Since we are talking about shithouses in Norway and international politics, I should mention as a Frenchman the existence of French toilets with the colours of the French flags and the France national motto displayed on top. In front of the Norwegian parliament in Oslo.
It's also the colours of the Norwegian flag (as well as the US flag). I think the flag is quite literally coloured by the time when the flag was created (1820s, post French revolution).
Yet no trash cans. It's a frustrating trade off, especially with all the vending machines. If you don't have a backpack, you're stuck carrying trash. If you do, it gets messy.
Also, this does not hold in Hokkaido. I taught English in Obihiro (well, Makubetsu) and you had to plan your trash and restroom breaks.
Perfect Days is in my top 10 movies of all times - a must watch for everyone.
ps - I learned the beautiful word / concept komorebi from the film: "dappled, shimmering light and shadow created when sunlight filters through the leaves of trees"
Some of the most beautiful English-language writing I've read is describing the interplay of light and shadow under a canopy. This is an area where I think having a single word description is a linguistic loss.
Petrichor isn't very evocative though? It sounds more like it should be a description of a scab or something than a smell, and I guess maybe it rains too much where I live but the smell of rain isn't something I have a strong feeling about, it's just a warning to get inside.
I find having the word "komorebi" to be a conceptual gain. I can more-readily notice this beautiful occurrence because I have this easy-to-grasp concept in my mind.
ps - the existence of this word does not prevent authors from using more words to describe the situation ;)
Technically you're supposed to wait around and consume your product at the shop where you've bought it, but I didn't have any objections to doing one-in one-out, so as long as I bought a new drink I just dropped the refuse from the last one at the store where I bought the next one.
IDK man, I was just there for 2 weeks in Kobe, Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo, and there were so few publicly accessible trashcans that I started considering photographing the handful I saw (2-3 next to drink vending machines, and one (1) large one in Shinjuku's main luxury-tourism thoroughfare) for their shiny rarity. At one point we were joined by our third member, and we warned them first thing "there are no trash cans in Japan!" and sure enough, about 2 hours later, they were clutching an empty beverage, looking around futilely for somewhere to throw it out...
I was there for a month, a year ago, but this is all just anecdata.
It's well known there isn't an abundance of public rubbish bins, but there are plenty that are adjacent to where you are likely generating rubbish (or recycling) - eg. konbibis.
I suspect spending all your time in the frustratingly tourist-dense triad likely skews your experiences of the country. I haven't been to Kobe, but it's doubtless similarly afflicted, and presumably has responded in a similar way.
The absence is well-known and described in places like Wikipedia. Also, how many major capital cities in Japan should I spend time in before it's not 'anecdata'? Should I get a sample of another 10 or 20 Tokyos before you're satisfied?
FWIW, I did a LLM research report about numbers, and they pulled up some interesting cites: https://gwern.net/doc/japan/2026-11-03-gpt6astra-japansmissi... Places like Osaka have deliberately removed their city trashcans (from 5000 to zero since 2007, while Kyoto apparently got rid of 500 recently), and the vending machine trashcans are inadequate because they're only supposed to be for bottles but of course pick up a lot of other trash because what other option is there, while konbinis report problems with people using their tiny little trashcans a lot. There's also some interesting dynamics here where the overuse of trashcans becomes the justification for removing them, thereby externalizing all the costs onto people (especially tourists, according to the Japan Tourism Agency's regular large-scale surveys, where a shockingly large percentage single out trash cans as a problem in their visit).
> but there are plenty that are adjacent to where you are likely generating rubbish (or recycling) - eg. konbibis.
As already noted, I didn't see many adjacent to konbinis. (Inside them, sure, but that is definitionally not a 'public rubbish bin'. That's a private one, and we felt awkward just going into stores to use their trash. Similar to using a store's restroom without any intent of shopping there. Some "plenty"!)
> I suspect spending all your time in the frustratingly tourist-dense triad likely skews your experiences of the country
Yes, I expect it skews my trash bin prevalence too high. Because tourist-heavy places should have more, not less.
Sorry, when I said 'adjacent to where you're generating waste - eg a konbini' - I meant the konbini bin itself. So, adjacent to _you_ (and your new rubbish) - not adjacent to the store. I could perhaps have used the word proximal.
AIUI the history is a bit murky, and it's mostly fiscal, but with some terrorism response - the sarin gas, and then other cities having attacks, and bins being seen as a safety risk.
Here in AU we had a famous (because they're so rare) bombing in the 1980's (the Hilton bombing, for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting) - about which much has been written. I think about 20 years ago, give or take quite a few, there's been a move to transparent public rubbish bins, and I'm sure the placement, shape, etc of those has been considered by planners with those risks in mind.
A related domestic anecdote - from the same era - one of our more interesting politicians in Sydney set about removing public bins, on the premise that their presence increased street litter (you see people put rubbish on top of a full bin, and it's blown away a few moments later).
Back to Japan - it seems to have been mostly a response to citizens avoiding rubbish collection fees at home by taking household waste to public bins. I don't know if that can be correlated tidily to higher density ~= higher tourism areas?
In any case, while we travelled there, it was rare that we had a problem with rubbish, but we were prepared -- we either followed the locals' habit (eat/drink where you buy and immediately ditch in their bin) and/or we were invariably carrying daypacks so we could take waste back to our hotel.
> Yes, I expect it skews my trash bin prevalence too high. Because tourist-heavy places should have more, not less.
I understand why you might think that, but I would suggest that it's not a universally agreed argument.
> So, adjacent to _you_ (and your new rubbish) - not adjacent to the store.
Yes, I figured that is what you meant, which is why I then explained why it still sucks. What if I don't want to eat something entirely then and there in the konbini I bought it...? What if I have trash from some other source?
> it seems to have been mostly a response to citizens avoiding rubbish collection fees at home by taking household waste to public bins.
Yes, that was highlighted in the LLM report. And is an example of the perverse dynamics and poverty mindset, where an entire society is distorted in the name of conservation, where the high usage of trash cans becomes a reason to not have them. (I am still thinking about the multiple 3/4-star luxury hotels I stayed in which provided some of the lowest-quality gas-station-tier toilet paper I have ever used - a false economy all the more unjustifiable given how little toilet paper a guest would use thanks to the wonderful bidets!)
> but we were prepared
Precisely. I was confused for the first week: "how does this work? How are the locals throwing their trash away away? Surely they don't just reorganize their lives around this limitation, and tolerate things that few other societies tolerate, and let an obsession with litter and recycling run their lives and dictate when and where they can eat or even just drink some water on a hot humid day? There must be some trick or convention I am not getting, maybe some trash cans hidden away somewhere under an unfamiliar appearance." And then I realized, "oh. They do. That's how it works." And I too reorganized my life to submit to the trash planners.
The answer to your first question is 'day pack or pocket'.
I find LLMs pay a lot more attention to speculative blog posts about these things, as they out-number actual policy rationale - in the case of the North Sydney (AU) removal of bins, there's surprisingly few resources still surviving (or at least indexed) outside of newspaper interviews, and so I'm not convinced we have access to the full set of motivations and results analysis.
I suspect the Japanese motivation is cleaner, as I noted, and you have also concluded.
I spent a fair bit of time on /r/JapanTravelTips as part of our planning - it's probably the third or fouth most talked about topic there, after 'where to eat in Tokyo' (sigh), and how to use a fast train.
In any case, daypacks are the answer to many challenges, including this one.
Personal anecdote, but I lived in Okinawa for two years, and can state that I _never_ saw a single trash can in the street. Inside buildings, sure, but not outside.
So there's also all the stuff about the wonders of Japanese toilets with heated seats and bidets etc. and I was amazed at how many of what are really low budget toilets in like mid-tier shopping malls, fast food restaurants and rural train stations had the full deal. And how clean they were. Toilets in those kinds of places here are often a mess and it's not uncommon to find the toilet seat missing entirely, so nobody's installing a expensive fancy seat in a public bathroom.
The flip side is if you go off more rural, you can run into the type of toilet that Japanese people consider a "Japanese toilet". Complete opposite of the tech wonders that the rest of the world pictures when they hear Japanese toilet. Because they're pretty much relegated to toilets without much investment at this point, they're also usually much less maintained than other toilets too.
I think they don't have enough mechanical degrees of freedom to hurt you. The nozzle can only move forward / back. The seat and hot air blower could overheat and set your house on fire, but nothing could keep you on the toilet while they do that.
I hiked Norwegian fjords above Bergen a couple of times in the past, highly recommend it if you ever get a chance.
Also: Norway has one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world, valued at $2.2 trillion; over 50% are investments in US assets; close to $200 billion in US Treasury securities; and is a major shareholder in US corporations, especially across the tech sector.
So well done Norway, this is how you deal with clowns, not debate or argue on social media, but rub their face in your pure awesomness.
Norway has done a great job with what they've been given, but remember that they've had the national equivalent of being born into a rich family - they have had enormous wealth from natural resources in the form of North Sea oil.
Fair, but so does UK, Canada - which might be one of the richest countries in the world in terms of natural resources I think? - and especially US of A.
But how these countries use their resources is quite different.
The UK had a tiny amount of oil compared to Norway if you adjusted by population so it’s not a fair comparison. Also I’m not sure the share of the revenue the British government was getting was massively much lower than the case in Norway.
The UK government has had a huge income from the North Sea but unlike Norway we didn't invest it. We spent it as fast (or faster) than we received it. When modern Conservatives wax lyrical about Thatcher's economic miracle they seem unaware that it was mostly just oil revenue.
True, but the point is that no matter what the UK did it could never have been in the same position as Norway. Simply too many people and not enough oil.
Realistically even if they managed to accumulate a significant amount of money there would have been a lot of societal pressure to spend all of that during various economic downturns. How could a government that’s sitting on a fat pile of money ever justify cutting spending on the NHS or social services?
OK, so the US' sovereign wealth fund would be 5-6x less per capita than Norway's, so less effective, but nonetheless capable of benefitting Americans substantially.
Except that ... it doesn't exist, because, from the beginning, we've given it all away to Big Oil, who spend some of it making sure that politicians get elected who keep supporting Big Oil.
I mean you do have a perfectly valid point but I don’t see something like that working in countries like US or UK (or other countries with large trade deficits). The money would have just been used for general spending and at best would result in lower deficits. Which is of course better than nothing. It’s just that it would be simple politically infeasible and very unpopular to not spend it.
To be fair US is extremely rich in other natural resources other than oil. It is not the richest country in the world because Americans are such misers. Norways oil money could go to some Exxon or such and regular Norwegian could live in poverty.
Also their taxes are proportional to wealth and everyone pays them, so good public service. It's not that hard to understand and there is no need to circle around it.
You say it like it's given that natural resources wealth is distributed for population like it's in Norway. Its not. It takes a lot of work. Otherwise you get shithole countries where warlords/corporations/mafia take over control of resources and enrich them selves instead of raising global wellbeing.
You can only compare Norway to richest of the gulf states like UAE, though (e.g. Saudi Arabia produces less oil per capita than Norway). Put 10x more people in Norway and keep the same amount of oil like in many of those “shithole” countries and you’d end up with a slightly different situation
UAE and Qatar are doing quite well. Oman, Kuwait, SA, Brunei maybe not so much but there are obviously various socio-economic causes for that. I wouldn’t necessarily classify them as shitholes, though (as long as you are a male citizen at least..)
No other countries are comparable.
To be fair I think a good counterpoint is Denmark, they are doing about as well as Norway despite not having such massive amounts of oil. So surely Norway is underperforming despite the fact that they had a massive head start?
Norway won the lottery, sure they invested their winnings instead of wasting them but they are still playing on easy mode, you can count the number of countries which could have done the same with your fingers.
Exactly. They managed to use it to generate wealth inside their own country instead of spaffing it into the capital of the country next next door like Scotland.
Norway is hardly unique in having abundant natural resources. Other countries have larger oil reserves. What's unique is the fact that instead of letting a few large corporations, or corrupt mafia, get rich off of them with "trickle down economics" benefitting the rest of the country, the government is in charge of it and uses it for the public benefit.
I'm from Australia and always assumed the word "shithouse" was mostly used here, and at first glance assumed this post was an amusing joke by an Aussie (though - being somewhat cutesy with a Trump-ism?) rather than a Norwegian government website.
Though I might be wrong - I doubt this word comes up in tech blogs and academic conferences very often?
Nope, sorry, Norwegians actually tax mining / energy corporations (so the government has money to spend on... designer dunnies!), instead of just giving away their non-renewable natural resources to billionaires for free. That's un-Australian!
Their resource company is effectively the government and reducing their climate impact is basically impossible without killing their economy. I think we'd rather not be in that position.
> In 2019, fossil fuels contributed 48 percent of Norway’s export revenues of around $53 billion. And that number is much, much larger today, thanks to ballooning demand for natural gas in the wake of the Ukraine war.
How do you propose they kill the public company exactly? At least in Australia, govt. revenue is barely reliant on fossil fuels.
Norway is more reliant on oil/gas money than almost every country on Earth. e.g. to its small population it produces significantly more oil per capita than Saudi Arabia. So yeah for instance it is/was way easier for Britain to kill its privatized oil industry.
That's such an appalling misrepresentation of what happens here in Australia that even Konrad Benjamin himself would correct you. State, Territory and Federal governments all take revenue for non-renewable resource extraction.
You're aware of the revolving door between politics and resources right? You can't take a bribe in advance, but you sure as hell can take a kickback later.
As per usual, that’s British slang which was carried over to Australia. Almost all slang phrases Americans associate with Australia are British in origin and still in wide use, as you’d expect given the history of both countries.
It's also commonly used in the US. I've never heard it of it being associated with the commonwealth at all - based on the vulgarity I always assumed it was a native production.
I find it fascinating that the cost of these gorgeous places is roughly the same as the cost to build a public restroom in San Francisco. Notably the architects in SF are much more expensive than those in Norway. Certainly quite interesting.
Plus, there were persistent stories of terrifying beasts that lived in the sewers and bit people’s bottoms. Of course those stories could have just been invented by people who were waiting on line, to help people get done quicker.
On the topic of great shithouses, I highly recommend the 2023 Japanese drama Perfect Days. It's about a quiet man that works for Tokyo Toilets, cleaning a set of architecturally interesting public toilets around the Shibuya district. The movie itself is compelling -- a fascinating study of a man and purpose, very similar to Paterson (2016)[1] -- but the whole thing is like taking a trip to Tokyo, with an enormous number of gorgeous shots of fascinating scenes. Also a lot of shots of someone cleaning toilets.
[1] The directors of both movies are friends, and interestingly Paterson ends with the protagonist talking to a man from Tokyo who came to visit Paterson, as a poetry fan of William Carlos Williams. It is coincidence, but it does make it feel like they're the same universe.
They can’t possibly be the best because I went into the public bathroom out our local playground last week at 10am and there was a gigantic steaming turd perfectly deposited on the seat of the all-metal prison-style toilet. My 3 year old was as stunned as I was. To think, some local resident was thoughtful enough to bless us with this gift.
Are you telling me my Oakland California toilets are somehow inferior? I find this hard to believe…
It is the committee that is based in Norway. Doesn’t mean it is Norway the country. Just like US does not control the decisions of UN just because UN is located in US.
Well, it's a bit more muddled than that, to quote wikipedia:
"
Five members are appointed by the Norwegian Parliament. In his will, Alfred Nobel tasked the parliament of Norway with selecting the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize. Despite its members being appointed by Parliament, the committee is a private body tasked with awarding a private prize. In recent decades, most committee members were retired politicians.
"
A diverse Committee that makes its own decisions, and politicians abstain from influencing it. Because it is intended to be independent, and people see value in that, so they honour it. Nobody needs from the outside to have a say, because politics and the committee trust each other to do the right thing. It's alien, I know.
> In January 1944 an attempt by the Quisling government to take over the functions of the Nobel Committee led to the resignation of Jahn and other committee members. The Swedish consulate-general in Oslo formally took over the management of the Foundation's Oslo property on behalf of the Nobel Foundation.[14]
Norway won't play Trump's games. Just because the government appoints members to a committee doesn't mean it will (or even can) fire those people to force a decision it wants.
I don't disagree, but the name is pretty much where trump gets Norway from. He doesn't comprehend that our heads of states dont have the power to influence this in the first place.
I'm still not sure whether Donald himself is just dumb or whether he knows he can get away with saying things because his voters are dumb. Neither option looks good in an international context...
Not only the Norway thing, but he also (pretends?) doesn't understand how NATO works. Being angry about NATO members, a defensive treaty, not joining an offensive campaign in Iran.
You obviously can. An EU delegation had to explain the EU to Trump using colored cards as if he was a small child and it took many attempts before he got it. So the deciding quality must be something else.
You're assuming that understanding it was his priority in the first place. It wasn't.
Imagine a painter saying "these software engineers are profoundly stupid, I spent a whole day explaining to one how different color combinations are differently interpreted by different cultures and he still wouldn't get it".
That happened when Trump was discussing trade issues with the EU. Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission at the time, had to prepare colorful flash cards in simple language to explain the issues to Trump, because Trump didn't know at all what he was talking about.
A similar thing happened between him and Merkel, when Trump didn't understand that the EU was a unified trading bloc with a common market and that making separate trade agreements with Germany was not possible. Trump allegedly asked Merkel more than 10 times why he could not do that.
I don't think Americans still understand what a laughing stock their president is to the rest of the world. This goes beyond personal sympathies and antipathies; he is objectively a very unintelligent person and his exceptionally poor manners make things only worse.
> I don't think Americans still understand what a laughing stock their president is to the rest of the world.
The US is a very big and diverse place with a lot of different people and perspectives. However, most of us actually do understand what a laughing stock the president is. It’s the response that ends up being what we’re judged upon. The responses that perform insane mental gymnastics to absolve him (such as gp) cast most of us in a bad light as thoughtless parrots. There’s also a big nationalist response that leads people to defend a president that they know is an embarrassment because “USA.” There are also those of us who work in silence to educate and allow the embarrassments to carry on humiliating themselves
> I don't think Americans still understand what a laughing stock their president is to the rest of the world.
And, I don't think that Americans yet understand what leaders elsewhere are incrementally factoring in: this is not a one a one-off event. It happened twice. There is every reason to expect that it can happen again - this is a thing that the USA will do from time to time, and so they cannot be relied upon. Decoupling is the wise direction.
e.g.
"The world's trust in America is collapsing. That has consequences"
Trump stans: "actually he's very intelligent, he just has a gift for focusing on what the average voter cares about and talking in their terms rather than those of elites"
Trump: "Not many people know this, but dumb is spelled with a 'b' "
I still find it amazing nobody brings up he "aced it" once.
When a 80 year old "aces" a driving test they still have to take it more times to check for further decline. You only take these tests until you fail them.
Of course you can. Your handlers have to know what they’re doing, of course, but the candidate themselves? They don’t even have to be able to speak coherently (Bush II had some issues in that direction, and of course Trump pretty much just babbles nonsense, for hours, and people put up with it).
> I'm still not sure whether Donald himself is just dumb
Yes.
He has failed upward in an insane way. A combination of his petty exploitation of people's good nature and subordinates desperate to be trickled down upon have propelled him to a level of power and wealth he is not fit for outside of his greediness.
I believe that it simply speaks to his worldview. It's an institution in Norway, so he expects that Norwegian leaders can and should pressure the organization into awarding him. This is what he would do.
Well, that's a pretty good ad from Visit Norway: now I'd really like to visit.
In fact, if they weren't so damn rich and everything so expensive compared to my Southern European way of live, I'd consider moving there just to enjoy the gorgeous nature.
If you can get a job here then that will go quite some way to compensating for the high cost living and housing outside the biggest towns is relatively affordable compared to, say, UK.
Generally building public works becomes quite difficult when you have one dominant sector pushing up wages (oil and gas in this case). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect
When you get a dollar bill, you can actually tell whether it's from oil or not? I can't..
What's really amazing are the lengths by which people justify they cannot have a nice society. It's easy to see, mathematically, the willingness to share has no relation to absolute GDP or where it comes from.
Way to miss the point. Any government can take any share from economy and redistribute it more fairly. There is nothing specific to oil that makes society more equal.
The argument "but Norway has oil" is so tiring. So what, US has a big tech with huge profits. Why can't you have a UBI from ads? Of course you can.
Maybe more what amazing things you you can achieve for your people when the citizens are the shareholders of the economic benefits of your country’s natural resources?
How much better would the US or UK or wherever else be if our wealth of natural resources was shared instead of hoarded by private land-owners and SuperMegaCorp?
Norway drills about 1/4 of the barrels we do here in the US, but reaps more than double the revenue into public coffers. ~78% tax rate in Norway vs a published rate of 21% in the US (and a real rate of <10%).
True but even if it was 100% the amount of money per capita would be tiny compared to Norway. Only some of the smaller gulf states are comparable to Norway.
Increasing the tax rate by ~8x to match Norway would drop 60x to ~8x. What percent of Norway's per capita is from Oil & Gas? I have to imagine that 10% of that is actually still meaningful for an average American.
Government revenue wouldn’t increase by 8x. First increasing oil production in the US over the last 10-20 years required a massive amount of investment. Shale oil is much more expensive to extract so companies simply would have drilled less if they knew they couldn’t profit as much. Developing new wells is only profitable of oil is above $60-70, in Norway it’s up to 40-50% less.
Norway’s reserves are mostly conventional and much cheaper to exploit and develop.
Secondly even if corporations and their share holders get a much bigger share in the US a significant amount of that money ends up in the federal budget anyway.
So idk maybe 2-3x at best? Which of course is still a lot
My home has thirty-eight rooms on thirty-six worlds. No doors: the arched entrances are farcaster portals, a few opaqued with privacy curtains, most open to observation and entry.
...
The architect, a student of the legendary Millon DeHaVre, has incorporated several small jokes into the house’s design: the steps go down to the tower room, of course, but equally droll is the exit from the eyrie which leads to the exercise room on the lowest level of Lusus’s deepest Hive, or perhaps the guest bathroom which consists of toilet, bidet, sink and shower stall on an open, wall-less raft afloat on the violet seaworld of Mare Infinitus.
Just the fact that the level of politics dropped this low and this is being celebrated is something that makes me feel that we are on a 100% downward slope on our civilizational collapse with no turning back.
How tf the most powerful country on earth became such an openly corrupted clownshow?
I don't wanna absolve any of the evil shits in Trump's circle, or among the MAGA crowd, of blame in this. But I think the biggest issue of all is the anglosphere's love for first past the post electoral systems. There's no excuse for FPTP, and while they often have a positive side effect in giving crazies zero representation, they're vulnerable to crazies taking unchecked control of the system.
Sure, MAGA would've been a large congressional embarrassment in a proportional system. But they wouldn't run the show.
I mean clearly Trump, right? Nixon’s behaviour seems fairly minor by comparison, though at that time the Republicans had some residual sense of shame so he had to resign.
It might be that just your knowledge of history is lacking.
Look for example to America (i mean the continent, there is no country named that). Civilisation brought extinction to various indigenous tribes, but in norther and central america. It brought slavery. In a way, we are over that now, aren't we?
Look for example to Europe (I'm so glad that no european country is so full of it and call itself just "Europe"). They had hundreds of wars in a 10 year period. Some small ... but some like the 30 year long war more devastating than even the 2nd world war.Sure, some people there (look into ex-jugoslavia or look into Russia) still think that mass-killing people is good. Oh, did I mention 2nd world war? Then look there, too. And how one society thought they have the right to extinguish Jews, Gypsies, Jehovas Witnesses, mental ill people and basically any political opponent. I still think we can say that we are over such a thing.
Look for example to Asia. There was a country that waged war on China because China was not buying enough Opium. Or look like the asian golden horde devastated with utter cruelty whole (at the time) mega-cities. And they brough the bubonic plague on top of it ...
Or look at Africa. I mentioned the slaver for America ... but actually african tribes captured people from other tribes and sold them. We can't say that slavery is totally abolished in Africa (I heard the Boko Haram does it) --- but certainly not at the scale it used to be.
If you think that society develops backwards, then just looking at how things used to be 100, 200 or 500 years.
Besides aesthetics, there are so many functional aspects that sets apart good from shitty bathrooms.
Things I evaluate when I use public restrooms include: are they 100% touch free (doors, toilets, taps)? Recycled towels for drying or air dryers where your hands invariable touch the unit?
We have it too in The Netherlands "wildplassen", since the Dutch "wild" (as in "in the wild") can indeed also be translated as "wild" (as in uncontrolled), the standard response when caught is "No officer, I was, in fact, peeing very calmly."
The Dutch even have educational public service survival guides, and canal side bars will lend you a free pisriem or piemelpijp to prevent accidental death.
Are they just peeing now? One of my indelible memories in India from 20 years ago is seeing a rickshaw driver in Connaught Place, the heart of historically respectable Delhi and no isolated slum, crouching behind his rickshaw and defecating right there on the street.
Fox News will absolutely have told minihands that it is; they’ve been pushing an “everyone in Scandinavia is a communist trans Muslim” narrative for a decade or so now.
Meanwhile in London we have public... urinals. Just a few minutes from the city center. People urinating in the open. Opposite to where my wife goes to dancing classes. UK is really fucking abysmal sometimes.
I had the same thought! What do they look actually like in Norway‽ Unfortunately, because of the thing we're commenting on, Google image search has been taken over by those kinds of pictures, and none of the actual toilet and sinks!
I like them and I think they're cool, but Norway is a country of 5.6 million people that discovered a massive oil deposit and has an enormous public fund per-capita because of it, so making it a referendum on how bad the United States is is pretty weird. Saudi Arabia has indoor ski resorts too, yes if we had that much oil per person I bet we could have some pretty sweet toilets.
I'm totally fine with the pit toilet design they came up with for the parks. I'm not there to take an instagram poop, I'm there to go hiking.
Why has the title of this post been changed, when HN rules are to use the title of the article? The rename is less engaging and misses the point completely. Moderators did this or?
It's kinda funny. But I'm a Norwegian, and I can tell you that Norway actually is a shitty country in so many ways. It likes to tell the world how fantastic it is, but there are just so many things that are structurally pathetic, weak, or inadequate about it.
Norway has been severely mismanaged for decades now, and soon the chickens are coming home to roost. Sadly, karma will be a bitch.
A detail or two would be welcome so that we could either agree or disagree on firm ground.
I'll grant you it's not perfect, primary education is a bit lacklustre, preparation for an oil free economy is not given enough effort, etc. What were your "structurally pathetic", etc. things?
Really loving such responses to POTUS, I hope they don't spend too much of our tax money on addressing his childishness though, although, in PR this probably has good ROI :)
I can assure you that as a fellow European, both this amazing jab at the Clown in Chief and the beautiful vistas have renewed my interest in travelling to Norway as soon as I can, so I'm pretty sure it will pay off!
I'm new to HN. Does it always get like this before US elections?
I was really enjoying the apolitical vibes, but then that all went off a cliff about two weeks ago. Hard to tell if it's astroturfing or if it's just on people's minds.
I'm surprised you've had an apolitical experience up until two weeks ago. HN has always had politics creep onto the front page, less so during the off-season, but still pretty present IME. Especially prevalent over the last two years. Lots of side conversation bickering in random threads.
It's definitely been increasing compared to what it used to be, but this may also be natural consequence of the fact that big tech itself has become much more "political". It didn't use to be the case that the owners and managers of technology corporations displayed their political preferences quite so brazenly (in the case of Elon Musk, even to the point of taking on a leading government position).
Of course, corporations have always had policy preferences, but those tended to be mostly about taxation and regulation, where debate is less emotionally charged, and compromise is more achievable. These days, though, it seems that tech and political culture have become almost inextricably linked.
Because the us government leaders have become extreme and have also taken drastic steps that effect the economy in bad ways, people naturally post more on this in more places since often people only start caring and talking about things when it effects them economically
It's pretty hard to ignore if your government not only intertwines with the tech industry in ways that no government should with any industry, but even starts changing language used in the field by decree [0] in a 1984-esque way. Us non-USers run into these kind of things on platforms we use everyday (platforms that are gracefully provided by the US, for sure! Although we have our own here in the EU, the US still sets the standard... for now) like [1].
I'm increasingly convinced that awful public restrooms are mostly a North America thing. Travelling in Iceland a few years ago I was shocked at how nice the restrooms at the major gas stations were (N1 stands out). Full-height doors and stall walls, meticulous cleanliness, no weird smells.
At a gas station off the ring road in the middle of nowhere.
Awful everything is an American thing. We are cheap and boring in the name of lining some rich wackos pockets. It’s pathetic how gross most of the bathrooms are at national and state parks. These are the Crown Jewels of outdoor areas and we have disgusting, under maintenanced toilets with single ply (if you’re lucky).
Free market is something America will never see nor know what it is except as funny term people throw around (along with many other “free(dom) _____” but especially market
I wish Americans would stop conflating some small part of Europe with the entirety of Europe. Scandinavia is of course within Europe, btw. Things may be handled vastly different depending on where you are in Europe. One small part of it does not define the rest of Europe. This is why you can't really compare "the EU" to "the USA" (Norway, while being part of Europe, is outside the EU btw). Not directly, anyway. Maybe some day, Europe will be much more homogeneous, but for now it's a pretty culturally, politically and economically diverse continent. Some European countries have epic public toilets. Others, not at all. It all depends on which country or culture you visit.
My conflation comes from the fact that in Canada, you're almost guaranteed to have terrible washrooms at gas stations (and frankly, in most public venues outside of really nice hotels and restos) coast to coast to coast.
A washroom at at an Irving in rural New Brunswick will have the same weird smells and nonspecific grossness as a Petro in North Vancouver.
Granted, I also haven't visited most of Europe since being a kid, though at that time I remember a few Orlans in Poland and Elfs and Mobils in France having a much cleaner vibe than the gas stations back home.
Canadians are kinda like honorary Europeans. :p Your experience sounds like something you should perhaps consider photographing. Serious photography only. Recommend large format. Macro might also be interesting. Eager to see your work!
My claim: Has epic public toilets. Free wasn't part of that claim. But Norway does indeed have epic public toilets that are also free. If you know where to find them. Norway is also a fairly big country. Would you mind driving for four hours to said epic location, with the epic public toilet? If so, enjøy! If not, then... Oh well. Tip for you: Hotels usually have pretty good toilets no matter which country you're in. If you sneak past the concierge, for instance by claiming that you forgot some luggage, perhaps you might enjoy it. Epic view not guaranteed. All the best! :D
Personally, I rather enjoyed the roadside German toilets. Though they aren't free. But for a small fee you get a reasonably clean toilet while driving somewhere.
Worst public toilet experience in Europe? Hands down, Bulgaria. Sorry, Bulgarians, I love you guys, but your toilets....... Ugh!
> 1. The original and locally preferred view is that Iceland, Finland, Faroe Islands, and Greenland are all countries considered to be part of the Nordics, but not technically part of Scandinavia (which would only be Sweden, Norway and Denmark in this case).
> 2. The international and more commonly preferred view is that the Faroe Islands, Finland and Iceland are part of both Scandinavia and the Nordics, leaving Greenland as the only non-Scandinavian country in the Nordics (along with the Norwegian territories of Svalbard, Jan Mayen and Bouvet Island).
I don't think it the more common perspective outside of Scandinavia either. It is common, but lots of people from outside the Nordics are perfectly aware that it annoys us.
In the Nordics the terms are not just "preferred" but unambiguously used this way.
The word I used, "Scandinavian", can be used both to mean "part of the Scandinavian peninsula" and "part of or relating to the culture originating on the Scandinavian peninsula". Calling Iceland Scandinavian easily satisfies the second definition.
You're right, in that Scandinavia is a peninsula and Iceland being a far off island is not part of it.
English is a weird and inexact language where there are a lot of different things words can mean. Seizing upon a single obviously-incorrect definition is not the whole story.
I'm sorry this bothers you; however I fear that you face the same battle as would a German trying to get Americans to call their country "Deutschland" instead of "Germany".
The term Scandinavia includes Denmark, which is not on the peninsula.
The use to include any country other than Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, is something that will tend to really annoy Scandinavians, as we're generally consistent in that use and it's foreigners trying to tell is what names to use for ourselves.
It may be a losing battle, but it's not one we'll give up on.
In Scandinavia or categorically always includes Denmark.
Only English speakers ignorant of the history of Scandinavia sometimes excludes it.
Tjere is no English language authority that has any business redefining what Scandinavia means at all. It's just insulting when English speakers believe they get to decide to redefine the names of regions that don't belong to them. It's rude.
> Tjere[sic] is no English language authority that has any business redefining what Scandinavia means at all.
Right, and none exists.
> In Scandinavia or categorically always includes Denmark.
> Only English speakers ignorant of the history of Scandinavia sometimes excludes it.
These two sentences are contradictory.
Maybe this is a translation error for you where what you mean when you say "Scandinavia" and what others mean when they say "Scandinavia" don't match up, and this upsets you?
Like I said above; what you're doing is tantamount to a German fighting to get English speakers to call their country "Deutschland". Who are we to redefine them as "Germany"? The difference here being that the English word in the "Scandinavia" case actually does have a slightly different meaning than your own native word, but this is upsetting to you because unlike with "Deutschland" it is pronounced the same.
"Scandinavia" is an English word as well despite its resemblance to words in your native tongue. Who are you to tell English speakers what their own language means?
As an English speaker, just stop you're embarrassing us. You didn't know Scandinavian meant what it does. That's ok, just learn. Don't make it like nonplussed, where Americans gave it a new meaning out of stubborn ignorance, just learn
> Don't make it like nonplussed, where Americans gave it a new meaning out of stubborn ignorance
I do believe you are mistaking how the English language works for stubborn ignorance.
There are many dialects of English, and the way I speak mine doesn't change how you speak yours.
It's very colonial of you to think that your way of doing things is the best and must be forcibly pressed upon others. That you feel embarrassed by the (correct!) use of a word in a different dialect means you have some work to do on yourself.
Okay, but ignorance on whose part? Because as has been repeatedly shown via links to dictionaries, wikipedia, etc by both myself and others, using "Scandinavia" to refer to Iceland is not incorrect.
Britannica lays it out for you, and yet you tilt at someone that lives there (vidarh) telling you the same?
> Scandinavia, part of northern Europe, generally held to consist of the two countries of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Norway and Sweden, with the addition of Denmark.
You've been found wanting in your claims.
> Some authorities argue for the inclusion of Finland on geologic and economic grounds and of Iceland and the Faroe Islands on the grounds that their inhabitants speak North Germanic (or Scandinavian) languages related to those of Norway and Sweden. Typically, when these other areas are added to Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, the group is called the "Nordic countries.”
The second quote you posted appears to directly support my stance, and that you think it shows my claim wanting throws your comprehension of the discussion into question.
Britannica is not authoritative, it is one view. It attempts to promulgate One Answer, not to capture the breadth of all English usage in all countries. It hedges itself with words like "generally".
I've never argued that the Britannica interpretation is invalid, just that mine is also valid. Nothing you posted contradicts that.
This all is like a French person getting annoyed at a Quebecois because they're using a different word. Or a Spaniard getting annoyed at an Argentinian. Different places use different words differently, and thinking it isn't so is simultaneously arrogant and ignorant.
Speaking of comprehension.. do you feel that Typically, when these other areas are added to Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, the group is called the "Nordic countries.” supports your claim and not that of the person you're fighting with?
You argued people weren't bringing sources. Now you're arguing your sources are infallible while any that refute you are open to interpretation?
When you feel the need to argue and fight with the people who are from the area you want to rename, then you should consider that as much as you're technically free to include whatever you want in whatever words, that also means I'm technically free to mean you when I use the term asshole. That doesn't mean it isn't rude and insulting.
It's already an English word with multiple meanings. I'm correctly using one of those meanings, in English.
I'm just informing people apparently unaware that the language I speak has that meaning for that word. If they don't care to learn about how the English language works, that is their choice. The learning opportunity is there.
No, the setences are not contradictory. One refers to what Scandinavia includes. One refers to what ignorant English speakers insist it includes.
What you're doing is different to translation, it is insisting on a different grouping. It's rude and insulting.
But even when it comes to translation, then yes, a lot of people take offence at that as well, and you'll notice there is a trend back towards the official spelling of names that has been ongoing for decades for exactly that reason.
No no, both refer to the same thing. Asserting there is one "what Scandinavia includes" is refering to what ignorant unskilled English speakers insist it includes.
I'm insisting on the word refering to multiple groupings in the English language. This is a matter of fact not opinion, and is obvious to anyone who understands how the English language works.
I'm sorry it insults you that other people in another part of the world use a word in their language to refer to a region, when you strongly feel it should refer to a smaller region. If I have further questions about your opinions on words in my language, I'll be sure to ask.
Gas station restrooms in Germany are possibly bearable, but annoying since you need to ask for keys - I have used them about twice in 25 years of driving. Autobahn restrooms are either pretty disgusting or paid.
> I'm increasingly convinced that awful public restrooms are mostly a North America thing.
There used to be a fairly robust rest stop program here, but it's been basically replaced by exits with large gas station chains and fast food.
US and Norway seem to have roughly the same number of government rest stops per mile, not including the more common "commercial exit" I guess you could call it.
Defintely not. Good toilets are a rarity. In NZ they are not fancy, but ALWAYS has toilet paper and generally aren't trashed.
In Eastern Europe almost always stinky (aka people don't clean up after themselves nor does regular cleaning happening) and occasionally have a toilet attendant for whatever insane reason.
Paid toilets in western europe also sounds insane and doesn't help with people thrashing them.
IMO toilet culture is simply a reflection of society - are you able to keep things clean or not.
Isn't this a private gas station? Certainly some brands differentiate on rest room availability and cleanliness (I'm partial to Love's when traveling) but I believe parent was referring to state run rest areas.
Yeah, service areas between between PA-NJ-NY were always pretty good, I miss those today driving here in FL today, where its mostly shitty gas stations where you have to ask for a key to use the restrooms.
You don't get the Norway views but its also not a complete mess.
I still cannot believe I'm living in a timeline where the US president is emotionally a 3-year-old and throws a temper tantrum in the public when his parents don't get him a shiny thing he has done absolutely nothing to deserve.
He is not, remotely, “like them all”, and I think if you are dealing with your remorse this way then, respectfully, you have a little more work to do, not least because it will give you the skills to help you negotiate the current moment where the tech industry has some people who are aberrant in similar ways.
The threat posed by Trump to the USA was evident from the day he announced his candidacy. That his whole presidency would one way or another be about his awful approach to immigration and to Ukraine was evident by the time of the Republican National Convention.
That he would try to overturn an election that he lost was evident before he ran for one.
If you cannot see that this man’s essential pathology is dangerous, I worry you cannot see dangerous parallels in several current tech CEOs (at least two, fairly arguably four or five).
There are many bad and crooked politicians; there are many their colleagues hate. Trump is not a crooked politician except as a side effect.
He’s not the same kind of “bad person” at all; most of us never meet anyone as dangerous.
I think you do need to recognise that you (and don’t get me wrong, millions of others!) voted for someone who is essentially evil (in the literary sense of evil). And really you should have been able to see it, because it wasn’t that hidden.
It shouldn’t stop you voting again because genuinely so few people are like him, though he has found fellow travellers in this administration. (Notably RFK Jr — a shockingly awful man)
But it would be healthy to look at what it was that let you look past his evil.
Because it isn’t about his policies (and because it’s actually quite like turning an oil tanker, especially stuff like undoing tariffs).
Trump is a malignant narcissist. He’s a deeply unusual man.
The Democratic Party had one perennial fringe candidate, Lyndon LaRouche, who was dark-sided in a way Trump is. A really nasty, scary, creepy dude who fairly arguably ran a “business cult”, the LaRouche Group, who was held at arms length by the party.
It has had a few charming “political sociopaths” in the sense of driven people who can make arbitrary choices. It recently efficiently ejected a repeated power abuser (Eric Swalwell).
But nobody like Trump. People like him are rare (and dangerous when they achieve power)
What I'm afraid of if that following the turn toward authoritarianism that we observe worldwide, The Next One will keep all the dreadful legislation that Trump has set up, being more than happy to have them at disposal without having to pay the political cost to create them. Unfortunately, IME, these measures are always a ratchet.
I agree with all you said with two caveats. If someone only watched Fox News, they likely didn’t see all this from Trump especially the first time. Second is that Trump is a product of the growing and unaddressed wealth/equality divide. It’s a similar reason we see the rise of the far right in the EU.
People who watched Fox News saw allllll of Trump’s bad traits; he didn’t hide them from Fox viewers. They saw the racism and xenophobia and they loved it.
Admittedly they did not hear about Paul Manafort’s connections to corrupt pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians, or his debts, or that he was mysteriously working for Trump for free, or that he successfully weakened the RNC platform language on providing weapons to Ukraine. They heard very little about the “adoptions” meeting. Fox didn’t cover that. But then it only got a little bit of coverage in mainstream US TV media because it is incompetent.
> And really you should have been able to see it, because it wasn’t that hidden.
A lot of his voters saw the cruelty and crassness and liked it. Trump was their vessel for vengeance, as one disappointed Florida voter complained during Trump I "he isn't hurting who he is supposed to be hurting"
> The threat posed by Trump to the USA was evident from the day he announced his candidacy.
Why?
Both Democrats and Republicans equally seemed to hate him.
Like there was numerous government shutdowns in his first term because nobody actually liked his agenda. Why was it obvious that eventually both parties would agree to enable him?
Both parties did not enable him. The Dems did not fight him adequately but they did not enable him. He wanted the shutdowns, but the only way not to have a shutdown would have been to make unacceptable concessions. And then he'd have increased his demands and the whole thing would have repeated. Whereas what he got out of the shutdowns is less than he went in with.
You could argue that the left-leaning parts of the media spent a bit too much time laughing at Trump and not enough time worrying about him, but from day one it was obvious who he was and that he had media clout.
Dems gave him a blank check to spend by removing the debt ceiling for his first term.
The minority’s partys job is not to be looking out for the majority. Sure you shouldn’t sandbag but i mean not even republicans liked what he was doing.
Spoken from a place of true entitlement. Voting is a luxury some of the poorest can't afford, and the republicans have made sure to make it even more difficult now that the supreme court gutted the civil rights act.
I'm guessing you'd have a different opinion if you personally had to wait in line for HOURS because the Rs in your district closed down voting stations specifically to make it nearly impossible to actually vote in precincts that are predominantly liberal or people of color. And it has only gotten worse and more widespread since 2020.
I live in Washington State where we have universal mail-in voting. Unless you're homeless, every registered voter gets a ballot delivered to their door, they can fill it out at their leisure, and leave it back in their mailbox.
Turnout is only like 5%-10% higher than the national average. 30% still don't vote in presidential election years, 45% in midterms.
You can go to a physical voting center if you didn't receive a ballot by mail, or if you are having any other issues registering or submitting a ballot. I'll grant you that this a bit harder than going to a standard polling locating in another state because there aren't as many of them here.
That said, there are clearly far more people not voting than there are homeless people who unable to reliably receive ballots.
> Nevertheless, do these poorest really account for a third of all voters?
25% of all eligible voters work jobs like service, retail, or construction where it is very hard if not impossible to get time off work to vote.
Although many states even have laws allowing people to have time off to vote, it's often 2 hours or less, which in many localities is not nearly enough to get through the line.
There are no real blanket voting protections across the country.
Some mail you ballots automatically. Some require you to request a mail in ballot by a certain date. Others will only allow you to vote by mail if you are a senior citizen, have a critical illness or disability, etc. It's a mixed bag, and it's intentionally difficult in some states.
It's actually interesting for me to see that voting is on a Tuesday. Here it's always on Sundays. But as a direct democracy, we also vote a couple of times every year, maybe that's a factor.
Companies should make the day a holiday even if dipshit Trumpublicans won't make it a federal holiday. Consumers shouldn't shop on voting Tuesday and companies that don't shut down their shops on Tuesday should be boycotted. If you are a company that doesn't recognize you've been given more handouts than your employees then f u.
Remember that the republicans have made it very difficult to vote in a lot of states (huge lines, hurdles, etc.) such that only their demographic has time to vote.
This is why they are so against mail voting. It levels the playing field.
Ah yes, the timeline where the US president is a convicted sex offender, 34 times convicted felon, tried to overtake a democratically elected president, stored top secret nuclear secrets in his toilet, orchestrated a cover up of the biggest pedophile ring in history, is an active russian agent, and all we talk about is ...his tantrums....
It's been one of the biggest ways the media has helped him since the beginning. (Including outlets supposedly on the "left".) They spend so much time on how he's a terrible human being that it helps obscure that he is grossly incompetent and unfit to lead anything, much less a country.
Even now, it seems like more time is spent on his looks or his health or his pettiness than on his crimes and his destruction.
To be fair it's a non-political post with a political title which invited a conversation/argument completely unrelated to the contents. I'm not against politics here but this is exactly the low quality flame bait that this site would be better without.
Well, this thread is about a temper tantrum specifically.
Most of those things are internal US politics anyway and while certainly unpleasant to observe as an EU citizen, they just aren't salient on this side of the pond the same way that his international diplomatic efforts are.
I can believe that the head of state of a powerful industrial nation is a massive crook, criminal, terrible human being, what have you. But a toddler who shits his pants with liquid excrement and thinks it's an assertion of dominance? That's beyond my suspension of disbelief.
Yes! Trump is just the symptom of a much more serious disease. Far too many Americans are unable to distinguish propaganda from journalism, unable to critically evaluate the information they receive, where it comes from and who it actually benefits.
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” - Jefferson, 1816.
In the aggregate people are easily manipulated. We've known this since Freud. With mass media and the Citizens United decision, the elite have a much easier time pushing through their agenda.
Obviously there is a lot more going on that can't be easily expressed in a brief forum comment, but it's just not true that the electorate is simply morally corrupt.
That is a high expectation of people being driven by predictable human emotions, lacking the ability to think critically through everything in front of them.
The real issue of our media landscape (information feeds controlled by the elite), probably could have been nipped in the bud some years ago but it may be a little too late for that.
The problem is greatly exacerbated by two-party system. If there was a solid third or fourth choice, then at least people wouldn't be given two bad (in their opinion) choices. Many people don't vote at all, being disillusioned with the voting system.
Can we do something about it? The winner-takes-all Electoral College certainly contributes to two-party system [1] and to narrow margins [2]. There are two states who don't do winner-takes-all (Maine and Nebraska), and we can force all states to split their electoral votes.
Anyone here who spends time around their aging parents and their friends sees what shows up on their phones. The image of an 70+ year old man poolside scrolling through IG reels seeing ragebait about democratic cities is burned into my brain. I wouldn't stand a chance against it either.
Democratic institutional norms and a system relying on informed citizenry will always face new obstacles, but technology companies, particularly social media, adtech analytics, decline in established journalism have done so much damage and contributed to more conspiracy theories. Makes me feel even more icky about firms a16z pouring tons of money into things that undermine these norms… https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49416055
A large part of the voters are gullible idiots who don’t understand when they vote against their own interests. Add a personality cult in the mix and this explains the current situation we’re in.
The crazier thing to me is how the press reports stories like this, it's framed purely as reported speech, with zero analysis on likelihood, or legality of such inducements.
There's a statement about reporters having to look through their own windows when reporting on someone who claims it is raining.
You're describing a couple members of my family except... they don't use any Facebook products. Humans have been surrounding themselves with people that parrot their beliefs for generations; the internet just made it easier for fringe beliefs to reach critical mass.
If it not Facebook, it would be some other medium. What's the alternative, prevent people from talking to each other unsupervised?
My parents and inlaws are all in their late 70s/early 80s. Facebook is an amplifier for the cohort in question...it's an addictive product experience delivered to an audience without lifelong training in how to spot memes vs sincerity, ragebait vs news, and now, AI vs reality.
I think the "it's Facebook" crowd are people who either weren't around for or don't remember before then. I don't remember before the "It's fox news" time but I now suspect there was probably something before that too.
I think a lot of it has to do with the young and idealistic clashing against the old and jaded and both groups yelling at strawmen of each other.
I would add Fox News in tandem with Facebook, but otherwise, yes. One is the spigot, the other is the hose.
My mom is 76 and absolutely believes the most pressing issues are trans high school swimmers and illegal voting and the biases of the Kennedy Center.
Sure, I have my opinions on those but I’m not saying as a society we aren’t allowed to debate those issues. I’m saying that in some news sources, they’re pure ragebait and completely drown out much more pressing and existential topics we should be solving. They’re simple distraction tactics and a continuation of the culture wars from the 80s and 90s.
"Fox news has done to our parents what they thought gangsta rap would do to us". This applies to Facebook as well. I wish they would have stayed in their "I don't know how to use the computer" phase.
Facebook (and social media in general) just accelerated cultural issues that were already there.
The right has seen Democrats (and "leftists" in general) as communists and degenerates for nearly a century. Literally nothing about Trump or Trumpism is new, it just wasn't normalized. There was a consensus reality around politics and culture that had to be maintained which no longer does.
I don't mean to bring low value demagougue, I can't help but ask myself, when Hitler rose to power, then being jailed and then rose to power even more, did the normal people who wanted nothing to do with his bs felt the same?
Those viewpoints are always there in society and many people just waiting for the leader who will harness to come. It is one of the hard pills to swallow about humanity that authoritarianism is a popular movement brought forward with cheers and votes.
I think that this viewpoint is only made evident and amplified by the administrations that came before and did not make politics for the common man but a selected few.
Then the need for a "saviour" gets overwhelming for the negleted masses. Especially in a state with a such a religious imprint.
I would stipulate that the viewpoint is always there as you said but acting on it is a product of bad politics that came before.
As an American it is pure hell. Every day I feel like Marty McFly waking up in the nightmare timeline where Biff controls things. And my own brother voted for Trump 3 times yet absolutely refuses to talk about him under any circumstances.
I used to think that the (2018) book "The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States", which ridicules Donald Trump quite a bit, was overdoing it for dramatic effect...
This is probably inevitable once you combine winner-takes-all voting systems with the organized hysteria that is social networks.
Given that many of us here have helped the latter emerge and dominate the entire societal discourse, we should meditate somberly upon the law of unintended consequences. It certainly did not look this way when it started, but social networks are a major channel for hate and allow the worst of the worst to set standards for everyone else.
Frankly if AI can mitigate this, it would be a positive development and I would tolerate all the sickly-sweet sycophancy if it also steered people away from hating one another with passion.
Yes I can see that; sadly I'm no expert in helping people in your situation but I hope you find your way out - it's truly a terrible thing to be a prisoner of your own mind. Wish you all the best.
Yes, you are missing the context where this is Norway's playful response to Trump petulantly calling Norway "a shithouse country" because it once again didn't award him the Nobel peace prize like it did Obama. Norway is just "Yes, and"-ing the tirade, all judo-like "we are a shithouse country, because our toilets are architectural marvels with unbelievable views"
> Not thinking something is worth what it cost doesn't mean you can't afford it.
Make it the official motto of entire Scandinavia. "This burrito is 30 EUR and a seat in a shuttle coach is 50 EUR, but I have to eat something and get to the airport". In certain circumstances I can even afford a 1000 EUR burrito.
Scandinavia (except for Norway) is no more expensive to tour than the rest of Europe. After Covid they caught up in price.
But you don't go to Norway for the burritos or beer pints or hotels, but for the nature and outdoors experiences. Which are free. So if you really want it, then you can have it without breaking the bank. But if you want a traditional holiday of drinking and eating and guided tours, then Norway isn't it.
A McDonald's Quarter Pounder is 86 NOK (8.30 EUR or 9.34 USD) here and 6 USD in the US, 5.40 EUR in Germany. So yes it is more expensive than the US or Germany but still not outrageously so.
The one hour train journey from where I live to the national airport is 298 NOK (29 EUR, 32 USD).
I think the hundred of thousands of tourists packing the roads all summer didn't get your memo.
You can do expensive vacation or cheap vacation, and both are possible in Norway. You can get a cheap flight and sleep in a tent, or you can drive your car through Sweden.
Norway has everyman's right, so for some holidaymakers that means no accommodation costs. It is also popular to do one's grocery shopping on the Swedish side of the border, or even drive up from Germany with a full load of food for the length of the holiday.
Imagine building such objects and a graceful website only to have the visitor be confronted with "Shit" right at the beginning. Try this Norway: 'Outhouse'.
Since we are talking about shithouses in Norway and international politics, I should mention as a Frenchman the existence of French toilets with the colours of the French flags and the France national motto displayed on top. In front of the Norwegian parliament in Oslo.
https://koro.no/prosjekter/liberte/
It's also the colours of the Norwegian flag (as well as the US flag). I think the flag is quite literally coloured by the time when the flag was created (1820s, post French revolution).
That's true, and these toilets are still clearly a reference to the french flag
According to the link above they are originally French toilets from 1979 :)
Best public restroom density I've ever had was in Japan. Every corner you can find a toilet. So relaxing when you are traveling.
Yet no trash cans. It's a frustrating trade off, especially with all the vending machines. If you don't have a backpack, you're stuck carrying trash. If you do, it gets messy.
Also, this does not hold in Hokkaido. I taught English in Obihiro (well, Makubetsu) and you had to plan your trash and restroom breaks.
For a glimpse into public toilets in Japan, do yourself a favour and watch ‘Perfect Days’.
My favorite movie of all time. First thing I thought of when I saw this.
Perfect Days is in my top 10 movies of all times - a must watch for everyone.
ps - I learned the beautiful word / concept komorebi from the film: "dappled, shimmering light and shadow created when sunlight filters through the leaves of trees"
Some of the most beautiful English-language writing I've read is describing the interplay of light and shadow under a canopy. This is an area where I think having a single word description is a linguistic loss.
I dunno, it could be evocative like something like "petrichor" is in English.
Petrichor isn't very evocative though? It sounds more like it should be a description of a scab or something than a smell, and I guess maybe it rains too much where I live but the smell of rain isn't something I have a strong feeling about, it's just a warning to get inside.
I find having the word "komorebi" to be a conceptual gain. I can more-readily notice this beautiful occurrence because I have this easy-to-grasp concept in my mind.
ps - the existence of this word does not prevent authors from using more words to describe the situation ;)
Great film with great acting and great music. If you feel you lost the connection to your own life, it might be worth a watch.
And right here (U.S.): https://youtu.be/aRwug4G8JjI
Thanks! I was scrolling for this helpful comment with the link!
Correct order is:
1. Watch Perfect Days 2. Go to Japan 3. Do the The Tokyo Toilet [1] _tour_
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tokyo_Toilet
No trashcans anywhere though :)
and yet there’s no trash and the streets are clean.
They're in the konbinis.
Technically you're supposed to wait around and consume your product at the shop where you've bought it, but I didn't have any objections to doing one-in one-out, so as long as I bought a new drink I just dropped the refuse from the last one at the store where I bought the next one.
When I was in Tokyo last year I had cashiers almost mob me for my refuse when they noticed me carrying some from another shop a couple of times.
Many drink vending machines also have a place to deposit empty bottles for recycling.
Patently not true - there are rubbish bins and recycling bins all over the place in Japan.
IDK man, I was just there for 2 weeks in Kobe, Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo, and there were so few publicly accessible trashcans that I started considering photographing the handful I saw (2-3 next to drink vending machines, and one (1) large one in Shinjuku's main luxury-tourism thoroughfare) for their shiny rarity. At one point we were joined by our third member, and we warned them first thing "there are no trash cans in Japan!" and sure enough, about 2 hours later, they were clutching an empty beverage, looking around futilely for somewhere to throw it out...
I was there for a month, a year ago, but this is all just anecdata.
It's well known there isn't an abundance of public rubbish bins, but there are plenty that are adjacent to where you are likely generating rubbish (or recycling) - eg. konbibis.
I suspect spending all your time in the frustratingly tourist-dense triad likely skews your experiences of the country. I haven't been to Kobe, but it's doubtless similarly afflicted, and presumably has responded in a similar way.
> this is all just anecdata.
The absence is well-known and described in places like Wikipedia. Also, how many major capital cities in Japan should I spend time in before it's not 'anecdata'? Should I get a sample of another 10 or 20 Tokyos before you're satisfied?
FWIW, I did a LLM research report about numbers, and they pulled up some interesting cites: https://gwern.net/doc/japan/2026-11-03-gpt6astra-japansmissi... Places like Osaka have deliberately removed their city trashcans (from 5000 to zero since 2007, while Kyoto apparently got rid of 500 recently), and the vending machine trashcans are inadequate because they're only supposed to be for bottles but of course pick up a lot of other trash because what other option is there, while konbinis report problems with people using their tiny little trashcans a lot. There's also some interesting dynamics here where the overuse of trashcans becomes the justification for removing them, thereby externalizing all the costs onto people (especially tourists, according to the Japan Tourism Agency's regular large-scale surveys, where a shockingly large percentage single out trash cans as a problem in their visit).
> but there are plenty that are adjacent to where you are likely generating rubbish (or recycling) - eg. konbibis.
As already noted, I didn't see many adjacent to konbinis. (Inside them, sure, but that is definitionally not a 'public rubbish bin'. That's a private one, and we felt awkward just going into stores to use their trash. Similar to using a store's restroom without any intent of shopping there. Some "plenty"!)
> I suspect spending all your time in the frustratingly tourist-dense triad likely skews your experiences of the country
Yes, I expect it skews my trash bin prevalence too high. Because tourist-heavy places should have more, not less.
Sorry, when I said 'adjacent to where you're generating waste - eg a konbini' - I meant the konbini bin itself. So, adjacent to _you_ (and your new rubbish) - not adjacent to the store. I could perhaps have used the word proximal.
AIUI the history is a bit murky, and it's mostly fiscal, but with some terrorism response - the sarin gas, and then other cities having attacks, and bins being seen as a safety risk.
Here in AU we had a famous (because they're so rare) bombing in the 1980's (the Hilton bombing, for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting) - about which much has been written. I think about 20 years ago, give or take quite a few, there's been a move to transparent public rubbish bins, and I'm sure the placement, shape, etc of those has been considered by planners with those risks in mind.
A related domestic anecdote - from the same era - one of our more interesting politicians in Sydney set about removing public bins, on the premise that their presence increased street litter (you see people put rubbish on top of a full bin, and it's blown away a few moments later).
Back to Japan - it seems to have been mostly a response to citizens avoiding rubbish collection fees at home by taking household waste to public bins. I don't know if that can be correlated tidily to higher density ~= higher tourism areas?
In any case, while we travelled there, it was rare that we had a problem with rubbish, but we were prepared -- we either followed the locals' habit (eat/drink where you buy and immediately ditch in their bin) and/or we were invariably carrying daypacks so we could take waste back to our hotel.
> Yes, I expect it skews my trash bin prevalence too high. Because tourist-heavy places should have more, not less.
I understand why you might think that, but I would suggest that it's not a universally agreed argument.
> So, adjacent to _you_ (and your new rubbish) - not adjacent to the store.
Yes, I figured that is what you meant, which is why I then explained why it still sucks. What if I don't want to eat something entirely then and there in the konbini I bought it...? What if I have trash from some other source?
> it seems to have been mostly a response to citizens avoiding rubbish collection fees at home by taking household waste to public bins.
Yes, that was highlighted in the LLM report. And is an example of the perverse dynamics and poverty mindset, where an entire society is distorted in the name of conservation, where the high usage of trash cans becomes a reason to not have them. (I am still thinking about the multiple 3/4-star luxury hotels I stayed in which provided some of the lowest-quality gas-station-tier toilet paper I have ever used - a false economy all the more unjustifiable given how little toilet paper a guest would use thanks to the wonderful bidets!)
> but we were prepared
Precisely. I was confused for the first week: "how does this work? How are the locals throwing their trash away away? Surely they don't just reorganize their lives around this limitation, and tolerate things that few other societies tolerate, and let an obsession with litter and recycling run their lives and dictate when and where they can eat or even just drink some water on a hot humid day? There must be some trick or convention I am not getting, maybe some trash cans hidden away somewhere under an unfamiliar appearance." And then I realized, "oh. They do. That's how it works." And I too reorganized my life to submit to the trash planners.
The answer to your first question is 'day pack or pocket'.
I find LLMs pay a lot more attention to speculative blog posts about these things, as they out-number actual policy rationale - in the case of the North Sydney (AU) removal of bins, there's surprisingly few resources still surviving (or at least indexed) outside of newspaper interviews, and so I'm not convinced we have access to the full set of motivations and results analysis.
I suspect the Japanese motivation is cleaner, as I noted, and you have also concluded.
I spent a fair bit of time on /r/JapanTravelTips as part of our planning - it's probably the third or fouth most talked about topic there, after 'where to eat in Tokyo' (sigh), and how to use a fast train.
In any case, daypacks are the answer to many challenges, including this one.
Personal anecdote, but I lived in Okinawa for two years, and can state that I _never_ saw a single trash can in the street. Inside buildings, sure, but not outside.
So the claim 'no trashcans anywhere' was patently wrong?
So there's also all the stuff about the wonders of Japanese toilets with heated seats and bidets etc. and I was amazed at how many of what are really low budget toilets in like mid-tier shopping malls, fast food restaurants and rural train stations had the full deal. And how clean they were. Toilets in those kinds of places here are often a mess and it's not uncommon to find the toilet seat missing entirely, so nobody's installing a expensive fancy seat in a public bathroom.
The flip side is if you go off more rural, you can run into the type of toilet that Japanese people consider a "Japanese toilet". Complete opposite of the tech wonders that the rest of the world pictures when they hear Japanese toilet. Because they're pretty much relegated to toilets without much investment at this point, they're also usually much less maintained than other toilets too.
Im always afraid of Japanese toilets, will I sit on it as the robot uprising starts?
I think they don't have enough mechanical degrees of freedom to hurt you. The nozzle can only move forward / back. The seat and hot air blower could overheat and set your house on fire, but nothing could keep you on the toilet while they do that.
This cracked me up:
> If you are a mere mortal like us and can’t afford a gold-plated toilet seat, the Golden loo on the island Senja is the next best thing.
All joking aside, I'm impressed at the beauty and serenity of these public restroom facilities. They are truly architectural works of art.
Kudos to the people who designed and built them!
I hiked Norwegian fjords above Bergen a couple of times in the past, highly recommend it if you ever get a chance.
Also: Norway has one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world, valued at $2.2 trillion; over 50% are investments in US assets; close to $200 billion in US Treasury securities; and is a major shareholder in US corporations, especially across the tech sector.
So well done Norway, this is how you deal with clowns, not debate or argue on social media, but rub their face in your pure awesomness.
That chilling feeling when an intern in South Asia can freeze your trading account with one click.
> Norway has one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world
There were signs in the article lol
Norway has done a great job with what they've been given, but remember that they've had the national equivalent of being born into a rich family - they have had enormous wealth from natural resources in the form of North Sea oil.
Fair, but so does UK, Canada - which might be one of the richest countries in the world in terms of natural resources I think? - and especially US of A.
But how these countries use their resources is quite different.
Thatcher sold the UK's off to her cronies.
The UK had a tiny amount of oil compared to Norway if you adjusted by population so it’s not a fair comparison. Also I’m not sure the share of the revenue the British government was getting was massively much lower than the case in Norway.
The UK government has had a huge income from the North Sea but unlike Norway we didn't invest it. We spent it as fast (or faster) than we received it. When modern Conservatives wax lyrical about Thatcher's economic miracle they seem unaware that it was mostly just oil revenue.
True, but the point is that no matter what the UK did it could never have been in the same position as Norway. Simply too many people and not enough oil.
Realistically even if they managed to accumulate a significant amount of money there would have been a lot of societal pressure to spend all of that during various economic downturns. How could a government that’s sitting on a fat pile of money ever justify cutting spending on the NHS or social services?
To be fair US produces around 5-6x less oil per capita than Norway so it’s not exactly a fair comparison.
OK, so the US' sovereign wealth fund would be 5-6x less per capita than Norway's, so less effective, but nonetheless capable of benefitting Americans substantially.
Except that ... it doesn't exist, because, from the beginning, we've given it all away to Big Oil, who spend some of it making sure that politicians get elected who keep supporting Big Oil.
So yes, a very fair comparison.
I mean you do have a perfectly valid point but I don’t see something like that working in countries like US or UK (or other countries with large trade deficits). The money would have just been used for general spending and at best would result in lower deficits. Which is of course better than nothing. It’s just that it would be simple politically infeasible and very unpopular to not spend it.
To be fair US is extremely rich in other natural resources other than oil. It is not the richest country in the world because Americans are such misers. Norways oil money could go to some Exxon or such and regular Norwegian could live in poverty.
At least we didn’t have to steal it from the original inhabitants.
… Oh wait …
Also their taxes are proportional to wealth and everyone pays them, so good public service. It's not that hard to understand and there is no need to circle around it.
You say it like it's given that natural resources wealth is distributed for population like it's in Norway. Its not. It takes a lot of work. Otherwise you get shithole countries where warlords/corporations/mafia take over control of resources and enrich them selves instead of raising global wellbeing.
Look at Venezuela.
Bad example because that country has been under American economic sanctions for the past 12 years.
If you can't trade with the rest of the world your life gets hard very quickly
And all of their problems started 12 years ago? That seems unlikely.
You can only compare Norway to richest of the gulf states like UAE, though (e.g. Saudi Arabia produces less oil per capita than Norway). Put 10x more people in Norway and keep the same amount of oil like in many of those “shithole” countries and you’d end up with a slightly different situation
Only slightly.
The major differentiator for Norway is policy, not oil quantity.
UAE and Qatar are doing quite well. Oman, Kuwait, SA, Brunei maybe not so much but there are obviously various socio-economic causes for that. I wouldn’t necessarily classify them as shitholes, though (as long as you are a male citizen at least..)
No other countries are comparable.
To be fair I think a good counterpoint is Denmark, they are doing about as well as Norway despite not having such massive amounts of oil. So surely Norway is underperforming despite the fact that they had a massive head start?
Norway won the lottery, sure they invested their winnings instead of wasting them but they are still playing on easy mode, you can count the number of countries which could have done the same with your fingers.
Exactly. They managed to use it to generate wealth inside their own country instead of spaffing it into the capital of the country next next door like Scotland.
Norway is hardly unique in having abundant natural resources. Other countries have larger oil reserves. What's unique is the fact that instead of letting a few large corporations, or corrupt mafia, get rich off of them with "trickle down economics" benefitting the rest of the country, the government is in charge of it and uses it for the public benefit.
"But socialism is bad!!"
I still believe Estonian restrooms are prettier. Norway has a shitload of public money, but Estonia very good designers
Examples?
One example. Dug the hole myself.
https://ibb.co/5X009NcX
It's common practice to dig a new hole 10m further and move the shithouse over.
The picture is not very relaxing!
It's inviting you to Lenin
This reminds me of that scene in Babylon Berlin where a communist hides from the hit squad in the uhm tank of such a toilet.
Schindlers List has a scene sort of tile that too.
So does Vikings. And Slumdog Millionaire!
Yet there is no TV Tropes entry for that particular turn of events. Curious!
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SecretSewerSocie...
or
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AbsurdlySpacious...
These are near misses. I also found some in my research, but nothing about hiding in the sewage tank.
Almost definitionally, any amount of money spent on these kinds of washrooms would be a shitload, no?
Still seems wasteful to build everything like a brick shithouse.
Norwegians are honorary Australians apparently, we love a good shithouse.
Same energy as ‘CU in the NT’.
> Norwegians are honorary Australians apparently LOL, why?
I understand shortened attention spans but maybe consider reading the entire sentence of a single sentence comment before replying.
I'm from Australia and always assumed the word "shithouse" was mostly used here, and at first glance assumed this post was an amusing joke by an Aussie (though - being somewhat cutesy with a Trump-ism?) rather than a Norwegian government website.
Though I might be wrong - I doubt this word comes up in tech blogs and academic conferences very often?
We claim too many things as our own when, in fact, they're not.
As the sentence says, because Australians and Norwegians both have an affinity for shithouses.
Wtf is affinity to shithouses?
A cultural love of the dunny.
eg: https://www.absolutely-australia.com.au/culture-and-history/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenny_(2006_film)
I Hope Your Chooks Turn Into Emus (and kick your dunny down) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpg22KSrswc
Just as Australians share a love of the BBQ with parts of the USofA.
Nope, sorry, Norwegians actually tax mining / energy corporations (so the government has money to spend on... designer dunnies!), instead of just giving away their non-renewable natural resources to billionaires for free. That's un-Australian!
Their resource company is effectively the government and reducing their climate impact is basically impossible without killing their economy. I think we'd rather not be in that position.
Because it's somehow easier to kill the private companies instead of public ones? Show us.
> In 2019, fossil fuels contributed 48 percent of Norway’s export revenues of around $53 billion. And that number is much, much larger today, thanks to ballooning demand for natural gas in the wake of the Ukraine war.
How do you propose they kill the public company exactly? At least in Australia, govt. revenue is barely reliant on fossil fuels.
Norway is more reliant on oil/gas money than almost every country on Earth. e.g. to its small population it produces significantly more oil per capita than Saudi Arabia. So yeah for instance it is/was way easier for Britain to kill its privatized oil industry.
Neither Norway nor Saudi Arabia will ever voluntarily kill its oil industry. That will only happen when other countries stop buying.
However, Saudi Arabia needs higher prices than Norway to balance the budget, so Saudi Arabia will likely cut first.
That's such an appalling misrepresentation of what happens here in Australia that even Konrad Benjamin himself would correct you. State, Territory and Federal governments all take revenue for non-renewable resource extraction.
Politicians*
You're aware of the revolving door between politics and resources right? You can't take a bribe in advance, but you sure as hell can take a kickback later.
My favorite Australian idiom is "built like a brick shithouse" (of a guy being very muscular).
I did not know that was an Aussie thing (heard in England often enough)
As per usual, that’s British slang which was carried over to Australia. Almost all slang phrases Americans associate with Australia are British in origin and still in wide use, as you’d expect given the history of both countries.
It's also commonly used in the US. I've never heard it of it being associated with the commonwealth at all - based on the vulgarity I always assumed it was a native production.
As an Australian, I can confirm that basically everything about Australian culture (good and bad) is just British, sometimes with a little twist.
My favourite is “Going off like a frog in a sock”
But there are many to choose from. “Face like a dropped pie” is another gem.
While I can understand this for muscular guys, I never got why it can also be used to mean a very curvaceous/attractive woman.
>I never got why it can also be used to mean a very curvaceous/attractive woman.
Q: How do you build with bricks?
A: You stack them.
Yep! From the headline, I assumed that Norway had made its own version of https://toiletmap.gov.au/
Trump's gargantuan adult diapers serve as his portable shithouse.
Nominally. Public restrooms along major highways are dire in terms of cleanliness.
This is the problem with HN not doing humor. You are always the one who does not grok it...
"Trump calls Norway a ‘shithouse country’" - https://www.euronews.com/video/2026/10/27/trump-calls-norway...
Similarly cool reprisal from Trump 1 (made by a Dutch comedian, which was then many countries copied): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELD2AwFN9Nc
> This is the problem with HN not doing humor. You are always the one who does not grok it...
Rather: many people who are not US citizens or don't live in the USA don't really care about the gossip around Donald Trump's most recent tantrum.
Thank you - I did not understand what was going on / what the tie back was.
I find it fascinating that the cost of these gorgeous places is roughly the same as the cost to build a public restroom in San Francisco. Notably the architects in SF are much more expensive than those in Norway. Certainly quite interesting.
Old Rome had the best shithouses though. A whole row of toilets which made the experience very social and intimate.
Not sure it'd be my cup of tea. I prefer a bit of privacy. This was the one I checked out in Pompeii https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/10/14/47/8e/...
The ones at Sketch near me are funky https://live.staticflickr.com/881/42433327302_280548ddd2_b.j...
I would request one for my office, it would be good to have a deep, group discussion with our CTO while we all poop together in the open.
Plus, there were persistent stories of terrifying beasts that lived in the sewers and bit people’s bottoms. Of course those stories could have just been invented by people who were waiting on line, to help people get done quicker.
Everyone would meet up later in the vomitorium
"Vomitorium" is an architectural feature, vomit meaning 'to quickly discharge'.
On the topic of great shithouses, I highly recommend the 2023 Japanese drama Perfect Days. It's about a quiet man that works for Tokyo Toilets, cleaning a set of architecturally interesting public toilets around the Shibuya district. The movie itself is compelling -- a fascinating study of a man and purpose, very similar to Paterson (2016)[1] -- but the whole thing is like taking a trip to Tokyo, with an enormous number of gorgeous shots of fascinating scenes. Also a lot of shots of someone cleaning toilets.
[1] The directors of both movies are friends, and interestingly Paterson ends with the protagonist talking to a man from Tokyo who came to visit Paterson, as a poetry fan of William Carlos Williams. It is coincidence, but it does make it feel like they're the same universe.
Just scroll normally!
Agreed, the website is totally fucked
It's the dumb attempt to use video backgrounds and the varying ways that mobile devices choose to display those videos.
Real title
> ARE THESE THE WORLD’S BEST SHITHOUSES?
What happened to
> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.
Holly molly, Norway #1 rank on the front page. Let's gooo!
Ro Ro Ro :D
They can’t possibly be the best because I went into the public bathroom out our local playground last week at 10am and there was a gigantic steaming turd perfectly deposited on the seat of the all-metal prison-style toilet. My 3 year old was as stunned as I was. To think, some local resident was thoughtful enough to bless us with this gift.
Are you telling me my Oakland California toilets are somehow inferior? I find this hard to believe…
If you want to visit Norway come to the west coast if you want fjords and scenery - not the capital in the east.
Surprisingly few pictures of the facilities interiors.
This is prompted by Trump saying "Norway has become a shithouse country, actually" after he was not awarded the Nobel prize for peace.
Because he is too Trump to realize that Norway has no saying in the award
Wait what? Who has a say then?
It is the committee that is based in Norway. Doesn’t mean it is Norway the country. Just like US does not control the decisions of UN just because UN is located in US.
Well, it's a bit more muddled than that, to quote wikipedia:
" Five members are appointed by the Norwegian Parliament. In his will, Alfred Nobel tasked the parliament of Norway with selecting the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize. Despite its members being appointed by Parliament, the committee is a private body tasked with awarding a private prize. In recent decades, most committee members were retired politicians. "
Still, not something the government can directly influence. The last ruling head of government to try that was the Nazi Quisling.
A diverse Committee that makes its own decisions, and politicians abstain from influencing it. Because it is intended to be independent, and people see value in that, so they honour it. Nobody needs from the outside to have a say, because politics and the committee trust each other to do the right thing. It's alien, I know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Nobel_Committee
If you read that article you'll see:
> In January 1944 an attempt by the Quisling government to take over the functions of the Nobel Committee led to the resignation of Jahn and other committee members. The Swedish consulate-general in Oslo formally took over the management of the Foundation's Oslo property on behalf of the Nobel Foundation.[14]
Norway won't play Trump's games. Just because the government appoints members to a committee doesn't mean it will (or even can) fire those people to force a decision it wants.
I don't disagree, but the name is pretty much where trump gets Norway from. He doesn't comprehend that our heads of states dont have the power to influence this in the first place.
I'm still not sure whether Donald himself is just dumb or whether he knows he can get away with saying things because his voters are dumb. Neither option looks good in an international context...
Not only the Norway thing, but he also (pretends?) doesn't understand how NATO works. Being angry about NATO members, a defensive treaty, not joining an offensive campaign in Iran.
You cannot win US presidency twice while being dumb.
You obviously can. An EU delegation had to explain the EU to Trump using colored cards as if he was a small child and it took many attempts before he got it. So the deciding quality must be something else.
You're assuming that understanding it was his priority in the first place. It wasn't.
Imagine a painter saying "these software engineers are profoundly stupid, I spent a whole day explaining to one how different color combinations are differently interpreted by different cultures and he still wouldn't get it".
That happened when Trump was discussing trade issues with the EU. Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission at the time, had to prepare colorful flash cards in simple language to explain the issues to Trump, because Trump didn't know at all what he was talking about.
A similar thing happened between him and Merkel, when Trump didn't understand that the EU was a unified trading bloc with a common market and that making separate trade agreements with Germany was not possible. Trump allegedly asked Merkel more than 10 times why he could not do that.
I don't think Americans still understand what a laughing stock their president is to the rest of the world. This goes beyond personal sympathies and antipathies; he is objectively a very unintelligent person and his exceptionally poor manners make things only worse.
> I don't think Americans still understand what a laughing stock their president is to the rest of the world.
The US is a very big and diverse place with a lot of different people and perspectives. However, most of us actually do understand what a laughing stock the president is. It’s the response that ends up being what we’re judged upon. The responses that perform insane mental gymnastics to absolve him (such as gp) cast most of us in a bad light as thoughtless parrots. There’s also a big nationalist response that leads people to defend a president that they know is an embarrassment because “USA.” There are also those of us who work in silence to educate and allow the embarrassments to carry on humiliating themselves
> I don't think Americans still understand what a laughing stock their president is to the rest of the world.
And, I don't think that Americans yet understand what leaders elsewhere are incrementally factoring in: this is not a one a one-off event. It happened twice. There is every reason to expect that it can happen again - this is a thing that the USA will do from time to time, and so they cannot be relied upon. Decoupling is the wise direction.
e.g.
"The world's trust in America is collapsing. That has consequences"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBcHwbuOKXU
Imagine an 80 year old bragging about acing screening tests for Alzheimer’s as if they were a Wonderlic, then shitting his pants in the Oval Office
Trump stans: "actually he's very intelligent, he just has a gift for focusing on what the average voter cares about and talking in their terms rather than those of elites"
Trump: "Not many people know this, but dumb is spelled with a 'b' "
I still find it amazing nobody brings up he "aced it" once.
When a 80 year old "aces" a driving test they still have to take it more times to check for further decline. You only take these tests until you fail them.
Exhibit A: George W. Bush
This says more about how much you value intelligence than whether it takes intelligence to get elected in the US.
Of course you can. Your handlers have to know what they’re doing, of course, but the candidate themselves? They don’t even have to be able to speak coherently (Bush II had some issues in that direction, and of course Trump pretty much just babbles nonsense, for hours, and people put up with it).
The midterm election just proved once and for all that Trump is an idiot.
> I'm still not sure whether Donald himself is just dumb
Yes.
He has failed upward in an insane way. A combination of his petty exploitation of people's good nature and subordinates desperate to be trickled down upon have propelled him to a level of power and wealth he is not fit for outside of his greediness.
I believe that it simply speaks to his worldview. It's an institution in Norway, so he expects that Norwegian leaders can and should pressure the organization into awarding him. This is what he would do.
yeah fair point, he'd probably tell them the nobel prize management should be handed to another country or something
Well, that's a pretty good ad from Visit Norway: now I'd really like to visit.
In fact, if they weren't so damn rich and everything so expensive compared to my Southern European way of live, I'd consider moving there just to enjoy the gorgeous nature.
If you can get a job here then that will go quite some way to compensating for the high cost living and housing outside the biggest towns is relatively affordable compared to, say, UK.
And that's, ladies and gentlemen, how you promote yourself as a tourist destination!
In the US, you would get squaters living there the moment it gets opened to the public
In Norway they would be evicted pretty promptly.
It is amazing what you can do with oil money.
Generally building public works becomes quite difficult when you have one dominant sector pushing up wages (oil and gas in this case). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect
When you get a dollar bill, you can actually tell whether it's from oil or not? I can't..
What's really amazing are the lengths by which people justify they cannot have a nice society. It's easy to see, mathematically, the willingness to share has no relation to absolute GDP or where it comes from.
It's public money. I assume the government keeps track.
Way to miss the point. Any government can take any share from economy and redistribute it more fairly. There is nothing specific to oil that makes society more equal.
The argument "but Norway has oil" is so tiring. So what, US has a big tech with huge profits. Why can't you have a UBI from ads? Of course you can.
btw, Norway is the only country in the world which didn't get Dutch disease.
It's super impressive, isn't it!
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease
Your linked evidence contradicts you
Nope, “The Economic Effects of North Sea Oil on the Manufacturing Sector” != Dutch d.
Maybe more what amazing things you you can achieve for your people when the citizens are the shareholders of the economic benefits of your country’s natural resources?
100%.
How much better would the US or UK or wherever else be if our wealth of natural resources was shared instead of hoarded by private land-owners and SuperMegaCorp?
Norway drills about 1/4 of the barrels we do here in the US, but reaps more than double the revenue into public coffers. ~78% tax rate in Norway vs a published rate of 21% in the US (and a real rate of <10%).
True but even if it was 100% the amount of money per capita would be tiny compared to Norway. Only some of the smaller gulf states are comparable to Norway.
IIUC, USA is ~60x more people than Norway.
Increasing the tax rate by ~8x to match Norway would drop 60x to ~8x. What percent of Norway's per capita is from Oil & Gas? I have to imagine that 10% of that is actually still meaningful for an average American.
Government revenue wouldn’t increase by 8x. First increasing oil production in the US over the last 10-20 years required a massive amount of investment. Shale oil is much more expensive to extract so companies simply would have drilled less if they knew they couldn’t profit as much. Developing new wells is only profitable of oil is above $60-70, in Norway it’s up to 40-50% less.
Norway’s reserves are mostly conventional and much cheaper to exploit and develop.
Secondly even if corporations and their share holders get a much bigger share in the US a significant amount of that money ends up in the federal budget anyway.
So idk maybe 2-3x at best? Which of course is still a lot
I’d apply this to all extractive industry. Not just oil.
No, it's amazing what you can do with oil money _that you decide to nationalize the oil industry and use it for the public good_.
The US has plenty of oil money too.
finally: unshittification
This reminds me of Rick's secret pooping spot in Rick and Morty
From Hyperion by Dan Simmons:
No way you could have those in North America -- people would ruin them. Which is a shame because they are pretty place to be a king/queen for a bit.
Just the fact that the level of politics dropped this low and this is being celebrated is something that makes me feel that we are on a 100% downward slope on our civilizational collapse with no turning back. How tf the most powerful country on earth became such an openly corrupted clownshow?
It's a literal shitpost. I think you're being hyperbolic.
My outcry has zero to no connection to this post.
I don't wanna absolve any of the evil shits in Trump's circle, or among the MAGA crowd, of blame in this. But I think the biggest issue of all is the anglosphere's love for first past the post electoral systems. There's no excuse for FPTP, and while they often have a positive side effect in giving crazies zero representation, they're vulnerable to crazies taking unchecked control of the system.
Sure, MAGA would've been a large congressional embarrassment in a proportional system. But they wouldn't run the show.
Slowly (GW Bush and Trump 1), then suddenly (Trump 2).
Who was worse, Trump or Nixon?
Nixon had some sense of shame, and a party that wasn’t willing to ignore, much less enable, his crimes.
I mean clearly Trump, right? Nixon’s behaviour seems fairly minor by comparison, though at that time the Republicans had some residual sense of shame so he had to resign.
Because people voted a clown
It might be that just your knowledge of history is lacking.
Look for example to America (i mean the continent, there is no country named that). Civilisation brought extinction to various indigenous tribes, but in norther and central america. It brought slavery. In a way, we are over that now, aren't we?
Look for example to Europe (I'm so glad that no european country is so full of it and call itself just "Europe"). They had hundreds of wars in a 10 year period. Some small ... but some like the 30 year long war more devastating than even the 2nd world war.Sure, some people there (look into ex-jugoslavia or look into Russia) still think that mass-killing people is good. Oh, did I mention 2nd world war? Then look there, too. And how one society thought they have the right to extinguish Jews, Gypsies, Jehovas Witnesses, mental ill people and basically any political opponent. I still think we can say that we are over such a thing.
Look for example to Asia. There was a country that waged war on China because China was not buying enough Opium. Or look like the asian golden horde devastated with utter cruelty whole (at the time) mega-cities. And they brough the bubonic plague on top of it ...
Or look at Africa. I mentioned the slaver for America ... but actually african tribes captured people from other tribes and sold them. We can't say that slavery is totally abolished in Africa (I heard the Boko Haram does it) --- but certainly not at the scale it used to be.
If you think that society develops backwards, then just looking at how things used to be 100, 200 or 500 years.
Back in the 1980s, The Miami Herald's "Tropic Magazine" ran a couple of competitions for most scenic outhouse in the world.
(That is, an outhouse with a great view, which is different than finding ones which are architectural masterpieces.)
I can find no trace of those results online. Perhaps someone here has better success?
Besides aesthetics, there are so many functional aspects that sets apart good from shitty bathrooms.
Things I evaluate when I use public restrooms include: are they 100% touch free (doors, toilets, taps)? Recycled towels for drying or air dryers where your hands invariable touch the unit?
etc.
Recycled towels?
100% touch free? How does that work?
there's a stack of fresh towels and a basket for dropping used ones into
India please kindly follow. Indians peeing on the roads should be put in the prisons for life.
Tell the Germans, they have a word for it: Wildpinkeln.
We have it too in The Netherlands "wildplassen", since the Dutch "wild" (as in "in the wild") can indeed also be translated as "wild" (as in uncontrolled), the standard response when caught is "No officer, I was, in fact, peeing very calmly."
I've heard a few English parents tell their children to take a "wild wee".
The Dutch even have educational public service survival guides, and canal side bars will lend you a free pisriem or piemelpijp to prevent accidental death.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrgWp9_J1UY
Hey! A Pinkelbaum can use some nitrogen.
There's usually a little more dignity involved, with people generally at least trying to be discreet.
Are they just peeing now? One of my indelible memories in India from 20 years ago is seeing a rickshaw driver in Connaught Place, the heart of historically respectable Delhi and no isolated slum, crouching behind his rickshaw and defecating right there on the street.
Trump got confused and said shithouse (which makes no sense) instead of shithole, his original term for basically any non-white country.
> Trump got confused and said shithouse (which makes no sense) instead of shithole, his original term for basically any non-white country.
Is Norway really a non-white country? ;-)
Fox News will absolutely have told minihands that it is; they’ve been pushing an “everyone in Scandinavia is a communist trans Muslim” narrative for a decade or so now.
As an Englishman I can confirm they are built like brick shithouses.
Wish the text tiles were not so intrusive and obstructive.
Who wants a pretty view occluded by a large white rectangle!
No Javascript, no cookies:
https://web.archive.org/web/20201120004703if_/https://www.vi...
No Javascript, no cookies, no "bot" protection:
https://web.archive.org/web/20261104174428if_/https://www.vi...
Meanwhile in London we have public... urinals. Just a few minutes from the city center. People urinating in the open. Opposite to where my wife goes to dancing classes. UK is really fucking abysmal sometimes.
Just came back from a vacation in the UK and I was amazed at how clean everything is. Not a single dog poo or cigarette butt anywhere.
The UK is a large place.
We have had very different experiences of the UK.
Must have been a short holiday if you didn't see any of that. But it is much better than it used to be.
Sure, fine, but have you ever been to a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike?
The most shitest shithouse is clearly white and has a orange gremlin in it
To drop a massive log in house with a nice view is a thing. A good thing.
I've been to about half of those, and can confirm their awesomeness!
Great marketing, a wonderful country, and beautiful shithouses.
Did I miss something? Where are the pics of the actual toilet?
I had the same thought! What do they look actually like in Norway‽ Unfortunately, because of the thing we're commenting on, Google image search has been taken over by those kinds of pictures, and none of the actual toilet and sinks!
I had to disable my adblock
I like them and I think they're cool, but Norway is a country of 5.6 million people that discovered a massive oil deposit and has an enormous public fund per-capita because of it, so making it a referendum on how bad the United States is is pretty weird. Saudi Arabia has indoor ski resorts too, yes if we had that much oil per person I bet we could have some pretty sweet toilets.
I'm totally fine with the pit toilet design they came up with for the parks. I'm not there to take an instagram poop, I'm there to go hiking.
Valuable perspective.
That said, our public restrooms in big American cities are, in many cases, a disgrace. Vandalized, disgusting, and sparse/inacessible
But outside of cities (and even in some cities) it’s totally fine
Original title is far better
Why has the title of this post been changed, when HN rules are to use the title of the article? The rename is less engaging and misses the point completely. Moderators did this or?
Somewhat relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47207284
Lots of shit coming out of Norway lately.
As seen in Rick and Morty
Intrusive thoughts tell me to defecate straight down the scenic balcony.
Shithouses and SHITTY NAGSCREENS I will never agree to ...
So Rick’s toilet is real and there are more than one
It's kinda funny. But I'm a Norwegian, and I can tell you that Norway actually is a shitty country in so many ways. It likes to tell the world how fantastic it is, but there are just so many things that are structurally pathetic, weak, or inadequate about it.
Norway has been severely mismanaged for decades now, and soon the chickens are coming home to roost. Sadly, karma will be a bitch.
A detail or two would be welcome so that we could either agree or disagree on firm ground.
I'll grant you it's not perfect, primary education is a bit lacklustre, preparation for an oil free economy is not given enough effort, etc. What were your "structurally pathetic", etc. things?
the dignity of public toilets is a reflection of society
The US should take better care of people with mental illness... oh wait
That's some good shit right there!
MSGA lol
who gives a shit, really
Really loving such responses to POTUS, I hope they don't spend too much of our tax money on addressing his childishness though, although, in PR this probably has good ROI :)
I can assure you that as a fellow European, both this amazing jab at the Clown in Chief and the beautiful vistas have renewed my interest in travelling to Norway as soon as I can, so I'm pretty sure it will pay off!
Front page of HN…
I'm new to HN. Does it always get like this before US elections?
I was really enjoying the apolitical vibes, but then that all went off a cliff about two weeks ago. Hard to tell if it's astroturfing or if it's just on people's minds.
I'm surprised you've had an apolitical experience up until two weeks ago. HN has always had politics creep onto the front page, less so during the off-season, but still pretty present IME. Especially prevalent over the last two years. Lots of side conversation bickering in random threads.
I guess I just expect a high baseline from...everything else. It's hard to avoid these days.
It's definitely been increasing compared to what it used to be, but this may also be natural consequence of the fact that big tech itself has become much more "political". It didn't use to be the case that the owners and managers of technology corporations displayed their political preferences quite so brazenly (in the case of Elon Musk, even to the point of taking on a leading government position).
Of course, corporations have always had policy preferences, but those tended to be mostly about taxation and regulation, where debate is less emotionally charged, and compromise is more achievable. These days, though, it seems that tech and political culture have become almost inextricably linked.
We're (sadly) living in interesting times…
Because the us government leaders have become extreme and have also taken drastic steps that effect the economy in bad ways, people naturally post more on this in more places since often people only start caring and talking about things when it effects them economically
Apolitical vibes is a luxury that's hard to keep up given the level of insanity all around us.
It's pretty hard to ignore if your government not only intertwines with the tech industry in ways that no government should with any industry, but even starts changing language used in the field by decree [0] in a 1984-esque way. Us non-USers run into these kind of things on platforms we use everyday (platforms that are gracefully provided by the US, for sure! Although we have our own here in the EU, the US still sets the standard... for now) like [1].
[0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/09/inau...
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
I would like to visit now. Makes America’s rest stops look even more pathetic and cheap when I see this grandeur.
I'm increasingly convinced that awful public restrooms are mostly a North America thing. Travelling in Iceland a few years ago I was shocked at how nice the restrooms at the major gas stations were (N1 stands out). Full-height doors and stall walls, meticulous cleanliness, no weird smells.
At a gas station off the ring road in the middle of nowhere.
Awful everything is an American thing. We are cheap and boring in the name of lining some rich wackos pockets. It’s pathetic how gross most of the bathrooms are at national and state parks. These are the Crown Jewels of outdoor areas and we have disgusting, under maintenanced toilets with single ply (if you’re lucky).
> Awful everything is an American thing.
There is no need to be like that about it. The free market is going to come along and solve it, any day now.
Free market is something America will never see nor know what it is except as funny term people throw around (along with many other “free(dom) _____” but especially market
Your observation is a Scandinavia thing.
Mainland Europe's free public restrooms are not nicer than the US.
I wish Americans would stop conflating some small part of Europe with the entirety of Europe. Scandinavia is of course within Europe, btw. Things may be handled vastly different depending on where you are in Europe. One small part of it does not define the rest of Europe. This is why you can't really compare "the EU" to "the USA" (Norway, while being part of Europe, is outside the EU btw). Not directly, anyway. Maybe some day, Europe will be much more homogeneous, but for now it's a pretty culturally, politically and economically diverse continent. Some European countries have epic public toilets. Others, not at all. It all depends on which country or culture you visit.
My conflation comes from the fact that in Canada, you're almost guaranteed to have terrible washrooms at gas stations (and frankly, in most public venues outside of really nice hotels and restos) coast to coast to coast.
A washroom at at an Irving in rural New Brunswick will have the same weird smells and nonspecific grossness as a Petro in North Vancouver.
Granted, I also haven't visited most of Europe since being a kid, though at that time I remember a few Orlans in Poland and Elfs and Mobils in France having a much cleaner vibe than the gas stations back home.
So Canada is extrapolated to all of “mainland Europe”?
I didn’t actually mention Europe at all in my original comment, but I guess?
I’m not above admitting I’m not up to date on how the public washroom situation in the rest of Europe has changed in the past 15-20 years, though.
I assumed you were adding on to the original comment’s argument given it’s all in direct reply to it, but got it, not what you meant
Canadians are kinda like honorary Europeans. :p Your experience sounds like something you should perhaps consider photographing. Serious photography only. Recommend large format. Macro might also be interesting. Eager to see your work!
> Some European countries have epic public toilets
Which mainland European countries have epic free public toilets as a rule rather than as an exception?
I'll admit it's possible these countries exist, just that they aren't any of the ones I've been to.
Since the mainland European countries I haven't been to are mostly either microstates (which I'm not counting) or post-Soviet, I doubt your claim.
My claim: Has epic public toilets. Free wasn't part of that claim. But Norway does indeed have epic public toilets that are also free. If you know where to find them. Norway is also a fairly big country. Would you mind driving for four hours to said epic location, with the epic public toilet? If so, enjøy! If not, then... Oh well. Tip for you: Hotels usually have pretty good toilets no matter which country you're in. If you sneak past the concierge, for instance by claiming that you forgot some luggage, perhaps you might enjoy it. Epic view not guaranteed. All the best! :D
Personally, I rather enjoyed the roadside German toilets. Though they aren't free. But for a small fee you get a reasonably clean toilet while driving somewhere.
Worst public toilet experience in Europe? Hands down, Bulgaria. Sorry, Bulgarians, I love you guys, but your toilets....... Ugh!
Iceland is not Scandinavian, but it is Nordic (as a Scandinavian, English speakers conflating the Nordics and Scandinavia is a pet peeve)
Interesting. From the Internet:
> 1. The original and locally preferred view is that Iceland, Finland, Faroe Islands, and Greenland are all countries considered to be part of the Nordics, but not technically part of Scandinavia (which would only be Sweden, Norway and Denmark in this case).
> 2. The international and more commonly preferred view is that the Faroe Islands, Finland and Iceland are part of both Scandinavia and the Nordics, leaving Greenland as the only non-Scandinavian country in the Nordics (along with the Norwegian territories of Svalbard, Jan Mayen and Bouvet Island).
https://nordicperspective.com/facts/nordic-vs-scandinavian#w...
I don't think it the more common perspective outside of Scandinavia either. It is common, but lots of people from outside the Nordics are perfectly aware that it annoys us.
In the Nordics the terms are not just "preferred" but unambiguously used this way.
The word I used, "Scandinavian", can be used both to mean "part of the Scandinavian peninsula" and "part of or relating to the culture originating on the Scandinavian peninsula". Calling Iceland Scandinavian easily satisfies the second definition.
You're right, in that Scandinavia is a peninsula and Iceland being a far off island is not part of it.
English is a weird and inexact language where there are a lot of different things words can mean. Seizing upon a single obviously-incorrect definition is not the whole story.
I'm sorry this bothers you; however I fear that you face the same battle as would a German trying to get Americans to call their country "Deutschland" instead of "Germany".
The term Scandinavia includes Denmark, which is not on the peninsula.
The use to include any country other than Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, is something that will tend to really annoy Scandinavians, as we're generally consistent in that use and it's foreigners trying to tell is what names to use for ourselves.
It may be a losing battle, but it's not one we'll give up on.
The term Scandinavia sometimes includes Denmark. Sometimes not, especially if referring to the peninsula.
There's no English language authority dictating what the word "Scandinavia" does/does not mean. The language is its usage.
The first wikipedia paragraph does a good job breaking it down: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavia
In Scandinavia or categorically always includes Denmark.
Only English speakers ignorant of the history of Scandinavia sometimes excludes it.
Tjere is no English language authority that has any business redefining what Scandinavia means at all. It's just insulting when English speakers believe they get to decide to redefine the names of regions that don't belong to them. It's rude.
> Tjere[sic] is no English language authority that has any business redefining what Scandinavia means at all.
Right, and none exists.
> In Scandinavia or categorically always includes Denmark.
> Only English speakers ignorant of the history of Scandinavia sometimes excludes it.
These two sentences are contradictory.
Maybe this is a translation error for you where what you mean when you say "Scandinavia" and what others mean when they say "Scandinavia" don't match up, and this upsets you?
Like I said above; what you're doing is tantamount to a German fighting to get English speakers to call their country "Deutschland". Who are we to redefine them as "Germany"? The difference here being that the English word in the "Scandinavia" case actually does have a slightly different meaning than your own native word, but this is upsetting to you because unlike with "Deutschland" it is pronounced the same.
"Scandinavia" is an English word as well despite its resemblance to words in your native tongue. Who are you to tell English speakers what their own language means?
As an English speaker, just stop you're embarrassing us. You didn't know Scandinavian meant what it does. That's ok, just learn. Don't make it like nonplussed, where Americans gave it a new meaning out of stubborn ignorance, just learn
> Don't make it like nonplussed, where Americans gave it a new meaning out of stubborn ignorance
I do believe you are mistaking how the English language works for stubborn ignorance.
There are many dialects of English, and the way I speak mine doesn't change how you speak yours.
It's very colonial of you to think that your way of doing things is the best and must be forcibly pressed upon others. That you feel embarrassed by the (correct!) use of a word in a different dialect means you have some work to do on yourself.
There is no 'dialect' at play here, only ignorance.
Okay, but ignorance on whose part? Because as has been repeatedly shown via links to dictionaries, wikipedia, etc by both myself and others, using "Scandinavia" to refer to Iceland is not incorrect.
It would be ignorant to assert it was.
Britannica lays it out for you, and yet you tilt at someone that lives there (vidarh) telling you the same?
> Scandinavia, part of northern Europe, generally held to consist of the two countries of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Norway and Sweden, with the addition of Denmark.
You've been found wanting in your claims.
> Some authorities argue for the inclusion of Finland on geologic and economic grounds and of Iceland and the Faroe Islands on the grounds that their inhabitants speak North Germanic (or Scandinavian) languages related to those of Norway and Sweden. Typically, when these other areas are added to Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, the group is called the "Nordic countries.”
https://www.britannica.com/place/Scandinavia
The second quote you posted appears to directly support my stance, and that you think it shows my claim wanting throws your comprehension of the discussion into question.
Britannica is not authoritative, it is one view. It attempts to promulgate One Answer, not to capture the breadth of all English usage in all countries. It hedges itself with words like "generally".
I've never argued that the Britannica interpretation is invalid, just that mine is also valid. Nothing you posted contradicts that.
This all is like a French person getting annoyed at a Quebecois because they're using a different word. Or a Spaniard getting annoyed at an Argentinian. Different places use different words differently, and thinking it isn't so is simultaneously arrogant and ignorant.
Speaking of comprehension.. do you feel that Typically, when these other areas are added to Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, the group is called the "Nordic countries.” supports your claim and not that of the person you're fighting with?
You argued people weren't bringing sources. Now you're arguing your sources are infallible while any that refute you are open to interpretation?
Yes, that quote's use of "typically" and not "invariably" supports my claim.
I'm not arguing my sources aren't infalliable, I'm just arguing that they exist among other right answers.
I'm certain you are 0/2 comments in actually understanding what I'm saying. Read the second to last paragraph of my last comment please.
When you feel the need to argue and fight with the people who are from the area you want to rename, then you should consider that as much as you're technically free to include whatever you want in whatever words, that also means I'm technically free to mean you when I use the term asshole. That doesn't mean it isn't rude and insulting.
I'm not renaming anything.
It's already an English word with multiple meanings. I'm correctly using one of those meanings, in English.
I'm just informing people apparently unaware that the language I speak has that meaning for that word. If they don't care to learn about how the English language works, that is their choice. The learning opportunity is there.
No, the setences are not contradictory. One refers to what Scandinavia includes. One refers to what ignorant English speakers insist it includes.
What you're doing is different to translation, it is insisting on a different grouping. It's rude and insulting.
But even when it comes to translation, then yes, a lot of people take offence at that as well, and you'll notice there is a trend back towards the official spelling of names that has been ongoing for decades for exactly that reason.
No no, both refer to the same thing. Asserting there is one "what Scandinavia includes" is refering to what ignorant unskilled English speakers insist it includes.
I'm insisting on the word refering to multiple groupings in the English language. This is a matter of fact not opinion, and is obvious to anyone who understands how the English language works.
I'm sorry it insults you that other people in another part of the world use a word in their language to refer to a region, when you strongly feel it should refer to a smaller region. If I have further questions about your opinions on words in my language, I'll be sure to ask.
Gas station restrooms in Germany are possibly bearable, but annoying since you need to ask for keys - I have used them about twice in 25 years of driving. Autobahn restrooms are either pretty disgusting or paid.
That tracks, I was actually shocked by the state of the average public restroom in Switzerland.
> I'm increasingly convinced that awful public restrooms are mostly a North America thing.
There used to be a fairly robust rest stop program here, but it's been basically replaced by exits with large gas station chains and fast food.
US and Norway seem to have roughly the same number of government rest stops per mile, not including the more common "commercial exit" I guess you could call it.
Trust me, it can be worse.
Coming off a trip from mainland China and the bathroom culture there makes NA look _good_, and that's saying something.
Defintely not. Good toilets are a rarity. In NZ they are not fancy, but ALWAYS has toilet paper and generally aren't trashed.
In Eastern Europe almost always stinky (aka people don't clean up after themselves nor does regular cleaning happening) and occasionally have a toilet attendant for whatever insane reason.
Paid toilets in western europe also sounds insane and doesn't help with people thrashing them.
IMO toilet culture is simply a reflection of society - are you able to keep things clean or not.
Some states have really nice rest stops along the freeway. I think it's variable
https://buc-ees.com/
Isn't this a private gas station? Certainly some brands differentiate on rest room availability and cleanliness (I'm partial to Love's when traveling) but I believe parent was referring to state run rest areas.
Yeah, service areas between between PA-NJ-NY were always pretty good, I miss those today driving here in FL today, where its mostly shitty gas stations where you have to ask for a key to use the restrooms.
You don't get the Norway views but its also not a complete mess.
The ones on the New Jersey Turnpike are pretty ok. The Jon Bon Jovi rest stop is a trip.
https://www.nj.com/news/2021/12/the-24-thoughts-i-had-while-...
The ROI is shit
I still cannot believe I'm living in a timeline where the US president is emotionally a 3-year-old and throws a temper tantrum in the public when his parents don't get him a shiny thing he has done absolutely nothing to deserve.
It is like satire. I wonder if he can try bullying the olympics into giving him a 100m gold medal next.
Trump's dream is to have his name spelled in gold on the surface of the sun. He's not smart enough to know it's impossible, though.
Nobody tell him. NASA's doing pretty well at the moment.
Except for all the canceled projects like returning samples from Mars.
He will suggest to go at night...
Don't give them ideas...
The Olympics 100m Peace Prize is being designed as we speak
I cant believe 50% of the "free world" (umerca) put him in that place, THATs the scary part
They did that, twice.
I did it, once — most remorseful. Like them all: he's full of shit.
Also donated to Bernie, once – then ShareBlue gave it to a Clinton.
This political whoredom works best against our own interests.
He is much more full of shit.
Of course. People say they have never seen someone so full of shit!
He is not, remotely, “like them all”, and I think if you are dealing with your remorse this way then, respectfully, you have a little more work to do, not least because it will give you the skills to help you negotiate the current moment where the tech industry has some people who are aberrant in similar ways.
The threat posed by Trump to the USA was evident from the day he announced his candidacy. That his whole presidency would one way or another be about his awful approach to immigration and to Ukraine was evident by the time of the Republican National Convention.
That he would try to overturn an election that he lost was evident before he ran for one.
If you cannot see that this man’s essential pathology is dangerous, I worry you cannot see dangerous parallels in several current tech CEOs (at least two, fairly arguably four or five).
There are many bad and crooked politicians; there are many their colleagues hate. Trump is not a crooked politician except as a side effect.
He’s not the same kind of “bad person” at all; most of us never meet anyone as dangerous.
I think you do need to recognise that you (and don’t get me wrong, millions of others!) voted for someone who is essentially evil (in the literary sense of evil). And really you should have been able to see it, because it wasn’t that hidden.
It shouldn’t stop you voting again because genuinely so few people are like him, though he has found fellow travellers in this administration. (Notably RFK Jr — a shockingly awful man)
But it would be healthy to look at what it was that let you look past his evil.
> He is not, remotely, “like them all”
We will know this only if The Next One reverses all his policies.
No, if the next one did absolutely nothing, they would be much better
No, we won’t.
Because it isn’t about his policies (and because it’s actually quite like turning an oil tanker, especially stuff like undoing tariffs).
Trump is a malignant narcissist. He’s a deeply unusual man.
The Democratic Party had one perennial fringe candidate, Lyndon LaRouche, who was dark-sided in a way Trump is. A really nasty, scary, creepy dude who fairly arguably ran a “business cult”, the LaRouche Group, who was held at arms length by the party.
It has had a few charming “political sociopaths” in the sense of driven people who can make arbitrary choices. It recently efficiently ejected a repeated power abuser (Eric Swalwell).
But nobody like Trump. People like him are rare (and dangerous when they achieve power)
What I'm afraid of if that following the turn toward authoritarianism that we observe worldwide, The Next One will keep all the dreadful legislation that Trump has set up, being more than happy to have them at disposal without having to pay the political cost to create them. Unfortunately, IME, these measures are always a ratchet.
But I hope I'll be proven wrong.
>What I'm afraid of if that following the turn toward authoritarianism that we observe worldwide
Dear SCOTex Brother:
Your brothers are ashamed of you ("right now").
–Insanely yours, –halfTwin
I agree with all you said with two caveats. If someone only watched Fox News, they likely didn’t see all this from Trump especially the first time. Second is that Trump is a product of the growing and unaddressed wealth/equality divide. It’s a similar reason we see the rise of the far right in the EU.
People who watched Fox News saw allllll of Trump’s bad traits; he didn’t hide them from Fox viewers. They saw the racism and xenophobia and they loved it.
Admittedly they did not hear about Paul Manafort’s connections to corrupt pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians, or his debts, or that he was mysteriously working for Trump for free, or that he successfully weakened the RNC platform language on providing weapons to Ukraine. They heard very little about the “adoptions” meeting. Fox didn’t cover that. But then it only got a little bit of coverage in mainstream US TV media because it is incompetent.
>If someone only watched Fox News
The majority US voter demographic is geriatric – same demographic grew us up on televisions, then never turnt them off.
Fortunately, Fox News' own demographic cannot live forever...
Can't wait to see 24/7 curated news disappear with the landline coax networks.
> And really you should have been able to see it, because it wasn’t that hidden.
A lot of his voters saw the cruelty and crassness and liked it. Trump was their vessel for vengeance, as one disappointed Florida voter complained during Trump I "he isn't hurting who he is supposed to be hurting"
> The threat posed by Trump to the USA was evident from the day he announced his candidacy.
Why?
Both Democrats and Republicans equally seemed to hate him.
Like there was numerous government shutdowns in his first term because nobody actually liked his agenda. Why was it obvious that eventually both parties would agree to enable him?
https://time.com/3923128/donald-trump-announcement-speech/
Both parties did not enable him. The Dems did not fight him adequately but they did not enable him. He wanted the shutdowns, but the only way not to have a shutdown would have been to make unacceptable concessions. And then he'd have increased his demands and the whole thing would have repeated. Whereas what he got out of the shutdowns is less than he went in with.
You could argue that the left-leaning parts of the media spent a bit too much time laughing at Trump and not enough time worrying about him, but from day one it was obvious who he was and that he had media clout.
Dems gave him a blank check to spend by removing the debt ceiling for his first term.
The minority’s partys job is not to be looking out for the majority. Sure you shouldn’t sandbag but i mean not even republicans liked what he was doing.
Here is their secret: they are looking out for themselves!
I mean it didn’t work. Any republican that didn’t capitulate to him got primaried out.
If they had shown how bad he was then he’d be a negative endorsement like he is now.
Not "any," some. But in general, I agree with His endorsement as kiss of death.
Far less than 50%.
31.6% of all eligible voters.
36% of eligible voters didn't even vote in 2024.
He who remains silent seems to consent.
Spoken from a place of true entitlement. Voting is a luxury some of the poorest can't afford, and the republicans have made sure to make it even more difficult now that the supreme court gutted the civil rights act.
I'm guessing you'd have a different opinion if you personally had to wait in line for HOURS because the Rs in your district closed down voting stations specifically to make it nearly impossible to actually vote in precincts that are predominantly liberal or people of color. And it has only gotten worse and more widespread since 2020.
https://www.npr.org/2020/10/17/924527679/why-do-nonwhite-geo...
> Voting is a luxury some of the poorest can't afford
They always can take the matter in their hands. Worked wonders in Europe the last fifteen years.
I don't buy it.
I live in Washington State where we have universal mail-in voting. Unless you're homeless, every registered voter gets a ballot delivered to their door, they can fill it out at their leisure, and leave it back in their mailbox.
Turnout is only like 5%-10% higher than the national average. 30% still don't vote in presidential election years, 45% in midterms.
Typically the homeless are poor. How do they get their mail in ballots?
Is the argument that 45% of Washingtonians (the portion that doesn't vote in midterm elections) are homeless?
You can go to a physical voting center if you didn't receive a ballot by mail, or if you are having any other issues registering or submitting a ballot. I'll grant you that this a bit harder than going to a standard polling locating in another state because there aren't as many of them here.
That said, there are clearly far more people not voting than there are homeless people who unable to reliably receive ballots.
> Spoken from a place of true entitlement.
Maybe. I live in Switzerland. Here even the poor can afford to vote.
Nevertheless, do these poorest really account for a third of all voters?
> Nevertheless, do these poorest really account for a third of all voters?
25% of all eligible voters work jobs like service, retail, or construction where it is very hard if not impossible to get time off work to vote.
Although many states even have laws allowing people to have time off to vote, it's often 2 hours or less, which in many localities is not nearly enough to get through the line.
There are no real blanket voting protections across the country.
I thought they could vote by post?
Every state has different laws on this.
Some mail you ballots automatically. Some require you to request a mail in ballot by a certain date. Others will only allow you to vote by mail if you are a senior citizen, have a critical illness or disability, etc. It's a mixed bag, and it's intentionally difficult in some states.
It's actually interesting for me to see that voting is on a Tuesday. Here it's always on Sundays. But as a direct democracy, we also vote a couple of times every year, maybe that's a factor.
Companies should make the day a holiday even if dipshit Trumpublicans won't make it a federal holiday. Consumers shouldn't shop on voting Tuesday and companies that don't shut down their shops on Tuesday should be boycotted. If you are a company that doesn't recognize you've been given more handouts than your employees then f u.
Remember that the republicans have made it very difficult to vote in a lot of states (huge lines, hurdles, etc.) such that only their demographic has time to vote.
This is why they are so against mail voting. It levels the playing field.
They did not. Trump won the electoral college, but failed to obtain 50% or more of the popular vote both times.
Ah yes, the timeline where the US president is a convicted sex offender, 34 times convicted felon, tried to overtake a democratically elected president, stored top secret nuclear secrets in his toilet, orchestrated a cover up of the biggest pedophile ring in history, is an active russian agent, and all we talk about is ...his tantrums....
It's been one of the biggest ways the media has helped him since the beginning. (Including outlets supposedly on the "left".) They spend so much time on how he's a terrible human being that it helps obscure that he is grossly incompetent and unfit to lead anything, much less a country.
Even now, it seems like more time is spent on his looks or his health or his pettiness than on his crimes and his destruction.
Well you can see how, the 100% factual post you replied to, is being downvoted by the MAGA crowd here.
To be fair it's a non-political post with a political title which invited a conversation/argument completely unrelated to the contents. I'm not against politics here but this is exactly the low quality flame bait that this site would be better without.
Well, this thread is about a temper tantrum specifically.
Most of those things are internal US politics anyway and while certainly unpleasant to observe as an EU citizen, they just aren't salient on this side of the pond the same way that his international diplomatic efforts are.
I can believe that the head of state of a powerful industrial nation is a massive crook, criminal, terrible human being, what have you. But a toddler who shits his pants with liquid excrement and thinks it's an assertion of dominance? That's beyond my suspension of disbelief.
As an American, this says more about the American people than it does about a single loser.
Yes! Trump is just the symptom of a much more serious disease. Far too many Americans are unable to distinguish propaganda from journalism, unable to critically evaluate the information they receive, where it comes from and who it actually benefits.
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” - Jefferson, 1816.
> Far too many Americans
This is neither a particularly contemporary problem nor an American one.
Yes, see AfD in Germany, Vox in Spain, …
The American elite, specifically. The American people in general don't have much say in the matter anymore.
Somebody has to pull the lever in the voting booth.
In the aggregate people are easily manipulated. We've known this since Freud. With mass media and the Citizens United decision, the elite have a much easier time pushing through their agenda. Obviously there is a lot more going on that can't be easily expressed in a brief forum comment, but it's just not true that the electorate is simply morally corrupt.
As far as I'm aware, regular Americans outnumber American elites and only have one vote each regardless. The people elected Trump, not the elites.
Even if the elites are the only ones funding political campaigns, we expected more from regular Americans to vote on facts, rather than ads.
That is a high expectation of people being driven by predictable human emotions, lacking the ability to think critically through everything in front of them.
The real issue of our media landscape (information feeds controlled by the elite), probably could have been nipped in the bud some years ago but it may be a little too late for that.
The most important thing any country can do in this time is break up media conglomerates and broad function internet companies.
The problem is greatly exacerbated by two-party system. If there was a solid third or fourth choice, then at least people wouldn't be given two bad (in their opinion) choices. Many people don't vote at all, being disillusioned with the voting system.
Can we do something about it? The winner-takes-all Electoral College certainly contributes to two-party system [1] and to narrow margins [2]. There are two states who don't do winner-takes-all (Maine and Nebraska), and we can force all states to split their electoral votes.
[1] https://www2.law.temple.edu/lppp/electoral-college-two-party...
[2] https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article-abstract/108/3/727/11948...
Anyone here who spends time around their aging parents and their friends sees what shows up on their phones. The image of an 70+ year old man poolside scrolling through IG reels seeing ragebait about democratic cities is burned into my brain. I wouldn't stand a chance against it either.
I truly believe we're here because of Facebook.
Democratic institutional norms and a system relying on informed citizenry will always face new obstacles, but technology companies, particularly social media, adtech analytics, decline in established journalism have done so much damage and contributed to more conspiracy theories. Makes me feel even more icky about firms a16z pouring tons of money into things that undermine these norms… https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49416055
I think as a species we were destined to invent The Algorithm regardless.
I got a FB message from an older relative urging me to vote for the President's party so we could all get the $5000 checks he promised.
The craziest thing is he promised this the last time in some form and these people just … forgot
A large part of the voters are gullible idiots who don’t understand when they vote against their own interests. Add a personality cult in the mix and this explains the current situation we’re in.
> A large part of the voters are gullible idiots who don’t understand when they vote against their own interests.
Asserted without proof.
The crazier thing to me is how the press reports stories like this, it's framed purely as reported speech, with zero analysis on likelihood, or legality of such inducements.
There's a statement about reporters having to look through their own windows when reporting on someone who claims it is raining.
You're describing a couple members of my family except... they don't use any Facebook products. Humans have been surrounding themselves with people that parrot their beliefs for generations; the internet just made it easier for fringe beliefs to reach critical mass.
If it not Facebook, it would be some other medium. What's the alternative, prevent people from talking to each other unsupervised?
My parents and inlaws are all in their late 70s/early 80s. Facebook is an amplifier for the cohort in question...it's an addictive product experience delivered to an audience without lifelong training in how to spot memes vs sincerity, ragebait vs news, and now, AI vs reality.
I think the "it's Facebook" crowd are people who either weren't around for or don't remember before then. I don't remember before the "It's fox news" time but I now suspect there was probably something before that too.
I think a lot of it has to do with the young and idealistic clashing against the old and jaded and both groups yelling at strawmen of each other.
> but I now suspect there was probably something before that too.
"It's shortwave radio"
I would add Fox News in tandem with Facebook, but otherwise, yes. One is the spigot, the other is the hose.
My mom is 76 and absolutely believes the most pressing issues are trans high school swimmers and illegal voting and the biases of the Kennedy Center.
Sure, I have my opinions on those but I’m not saying as a society we aren’t allowed to debate those issues. I’m saying that in some news sources, they’re pure ragebait and completely drown out much more pressing and existential topics we should be solving. They’re simple distraction tactics and a continuation of the culture wars from the 80s and 90s.
There are issues that animate the left that are similarly trivial and en vogue.
How important is it right now to a very vocal group of people that you attach the word genocide to gaza?
> I truly believe we're here because of Facebook.
"Fox news has done to our parents what they thought gangsta rap would do to us". This applies to Facebook as well. I wish they would have stayed in their "I don't know how to use the computer" phase.
Facebook (and social media in general) just accelerated cultural issues that were already there.
The right has seen Democrats (and "leftists" in general) as communists and degenerates for nearly a century. Literally nothing about Trump or Trumpism is new, it just wasn't normalized. There was a consensus reality around politics and culture that had to be maintained which no longer does.
I don't mean to bring low value demagougue, I can't help but ask myself, when Hitler rose to power, then being jailed and then rose to power even more, did the normal people who wanted nothing to do with his bs felt the same?
Those viewpoints are always there in society and many people just waiting for the leader who will harness to come. It is one of the hard pills to swallow about humanity that authoritarianism is a popular movement brought forward with cheers and votes.
I think that this viewpoint is only made evident and amplified by the administrations that came before and did not make politics for the common man but a selected few. Then the need for a "saviour" gets overwhelming for the negleted masses. Especially in a state with a such a religious imprint. I would stipulate that the viewpoint is always there as you said but acting on it is a product of bad politics that came before.
As an American it is pure hell. Every day I feel like Marty McFly waking up in the nightmare timeline where Biff controls things. And my own brother voted for Trump 3 times yet absolutely refuses to talk about him under any circumstances.
I used to think that the (2018) book "The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States", which ridicules Donald Trump quite a bit, was overdoing it for dramatic effect...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_2020_Commission_Report_on_...
This is probably inevitable once you combine winner-takes-all voting systems with the organized hysteria that is social networks.
Given that many of us here have helped the latter emerge and dominate the entire societal discourse, we should meditate somberly upon the law of unintended consequences. It certainly did not look this way when it started, but social networks are a major channel for hate and allow the worst of the worst to set standards for everyone else.
Frankly if AI can mitigate this, it would be a positive development and I would tolerate all the sickly-sweet sycophancy if it also steered people away from hating one another with passion.
Just because you can't understand it doesn't mean it's not real.
Have you ever taken into account that perhaps it's you who has failed to understand anything about what is actually going on?
Don? Is that you?
Yes honey, you want so more Trump derangement syndrome? I have an infinite supply of it for you.
Yes I can see that; sadly I'm no expert in helping people in your situation but I hope you find your way out - it's truly a terrible thing to be a prisoner of your own mind. Wish you all the best.
What has this got to do with a post about Norwegian public toilets? Did you comment on the wrong post? Am I missing something?
Yes, you are missing the context where this is Norway's playful response to Trump petulantly calling Norway "a shithouse country" because it once again didn't award him the Nobel peace prize like it did Obama. Norway is just "Yes, and"-ing the tirade, all judo-like "we are a shithouse country, because our toilets are architectural marvels with unbelievable views"
I don't think many Americans visiting Norway can fit into the bathroom there.
Bad accessibility, not just for the fatties but also elderlies.
Let's see if they'll still act cute if they're actually confronted by their notorious neighbor one day.
After being confronted over and over by the notorious US, I think that would be peanuts for them.
Last I checked Norway doesn't have a border with the US ;)
Finland?
(I assume you mean Russia, but given that it’s only barely holding it together in Ukraine, it probably won’t be invading _Norway_ anytime soon).
Few in Europe can afford visiting these "free" Norwegian restrooms.
Almost everybody can afford it if they really want to.
Not thinking something is worth what it cost doesn't mean you can't afford it.
> Not thinking something is worth what it cost doesn't mean you can't afford it.
Make it the official motto of entire Scandinavia. "This burrito is 30 EUR and a seat in a shuttle coach is 50 EUR, but I have to eat something and get to the airport". In certain circumstances I can even afford a 1000 EUR burrito.
Scandinavia (except for Norway) is no more expensive to tour than the rest of Europe. After Covid they caught up in price.
But you don't go to Norway for the burritos or beer pints or hotels, but for the nature and outdoors experiences. Which are free. So if you really want it, then you can have it without breaking the bank. But if you want a traditional holiday of drinking and eating and guided tours, then Norway isn't it.
Except that none of those things are true.
A McDonald's Quarter Pounder is 86 NOK (8.30 EUR or 9.34 USD) here and 6 USD in the US, 5.40 EUR in Germany. So yes it is more expensive than the US or Germany but still not outrageously so.
The one hour train journey from where I live to the national airport is 298 NOK (29 EUR, 32 USD).
I don't think it's a problem to find the price range mentioned by me, don't even have to look for premium.
I think the hundred of thousands of tourists packing the roads all summer didn't get your memo.
You can do expensive vacation or cheap vacation, and both are possible in Norway. You can get a cheap flight and sleep in a tent, or you can drive your car through Sweden.
Or you can fly in and stay on expensive hotels.
Norway has everyman's right, so for some holidaymakers that means no accommodation costs. It is also popular to do one's grocery shopping on the Swedish side of the border, or even drive up from Germany with a full load of food for the length of the holiday.
Imagine building such objects and a graceful website only to have the visitor be confronted with "Shit" right at the beginning. Try this Norway: 'Outhouse'.
You're missing a bit of political context.