I had a discussion the other day with a friend, whether I am GenX or a Millennial. He was aghast that I would prefer GenX, even though he is fully aware I am still writing a blog, which these days is mainly about REM, so what does he expect?

Anyway, today I saw this on Facebook: Wearing masks may generate immunity against Covid-19 virus, according to leading macroeconomic influencers. Allow me please to have a "grumpy old man moment":

The article refers to an article in the Telegraph, which also does not refer to the original article in the New England Journal of Medicine. When I finally found the original article here, I immediately noticed that this is not a study, just an opinion piece. "may" is doing some heavy lifting there.

"Macroeconomic influencers" are just some random people on twitter with lots of followers, who retweet articles they like AND THIS IS HOW WE FORM OPINIONS ON PUBLIC HEALTH POLICY IN A PANDEMIC NOW. *sigh* Millennials....

Excuse me, I'm going to shout at some kids to get off my lawn now.

I did not expect an exploration of Modernism vs Post-Development theories in an episode of Sakura Quest, but well...







So I guess I actually have been studying the past 20 minutes.

Hans Rosling died yesterday at the age of 68. He was the kind of person I want to be when I grow up. Go and watch his videos now!

Today, 27 years ago beer was legalized again in Iceland, after several years of being the only alcoholic drink prohibited, due to a variety of circumstances.

Beer replaced spirits as the most popular drink in Iceland as soon as it was legalized and if you ever tried Icelandic Brennevín (also called Black Death, an Icelandic Schnapps) you can understand why.



Icelandic alcohol consumption has been mainly increasing in the past 27 years, a rather untypical development for a European country. There is currently a proposal being prepared by an MP of the Independence party to allow for alcohol to be sold in stores (atm the selling of alcohol is only allowed by the State Alcohol and Tobacco Company of Iceland), despite there being overwhelming evidence that availability of alcohol in stores leads to an increase in total alcohol consumption and especially heavy episode drinking. Binge drinking is already a problem in Iceland, with 1/4th of all adults engaging in binge drinking once a month and 1/3rd of drinkers only.

Having said all that, I am a fan of Icelandic beer and look forward to being able to walk to the store and get a beer when I feel like it.

... went really quickly. Iceland turned from this:

to this:

I moved house and now have a landlord (lady actually) who is not an asshole. Sadly I lost my dutch flatmate on the way (I really should have indexed my boxes). She lives with her boyfriend now, but we have a weekly brunch and go swimming every Tuesday. It is really good to have some motivation to stay active in winter and I am practicing to be able to do front crawl without drowning. I'm getting there.
My new house is awesome, it has floor heating and a dishwasher,. The latter motivates me to make lots of vegan drinks or spreads with my food processor. At some point I might put recipes on this blog, especially of my milk substitutes (oat, rice or coconut), which I like a lot.
University is over for this winter and I'm happier than ever to have chosen the Public Health course. after getting all excited about epidemiology and statistics last spring this semester I got to write a paper about the Millennium Development Goals and the previous post was part of learning how to use social media for health campaigns.
Not that using social media for campaigns is completely new for me, as we had done this with the IWW. We had another workers rights information event with the public library and even got a new member and a pretty logo!

In other news, the first snow storm just happened and Anonymous shut down government and restaurant websites to oppose whaling.
Iceland made news in the past months with a grassroot movement aimed at convincing the government to accept more than the previously planned 50 refugees from Syria. Facebook pages were founded, protests organised and lots of people offered to take refugees into their homes or signed up with the red cross as a volunteer. While the movement was used as another promotion for the liberal paradise that Iceland presents itself abroad, the Directorate of Immigration kept invoking the Dublin regulation whenever they can and the government kept dragging their feet until they finally decided to up the number of refugees they are going to accept from 50 to 200, celebrating themselves as humanist, while every other Nordic country accepts proportionally a lot more.

The police quietly decided to have weapons in the car now, despite falling crime rates, showing some impeccable timing after the Paris attacks.

As every year the Ikea Christmas goat burned down. All I can say about this incident is that my flatmate was installing Christmas lights the day before at IKEA....