I've been off nicotine now for 65 hours. My brain functioning sort of returned to normal after 48 hours, which was a big relief since the first two days were an unproductive haze. I'm not sure if I missed the bus to work on Monday because it never showed up, or because my brain had shut down and I was just standing there staring into space.
The attacks are unique - at least in a Scandinavian context - because of the coldblooded and refined planning and execution, while the attacker and his views are not. He set out to, and partly succeeded in, eliminating a generation of politicians of the Labor party, taking the rhetoric common in the national conservative and counter-jihad circles to its logical conclusion. I lived in Oslo at the time of the attacks, spent the night guarding a store with blown-out windows a block from the Labor party headquarters. I walked in the rose marches, attended the memorial ceremony. It was a national trauma that affected everyone. I now live in Sweden but much of the public discourse remains the same; he was a lone mad man; don't politicize the attacks. But at some point, as a society, we need to face the truth: the attacks were an act of far-right terrorism aimed at young social democrats. The terrorist shared his worldview with one of the largest parties in our parliament. Claiming that you should not make politics of an event is very much to make politics out of an event. To say that a political act isn't political is a political act.
It ain't real until I've heard it from the Council of Steves!
I went through my Pinboard bookmarks related to David Graeber, so here's some weekend reading/listening for anyone interested: Promises, promises: A History of Debt is a BBC radio/podcast series on Graber's book Debt: The First 5000 Years. Novara Media had him as a guest to talk about his book Bullshit jobs and the end of capitalism. Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit. Where are the flying cars? Why isn't capitalism innovative? What’s the Point If We Can’t Have Fun? Dickheads. Caring too much. That's the curse of the working classes How to change the course of human history, and how we're doing it all the time.
God jul!/Happy holidays!/Merry Christmas! We had our main celebrations yesterday, so today has been really relaxing, eating leftovers, reading, walking and napping. I’m translating an essay from my local paper that I wanted to share with y’all. It's about mysticism, metaphysics and eels. I will post it when I’m done.
Disclaimer: I only know this works for European cold-temperate oaks. The Quercus genus has hundreds of species with Mexico having the most species. I don’t have any direct experience sprouting acorns, but you might have just gotten a dud or, depending on the species, you need to put it in the fridge for a while to mimick the cold period it would experience in nature to wake it from hibernation. Bonus tip for growing your mighty oak a little bit faster: plant it together with a nurse tree of a faster growing species so it gets some competition for light, as well as a bit of protection from the wind. Around here birch or larch are commonly planted together with oak like this, the nurse tree gets removed after a couple of years. This also reduces the risk of multiple trunks, if that’s something you want to avoid.
Last week was really warm so I went and got my hair cut for the first time in almost three years. Oops.