Ice, it’s short, cool and was available because the fediverse is small. Comes as the short version of my old minecraft username I made when I was like 8 y.o that has become my online handle - Iceblade (very cool to kid me) + 02 (birth year).

To answer the question in your title, it depends on what you’re looking for.

When I was in my teens I didn’t know where I would be in a few years, planning for the future was difficult. The main criteria I used was that I didn’t want to regret a relation. It should be something I could look back on fondly and think “Yes, this was meaningful” even later.

As my life got a bit more predictable in my now early twenties and the road ahead more clear, this has shifted my priorities strictly towards seeking a partner for life. Right now, I have found someone who (hopefully) is it. Time can pass quickly, so once you’ve an idea of what you’re looking for in a long term partner (assuming you want one) it may be a good idea to not get stuck in dead-end relations.

Eh. Sure.

I was also a teenager on the internet, back when Reddit was a chill place to be. Now I’m an adult, with… responsibilities.

My advice?

Enjoy yourself, have fun, be unfiltered, be silly. The internet isn’t that big of a deal as long as you keep a degree of separation between your irl identity and online life. It’s liberating especially as someone who was a bit socially awkward.

Still, don’t forget mental hygiene. A break is good from time to time. Talk to people irl, take a walk, touch grass.

When people get angry online, I do my best to be a duck, let it wash off, respond either pleasantly or with cheer. Life is too short to be miserable, so go forth and have fun little duckling :)

Some people shouldn’t have kids, and some children probably shouldn’t be born.

The sad part is that the backbone of our clean energy system in Sweden, nuclear power, is being dismantled by persistent attacks from the environmental party. Since 2000 they’ve dismantled half of our nuclear fleet, and are commited to destroying the rest within twenty years.

Meanwhile our national grid operator is warning about the potential need for rolling blackouts during the winter demand peaks, which coincide the very coldest days of the year (which are also dark and windless). This winter there were below -40°C in parts of the country, and when the overwhelming majority of households rely on the grid for heating, extended outages have the potential to be lethal. Meanwhile, the electricity cost for a normal single family home can exceed 1’500€ equivalent for a single winter month, which can be compared to the median wage after taxes (3’000€ equivalent).

That’s not to mention that many new companies are being refused electricity connections by the grid providers due to them being unable to guarantee electricity supply the whole year (despite massive surpluses & negative prices during summer & windy seasons).

Meanwhile wood fire heating is making a huge comeback, reaching levels not seen since the 80s. 2022 marked the first year in my lifetime when many built up areas smell like wood fire in the winter, and have done so every year since. Industry experts are talking about adding fossil gas turbines as a stop gap measure to shore up the system, until we can either expand hydro by damming up the last northern rivers (currently prohibited due to environmental regulations to protect fish) or increase nuclear capacity again.