Well, I'm afraid my idea of "cool" was thousands of years old when I first got into it, so I guess I'm a lost cause anyway ;)

(I got my math symbols after my first year of working as a full-time teacher, way after my first degree, so it's not exactly some drunken teenage idea. That was over 10 years ago. I never used the word "cool" because I think it refers to something trendy and ephemeral. However, I also don't believe that growing up means losing everything that's fun and playful.)

System collapse is not a cause, that's what the end of civilization is! And whatever "governance" there may have been before collapse will necessarily be considered "bad".

This. My signs are rarely visible, even most t-shirts cover them, and I don't exactly go around flaunting them. It's a personal thing that tells something about me, for those who like to know. It's also a kind of joke about the perceived disjoint between those who have tattoos and those who work in education or research. That said, I've seen a surprising amount of ink in the teachers' lounges, and one of my most inked friends is an elementary school teacher; the university people seem more conservative than teachers in this sense, in my experience.

Some people might prefer an expensive suit or a fancy car to maintain a certain kind of image, and they don't seem to get the same kind of hate -- though that kind of image is usually associated with a status that attracts haters for other reasons.

It's pretty hard to go about your life not giving any kind of impression. If you avoid giving one at all, then chances are that others will come up with all kinds of false impressions.

I'm a math/science guy, and I have math symbols on my arms. If I ever regret my affection towards math and science, I might as well have some skin torn off.

Besides, the capital Sigma works great whenever somebody asks me "Are you series?".

I used to do modelling on a supercomputer. That's like supermodelling, right?

It would certainly be interesting if the tunnel project helped balance out the drastic price/income/tax differences between Finland and Estonia, similarly to what has happened between Sweden and Denmark to some extent. Booze runs to Estonia are a national pastime in Finland where alcohol is heavily taxed and monopolized, while many an Estonian spends their weeks working well-paid jobs in Helsinki. Of course, our government is doing everything to curb the booze runs in the name of national health, intra-EU free trade be damned. Meanwhile, a lot of Finnish entrepreneurs are moving South to enjoy a more business-friendly taxation.

You know these two are the same thing? It's just a matter of coordinate transformation. Isn't the scientific name of a regular bear, like, Ursus Cartesius?

As soon as you blame USD and Euro for old-fashioned scams.

Surely you don't mean mining Bitcoins directly? There are much more profitable GPU coins, as in profitable even when you pay for electricity.

This. Openbox is a good example of a light WM, but XFCE is more like a desktop environment, with all the Windowsy cruft like the start menu, and all the panels that take up screen space and visual attention.

Personally, I use Fluxbox with plenty of virtual screens, because I want to focus on doing one thing at a time. I don't want constant reminders of what other programs are running or might possibly be running somewhere in the background -- I trust the computer to handle them for me.