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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Your message is snarky, but yes, it's amazing what you can do with oil money AND high IQ; compare Norway to many other countries which also have oil money but do not have high IQ.
It reminds me that the mediocrity of an enormous amount of the U.S. is really quite voluntary. Enormous potential. Enormous wealth. Just cannot figure out how to socialize the prosperity.
I’m not sure I would bring high IQ into this. Norwegians tended to own their own farms, they knew how to manage resources. The winters taught them to plan ahead.
Most importantly, Norway realised it had to avoid spending all its oil money to be responsible. An Iraqi immigrant helped establish this policy. Wouldn’t give him all credit as some give the impression of, but I think it’s interesting that people from the Middle East do have the right ideas. But the environment they’re in prevents their voices from being heard.
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.
This is cope from another country. Where are you from? I am Swedish.
Now, first, Norway was a poor country until oil, yes.
However, plenty of countries have oil. Why are they so crap to live in? Russia, Venezuela, USA even Canada, UAE? Why are they so crap? Be from those countries and visit Norway and cry.
Visit Scandinavia and cry, Americans are floored by Stockholm and Copenhagen. "wow there aren't overweight people everywhere" - this is years and years before ozempic (I concider ozempic cheating) Sadly now I feel like it is 25% indians, 25% arabs and only 50% Swedes left in my country...
So, where are you from?
If its "oil money" - why aren't Russia, Venezuela, USA even Canada, UAE as good of a country to live in?
Norway was not that poor before oil. That’s a myth. Relative to some other European countries, yes. But it was still a country with a long history of trade, industry and natural resources.
Though I’m not surprised a Swede thinks of us mainly as poor farmers ;)
(no bad feelings, you literally had an empire so the attitude is understandable)
Sorry, I have that image due to, just the image of a "poor" fishing country. Now we envy you and I heard all my life that we in Sweden are Norways poles/polacks due to cheap labour from Sweden.
That said we in Sweden where extremely poor too, see the famous book "Utvandrarna" for how it could be so miserable that people left.
Now we are the ones causing issues - "det svenske tilstander"
Well, I say "we" but these are not the Kalles Kaviar looking people. It could get to that point though...
> we in Sweden are Norways poles/polacks due to cheap labour from Sweden.
Hopefully you'll be treated "with love" on your binge drinking trip to Gdańsk because simply buying and drinking a bottle of wine is a challenge back home.
In fact, immigration to Norway from Sweden started already back then. My great great grandfather moved from near Bullaren to Southern Norway in the late 1809's. But then emigrated with most of his family onwards to the US a couple of decades later as Norway was also poor at that time.
What was Norway's way out of the worst of that poverty apart from reduced surplus of people from emigration was shipping, and several of his sons, including my great grandfather ended up working on ships (and my great grandfathers family ended up moving back to Norway, supposedly in part because his wife got tired of the warm summers in Brooklyn...)
I wouldn’t say poor, fishing was the backbone for over a thousand years and generated its fair share of wealth, so did timber. Seafood is still second after oil, even if oil of course is much bigger.
Norway benefits greatly from being a massive country with a small population and enormous natural resources. This makes governing far simpler compared to many other countries, and the culture is of course vastly different too.
I’ve only ever been to Lofoten but it was lovely, I think that’s how humans are supposed to live, too bad I can’t afford to move there.
For anybody who was interested in the stats: The correct number is c. 20 perc are immigrants.
The largest group is from Finland followed by Iraq and Iran. It's a bit higher in the capital.
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
Do you think it's enjoyable carrying two bottles for miles with just my hands while I have other things to carry? I'm complaining because it was extremely annoying.
Maybe folks don't hydrate as much as me, but I did not have fun carrying the abundance of trash with me everywhere all the time.
Yes, there's litter in Australia of course, but most Australians are taught from a young age to leave nothing but footprints and trek out whatever they bring with them when moving about a city, a park, wild areas.
Relative lack of litter and glares from Australians when tossing stuff on ground as a tourist is apparently enough to make a number of those daft "10 things about Australia ..." videos and listicles.
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.
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.
It's kind of amusing seeing this post get downvoted, because I actually live in Japan (specifically: in a certain ward of Yokohama), and it's not hard to find public trash cans. A public bin for non-combustible garbage is relatively uncommon, but I still know about three places near me with one. Bins for combustible garbage, PET bottles, and cans are easy to find at most train stations and convenience stores. Electronics stores (e.g. Yamada Denki) offer free battery recycling, and some stores even provide cellophane tape for free so you can properly seal the terminals.
There's another comment in this thread marveling about public toilets, but one of the easiest ways to gauge the 治安 of an area is by checking whether nearby convenience stores have public bathrooms or not. The bad areas tend to not let you use the toilet at all; in fact, this is common advice for people searching apartments.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
> 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".
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 39.3 ms ] threadThough I might be wrong - I doubt this word comes up in tech blogs and academic conferences very often?
How do you propose they kill the public company exactly? At least in Australia, govt. revenue is barely reliant on fossil fuels.
However, Saudi Arabia needs higher prices than Norway to balance the budget, so Saudi Arabia will likely cut first.
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.
But there are many to choose from. “Face like a dropped pie” is another gem.
Q: How do you build with bricks?
A: You stack them.
Sure, MAGA would've been a large congressional embarrassment in a proportional system. But they wouldn't run the show.
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.
Is Norway really a non-white country? ;-)
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.
Most importantly, Norway realised it had to avoid spending all its oil money to be responsible. An Iraqi immigrant helped establish this policy. Wouldn’t give him all credit as some give the impression of, but I think it’s interesting that people from the Middle East do have the right ideas. But the environment they’re in prevents their voices from being heard.
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.
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.
It's super impressive, isn't it!
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease
Now, first, Norway was a poor country until oil, yes.
However, plenty of countries have oil. Why are they so crap to live in? Russia, Venezuela, USA even Canada, UAE? Why are they so crap? Be from those countries and visit Norway and cry.
Visit Scandinavia and cry, Americans are floored by Stockholm and Copenhagen. "wow there aren't overweight people everywhere" - this is years and years before ozempic (I concider ozempic cheating) Sadly now I feel like it is 25% indians, 25% arabs and only 50% Swedes left in my country...
So, where are you from?
If its "oil money" - why aren't Russia, Venezuela, USA even Canada, UAE as good of a country to live in?
Thanks!
Though I’m not surprised a Swede thinks of us mainly as poor farmers ;) (no bad feelings, you literally had an empire so the attitude is understandable)
That said we in Sweden where extremely poor too, see the famous book "Utvandrarna" for how it could be so miserable that people left.
Now we are the ones causing issues - "det svenske tilstander"
Well, I say "we" but these are not the Kalles Kaviar looking people. It could get to that point though...
Hopefully you'll be treated "with love" on your binge drinking trip to Gdańsk because simply buying and drinking a bottle of wine is a challenge back home.
In fact, immigration to Norway from Sweden started already back then. My great great grandfather moved from near Bullaren to Southern Norway in the late 1809's. But then emigrated with most of his family onwards to the US a couple of decades later as Norway was also poor at that time.
What was Norway's way out of the worst of that poverty apart from reduced surplus of people from emigration was shipping, and several of his sons, including my great grandfather ended up working on ships (and my great grandfathers family ended up moving back to Norway, supposedly in part because his wife got tired of the warm summers in Brooklyn...)
I’ve only ever been to Lofoten but it was lovely, I think that’s how humans are supposed to live, too bad I can’t afford to move there.
I don't need to downvote you for your nationalism, but I do need to downvote you for your casual racism.
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%).
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.
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
The US has plenty of oil money too.
Also, this does not hold in Hokkaido. I taught English in Obihiro (well, Makubetsu) and you had to plan your trash and restroom breaks.
What?
> Carry your trash with you.
What do you think I did with it?
Do you think it's enjoyable carrying two bottles for miles with just my hands while I have other things to carry? I'm complaining because it was extremely annoying.
Maybe folks don't hydrate as much as me, but I did not have fun carrying the abundance of trash with me everywhere all the time.
It's very unpleasant.
Yes, there's litter in Australia of course, but most Australians are taught from a young age to leave nothing but footprints and trek out whatever they bring with them when moving about a city, a park, wild areas.
Relative lack of litter and glares from Australians when tossing stuff on ground as a tourist is apparently enough to make a number of those daft "10 things about Australia ..." videos and listicles.
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"
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
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.
There's another comment in this thread marveling about public toilets, but one of the easiest ways to gauge the 治安 of an area is by checking whether nearby convenience stores have public bathrooms or not. The bad areas tend to not let you use the toilet at all; in fact, this is common advice for people searching apartments.
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.
The same page in Norwegian (world best WCs): https://www.visitnorway.no/planlegg-reisen/reisetips/nasjona...
"Trump calls Norway a ‘shithouse country’" - https://www.euronews.com/video/2026/10/27/trump-calls-norway...
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.
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.
At a gas station off the ring road in the middle of nowhere.
There is no need to be like that about it. The free market is going to come along and solve it, any day now.
Mainland Europe's free public restrooms are not nicer than the US.
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.
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.
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.
> 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...
In the Nordics the terms are not just "preferred" but unambiguously used this way.
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".
Coming off a trip from mainland China and the bathroom culture there makes NA look _good_, and that's saying something.
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.
You don't get the Norway views but its also not a complete mess.
https://www.nj.com/news/2021/12/the-24-thoughts-i-had-while-...
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.
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.
(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?