NL 45 - Good food, good life
Finland's PR changes + VPNs + Why are so many people wearing glasses now + a succinct take on AI
Hello from my home in Matinkylä! This is NordLetter #45, a weekly newsletter on living and walking in Finland. Each week I share some of the interesting things I found on the web.
Previous editions can be found here. You can reach out to me by replying on this mail or adding a comment on this. I am also posting on Mastodon.
I finished working on A year of mornings this past week. It will be published on February 15, 2025. The kindle edition is available to pre-order now!
A year of mornings is a collection of fifty love poems. It follows a young heart as it finds love, finds the strength to be in love and finally, finds the strength to let go.
Finnish government aims to tighten permanent resident permit rules.
The proposal calls for permanent resident permit applicants to live continuously in Finland for six years, rather than the current four-year requirement.
Additionally, if the changes go ahead, successful permanent residence applicants will also be required to have "sufficient skills" in either Finnish or Swedish, as well as have a two-year history of work in the country.
However, people could still obtain permanent residence permits if they meet one out of three requirements: earning at least 40,000 euros per year, having Master's or postgraduate degrees that are "recognised in Finland" along with a two-year work history, or having "particularly good skills" in Finnish or Swedish as well as a three-year work history in the country.
I understand it. I understand the fear and the want one has to protect themselves against the others. It is a particularly easy thing to feel. Right wing extremism is on the rise all around the world.
The common thing is this: they rile the people up, everything is unfair. When in power, all they do is consolidate power and money for the rich.
The rule change do not affect me. At least that's what I understood. But if the aim is to attract high tax-paying immigrants, I don't know how changes like this would do that.
Anyway, on to sweeter news.
We tried Runeberg torte this week.
I had seen these in the Prisma bakery section a few times and wondered what these were. Then, on Wednesday I read that these were Runeberg torte, a Finnish delicacy named after
Johan Ludvig Runeberg, Finland's national poet.
Runeberg pastries are a confection featuring jam and arrack, punch or bitter almond oil, often disappearing from shops and cafes after 5 February. 5th February is Runeberg Day.
It was yummy. If you can, go try them before they go out of stock!
We were invited to a birthday party on Friday. The food was great. The party was great. It was held at the bio-dome at EIS.
The thing that I want to talk about is cleaning up after the party was done. Which is a thing that you have to do at most venues here in Finland. Which is also a thing, which never stops being amusing to me, with us being Indians.
Before the party started, we put the chairs and tables to the corners. We put the food on a couple of tables. I inflated the balloons on the table-tennis table. Kids sat and jumped around on other furniture kept in the bio-dome.
The bio-dome was interesting with its high ceiling and two massive plant things on either end of the room.
Anyway, after the party was over, we cleaned the room, put everything back where it was. Someone had clicked a before picture so it was fun trying to figure out which chair went with which table, and so on.
It was fun. Here, you either pay for someone to clean up after you, or you clean up yourself. This happens on events like India Day as well. There is a nice lesson in this for us all. Cleanliness can not be taken for granted.
After the party, we went and sat at our friends' place for a bit to talk and play Ludo. That awoke something in me. I went and bought Ludo from Clas Ohlson.
It does not look like what we have in India. It is fairly minimalist, but I dig it. We played a round. I won. Go home!
/five things to share
1. This VPN is the resistance tool of choice for millions
A wonderful feature on Proton VPN. I feel a great sense of camaraderie whenever I read a piece on the infrastructure side of things. I feel a bit visible.
VPNs work by providing users a parallel infrastructure to access the internet. Rather than going through local servers, VPNs route traffic through a separate network, often in a different country outside the user’s location. That means that a user in Russia, for instance, can access sites as if they were sitting in Switzerland, circumventing their own country’s internet censorship. Even their own internet service provider can’t see what they’re looking at online.
2. Why so many people need glasses now - Vox
A short video on myopia and why its on the rise. Very insightful. The reasons as postulated are we spend more time indoors, focusing over shorter distances. The preventative fix for children at least is to get them outdoors.
3. Once You're Laid Off, You'll Never Be the Same Again – Mert Bulan
When I looked back on my time at the company and all the things I had accomplished, I was surprised to be impacted by the layoffs. It wasn’t because I thought I was better than others—it was because I believed I was doing more than what was expected of me. However, during a layoff, it seems that who you are and what you do doesn’t matter. In most cases, the decision is made by people who don’t even know you. This realization made me question the concept of work, which is part of the reason I’m writing this blog post.
4. The Future of AI and LLMs - Hugh Howey
A succinct take on the current state of AI. This came out after I wrote about it this week. I wish I had written this.
The two main things Hugh talks about are :
- We are LLMs: that's what we do with language.
- LLMs are us: They basically have all of human knowledge in them.
Which, like all great things are so simple, and have been said before, but the beauty of good writing is that it makes you nod along, and say of course!
AI could do much to alleviate drudgery and suffering without causing economic upheaval and exacerbating income inequalities. It could … but it won’t. Because we will not choose this route. Instead, we will choose a route that causes more heartache than is necessary and provides fewer mental health benefits than it could all while we are as uncreative and immoral as humanly possible
5. Austin Kleon - So what
This week's newsletter by Austin spoke to me. I enjoyed most of the things in it, specifically the part about practicing something you want to do for 28 days and try to suck less. That's it.
/new posts
Five new posts on the blog this week. Go an give them a read!
- Why do I read more on the web - About convenience and the device I carry with myself everywhere.
- A week of AI news - Deepsek and OpenAI's agentic system. I still feel the same way about AI.
- Designing a book - I loved the design of Murakami's Men without women.
- Murakami, Haruki - Men Without Women - A review of Men without women, which I realised I was re-reading half way through the book.
- Sleep well - Yoga gets you closer to your body.
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Until next week.
