Isn't your media much less diverse? ;)

I don't know what is the real scenario. But yeah. You've of course been lacking in other areas. And Sweden likely is leading in equality (at least from the perspective of the society / the government, it has integration and segregation issues but we've got a higher amount of foreign born citizens now than the US and they have increased as share by over 50% since year 2000 so .. it happens. And the private society / the people may not have been as "multiculitifiliac"/tolerant/view everyone as equal when they are not as the ruling elite / media see them.

The whole court system I guess is more scary in the US.

Sweden was a good country .. =P, it's just that I feel like the freedoms may be given away / taken away by people of different ideas and I don't see how a generous small well-fare state (we don't have the highest taxes of the OECD any longer but we could easily get there again ..) as applicable together with open borders / citizenship for everyone.

You're also much more people.
In Sweden people think the police are "racist" if they ask people to identify themselves to figure out if they are illegal immigrants and I think you can hide for four years if you are supposed to be forced out of the country and if that haven't happened within those then it's supposedly societies fault and you get away with it.

(To be fair I'm not against social democracy either, it's just that it doesn't work when one small state do it and offer it for the whole world. It should be fucking obvious for anyone. Either do it in a smaller community where everyone knows the rules, are pretty equal and accept it against each other or do it on a global scale. If you're going to start talking about UN human rights and how everyone supposedly have this and that right of housing and health-care and food and .. also accept how everyone got the right to express their opinion and not be a slave .., sure, have a house - finance it yourself.)

Here they don't even try to find them. And border controls within the EU isn't much of a thing. And people are supposed to file their asylum application in the first country they reach but Italy is just fine with people traveling along and Swedish administration doesn't care / bother / have any way to prove it anyway and the asylum seekers much rather ask for it here because for instance from Syria and Ethiopia about 100% will be granted asylum and I doubt Italy is as generous.

12 million isn't all that many and I guess many of them are from Mexico and the US have little well-fare system anyway and if they are illegal immigrants I guess they have little access to any well-fare as-well so I don't see all that much problem with it.

If Germans wanted to come here and work then fine!

If Somalis want to come here and be financed for life ..

Yeah, someone mentioned how KSA (Saudi Arabia) managed the country so well with their harsh laws. Except the homicide rate in Sweden was about 1% less than in Saudi Arabia even though we don't have capital punishment (we have harsher laws by now though, the regular punishment for that is life time in prison but the law for that I believe is that you can ask to have it time limited after 12 years and it can then be decided to become 18 years, but it was much less before.)

I assume the murder rate in the US is because of the inequality and desperate / poor people.

But we're doing that in Sweden too... That or taxes ourself beyond imagination because everyone in the world should have the same income as a Swedish worker (even though they work the most in the EU.)

It's the basic idea of freedom I'm after.

I'd much rather take US idea of "hey we need to be able to surveillance all communication!" and be free to express my opinion than being able too but also having too hide my ass to express it.

I'm somewhat proud of "my old Sweden", but I'm also not ignorant to the fact that the US have shown better growth and as such at least parts of it is richer. (And skilled labor earn more, pay less in taxes and the money go further, then again for the non-skilled worker / unemployed ...)

Of course if I could have my own wishes go through we just wouldn't have had all this immigration and ignorance about cultural differences and instead if we really wanted to help fight for freedom, democracy and humanism in the rest of the world and help educate people and possibly other basic things such as helping them get access to water, toilets, sewage treatment, modern agriculture, electricity, ..

And remain the free countries with a pretty successful balance of equal, safe, confident and supported while still being competitive at large (partly because everyone get a chance and support for getting there.)

I'd much rather see Scandinavian society be exported to the rest of the world than middle-Eastern and African being imported to Scandinavia.

While Sweden may have cut taxes by closer to 20% or whatever I still think they are about twice here over all relative what they are in the US.

That likely got to do with it too..

(By now Sweden is likely a pretty good place to be rich in: You can get capital gains with close to no taxes now (Investeringssparkonto), there's no heritage tax and no gift tax and the taxes of houses has been reduced.. I think possibly our corporate tax are lower than that of the US by now too.
Whatever it will be sustainable and how much it will change in the opposite direction soon is a different story though.)

I assume that could be a pretty easy thing to change. But disadvantageous for the US (well, if others apply for a citizenship and work there then maybe not :))

Personally I guess I wish I could work and live anywhere and still have the same rights against my home country. As is I can that in the whole EU and EES but the whole world would be even better :) .. if only people didn't thought the US everywhere was such a bad idea =P.

"Blah blah blah New World Order!" - Yeah! Sounds amazing!

Well, that or if the Nazis had won =P, all ruined by the communists! ;D

You know the one .. Citizenship, cultural, born, by heritage, by land, by water, ..

HELL YEAH!

I know the US just want their citizens to have one citizenship so I don't know how that work but I wish I had one.

Sweden used to be one of the most free, safe, rich, equal and in general bloody awesome except dark in the winters country of the world.

The problem though is that the self-denial/-hate is huge, socialism is still pretty relevant and I guess the immigrants may ask for more of it especially since inequality has gone up by changes in tax and massive immigration.

We have the European limits to freedom of speech and we've got the socialist extremist view of stup.. supposedly enforced equality and social stigma and extremist shouting, censorship and threats (and soon likely violence, murder and death too) against people who don't buy into it.

The US I feel is more secure in it's cultural and fundamental values. It's large enough to say "fuck that" if someone comes with an idea they don't want to implement too.

Personally I'd rank freedom first I guess and standard of living second and democracy third or something such. I don't see how Sweden can guarantee or even try to implement freedom for me.

If I lived in the US I wouldn't worry about that.

The problem for me of course is that it would be much harder for me to become a US citizen (well, guess marriage possibly could work for me too), if I got rid of my Swedish citizenship to not be under stupid anti-freedom laws of Sweden I would of course no longer have full access to the pension system of Sweden and while I'm somewhat educated for somewhat non-important reasons I'm not skilled labor at the moment so I don't see how I would be very competitive in the US and hence I would possibly end up poorer.

Taxes are lower in the US though. And I guess it may not be the general opinion in the US but they are at least spent on:
1) Upholding the law & society.
2) Upholding the border.
and hence:
3) Guarantee the society of their citizens.

Sweden of course spend much of its money in public service and well-fare and maybe some people in the US wish their money went there rather than for bombs, fuel and gizmos. But on the other hand Sweden kinda fail at the two basic tasks as a state:
1) Uphold the law & society.
2) Uphold the borders.

In my view and hence it kinda suck.. Like totally.

UN declaration of human rights isn't a law. Sweden by far isn't the country who follow it the least .. I could accept it as a foundation for a global well-fare super-state but it's a fucking stupid idea for a country of 4.5 million workers to implement for the whole fucking world.
(Also come on, don't grant murderers asylum just because they don't want to go to prison.. Any sane country avoid criminals and the US even only want good citizens. And don't worry about deporting whatever trash commit acts of terror because "they are Swedes" or "they need care" or what will happen somewhere else or whatever. Be egoistic and care for your own country.)

Anyway. Yeah. If I didn't lost in economy / standard of living and was allowed to live and be part of the US I kinda feel I possibly would had wanted it by now. Just to be sure if nothing else.

How awful can the tax declaration be? Sure in Sweden I just sign it with my banking ID or send and SMS reply where I accept it as is ..

Old Sweden? That may have been a different story.

But Sweden isn't what it was and will definitely not be what it has been. So that's pretty irrelevant.

Of course it's much easier for me to move around in Europe and there's other places which may feel more at home eventually. But Sweden is still one of the more richer regions and relative at least my Nordic neighbors I kinda feel Sweden offer a bigger variation in the land and it's the bigger country with the bigger cities.. also have the bigger lakes.. So there's that. I don't dislike the land.

Anyway. I'd be honored to have a US citizenship. As would so many people in the world!

(And obviously I'm cultural compatible with the US and would much rather take extreme freedom over any regulation against it and I would had accepted the laws of my new home/country.)

Do having spherical or aspherical glasses affect the magnification at the same strength? If so maybe that.

I lose a lot of "wide angle" with my glasses and stuff are bigger than without (positive strength.)

So stop jabbering like what you say is important, correct, better or whatever.

Of course it's an excuse for it.

Yeah. I too wonder what black people would had done in general and if the person was white.

But I guess it would be racist trying to figure out because surely we're all individuals and not just ethnicities ..

Well.. as long as we're not white.

Russia? The middle-east? Africa?

Since you're AC I guess you won't read this but whatever.

Here in "my city" Örebro they have "always" claimed that they plow the cycle (and pedestrian?) parts of the road first and for cars later. In my opinion that haven't been done but that's the claim. And I've guess that was because they felt being able to bicycle was important and possibly because it's also unprotected people.

However the current ruler-ship have decided to "genus plow" the streets which supposedly mean exactly the same thing! But what is news to me but supposedly the case is that only women ride a bike and only men drive a car, so it's unfair to prioritize the men (I didn't knew it was a local idea what to start with here) and but it's not to prioritize women so hence bicycle lanes should be cleared up first.

One of the two (one male one female) leader of the Swedish environmentalist party which possibly is behind the stuff above is also the leading force for the mass-immigration, well-fare for anyone, abandoning of law & order, borders and likely nationality too. They don't get many votes (about 7%) and they rule the government in minority with the social democrats (for a total of less than 38%) but those two together think it's very important to be possible to rule in a minority because none of the "non-racist" parties can come up with a majority government together and to have disputes, do sacrifices and come up with majority decisions in a parliament is so horrible. The "racist" party is likely ok to rule with anyone to get influence but that won't do it because the they are just as racist as the rest of the world.

Other "fresh" initiatives is that while sex is a social construction it's very important to see what sex is at what working places and in what positions and who's staying home with the children.

And while it's totally unimportant and irrelevant that immigrants commit more crimes, rape, terrorist travels, fail school and such it's very important to see whatever they too reach the same positions in society!

Because individuality doesn't matter. Only sex and race do for the anti-sexist and anti-racists.. Well, as long as it's about positive discrimination for those who can't pass on their own merits. However it's totally not relevant when the outcome would relate to anything negative for a "minority group" (a group individuals supposedly given a group belonging due to ethnicity, sex and religion.)

I guess in my world it's just affirmative action and censorship and positive discrimination.

I'm against discrimination but I'm just fine with women picking medicinal research over technological and the fact that people from Somalia have less competitive work experience and education than the native born people.

I've checked what people think about the various capitals (more Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen rather than Helsinki) and where one should go (I was more curious about living than visiting but whatever.)

For Stockholm I think what is mentioned is Skansen, Gamla stan and the Gustav Vasa museum.
http://www.vasamuseet.se/en/
http://www.old-town-stockholm....
http://www.skansen.se/en/kateg...

Whatever it would be my picks I don't know.

I haven't been to many museums. I've been at both Skansen and Vasa but I don't remember much from it and I don't really see what's so interesting with an old wooden ship =P.

Sometimes museums has had free entry here in Sweden depending on who's in charge of the government so if that's the case I guess that's a nice opportunity to go visit some :)

I can understand the idea of visiting places for education (maybe more so for kids? If you got any there's places like Tom Tits Experiment which may be worth a visit too, likely more so! ;D http://www.tomtit.se/english/I...) and culture & history too even though here in Sweden for whatever reason the in fashion thing is to deny it / act like it doesn't matter but I assume most of the world don't and think it's interesting.

I know while I think the middle-east would be the least place on the planet I wanted to live in and possibly visit too .. (maybe along with parts of Africa though stunning scenery may be nice) what would be of some interest there and in Egypt is exactly the things IS want to destroy and remove because they don't like different cultures either / want no traces of them / want no-one to care.

This is so fucking nasty and obviously ruin things forever:
https://gatesofnineveh.wordpre...

The few things worth bothering about ..

Anyway, not a Museum guy. In Sweden I would rather want to travel some rural road either just with agriculture landscape and vast views or through and wooden avenue or places where animals has grassed on the sides or something such. Or venture out on any lake or in the case of Stockholm the archipelago.
(Or I guess for some others maybe up in the northern mountain regions, if you where long up north maybe visit Boden and http://www.rodbergsfortet.com/... ?), possibly Gotland and Visby.

In Norway people would take about the fjords and hiking in the mountains there too, in Denmark you've likely got the same agriculture landscape and Bornholm & Hammershus to visit instead for instance.

On the lake side we've got lots of lakes and Vänern is the largest lake in EU and our biggest, Mälaren which sit left of Stockholm is our third largest but it's also large ..

If one wasn't in Stockholm I guess there's lots too see at various places. Anyway, I don't know what's best. And it's likely ok to not visit anything beyond just being in the city considering there's so much water IN the city too =P, so at least there's all that to take in regardless :)

Enjoy your stay :)

I could make it easy for me and go the nationalistic route of any country/culture and say how maybe they just don't want to turn it into a shit-hole which would be anything else than what it is because anything else than what you have is considered a shit-hole.

Anyway, to be fair:
Wikipedia: "According to a poll by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center, 6% of respondents considered themselves Muslims.[2] According to Reuters, Muslim minorities make up a seventh (14%) of Russia's population.[3] Muslims constitute the nationalities in the North Caucasus residing between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea: Circassians, Balkars, Chechens, Ingush, Kabardin, Karachay, and numerous Dagestani peoples."

My impression from what I've seen lately is that there's quite a bit of Muslims in Russia and if you check RT they write all the time about racism and anti-Muslim movements and such in Europe so I get the impression that they are against that / pro tolerance (because really my impression of RT is that they want to point out how everyone else is bad and Russia is good ..)

On the other hand Russia doesn't buy into the globalism and idea of a country/people not owning their natural resources or not having the right to decide how they want their society to work.

So yeah. Maybe in Russia a Muslim is supposed to accept Russian society and obey to the same laws and maybe if nothing else they want to set their own laws on homosexuals (I live in Sweden and while Sweden is much further on there the fact is that Sweden have just like the very last year or so gone into feminism extreme and last couple of years been extremely pro-immigrants / deny any flaws in such a policy and maybe just for what? two? Decades been more ok with gays and the church less so. The idea of religious freedom is just little over 60 years old. I assume Bible studies was part of the school at least little over 100 years ago, I don't really know. .. so yeah. Russia may be behind there if you think all of that is a good thing but we don't really deserve to be super proud of it and view it as it's something which has always been there because it haven't.
And to be fair didn't USA more or less invented freedom? ;D (No? Someone feel free to write down some points, I'm interested and don't really mean and say that USA was first but I respect it being a thing from the very beginning over there and taken seriously.)
Religious free in writing since 1789(?)
I used to be proud of the freedom of my country but I've lost that belief. And I'm sad for that and don't really know what to do against it (because it's true one have to fight for it but fighting for it put yourself at risk and I don't really feel I deserve or should have to take a risk for the right of being free. I want to take it for granted. It's fucked up.))

From Wikipedia, Khronos group:
"The Khronos Group was founded in 2000 by companies including ATI Technologies, Discreet, Evans & Sutherland, Intel Corporation, NVIDIA, Silicon Graphics (SGI), and Sun Microsystems. It now has roughly 100 member companies, over 30 adopters, and 24 conforming members.[3] Its president is Neil Trevett.

Working Groups[edit]
OpenGL, a cross-platform computer graphics API
OpenCL, a cross-platform computation API.[4]
COLLADA, a file-format intended to facilitate interchange of 3D assets.
OpenGL SC, a safety critical profile of OpenGL ES designed to meet the needs of the safety-critical market
OpenKODE, an API for providing abstracted, portable access to operating system resources such as file systems, networks and math libraries
OpenGL ES, a derivative of OpenGL for use on mobile and embedded systems, such as cell phones, portable gaming devices, and more
OpenVG, an API for accelerating processing of 2D vector graphics.
OpenMAX, a layered set of three programming interfaces of various abstraction levels, providing access to multimedia functionality
OpenSL ES, an audio API tuned for embedded systems, standardizing access to features such as 3D positional audio and MIDI playback
EGL, an interface between Khronos rendering APIs such as OpenGL ES or OpenVG and the underlying native platform window system[5]
OpenWF, APIs for 2D graphics composition and display control
OpenML, an API for capturing, transporting, processing, displaying, and synchronizing digital media
WebGL, a JavaScript binding to OpenGL ES within a browser on any platform supporting the OpenGL or OpenGL ES graphics standards
WebCL, a JavaScript binding to OpenCL within a browser.
StreamInput, an API for consistently handling input devices.
OpenVX, Hardware acceleration API for Computer Vision applications and libraries
OpenKCam, Advanced Camera Control API"

Founded year 2000.

I assume one doesn't necessarily know all that but if nothing else for those who care somewhat I guess they should know they are behind OpenGL at least.

And kinda anyone who cares about computers to any degree of seriousness really should know what Direct X is too.

So basically it says a multi-platform 3D graphics API competitor to Microsoft 3D graphics API announces their competitior against Microsoft newest (and rather hyped possibly "revolutionary step"?) 3D graphics API.

Where DirectX 12 3D-part is supposed to be competition to Mantle which is AMDs API where they lower abstraction and CPU usage in an attempt to get more performance out of the GPU and more CPU power left for others.

DirectX handles more than just 3D graphics though, such as joystick input and sound too.

His/her post was likely about the "relative distance" and "closer."

If it would be X light-years to the center in time and space and the galaxy would be 700 million along in development towards our side (X-n or whatever) "it should had looked 700 million years old" by that time.

Whereas if we looked passed the center it would still be .. oh wait, no, I possibly get it, to be able to see it that far it would had to be even older? .. anyway, the point I wanted to make is that if it was 700 million years along the development but "had moved in the other direction" it would rather had been X+n away and the idea was likely that that would had explained the red shift. .. but I guess the light would have had to travel longer then to reach us and that would possibly had sorted it out. (Is it about variations in red-shift too? Because isn't the red-shift how decide on the distance? Both distance and composition? I assume that would be more than one wavelength?

1) Flood the Netherlands.
2) Have it come up again.
3) ???
4) Profit!

So they sent a death threat.

But what did they REALLY want to say?