It is complex and yet it isn’t. There are understandable psychological and historical causes for the current state. It is not black and white. But nothing is. We just want to make things to fit nice boxes.

If you want to understand it, you need to understand radicalization and how it applies to MENA including Israel. Actions do not come from the vacuum and people are messy. Every person has an agenda.

At the same time, in this specific situation, there are what according to well-established parameters amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. While there is terrorism committed by Palestinian groups, these crimes are largely committed by Israel. It might be that if the power imbalance were a little less we would see similar actions from the Palestinian state. But it is not.

Just in the last week, we have seen apartheid, ethnic cleansing, what could be genocide, collective punishment, embargo and cutting vital supplies to the area you are occupying. This list is not exhaustive. This is univocally wrong.

The most complex part is not understanding it. The most complex part is solving it.

Starting fire is pretty relevant skill in Finland for multiple reasons from saunas to cabins to campfires. While I partially learned at home, scouts are pretty good here and definitely taught me a lot of wilderness and survival skills.

It is also not always about our intelligence but our skill set. I rarely have hard time learning when I want, but issue in my case has been in addition to probable ADHD and mental health issues that the system wasn’t designed to teach me studying.

I am crossing this divide now. I have secondary education but no university and I am working to get to med school now (In Finland it is a combined undergrad and med school). I think I can do it but I don’t really know how to study. I know how to learn but learning in schedule is the issue. I was too ill to go to university when I should have and I could have gone to easier courses I could have gone to without an entrance exam and done OK but I always wanted medicine. Or well, I not easier but easier to get into like maths. After I got better I ended up in aid work, and stopping that is really hard. But I still want to become a doctor so I am trying now in my thirties. Having what looks like undiagnosed ADHD that is now under investigation and crappy childhood might explain part of why I never became what people felt I should have but the fact that I never had to learn to study because I didn’t need to get through is up there.

I try to remember that our education does not mean anything for our value, but it seems hard when it comes to you.

I get it. Part of my job is human rights advocacy. It is highly depressive and is getting to the point where I don’t really think we can change things really for the better in at least the next decades. If we had fewer existential threats I would think based on history that the day when we again decide human rights are a good idea would come again. I am purely doing it for the belief that defending human rights even when not changing anything is worth it.

In Finnish. Pilkunnussija is the word.

But they don’t actually want to help long term. They see collapse as a chance to seize power for their own benefit as even the loose control we have to check the power of the powerful is too much for them.

People have no idea what it means. Like no grasp even when stories are everywhere. I’m an aid worker. Focusing on refugees. They can’t even imagine what they go through and what the people who never got to me/safety survived until unsurvivable came in front of them.

Just be warned Moomins are a gateway to communism (Weird internet theory). Or at least to more Moomins. We literally have Moomin everything here.

In addition to general learning which might be my favourite, I have multiple.

Maybe the most niche is a historical reenactment and historical costuming. Latter usually based on extant garments or garment finds. I try to get as close to the original in techniques, tools and materials using the best evidence I can find.

I also plan things that will never happen. I decorate houses and apartments on paper. I make extensive plans for travel that I can never afford unless I win in Lottory. Which I even never play.

I spend absolutely too much time playing with spreadsheets.

At least in Europe, a lot of people find sparring partners through historical reenactment groups. I encourage you to join reenactments for other reasons too.

Thank you! This really does point me in the right direction.

And as an aside, I absolutely love how welcoming the open source community is.

Do you also do historical reenactment or just sword fighting? I never personally got into the fighting side of things but the former has been one of my favourite hobbies for decades.

My personal favourites from Finnish.

“Ei ole kaikki muumit Muumilaaksossa” “Not having all the Moomins in Moomin Valley” Used for people who are either stupid or lack sanity. There are other variants of this and Moomin one is not older than a couple of decades.

I find our version of Grammar Nazi pretty great. We call them comma fuckers.

“Ei voi kauhalla ottaa jos on lusikalla annettu” “You can’t take with a ladle if it was given with a spoon”. This refers also to a lack of something, usually a lack of intelligence or sense.

Would have suggested it but Calcifer is written with C in Howl’s Moving Castle.

Hmm. I have been moving towards more and more open source. But my ability to code is very limited. Is there any kind of guide on how to get involved when you can’t code?

I played being a bureaucrat. I became woke moralist. Well, kind of.

They played too much WoW.

No, but seriously, calling people whatever they like is OK. As another Millenial, at least in my corner, we all had some kind of nicks and they came to real life. I have a lot of friends who still go by their nicknames from decades ago. I also changed my own name a little and am currently almost exclusively known by that name. I don’t go around telling people why but my name is connected to trauma quite strongly. I can even go further in my family history to have an example of how people have been doing that always. My grandma was called by two names. She moved to the city and decided to go by another name. I was a little bit confused as a kid when my great-aunt called and asked her by a name I had never heard before. I might understand not calling someone something offensive, but Kalcifer is quite mild. In the end, it doesn’t hurt anyone and is a tool for building your identity.

I think you are not aware how troubled teen industry is run at least in the US. Just so you are aware that they are places full of physical, sexual and mental abuse. It is like you sent your kids to a camp but instead of summer camp, it was a refugee or concentration camp.

To be fair to America, I don’t think there are any sane countries left. Finland had an actual neo-Nazi as minister and while it didn’t last longer than Truss or even half of it, the party that is ministerial party is still there with similar ideas. They just had forethought to not write 14/88 in an old electoral ad. We are tied for first place still in the least corrupt countries and 5th in most democratic countries.