There’s one made of stone and a natural brook runs through the floor.
In the winter there are several saunas built from snow / ice. The snow sauna is said to be an especially pleasing experience.
There are sauna rafts that have engines, so you can cruise around the waters.
There are car trailer saunas that you can rent and drive to any open beach you wish. Or your own backyard.
And probably a whole lot crazier ones that I can’t remember right now.
My eyes are very sensitive to light, so I’ve been using “Men in Black” - style wraparound sunglasses since the late 90’s.
I am a dad, but pretty much as far from conservative one can be. Where I live conservative dads do not tend to use these at all.
My old Xperia Z5 Compact was the only phone I’ve ever owned that had decent speakers. You could actually listen music with them without getting pissed off. It was small and had amazing audio capabilities and great camera, easily the best phone I’ve ever owned.
But listening music / watching videos in public with your phone speakers on is an abomination. It should be made illegal everywhere.
Where did you find this?
Though apocryphal, it would give the Númenoreans a solid reason to see the Valar as deceitful. “The Gift of Men cannot be taken away - except for Tuor, due to reasons we will not explain.”
After a revelatation such as this, it would be far easier to accept how quickly Sauron managed to incite them to attack the Undying Lands. The kings would have known that immortality was somehow possible for men and the temptation would have already been there for generations.
The canonical version works without problems, but I think this would have been a nice addition.
Yes. I was almost three years old. I don’t remember much, but I do remember that I started to sing during the wedding ceremony when my parents knelt at the altar. Of course no one else sung.
I also remember that the priest scared the shit out of me and that my godfather “fell asleep” in the toilet and had to be carried to a car. I learned years later that he had severe social anxiety which he treated with liquor.
Tervaleijona 4-eva, man!
I did this with my friends when we went to Thailand. We were enjoying the delicious taste on a beach, two Australian guys were wanted to try it. They both spat it out instantly and the other one got so mad we thought he’s actually going to attack us.
After he calmed down a bit he demanded to see us drink it to be sure we hadn’t tricked him to drink poison. So we downed the entire 1 litre bottle to appease him. It was the start of a great day that lasted for few days.
I tried American chocolate once. It tasted like vomit aftertaste.
Never again.
Black licorice is the only licorice. The colourful ones are foul creations.
Salmiac and licorice are the superior candies.
I taught myself to play the guitar and electric bass by learning the chords and reading tabulatures, I got good enough to play decent bass in a rock band. I also learned the basics of playing the piano. For the first ten years I had only a very basic understanding of the underlying theory and I never felt the need to learn more. I didn’t know the names of the scales and modes I could play and I just knew in which order chords worked or didn’t, I just couldn’t explain why. Nor I needed to do so.
Then I chose music pedagogy as one of my university minors and suddenly I had to learn the theory and reading/writing notation in just a few months - it was not easy but in the end it paid off big time. I finally understood why things worked the way they did and it opened up a world of new ideas for me.
I’m happy that I learned the theory after I had already learned to play an instrument. Knowing the theory backs me up, it does not constrain me. Few of my friends went through the formal music education and some - not all - are really bound by “the rules”, breaking them in any way is a big NO when we play together. One can play almost anything with the piano if you hand him the notes, but he’s totally unable to improvise or pick tunes by ear. Which is quite baffling to me.
And I’m not saying that the route I took to learn music is better, it just worked for me.
EDIT: Typos.
The headline of the article is misleading. No one is laying “pre-emptive” minefields at their borders for civilians to waltz in, withdrawal from the Ottawa agreement means that anti-personnel landmines are an option if Russia starts massing troops on their side of the border.
I’ve trained with landmines during my military service and they are truly horrible things. I hope we never have to use them again.
I’d hug my mom. Then I’d go ask the pretty next door girl for a date; I lesrned later in life that she also had a crush on me at the time, but since I was plain looking and slightly overweight nerd I never thought I’d hsve any chance with her.
After getting that out of my system I’d do the obligatory investing.
Lemmy only. I quit Reddit when the third party apps fell.
I do miss some of the niche hobby subreddits, but fuck Spez. If I need to find some info, I can access it via search engines.
Otherwise I’m perfectly happy with Lemmy, people are generally much nicer and there’s more than enough content. Reddit was so overbloated that this smaller universe is quite enough for me.
No racism was intended. Perhaps I expressed myself poorly.
I do not consider the Russian people be any dumber or inferior than any other nation. I meant that their civil society has not had the opportunity to grow and develop into a strong democracy like many European countries.
I too have many Russian friends and most of what I wrote I have learned from discussions with them. And more than a half of my father’s ancestors are Russian.
I assume it was a generalization, just few weeks ago I installed 32-bit Linux Mint to two laptops from 2007 or 2008, now my kids have their very own and fully functional computers. They do lag a bit sometimes, but learning patience is just good for the kids.
Hell, they would get unconditional surrender just by promising to send a few battallions of unarmed female troops over.
I’ve had the honor of competing with air rifles against one of Häyhä’s grandnieces. Häyhä never had any children of his own.
I can assure you that the talent was NOT genetic ;)
My understanding has always been that none of the Valar took part in the War of Wrath.
When the Valar challenged Melkor directly in the Battle of the Powers, Middle-earth suffered massive collateral damage. And at that time there was only a small population ol Elves at the remote Cuiviénen, guarded by detachment of Maiar.
During the War of Wrath most parts of Middle-earth were already populated by the Children of Ilúvatar, so the Valar had to limit their attack force to “just” Maiar and the Eldar of Aman.
Morgoth’s personal power had diminished when he slowly shared parts of his might with his “creations”, like the dragons. The Valar had to be aware of this; Thorondor was able to maim Morgoth’s face while retrieving Fingolfin’s body and would have relayed the news of this and the duel to Manwë.
So it’s pretty safe to say that the Valar considered their army to be more than adequate to overthrow Morgoth: Maiar to take on the Balrogs and other fallen Maiar, elite Elves for the orc hordes and other “normal level” enemies.
But I also think that an important component is also that the Children of Ilúvatar had to “save themselves” from evil, the Maiar were sent just to level the stakes and capture Morgoth at.the end. The Eldar of Aman needed to be a part of this effort, not just as elite reinforcements but to show unity with their Middle-earth brethren and other Children of Ilúvatar. They all had to renounce Morgoth’s evil and rally together to finally prevail after immeasurable suffering.
If the “gods” themselves had just showed up and taken care of the baddies, there would have been none of this hard earned absolution. Which also fits pretty nicely with Tolkien’s Catholic worldview.
As how Beleriand was destroyed and “fell beneath the wawes”, it could be argued that the Maiar were allowed to use their full power while facing the fallen Maiar, resulting in the utter ruin of the lands. And if the ruined Beleriand was considered to be tainted by Morgoth’s lingering evil, sinking the entire region to the sea would be a logical thing for the Valar to do.
I think there’s also one on a ski lift gondola in Lapland…