Really loving such responses to POTUS, I hope they don't spend too much of our tax money on addressing his childishness though, although, in PR this probably has good ROI :)
I'm new to HN. Does it always get like this before US elections?
I was really enjoying the apolitical vibes, but then that all went off a cliff about two weeks ago. Hard to tell if it's astroturfing or if it's just on people's minds.
I'm increasingly convinced that awful public restrooms are mostly a North America thing. Travelling in Iceland a few years ago I was shocked at how nice the restrooms at the major gas stations were (N1 stands out). Full-height doors and stall walls, meticulous cleanliness, no weird smells.
At a gas station off the ring road in the middle of nowhere.
I can assure you that as a fellow European, both this amazing jab at the Clown in Chief and the beautiful vistas have renewed my interest in travelling to Norway as soon as I can, so I'm pretty sure it will pay off!
Since we are talking about shithouses in Norway and international politics, I should mention as a Frenchman the existence of French toilets with the colours of the French flags and the France national motto displayed on top. In front of the Norwegian parliament in Oslo.
It's also the colours of the Norwegian flag (as well as the US flag). I think the flag is quite literally coloured by the time when the flag was created (1820s, post French revolution).
So there's also all the stuff about the wonders of Japanese toilets with heated seats and bidets etc. and I was amazed at how many of what are really low budget toilets in like mid-tier shopping malls, fast food restaurants and rural train stations had the full deal. And how clean they were. Toilets in those kinds of places here are often a mess and it's not uncommon to find the toilet seat missing entirely, so nobody's installing a expensive fancy seat in a public bathroom.
The flip side is if you go off more rural, you can run into the type of toilet that Japanese people consider a "Japanese toilet". Complete opposite of the tech wonders that the rest of the world pictures when they hear Japanese toilet. Because they're pretty much relegated to toilets without much investment at this point, they're also usually much less maintained than other toilets too.
Yet no trash cans. It's a frustrating trade off, especially with all the vending machines. If you don't have a backpack, you're stuck carrying trash. If you do, it gets messy.
Also, this does not hold in Hokkaido. I taught English in Obihiro (well, Makubetsu) and you had to plan your trash and restroom breaks.
Technically you're supposed to wait around and consume your product at the shop where you've bought it, but I didn't have any objections to doing one-in one-out, so as long as I bought a new drink I just dropped the refuse from the last one at the store where I bought the next one.
I think they don't have enough mechanical degrees of freedom to hurt you. The nozzle can only move forward / back. The seat and hot air blower could overheat and set your house on fire, but nothing could keep you on the toilet while they do that.
I hiked Norwegian fjords above Bergen a couple of times in the past, highly recommend it if you ever get a chance.
Also: Norway has one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world, valued at $2.2 trillion; over 50% are investments in US assets; close to $200 billion in US Treasury securities; and is a major shareholder in US corporations, especially across the tech sector.
So well done Norway, this is how you deal with clowns, not debate or argue on social media, but rub their face in your pure awesomness.
Norway has done a great job with what they've been given, but remember that they've had the national equivalent of being born into a rich family - they have had enormous wealth from natural resources in the form of North Sea oil.
You say it like it's given that natural resources wealth is distributed for population like it's in Norway. Its not. It takes a lot of work. Otherwise you get shithole countries where warlords/corporations/mafia take over control of resources and enrich them selves instead of raising global wellbeing.
Fair, but so does UK, Canada - which might be one of the richest countries in the world in terms of natural resources I think? - and especially US of A.
But how these countries use their resources is quite different.
Also their taxes are proportional to wealth and everyone pays them, so good public service. It's not that hard to understand and there is no need to circle around it.
Norway is hardly unique in having abundant natural resources. Other countries have larger oil reserves. What's unique is the fact that instead of letting a few large corporations, or corrupt mafia, get rich off of them with "trickle down economics" benefitting the rest of the country, the government is in charge of it and uses it for the public benefit.
As per usual, that’s British slang which was carried over to Australia. Almost all slang phrases Americans associate with Australia are British in origin and still in wide use, as you’d expect given the history of both countries.
Nope, sorry, Norwegians actually tax mining / energy corporations (so the government has money to spend on... designer dunnies!), instead of just giving away their non-renewable natural resources to billionaires for free. That's un-Australian!
That's such an appalling misrepresentation of what happens here in Australia that even Konrad Benjamin himself would correct you. State, Territory and Federal governments all take revenue for non-renewable resource extraction.
Their resource company is effectively the government and reducing their climate impact is basically impossible without killing their economy. I think we'd rather not be in that position.
I'm from Australia and always assumed the word "shithouse" was mostly used here, and at first glance assumed this post was an amusing joke by an Aussie (though - being somewhat cutesy with a Trump-ism?) rather than a Norwegian government website.
Though I might be wrong - I doubt this word comes up in tech blogs and academic conferences very often?
I find it fascinating that the cost of these gorgeous places is roughly the same as the cost to build a public restroom in San Francisco. Notably the architects in SF are much more expensive than those in Norway. Certainly quite interesting.
Plus, there were persistent stories of terrifying beasts that lived in the sewers and bit people’s bottoms. Of course those stories could have just been invented by people who were waiting on line, to help people get done quicker.
On the topic of great shithouses, I highly recommend the 2023 Japanese drama Perfect Days. It's about a quiet man that works for Tokyo Toilets, cleaning a set of architecturally interesting public toilets around the Shibuya district. The movie itself is compelling -- a fascinating study of a man and purpose, very similar to Paterson (2016)[1] -- but the whole thing is like taking a trip to Tokyo, with an enormous number of gorgeous shots of fascinating scenes. Also a lot of shots of someone cleaning toilets.
[1] The directors of both movies are friends, and interestingly Paterson ends with the protagonist talking to a man from Tokyo who came to visit Paterson, as a poetry fan of William Carlos Williams. It is coincidence, but it does make it feel like they're the same universe.
They can’t possibly be the best because I went into the public bathroom out our local playground last week at 10am and there was a gigantic steaming turd perfectly deposited on the seat of the all-metal prison-style toilet. My 3 year old was as stunned as I was. To think, some local resident was thoughtful enough to bless us with this gift.
Are you telling me my Oakland California toilets are somehow inferior? I find this hard to believe…
Well, that's a pretty good ad from Visit Norway: now I'd really like to visit.
In fact, if they weren't so damn rich and everything so expensive compared to my Southern European way of live, I'd consider moving there just to enjoy the gorgeous nature.
If you can get a job here then that will go quite some way to compensating for the high cost living and housing outside the biggest towns is relatively affordable compared to, say, UK.
Maybe more what amazing things you you can achieve for your people when the citizens are the shareholders of the economic benefits of your country’s natural resources?
When you get a dollar bill, you can actually tell whether it's from oil or not? I can't..
What's really amazing are the lengths by which people justify they cannot have a nice society. It's easy to see, mathematically, the willingness to share has no relation to absolute GDP or where it comes from.
Generally building public works becomes quite difficult when you have one dominant sector pushing up wages (oil and gas in this case). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect
My home has thirty-eight rooms on thirty-six worlds. No doors: the arched entrances are farcaster portals, a few opaqued with privacy curtains, most open to observation and entry.
...
The architect, a student of the legendary Millon DeHaVre, has incorporated several small jokes into the house’s design: the steps go down to the tower room, of course, but equally droll is the exit from the eyrie which leads to the exercise room on the lowest level of Lusus’s deepest Hive, or perhaps the guest bathroom which consists of toilet, bidet, sink and shower stall on an open, wall-less raft afloat on the violet seaworld of Mare Infinitus.
Just the fact that the level of politics dropped this low and this is being celebrated is something that makes me feel that we are on a 100% downward slope on our civilizational collapse with no turning back.
How tf the most powerful country on earth became such an openly corrupted clownshow?
I don't wanna absolve any of the evil shits in Trump's circle, or among the MAGA crowd, of blame in this. But I think the biggest issue of all is the anglosphere's love for first past the post electoral systems. There's no excuse for FPTP, and while they often have a positive side effect in giving crazies zero representation, they're vulnerable to crazies taking unchecked control of the system.
Sure, MAGA would've been a large congressional embarrassment in a proportional system. But they wouldn't run the show.
It might be that just your knowledge of history is lacking.
Look for example to America (i mean the continent, there is no country named that). Civilisation brought extinction to various indigenous tribes, but in norther and central america. It brought slavery. In a way, we are over that now, aren't we?
Look for example to Europe (I'm so glad that no european country is so full of it and call itself just "Europe"). They had hundreds of wars in a 10 year period. Some small ... but some like the 30 year long war more devastating than even the 2nd world war.Sure, some people there (look into ex-jugoslavia or look into Russia) still think that mass-killing people is good. Oh, did I mention 2nd world war? Then look there, too. And how one society thought they have the right to extinguish Jews, Gypsies, Jehovas Witnesses, mental ill people and basically any political opponent. I still think we can say that we are over such a thing.
Look for example to Asia. There was a country that waged war on China because China was not buying enough Opium. Or look like the asian golden horde devastated with utter cruelty whole (at the time) mega-cities. And they brough the bubonic plague on top of it ...
Or look at Africa. I mentioned the slaver for America ... but actually african tribes captured people from other tribes and sold them. We can't say that slavery is totally abolished in Africa (I heard the Boko Haram does it) --- but certainly not at the scale it used to be.
If you think that society develops backwards, then just looking at how things used to be 100, 200 or 500 years.
Besides aesthetics, there are so many functional aspects that sets apart good from shitty bathrooms.
Things I evaluate when I use public restrooms include: are they 100% touch free (doors, toilets, taps)? Recycled towels for drying or air dryers where your hands invariable touch the unit?
Are they just peeing now? One of my indelible memories in India from 20 years ago is seeing a rickshaw driver in Connaught Place, the heart of historically respectable Delhi and no isolated slum, crouching behind his rickshaw and defecating right there on the street.
Meanwhile in London we have public... urinals. Just a few minutes from the city center. People urinating in the open. Opposite to where my wife goes to dancing classes. UK is really fucking abysmal sometimes.
I had the same thought! What do they look actually like in Norway‽ Unfortunately, because of the thing we're commenting on, Google image search has been taken over by those kinds of pictures, and none of the actual toilet and sinks!
I like them and I think they're cool, but Norway is a country of 5.6 million people that discovered a massive oil deposit and has an enormous public fund per-capita because of it, so making it a referendum on how bad the United States is is pretty weird. Saudi Arabia has indoor ski resorts too, yes if we had that much oil per person I bet we could have some pretty sweet toilets.
I'm totally fine with the pit toilet design they came up with for the parks. I'm not there to take an instagram poop, I'm there to go hiking.
Why has the title of this post been changed, when HN rules are to use the title of the article? The rename is less engaging and misses the point completely. Moderators did this or?
It's kinda funny. But I'm a Norwegian, and I can tell you that Norway actually is a shitty country in so many ways. It likes to tell the world how fantastic it is, but there are just so many things that are structurally pathetic, weak, or inadequate about it.
Norway has been severely mismanaged for decades now, and soon the chickens are coming home to roost. Sadly, karma will be a bitch.
A detail or two would be welcome so that we could either agree or disagree on firm ground.
I'll grant you it's not perfect, primary education is a bit lacklustre, preparation for an oil free economy is not given enough effort, etc. What were your "structurally pathetic", etc. things?
I still cannot believe I'm living in a timeline where the US president is emotionally a 3-year-old and throws a temper tantrum in the public when his parents don't get him a shiny thing he has done absolutely nothing to deserve.
As an American it is pure hell. Every day I feel like Marty McFly waking up in the nightmare timeline where Biff controls things. And my own brother voted for Trump 3 times yet absolutely refuses to talk about him under any circumstances.
This is probably inevitable once you combine winner-takes-all voting systems with the organized hysteria that is social networks.
Given that many of us here have helped the latter emerge and dominate the entire societal discourse, we should meditate somberly upon the law of unintended consequences. It certainly did not look this way when it started, but social networks are a major channel for hate and allow the worst of the worst to set standards for everyone else.
Frankly if AI can mitigate this, it would be a positive development and I would tolerate all the sickly-sweet sycophancy if it also steered people away from hating one another with passion.
I don't mean to bring low value demagougue, I can't help but ask myself, when Hitler rose to power, then being jailed and then rose to power even more, did the normal people who wanted nothing to do with his bs felt the same?
I used to think that the (2018) book "The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States", which ridicules Donald Trump quite a bit, was overdoing it for dramatic effect...
Ah yes, the timeline where the US president is a convicted sex offender, 34 times convicted felon, tried to overtake a democratically elected president, stored top secret nuclear secrets in his toilet, orchestrated a cover up of the biggest pedophile ring in history, is an active russian agent, and all we talk about is ...his tantrums....
There's a good number of differences between "shithouse countries" and countries that care enough about the wellbeing of their citizens to have good, clean, and free public toilets.
We should definitely make not using that phrase one of them.
Imagine building such objects and a graceful website only to have the visitor be confronted with "Shit" right at the beginning. Try this Norway: 'Outhouse'.
I think the hundred of thousands of tourists packing the roads all summer didn't get your memo.
You can do expensive vacation or cheap vacation, and both are possible in Norway. You can get a cheap flight and sleep in a tent, or you can drive your car through Sweden.
Norway has everyman's right, so for some holidaymakers that means no accommodation costs. It is also popular to do one's grocery shopping on the Swedish side of the border, or even drive up from Germany with a full load of food for the length of the holiday.
Really loving such responses to POTUS, I hope they don't spend too much of our tax money on addressing his childishness though, although, in PR this probably has good ROI :)
Front page of HN…
I'm new to HN. Does it always get like this before US elections?
I was really enjoying the apolitical vibes, but then that all went off a cliff about two weeks ago. Hard to tell if it's astroturfing or if it's just on people's minds.
The ROI is shit
I would like to visit now. Makes America’s rest stops look even more pathetic and cheap when I see this grandeur.
I'm increasingly convinced that awful public restrooms are mostly a North America thing. Travelling in Iceland a few years ago I was shocked at how nice the restrooms at the major gas stations were (N1 stands out). Full-height doors and stall walls, meticulous cleanliness, no weird smells.
At a gas station off the ring road in the middle of nowhere.
Some states have really nice rest stops along the freeway. I think it's variable
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I can assure you that as a fellow European, both this amazing jab at the Clown in Chief and the beautiful vistas have renewed my interest in travelling to Norway as soon as I can, so I'm pretty sure it will pay off!
Since we are talking about shithouses in Norway and international politics, I should mention as a Frenchman the existence of French toilets with the colours of the French flags and the France national motto displayed on top. In front of the Norwegian parliament in Oslo.
https://koro.no/prosjekter/liberte/
It's also the colours of the Norwegian flag (as well as the US flag). I think the flag is quite literally coloured by the time when the flag was created (1820s, post French revolution).
That's true, and these toilets are still clearly a reference to the french flag
Best public restroom density I've ever had was in Japan. Every corner you can find a toilet. So relaxing when you are traveling.
So there's also all the stuff about the wonders of Japanese toilets with heated seats and bidets etc. and I was amazed at how many of what are really low budget toilets in like mid-tier shopping malls, fast food restaurants and rural train stations had the full deal. And how clean they were. Toilets in those kinds of places here are often a mess and it's not uncommon to find the toilet seat missing entirely, so nobody's installing a expensive fancy seat in a public bathroom.
The flip side is if you go off more rural, you can run into the type of toilet that Japanese people consider a "Japanese toilet". Complete opposite of the tech wonders that the rest of the world pictures when they hear Japanese toilet. Because they're pretty much relegated to toilets without much investment at this point, they're also usually much less maintained than other toilets too.
For a glimpse into public toilets in Japan, do yourself a favour and watch ‘Perfect Days’.
Great film with great acting and great music. If you feel you lost the connection to your own life, it might be worth a watch.
Correct order is:
1. Watch Perfect Days 2. Go to Japan 3. Do the The Tokyo Toilet [1] _tour_
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tokyo_Toilet
My favorite movie of all time. First thing I thought of when I saw this.
Yet no trash cans. It's a frustrating trade off, especially with all the vending machines. If you don't have a backpack, you're stuck carrying trash. If you do, it gets messy.
Also, this does not hold in Hokkaido. I taught English in Obihiro (well, Makubetsu) and you had to plan your trash and restroom breaks.
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No trashcans anywhere though :)
They're in the konbinis.
Technically you're supposed to wait around and consume your product at the shop where you've bought it, but I didn't have any objections to doing one-in one-out, so as long as I bought a new drink I just dropped the refuse from the last one at the store where I bought the next one.
and yet there’s no trash and the streets are clean.
Patently not true - there are rubbish bins and recycling bins all over the place in Japan.
Im always afraid of Japanese toilets, will I sit on it as the robot uprising starts?
I think they don't have enough mechanical degrees of freedom to hurt you. The nozzle can only move forward / back. The seat and hot air blower could overheat and set your house on fire, but nothing could keep you on the toilet while they do that.
This cracked me up:
> If you are a mere mortal like us and can’t afford a gold-plated toilet seat, the Golden loo on the island Senja is the next best thing.
All joking aside, I'm impressed at the beauty and serenity of these public restroom facilities. They are truly architectural works of art.
Kudos to the people who designed and built them!
I hiked Norwegian fjords above Bergen a couple of times in the past, highly recommend it if you ever get a chance.
Also: Norway has one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world, valued at $2.2 trillion; over 50% are investments in US assets; close to $200 billion in US Treasury securities; and is a major shareholder in US corporations, especially across the tech sector.
So well done Norway, this is how you deal with clowns, not debate or argue on social media, but rub their face in your pure awesomness.
> Norway has one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world
There were signs in the article lol
That chilling feeling when an intern in South Asia can freeze your trading account with one click.
Norway has done a great job with what they've been given, but remember that they've had the national equivalent of being born into a rich family - they have had enormous wealth from natural resources in the form of North Sea oil.
You say it like it's given that natural resources wealth is distributed for population like it's in Norway. Its not. It takes a lot of work. Otherwise you get shithole countries where warlords/corporations/mafia take over control of resources and enrich them selves instead of raising global wellbeing.
Fair, but so does UK, Canada - which might be one of the richest countries in the world in terms of natural resources I think? - and especially US of A.
But how these countries use their resources is quite different.
Also their taxes are proportional to wealth and everyone pays them, so good public service. It's not that hard to understand and there is no need to circle around it.
Norway is hardly unique in having abundant natural resources. Other countries have larger oil reserves. What's unique is the fact that instead of letting a few large corporations, or corrupt mafia, get rich off of them with "trickle down economics" benefitting the rest of the country, the government is in charge of it and uses it for the public benefit.
"But socialism is bad!!"
At least we didn’t have to steal it from the original inhabitants.
… Oh wait …
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I still believe Estonian restrooms are prettier. Norway has a shitload of public money, but Estonia very good designers
Almost definitionally, any amount of money spent on these kinds of washrooms would be a shitload, no?
Still seems wasteful to build everything like a brick shithouse.
Examples?
One example. Dug the hole myself.
https://ibb.co/5X009NcX
It's common practice to dig a new hole 10m further and move the shithouse over.
Epstinian rooms on the island have no equal.
Norwegians are honorary Australians apparently, we love a good shithouse.
My favorite Australian idiom is "built like a brick shithouse" (of a guy being very muscular).
As per usual, that’s British slang which was carried over to Australia. Almost all slang phrases Americans associate with Australia are British in origin and still in wide use, as you’d expect given the history of both countries.
I did not know that was an Aussie thing (heard in England often enough)
My favourite is “Going off like a frog in a sock”
But there are many to choose from. “Face like a dropped pie” is another gem.
While I can understand this for muscular guys, I never got why it can also be used to mean a very curvaceous/attractive woman.
Nope, sorry, Norwegians actually tax mining / energy corporations (so the government has money to spend on... designer dunnies!), instead of just giving away their non-renewable natural resources to billionaires for free. That's un-Australian!
That's such an appalling misrepresentation of what happens here in Australia that even Konrad Benjamin himself would correct you. State, Territory and Federal governments all take revenue for non-renewable resource extraction.
Their resource company is effectively the government and reducing their climate impact is basically impossible without killing their economy. I think we'd rather not be in that position.
Yep! From the headline, I assumed that Norway had made its own version of https://toiletmap.gov.au/
Same energy as ‘CU in the NT’.
Nominally. Public restrooms along major highways are dire in terms of cleanliness.
Trump's gargantuan adult diapers serve as his portable shithouse.
> Norwegians are honorary Australians apparently LOL, why?
I understand shortened attention spans but maybe consider reading the entire sentence of a single sentence comment before replying.
As the sentence says, because Australians and Norwegians both have an affinity for shithouses.
I'm from Australia and always assumed the word "shithouse" was mostly used here, and at first glance assumed this post was an amusing joke by an Aussie (though - being somewhat cutesy with a Trump-ism?) rather than a Norwegian government website.
Though I might be wrong - I doubt this word comes up in tech blogs and academic conferences very often?
I find it fascinating that the cost of these gorgeous places is roughly the same as the cost to build a public restroom in San Francisco. Notably the architects in SF are much more expensive than those in Norway. Certainly quite interesting.
This is the problem with HN not doing humor. You are always the one who does not grok it...
"Trump calls Norway a ‘shithouse country’" - https://www.euronews.com/video/2026/10/27/trump-calls-norway...
> This is the problem with HN not doing humor. You are always the one who does not grok it...
Rather: many people who are not US citizens or don't live in the USA don't really care about the gossip around Donald Trump's most recent tantrum.
Thank you - I did not understand what was going on / what the tie back was.
Similarly cool reprisal from Trump 1 (made by a Dutch comedian, which was then many countries copied): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELD2AwFN9Nc
Old Rome had the best shithouses though. A whole row of toilets which made the experience very social and intimate.
Not sure it'd be my cup of tea. I prefer a bit of privacy. This was the one I checked out in Pompeii https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/10/14/47/8e/...
The ones at Sketch near me are funky https://live.staticflickr.com/881/42433327302_280548ddd2_b.j...
I would request one for my office, it would be good to have a deep, group discussion with our CTO while we all poop together in the open.
Plus, there were persistent stories of terrifying beasts that lived in the sewers and bit people’s bottoms. Of course those stories could have just been invented by people who were waiting on line, to help people get done quicker.
Everyone would meet up later in the vomitorium
On the topic of great shithouses, I highly recommend the 2023 Japanese drama Perfect Days. It's about a quiet man that works for Tokyo Toilets, cleaning a set of architecturally interesting public toilets around the Shibuya district. The movie itself is compelling -- a fascinating study of a man and purpose, very similar to Paterson (2016)[1] -- but the whole thing is like taking a trip to Tokyo, with an enormous number of gorgeous shots of fascinating scenes. Also a lot of shots of someone cleaning toilets.
[1] The directors of both movies are friends, and interestingly Paterson ends with the protagonist talking to a man from Tokyo who came to visit Paterson, as a poetry fan of William Carlos Williams. It is coincidence, but it does make it feel like they're the same universe.
Real title
> ARE THESE THE WORLD’S BEST SHITHOUSES?
What happened to
> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.
Just scroll normally!
Agreed, the website is totally fucked
It's the dumb attempt to use video backgrounds and the varying ways that mobile devices choose to display those videos.
They can’t possibly be the best because I went into the public bathroom out our local playground last week at 10am and there was a gigantic steaming turd perfectly deposited on the seat of the all-metal prison-style toilet. My 3 year old was as stunned as I was. To think, some local resident was thoughtful enough to bless us with this gift.
Are you telling me my Oakland California toilets are somehow inferior? I find this hard to believe…
Holly molly, Norway #1 rank on the front page. Let's gooo!
Ro Ro Ro :D
If you want to visit Norway come to the west coast if you want fjords and scenery - not the capital in the east.
Surprisingly few pictures of the facilities interiors.
Well, that's a pretty good ad from Visit Norway: now I'd really like to visit.
In fact, if they weren't so damn rich and everything so expensive compared to my Southern European way of live, I'd consider moving there just to enjoy the gorgeous nature.
If you can get a job here then that will go quite some way to compensating for the high cost living and housing outside the biggest towns is relatively affordable compared to, say, UK.
In the US, you would get squaters living there the moment it gets opened to the public
In Norway they would be evicted pretty promptly.
This is prompted by Trump saying "Norway has become a shithouse country, actually" after he was not awarded the Nobel prize for peace.
Because he is too Trump to realize that Norway has no saying in the award
And that's, ladies and gentlemen, how you promote yourself as a tourist destination!
It is amazing what you can do with oil money.
Maybe more what amazing things you you can achieve for your people when the citizens are the shareholders of the economic benefits of your country’s natural resources?
When you get a dollar bill, you can actually tell whether it's from oil or not? I can't..
What's really amazing are the lengths by which people justify they cannot have a nice society. It's easy to see, mathematically, the willingness to share has no relation to absolute GDP or where it comes from.
btw, Norway is the only country in the world which didn't get Dutch disease.
It's super impressive, isn't it!
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease
Generally building public works becomes quite difficult when you have one dominant sector pushing up wages (oil and gas in this case). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect
No, it's amazing what you can do with oil money _that you decide to nationalize the oil industry and use it for the public good_.
The US has plenty of oil money too.
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finally: unshittification
This reminds me of Rick's secret pooping spot in Rick and Morty
From Hyperion by Dan Simmons:
No way you could have those in North America -- people would ruin them. Which is a shame because they are pretty place to be a king/queen for a bit.
Just the fact that the level of politics dropped this low and this is being celebrated is something that makes me feel that we are on a 100% downward slope on our civilizational collapse with no turning back. How tf the most powerful country on earth became such an openly corrupted clownshow?
I don't wanna absolve any of the evil shits in Trump's circle, or among the MAGA crowd, of blame in this. But I think the biggest issue of all is the anglosphere's love for first past the post electoral systems. There's no excuse for FPTP, and while they often have a positive side effect in giving crazies zero representation, they're vulnerable to crazies taking unchecked control of the system.
Sure, MAGA would've been a large congressional embarrassment in a proportional system. But they wouldn't run the show.
Because people voted a clown
It might be that just your knowledge of history is lacking.
Look for example to America (i mean the continent, there is no country named that). Civilisation brought extinction to various indigenous tribes, but in norther and central america. It brought slavery. In a way, we are over that now, aren't we?
Look for example to Europe (I'm so glad that no european country is so full of it and call itself just "Europe"). They had hundreds of wars in a 10 year period. Some small ... but some like the 30 year long war more devastating than even the 2nd world war.Sure, some people there (look into ex-jugoslavia or look into Russia) still think that mass-killing people is good. Oh, did I mention 2nd world war? Then look there, too. And how one society thought they have the right to extinguish Jews, Gypsies, Jehovas Witnesses, mental ill people and basically any political opponent. I still think we can say that we are over such a thing.
Look for example to Asia. There was a country that waged war on China because China was not buying enough Opium. Or look like the asian golden horde devastated with utter cruelty whole (at the time) mega-cities. And they brough the bubonic plague on top of it ...
Or look at Africa. I mentioned the slaver for America ... but actually african tribes captured people from other tribes and sold them. We can't say that slavery is totally abolished in Africa (I heard the Boko Haram does it) --- but certainly not at the scale it used to be.
If you think that society develops backwards, then just looking at how things used to be 100, 200 or 500 years.
Slowly (GW Bush and Trump 1), then suddenly (Trump 2).
It's a literal shitpost. I think you're being hyperbolic.
Back in the 1980s, The Miami Herald's "Tropic Magazine" ran a couple of competitions for most scenic outhouse in the world.
(That is, an outhouse with a great view, which is different than finding ones which are architectural masterpieces.)
I can find no trace of those results online. Perhaps someone here has better success?
Besides aesthetics, there are so many functional aspects that sets apart good from shitty bathrooms.
Things I evaluate when I use public restrooms include: are they 100% touch free (doors, toilets, taps)? Recycled towels for drying or air dryers where your hands invariable touch the unit?
etc.
Recycled towels?
100% touch free? How does that work?
India please kindly follow. Indians peeing on the roads should be put in the prisons for life.
Are they just peeing now? One of my indelible memories in India from 20 years ago is seeing a rickshaw driver in Connaught Place, the heart of historically respectable Delhi and no isolated slum, crouching behind his rickshaw and defecating right there on the street.
Tell the Germans, they have a word for it: Wildpinkeln.
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Wish the text tiles were not so intrusive and obstructive.
Who wants a pretty view occluded by a large white rectangle!
Trump got confused and said shithouse (which makes no sense) instead of shithole, his original term for basically any non-white country.
> Trump got confused and said shithouse (which makes no sense) instead of shithole, his original term for basically any non-white country.
Is Norway really a non-white country? ;-)
As an Englishman I can confirm they are built like brick shithouses.
Meanwhile in London we have public... urinals. Just a few minutes from the city center. People urinating in the open. Opposite to where my wife goes to dancing classes. UK is really fucking abysmal sometimes.
Just came back from a vacation in the UK and I was amazed at how clean everything is. Not a single dog poo or cigarette butt anywhere.
Sure, fine, but have you ever been to a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike?
The most shitest shithouse is clearly white and has a orange gremlin in it
To drop a massive log in house with a nice view is a thing. A good thing.
I've been to about half of those, and can confirm their awesomeness!
Great marketing, a wonderful country, and beautiful shithouses.
Did I miss something? Where are the pics of the actual toilet?
I had the same thought! What do they look actually like in Norway‽ Unfortunately, because of the thing we're commenting on, Google image search has been taken over by those kinds of pictures, and none of the actual toilet and sinks!
I had to disable my adblock
I like them and I think they're cool, but Norway is a country of 5.6 million people that discovered a massive oil deposit and has an enormous public fund per-capita because of it, so making it a referendum on how bad the United States is is pretty weird. Saudi Arabia has indoor ski resorts too, yes if we had that much oil per person I bet we could have some pretty sweet toilets.
I'm totally fine with the pit toilet design they came up with for the parks. I'm not there to take an instagram poop, I'm there to go hiking.
Valuable perspective.
That said, our public restrooms in big American cities are, in many cases, a disgrace. Vandalized, disgusting, and sparse/inacessible
But outside of cities (and even in some cities) it’s totally fine
Why has the title of this post been changed, when HN rules are to use the title of the article? The rename is less engaging and misses the point completely. Moderators did this or?
Somewhat relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47207284
Lots of shit coming out of Norway lately.
As seen in Rick and Morty
Intrusive thoughts tell me to defecate straight down the scenic balcony.
Original title is far better
Shithouses and SHITTY NAGSCREENS I will never agree to ...
So Rick’s toilet is real and there are more than one
It's kinda funny. But I'm a Norwegian, and I can tell you that Norway actually is a shitty country in so many ways. It likes to tell the world how fantastic it is, but there are just so many things that are structurally pathetic, weak, or inadequate about it.
Norway has been severely mismanaged for decades now, and soon the chickens are coming home to roost. Sadly, karma will be a bitch.
A detail or two would be welcome so that we could either agree or disagree on firm ground.
I'll grant you it's not perfect, primary education is a bit lacklustre, preparation for an oil free economy is not given enough effort, etc. What were your "structurally pathetic", etc. things?
the dignity of public toilets is a reflection of society
The US should take better care of people with mental illness... oh wait
No Javascript, no cookies:
https://web.archive.org/web/20201120004703if_/https://www.vi...
That's some good shit right there!
MSGA lol
who gives a shit, really
I still cannot believe I'm living in a timeline where the US president is emotionally a 3-year-old and throws a temper tantrum in the public when his parents don't get him a shiny thing he has done absolutely nothing to deserve.
As an American, this says more about the American people than it does about a single loser.
I cant believe 50% of the "free world" (umerca) put him in that place, THATs the scary part
As an American it is pure hell. Every day I feel like Marty McFly waking up in the nightmare timeline where Biff controls things. And my own brother voted for Trump 3 times yet absolutely refuses to talk about him under any circumstances.
This is probably inevitable once you combine winner-takes-all voting systems with the organized hysteria that is social networks.
Given that many of us here have helped the latter emerge and dominate the entire societal discourse, we should meditate somberly upon the law of unintended consequences. It certainly did not look this way when it started, but social networks are a major channel for hate and allow the worst of the worst to set standards for everyone else.
Frankly if AI can mitigate this, it would be a positive development and I would tolerate all the sickly-sweet sycophancy if it also steered people away from hating one another with passion.
I don't mean to bring low value demagougue, I can't help but ask myself, when Hitler rose to power, then being jailed and then rose to power even more, did the normal people who wanted nothing to do with his bs felt the same?
I used to think that the (2018) book "The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States", which ridicules Donald Trump quite a bit, was overdoing it for dramatic effect...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_2020_Commission_Report_on_...
Just because you can't understand it doesn't mean it's not real.
Have you ever taken into account that perhaps it's you who has failed to understand anything about what is actually going on?
Ah yes, the timeline where the US president is a convicted sex offender, 34 times convicted felon, tried to overtake a democratically elected president, stored top secret nuclear secrets in his toilet, orchestrated a cover up of the biggest pedophile ring in history, is an active russian agent, and all we talk about is ...his tantrums....
It is like satire. I wonder if he can try bullying the olympics into giving him a 100m gold medal next.
What has this got to do with a post about Norwegian public toilets? Did you comment on the wrong post? Am I missing something?
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To be fair it's in the website itself. I agree though.
There's a good number of differences between "shithouse countries" and countries that care enough about the wellbeing of their citizens to have good, clean, and free public toilets.
We should definitely make not using that phrase one of them.
Nah. Making things great again will continue till greatness improves.
>us all
you do realize that half your country had voted for the guy three times?
Imagine building such objects and a graceful website only to have the visitor be confronted with "Shit" right at the beginning. Try this Norway: 'Outhouse'.
You're missing a bit of political context.
I don't think many Americans visiting Norway can fit into the bathroom there.
Bad accessibility, not just for the fatties but also elderlies.
Let's see if they'll still act cute if they're actually confronted by their notorious neighbor one day.
After being confronted over and over by the notorious US, I think that would be peanuts for them.
Finland?
(I assume you mean Russia, but given that it’s only barely holding it together in Ukraine, it probably won’t be invading _Norway_ anytime soon).
Last I checked Norway doesn't have a border with the US ;)
Few in Europe can afford visiting these "free" Norwegian restrooms.
I think the hundred of thousands of tourists packing the roads all summer didn't get your memo.
You can do expensive vacation or cheap vacation, and both are possible in Norway. You can get a cheap flight and sleep in a tent, or you can drive your car through Sweden.
Or you can fly in and stay on expensive hotels.
Norway has everyman's right, so for some holidaymakers that means no accommodation costs. It is also popular to do one's grocery shopping on the Swedish side of the border, or even drive up from Germany with a full load of food for the length of the holiday.
Almost everybody can afford it if they really want to.
Not thinking something is worth what it cost doesn't mean you can't afford it.