I was helping out at a farm when I was in my preteens, and was rushed by a docile cow that loved being scratched behind her ears. I had petted and scratched her, and when I went to leave the paddock, she rushed me and almost impaled me with one of her horns. Since then I only have one working kidney.

Cows are big, strong and heavy, and docile dogs can also kill. Any kind of caution around things large or feisty enough to kill you is healthy.

Well, the standard recommended work hours would be 08-17 (8 AM to 5 PM), with one hour unpaid lunch, so 8 hours paid. And you can take those paid breaks, or even combine them with lunch. Most places (that don’t have shifts, scheduled appointments or aren’t school or health care related) allow for this kind of flexibility.

My current work place has 39 hours a week during the half year during or close to winter and around 37 hours during the summer or the months adjoining summer. Then again, most people tend to flex actual hours worked, e.g. working 4 hours on Monday and Friday, and working more hours during the same week or compensating for it later. But you HAVE to take at least 30 minutes of lunch, and the workplace tries to enforce the paid breaks as well. So some, like me, take an hour off for lunch, but use our half hour unpaid lunch and add on breaks 2x15 with pay (which is billed to our clients, as we’re legally entitled to). So I can show up anywhere between 06:30 and 11:00 (as long as I don’t have deadlines or meetings) and decide how I want to dispose the hours of my time on schedule.

And I get 7 weeks off, paid, every year. And pad it out with overtime so that I work maybe a week of overtime and get two weeks extra off for holidays.

Not all Nordic countries. The main standard work weeks in Sweden are 40 hours for office work employees. Our collective union agreements for most office work places I know of agree on at least half hour unpaid lunch and at least two 15 minute paid breaks each work day. Every place I worked for had flexible hours, which meant I could choose between turning up between 7 or 9, as long as I didn’t miss meetings and worked 40 hours a week at an average, based on monthly calculations. And any overtime was compensated with double time off and/or monetary overtime compensation.

This will of course be different for shift work or nurse/doctor positions. But I’ve never worked an 8-16 job.

As a last ditch attempt to avoid bankruptcy someone in management decided to join a MLM program to “raise further money”. Which involved lots of household chemicals that we were supposed to sell to clients at the same time as we were doing our actual jobs (both unpaid).

The IT startup I worked at went from providing free food, snacks and beverages to bringing in management consultants clocking hundreds of dollars per hour and finally investing in tonnes of household chemicals while they couldn’t afford to pay our wages. I think they went through bankruptcy at least three times while I worked there, before the former CEO and CTO fled the country.

Edit: The VC’s were in cahoots with the management consultants. No idea if they were involved with the household chemicals. The fools who invested in the IPOs however were fucked over twice.

Thank you, I had forgotten some of the memes and jokes from that era.

Mindfulness for me, now, is to be aware of myself and my surroundings. It started with meditation during a one year chronic pain remedy program, and helped with learning to deal with all the noise that comes up (pain, stress, intrusive thoughts). To not ignore them, but to observe them. Detach myself somewhat and just “look” at it. This helped me to eventually do this during monotonous activities: brushing my teeth, doing dishes, combing cats, vacuuming, even emptying litter boxes. Then to external activities where I am observing the things outside and inside me: waiting in line, sitting on the bus, hiking, drinking tea at a café.

When I exit the state I feel a bit more refreshed. If I need more, and have the ability, I will go and sit in my favourite spot and meditate deeper.

I disagree regarding lying down for bed. Never teach your body to associate the relaxation of meditation with sleep. Unless you only need it for immediately before you sleep to calm your mind.

I can now have mindfulness while doing activities (not driving ofc). Your body will do what you teach it, and I’ve stopped falling asleep meditating when I removed it from bedtime.

Yes, the world needs more meditation.

I don’t brake check people, but I do flash my brake lights a few times if someone is tailgating me. That generally makes people realise “oops, sorry, I was too close”. If they ignore that I slowly turn the cruise control down until they’d rather switch lanes and zip off. Funny how I’m only tailgated when there is plenty of space in the passing lane to the left of me.

The brake checks that the assholes do are when they actually brake to have near-collision vicinity to trigger collision warnings/autobrakes on trucks and busses, or to really rile another car driver up/collect insurance. But they forget that many people nowadays have dashcams (thank you Russian insurance companies!).

I wish I had dashcam footage of the luxury Audi who was repeatedly brake checking buses and trucks on a major highway, swerving in front of them and forcing them all to come to complete stops before dashing away and repeating it with the next big vehicle. But that’s Södertälje (municipality south of Stockholm) for you.

Good question. But at least he used his blinkers, that is virtually never with the case with BMW or Audi drivers.

That would require an inter-instance mod cooperation. Not impossible, but between some instances it seems like the Iron Curtain.

Dead-easy, they aren’t locked to a permanent object, just move them behind the car, and then they’ll neither be stolen nor your fault if someone else parks their hoods into the bikes.

The long ass skinny one is great for pickle jars on the dining table. We love pickles.

The herring one, well, it’s called “sillgaffel” in Swedish. We do use it when we eat pickled herring, but also for olives and other small delicacies served in small bowls instead of using tooth picks to pick them out.

The “sandwich” one is accompanied by a “sandwich” knife, and are intended to be used for appetizers, and according to an older friend, single sandwiches with ham and (sometimes melted) cheese would be served as appetizers occasionally.

There are dessert forks as well, but they are rare. There are proper crustacean forks too that I would like, as they’d be useful.

There also are supposed to exist fish forks (and fish knives) in the series as well, but I kind of stop before that.

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Omg, I just found out there are two more forks I don’t have! Going to waste a month tracking them down… (Ignore me, this reignited my sometimes-pastime of completing my cutlery, just wanted to share some of my joy.)

Beautifully said.

There are two more spoons I lack in this collection. But no, I just like this series as it’s semi-retro, and I thrift it at second hand stores and at auction sites.

I was joking otherwise, just wanted to throw my punch in this discussion. :D

How do you feel about forks in the same slot?

Although, I have to admit I keep these in three separate slots.

… so you’re telling me I need five slots for spoons?

I’m a monster who separates only the tablespoon into a separate compartment.

Sweden allows for half hours in setting the time rounded upwards, so if I arrive at 11:32, I can set the time to 12:00. But not to 12:30.

This varies from country to country though, some (France?) allow 15 minutes, some (Norway?) require the exact time.