Interesting, thanks! I certainly will look this up.

You could probably also test if this is the source by disturbing some forest soil with a shovel to see if it momentarily intensifies, maybe

Ideally, I would like to drag one of the students working at Oulu University’s botanical garden outside when the smelll happens to ask them what it is - assuming they can even smell it at all, which at this point I’m not convinced everybody can. But that’s unlikely to happen 🙂

Next best thing will be indeed to see if it comes from the soil. Even without disturbing it, if it comes from the ground, it should smell more strongly closer to the ground. That would be a good indication.

If this is the case though, it would probably take a couple years of planting many to get the smell near your house strongly, though I imagine using forest soil near birch would help speed up the process.

I have about 1500 square meters of forest at the back, and it’s completely natural forest ground and shrubs there, and maybe 30 pine trees. But 10 of them need felling and I want to replace a few of them with birch tree, because I like birch trees better visually regardless of what they may or may not smell. But if they are indeed the source of that smell, I might fell more pines and plant more birch trees.

The lumberjack is coming in October to fell the trees. That’s why I’m trying to figure out whether it’s worth planting more birch now.

The red states are like the far-flung French overseas territories in the carribeans and in the Indian ocean: they complain loudly about France and keep talking about independence all the time, but the last thing they want is to actually get it, because then they’d become the ultra-poor shithole countries they truly are.

A union of red states only would be a third-rate nation. And it’s not hypothetical: the Confederacy was notably poorer than the North, even though they had slavery. A new confederacy today would be even poorer.

How is it called again when bunch of states feel the need to sidestep the Union and band together to form a sort of separate union, I wonder? Cessation? Excession? Circumcision? I just can’t remember…

It’s high time California became its own state. And if other like-minded states want to join the party, so much the better. The current Union is just shitting the bed at this point.

Yes, and Bernie Sanders is old as dirt yet a decent politician in touch with young people.

But they’re exceptions. We need AOCs and Mamdanis and Sanders as the norm in politics.

That’s not a bad idea. But then you have to outlaw money in politics, because as soon as money is in the picture, it invariably favors rich old dudes, or people with connections that can only be formed over time.

In other words, nothing like this will happen in America in my grandchildren’s lifetime, let alone my children’s or mine.

That’s an illusion.

America 7 millenia ago might have been empty enough of people to be peaceful (though I highly doubt that) but people died young of easily treatable diseases because they didn’t have vacc…

Nevermind…

If you’re not bothered by your conscience and you’re not worried about being put on trial after the Trump regime collapses, you can join the American Gestapo: they’ll give you all of $50k to leave your humanity at the door and turn into a beast, and ruining other people’s lives by kidnapping them in the street at gunpoint like a common thug isn’t really work.

That’s the tragedy of government: rulers and lawmakers need to be old enough to be wise, but age also disconnects them from the needs of the world of today.

As I got older and I reflected on all the grumpy old men waving at the clouds and complaining constantly about this-or-that being better in their days when I was a kid, I realized why.

Now I’m the old man and I avoid becoming bitter my reminding myself of the following truth:

• When you’re a kid, the world belongs to the grown-ups - your parents, adults of authority around you.

• When you reach teenage years, the world starts being yours: you’ve developed tastes for things people your age do and create. As you go through puberty, your identity is reinforced with things of your time, and other young people your age with which you do the same things. You all have a bright future in front of you.

• When you get out of puberty, hopefully you get our of school and start working: the world is fully yours. The trendy things in the world are things you find trendy too. Other people speak like you. You’re not a powerless kid and you’re not weaker old guy/gall yet. You’re fully part of it and it suits you. You may not like the world, but it’s yours. It shares your values and your values are what makes the world go round at that point in time . Your personality, your cultural identity and the cultural norms you respect, and your value system are fully developed, and a pure product of their time.

• And then they stay that way. But the world keeps evolving. Slowly but surely, the things you learned become deprecated. The things you like become old. The way you speak becomes strange to younger ears. The values you believe in no longer apply. The world slowly shifts beneath your feet, but it’s happening very slowly, year after year, until…

• You reach an age at which you’re very visibly and obviously out of sync with the world. Even you notice it at this point.

And here lies the trap: you can either reflect on how the world has changed and acknowledge that it’s not your world anymore, but it’s younger people’s now. People who are now the age you once were: it’s their turn to have a go at owning the world. You’re just in it for the ride.

Or you can take refuge in your old values, wallow in the old things you’ve liked for decades, and bitch and moan about the world going to shit. It’s not going to shit, but it feels that way to you. It’s easier to reject the world around you than admit it’s just not how you like it anymore, but it’s poisonous: it turns you into a bitter person everybody hates.

I choose to ignore the things I dislike - which, at this point, constitute a lot more of the world than the things I like from the past, from my youth. But I also choose to not pass judgment on them because they’re not from my world: they’re from today’s youth’s world, and I have no say in it.

If you’re old and angry, think about this. You might find some comfort in letting go.

The corollary of all this is: there is no better America in the past: the past simply seems rosier to older eyes. America has always been as great or as shit as you find it to be today.

Are you somehow implying that somebody in the Trump regime may have a conflict of interest?

Surely not…

They’re anything but standardardized 🙂 In fact, that’s why you choose them - either because your bottom bracket isn’t designed for a motor, or your hub is special or something and won’t take a motor either. Usually they come with universal bracketry, but most of the times you’re better off getting creative to mount then.

Most of the ones I installed, I installed in my velomobiles because not much is standard in velomobiles either. I usually install a second chainwheel on the left-hand side by threading a new pedal hole in a right-hand side crank and mounting it in reverse, then I install a RHD mid-drive motor to drive the second chainwheel. That way, the regular transmission is totally unaffected. If I want to get really fancy, I also install a second derailleur in reverse to derail the chain off the second chainwheel on the left and totally disconnect the motor, if I want zero drag on muscle-power alone.

All of this is custom hackery obviously…

EDIT: here’s an old video I made showing the left-hand side chainwheel and custom disconnector for the mid-drive motor:

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3bxatr

For your bike, I’m pretty sure you’ll have to go down a similar creative path if you can’t find original replacement parts. All that stuff looks custom OEM.

Yeah, I realized the computer world was going down the drain when Scott McNealy inadvertently spill the beans on the industry’s true intentions in 1999, and a few years later, I quit programming entirely and changed career.

I still use computers because I have to, and I maintain a few open-source projects of little importance so I can say I’ve done my part. But mostly I’m busy avoiding computers and trying to maintain whatever shred of privacy I have left.

I’ve always called this a mid-drive. They’re quite common. I’ve installed quite a few of those motors from Cyclone in Taiwan and I recommend them.

Yes, conspiring against the US with Putin and Kim is a Trump exclusive. Xi has no right to steal his show!

The great Hawaiian goddess Tūtū Pele is angry and wants the Impostor of Kauai Mark Zuckerberg off the sacred Hawaiian land and cast into Her holy volcano.

I suggest obeying Her. The sooner the better…

My first computer was an Altair.

It was a machine from a time when personal computers were a hopeful symbol of a better future for the whole of humanity. Tech bro sumbitches monetized that hope away, and now our future is an adversarial billionaire-feeding dystopia, promising more billionaires and more dystopia.

I’m old enough to retire soon, and I constantly feel someone took away the future I was promised as a teen. As a frustrated gen-Xer who generally had it good despite everything, I can’t imagine the kind of despair young people today are going through. At least I can remember the Altair, and that’s something.

Come on… Who gives a turkey…

They’re circling the only issue that matters like a turd circles the toilet bowl, refusing to be flushed:

Trump!

We want to know what Trump did.
We want to know what Trump knew.
We want to know what Trum hid.
We want to know who Trump paid off.

Or rather, we want to have it in writing. We already know.

So we can impeach fucken TRUMP!

It’s not that. I know earthy smells. I used to spend a lot of time outdoors, and I’ve smelled earthy smells in all the countries I’ve lived in. The mystery smell I’m interested in is only found in boreal regions.

Take a whiff of a birch sauna whisk and you’ll have a representative sample!

Hmm, I did buy a sauna birch whisk in a cheap discount store once (wrapped in plastic and all) and it didn’t smell of anything. But now you have me curious again: maybe it truly was too cheap a store. I’ll go get another one tomorrow.

I’ve not seen any such trees in Oulu, or in the forest where I’ve smelled the smell. You might also have a different “smell of autumn” experience down south 🙂

Are you sure it’s not https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suopursut

I doubt it because one of the place I smell this smell most strongly when the conditions as right is right downtown Oulu where I live, and whenever I smell it and I look up, sure enough, there are birch trees nearby. And the city seems to have planted quite a lot of them - but also another variety that I can’t identify, and it might come from that tree too.

But no suopursu anywhere in sight.

And then you might be one of us smelling mushrooms. Pretty much all people of slavic origin are in this group I think.

I’m not of slavic origin 🙂 The closest to a slavic country I can trace back my ancestry is Prussia. But yeah, I do smell mushrooms. I was quite the mushroom picker when I was a kid. Unfortunately, I don’t know any of the varieties here, so I don’t dare pick them. I need to learn them one day.