Sweden has been an industrial powerhouse for centuries, due to its rich deposits of various ores in its relatively young mountains, and excellent access to the rest of Europe by sea.
No wonder chemistry was in high regard there for quite some time.
Some of those elements they discovered (e.g. chlorine, silicon) hardly require geographic luck to discover, just a beach. Could it be that Sweden just had some enterprising chemists at the right time, rather than just hand-waving their discoveries away as geographic luck?
The combination of being dismissive and adding nothing to the conversation is what makes it assholish. Their only contribution was to shoot down what was an interesting aside.
I don't particularly like the way the comment was delivered either, but it does add to the conversation (as evidenced by the other comments that respond to its content and not its tone). The comment in question is bringing up the point that geography may have something to do with the reported stats, which is another interesting thing to keep in mind.
Others have pointed out what struck me as assholeish: perceived snarky tone, seems antagonistic for no reason, and completely unproductive. Like, why did they make that comment? I can't see any point other than criticizing and demeaning the other person for their statement (which also seems to be intentionally misinterpreted).
Of course, there could be a language barrier (which I didn't think of immediately), in which case I'm the asshole
I actually find it quite interesting that people are jumping to the conclusion that the comment is demeaning. Ambiguous and lacking a particular effort to be explicitly positive, sure. But where is the "criticizing and demeaning" the author part? The comment is bare and terse, questioning whether it's really that impressive when you factor in geography or whether it's more or less to be expected. There is no ad hominem attack.
For instance, Japan has good sea food cuisine. Sure that's awesome and nothing to disparage, but neither is it especially impressive considering they're an island. I think this is the point the comment is attempting to communicate.
> actually find it quite interesting that people are jumping to the conclusion that the comment is demeaning. Ambiguous and lacking a particular effort to be explicitly positive, sure.
Maybe most of us had worse experience with people than you, and have developed a more cynical model of human behaviour.
> But where is the "criticizing and demeaning" the author part?
This is just my quick analysis of what is probably more intuitive in my head than well fleshed out. I didn't think about this very hard, but I wanted to indulge you since you put effort into your comment of the situation.
It was written very tersely, it was disguised as a question, and it was directly aimed at the author of the comment, not the content of their comment. Also the way they clung onto a narrow definition of impressive seems like a petty attempt to reconstruct the narrative around the original comment's content to show how they're smart and the original poster isn't for "giving kudos" (ie being impressed) to a geographical area.
Like I said earlier though, maybe I read too much into it.
Also, I have higher standards for comment etiquette on HN than I would on other platforms. Why? I don't really know. Maybe that's a mistake too, clearly.
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It's a combination of historical industrial strategy, a culture with love of learning and individuals with a great love of learning who happened to be creative and innovative enough to discover these elements.
It's not like these elements are nowhere else. In fact, I don't think any yttrium, ytteribum, etc. is mined in Sweden at all.
If you keep breaking the site guidelines, we're going to end up having to ban you. We've warned you more than once before (not counting the other place in the current thread):
Edit: I kinda know that because I have some weird passion about the elements of periodic table and because I'm reading "Periodic Tales: A Cultural History of The Elements From Arsenic To Zinc" which I really recommend!
Indeed, good catch :
> Thorium was discovered in 1828 by the Norwegian amateur mineralogist Morten Thrane Esmark and identified by the Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius, who named it after Thor, the Norse god of thunder.
I don't know anyone who refers to the element as wolfram in English. The abbreviations are internationally standardized and many don't stand for the English words anyway (Latin is quite common, e.g. Pb means plumbum, for lead).
That's gonna be people either in specialized areas, or non-native English speakers using their own words. I see British English spelling all over Wikipedia, for example, but I never see anyone in my actual life in the US use it except for one guy who is from, you can guess.
The area around Viborg was lost to the russians in 1721 and 1743. The western part of that, Lappeenranta and part of Kymenlaakso, are part of Finland today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Finland
Gadolin was Finnish by the same logic Benjamin Franklin was American. Or would you consider him an Englishman? He was born in the British colony, after all.
That Finland has a sizable Swedish-speaking minority? The guy was considered Swedish back then; Finland was simply the Eastern half of the Swedish kingdom.
There's plenty of Finnish speaking Swedes too. Is that also an argument for invasion?
Thule comes from a Greek cartographer, Pytheas. Thule was supposed to be an island to the north of Britain, but nobody knows what he referred to or if whatever place he referred to even was real. Some people, especially 19th century Scandinavian nationalists, associate Thule with Scandinavia.
Unlikely. Thule was supposed to exist in 330 BC, long after Doggerland had disappeared. There are many other candidates which would make more sense and fit better with his descriptions, including Norway.
Multiple I think. I believe Thule was the capital of the Greenland Norse civilization, but it's also a local story about a high culture that disappeared.
- Scandium from Scandinavia
- Yttrium, Terbium, Erbium and Ytterbium from the village of Ytterby
- Holmium from Stockholm
- Thulium from Thule