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Category: Finland

  • Restless Times – 2

    As mentioned in the previous Restless Times posting, France just changed their prime minister.

    But so did Nepal. Their parliament burned, and the prime minister fled on helicopter. People were teed off by the government decision to shut down all social media because the companies refused to censor content that Nepalese government did not like (no, I don’t have any details) and then the pro-social media demonstrators were met with a hail of bullets, and then it turned out that the number of teed off citizens exceeded the government firepower and willingness to use it. Some people are suspicious about the social media companies’ unwillingness to censor in Nepal, after all, the social media have been over the years been weaponized for color revolutions and some interests may have wanted the Nepalese government out. However, the people of Nepal have probably been thoroughly disgusted by their leaders and corruption so I think the uprising was organically powered, with social media companies merely allowing the people to egg each other on.

    Also Samoa is changing their primer minister, though that event is more orderly.

    In Qatar, Israeli airstrike is claimed to have taken out Hamas leadership. There are dissenting reports. The news have within the last decade become a fun-house mirror maze, where people hear what they are supposed to think and then are left to figure out if anything happened let alone in the manner the news present the events.

    Gold prices are shooting up. I am waiting to get some money to buy gold and silver. The physical metals, not the futures. Currently, as I type, I read that each silver ounce in the COMEX vaults has been overbooked by 36 times, i.e., there are 36 paper contract ounces to each physical ounce, which means that in case of a panic, the first / strongest to assert their claim will get the nuggets. Whether the rest will get even the cash value of their paper metals will depend on whether the vault on which you have claims has money to cover the debts. In other words, the same logic as in Resolution Weekend.

    Europeans are busy with military exercises. There were at least six simultaneous ones within Finnish territory, including joint force exercises and urban warfare exercises, and Finland also participated in the CBNR exercise in Sweden. Poland had massive exercises, and aside from Quadriga exercise, Germany has moved a panzer brigade to Baltics. The French and UK orders regarding hospital readiness in case of mass casualty event I may have already mentioned earlier. I had so hoped that the United States 2024 election results would have brought peace, but depressingly it looks like this will not happen.

    Especially now, as Poland shot down Russian drones in Poland’s air space, and consequently, Poland is invoking NATO Article 4.

    Also Belarus says they shot down stray drones (either Ukrainian or Russian) and warned Poland about the arriving drones. However, there are too many reports for me to follow but it sure looks bad.

    In Vilnius, there were LNG rail car explosions. In the report I read, they were attributed to OHSA violations, but the cause is still being investigated.

    Other unrest:

    Indonesian finance minister has been removed, after demonstrations in multiple provinces.

    Government troops to deal with violent crime in Brussels, Belgium, and possibly in Chicago, IL, USA (national guard).

    Secretary of War Hegseth gave a speech to military in Puerto Rico telling the soldiers that this was not training but to end poisoning of the American people.

    Economy will not improve, either. Layoffs are increasing, but the hirings (at least in the USA) keep getting revised down. On Tuesday, I saw in LinkedIn feed a discussion about even recruiters finding new careers (sorry no link or screenshot.) I have been actively looking for a job since last year, and based on my job listing feeds the job market has been getting crazier by month.

    Needless to say, I am doubtful about the idea of getting a job. At least a job matching my skills and work experience. Why I get advertisements for ‘CDL-A drivers needed’ is anyone’s guess, I don’t have a commercial trucking license, but based on recent news, maybe that is not a hard barrier in California.

  • A Jigsaw Puzzle – 8

    Just another free jigsaw puzzle via Jigsaw Explorer. A depiction of light on Finnish forest lake water.

    For people who have only a short break, 24 pieces. Access the puzzle by clicking the image. For those who want more challenge, the number of pieces can be adjusted at the beginning of the game.

    Have fun!

  • Beetle, Unemployment, Inflation, Food, Migration

    This May in Finland I was lucky enough to spot this beetle on a tree stump. The stump was also hosting a fungus, recycling nutrients. Life goes on.

    Now I am in California. The job situation is bad. The official US unemployment percentage for July 2025 was 4.2%. Functionally unemployed in July 2025 were estimated by Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity to be 24.7% of US labor force. With AI, especially white collar unemployment is estimated to soar further. I think AI is an excuse for job cuts resulting from austerity enforced elimination of Bullshit Jobs.

    David Graeber estimated in his 2014 book Bullshit Jobs – A Theory that about 40% of the jobs are unnecessary and people are being paid, often well, to do nothing useful.

    Meanwhile, we have printed money, that is accumulated debt, faster than productivity has grown since the previous century, but now the buy-now-pay-later Ponzi scheme is unraveling. Most of the printed money seems to have been soaked into stock market and complex derivatives, benefiting governments and their servants and ‘NGOs’ and the 0.1%, which have sucked the money (plus interest) away from real world investment. While also saddling the people with unpayable public debt loads, the consequences of which manifest as increased taxation, reduced services, and proliferating licensing requirements and fines, which both are additional taxes in disguise to government coffers.

    Now the production is no more, despite the inshoring attempts of the current administration of US and the 99.9% are doing price discovery. The economy is shedding jobs. Optimally the lost positions should have been the 40% Bullshit Jobs, but it seems that many useful positions are eliminated, too, further damaging the economy.

    Part of this is the loss of consuming power driven by the mass functional unemployment. While the people with Bullshit Jobs may not have produced anything, they used their salaries to keep up the consumption demand, being vital for the survival of many small real businesses like pizzerias, lawn care companies, cosmetologists and car dealerships.

    Another part of it is the pathologies of the system itself. After years of promoting incompetents into leadership positions, be it by nepotism, political clientilism (including DEI) or slack allowed by easy (freshly printed) money, the managerial class no longer recognizes which workers are necessary for operating a business. A case example: Boeing.

    The regular people (including many of the 40%ers) are now suffering from another effect of money printing, inflation, including food inflation. Although food (and other) inflation is not driven by money printing alone but by money supply growing faster than food (or other) supply. The demand is semielastic, if that is a word. The former middle class downgrades consumption and the poor skip meals, but the number of mouths to feed depends on immigration plus births minus emigration plus mortality.

    Unfortunately, thanks to the globalization, also problems are global. I think food inflation in the West is not only due to reduction of food production per capita or collapsing Western economies but also due to increasing wealth in poor and middle income countries, that now can better compete for the global resources.

    I also believe that the global food production has not kept apace with the global money printing, and though the poorest in the West have traditionally outspent the poor and even the middle classes in poorer countries, now even in West we now have food inflation because other countries can pay for the food on global export markets. For example, China has during recent years bought massive amounts of grain, pulses, oils, meats, fruits increasing price pressures.

    Meanwhile, people with money to travel are leaving global south for global north increasing pressure in the Western countries. Traditionally, if food supplies or economy grow tighter people emigrate. However, it is not the poorest of the poor who can apply for visas or pay for human smugglers if they are not eligible for a visa. Nowadays the situation in the departure country does not does not need to be catastrophal to induce emigration. Just the perceived better economic opportunities in other (including Western) countries – thanks to mass media and ubiquitous internet -, and the comparative ease of traveling are now major drivers of mass migration from poorer countries to wealthier, and if the situation in the country receiving the immigrants changes, the flow of people will head some other place.

    Thus, I think that fewer people are starving to death but the price of the global affluence paradoxically is that more people in West go hungry.

    Some time ago I was in a grocery market here in California, not a hugely expensive one. They advertised for two avocados for seven dollars. The economy may be toast but it won’t be an avocado toast.

  • Resource Competition

    I saw an interesting video from YanasaTV. He was discussing about blue pigs and their causes in California. I think this is a symptom of even bigger problem than he described, so I thought to expand a bit.

    The starting point was boar meat that had turned blue in some parts of California, because of liberal use of rat poison, which dyes the meat.

    According to the video, farmers have been fighting against a figurative tidal wave of rodents, whose populations had exploded in four counties due to farm and orchard closures leaving them tens of thousands of acres of prime breeding areas in almond country.

    The orchards and farms are closing because of California’s water policies, justified by drought blamed on climate change, specifically the conservation laws passed 2014 were a death blow to many farms. I remember the wave of orchard cuttings when many farmers got rid of their almond trees and then the markets in the urban areas got bundles of (expensive) almond firewood. After all, you might at least sell the cut trees for the last bit of income. Recent growing season, documented orchard removals took more Kern County almond acreage than those of Stanislaus County. Again, not surprising. When I drove to LA in 2022, Kern County was drought burned chiaroscuro, like Dali painting, only dusty orchards being green, Stanislaus County being greener, though still dry. If I correctly recall, that year Kern County had gotten 100% of its water allocation cut, Stanislaus County 50%.

    The official explanation of the laws was the environment and need to save water. However, an important underlying cause influencing the passing of water laws was consolidation of water rights under the big players. (get reference)

    Any case, according to Yanasa TV, last year California lost 8000 farms, to multifactorial causes, but lack of water is a big one. Oddly enough, Texas lost even more farms, 18000, also often due to lack of water. In Texas, the irrigation competes against AI server farms. And is losing.

    That caught my attention. The news have been buzzing for a couple of years about how the Silicon Valley firms have been moving to Texas because of their nicer regulatory environment. The discussion online had given me the impression that this was due to the taxes and insane regulatory policies of California. I had not thought about the water regulation, but in hindsight, it should be obvious. The firms are moving to what is greener pastures (more resources) for them, never mind the parched pastures of the ranchers. Which are blamed on climate change.

    The final point I got from this YanasaTV video was the question, how do we feed the billions of people if we reallocate agricultural resources to feed AI? The regulations hindering the agriculture are passed under the pretense of ‘conserving the resources’, but to me it seems that most if not all conservation regulations are nowadays just to preserve the ‘protected’ resources for the powerful, whereas the little people like me get to enjoy the Green New Leap as increased energy and food prices. And as shortages of critical resources.

    The California water rationing for urban dwellers and destruction of small farms is not about conserving resources, since water is very much available for the Big Almond, golf courses, and such. It is about extirpating the competition for scarce resources the big players want for themselves. If the side effect is the ballooning fruit, vegetable and meat prices for the small people, someone is making money of that, too. At some point the breakeven point when increasing prices will not bring more profits because the consumers cannot afford to buy will be reached but the availability of food (and energy or other resources) relative to the need will determine whether that happens before or after a mass uprising.

    Speaking of AI and energy, I wrote the other day about rolling blackout warnings in Maryland and New Jersey. I think the AI industry will have to begin to address its effects on the energy grid soon, maybe already next winter. Once people will begin to experience survival threatening acute shortages, backlash is guaranteed. The incoming collapse of the power grid, by the way, is the main reason why I chose coastal California as my bugin place. If the grid fails, I will not freeze to death.

    But my realization about all of the above: there is no such thing as a conservation law. There are only resource reallocation from the poor to the wealthy laws.

    Note added in proof:

    Nova Scotia in Canada banned people from going into woods, either Crown lands or privately owned lands belonging to someone else. Traditionally people had enjoyed access to Crown lands, but now they had been told that this privilege had been taken away to prevent forest fires. 25000$ fine for people trespassing their country’s forests. Would you feel like hemmed in?

    Then I read that the Nova Scotia woods (over 3500 acres of them) are getting sprayed with defoliant that is being used to kill unwanted (less economically useful) tree species. Imagine large swathes of dying and drying trees in the middle of a drought. Controlled burns to free land for more profitable tree species were speculated. The cost to the ecosystem is hideous, so is the loss of immaterial (and material) value to the people.

    Not that immaterial value even matters to the powerful. My uncle back in Finland told that they are planning a data center next to a big hydropower plant in the town he lives in, and the land being developed has stone age sites on it. I don’t know how valuable these sites are archeologically, but I suspect they have not been properly studied, either.

  • Red Admiral Butterfly

    A short clip I posted on YouTube and Pinterest.

    I think this butterfly is an immigrant. The video was filmed in early June, meaning it could not have hatched in Finland.

  • A Bumblebee And A Rhododendron

    A short video from material filmed in Finland.

    I have been working through my insect clips and this is a bit too short for YouTube as a stand alone but too big for Pinterest, so I posted a mobile phone formatted version here, since the bumblebee and rhododendron video was so pretty.

    A bumblebee is an important part of Finnish ecosystem.
    A garden Rhododendron is an imported species.

    I hope this little clip will provide a relaxing break, enjoy!

  • Lichens

    I have been planning and working on making short form videos. The Morning Chorus was a test video filmed at one go but this is a slideshow converted into a video.

    I hope you like lichens.

    Update, July 9th, 2025: I have edited the video, trying to improve the sound quality and changing the text a bit.

    Finnish lichens, photographed 2025

    I do not know where the crack in voice track and and flicker in video come from. Some programs do not show it, others do. If you have any idea, I’d appreciate the info…

    Update, July 9th, 2025, continued: apparently these cracks were a bug in PowerPoint I used for converting a slideshow into a video – I ended up loading the individual slides and separately recorded voice tracks into Clipchamp and cutting, stretching and pasting them there into this updated video.

  • Särä

    Särä is a traditional meat dish from Karelia which has been in use since Medieval times (with modern adjustments) in Finland.

    The recipe is for cooking brined sheep with salt in birch wood vessel (supposedly giving name to the dish) in wood fired oven. The meat is turned and extra fat was drained at about midway of cooking. Towards the end of the cooking, some half-boiled potatoes (in the meal photo, they appeared to be peeled, too) are added under the meat for the final hour of baking. The original Medieval recipe probably used turnips instead of potatoes, since potatoes arrived to Finland later, during 18th century.

    My modern lamb in oven uses unbrined lamb shoulder chops with bone in them, sprinkled with iodized salt, and wrapped in aluminum foil (I know, very dangerous, and misuse of hat material) to be baked in oven that has been set at 350°F until the meat smells cooked. Not särä, really, but I like the ease of cooking and the taste.

    Not särä, July 3rd, 2025

  • Chronocide

    is a very important topic.

    Atomized people without knowledge of the past are easier to govern badly. If there are no reference points how things were better (in addition to worse), people will not demand it.

    Atomized people lack social cohesion required for mass movements or revolutions. Every man forges his own fortune. Every woman is equal to man. The weak will get trampled in an increasingly predatory environment that used to be a society. As even family units are eliminated in gender wars and intergenerational conflict, it is no wonder that birthrates fall when atomized people concentrate on their own day to day survival.

    I suspect that the loss of culture and traditions are a result of loss of intergenerational connection. When I was a child, we celebrated Christmas. The tree, the feast, the carols, the gifts (brought by some version of Santa or an elf, this was not all Westernized Coca Cola festival for us), the reading of Bible. Christmas was fun for children. Even in Soviet Union, where Christianity was suppressed, the powers that be had to bring back Father Winter and an associated winter festival, set to be the New Year’s Eve.

    The world’s biggest shopping day is now the newly invented Singles’ Day from China, which began as a student response against Valentine’s Day but quickly ballooned into a massive hit, not only domestically but expanding globally, even having arrived into Finland. If you are lonely, why not have a day and buy something for yourself since the couples are having a day too? The popularity of the Singles’ Day is probably a troubling portent for future demographics and survival of the traditions, and by extension, history.

    By the way, despite the lack of material manifestations of the culture and the breaking of social structures, there still remains an option for inner life – learn things and live your ideals. Become the culture you want to be.

    P.S. Soon it will be Midsummer Festival / St. John’s Day / Summer Solstice time. I will not have a bonfire, nor will I go to a lakeside cabin to drown in a drunken boat accident. As cultural traditions go, I am neutral about bonfires, but against drunken boat accidents. Not all traditions need to be maintained.

  • An Uplifting Video

    Morning in Finland, May 26th, the predawn chorus is in full swing. Edited with Clipchamp.

    These type of noises typically greeted me when I woke up in Finland.

    Turku is the old administrative capital in the south-western coast of Finland and the late spring/early summer were really beautiful.

    Thank you to the friend who hosted me and allowed me to record and use the media.