Those trains were blatantly copied by another Swedish company, and then that one was again blatantly copied by a Finnish company, leading to the models Dm6 and Dm7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VR_Class_Dm7

Zero royalties paid!

Thank you!

I cannot get that to work. I tried this link: https://piefed.europe.pub/post/35873 . And no. Nothing.

The US instituted a mandatory draft to fight that war.

But that was an offensive war, and most countries don’t do those.

Finland was much much safer before.

Depends on how you define “to be safe”. The Russia had declared that its goal is to return the borders of the Russian empire. That sounded a bit scary, but we shrugged it off, because it would require a war and that would hurt the Russia so much that such a war would be idiocy and therefore will not happen.

In case you don’t know where the borders of the Russian Empire were, they included for example these:

• Finland
• Estonia
• Latvia
• Lithuania
• half of Poland
• Ukraine
• Moldova

The Russia has declared that it wants to make all of those countries part of the Russian Federation.

So, we were not in danger, because the Russia would not be stupid enough to begin a war in Ukraine or in Finland, as it was clear that it would hurt the Russia’s economy more than it could ever be of use to it. The Finnish defence doctrine was based on the concept of credible defence. We were told in school that “they can attack us and they could most likely even take over all of Finland, but our army is able to incur such big losses to them that they will not want to do that.”
But then, it turned out that the Russia does not care about losses.

So, we found out two things:

• the Russia is really interested in acting to its declarations. They are not just empty words as we had assumed
• the Russia does not care about losses – therefore the doctrine of credible defence does not protect from the Russia

You can say that we were not in danger because we didn’t know that we are in danger. And in some way that’s true. But, once we found out that we are in danger, then, well, we were.
Since the doctrine of credible defence went down the drain, meaning that Finland effectively did not have a defence that is able to protect it, what else than joining NATO do you suggest we should have done to gain a level of defence capability able to keep the Russia out of Finland? Name one other option that we had.

Your idea that the Russia has a right to defend itself by preemptively taking over Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, half of Poland, Ukraine, and Moldova is, well… It would be impolite saying what it makes you look like.

EDIT: And of course this is relevant: In January 2022 the support for joining NATO was around 35 %. No “let’s join NATO” propaganda had been made at all, but in May 2022 the support for joining NATO was around 80 %. The only thing that caused this was that people around Finland saw that what we had been taught about the Russia in our schools was crap. It was part of the school curriculum to make sure every Finn knows that the Russia is not going to attack us, with an explanation of why not. And it seemed to make sense. And everyone had that in their heads. And then… We saw what the Russia is doing in Ukraine, and it was clear from that alone that shit, we are fucked! That meant, 80 % of the people decided they wanted a new kind of safety against the Russia.
Maybe you can say that they told that in our schools for about 40 years just so that in 2025 Finland could join NATO. But… Well, you know.
In May 2022 you could go to any bar to talk with random people and it would be clear that the assumption was “we are joining NATO. There is no other option.” There was no real dialogue about it, because basically everybody was of the same opinion. For the abovementioned reasons.

I don’t think we could implement your suggestion. Our wartime maximum strength is about 700 000 soldiers and our population is around 5 600 000. That means, in wartime, one out of 8 inhabitants will be in different forms of military service. There’s no way we could pay an adequate salary for that many soldiers. And, that number is still a third less than how many soldiers Ukraine has, and Ukraine is just barely able to keep the Russia from advancing.

I’m not sure why you’re taking Vietnam war as an example, as it’s an offensive war and for example Finland has no plans to do anything like that.

Our military – numbers are public.

Yes, but the speed at which one can recruit soldiers in an emergency is not public.

maintaining offensive and diminishment operations

This is irrelevant, because most countries do not have any offensive operations to maintain in the first place.

You may not know what the phrase “proxy war” means, because in this context it’s rather insulting. And I do not think you meant to insult me or others. But do tell, why and how would Finland wage an offensive war?

Yeah, this is getting a bit off topic, but you’re making wild claims that would really need some clarification.

You could directly vote against being sent to die. You might not care about a ski hill funding request.

Uh, people choose when they are 18 whether they want to go to civil service or army. If they choose army, they will obviously be drafted if the Russia ever attacks, unless they have later had themselves removed from the drafting lists. To make a decision on how many soldiers we’ll need for the defence is actually an extremely good example of what kind of decisions absolutely cannot be made by a broad public vote. You need a military person relaying secret strategical information to the Ministers of Parliament. It cannot be relayed to all 5.6 million people without compromising the information. If such an amount of people knows about our military strategy, so does the Russia.

So, at least for that kind of decisions something else must be at place. Maybe there could be a restricted set of representatives that are allowed to vote in case we are attacked and you could then choose which one of those will handle your vote in this precise case – before they have talked with the military specialists.

To paraphrase a section of what was already said above:

Once you can make AND, OR and NOT gates, you can do everything. Everything any computer does is done with those three.

In Minecraft you can build AND, NOT, and OR gates.

There is no concept of a parliament majority leader being able to block a proposal from being voted on.

I didn’t get what this is referring to. Is it some Canadian or US-American concept? I’d be happy if you could elaborate a bit!

You can change your delegation after disappointment with vote on an issue, and can choose to not delegate your vote on a mandatory military draft proposal.

I am already able to change my delegation after disappointment. Luckily I’ve never had to exercise that right. Also, another thing that flew far over my head: why is an exception specifically regarding mandatory military drafting important?

There was a very interesting tool/game someone made in Finland. You got shown the same problems the actualy Ministers of Parliament have to vote on, and all attachments that are available for public.

The idea was that it shows that direct democracy can work just fine.

I spent an evening trying to make my mind on whether I want to support expanding a ski centre in Lapland or not. Both sides had very good arguments! In the end I ended up thinking “Damn, this is a huge amount of work! If there was a system like this in place in Finland, I’d definitely want to outsource my part. I’d find someone that thinks more or less the same way as I do and I’d pay them to do the research and use my vote. It would make sense that people would sell that service to several citizens at once, bringing down the cost per person. I would not want to spend several hours each day researching something like ski centres 800 km away from my home – yet if only few do and vote, then the result is really random. So, I would definitely want someone to represent me.”

And then I figured that “damn, this is actually the system we have right now!”

What is the opposite of human? A mountain? A shrimp? Hmm… No… A human is a conscious being… Therefore, the complete opposite can not be conscious. I physically exist, therefore the complete and total opposite does not.

Not terrible fucked or blessed… Just very very inactive? And inexistent?

FreeBSD is not Linux, though…

Nobody has ever helped China as much as Trump has. In fact, he is the biggest friend China has ever had. The best. The awesomest. And the most modestest! Absolutely fabulous. (Really, nobody in the west has ever helped China gain as much influence as mr. Carrotface has.)

A funny video, but why did you link it?

I call those low quality crap made in China so that China has a better chance to bring us down by seizing to export this stuff.

Anything but China, please. Even Vietnam is a lot better!

Of course, on Lemmy things also depend on your instance. I got banned fromba group by a mod that is at the same time a lemmy.ml admin for mentioning that China is putting Uyghyrs to concentration camps.

On lemmy.ml you can get banned for things you wouldn’t get elsewhere. The solution for that is to join a group for the same theme but hosted on another instance. I’m in three communities hosted on .ml, because their alternatives are not active enough. But, of course I always prefer the non-.ml alternative when available.

Duh.

But what does that marketing include?

This 39-year-old north-European doesn’t seem to get reached by Apple’s marketing at all.

The previous president of Finland, Sauli Niinistö is currently 77-year-old and his firstborn is 7.

That means the child will see his dad die at a far too young age, most likely. But otherwise, meh. He’ll be a different kind of father, but a good father all the same.

The question: how angry would he be if his father was 25 years older than he actually is? Would he prefer not having been born at all under such circumstances? I bet he wouldn’t oppose his own existence, for such a reason at least. And neither will his child.

How does that telling happen, actually?

Finnish, Swedish, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Russian, English. Plus, Polish and Norwegian would go mostly right.

So, apparently 12.

However, I can say “I am am apple” in 30 languages. Much more useful.

My kids’ first electronic device was an android tablet for playing Ekapeli.

Then my phone for pretty much the same.

And now the bigger one is playing Minecraft on my desktop computer. (So that they would get fluent in using a mouse and develop their eye-hand-coördination. But they don’t know that 🤫)