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.

Scandinavian, mid-40’s. The vast majority of cars in Europe have manual transmission, in my country you can’t even get a driver’s license if you can’t handle it. I prefer manual, whenever I drive automatic I feel like there’s something missing.

I like to repair and restore broken vintage audio gear.

“Wow, this 60’s Sansui amp and those 70’s AR speakers are practically free! I already have all the tools I need to repair them, it’ll be fun and cheap. When I get these restored, I won’t need anything else ever again!”

How little did I know.

Jesus. That theory is the one my professors talked about in university, as an example of “how to never teach anyone anything”.

Yes. For years now. And I am horrified.

I am a teacher and I’ve had students who could not find the article about lions from the animal encyclopedia I handed to them. And when I helped them to find it, one started crying, one tried to read it (stopped after a minute or so) and one asked “Isn’t there some lion video we could watch instead?”. It was two pages with a lot of pictures. But it was too much for these 5th graders.

Reading proper books has become almost impossible to kids because their attention span is almost non-existent with written material.

We’ve tried to add more emphasis on basic reading skills in the early grades for some time now, but it seems to have very little effect.

In Finland many high school seniors go to an overnight booze cruise some time before their final exams. It can get pretty wild.

1. Do not let Mom ever have brain surgery.
2. Make grandma see a different doctor. The current one is clueless.
3. Bust Dad for smoking in secret and force him to stop. You know how it can be done.
4. Idea of Mom and Dad getting a divorce is a scary one, but it probably would make their and your life a lot better.
5. Start jogging daily. You’ll never like it, but you need to do it to.
6. Ask her out when you’re 15. She likes you too.
7. Start taking guitar and piano lessons. Turns out you have musical talent, you just haven’t realized it yet.
8. No, I won’t tell you how to get rich. You’d fuck your life up royally with unlimited money.

When we met, we were both pretty broken from past experiences. She had had a line of bad relationships and I had my own issues. She was creative, smart and very beautiful, way out of my league.

With her I was happy for the first time in my adult life and I loved her just as she was. We enjoyed the same things and our friends talked of us as a “perfect couple”. And for a time everything truly was pretty perfect.

Then one day she called me and said: “I’m sorry. I can’t do this anymore.”

After the initial shock I managed to say: “I love you and want you to be happy. If this makes you happy, so be it.”

And that was it. I was emotionally devastated.

I never saw her again. Nine months later a common friend told me she had a baby coming in the next month. Apparently she had switched me for a better candidate and gotten herself pregnant almost instantly.

Realizing this broke me even more. I guess our time together had fixed her to a point where she was ready to start a family, just not with me. According to my friend she got three kids with the same guy and is very happy with her life.

It took me years to recover from this and I don’t think that I’ll ever really get “over it”.

I had a larger surgical procedure done when I was 7. They gave me the calming pre meds maybe half an hour before the operation to make sure that I wouldn’t freak out with the IV. I remember clearly how strange it felt when the pre meds started to kick in, the whole world slowed down and everything felt “good”.

Then they wheeled me into the OR and took my robe off. The operating table was cold and I commented on it, the anesthesia doctor just laughed and said “don’t worry, in a minute it won’t be”. Then she put the IV in and asked me to count down from twenty. “Nine” was the last word I managed to stutter before I went under.

Then I woke up in the recovery room, about 9 hours later. It felt like I had slept a really long, dreamless sleep. The operation had gone as planned, but the recovery period in the hospital was still pretty painful.

Very fast reflexes and I can see in the dark far better than most people.

I had never realized that my eyes were different until my compulsory miltary service. I could reasily read maps when others couldn’t see shit and I never stumbled during night training in the forest.

Fast reflexes are generally pretty cool to havel, but it’s not fun when a knife falls off the kitchen table and it is impossible to stop your own hand trying to catch it.

My “learned talent” is fixing mechanical devices. When I was 6 or 7 I took apart and fixed the family VCR so I could finish watching the Smurfs. My mom found me studying the jammed mechanism, with all the parts lying on the living room carpet. She had a fit and wanted to collect the parts away, I started crying and told her that I’ll never get it back together if she messes up their places. She watched as I released the stuck tape wheel and reassembled the device. And it worked.

I’ve fixed countless devices with just visual analysis and pure intuition after that.