I hear so many people praise paying with their phones, and there I am, so happy that I can leave my phone at home when shopping. Each to their own I guess.

To build on this, in Norway so many people died that in 1450 (100 years after the black death) 60% of all farms was left abandoned and the term Ødegård (øde = desolated/abandoned, gård = farm) was popularized. Ødegård/Ødegaard is still quite a common family name to this day.

Anyone that wanted could just go and take a farm and be their own boss.

Of course, in the 1500s when the population had increased sufficiently the farms all had to be rebuilt and the rich landlords claimed the farms in their area and the King took the rest. The peasants were allowed to work the farms if they paid the lords for the privilege.

In the 1600s a new underclass of Husmenn (hus = house) was created. They owned their houses, but not the ground. When they moved they would normally take their houses with them.

In Norway we use Facebook Messenger, which is worse. Wattsapp’s at least usable as a messaging platform for more than 1-to-1 communication

Yes, I used web sockets for Signal for a while. It drained 30% of my battery when the phone sat idle for a day. Absolutely bonkers. Made the phone almost unusable so had to revert to FCM or disable notifications.

I think thats exactly it. A lot of the people begrudgingly have a PC. I bet most of those just use whatever the PC came with. Linux and Mac users are more likely to enjoy using a PC.

Apparently Linux have 20% market share in Norway. That is… I don’t really believe it, but really cool if true.

In Norway we made the plastic bags really expensive (about half an Euro atm) and it’s working wonders. I still have a stash of them, but they’re for special emergencies. The stores sell actual trash bags that’s much smaller and thinner, and thus more convenient (for me at least) so that problem is taken care of as well.

I keep 4 reusable fabric bags around as well, two for shopping, 1 for glass and 1 for recyclable bottles.

I find that I much prefer this system. And I still have the option to pay 5kr for a plastic bag at store if I have to.

5kr for a bag is juuust enough for me to get my reusable bag at home if I want to make spontaneous trip to the store on my way home.