Starting fire is pretty relevant skill in Finland for multiple reasons from saunas to cabins to campfires. While I partially learned at home, scouts are pretty good here and definitely taught me a lot of wilderness and survival skills.

In Finnish. Pilkunnussija is the word.

Just be warned Moomins are a gateway to communism (Weird internet theory). Or at least to more Moomins. We literally have Moomin everything here.

In addition to general learning which might be my favourite, I have multiple.

Maybe the most niche is a historical reenactment and historical costuming. Latter usually based on extant garments or garment finds. I try to get as close to the original in techniques, tools and materials using the best evidence I can find.

I also plan things that will never happen. I decorate houses and apartments on paper. I make extensive plans for travel that I can never afford unless I win in Lottory. Which I even never play.

I spend absolutely too much time playing with spreadsheets.

At least in Europe, a lot of people find sparring partners through historical reenactment groups. I encourage you to join reenactments for other reasons too.

Do you also do historical reenactment or just sword fighting? I never personally got into the fighting side of things but the former has been one of my favourite hobbies for decades.

My personal favourites from Finnish.

“Ei ole kaikki muumit Muumilaaksossa” “Not having all the Moomins in Moomin Valley” Used for people who are either stupid or lack sanity. There are other variants of this and Moomin one is not older than a couple of decades.

I find our version of Grammar Nazi pretty great. We call them comma fuckers.

“Ei voi kauhalla ottaa jos on lusikalla annettu” “You can’t take with a ladle if it was given with a spoon”. This refers also to a lack of something, usually a lack of intelligence or sense.

Things either need to be really, really bad and people are done or we need to find what they care about more than being comfortable. I was not always politically active. It took until my late twenties and seeing how bad things can really be. I have been an activist on the human rights front for about a decade. And it only happened because I really saw the issues in my country and continent. But while my family knows as I make sure they know, and some kind of care, it is not important enough for them.

But weirdly. My country had literal neo-Nazis as a minister and everyone with a brain thinks we still do as bids of the same feather and so on. And suddenly my leftist but not active friends became active, online and outside that. It is weird when I have been warning that this is the road we are on for the better part of a decade it took it to happen for people to take action. Thankfully we are still solidly democratic so this might work. At least for a few years.

While I mostly agree with you I don’t think country-owned companies or even monopolies are always bad. There needs to be a huge amount of real separation between politicians and those companies but it can work. In mine, both gambling and alcohol spirits stores are monopolies and owned by a country. Profits from gambling are distributed to grants for health and social welfare nonprofits. The question is if my country with very little corruption is the exemption that confirms the rule or if, if you do it right, it can work.

I also do not believe communism without very solid safeguards can work and those would need to be applied almost at the start. I am also pessimistic about human nature these days and am not sure if there can ever be enough safeguards to protect that model from misuse. I am what you could call a democratic socialist. I believe in mix and match where public and private companies can work in the same economy. Although I do oppose land resources being sold, especially as they are usually sold with a pittance for companies to profit. And I am not talking about private persons selling their land’s resources but government land resources. Selling them really doesn’t often make economic sense unless extraction would require a really high investment. Ecologic considerations should also be taken a lot more into account.

Mine is either Paradox Games although my preferred is CK series. Also, dabble in the Sims. Which I have been told is weird mix.

They definitely are emotionally compromised person being manipulated but being emotionally unintelligent and being emotionally compromised are not the same thing. While being emotionally unintelligent will affect your risk of being radicalized it does so through your own emotions and capacity to process them in a healthy way.

Radicalization happens in steps. You don’t get from being blind to racism and as the next step participating in genocide. Nor do you go from wondering if you are being lied to for some nefarious reason to believing 5G will kill you. It is a slow and gradual process. A lot of people are following the same playbook. It includes things like moving goalposts, giving the same legitimacy to two viewpoints that are not equal in ethics or evidence, playing on fear and discomfort, and giving convenient fall guy for people’s difficulties. In my language, there is a saying that in a group stupidity condenses. That isn’t because people’s intelligence somehow lessens but because of the social nature of human beings.

It is not like people in Nazi Germany suddenly lose their collective cognitive or emotional intelligence in 20s and 30s. There were pretty clear issues going on that could be seized for populist politics. It is also not like Nazis themselves didn’t have a huge amount of anti-intellectual pseudoscience in their idealogy and, in the case of some members, a lot of occultism going around.

The hard truth is that people in general are really bad at seeing manipulation. You can see the clumsy attempts but the majority of people judge others’ actions based on their view of their intentions. And as in general we would like to think of ourselves as well-intentioned, we are not judging if someone is manipulating all the time. Critical thinking can help but the thing about radicalization is that it speaks to multiple psychological tendencies we naturally have.

And while I deem QAnon shit and even any flavor of alt-right or religious fundamentalism idiocy, the pure fact that they have been as successful as they have tells that their manipulation is quite finessed.

It is because radicalization is more than a cognitive process. It is as much social and psychological. Intelligence alone is a pretty bad predictor of a lot of things we like to think only depend on intelligence. While there is some causation, it is not a vacuum or often even the biggest predictor of many things.

Radicalization is the thing that makes you believe in things that can’t be real. Making people believe a lot of things is surprisingly easy. Look into religions. While I don’t believe and you might not, a lot of intelligent people throughout world history have. There might be a correlation between intelligence and atheism these days, but the effect is far from linear.

We really need to step out of the idea that radicalization only happens to people who are somehow slow or uneducated. It might make you more likely to fall for it, but cognitive ability and education will not mean you will not end up there as well. Issue with the anti-intellectualism of the alt-right is not if someone themselves has education but if they are willing to listen to other people who do. If no one is an expert for example racist ideas of the alt-right about biological differences can’t be refuted. Which is probably partially where it comes from times quite a lot.

Everyone likes to think they have cognitive ability. If we just think radicalization happens only to stupid people, and you are not stupid, getting a person de-radicalized is going to be a lot harder. Thinking that we as people with cognitive ability can’t be radicalized will also make it easier to fall for it because you can’t be radicalized.

Instead of intelligence or education, we should focus on the trifecta of vulnerability, marginalization, and othering. That’s a better predictor.

(And no, I do not actually disagree about the ideas being idiocy, just that falling for them are not just for idiots)

I don’t think it is about flipping a coin between open-minded and close-minded but about radicalization. While it is harder to see with QAnon, radicalization be it right, left (although you have to go really far on the horseshoe), or religious is staunchly anti-intellectualistic. Once you believe in ideas or at least do not see them as really distasteful, it gets easier to go towards more and more batshit insane ideas.

While I am not sure if there is actual research on how age affects radicalization, research on radicalization has identified certain things that make it likelier for a person to be radicalized. Vulnerability, marginalization, and othering are all pretty common. To extend it there might be an age group vulnerability of 45 and up age group because of either being empty nesters or kids at least starting to be a lot more independent.

There is also somewhat of a domino effect. People like to be part of a group. If people don’t give any legitimacy to radicalized viewpoints, it makes it harder to be radicalized. The problem with this is also how hidden ideas can become mainstream as has at least in Western countries happened with the alt-right, they can reach a scary critical mass. Once you have been tempered with completely crazy viewpoints at one point thinking JFK Jr will be resurrected is not that weird anymore.

Over a decade ago when I started to get really worried about the rise of fascism in the West, my mom thought I was insane. Now we have had (not American) actual neo-Nazi as minister and no one of the ministerial parties thought it was a huge enough deal to actually not do it. In my books that means they all are neo-Nazies. My mom also doesn’t think I am insane anymore. The tools they used to gain power are not new. We are just not taught to identify them. I was because it would be a pretty bad idea to have someone in my profession if not aware of signs of radicalization.

BTW every time I see you commenting on something it makes me think I joined the right instance. Well, I joined after checking that out but you are just making it so easy to be happy about it.

I’m Finnish. We also start with wooden pencils and graduate to either ballpoint pens or some kind of fineliner marker. I am the only person I know with a fountain pen who actually uses it for normal writing. Mainly because it hurts so much less.

Fountain pens are also for some people more disability friendly. Handwriting has sucked for me as long as I remember as it causes a lot of pain and cramping. Fountain pens glide easier and I can write longer with one than with any other type of pen.

I don’t think that is an old person trait. You are just secretly Nordic.

Mine is very similar. Loudness annoys me but the rest of the inconsiderate behavior that seems to be more common to teenagers drives me bonkers. My teenage neighbors moved last week. First, they did not first empty the elevator of the 50 apartment building but tried to take stuff directly to the car after cigarette break. While three people were waiting to use elevator. Then they left some furniture in entrance hall that would be whatever but by doing it they blocked two doors to building common storages that are commonly used until late next day. Another thing is littering when the trash baskets are right there. And yes, I said something and felt like old man screaming for them to get out of my lawn. I guess I have reachem my rackety old man stage while being thirty something woman.