In Nordic countries there is MobilePay. I think in Norway they already have NFC payment. NFC payment should be coming to Finland later this year. It’s already possible to pay in stores with MobilePay over Bluetooth, but it’s a bit of a hassle compared to Google Pay/Apple Pay. MobilePay can be used to pay in online stores that support it, and you can also send and receive money from other people.

Also available in Finland in some grocery stores.

Loops are great. I use the Quiet 2 Plus for sleeping. They are easy to insert and take out, and because they are made of only soft materials they don’t press your ears. Seems they now have Loop Dream for that purpose. I guess I just found out which earplugs I should buy when I need to replace my current ones. Previously I used Happy Ears Earplugs (Swedish company), but they have a short stick made out of plastic which makes them somewhat uncomfortable.

Cacao naturally contains heavy metals, so every chocolate product contains them as well. Some cacao contains more than others. And dark chocolate contains more cacao than milk chocolate, so it contains more heavy metals as well.

This is what Tony’s says on the topic: https://tonyschocolonely.com/blogs/other/a-small-update-on-health-and-safety-and-heavy-metals

Turns out Snowpiercer is based on a South Korean movie called Snowpiercer, which is based on French graphic novel called Snowpiercer. The movie belongs to “Made in Europe” but the TV series does not.

It’s South Korean, but some European studios were involved.

Kärcher is a German manufacturer that makes different kind of cleaning products.

I have used my Retki backpack for about 10 years now. It’s starting to fall apart at an increasing rate, so I should probably replace it someday. I don’t know if they are sold outside Finland, though. https://retki.fi/en/category/backpacks/

I am not aware of any stores that sell Kindle’s MOBI format books. But there are stores that sell DRM-free EPUBs. You can use Amazon’s SendToKindle service to send them to your Kindle. There are also online converters that can convert EPUB to MOBI.

As a Finn, these are the only stores I know that sell DRM-free e-books. I don’t know if any of them sells e-books to other countries, but they all sell non-Finnish books as well. The DRM-free books are watermarked, which means the store adds some identifying information (your email address) to the books when you buy them.

• Adlibris is a Swedish store that operates also in Norway and Finland. They among other things sell DRM-free e-books. Just be warned that some of the e-books have Adobe DRM.
• Ellibs is a Finnish e-bookstore that sells both DRM-free and Adobe DRM’d e-books. This is the only one of these stores that has an English page.
• Suomalainen Kirjakauppa (Finnish Bookstore) is a … Finnish bookstore. All their e-books are DRM-free EPUBs. Their prices tend to be a bit on the high side, though.

You can try to find more bookstores if you search for stores selling DRM-free or watermarked EPUBs.

And if anyone knows other stores that sell DRM-free e-books in English, do let us all know.