn all stones.

Many of the proposals put forth by the committee are Progress Party policy already, but some of them are new. And these are measures that we intend to discuss thoroughly and see whether - and if - and when, we plan to implement [them] as the Progress Party's policies.

But I am very happy to see that someone dares to try out new ideas, and I'm not very surprised, then, that our proposals get dismissed almost without anyone having had time to think through what they actually imply.

It's always been like this in the discussion about Norwegian asylum and immigration policy, every time we've gone ahead and thought new thoughts, the others compete to denounce it, then ten-fifteen-twenty years afterwards they all agree anyway.

BM: That was a long answer to something that was not the question. What is Norwegian culture?

SJ: Yes, well, the baseline in this report is that we must dare to be proud of the Norwegian simultaneous to being generous with other cultures. I think it is an important starting point. We must dare to highlight our heritage, our uniqueness, our origins, our history. I think it strengthens every nation, in their encounter with other cultures.

BM: But Siv Jensen, this is also an answer to a question I didn't ask. I asked: What is Norwegian culture?

SJ: But I don't really understand why you're asking about that...

BM: [Interrupts] Because a central concept in this report that you have ordered is "cultural sustainability". And then maybe you have to define what Norwegian culture actually is?

SJ: No, that is a contribution that has come to us in this process, and which we gladly will discuss. But what is the Progress Party's starting point in this discussion, is that we highlight and dare to be proud of our origins. And that's what culture discussion is about. It's about our cultural history, our identity, our ancestry. And unfortunately, it has been ...

BM: [Interrupts] But what Norwegian culture is, you don't want to say?

SJ: Yes, but, hehe, that's the definition we have of our cultural heritage that has evolved over many generations ...

BM: But what is it?

SJ: ...that very many now believe that is okay to put aside in a sort of misunderstood tolerance towards other cultures.

BM: But what is it?

SJ: Norwegian culture is defined by our longstanding background and history, that is ... that maybe ... highlights Norway and Norwegians more than one will find corresponding features in other countries.

BM: Is Norwegian culture threatened?

SJ: It is certainly so that the more we focus on putting this aside, the less we think, maybe, of the importance of remembering our own history. And I hear more and more politicians who say that this is not so important. The Progress Party believes that is important to be proud of one's history, one's origins and one's culture.

 

YES.

Those people start in the wrong end. After a while of viewing and treating women as people, you'll no longer feel the need to affirm yourself by sticking your ding dong in them. Maybe you'll find that what you really want is things like meaningful relationships and intimacy.

I think these truths are pretty damn well-established:

• People are insecure bastards, young people even more so.
• A consumer economy depends on people buying more and more stuff.

Consequently, the emergence of a distinct youth culture in the 20th century opened up an entire new market: Profitting from young people's feelings of inadequacy by selling them stuff. The clever thing about this is that the stuff never remedies it completely. They promise you a sense of belonging if you buy this or that, it helps for a while but it doesn't last. So the kids buy more stuff. Repeat ad infinitum. They can never be enough.
I have an 8 year old half-sister, the pressure to conform is remarkable even at that age. And it doesn't get better.
Even young political radicals are afraid as hell of being tagged in a Facebook or Instagram photo with the wrong guy or not wearing the customary uniform. A communist kid is afraid of turning up at a meeting and being the only one without a keffiyeh.
I think it's important to realize that you can never be enough, never have enough, never do enough, not that way. You'll always feel inadequate when you view yourself in the imagined eyes of others.
You're afraid of being perceived as weak. You're afraid of being judged by others. You're afraid to open up to others. But if you do open up to someone, you'll soon find that it's not "you". It's WE. And you'll find that the fear is not isolating you from the rest of humanity, but us from each other.

A while back, I started receiving Snapchat messages from a girl who found my Twitter feed interesting. Then she discovered my Instagram, and I added her on Facebook, then she added me on Skype and we've had a few phone calls when we've been drunk enough to summon the courage to do so. We've never met. Now we're chatting on Facebook, about whether it really is possible to fall in love with someone you haven't met (we're afraid we both have). About how social media and smartphones are creating shallow narcissists with goldfish attention spans out of us. About Uniforms. About other stuff, like books (made out of real paper). And earlier tonight about how we really wish we didn't have these smartphones, even though we would never have known each other without them.

The Absurd is sort of taking a huge dump on my face right now and I like it.

Oh FFS Varg:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23327165

A Norwegian musician with links to mass killer Anders Behring Breivik has been arrested in France on "suspicion he was preparing a major terrorist act".

The French interior ministry said Kristian "Varg" Vikernes constituted "a potential threat to society".

He was arrested in central France after his wife bought four rifles.

Vikernes, described by French officials as a neo-Nazi, had in the past received a copy of a manifesto from Breivik, who killed 77 people in Norway in 2011.

He planted a bomb in central Oslo and went on a shooting spree on the nearby island of Utoeya in July 2011. He was imprisoned for the maximum 21-year term last year.

An official at the Paris Prosecutor Office said Breivik sent a copy of a manifesto setting out his ideology to Vikernes, who is also a convicted murderer.

Did not know about the Breivik link, though it's not a surprise.

Nicely timed though. Frances version of PRISM/GCHQ was getting some shit and outrage recently. I think this will guarantee their budget rises for the foreseeable future.

Being one of hundreds he mailed the manifesto to is hardly a link.

An unsuspecting individual is arrested and brutally interrogated with questions about Georg Cantor for all eternity

And to add to all this madness:
Being consistently stupidly happy and seriously making plans to hitchhike 350 kilometres (spending 180$ on train tickets is not an option for me at the moment) to meet someone does suggest that I'm in love or something.

$180? where are you going? Azerbaijan?

Anyway, the stupidly happy being in love thing is all kinds of awesome!

Well, Trondheim. Something like 600 kr per way, cheaper if I find some Minipris tickets but they're not NOW.

And to add to all this madness:
Being consistently stupidly happy and seriously making plans to hitchhike 350 kilometres (spending 180$ on train tickets is not an option for me at the moment) to meet someone does suggest that I'm in love or something.

Had my last exam today (jazz piano), basically done with high school now.
I'm just happy I managed to keep my attendance high enough to get graded in all subjects. Especially after all those days this winter when I was so depressed I felt like dropping out of school entirely. My grades are even quite good.

I'm moving out in August. This is both an exciting and frightening thing.

#9
If I ever get in a position where I have to write job adverts, I will insist on including "introversion", "sober, realistic outlook on life", "ambivalent relationship to humanity" and "healthy skepticism towards authority figures" in the list of desirable personal qualities.

+1000 at being unusually nice to people.

Yesterday I hitchhiked for the first time ever. I like to think I made a lonely 50-something on disability benefits (this is what I imagine he was, I don't know exactly) feel a little bit more useful and appreciated during those 5 kilometres.

#1
Last night I dreamed that posted a link on Facebook to a song I had written. Lots and lots of people commented, hundreds, many of them I had no idea who were. My dream consisted of just watching the stream of comments coming, some of it read in the voice of those who posted them. Someone made some stupid remark, misogynistic I think, and this was replied to with long angry ranting. This was responded to with more angry ranting. In the end there was lots of caps lock and exclamation marks but no communication. People just shouted their opinions (completely unrelated to my song!) out loud with their ears closed and rode their own personal hobby horses to the brink of death. They didn't notice each other, they didn't notice other people's arguments. It was sad. I choose to interpret this dream as a metaphor for humanity.

#2
Isolation is nice. I like it, though you turn slightly crazy from it. You get a different perspective on how the world works, more unfiltered maybe. You get time to rethink things, think about how you relate to other human beings. I've noticed that I appreciate my interactions with humans a lot more now that I live in this cabin

But even though I enjoy solitude, I also need other people to avoid becoming lonely. Few things make me feel better than good conversations, or even just the quiet presence of another person.

I also need other people there to correct me, because sometimes I'm completely wrong. Many times. Terribly wrong.

#3
It is hereby decreed that:
LIFE is too short and nasty, and the world too full of shit, for good people to be allowed to walk around without being appreciated, without being let to know that they, by existing, make the/my world a little bit warmer, a little bit friendlier and a little bit more beautiful.

THIS DECREE SUPERSEDES ALL SOCIAL ANXIETY

#4
Note to self after today's dinner: Not everything needs to bathe in fat.

#5
The concept of normality is strange.
You can be a huge fucking asshole and still be considered normal. You can wear slightly weird clothes, behave slightly weird, talk slightly weird, look slightly weird and suddenly you're an outsider. It doesn't really surprise me then, that half of Norway seems to be mentally ill at times, when the idea of normality is so narrow that you almost need to be crazy to fit in. We live in an awfully conformist society. I want to fight for a warmer and weirder society with a more inclusive idea of what normality is.

#6
Eurovision. Russia wants us to "bury our guns" LOL

#7
All the children watched the Teletubbies
Except for Serge
He read Apollinaire's Les onze mille verges

#8
There should be scholarships for people who just want to live alone in the woods and drink beer and think about stuff.

(there are a lot more of them, I just have to separate the interesting ones from my attempts at gibberish poetry and thought experiments about sharing a joint with Franz Kafka)