Iain M. Banks Terry Pratchett

Tbf cross country equipment can be very expensive in a country that is all about cross country skiing.

I should have said “socially mandatory”. Not mandatory as in you fail your classes if you go walking instead, but it was heavily not ok if your kid doesn’t take part or you can’t buy the equipment for them. My kid was in school just a few years ago still, but it was more rural.

I also did substitute PE teaching for some years and saw a lot of these equipment related financial issues during those times, there was none to give from the school to improve inclusion. Not just with skiis, but with skates and other winter sport stuff as well.

Ah solidarity, I also won a week long ski pass as a teen with lift tickets and rented skiis. I went to it with a friend and we spent all day every day in the slopes. That along with a school class trip are the only times I have alpine skied in a country of endless ski slopes, haha. It was a lot of fun, the rich kids did it all the time. Tony Hawk games and snowboarding was a big thing at the time and it was the rich kids in my class exclusively who had snowboards and were able to do that and flex about it.

It’s very different then. Here this is a mandatory sport in school, but everyone has to buy their own equipment. Often kids from poor or for example migrant families end up having to sit out the ski lessons and also get poorer grades/negative feedback because of it. I was able to buy my kid one set of new skiis during their school years, but even those broke our bank. Kids skiis are cheaper, but you also need the sticks, shoes and proper clothing. Kids need several pairs over the years as they grow up so other times my kid just never got to take part.

We are made to compete in skiing as well from grade 1 onwards latest, it can be very humiliating for those who never learn it well or those many who never like it. I personally did like it, but my parents never were able to get good skis for me so it was always miserable. I did ski in the woods by myself though, that was nice. It was a good way to get to places in winter growing up, I did love skiing on sea ice.

Interestingly skiing was just a mode of transport in this country in the past, just like biking, and everyone had these equipment or made them. Nowadays it has become more of a banal nationalism and a symbol of “national spirit” and “fitness” or whatever that is seen as good and moral. It fits really well into the neoliberal wordview because people can just say “everyone is free to do it”, ignoring the fact that the cheapest and crappiest skis for adults are hundreds of euros. If you are for example tall or fat, you can’t buy those or you will hate skiing or end up hurt.

It is actually pretty depressing how something that historically was a mode of transport for the majority has been turned into something very exclusive and expensive by capitalism. I would argue this is happening to biking too, new bikes are well out of reach for someone like me now, but at least there is a better second hand market.

I tried to look for old school forest skiis to get past this and to be able to ski outside the raging bougies in the maintained lanes, but turns out those are even more pricey as the bougies have also discovered nature now as a posing stage.

Wish we had kept all the old skis our grandparents still had when I was young, the wood plank style army skis and such from the start of the last century. Those would still work in cross country terrain and could be maintained forever unlike the high tech carbon fibre stuff we are sold, but you can’t find them anywhere anymore.

I mean the snow making machines, afaik they use a lot of energy. Where I live those are used to put snow into the cross-country ski routes that are everywhere as well.

The petty bourge loves this sport too, it makes them feel like they are properly doing their protestant seld-discipline. It has a lot of male coded and toughness coded undertones, there are a lot of sayings about skiing and “toughness”. Ski route rage is a real thing that happens here as a result.

I don’t know where you are, but where I live this has never been the sort of second hand stuff that is even remotely accessible to poor people.

I have been able to alpine ski about twice in my life. With rented equipment. Plenty of places around me for doing it, the lift tickets alone make it way too expensive.

And when it comes to cross country, which is a kind of national sport where I live, we all did do that as kids. But, it isn’t cheap. Plenty of kids can’t afford the equipment and those who have the good stuff obviously enjoy it more and don’t get laughed at.

During covid year one me and my partner thought about doing it again as it’s outdoors, but soon found out there is no way poor folks buy even cross country adult skiis that are actually usable. Used isn’t all that cheap either.

There are endless tax payer money maintained ski routes in this country during winter that take over walking routes, hiking routes etc. You are not allowed to do anything there but ski during the ski season. The people who do it are all upper middle class or otherwise in a position where they can afford the equipment. The poors don’t even get to use the area for walking during this time.

Fun fact, the OG big covid wave in my country was almost single handedly brought in by bougie skiiers partying in Austria, in the middle of a pandemic.

They just had to go skii, in a pandemic.

The genetic variant testing has revealed that not a single actual wave or mass spread ever happened here from outside the circles of bougie whiteness, no matter how hard they tried to make headlines of the “Chinese tourist” with covid.

And the fact that energy is spent in putting fake snow on the ground for these people so they can do their sport in climate change destroyed mountains is also a thing. They fly to these places to ski on artificial snow…

Not to mention how this “sport” and the tourism done in Lapland around it exploits and robs Sami peoples lands.

White supremacy and imperialism are unsustainable, humanity is not. We are totally able to live on this earth sustainably as a species and have done so just fine. Capitalism is unsustainable, but it has nothing to do with humanity as a whole.

Your comment is pretty (eco)fashy tbh.

The music in the marketing video is just incredible, reminds me of totally different sorts of movies circa 80s - 90s.

Yeah, it’s soul-crushing. This time I was however finally able to have the “covid is not over” talk with the mom of said kid when in the summer of this year she still ripped my eyes out when I very calmly said I don’t appreciate people showing up sick to family gatherings when covid is not over. Then I still got the partypooper treatment.

It’s very sad and depressing that we have to do this the hardest possible way with the most harm possible, but here we are.

Amazingly seemed like my more and more violently coughing midde class family is starting to get disillusioned by the status quo, all had been sick before Christmas with novid obviously. Most of my leftist points were met with comments like “I agree” with glances from depressed and weary eyes. Even my comments on how this virus will end us if we keep this up. That is new.

Boy did the kids especially make me sad though. One 9 year old said when I said their cough sounds pretty bad that “I cough like this all the time now”.

Oh and we also had our annual national(istic) presidents ball where the bourge goes to show of to the plebs today. The neoliberal princess Marin had put on a yellow dress to stand with Ukraine. Imagine her being framed as “the most leftist” pm we have had in some time, hahaha. Will fit so well into Tony Blairs School of Crimes Against Humanity.

Also some other bourge showed up with a dress with all the names of “hostages of Hamas” emboidered into it.

Nobody can make this shit up anymore.

Finland had an independence day today, complete with cop violence and nazi marches, as is again tradition.

Went to Reddit to see what Finnish “leftists” are saying about it all and as a sidenote in the otherwise ultralib bs someone pointed out how almost half of the audience of Vaush are often Finns and how curious that is.

Yeah, real curious.

Incredible how a line like this can be just thrown out there as a kind of fact, a way of the world. I would love to, for once, hear one of these types really explain what exactly is “american” and see if any lights turn on upstrains on how that whole concept might be a reason for a lot of problems.

Ah there is an account there that is doing the rounds on Masto, just blocked it today in a thread where it was vicously defending zionist atrocities in the Palestine tagged convos.

Yeah and yet she is referenced in articles. I just had to read a book on supposedly antiracism (pov Europe) and this ghoul appears on the reference list, I knew to look for it as the article itself was very much anticommunism dressed as nuanced academics.

Ffs, #holomodor is “trending” according to my server on Masto… with her post leading the pack.

There are so many of them now. And so many radlibs prop them up, the twitter escapers are exhausting.

Watched this halfway tonight, can’t handle the whole thing in one go. You are right about the safety of leftists, this chilled me to the bone.