Icons and clutter strictly forbidden past this point!!
Huh, just noticed the bars look a little wonky on screenshot. The left one is all blurry and shit. They look a little different from each other too because the right screen is 4k scaled to 1440p, so I had to use an other font for it. But IRL it looks tight as fuck!!
imagine actually believing this
good shit, thanks
Update regarding my earlier post about suspected group-chat wrecker: He started with some bullshit again yesterday and I kinda snapped and told him to stop it with this senseless garbage, muted the chat to calm down, and when I unmuted it today he had left. Yay?
I'm kind of a little worried + overthinking about this though. hope it doesn't have too much social blowback, since we have a decent amount of mutual friends and acquaintances. and he's a lot of fun and really not a bad dude, just extremely politically reddit-brained and woefully uncritical. I mean, plenty of people are, but they at least usually have the good sense and decency to shut the fuck up. Sure, he wants an end to all the violence and for the working masses to achieve liberation, but all his takes and opinions are extremely eurocentric and always just so happen to align with the US state department. I tried my best to find some kind of ideological framework in there but nope, seems like it's just 
all the way down. I have enough infantile bullshit to deal with already, so that's not really the kind of person I can keep around.
Eh, whatever. If you dip into a nice little tankie echo chamber, you should expect your shitty takes to be dunked upon 
external validation pleas.e
What's the origin of "unlimited genocide on the first world"? I thought it was a hexbearism but then some rando used it in on an instagram story and now I don't know anymore. Unless rando is also on hexbear...?
It's very bad and not good, but I have to stay optimistic or I'm gonna lose my entire mind. Still salty about Li deciding to support nato membership.
Oh shit I had forgotten about that whole yle law debacle. That does explain a lot. God damn.
Stubb has at least been leading the polls, for what it's worth. He isn't outspoken about anything, and doesn't really seem to hold any opinions on anything, or care about anything else than the line going up. The politician's politician. Very much the business-as-usual veil-of-normalcy candidate. Very popular among the so-called middle class and petit-bourgeois for that reason, I suppose. Generally strongly disliked by the younger generations, because back when he was minister of finance during the Sipilä coalition he swore on his mum's grave to not make cuts to education and student grants, and then did it anyway (the Koulutuslupaus farce). Did a bunch of photoshoots and PR stunts about how he's gonna save education and improve students lives immensely and all, which obviously hasn't aged well and become a bit of a meme.
I don't really know what the general public opinion is, since I'm in a cozy little bubble where 100% have already voted or will vote for Li Andersson. If I were to speculate, based on earlier election results, vibes and what YLE says, the most likely scenario would be that Stubb and Haavisto go to the second round, where Stubb will more or less narrowly take it home in the end. Most people in the bigger cities under 40 will vote for Haavisto, but homophobia combined with his association to the Green Party will likely hold him back nationally, because finland is after all very "traditional", shall we say. Last time Haavisto was close to getting elected president, people in the semi-rural area I was living at the time were saying shit like "are we supposed to have a First Man?! Is he going to be at the independence day ball with his HUSBAND?! Nothing against gay people, of course, but what will people think???" It just creates too much of a ruckus, you know. That was a long time ago, though, maybe things have changed. Either way, many leftists will sit out the second round and then everyone will blame us for Haavisto losing.
People generally like Niinistö for the same reasons as Stubb; namely that he hasn't really done or said anything particularly scandalous (apart from his wife being, what, half his age? I guess that's not scandalous enough), he belongs to the most milquetoast neoliberal party (NCP), and is an endearing finnish grandpa type of guy. He's rather popular on the internet as well, what with that fucking dog and all, which probably contributes to his domestic popularity, considering how weirdly desperate for international recognition finland tends to be. Anyway he kept the mask on, avoided stirring the pot, God is in his heaven, everything is normal on Earth.
Basically, 
In other news, there's a presidential election happening here on sunday. There are zero good options, one very bad option (the garden gnome-looking nazi), and one okay option (Li Andersson of the Left Alliance).
Li Andersson is the only one who is publicly taking a stand against isn'treal, and seemingly gaining a decent amount of support from the younger generations for it while drawing the ire of everyone else. The media is doing their best to mention her as a side note whenever they can, though she is the highest polling candidate of the Left Alliance in recent memory. Unfortunately she is unlikely to get to the second round imho, but I'm taking the relatively high support as a good sign.
Candidate Pekka Haavisto of the greens party, later turned nato worshipping warhawk, is a dream come true for self-proclaimed "progressives" though. He is openly gay and has explicitly stated he is not a leftist. Some of his voter base would probably agree more with Li Andersson policy-wise, but are too worked up about the whole "leftist" and "electability" stuff and that usual kind of drivel.
The nazi candidate is playing that same old clown circus game, playing the libs like fiddles and saying literally whatever unhinged bullshit he wants with zero repercussions. The rest of the candidates are political wet socks who don't really stand for anything, which to be fair suits the role of president rather well here. Currently leading the polls is Alexander Stubb of the whatever-the-fuck-party who has done uh... probably something, some time, I don't really know or care.
🇫🇮🔥 It is official: Finnish state media YLE completely fucking losing it. Today, there's a thing about "Why Russia definitely probably shot down the plane and Ukraine is innocent. Even if Ukraine did it, it was Russia's fault". There's a thing about "Wholesome 100 innocent uwu Taiwan is in MORTAL DANGER of being RIPPED TO SHREDS and BRUTALLY EVISCERATED by the CHINESE HELL-DRAGON!!". There's even a thing about how unbelievably fucking dangerous TikTok is to life as we know it. I am reaching entirely new levels of Jokerification at an absolutely incredible rate.
But the best part is the podcast segment titled, and I am not shitting you here, "Why 10000 dead children in Gaza doesn't mean Israel is committing genocide". That is a direct translation. I was foolishly hoping that it was an intentionally ridiculous and exaggerated clickbait title for an actually decent take, but who was I kidding. Of course not. Since I'm feeling invincible today I went ahead and listened to it anyway so no one else has to. That's how this works, right?
The "expert" they have on argues that the definition of genocide "is just not about killing, but the intentions they have when doing the killing. Israel says that they're not intending to exterminate everyone in Gaza, ergo, therefore, you see..." They also, naturally, go out of their way to sneak in the word TERRORIST ATTACK just to be sure.
Expert continues: "Israel has said that they are the most moral army in the world and that they aren't indiscriminately targeting civilians..." so "it's really difficult to tell if they're doing a genocide or not." Yep, our hands are tied. I guess we just have to believe everything israel says, then.
Proceeds to talk about the role of the ICJ, and how they can't really do anything, but gives them props for upholding the good old "rules-based order", and then my brain shut out the rest.
I must reiterate that this is official state media. Finland really turned from "generally pretty fucking bad" to "most bloodthirsty genocidal lapdog of the american empire" almost instantly when they let us into nato. I think I need to get the heck out of here.
There used to be a sort of socialist movement and commune in a rather obscure place called Munsala in Ostrobothnia, about 80 or so kilometers north of Vaasa. The Munsala socialism, or Munsala radicalism, they called it. It was started by people from the region who returned after having emigrated to the US in the late 1800's. Many of them had found that US labour rights were absolutely fucked, and had began to work with various labour movements, and eventually discovered Marxism. A few dudes that returned home to Munsala in the early 1900's started spreading the good word of Karl Marx in the region, and it was very popular among the almost entirely agrarian proletariat. It was a also rather religious movement. The local preachers took to incorporating the teachings of Marx in their sermons. They emphasised pacifism, sobriety, education, and parliamentarianism.
That is, until the civil war broke out. The Munsala socialists mostly tried to stay out of it, but since the whites had decided to base themselves in Vaasa (80km away) and Pietarsaari/Jakobstad (30km away), they found themselves pretty much at the heart of enemy territory. They were often harassed by whites and cops, and used guerrilla style hidey holes in the local forests to hide. Many who didn't hide were captured and executed or fled to Sweden. During the second world war, many Munsala socialists refused to fight, because of the finnish state's alliance with Hitler and therefore its support for fascism. The able bodied men went back into hiding in their old forest hidey holes, while the rest of the village kept watch for cops and whites. In the 1930's, a Munsala socialist and teacher named Walter Blomqvist fled to the US. He eventually ended up in Cuba, where he supposedly hung out with Castro and Che and took part in the revolution (here is an interview with the guy, in swedish)
Machine translated summary
The Munsala Socialism is said to have been eradicated in the 70's, after fur farming became a thing. It brought in vast amounts of money and resources to the thus far poor agrarian community, which "did away with any need for socialism".
This whole thing is of great personal meaning to me, because I grew up quite close to Munsala. I've driven through Munsala a fair few times. My grandma and grandpa both have roots in Munsala. Me and many in my family speak the same (or a similar) swedish dialect spoken in Munsala. So by all accounts, this should be common knowledge, or at least something I would have been taught, but no. I never ever once, not even a litte, heard of this before. Not a word about it in school or anything. Unbelievable. First time I heard of this was in maybe 2015, when a random woman at an anarchist café in Turku (southwest finland) overheard me saying something in swedish. She could tell I was from Ostrobothnia by the dialect, I guess. She asked if I'm from there, and I said that yeah, but I didn't really like it because of its still very prevalent white (both as in mayo and as in wrong side of the civil war) mindset and culture. She told me to not feel bad about it, because there is a vast and colourful history of labour movements and class struggle there, "for example the Munsala Socialists".
Finnish natopedia article: https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munsalan_radikalismi
Here is one article and videos about it in swedish: https://svenska.yle.fi/a/7-883429
full documentary, also in swedish: https://areena.yle.fi/1-4261007
Doesn't seem to be available with subtitles either. It's unfortunately very hard to find any more information about this in English. Erased history, I suppose.