Johannes Magnus, exiled Catholic archbishop of Protestant Sweden, spent his last years on a credulous, breathless history of Sweden; the Protestant monarchs loved it so they counted their descent from Magog grandson of Noah as Eric XIV and Charles IX. Conspiracy theory: Johannes did this on purpose.

I believe the world can and should be understood and changed. So it really grinds my gears when some good people give up: all politicians are useless, all companies are evil; just try to survive. Nonsense! There is always a least evil, and that's the path to actual good choices. #politics

Aqua's Barbie Girl (1997) is a wonderful dark commentary on how men view women (derogatory). Framing a girls' toy as a submissive sentient creature that men can play with to fulfill any of their fantasies is... I had many proto-feminist thoughts. m.youtube.com/watch?v=Zyhr...

Aqua - Barbie Girl (Official Music Video)

YouTube video by AquaVEVO

m.youtube.com

A Finnish grocery store chain uses little wheeled robots for deliveries; the size of an automatic cat litter box, wheeling along sidewalks. Man, I can't wait for #Ikea to get on this. I want a Billy delivered to my front door.

Was talking with someone who's not really into superheroes, and she wondered if #Spiderman can see or breathe through his mask. Would be a really different series if he couldn't. Not too much swinging from building to building.

Saw the new #Spiderman. Very good entertainment; had no idea who the villain was, did not guess, and was very impressed by the reveal. To the youth of today: those cultural things of yours nobody values now, don't worry. In 30 years you'll be running the asylum and make movies outta all of 'em.

Man, I want a movie about a non-crazy adventure.

Sometimes fiction and fandom accidentally repeat real life: A brilliant general serves an evil, murderous regime. Because of his brilliance he gets popular, so storytelling glazes smarts, downplays crimes, invents motivations, gives him a fandom. So, Thrawn from #StarWars or real-life Rommel?

One of my skills that's approaching the uncanny finesse of a superpower is an ability to skip over a Youtuber sponsorship segment without even learning who the sponsor was. This is way better than heat vision.

Youtube just recommended me a video on how to parallel park a tractor-trailer. 1. Am not gonna. 2. Every time I'm disappointed it's not HowToBasic.

A hypothesis sans evidence: Incredibly many people are #streamers today. Putting yourself out like that day after day means you will talk about yourself a lot. As a result, a lot of people will discover things about themselves they otherwise wouldn't (that quick): colorblind or bi, aphantasia etc.

Suppose you gain the magical power to make perfect copies of physical objects. The usual question is what you would copy first; the interesting one is who would come for you first? #tech (1/6)

I have a game idea: JUMPSCARE TETRIS. It is normal Tetris, except every 5 to 60 seconds there's a jumpscare. I haven't made it, because I feel just describing it is enough. #gamedev

Hngh. AI things are so inflamed neither side is making sense. The advocates are drunk on their own financial incentives (no further analysis needed), and the opponents are so high on hate catastrophizing has turned to unchecked lies because anyone disagreeing is a shill and an enemy of humanity.

#DoctorWho has its old series, and its new series, and they are separated by the greatest individual installment of that great show ever made. I am of course talking of the Curse of Fatal Death. I am not joking, because sometimes a loving parody of a thing is also a perfect sample of the thing.

Thread: So in Finland #anime and #manga became big in the 2000s: you could get manga from the newsstands, see anime on TV. But there were precursors in the 80s and 90s, and these are the ones I saw.

Different places, different books: Android Kindle for lunches out (Regicide Report, Charles Stross), hardcover for the garden swing (Reporting Vietnam vol. 1, LoA), Audible for walks (Ultimate Hidden Truth etc., Graeber), and a paperback for travel (Challenger, Adam Higginbotham). #booksky

Oh how I hate articles like "The 8 Greatest #Fantasy Book Trilogies of All Time, Ranked", without a single word on how the they were chosen or ranked. Literally any methodology you had would have made the article ten times as interesting.

Every generation has the same amount of chosen works old and new you have to be aware of to talk their language. Shakespeare, Bible, Star Wars, Halo. No need to play Super Mario Bros 1; but you need to "get" world 1-1, ?-boxes, and bottomless pits "worn smooth by billions of tumbling Mario corpses".

Whenever I see a video of someone in front of their bookshelf, I pause, zoom in, and see what they got. Someone called bookshelves the cleavage of the mind, and I can't help staring. #booksky

My #Lego pet peeves: 1. Too many sets with wheels. 2. Too many sets with repetitive flowers (etc.). 3. Too many sets with one-off custom pieces. 4. Too many sets funneling money to the Transphobe of Great Azkaban and Northern Ireland when other properties not funding bigots exist.

There's an old Finnish expression: "vettä sataa kuin Esterin perseestä" (it's raining water like out of Esther's ass). Sometimes I wonder about my ancestors.

Pro tip: "Why X Are Turning To Y" in a title usually means "We Found Two X Who Did Y Once".

Bought a lot of small sets and now got a shoebox of #Lego. Somewhat terrified how to sort them: so far big plates, long plates (1 x n), other plates (2 x n), Technic, architecture, wheels, pieces so random they will not fit in any other category...

The thing with being Finnish that Americans don't have is that when someone mentions Finland it's rare and exciting. For an American, not only are most of your channels from there, the #1 country mentioned by others is also yours. You're inescapable. (Maybe your state is rare and exciting!)

#German has gendered nouns (the moon is der Mond, vaguely guy-moded, an oak is die Eiche, feminine). If you want to save time, speak Guy German: treat every noun as masculine. (May permanently harm your brain if you try this as a native speaker.)

Sometimes when I'm carrying a shopping bag I let it dangle from the nook of my wrist, yet keep my fingers curled as if I'm holding it. I hope someone will think it a graphics glitch, and then wonder. (Be the chaos you want to see in the world.)

Sometimes you realize a thing you had been vaguely aware of is actually two things you've smooshed together into a Frankenstein of hazy ignorance. Mine: Santana/Santayana and the TV series Weeds/Scrubs.

We are living in the golden age of culture. The % of well-read aristos that people wax nostalgic over was smaller than the % of well-read people today, and the rest, the peasants with little to no cultural access, were worse off than today's general population, even those who just quote Star Wars.

Story idea: Slow human colony ships approach a planet. Faster "ships" were sent ahead to terraform it by impacting mountains of ice and biochemicals; nobody wants to wait that out. Imagine the horror when our colonists realize the planet had intelligent life...