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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • Start here:

    Backer, Larry Catá, Sovereign Investing and Markets-Based Transnational Rule of Law Building: The Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund in Global Markets

    "By 2009 the NSWF was reported to own about 1% of global stocks and 2.25% of every listed European company."

    "The Fund is to be used not merely to protect and increase the value of the Fund itself, but to influence behaviors among the pool of potential targets of investment."

    "The objectives also contribute to the complex relationship between law and norm, between state regulatory policy and state projections of power through active participation in private markets, and between national legal structures and the internationalization of behavior standards."

    "Responsible investing is not constructed merely to produce the highest achievable returns, but also to bend that objective to other Norwegian political objectives."

    "The Norges Bank may not acquire more than ten percent of the voting shares of an enterprise. Unlike other SWFs, the NSWF does not aspire to be a controlling shareholder, just an influential one. Additionally, the NSWF may not invest in domestic companies or in fixed income instruments issued by governments."

    "Private in form, active ownership provides a method for the transposition of national policy onto the operations of companies over which the Norwegian state has no legal claim to control. Additionally, this projection of public power through shareholding also appears to open a back channel to communication with other states."

    "The NSWF does not merely lobby the companies in which it has an interest, it takes the position that its stakeholding gives it a means of lobbying states for changes in their legal regimes to conform to those that Norway prefers."

    "Norwegian preferences themselves seek to universalize the Norwegian legal order by seeking to incorporate (and transpose) international law and norms onto Norwegian regulatory space, and thus onto the domestic legal orders of foreign states (whether or not the foreign states have embraced those international norms)."

    The fund is only the tip of the iceberg. Norway’s PR game is absolutely stunning.

    Their extensive (and curious) involvement ranges from importing Jewish prisoners to build infrastructure during WWII, later secretly moving thousands of the bodies of those same victims using paper/asphalt bags as bodybags, to deforestation of the Amazon in Brazil for the benefit of Norwegian Salmon, and so much more.

    It’s a wild ride — buckle up.






  • I don’t think I’ve ever worked at a job that felt morally right.

    I worked at a housing association that I thought would be useful in helping the unhoused with a type of co-operative housing, especially as they’re regulated. But no, it was all ‘pass on the poor folk to other associations’ and ‘try to grab property for cheap’ with the pooled rent money while skimping on repairs and improvements.

    I worked in renewables for a while, and profit is always king there too. Safety was never the priority.

    I worked at a crisis centre for victims of SA, which was also run to the bare minimum and largely existed as a flex for the person in charge to get write-ups in the Guardian. I can’t remember actually being able to successfully connect anyone with the therapists due to the length of the waitlist. We gave the bare minimum of advice. It existed on the lowest wages possible because everyone working there was supposed to feel good that they were essentially doing charity.

    I did some advocacy work where I was connected with people that were unhoused, and where the job was to help them navigate the system in order to get assigned a home with a local housing association. Each case took months and nobody in the relevant council departments and housing associations gave a single shit. The clients were distressed (naturally), but were still given false information from every angle, and then it was all consistently used against them or leveraged to try and make them accept a lower standard of housing and/or care. They were treated like criminals for simply not having access to shelter. I worked hard and felt sad constantly. There were some successes, but a few people just quit trying to get housed because living on the street and sofa surfing were somehow less humiliating.

    Those are the most ‘moral on paper’ roles I’ve held, and even they were a disgrace.



  • IMO bosses get what they pay for, in time and in effort. It sounds like they’ve neglected you, the business, and your co-workers.

    I’m hearing that you care about your efforts, and that you take the time to notice what isn’t working. Could you have spoken up? Sure, probably. Should they have actively checked in with you? Absolutely. This is on them.

    Employers act like they have no duty of care, but they forget that we have no obligation to keep picking up their slack. No one is entitled to be a business owner.

    Good luck with the new offer.

    There must be 50 ways to leave employers.





  • I went cold turkey last November.

    Followed a long hair community routine called ‘the sebum cure’, and also lurked for months on the ‘nopoo’ subreddits.

    I added refined lanolin to my routine for styling (essentially the cream that breastfeeding people use for chafing) and to get over the transition phase of mega sebum production.

    I also shampoo’d with a silicone free clarifying shampoo the first day. Just to move along any leftover residue lurking on my scalp and lengths from previous products.

    Since November I’ve just used water and dilute ACV (occasionally - no more than once a week) to wash and ‘condition’. My hair is in the best goddamn state of my bloody life. Amazing volume. My natural texture in full force. No more flakes AT ALL. The growth has been crazy: my hair is past my waist now. And I no longer have to remove a small creature made of hair from the drain after each shower because breakage is practically nil.

    I frequently feel annoyed about ‘having been duped’ whenever I see shampoo commercials. But then I remember they can’t make me buy anything, and with this I feel pleased.