Nineteen days ago, a Swedish advertising agency made waves by airdropping a thousand teddy bears over Belarus—a minor protest against the nation’s repression of free speech. A student in Minsk posted several photos of the bears on his site, and was subsequently arrested by Belarusian authorities for undisclosed reasons. That arrest caused the Swede behind […]
I’m genuinely surprised that this story, about the attempted assassination of a dissident Uzbek cleric, has remained so off-the-radar. The victim, Obidkhon Qori Nazarov, was reportedly shot multiple times—not in his native country, but rather in the small Swedish town of Strömsund. I can’t imagine the Swedes are too happy about a foreign nation’s assassins […]
In case you don’t keep regular tabs on Scandinavian jurisprudence, I’d like to draw your attention to a recent legal triumph by a group of Sami reindeer herders who operate in Sweden’s forbidding north. After 14 years of litigation, the herders have finally won the right to let their animals graze in the forests around […]
Tags:agriculture·elephants·public health·reindeer·Sami·Sweden
To ardent fans of arm wrestling, there is no greater hero than the famous Mac Batchelor, a Los Angeles bartender who never lost a single match over his twenty-five year professional career. Even more impressively, he won a fair share of those matches while blasted out of his skull on whiskey and beer—his tolerance for […]
Tags:arm wrestlings·Mac Batchelor·Oscar Nygren·sports·Sweden
We stayed up late last night finishing Grounded, an unusual (and excellent) travelogue by our pal and occasional Slate colleague Seth Stevenson. (Check out one of our NFL-centric back-and-forths here.) The book is an account of Seth’s attempt to circumnavigate the globe with his girlfriend, using only surface transportation—no planes, helicopters, or dirigibles. Hilarity and […]
Tags:cars·H-Day·Scandinavia·Sweden
Upon learning that Poland is set to end military conscription starting early next year, Microkhan got to wondering about the economic effects of nixing the draft. Is it a net good to have thousands of 18-to-21-year-olds pounding the pavement in search of jobs or educations, as opposed to learning how to march and fire weapons? […]
Tags:conscription·military·Poland·Sweden
Another day, another gobsmacking tale of police impersonation, this time involving a 14-year-old Chicagoan who managed to make his way onto patrol thanks to the laziness of commanders. The kid even got to twist a suspect’s arm—surely every rage-filled teenager’s dream. The Chicago case provides an excellent opportunity to call out another athlete with a […]
