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Submitted via IRC for Bytram:
Legend holds that King Arthur's reign was foreseen by an enchanted lady in a lake, who granted him the sword Excalibur. By the same rules, Saga Vanecek, an eight-year-old Swedish girl, is now on a divine path to rule a great kingdom after she discovered a 1,000-year-old sword in a lake.
The sword may be Viking in origin and could date back to Arthurian times, in the 5th or 6th centuries, according to experts at the Jönköpings Läns Museum. That its discoverer is literally named Saga is further proof that this is the stuff of legends.
Vanecek found the rusted weapon over the summer while swimming in Vidöstern Lake in Småland with her family. "I felt something with my hand and thought it was a stick, and then I lifted it up and it had a handle that looked like it was a sword," she recounted in an interview with the Swedish news site Värnamo Nyheter.
"Then I lifted it up and shouted at Dad: 'Daddy I found a sword!'"
Girl pulls ancient sword from lake
An eight-year-old found a pre-Viking-era sword while swimming in a lake in Sweden during the summer.
Saga Vanecek found the relic in the Vidöstern lake while at her family's holiday home in Jönköping County.
The sword was initially reported to be 1,000 years old, but experts at the local museum now believe it may date to around 1,500 years ago.
"It's not every day that you step on a sword in the lake!" Mikael Nordström from the museum said.
The level of the water was extremely low at the time, owing to a drought, which is probably why Saga uncovered the ancient weapon.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @08:25PM (25 children)
Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you! I mean, if I went around sayin' I was an empereror just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me they'd put me away!
(Score: 4, Funny) by nitehawk214 on Friday October 05 2018, @08:38PM (18 children)
Well, I didn't vote for her.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @09:06PM (3 children)
Still comforting to know there's a future for her to rule over.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Snow on Friday October 05 2018, @09:21PM (1 child)
It is darkest before dawn. --Thomas Fuller
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Saturday October 06 2018, @01:39AM
It is always darkest just before it goes completely black. -- despair.com
(Score: 4, Funny) by bob_super on Friday October 05 2018, @09:50PM
Sweden has a future, just from not being between significant targets and benefiting from global warming.
The smart Muslims fleeing their own war-torn drying hellholes are moving there in droves.
(Score: 2, Troll) by captain normal on Friday October 05 2018, @10:01PM (13 children)
Well in the U.S.A. most of the people didn't vote for Trump. Does that mean we don't have to kowtow to him?
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @10:19PM (4 children)
Not sure of your definition of "most", but 46.1% DID vote for Trump, and 48.2% for Clinton. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2016 [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @10:57PM (3 children)
Not sure of YOUR definition of "most", but based on your cited numbers, 55.9% of the people didn't vote for Trump. GC's comment rings true for me.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Saturday October 06 2018, @01:41AM
Nobody got a majority -- most people didn't vote for HRC and most people didn't vote for Tump.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Saturday October 06 2018, @06:01PM (1 child)
Trump received 63 million votes, Clinton received 65 million votes. The US population in 2016 was 323 million. Ergo, Trump received the votes of 19.5% of the population, and Clinton received the votes of 20.1% of the population. Which means that not only did neither of them have the support of the majority of Americans, both of them put together didn't have the support of a majority of Americans. Now, you might say "But many of those 323 million aren't registered voters", and you'd be right, but they're still people. Even if you limit your numbers to the 200 million registered voters, that means that "no vote or somebody else" had a plurality of 72 million.
2016 is the very first presidential race in which both major party candidates had a negative net approval rating (i.e. more people hated them than liked them). That's definitely saying something about the state of US politics in general and the two major parties in particular. Contrast that with the 1952 election: The guy who lost had the approval of about 2/3 of Americans, was basically responsible for the existence of the UN, and had a long career of busting up public corruption in Illinois, and would later go on to be the key diplomat in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The guy who won had the approval of about 4/5 of Americans for being a badass who kicked Nazi butts all over Europe. Just a totally different quality of people.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @06:16PM
I don't have huge insight into the confusing American Democracy, but I'd encourage people to take the primaries seriously so that you don't have a bunch of extremist loonies or pranksters from 4chan and reddit selecting your candidates. I'm lucky I live in a democracy with an abundance of parties to vote for. There are very rarely a government of less than three parties.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @11:58PM (1 child)
Kowtow to the Pres?
If you are a US citizen, you must not have passed middle school civics.
Fuck the Pres with a telephone pole, and any citizen trying to kowtow to him(or her, in the future).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 06 2018, @01:53AM
You're missing an important part of the above conversation. Those people feel a need to kowtow to someone. Their chosen kow lost the election, so they don't know who to tow to. I suppose that Queen Saga will fill that bill nicely. At least she's a pretty little girl. If we have to tow to a kow, I'd rather the kow be pretty.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @12:05AM (5 children)
In the U.S.A., most of the people didn't vote.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday October 06 2018, @03:55AM (4 children)
Completely understandable when their choices were between which kind of lube to forego applying for their anal raping.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Saturday October 06 2018, @05:35AM (3 children)
If everyone who didn't vote had voted for a third-party candidate instead, what do you think would have happened?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @11:19AM
Eco-friendly non-lubricant or invisible-fisting?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @01:21PM
Next time an election was held the rules would be strict enough there'd be no third parties able to qualify again, ever.
See the changes made after Perot made his almost-successful run.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday October 06 2018, @03:22PM
I think any third-party candidate showing more than 30% of the vote in the polls, something along the lines of having their family threatened if they didn't withdraw would have been attempted or they would have been killed outright if that failed.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Friday October 05 2018, @08:46PM (1 child)
- How do you know she's the queen ?
- She hasn't got shit all over her.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @09:05PM
Give the girl a chance, she's not even entered politics yet!
(Score: 3, Funny) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday October 05 2018, @10:55PM (1 child)
Here's what we do. We see if she weighs the same as a duck. That will settle it completely.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @12:38AM
We shall use my larger scales!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @12:47AM
Sounds a hell of a lot better than strange lobbyists distributing campaign contributions.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Saturday October 06 2018, @04:13PM
"I mean, if I went around sayin' I was an empereror just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me they'd put me away!"
The source... [python.org]