Mint is on the other hand the most popular in the world

I mean, sure, I had a few bad teachers myself at certain ages, but there were good ones too.

Making it up to be some kind of power-trip seems wrong to me, although there certainly are a few of those.

I will say though, that teaching the same curriculum year in year out grinds down almost anyone.

I felt lucky that each student was truly different since their various issues needed such radically different approaches, but that was spec. ed., not normal school.

As I’ve worked most of my life in schools, and am married to a teacher I realize I have a bias, but some teachers do try their best to help every possible student.

I can’t count the evenings we’ve discussed certain cases and how to approach them.

We’ve been lucky in that we’ve mostly had the same students, as I worked with them as they were younger and when they switched up my wife got them.

We did work in special ed. though, focusing mostly on autism, so we’ve seen a lot of bad situations throughout the years, but I wouldn’t go blaming only teachers for that. There are also administrators, headmasters, outside influences and last but not least the parents that all play a role in every students education.

Then again this isn’t the US and I know how things look there in the educational sector, so your mileage may vary.

I agree completely. I could see an argument for one instance that is shown globally via screens or whatnot as each year passes, but other than that it is such an enormous amount of unnecessary wastage.

At least there’s two three four of us.

That was an interesting read, thank you.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

You get to be a duck if you commit suicide?

The man is a swedish speaking Finn originally, it kinda comes with the territory. We might technically be a minority but we’re still as Finnish as the rest of them (to a certain degree at least).

If it wasn’t apparent already, we don’t live on the same continent. We live in completely different worlds.

The biggest threat here is getting mugged by some youngster with a knife that’ll get caught within 15 minutes.

If I lived over there I’d be carrying too. Here? Here we leave our babies to sleep outside safely.

Yes, I understood that point. It’s just not widely shared outside of the US. I personally wouldn’t mind having something for self defense, but I’m in a minority and it comes from living a rough life when younger. Luckily the risk of running into an armed intruder here is just about zero anyway. It’s just another world, really.

…and I think you’re smart enough to know there’s no outshooting any government, no matter the country.

I agree in principle, and the fee in itself isn’t expensive. It’s the fact that you need to buy a safe with a high enough security rating (which they actually do come to check on randomly) and then also another secure place to store ammo in. Legally they have to be separated when not in use.

After that you need an active membership in either a hunting party or a gun sports club, and participate/shoot a certain amount each year to keep the license for your gun. You also have to file and get approved for each individual gun you buy/own.

With all that said though, once you’ve gotten your first license and proved you can handle whatever firearm you got for either purpose it gets easier to get a second one, and then a third, as long as you have a valid enough reason to buy and own whatever gun you’re after.

Most people just start with a .22 and go up from there if it is for sports, or buy a shotgun or rifle for hunting.

As for self defense - it’s practically impossible to get a handgun for self protection purposes in any legal way, unless there are very special circumstances. Owning a gun for self protection is just not a thing people take seriously here, outside certain …groups.

As a sidenote tho, if you know where to look it’s not particularly hard to get a handgun if you want one, you just don’t want to get caught with one, and it’s also not completely trivial to get decent ammo. A black market Glock goes for around 500€ afaik.

Like I said, I agree with you in principle, but like I also mentioned, Finland is very conservative with certain things. This is one of them. I haven’t been shooting for a long time due to medical reasons, so some of this might be out of date. Maybe someone more involved please correct me if I got something wrong.

Finland is up there on weapons per person in Europe, but it is both expensive and complicated to get that first license. It does get easier the more you are into it, but following all the laws to the letter is, again, expensive as hell.

Meanwhile practically every fighting aged male has had some time on the range and weapon safety drilled into them during their conscription, although some more so than others. It might be an old system, but it works for us. Can’t really see it working in the US, tho, for obvious reasons.

Is it practical? Not really. Do we have a lot of mass shootings? Nope.

Definitely, who knows what those degenerates are into during the winter months.

Jokes aside, my mother tongue is Swedish but I was born in Finland. I’ve lived in both countries and speak both languages and I prefer Finland by far. Swedes are just… all up in your business all the time. In Finland privacy is preferred, mostly.

It’s pretty widely accepted that whatever happens over in the US has ramifications all over the world. My tribe, so to speak, are Swedish speaking Finns, and we’re a very small minority in a country that functions better than most.

It sort of gives one a perspective. The Finns are liberal in some things sure, but very conservative in many ways. We’ll never legalize weed for example, but we also won’t touch abortion rights because that’s just common sense.

That said, in the US my voting pattern would be extreme left sure, because that’s just normal over here. Sadly people are afraid and vote right because immigration, but that’ll stop once everyone realises it doesn’t work, since we still depend on immigration to get jobs filled. Everyone knows it, they just don’t want to say it out loud.

And when the climate really hits us, the clowns will probably be gone anyway. It’s the last gasp we’re seeing right now. Enjoy it while you can.

lol what? It’s a fairly common name in all the Nordic countries at the very least, and fairly sure in Britain as well. The post is obviously American, but that name is not an uncommon one.

Anecdotally I know of at least three, two adults and one just starting school.

I agree with you, for the most part this has been my experience as well.

I don’t have anything in particular against dwarves as such, but why would I like them?

I can’t stand most metal, especially the death/black/whatever subgenres. Symphonic maybe once in a decade or so.

Better conversations, and less echo chambers in general. I know exactly who’ll disagree with that notion too, but that has been my experience.

The right-wingers that did come over are obviously butthurt to hell since they can’t abuse the report function and get backed by obviously biased mods like they do on Reddit. It’s easier to simply ignore them here, as well, even though they’re around as always.

Hell, half the comments in this very thread seem to be bitching about “Marxism” like it’s something that anyone gives half a shit about in today’s world. They need their bubble, and they seem to be angry they didn’t get this one, too.

Also people are generally more tech-savvy here than there, for obvious reasons. That’s a plus.

A Finn signing in. What are we discussing?