Absolutely lame, but age 12 I remember the worst most intense pain I ever felt was sitting on my own thumb after pulling a wooden stool towards me - crushed it right on the edge corner and it was so intense.

Way more painful than the time I got a drawing pin (thumbtack) half embedded in my heel, impaled my wrist on a set square, or winded myself falling chest-first off a skateboard.

I’ve been pretty lucky/sensible

Carp. Had it in poland. The toughest fish meat I’ve ever had, riddled with tiny annoying bones. Tastes a bit like discount supermarket proscuitto… not exactly horrible, but it was so much effort to eat the damn thing to boot

A kangaroo steak I had in oz is in the top 5 steaks I’ve ever had

As an oyster fan, I can confirm that different species make a pretty enormous* difference to both flavour and texture.

*within the confines of slimy salty shellfish meat

tucking in to anything salty with lemon and tabasco is also pretty good though

Most of my print jobs… maybe one a month, are for either artistic reasons or for making labels to stick on things.

I do still print tickets out of habit though, just in case I lose/forget my phone or drain the battery that day, though this has literally never happened.

One of the saddest things was a blog by a nanny to a little girl who was born without a face. She had eyes and a mouth, but that was about it other than random folds of skin. The nanny was so sweet, talking about all the operations the girl had had to slowly, over time, build her something resembling a face. The girl herself was apparently really sweet and loving too, but everyone who saw her would react as you might expect.

It just struck me how cruel nature can be sometimes. At least she was born to very wealthy parents, but that was the only perk.

I wonder how she’s getting on now. Must be 18 or so I imagine.

Life IS an experiment, via evolution, to propagate our DNA. We’re doing pretty great! Colonised loads of land, even at extremes of temperature. Sure, we haven’t made it to living underwater just yet, and the poles, mountainous regions and deserts are logistically tricky, and there’s only a handfulbof us in space at any one time, but we’re getting there!

I kind disagree. I admit that e.g. growing your own veg will never be cheaper than buying it at a supermarket - it would make financial sense to spend a few more hours working instead, and just buy the veg, but that kind of misses the point. Gardening, cooking, DIY… they all have a certain satisfaction and self-sufficient pride to them that money can’t buy

special mention to Richard Herring, who I think has the longest-running daily updated blog on the Internet - he’s written every day for like… 15+ years now. The blog has moved to substack recently though

I like Ecosophia.net - an occultist writes about all kinds of stuff

craigmurray.org.uk - an ex ambassador explains domestic and international politics with an insiders view.

and the blog at disappointment.com - sadly he only posts once every couple of years nowadays, but it’s just… very silly, often very gay humour.

Irrelevant, yeah, but I’ve never been wrong about anything. Purple monkey dishwasher.

This is it. If all my needs were met by the state, I’d happily pay 90% tax with 10% on luxuries, which is about what I spend anyhow

Ordered a pizza, it came with a garlic dip in a transparent tub. My sister tried to dip the crust in the dip about 4 times to no avail, each time my buddy saying “the lids on, Jess. The lids still on, Jess. The lids still on, Jess. The lid, Jess, is still on” until the words finally got to her brain. She and I collapsed in giggles for a solid minute. It was the perfect representation of “this is your brain on weed”.

I’d say the same about reddit, comparing 8 years ago when I joined to 2/3 years later. Again, political divisiveness partially to blame, but also, early adopters of tech tend to be more intelligent. The more it filters into the mainstream, the dumber the general discourse gets. Eventually, that has the effect of putting off the smart folk who were there first, even further lowering the tone.

Going to disagree with your second point. In the UK at least, there’s a lot of friendly “no, after you” type activity. If the road narrows due to an overhead railway bridge or parked cars etc. generally speaking one or both will pull over, flash their lights to signal the other one can go first, and get a friendly wave of thanks when they pass. Letting people in at junctions isn’t uncommon either, though tends to be more the exception than the rule.

There is anger too of course, but usually only aimed at people who aren’t following the rules of the road, have done something stupid/dangerous, or are hesitating for far too long.

This happened to me a couple of weeks ago; neighbor texted me to say all my car windows were open. I had to put the key in to wind them back up. Neighbor said he once had a car that kept doing that - some controller unit had somehow gotten water/moisture in, so he had the part replaced and that fixed it.

I wonder if it was actually a satellite rather than a plane? If, rather than speeding away, it actually halted its orbit, then what you saw was the earth’s rotation spinning away from it

No real need. They could just bury it at worst, dig it up again as soon as they can use a spade

I think it’s the book of Job, God says something like “you could not possibly fathom the purpose or meaning to the world, even if someone tells you”. I think in much the same way a Turing Machine simply cannot process certain tasks or achieve particular ends, our brains are limited to a certain subset of understanding. Still mightily impressive what we can imagine/devise/understand IMO. In Islam, this is more readily accepted dogma: you can’t even imagine or picture God, so even attempting it is doomed to failure (or delusion)