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.

A hit in the neck is definitely a miss from an intended target anyway. Can’t say how much or to what direction. It could have been that there’s been a target where the bullet would fly 30 cm behind the person to be guarded, but the bullet is taking a trajectory 10 cm off the intended and the person happens to their head 20 cm backwards just at the crucial moment.

But, I do believe that someone wanted that guy dead. I can imagine someone figuring that “he’s actively advocating killing politicians you don’t like, and I don’t like him. Therefore I am following his own instructions and this is acceptable.”

I personally think it’s a bad idea to kill a person like that, because it probably causes other people to get shot as well. It’s not a culture I want to see spread. But at least I do not see it morally as a very big problem that a person explicitly says that something is acceptable and then that thing is done to him. He wanted a certain kind of society and he got the kind of society he wanted. If there is life after death, he can spend that time being content of having changed the society.

What I’m saying is that there was a very much raised likelihood that someone kills him intentionally.

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!”

Triplan mällissä siis?

Removed by mod

You’re acting like it’s a physical impossibility…

Why would it be a physical impossibility? Doesn’t seem to be for me. Or have I just thought what I do is hugging while in reality it’s not? Please elaborate.

Men secure in their own masculinity don’t have any problems hugging other men. And insecure men likely have toxic traits that make them bad friends.

Yes. How many men are secure in their masculinity? 5%? If the remaining 95 % can only have those 5 % as their friends, how do they find sufficient time for all that friendship?

For most men non-toxic men are not available for friendships. And especially: I don’t want to be friends with a toxic asshole, regardless of how much he moght (unbeknownst to himself…) need my friendship.

Most have no idea they need a hug.

They don’t want to because it would be gay. They want to be real men. And they feel sad and lonely and lost. If someone somehow got them to understand that all we men really need to do in order to be actually happy is to hug each other, this world would stop being a nightmare for us all.

That’s not really enough.

Also, such a small part of men are able to hug other men that if everybody needed to have those few as their friends, they’d very quickly run out of friendship capacity.

I have never seen a school running anything else than Windows.

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.

“All cops’ fathers have been married to people other than the cops’ mothers during conception”? Is that what “Out of wedlock” means? So, basically ACFHBMTPOTTCMDC?

Isn’t that the translation of ACAE, though? 🙃

You have a printing error in the right side of the B!

For the record, Ubuntu was originally made to be Debian with changes that made it easier to use. For first, Ubuntu was basically a form of Debian, but nowadays it has veered a bit away from it. Not very far, though. I just recently solved an Ubuntu problem using instructions written for Debian – but only after reading and understanding each command to be sure it won’t explode anything!

And then there’s Linux Mint, which is made from Ubuntu with changes that make it easier to use. And corporation boot-licking removed.

And Debian used to be in the end of 1990’s what you used if you wanted ease-of-use, BTW! That’s why it was taken as a base when they wanted to create something that is completely newbie-compatible.

Nowadays Ubuntu uses a graphical interface inspired more by Mac OS X than by Windows, although the important feature of menus being at the very top of the screen is missing, meaning that using menus takes more accuracy than just smashing the pointer to the top of the screen. If you are used to Windows and not familiar Mac OS X, then the user interface of Ubuntu has a learning curve while Linux Mint does not. If you have no experience with any graphical user interfaces at all, I would imagine Ubuntu’s UI is easier to learn than that of Windows and Linux Mint, though! Ubuntu is extremely good for those who have lived under a rock. You seem like a person who has seen a computer before, though. I don’t think you’d be on Lemmy otherwise.

This only applies if you install an LTS release. LTS stands for “Long Term Support”.

Every April and October, a new Ubuntu version is published. On Aprils, they additionally publish an LTS version, which does as described above. Its main point is that there has been plenty of time to see that the versions of programs used indeed have no bugs, so basically the whole point of LTS is it being outdated.

Of course, you can just install an Ubuntu version that is not LTS, and you won’t have to problems of having an LTS version.

But yeah, Linux Mint is better than Ubuntu for newbies. While it’s also nice that it’s less restricted than Ubuntu, more improtantly they put a lot of effort into ease-of-use. Since Linux Mint is made by taking the newest Ubuntu version and modifying it, whatever instructions you find for Ubuntu also apply for Linux Mint (except in some rare cases where Linux Mint has modified that part of Ubuntu. Usually the modifications in Linux Mint are to the user interface only, so usually this doesn’t matter)

I’m currently running an Ubuntu LTS because that happened to be preinstalled on this computer when I bought it and for my uses it works absolutely fine. And is definitely stable in all circumstances. But, for graphical editing, you might want to stay on the bleeding edge regarding your tools, and that means an LTS is not for you. Non-LTS Ubuntu might very well be, but Linux Mint is a little better yet.

How about KPOÄ 🤣