Rememberment

Time to take a brief look how the year went. Let's start with the negatives. 1. The Politics There's not much to celebrate, is there? The war in Ukraine keeps going on, things in the Middle East still aren't looking great, and the Trump administration madness continues to keep everyone on their toes. Our own administration in Finland is quite likely one of the worst we have ever had, failing at everything except making our country look like a backwards, racist land of idiots. 2. Sad News Among my family members, there was a lot of grief brought by untimely deaths and illnesses. 3. Things That Didn't Change I failed to sell my apartment which was the main thing I planned to accomplish this year. I also intended to lose weight, but instead ended up gaining some. My mental health still isn't great, and in case some of you are curious about my love life, there just isn't any (not that I would deserve an A for effort, for that matter). Before this gets too depressing...

As a kid I was of course always thrilled about Christmas and couldn't wait what Santa would bring me. To be fair though, I don't think I ever really thought Santa was anything other than one of our neighbours or relatives in a silly costume. I mean, it was always this same mask which I had already seen being sold in every store. Kids aren't that stupid. Our Christmas Eve followed the same routine each year. In the morning, we drove to the graveyard and lit up some candles there. Getting back home, Mom started preparing food while me and my brothers wandered off to the woods to find a suitable spruce that would serve as our Christmas tree. After it had been cut down, brought in and decorated, it was time to eat. Then all the adults wanted to take a nap. (A goddamn nap. How could they do that to me? There I was, the single person who was awake, anxious to get my hands on my precious presents, just waiting for the rest of the bunch to wake up. It was torture, I tell you.) Afte...

Last week, a report by Yle investigative journalism unit MOT revealed that foreign partners of Finnish third-level study institutions are recruiting students for them under false claims. These recruiters (in countries such as India and Bangladesh) are telling people how easy it is to find a part-time job in Finland to support themselves, and that learning the Finnish language isn't even necessary. This has resulted in thousands of foreign students moving here, often spending their life savings in the process, only to find a life of poverty in the "happiest country in the world". This, of course, again serves as an inspiration for our Deputy Prime Minister to try and  make life even more difficult  for our immigrants. In my personal TikTok bubble, I have also ran into the claim that it's not necessary to learn Finnish to make it in here. People who are making that claim often tell people that you can get by and find work just fine if you can speak English, and for cit...

My grandpa was born in 1908 in the USA (most likely in Herbster, Wisconsin but this is not 100% certain). His parents were among the ~350,000 Finns who moved to the United States between 1870 and 1930. At some point the family then decided to move back to Finland, while two of my grandpa's uncles and his aunt decided to stay in the US. The siblings of my great-grandparents, with their children. The picture was taken in Wisconsin, somewhere in the early 1920s. My great-grandparents and their kids. Grandpa is in the back, close to his dad. There's not much info about Grandpa's younger years. As an adult, he started working as a locomotive fireman for the Finnish national railroad company (VR) and then met my grandmother. My dad was born to them in 1935. Operating the trains was crucial during wartime too, so Gramps kept doing the same job over the war years as well. Life wasn't always kind. Grandma caught tuberculosis when my dad was in his teens. One day when she was cle...

Fandom is a powerful thing. It's nice to have someone to look up to. Fandom can fuel creativity (such as fan fiction) and connect you to people with similar interests. An idol can be a source of inspiration, acting like a beacon showing the way to success. Plus, it's just nice to be enthusiastic about something or someone. The connection that forms between a fan and an idol is well-studied, and it's called the Parasocial Relationship . A Parasocial Relationship is a non-mutual one; most often our idols won't be interacting with us directly and even when they are, they will generally do so just to intensify the illusion that we have a personal relationship with them. Fans can invest a lot of their time and energy - and certainly money - into their fandom, allowing an idol to become an important part of their lives, self-perception and identity.  Just like a real relationship, a Parasocial Relationship can also end in sadness and misery, either when a fan feels somehow be...

Back in the eighties, ski jumping was massively popular in Finland among people of all ages. Our hero was Matti Nykänen , who seemed impossible to beat and broke every record. His namesake and I were also huge fans, and as soon as the first permanent snow covered the land, we took out our skis and ventured out to build our own slope in the woods between our houses. It was easy enough, given that the whole piece of forest was located on a hill. We also had toys like this one, which allowed us to have somewhat safer ski jumping competitions. Mom also had her own skis, and asked if Matti and I could create some ski tracks in the woods for her to do some cross-country skiing. We were happy to oblige. I wasn't a fan of cross-country skiing at school, but it wasn't too bad when you could practice it at your own pace. We made the tracks so that they circled around the whole piece of forest, going alongside the train tracks on one side and the Road of Death on the other. The center of ...

Since my birthday is so close to Father's Day, we tend to celebrate both at the same time each year with my children. Since they are all adults now and whatever successes and failures there are to be had as a parent are mostly in my past, it seems like the perfect time to take a brief look at the subject (not to mention that a whole lot about my blog is about dealing with my own upbringing). So, how much does it even matter how you were raised? When I look at my own kids, they turned out quite different from each other. It's hard to think that I would have treated each of them so differently that I could be held accountable for that, at least entirely. According to studies, personality traits such as extroversion, neuroticism and conscientiousness are somewhere between 40% and 60% heritable, and intelligence is around 50% heritable in childhood and up to 80% in adulthood. For many psychological traits you have as an adult, only about 5% to 10% can be accounted for by the shared...