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.

It is complicated and tied to EU regulation and the “free market”, but it effectively made things so that Yle is not allowed to do text based journalism the same way it was before. There was a petition againts the law change here that obviously did nothing despite being a mechanism for “open democracy”.

Our capitalist media and right wing pushed out endless think pieces about Yle not being open and democratic enough to make this happen. The public ate that up. Later many voted for the Basic Finns because they promised to cut the funding of Yle (that they think is a nest of leftists) in half. It’s all a big farce.

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.

I have had to cut my Yle consumption to once in a few weeks, it triggers me so bad every time now. Should come with a health warning.

But you are so right, it has been incredible to watch how the relatively thinly weiled mask has come fully off in the last few years. I know a part if it is explained by the change in Yle law that the right wing pushed for that made the lefty journalist flee. And the editors in the recent times have all come from the corporate side of Finnish media that is notoriously bourgeois.

Good answer. Personally have fully checked out from electroralism after the Left Alliance went pro-Nato and I started to more clearly see that their understanding of leftism is mostly whining about social justice issues, but then backing capitalism and nationalism all the way to the bank. It’s a very neoliberal left. There is no real left option here.

And the presidential election being mostly a ceremonial little spectacle where people can vote their way into feeling better while the right wing government is pushing for the heaviest austerity and cuts to basic workers rights makes it all feel pretty pointless.

Can’t lie though, seeing any of these bourge ghouls speaking for the country will still feel bad, but I am not sure if it really matters which one of these it is. Stubb is an obnoxious neoliberal, but so is Haavisto. It will suck either way.

The push for return to office. At least here I am hearing about more and more sick tech workers, the whole “our entire office is sick”-thing. Not everyone will come out of that ok.

Statistically the push for in person stuff will raise their exposure too. They are working class, and can lose their protection on a whim, many have already lost it.

The amount of finance shenanigans the capitalist class has going on around in the use of these office buildings and other in-person infra is huge. And we spend a lot more when we have to leave our homes. Travel, eating out, clothing. They want the high earners out there, consuming and getting sick.

The exposure is next level. Schools, daycares, healthcare settings too, clearly jobs where there are a lot of women as well. Pretty sure the response would look different if more tech bros were dying or getting longcovid from this. Sadly we might be getting there though.

And public health messaging has truly been motivated by the capitalists on this.

We currently have the tail-end covid and we had an electrician come over yesterday and my partner told him that we are likely still not good to be around. The guy replied with “Yes, but I am vaccinated 4 times”. My partner replied with “I am 5 times and still have been sick for almost two weeks now, would you like a mask?”. He was happy to take the mask.

It was still risky for him, but they are sent to these apartments by the landlords who employ them and nobody cares to protect the workers.

Biggest issue is that these workers clearly trust public health enough that they really think they are protected now. What will this do to that trust, why is anyone surprised that anti-vax sentiments are on the rise? It’s a symptom of this.

Covid is a class issue.

I just read a paper on where covid came from in my homecountry Finland. The entire spread of it was from tourist spots in three other European countries where the upper classes like to vacation and did during the first years. One ski resort in Austria seeded one wave alone here basically. Not a single case that spread further ever arrived here from Wuhan for example, the spreading was all done by the high income brackets from their vacationing.

Now the brunt of it is beared by the service workers, the labor aristroes are happily cushioned in their remote work and it is still them who keep bringing new variants in, those who say “I need to travel for mental health” or whatever.

Covid is a class consciousness issue on a very real level, it’s the working class that dies from it.

I fell victim to this over Christmas. Had spent a few months laying low, online shopping, no unnecessary peopleing and then the coughing group of dead eyed relatives with their kids descended on us. Both me and my partner have been sick now for 12 days, despite all the boosters.

Stole this from somewhere on social media because it is just the most glorious round bird with a big attitude that I very much identified with. The meme hands that were added on it are the icing on the cake.

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”.

Ah homecountry.:/ I feel like I would have so much to say that I don’t even know where to begin.