antimidas

And by some miracle, I wouldn't be surprised if the Panzer II felt more spacious inside. It's baffling how cramped modern SUVs and especially crossovers are compared to their external size.

Our relatively small VW ID.3 is more spacious inside than most small-to-mid crossovers in Europe (e.g. Renault Kadjar/Nissan Qashqai, Volvo XC40 etc.). It's still a lot smaller in external dimensions, and actually fits to parking spots.

However, there's only so many times the enemy in this case is actually able to use the tactic. Russia has absolutely no way to replace losses on the battlefield with their birth rates, which are consistently among the lowest in the whole world. Much of the manpower in soviet times was from the former bloc that's now either at war with Russia, joined NATO, or a reluctant vassal like is the case with Belarus. Ukraine is also next to the only country in Europe where piling more bodies to the front works even to this extent, as there are fewer natural defenses compared to the likes of Poland and Finland.

Was there a conflict between NATO and Russia, it wouldn't be long before dying at the front would be the new Russian pension scheme. A dying empire that has been quickly withering even before a war, for three decades, simply doesn't have a route to a recovery.

The myth of smekalka still lives strong. But there's adaptation due to the situation on the battlefield that's done by every miliatry, and there's adaptation due to bottom-tier logistics, shortages, and desperation. These are indeed examples of the latter case.

Truth be told, almost every time the Russian culture has done something to "adapt" it's been out of desperation, and re-framed later to cope with the fact they're not strong enough a country to solve it the right way. On the other hand, you can actually see very good examples of actual adaptation and cleverness displayed by Ukrainians.

Tomorrow: Georgian script and Ogham.

Here my European brain was thinking the two sets of counting and alphabet meant two counting in two different languages and systems and listing two different alphabets like Cyrillic and Greek...

I should learn to read things through before jumping to conclusions.

Executive dysfunction train cafeteria meatballs

True, the responsibility for safe lane change lays on the driver who is changing lanes. However, any sensible country also prohibits obstruction of a lane change, i.e. you can get fined if you don't hold enough distance to the driver in front of you to allow merging, don't make room for the person with the signal on in reasonable time or if you deliberately close the gap so the other person can't change lanes.

That kind of cooperation is mandatory for good traffic flow and properly made laws try to ensure that. Turning signal should result in people noticing you, and letting you safely switch lanes. Too often people get into some vigilante-mode because they see the other driver skipping in line or something similar.

Merging is another story. Merging traffic should explicitly yield to all traffic already on the highway, similarly to how it works in a roundabout. This prevents people merging on a highway that's over its capacity, so the traffic clears quicker. It means that traffic should queue on the ramp until it's safe to merge, indefinitely if necessary. Mathematically it makes sense, but goes against intuition.

Some municipalities have tried out metered entry on highways, that block turning onto the on-ramp altogether if the level of congestion is too high. Some trials have already ended due to the perceived injustice as well, as people already on the highway are typically from out of the city, and thus preventing those living closer from merging onto it. Personally I think if you're close enough to complain about that you should be in public transit range of the population center, and complaining more about the lack of alternatives to driving.

Good point with the barrel, truth is probably somewhere between the barrel and a can. After all, there's also pönttö, both vessan- and linnun-, which again are on the smaller side. I kinda love how much nuance and double meanings there are in especially the spoken language.

True meaning can only be grasped with enough exposure.

Didn't we also have some Vickers six-tonners at the start? Next to useless by then but probably could penetrate at least a BT-5.

Edit: now that I think of it, a canister probably fits quite well between the sizes of can and barrel. But to me it would then be a closed container, which a pönttö doesn't necessarily have to be.

They're an interesting thing to say the least. Finland had a lot of wood gas generators in use during WWII as what limited petrol we had went towards the war effort. Other substitute fuels were used a lot as well, e.g. pine turpentine which we had a lot of as it's a side product of refining wood into pulp.

It's a relatively efficient system, and burns quite cleanly in the engine (as soot and other contaminants are filtered out by the generator). Though they're quite dangerous, since wood gas is mainly pure carbon monoxide. The amounts they produce are so high that leaks or topping up the generator can cause carbon monoxide poisoning even when outside. In Finnish we actually call the generator häkäpönttö, which in English would be a carbon monoxide can (häkä colloquial Finnish for carbon monoxide, pönttö a colloquial Finnish word meaning a can, container (for liquid), carton or someone dumb in a usually non-derogatory way).

Yes, performance fees were, and still are a thing. That's why there are separate streaming services for playing background music in e.g. restaurants and malls, which have licences that cover that use case. You can't just use e.g. Spotify even if you pay the appropriate fees separately, at least where I'm from (Finland). Same goes for playing TV and radio in the background – if it's specifically as background noise or e.g. TV at a bar you typically need separate licencing on top of the one used by the channel itself for distribution. Might be different in the US for example, but copyright laws tend to be quite similar across countries (unfortunately).

The smooth jazz in malls part is likely a lot due to the (historically) overwhelming market share of the company Muzak. They were the pioneer of background music in commercial environments and got a strong enough presence in the market that their name ended up a generic one. AFAIK they're still a large player in the business.

Mall music basically ended up as its own genre due to Muzak and how big it became, and started influencing other media as well. As an example, the style was referred to in the soundtrack of the first Sims game in the buy mode, where it brought with it the feeling of rampant consumerism and buzz of purchasing new stuff. At least according to this video essay on the subject, which in my mind makes its point quite convincingly. (~~the relevant part from 11:46 onwards~~ re-watched the video and the relevant part actually starts at approx the 5 minute mark, but the video is altogether quite interesting)

At least in Finland the 30 minutes is meant to be 30 minutes sitting down and eating your food. If your place of work has a shared cafeteria people are meant to eat lunch in, getting from your desk to the cafeteria and back, and queueing for your food aren't meant to be part of the lunch break. Only the part you actually spend eating and thus properly on a break.

It's a bit of a spirit of the law thing, though the law is quite exact on the matter. Good luck trying to find an employer outside desk jobs who actually abide by it, though, as factory jobs are scheduled around 20 or 30 minute breaks and if you're not back at your line by then, production halts. Luckily that fact is typically compensated in the pay.

I'd assume other European countries with 30 minute lunch have a similar clause.

Ed. It's the standard text editor.

https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.html