Lorindól

Few years ago I did a full rebuild of a top-of-the-line tube radio from 1958 and use it daily in my living room. My stereo tube amp is from 1963 or 1964. Both sound astonishing.

My binoculars are from WW II - era. I had to realign the prisms when I got them but the optics are about as good as you can get.

I also use an iPod Nano 2Gen almost daily, I think I bought it in 2008 and the original battery can still hold enough charge for 4-5 hours of continous play. Incredible device with a neat perfect UI. The physical jogwheel can be operated through pocket fabric, so I can switch songs or adjust volume while running without even having to remove the iPod from my pocket.

Although we never even seriously discussed giving up conscription, we Finns also made mistakes. Like cutting down the war time troop numbers from ~500 000 to current ~240 000 in the early 2000’s. It did seem like a moderarely reasonable action at the time, but luckily it will most likely be remedied sooner than later.

Trump negotiating wirh Putin is like a clueless kindergartener playing chess with national master.

They’re going to force Ukraine to give up on Crimea and the eastern occupied terrritories, but Ukraine gets back some strictly defined areas where rare earth metals can be exploited.

Trump will consider this as an absolute victory and in the near future Europe will pay the heavy price if Russian aggression is rewarded this way.

EDIT: Changed “Krim” to “Crimea” to avoid misunderstandings.

Are you familiar with the Russian prison system? I am not certain if a life sentence there qualifies as “living”, except that you’re still breathing.

https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-prison-system-interview-olga-romanova/32614416.html

When TOS aired the first time in my country, I was 9-10 years old. I found it mind-blowingly good compared to other shows at the time. I had learned to read when I was 4 and I read a LOT. And not just books for children, I also read classics and nonfiction natural science as much as I could.

I was a strange kid, but all my reading had made me ready to understand the social commentaries in TOS and the fictional scenarios really opened the concepts up for me. I often went to the library to research stuff that was explored in the latest episode to make sure I had understood everything.

My son is 13 now, we started to watch the TOS DVD-set together and he loves it. Although he is older than I was, he is not an avid reader like me. He needs many of the concepts explained and subtle guidance to understand the underlying larger themes, but he has shown advancement and after every episode we have a small discussion. I love teaching him this way.

We just finished season 1 and my son noted: “Athough this show is ancient, this stuff is still relevant and happening even today, isn’t it?”

“The cope cage! It does nothing!”

You are pretty much correct.

When the Soviet Union’s unprovoked attack started the Winter War we were basically left on our own by nearly everyone. With our minimal stocks of ammo and weapons we managed just barely to stop the onslaught. The Finnish army’s capabilities had suffered under severe budget cuts for almost the entire 1930’s. The Soviets were well aware of this and decided to use it to their advantage.

When the Interim Peace began, our leaders were certain that sooner or later Stalin would attack again to finish the job. So we started to frantically rebuild and restock our army and seek allies wherever we could find them. Unfortunately the only one whose interests aligned with ours was Germany. Fighting against the Soviets alone was not an option anymore, so we allied ourselves with Hitler’s Germany. No formal treaties of alliance were made, but that’s just a technicality.

Most of our leaders were not very enthusiastic about this (it is well documented and confirmed by several reliable sources that our supreme commander Mannerheim despised Hitler) but Germany was our best and only bet.

When the Continuation War began, our offensive to regain the lost territories and “liberate the Finnic people of East Karelia” did undoubtedly help the Nazi war effort. We both went out to crush a common enemy, but as a nation we did not embrace Nazism in any way. There were of course some who did, but there were very few of them.

Hitler requested us to complete the encirclement in the siege of Leningrad but our troops stopped at the old border. We also refused to cut the railroad supply line from Murmansk, which was vital for the Soviets due to the US aid arriving from the north (the US had informed us via diplomatic channels that blowing up the railroad would be really, really bad for us in long term).

Hitler’s trust in our alliance was wawering due to these denials and so the Germans requested that we send them a battallion of “fine Aryan examples” to fight with Waffen SS and Wehrmacht against the Soviets in the eastern theatre of war. We called them the “Deposit Battallion”. My grandma’s cousin was one of these men, I met him several times when I was a kid and he most certainly was not a Nazi. He told us that if you had showed any “Nazi enthusiasm” in your home regiment, you were automatically disqualified from the Deposit Battallion selection. The leadership did not want to send them any whackjobs who would bring Nazi ideology back home.

The Deposit Battallion was deployed in Ukraine with the SS Division Viking , alongside other foreign volunteers. My grandma’s cousin never shared any stories from the war. “They are not for children, or anyone for that matter.”

Germany gave us more than 200 000 troops to defend Lapland and a vast number of equipment and ammo. Without the troops and material the Soviets would have crushed us.

One can call us “Nazi belligerents” or “Nazi allies”, it does not make any difference. When presented with only one viable option, one tends to choose it even if it was one they would rather not make. In retrospect our leaders chose correctly and we remained independent.

Had we known about the true scope of the Nazi atrocities before joining forces, would we have been able to reject them? I fear that the tides of war would have still forced us to join the side of the fascist monsters.

This must be a prototype test of some sort, to my knowledge nothing like this was never taken into mass production. The picture was taken in 1947 at the Santahamina garrison in Helsinki.

A fellow connoiseur! I too am a master of this delicate art and I have passed this gift on to my children.

After the selection has been made it is quite entertaining to look back the aisle and watch the other shoppers cautiously tap the remaining melons, trying to make sense of what they just saw.

Apparently the original team behind Star Control is making a direct sequel to II, since SC 3 was done by a different studio and did not follow the storyline that the creators had in mind.

And it’s supposed to be released this year. They are calling it “Free Stars: Children of Infinity”, since they don’t own the rights to the Star Control name. But they do own all the rights to the content in SC 1and SC 2, so this could be fun!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Stars:_Children_of_Infinity

I did like SC 3 as well, but it wasn’t nearly as great as SC 2. I can barely remember the main storyline.

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Star Control II, PC.

I had this book when I was a child.

The illustrations are permanently burned to my mind’s eye.

Lyhytvideot ja “uutistiivistelmät” ovat irvokkaita ja suorassa ristiriidassa faktapohjaisen tiedonvälityksen periaatteita vastaan.

Nopea videoklippi tai tiivistelmä on automaattisesti julistuksenomainen, eikä siinä ole tilaa lähteiden tai laajemman kokonaisuuden avaamiselle. Tällöin vastaanottaja helposti hyväksyy esitetyn asian totuutena sellaisenaan, etenkin jos ei omaa jonkinlaista pohjatietämystä aiheesta.

Nuoriso on tämän johdosta erityisen altis tällaiselle vaikuttamiselle, oli sen tarkoitus sitten mikä hyvänsä. YLE:n ei tulisi missään nimessä lähteä mukaan tällaiseen roskaan, laadusta tinkiminen vain siksi että “muutkin tekevät niin” johtaa vain tuhoon.

Mark Twain lausahti aiheeseen liittyen jotakuinkin näin: “Älä koskaan lähde mukaan väittelyyn idiootin kanssa. Hän vetää sinut alas omalle tasolleen ja pieksee sinut kokemuksensa turvin.”

I’d go for a continuation instead of remake. And I just checked, just last year there have been discussions with Jim Henson Company and Rockne O’Bannon (Farscape’s co-creator) about continuing the story. Nothing solid, but there is hope…

Farscape.

Modern visuals, Muppets, a team of good writers and the core cast returning could be really good. Black and Browder wouldn’t be too old yet to make the characters work.

That chaotic universe could provide so many posibilities to explore if done right.

That was pretty wild development, yes. But still, we will not make any territorial claims. Doing so would effectively render the protection provided by NATO’s Article 5 null. We would once again be alone against a nuclear power with much larger resources than we could ever have.

So we won’t be doing that.

Finland won’t make any claims. This much is certain.

The only way we would even consider restoring the stolen lands would be IF the Russian Federation falls and IF the initiative for reunification would come from the Karelian Republic.

In Finland it’s called “driving shit rings”.

All hail the Gerbil King!