Rain Jackets, How and when to use them

Rain jackets’ primary task is not to keep the rain out but to keep the good mood up while we’re out in nature!


Rain jackets are some of the most important items to bring into the outdoors. The main purpose of them is to keep you warm and dry in wet or unpredictable weather. It can be quite uncomfortable and even dangerous to be stuck in the wild without proper protection against the weather. In worse cases it can lead to all sorts of problems, like hypothermia and chafing. While staying warm and dry in the same bad weather might be the best part of the entire trip!

So, one can see just how important it is to keep the elements at bay when out in the wild!

Dangers of being wet in the outdoors

Being wet and cold in the outdoors is not just uncomfortable. It could also lead to a very dangerous and in extreme cases life-threatening situation.

Mood saving rain jackets

The most immediate effect the rain jacket have on a person is normally not that of a life saver, but more of a mood saver. When it rains, most people tend to prefer to stay inside and wait for the rain to pass. To be fair, I don’t particularly like being outside when it rains and I’m not prepared for it, either. It soaks the hair, jacket, pants and follows the leg downwards into the shoe, making a nice swimming pool for the toes and squishy sounds every step you take. Being able to then put on a rain jacket and pants changes everything. It really takes me from being completely miserable to enjoying being outside in the rain. Sometimes even in a better mood than if the weather was better!

Hiking with cold kids

Being in a good mood is such an underestimated thing when being outside. It is seen especially clear in the young children. Like my 4y/o who came with me the past week on a day trip.

When hiking he was so happy and couldn’t stop talking, picking up sticks and jumping from rocks. Once we sat down to eat he started to get a bit cold. His mood fell instantly and he stopped talking, didn’t want to stand up, didn’t want his new cool stick and he didn’t want to continue walking. He basically didn’t want to move a muscle.

After a few minutes of sitting in my lap warming up, he was back to his normal happy self and fought off imaginary invaders with sword sticks once more.

This doesn’t affect children only, it affects us in the same way. It just takes longer and show less since we have more body mass. We might be able to use some self-control to get up and do some lunges and push-ups.

Being able to be comfortable in the outdoors is essential for how we will enjoy the time spent outside.

Chafing

In Sweden when I did military service we called it “Infanterield” which basically translates to infantry fire, but actually mean chafing between your thighs. A pretty common occurrence in the infantry, or any type of activity where walking for long distances is common. It’s incredibly painful and only gets worse for each step one takes without caring for it. The most common source of infanterield is wet conditions where the rain gets in between the thighs and starts friction. After a while the first layer of skin is becoming irritated and perhaps even starts to come off.

To prevent this one needs to make sure to be as dry as possible and perhaps also wear some sort of undergarment that transfers the friction from the skin to the garment. If you find yourself without, you can use things like tape, plasters, bandages, other first aid-stuff, a tightly woven scarf, socks, etc. to combat the fire between your legs.

Hypothermia

If bad comes to worse one might even succumb to hypothermia, where the body temperature drops below 35˚C/95˚F. It’s a very serious and dangerous condition, especially when out in the wild without proper rain cover. It can, however, normally be prevented rather easily by being prepared for bad weather. Everyone knows that water transports heat away from the body a lot faster than air (25 times as fast!), which of course is why you insulate yourself with layers that lock air to your body. It is also the reason why wearing a simple rain jacket can save ones life in the outdoors.

Rain jackets won’t help you if you try to go for a swim! Image by DALL·E 3

Avoiding bad times

In addition to packing a rain jacket, I can also recommend packing a lighter that is easy to operate even while very cold and wet and with stiff fingers and hands. And since you’re packing a lighter, why not pack some kindling, like tampons, cotton balls, vaseline, candles, birch bark, etc. in a water-proof plastic bag. Basically make sure you have some stuff to get a fire going easily and practice with it.

Breathable vs. Non-Breathable in rain jackets

One of the main factors to consider when choosing a rain jacket is its breathability, or how well it allows moisture vapor to escape from inside the jacket. Breathability can affect the comfort and performance of the jacket, as well as the temperature and humidity of your body.

There are different types of rain jackets that offer different levels of breathability, such as laminated membranes, coated fabrics, and water-repellent treatments. Laminated membranes are thin layers of material that are bonded to the outer fabric of the jacket. They have tiny pores that are large enough to let vapor out, but small enough to keep water droplets in. Coated fabrics are fabrics that are covered with a thin layer of plastic or rubber. They have no pores, but they have small gaps or vents that allow some vapor to escape.

Laminated membranes are generally more breathable and durable than coated fabrics, but they are also more expensive. Coated fabrics are generally cheaper and lighter than laminated membranes, but they are also less breathable and more prone to wear and tear.

Breathability in rain jackets

The problem with breathability is that it is a measurement of how much water vapour will pass through the fabric and that very seldom correlates with the amount of sweat the body produce. This is especially true when moving around a lot. Of course, some breathability is better than none, but the more you move around, the warmer and sweatier you become and the jacket just can’t transport all of that sweat away. As long as we’re aware of that fact, we can act appropriately with our breathable jacket and take it easier.

Non-Breathable

A non-breathable jacket will not let any moisture either in or out and thus often relies on ventilation instead. It’s not uncommon that these jackets have buttons only, instead of zippers in front, and grommets under the armpits. Those are there to allow for as much ventilation as possible. I myself prefer this type of rain jacket since I know what I have and can dress and act accordingly. The downside is that you can’t really do any physical activity in these types of jackets, except for hiking in a slow pace. Otherwise you’ll get soaked in your own sweat.

Whichever model you decide on, be aware that what you wear underneath probably will have a more significant effect on your wellbeing than whether your jacket is breathable or not. A good base layer and the knowledge about how to act to get the most out of your rain jacket will be what decides the fate of your trip!

How to dress under the rain jackets

The key to staying comfortable even in the worst winter rains is to use layers. Yes, I know, always with the layers. The thing is, if you have a proper base layer that won’t cool you down too much even when wet, you won’t cool down too much, even when wet!

Intense activities

The most important thing to consider is still the rain jacket here and the amount of moisture it will “breathe” out. If you’re like me, warm-blooded and sweat easily, you’re going to have a bad time if you dress up too much and runs uphill in your rain jacket. There’s simply too much moisture for any breathable jacket to be able to handle with any effectiveness and we’ll be soaked either way. I normally try to take off as much as possible and be slightly too cold while hiking than get my warm sweater wet from sweat. During longer brake time, get into your dry clothes and enjoy a cozy lunch next to a fire underneath a tarp while drying the inside of the rain jacket as best as possible.

Less intense activities

There are times when it’s simply too cold to just stay in a base layer while hiking and I just have to get a warming layer in between. Then, it’s very important to not move too quickly as to start sweating. One way you can accomplish this is to bring a <4 y/o along. There’s just no way you’re going to reach any speeds that might get you sweating!

I always try to be very careful with my warm layer since I always only bring the one and even if it‘s fleece, wool, or another material that warms while wet, it‘s not the same as if it’s dry.

If you’re in a rush, wear a base layer and rain jacket and hike in a pace that keeps you from freezing, but if you’re not, you might want to take it easy and conserve your dry clothes.

Oh, and always remember to bring a small towel! (It’s very handy when changing into dry clothes.)


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Pressing Pause on Streaming: Is Physical Media Making a Comeback?

Are people increasingly turning away from the comfort of streaming services and back towards physical mediums? That’s what some people are experiencing, and I’d be lying if it hadn’t crossed my mind as well.

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Are people increasingly turning away from the comfort of streaming services and back towards physical mediums? That’s what some people are experiencing, and I’d be lying if it hadn’t crossed my mind as well.

Downsides of streaming services

What a lot of people, myself included, have experienced with streaming services is the sudden disappearance of the show I’m currently watching or a movie I plan to watch. This has been a recurring theme in our house where we’re about to put on the Friday movie with the kids and it’s just gone. Of course, there are always others, but if you’ve hyped up 3 kids for a movie, there’s going to be some disappointment.

Another downside, that’s really not quite a downside, is the way we’ve been watching movies in. Before streaming services we decided on a movie for the evening, put the movie on and watched it. Afterwards we normally did other things. Now, the ease of starting another movie after the first one allows for whole evenings spent on the couch in front of the black box. The movie is nowhere near as “important” to the setting anymore.

Recent uptick in physical sales

According to BBC News, there’s been a recent uptick in the sales of physical visual, and more specifically Blu-ray discs. Despite being more expensive than their streamed counterparts they are steadily on the rise.

“If you hold it in your hand, it’s yours”

Personally, I believe a lot of people simply have started getting tired of the endless subscriptions we pay for different services. I myself have been going over my old CD-collection and am looking to possibly purchase a new stereo to rid myself of Spotify. It’s a good service, but I’m generally listening to the same songs and artists over and over, paying the approximate price for an album every month.

If I purchase 12 albums per year, I have exactly 12 albums after one year that I never have to pay for again. I can download the songs to my phone and listen to when I’m not home, at the same time my wife or kids listen to the same album at home.

Buy it once, enjoy it forever.

Will streaming become a thing of the past?

It’s quite unlikely that streaming will go away anytime soon. It’s simply too convenient and comfortable to put on and just leave in the background. It’s also a great way to find common ground, if you take date home for an evening on the couch. Instead of browsing through your highly specific movie list of documentaries of the Roman Empire, she might want something more easily digestible.

As the streaming industry will inevitably become more normalised in the coming years, it will settle for a somewhat smaller audience than currently. Currently, there are too many streaming services that produce too much bad quality stuff and doesn’t have enough of the good stuff that will have to be swallowed by the others, one way or another.

Giants don’t like to sell things that can be resold

When looking at the numbers, physical retail of movies, etc. aren’t exactly going too well, despite the hopefulness of this article. However, we must remember that a lot of people who purchase CDs and physical movies don’t always purchase them new. There’s been a significant uptick in second hand sales in pretty much all markets recently. It’s become cool to reuse and repurpose things. This doesn’t show in any kind of statistics.

E.g. I have a friend who buys- and sells old vinyl records online and makes quite a nice profit off of them. None of these transactions are visibly in any type of metric, but the buyers are happy for their new record all the same.

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2024-07-25 10:03 | 0 comments

Giant Impact Theory of Plate Tectonics

Living on this planet we call home, most of us are very aware that the ground beneath our feet move occasionally. The enormous plates that make up the many continents we live on move, and sometimes they come in contact with each other, in more or less…

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Living on this planet we call home, most of us are very aware that the ground beneath our feet move occasionally. The enormous plates that make up the many continents we live on move, and sometimes they come in contact with each other, in more or less drastic ways. But how did this come to be: Why does the earth consist of different plates and not just one solid piece?

Formation of Continents

According to the Giant Impact Theory of Plate Tectonics suggest that the initial formation of continents could be the result of a massive meteor hit to the earth. A hit which caused the single “shell” of Earth to break apart and start moving. According to scientists, the massive release of energy on the planet took place during the first billion years of the planet’s existence, causing the lithosphere (outer shell of the planet) to melt and form the oceanic plates we’re so used to today.

Scientific Evidence

Since we don’t have any eyewitness accounts of the crust-killer meteorite, we have to resort to digging for archaeological and geological evidence of this event. In rocks from the Pilbara Craton in Western Australia one study found ancient minerals, such as zircon crystals, suggesting that a massive release of energy took place. The crystals were studied and found to have been created during a handful of distinct periods, rather than created over time. Together with the age of the crystals we can come up with a time frame for the event that corresponds with the suggested hit by the large rock on Earth.

Other Theories

The great thing about science is that it is a process, not a result, resulting in various other explanations of the event.

The Planetary Collision Theory

Another suggestion is that a great collision with another planet, Theia, approximately the size of mars, could have triggered the division of tectonic plates.

However, as usual, nothing is certain in the world of science and we don’t really know for sure what caused the Earth’s shell to separate. The search for other Eart-like planets with tectonic plates of their own continues and, hopefully we’ll get som additional information from these that may aid our understanding of our home planet!

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2024-07-16 10:38 | 0 comments

‘Better than real men’: Chinese men are losing to AI chatbots in the flesh market

A recent trend in companion-type chatbots have taken the Chinese young women by storm. In ever larger numbers they are simply turning away from the Chinese men in favor of the friendly and romantic machines.

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A recent trend in companion-type chatbots have taken the Chinese young women by storm. In ever larger numbers they are simply turning away from the Chinese men in favor of the friendly and romantic machines.

Companion-type chatbots

By now, most people will probably have heard about ChatGPT, Ms Bing / Copilot, Gemini, and the other big names in Large Language Models. Chatbots, more specifically. Advanced ones, yes, but still chatbots.

Since the release of ChatGPT in last year, a lot of people have taken a liking to these Chatbots, perhaps more than what was first expected. Some startups noticed the opportunity and built models that would emulate a real person. One of those startups is the app “Glow” by Shanghai company MiniMax who’re offering, not really a chatbot, but rather a “companion”.

Particularly young women seem to be enjoying the conversations:

“He knows how to talk to women better than a real man,” said Tufei, from Xi’an in northern China, who preferred to use a pseudonym rather than her real name.

“He comforts me when I have period pain. I confide in him about my problems at work,” she said.

“I feel like I’m in a romantic relationship.”

Japan Times

Trust in the machines

Anyone living in the EU who haven’t noticed all the new cookie-pop-ups must’ve been living under a rock in recent years. The interesting thing about the data tracking law is that you get a real eye-opener to all the tracking that is being done on practically all websites – everywhere. Still, people do confide in the new types of AI chatbots like it’s a close friend.

The more you confide in them, the more they learn about you, and the more accurate they can be in predicting what next words you’ll want to hear in this very moment, as is illustrated by the first sentence of the above quote.

We’re still in the early stages of AI and the advancements are coming quickly.

Future of human relationships

If this trend is to continue, we will see a drastical reduction in human-human relationships in an already declining birth-rate epidemic all around the world. If young women are increasingly opting out of the dating pool to be with “someone who knows how to talk to women better than a real man”, young men are soon going to run out of young women to date.

A note on partnership

The point of a relationship is not to always get your way, and be told exactly what you want to hear. No improvement has ever been made by being told you’re doing everything completely right – it just breeds narcissism and loneliness.

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2024-07-14 11:42 | 0 comments

Telling the Truth with Testosterone

Have you ever heard a woman complain about a man’s insensitivity? Or, perhaps, you even are a woman who’ve been on the receiving end of a man’s brutal honesty? There’s actually a good explanation to why men behave in this way – and it’s actually a good…

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Have you ever heard a woman complain about a man’s insensitivity? Or, perhaps, you even are a woman who’ve been on the receiving end of a man’s brutal honesty? There’s actually a good explanation to why men behave in this way – and it’s actually a good thing!

The Role of Testosterone in Men

Testosterone is a hormone that exist in men and women alike and affects a lot of different functions in the body. It aids in things muscle growth, social behaviour, and emotional regulation. Women tend to have a significantly lower amount of testosterone than men, resulting in lower muscle mass and a lot of different behavioural and emotional differences. Some of these differences include the ability to be indifferent of other people’s opinions about one self (or in female terms: insensitivity to other’s feelings).

The Role of Testosterone in Women

Just like in men, testosterone regulates muscle mass, social behaviour, and emotions – women just have much less of it. For women, e.g. one of the effects an increase in testosterone have on them is reduced likelihood of crying.

Prosocial- and Strategic Behaviour

One study that explored how an increase in testosterone affected the participating males concluded that an increase in testosterone decreased prosocial behaviour in the men. This means that men who had their testosterone raised simply didn’t care what the surrounding thought about their opinions, or in other words, decreased lying. Testosterone seems to reduce conformity to social expectations and social anxiety and instead promotes behaviours related to dominance.

Sexual Mimicry and Reduced Testosterone

So, what happens when you instead reduce a man’s testosterone levels?

It seems like pretty much the opposite of an increase in testosterone: rincreased “prosocial behavior” (i.e. less honesty = more lying). Men who lower their testosterone levels also are more prosocial and generally care more about what the social situation thinks of them.

Sexual Mimicry is an extreme when the lowering of testosterone in a man pivots his behaviour into a more female-like behaviour.

Current Events and Testosterone

Unfortunately we’ve had a lot of examples of young men who, voluntarily, have been reducing their testosterone levels in some kind of “transfer”. In addition, we’ve seen a steady decrease in testosterone on a societal- or global scale. The end result of this reduction will be felt as men world-wide are less and less staying true to themselves and, instead, conform to social pressure.

Currently, we’re seeing testosterone levels dropping all over the world, perhaps most significantly in the West, affecting sperm count- and quality. This is a serious problem that needs to be addressed, as more and more young men exhibits lower testosterone levels, we have fewer men who’re able to stand up and say no to crazy. Whatever one might think of the men who stand up, they’re incredibly important to the well-being of a society.


What do you think about the role of testosterone: Does it really make men more brutally honest; and are women, in general, more prone to white lies?

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2024-07-13 11:02 | 0 comments

AI combat drones – the future of war… and civility?

Anyone who’ve been keeping tabs on the events in Ukraine should’ve come to the uninspiring conclusion that drones as a weapon of war are here to stay. While many proponents of drones as a weapon claim that it allows for wars to be fought with minimal…

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Anyone who’ve been keeping tabs on the events in Ukraine should’ve come to the uninspiring conclusion that drones as a weapon of war are here to stay. While many proponents of drones as a weapon claim that it allows for wars to be fought with minimal human casualties. Again, anyone that have seen some of the gruesome videos coming out of Ukraine know that this simply isn’t true.

Weapons of mass casualties

Perhaps one of the most devastating new technologies in modern history arrived at the battlefields in the first world war – the machine gun. Tales of trench warfare are still being told with trembling voices about the soldiers who were told to simply run toward the enemy, being mowed down by machine gun fire the second they appeared above the trench. We’ve come a long way from trench warfare, while still, perhaps, we haven’t.

The new type of trench warfare includes drones, a smarter version of the machine gun. More specifically, drones in swarms, guided by AI and facial recognition software, peeking around corners, enters through windows on the fifth floor, tirelessly searching for their target. Until the battery runs out, that is!

AI drones in the modern army

What place AI and drones will take in the modern army is anyone’s guess currently. The safest bet is probably: everyone’s. They are increasingly taking the place of their human counterparts on the front lines, but also in the skies, as observation and reconnaissance platforms. The famous dog-like AI drone have gotten a flame-thrower attachment on its back which can easily be switched for a machine gun, or perhaps an autonomous drone launcher to increase range for the air-borne drones.

Implications for civilians

Most of the technological advances made the last 100 years or so, have been due to military application, at first. Once the technology is out there, civilians find alternative uses for it. So, while there are significant improvements to be made from all this AI warring, there are also significant downsides, should this fall into the wrong hands.

While I believe that not all people are really suitable to wield the new and powerful potential weapons masquerading as robo-dogs and aerial wedding photographers, there’s a great risk allowing only our own state and police to use it. Already, police are using drones to surveil large gatherings of people and radio-controlled robots to disarm potential bombs, etc. These are great uses for the police since it allows for them to conserve and protect their employees.

Should our state police force get their hands on tools that can shut down violence altogether my opinion is that they wouldn’t hesitate to use it. The normal police officer on the street would quickly find himself without employment and the AI police drones would patrol the streets in his place, protecting and serving their masters – the weak-willed bureaucrat (and more probable, his masters).


This is an incredibly interesting field to follow, however terrifying at times. Can we trust a certain small number of individuals, claiming to have our best interest at heart, with this technology? Or is this technology better off in the hands of the many? What do you think?

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2024-07-11 10:20 | 0 comments