Regular readers of this blog may remember the giant traditional Swedish Yule Goat erected annually in the Swedish town of Gävle. The Gävle Goat (Gävlebocken in Swedish) is a source of fascination for me because of its unfortunate habit of being burnt down by vandals.
In 2023, the Gävle Goat was eaten by jackdaws who feasted on the unusually high seed content in that year’s straw harvest. But fortunately, in 2024, the goat survived, bringing its survival rate for the 2020’s to 3/5. It looked like it was doing fairly well, at least by Gävle Goat standards.
Alas, in 2025, the goat succumbed again. But it wasn’t fire or birds that did in the goat. This time, it collapsed under the strong winds of storm Johannes, which also knocked out power to over 40,000 homes and felled trees across the country.
YouTube video of the goat’s collapse.
Local officials have not decided whether they will attempt to raise the goat back up.
If I might suggest a candidate for holiday fine print number 5: StartTrace and its “argument” EVENT_TRACE_PROPERTIES. I put the quotes because the remarks say that you need to allocate additional memory after the struct such that StartTrace can copy the string you provide to that location.
I’d love to know why that is.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/evntrace/ns-evntrace-event_trace_properties
Du menar Gävlebocken, inte Gävleboken!
Tack!