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Yeah, same. Post-metal or thereabouts towards jazz can work too IME. Stuff like Russian Circles, Earthless, Elephant9. But stuff like Waveshaper and Amynedd are often safer bets.

Oh and as for raingear goes, I’ll wear it in colder seasons, but my favorite is summer rain. Just put on some wicking material and treat it as free sweat.

It varies. IME you can’t combine them with something like a respro mask in winter, you have to choose whether to expose your lungs or your eyes. In some weather you might feel like you need wipers, at that point you kinda just gotta use your fingers.

(I used to wear a respro in winter here in Oslo, but between replacing diesels with EVs, some route changes and generally mild auto traffic here, I haven’t bothered this winter. Used to develop this kind of mild, sporadic but chronic cough, but now I think I’m free, apart from when I actually get close to a diesel with their rancid winter fumes.)

Seconding the use of protective glasses as a sort of windshield. I use clear ones in the winter and tinted ones in the summer.

Here in the sub-arctic we get some heavy showers but likely nothing like what you get if you have monsoon seasons or the like. But snow and sleet and the like can be surprisingly unpleasant to get on the eyes anyway.

Lots of food has been getting more expensive. The response seems to be largely electing climate deniers.

I imagine the German response here is to be annoyed that they’ve worked very hard to be able to do this without telefax, indeed without paper at all, and it’s still not considered good enough by the peanut gallery.

Better jobs. I would never have had the kind of career growth I had staying where I used to live.

Side note here: Better access to work-related events. It is possible to WFH for some jobs that were previously city-only, but you’ll be missing out on not only the casual socialization of stuff like grabbing a pint after work, but also various technical meetups. I’ve gone to meetups for fields of work not related to me just because I find the topic interesting and it’s easy to swing by.

Central Oslo resident:

• Gym is about 8 minutes by bike away. I’ve gone to gyms further away to train with my PL club but ultimately the gym between here and work wins out (work is about 10 minutes by bike away).
• Groceries are usually five minutes by foot away. Within ten minutes on bike I have access to bigger and more specialized shops.
• There are plenty of bars within walking distance, with various concepts, so we can visit one we’re in the mood for.
• Quiz nights in bars are generally packed. They also frequently have board games available, but I tend to ignore them.
• It’s actually pretty quiet here. There are some noisy party streets, but you more or less just need to live a block or two away to not hear any of it.
• We also have plenty of parks and easy access to the waterfront for Sunday Spaziergang and swimming.
• IMO Oslo could learn a bit from German cafe/Konditorei-culture. We have good coffee pretty much anywhere, and some good pastries here and there, but not their cake selection. There’s also plenty of restaurants around, again within walking distance. Depending on our mood we can just get a döner and watch Star Trek at home, or we could go out to eat at something mentioned in the Michelin guide, or something in between, or even get Foodora. (The Frau was severely pleased when one of her favourite places got a Bib Gourmand.)

A significant difference for the household economy is if you can own your home in the city and not have to own a car. The home will appreciate, while a car depreciates. Generally energy costs will also be lower if you share walls with your neighbours. And, of course, being two helps. Living with a friend or two in a collective is pretty common.

But also going to work and getting groceries is something almost all of us have to deal with. We have to wipe our asses in the city, just like everywhere else.

The bathrooms in the building need to be refurbished and I’m actually thinking of getting a Japanese style toilet with a built-in bidet.

There have been studies of manure reactors here in Norway as well, including some really small-scale ones, like the Telemark reactor.

As long as they have animals, getting the manure through the reactor will

• capture methane for use as biogas rather than letting it straight into the atmosphere,
• let that biogas supplant fossil gas (“natural” gas), i.e. rather than free stored carbon it has gone in a loop
• reduce the viability of weeds in the manure, and
• increase the nitrogen availability in the manure, bringing it closer to fossil gas-derived artificial fertilizer in potency.

Biogas reactors are a serious harm reduction win in modern agriculture and reduces reliance on fossil fuels in several ways.

Here it seems like Vox is just peddling “big oil and big ag are in favor, therefore it’s sus”. Blind hens like those two also sometimes find corn.